You Know What You Need to Know

By Katie Lewis

“Write what you know” is a quote usually attributed to Mark Twain. It has become a cornerstone of writing advice in the hundred-plus years since he may or may not have said this. Like other writing rules, however, I feel it’s somewhat misunderstood.

You know more than you may think you do. The challenge lies in recognizing that knowledge and channeling it into your work.

Recognize Your Experiences

The biggest hurdle I see writers, especially new writers, face around this concept is that they need to take it less literally. To know something is not necessarily to have experienced the exact situation you’re writing about. Instead, it’s to have experienced similar emotions to your character in that moment.

You’ve probably never slayed a dragon, but you’ve conquered a massive project at one point or another. I’m not necessarily talking about writing here. You may have survived the holiday rush at a retail job. You may have passed an important test you were convinced you would fail. Maybe you’ve inched down an icy mountain road in a blizzard and lived to tell the tale.

Whatever the situation, however big or small, you know what that adrenaline spike feels like. You’ve felt the determination to press on while a voice in your head keeps whispering it’s impossible.

You’ve stood before a proverbial dragon, which is the key to understanding your character’s feelings.

To write what you know doesn’t mean you’ve lived the exact life experience you’re writing about. It means that your unique experiences have led you to understand the characters’ emotions in a scene.

If you know your characters, then you know WHY they are stressed. And if you know why, you can examine any time you have felt even remotely similar to determine how they should act or react.

Keep Coming Back to Emotions

That empathy and emotional common ground is the crux of writing what you know. We’ve all had the experience of reading something and feeling disappointed. Reactions like, “This author doesn’t know how to write women,” or “The protagonist’s actions don’t feel realistic for their age/gender/race.” Sometimes, those missteps are from a lack of research on the author’s part, but only sometimes.

Whenever I have those criticisms, the author feels divorced from their characters. I don’t sense the author in the work. Instead, they simply wrote what they thought would appeal to their readers.

The best example of this is Harry Potter, for two reasons. He’s the most well-known protagonist the world over. If you take the series as a whole, he is a perfect example of what happens when you stop writing what you know. Allow me to explain.

I, like Harry, latched onto school as a welcome escape from a less-than-ideal home life. I, like Harry, could be shy and only ever had a small circle of close friends. Rowling effectively weaves this experience for the reader, and so I could identify with Harry, at least initially.

As the series went on, however, I struggled. Harry stopped feeling like a natural person. His emotions simply stopped making sense to me. I aged with him as each book came out, yet he felt so out of step with me and my classmates. I didn’t know how to articulate this back then, but looking at those books, what happened is clear. Around book three or four, Rowling stops writing from experience and begins writing a stereotype of a pubescent boy instead.

Stereotypes exist for a reason, but relying on them is the antithesis of writing what you know. It has always felt that Rowling knew Harry until he hit puberty. After that point, she shied away from putting herself in his shoes. The result is that Harry felt very two-dimensional at times. It wasn’t until the very last book that I could connect with him again.

Finally, I felt like his grief was genuine, his pain was real, and his determination was tangible. Those feelings didn’t seem fake or like he was just going through the motions because, at last, they were coming from the author.

That’s the end of my Harry Potter soapbox, but let me leave you with one final thought before I step off it entirely. Imagine, just for a moment, what the middle books in that series could have been like if Rowling hadn’t pulled back the way she did.

And with that, allow me to touch on how to avoid the same pitfall in your work.

Don’t Let Others Tell You What You Know

You can write anyone if you understand how to tie your experiences to your character. An old woman, a 13-year-old boy, an elf, a citizen of Mars—anyone. However, that doesn’t mean you won’t get push-back in critique groups or from the public at large.

This past weekend, I just finished a writing project I’ve been working on and posting online for years about a character dealing with mental illness in a fantasy setting. I focused mainly on a representation of Anxiety and how it affected my character’s approach to stressful situations.

Mental illness is not a one-size-fits-all subject. Two people with the same diagnoses can have vastly different experiences. Since I was writing what I knew, I modeled his panic attacks after my panic attacks and his intrusive thoughts after my intrusive thoughts. As a result, my story resonated with some but not with everyone.

Particularly during the first year, I was working on this story, one fellow writer in my circle gave me constant negative feedback. It was consistent enough to make me worry I was guilty of promoting sloppy representation in my attempt to shed light on a personal issue. I came very close to abandoning the story altogether.

I was getting enough positive feedback from other corners to keep me going, though, and I’m so glad I did. Since I was writing from a place of personal experience, even though not all of my character’s symptoms match how Anxiety affects everyone, the character’s emotions rang true. He was never a stereotype.

As a result, I have had the most incredible experiences and reader interactions because of that story. People have told me they felt seen. They’ve told me they understood themselves better. And a brave few have even told me that reading that story gave them the courage to seek help.

That’s what happens when you write what you know. When you inject your emotions, it clicks with people, and you can connect to your reader through your words. You can bring them joy or grief or even, rarely, change their life. And if that’s not the point of art, I don’t know what is.

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Write What You Know

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