Breaking Writing Rules Right: "Write What You Know"

You've probably heard the writing rule, "Write what you know," but in the world of fiction, that advice can seem questionable, especially if you work in the speculative realm. No one alive has ever met a dragon, but there are load of books that have them. On the other hand, if you write about Latter-day Saints attending churches filled with crosses, those familiar with the religion will be shaking their heads.

So where do we draw the line? And what does it mean? And when can we write what we don't know?

What's the Rule?

Write what you know.

Why it's a Rule

My church example above is problematic because that religion doesn't use crosses. So the person who wrote it doesn't know what they are talking about. Here is another example from the book Making Shapely Fiction by Jerome Stern:

"Mush, mush!" Nooknook shouted, as he threw bits of meat to make his dogs bound across the ice floe.

That's not how dog sledding works.

One of the most obvious (and quickest) problems that arise from this is that it messes up believability. We are instantly taken out of the story because we know that's not how dog sledding works.

Having done ballet, including pointe shoes, I find myself cringing a lot in movies when they incorporate it. For those that don't know, wearing pointe shoes requires very specific technique and you also need the shoes to fit in the exact right way (you should have a professional fit your foot), which is one reason why you have to sew the ribbons and elastic on yourself. If you haven't developed the right muscles, haven't learned the accurate technique, or you wear shoes that don't quite fit, you can develop serious health issues. It's hard to get to the threshold where you can even use pointe shoes, but being able to continue to use them can be even harder.

So when I see Gwen Stacy zip down from the trees and land on hers hard like this:

I cringe inside.

Look at how damaging that alignment is! Ouchie.

(Even worse is when movies show a character skipping the ballet slippers and going straight for the pointe shoes. *facepalm*)

But there are more problems than just believability issues.

If it's a reoccurring thing in entertainment, negative and inaccurate stereotypes can emerge. Also, if audiences see inaccurate information enough times, they begin to believe it as truth.

As a writer, you probably know what I'm talking about. You know those movies that are "about" writers? Where the character has a moment of inspiration and then stays up all night and completes a novel by morning? It's a joke, right? But because that's how the process has been conveyed so much, the average person thinks that's how it works and is completely clueless as to what actually goes into it and what it takes (same with pointe shoes).

I still remember watching La La Land and laughing internally as the protagonist spends the entire movie struggling to be an actress but then magically becomes an amazing screenwriter/playwright after writing two stories (one when she was a child). Please. Even when they try to show how difficult the arts is, they show the writing part of it wrong.

Anyway . . .

My writer examples are rather harmless, but these things can have real world, real serious consequences. Such as when someone started slipping off the edge of the Grand Canyon, so their loved one reached out for them and they both ended up dying. Folks, real life is not like the hanging-on-the-ledge-by-one-hand movie trope. Also, mines don't really go off after you step off them--if you wanted to kill someone, why would you invent it like that? You'd have it go off asap.

Then there are the stereotypes, which is a whole other thing. Some of you might be familiar with the popular Disney ride, Splash Mountain. Fewer of you may know that the movie it's based on, Song of the South, is actually banned because of racism. Lots of people who've seen it will argue all day that the movie has nothing negative about blacks in it. But the point isn't that it doesn't have blatantly negative depictions of blacks, the point is that it perpetuates damaging stereotypes and ideas about blacks.

See, back in the day, blacks were often depicted as being happy to be slaves, in order to encourage society to keep them as slaves--which in some ways is actually more dangerous than being blatantly racist, because the average person watching the entertainment is blind to it. Whether or not you agree that Song of the South should remain banned, the reason it was banned, is because it taps into and perpetuates that damaging stereotype. This is also why every Halloween there is controversy over someone painting their face black--because back in the day, people in power intentionally did that when intentionally portraying blacks in negative or damaging ways, subtlety keeping them in a culture and societal state of less power (and in a way that would seem harmless). This is also why there are arguments regularly about who has the right or ability to portray minorities, period.

