Yesterday I had a conversation with someone. I told her I was writing a play about a prison psychologist who is counseling an inmate. She asked if I had any experience with any of that. Of course I had to say no-I have never been a prison psychologist, a student of psychology, a prisoner, or a murderer.
One of the great tenets of writing has always been to write what you know. But, if we all wrote about what we knew we wouldn't have half the books that we do. I'm sure there's someone out there who knows what it's like to fight the greatest dark wizard of all time or fall in love with a vampire. But that person isn't J.K. Rowling or Stephanie Meyer. Rowling doesn't know what it's like to fly on a hippogriff any more than Meyer knows what it's like to give birth to a half-vampire baby. Orson Scott Card (Ender's Game Series) doesn't know what it's like to be a child soldier training in space or the savior of the human race. Jodi Picoult (My Sister's Keeper) doesn't know what it's like to have your parents forcing you to donate your bodily material to your sister. Suzanne Collins (The Hunger Games Series) doesn't know what it's like to fight to stay alive in a dystopian world. Bram Stoker (Dracula) didn't know what it would be like to be a guest of Dracula. George Orwell (1984, Animal Farm) didn't have a time machine that allowed him to visit the world as it would be in 1984. Agatha Christie (Hercule Poirot, Miss Marple Series) was no renowned criminal investigator. Arthur Conan Doyle (Sherlock Holmes) was a writer, not a detective. Mary Shelley (Frankenstein) didn't know what it was like to bring something to life that terrified and filled her with shame. Richard Wright (Native Son) never murdered a white girl. Justin Cronin (The Passage) never lived through a vampire apocalypse. Phillip Pullman (His Dark Materials Series) didn't have a daemon by his side while penned his famous trilogy. Cormac McCarthy (The Road) never wandered through a post-apocalyptic world.
So if these authors didn't write about what they knew, how did they do it? With time, research, and where research failed, imagination. And of course, an understanding of the human condition.
To write a great novel or series of novels, you need not have traveled far and wide or seen great things. You simply need to understand what it is to be alive. That's all characters need, wherever they be. Life.
Oh my gosh, Shannon, I LOVE this post! It's great advice and it's true! I didn't know you were a writer. I love writing too, Language Arts is my favorite class. I like to write free-verse poetry about horses, dressage and the connection between horse and rider. I also love writing poems about nature. Lots of people in my class had a hard time writing about nature... but I think they (like you said) simply needed to realize and understand what it is to be alive. If you do that the whole world seems so much more amazing, and unbelievable. Realizing what it is to be alive, and acknowledging every precious moment and detail adds so much depth to your writing! Ughh love it!! :D
ReplyDeleteHaha.. I saw your post of this blog on facebook and decided to click it...
I agree that people need to push themselves and their imaginations (I think that might have been the Bynum lecture that you unfortunately missed) - fantasy is one of my favorite genres, and there is know way that any fantasy writer could "know" what they're writing about.
ReplyDeleteEven fantasy books, though, do a lot to pull from real-world, concrete, technical details. (The saddle-lingo applied to dramals, for example :p )
Steve: That's kind of what I meant. Like, you can describe all this crazy stuff not because you've done that exact thing (therefore knowing it), but because you've existed in a world that can be applied to another. I've never been an acrobat, but I think I could write a story about being one, yes?
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