If this is a new idea to you, or you are bit skeptical, let's go back to the writing example. How many people have you interacted with that expect you to whip out a book in a week, and if it takes you months or years, they become skeptical of how you spend your time, or if you are "actually" working? Probably a lot of us have had an interaction like that of some sort (seriously, no wonder there are so many closet writers! Because writers don't want to deal over and over again with all the misunderstandings). Even as a writer, you may be faced with perpetuating myths and misinformation that have been so ingrained into our culture and society that people do not even know to even question them as possibly being false.

This is one of the crazy powers of storytelling.

So.

I guess I had a lot to say about that. But the point is, when you write what you don't know, not only do you damage the audience's suspension of disbelief, but if the audience doesn't know, you can intentionally or unintentionally create or perpetuate false ideas as truth, which can be harmful to individuals or even a culture or society.

I mean, imagine everyone grabbing pointe shoes and dancing around on concrete.

Aaack, let's not! It's too cringe worthy.

Does this all sound like a burden?

Let's talk about what the advice actually means.

What it Actually Means and How it Applies

"Sound bite" advice can always be dangerous when it's applied to everything. Very, very few things in life can apply to everything.

Let me give an example.

I hate the adage, "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger."

Because there are so many exceptions to this, depending on how you interpret it.

However, in the right context it can be absolutely true. But as human beings, we don't want to reiterate the whole context and setup and everything else every single time we use an adage. It's monotonous and long winded. And it looses its punch. We like when phrases sum an idea up and communicate it quickly. "No pain, no gain." --obviously this doesn't apply to everything in life, but it's shorthand advice for a particular situation. Problems come if we take it out of that context/situation and assume it applies to everything. Sometimes, we hear an adage so much, that the context is lost over time, so we assume it's absolute--that it's intended to always be true on all accounts. (Dangerous.)

But really, adages are meant to serve as a written/verbal symbol for a thought process. We don't want to go on a long winded speech about courage, liberty, and purity every time we incorporate American ideas, so we display the flag as shorthand. Same with adages.

"Write what you know," probably originally had a whole thought process, but it's been used as shorthand advice for so long, that a lot of us don't know what it actually means or what it applies to anymore. (And this happens a lot with writing advice.)

But I like how Stern rewords it in Making Shapely Fiction. He notes it might be better to think of this advice in the negatives:

Don't write what you don't know.

If you don't know about dog sledding, and you are going to write, "Nooknook threw bits of meat to make his dogs bound across the ice floe," we have a problem.

Don't write what you don't know.

Great.

But it's still vague, right? I mean, does any of us actually know definitively what real aliens are like, assuming they exist? No.

What the advice is really saying is:

Don't write something wrong that you (or society) can know to write right.

Don't write something wrong when you or society has the capacity to know what's accurate.

Obviously, for a lot of things, this is taken care of through research. I can research dog sledding. You can interview someone who has done pointe shoes.

Heck people, we have the internet these days! Research is easier than ever (though it takes a level of discernment with your sources).

However, some of this section overlaps and is bleeding into the next section, so I'm going to move onto that.

When to Break the "Rule"

The most obvious, and the one I touched on in the last section, is speculative fiction.

Speculative Fiction

None of us know about aliens, so in that case, we have to imagine them. We get to make it up.

Have you or has anyone you've known met a dragon? Of course not. In order to write a dragon, you will have to write about what you "don't know." Sure, you can research all you want about "dragons," and if you want to, that will fill in a lot of blanks. But since they don't exist, it's all myth anyway. And even if you do use what's historically available, you will have to make up some part of it.

Same with science fiction. Even with things we know, like all we know about dinosaurs, Jurassic Park still had to imagine and make up what we don't know about dinosaurs to fill in the blanks. How they moved, how they sounded.

Remember my modified version of the rule:

Don't write something wrong that you (or society) can know to write right.

Is there really a wrong way to write your own made up magic system? In most cases, no.

HOWEVER

Weirdly enough, sometimes even the fantastic can go wrong. That's because even the imaginary needs to be believable within the realm of the story and within the audience's suspension of disbelief. (For more on problems with believability, see this post). For one, your magic system probably needs to follow the rules you established in the beginning of the story. If fantasy or science fiction doesn't follow the established rules, there is (probably) a problem.

Personal Experiences

Because I already talked a bit about what the rule is actually supposed to mean, I almost feel like I don't need this section, but I'm adding it because people get stuck on it.

Sometimes we think "knowing" means we have to have experienced it. Obviously experiencing something firsthand is super helpful when writing, but it's not a requirement. Just because I've never owned a sugar glider doesn't mean I can't write what it would be like to own one, if I do the proper research. Just because you are a man doesn't mean you can never write from a heroine's viewpoint. Learn what you can, then draw from your own intellect, imagination, or experience to fill in the blanks. (Notice I didn't say "make up the blanks," I said "fill in the blanks.")

I'm not a murderer. In most ways, I don't really know what it would be like to actually be one. I know some things because I love watching the creepy I.D. channel on tv. But I have been very angry before, and I have imagined what it might be like to be a murderer (if only through television and fiction), so I could use that to fill in the blanks.

When we confuse "knowing" with "experiencing" we can really paralyze ourselves as writers. For most of us, it's impossible to experience everything everyone in our cast of characters has experienced. If you want to cripple under powerful bouts of imposter syndrome, this is a fantastic way to accomplish that.

One way to help make something you haven't experienced still feel authentic is to make it very human. Another helpful way is to ask how that experience would play out for that specific person in that specific setup. So, maybe you are a man writing about a woman walking home in the dark. How is walking home in the dark different for a woman than a man? Well, a woman is going to be more cautious and suspicious of others. Personally, I'd have my hand on my pepper spray. So you brainstorm that, then slide some choice details of that experience in. They key is you slide in some--don't overdo it. Some people draw attention to their lack of experience by overcompensating.

The Information is Known, but Inaccessible

There are still some things you can not know, even if other people exist that do know. Secret experiments. Government cover-ups. The latest technology in weaponry. Even if you manage to get some information from someone, you may not be able to get all of THE information.

Like the last section, build off what you do know, and then fill in the blanks. In some cases, it's okay to be vague (though it depends on the situation). For example, maybe you have a character fixing an advanced piece of equipment that is real, but you don't have access to information on how its components actually work. So write a little vaguely about him fixing it. The average audience member isn't going to care or notice, unless it's something already established as very important to the story. It's okay to bluff a little. After all, as writers, we are making stuff up. Remember, it still needs to be believable in the realm of the story.

Intentionally Writing What You Know is Wrong

In some cases, it might be worth really breaking the rule by intentionally writing what you know, wrong.

An Exchange is Worth the Cost

Remember my complaints about Gwen being on pointe shoes? Guess what? Even though I cringed initially, who really cares? It was a fun and cool character design. Maybe portraying pointe shoes wrong was actually worth the exchange of a cool character design. Spider-man is my favorite superhero, so a Spider-woman who does ballet and is in a rock band? Um, okay, that's really cool and fun.

Despite all my complaining above, after my initial response, I actually kind of loved the pointe shoes. I've never seen them used for a superhero costume. Also, let's not forget she's freaking Spider-woman, so she can flipping get beat up, mess up her body, and break her bones and still survive. Sure, we probably don't want girls running home and trying to do acrobats and land on pointe shoes they've never worn before, just like we don't want them to run through traffic in New York to get away from police. But at the end of the day, I'm willing to forgive any inaccurate portrayals in exchange for a cool character design (also the fact she's super-human does really help).

You might run into similar moments. Sometimes intentionally doing something wrong is worth the cost.

It Serves the Story

Similarly, you may want to intentionally write something wrong when it serves the story. HOWEVER, this is not to be confused with ruining the suspension of disbelief (believability). It's possible to write something wrong without making the audience roll their eyes.

As a lot of you probably know, I'm a huge fan of Interstellar, and it was interesting watching the behind-the-scenes clips for the movie and hearing Christopher Nolan talk about the things he portrayed wrong, intentionally. I mean, it feels like we aren't allowed to do that right? But he did.

One thing he did in particular was put a whole cornfield on fire. When he said he was going to do this, people told him that Cooper's cornfield wouldn't actually burn. It's too green. Nolan said he was going to do it anyway.

Other than maybe a percentage of farmers in the audience, did anyone really care? No. It was a minor change that served the plot. Those who knew better would probably make note of it, but as for actually ruining the suspension of disbelief . . . ? I doubt it. You're going to tell me that having a green cornfield catch on fire is going to ruin your movie experience? If you are that guy, you need to loosen up and have some fun. "It's a movie!"--as they say.

It Serves the Audience

Sometimes the audience will actually enjoy the story and benefit more if you portray something inaccurately.

Also in Interstellar, there are a few lines of dialogue where the science is slightly wrong--intentionally. At one part, the characters talk about sling-shotting their spacecraft via gravitational pull. In order to do what they were talking about, you would need to slingshot around a little black hole. One problem: there was already a black hole in the story, and mentioning another one, in passing, was just going to confuse the audience. It wasn't important enough to slow down and explain that there were two and differentiate them, so instead, they said something else (I think it was a pulsar) to keep the story flowing.

A harmless little white lie.

That served the audience.


Note: You probably almost never want to portray minorities wrong--unless the point is that it is wrong, and therefore ridiculous for it. Any controversial topic should also probably not be portrayed inaccurately either. Use your brain.

Room for Forgiveness

After everything I said in the beginning of this about the importance of portraying things correctly, I also want to note that we are all probably going to get something wrong at some point. I mean, we're only human. Even writers can't know everything. ;)

It's better to make some mistakes or write a few minor things wrong than to not write at all.

I mean, if a writer gets something wrong, but the rest of the story is great, I'm going to forgive the error. I'd rather have a good story.

Also, don't forget that it's a story.

On the one hand, it can be incredibly important how we portray things in storytelling, on the other, it's important to also remember it's a story. It's not real life. And sure, that character can hang off a ledge by one hand and be fine, and that soldier can step on a land mine and not have it go off until after he takes his foot off. Sometimes we go so far one direction, that we can forget that it's a work of fiction and not necessarily a perfect nor accurate representation of real life. Or in other words, "It's just a movie!" (or book.)

Now go forth and write!

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Inconceivable! Dealing with Problems of Unbelievability

There are a lot of things that can go wrong in a story, and I've found that perhaps some of the worst feedback to give and receive is that of unbelievability. There is a kind of stinging and feeling of foolishness that comes with the criticism. I've had it, and I've given it--multiple times each. Most often, this criticism is given to new writers.

Now when I say believeablitiy, I'm not saying your stories can't have any dragons or magic or advanced technology. Stranger Things Season 2 recently came out, and I've heard people complaining that KFC wasn't actually called KFC in 1984, or that no one had side parts until later years. Isn't it funny that we have no problems "believing" that there is a parallel world where monsters live and that a young girl can have psychokinetic abilities, but people can't believe that a character has a side part? What a funny life we live in our entertainment.

If you've been told that something in your story is unbelievable, there could be a few different reasons as to why. It might simply be that what you put in the story couldn't actually happen in the real world--if you are dealing with a real world setting. Or it could be because the mechanics of fiction is different than our reality. Here are the different reasons and routes unbelievable content manifests itself in fiction.

The Truth is Stranger Than Fiction

I recently read an article about a woman who got pregnant a second time, when she was already pregnant. It's weird right? That's not how nature works. However, this woman had a rare condition that allowed this to happen. Now, you can say this is a true story, because it is. But if you try to put this into your story, without proper explanation, or when you already have a lot of other unusual things happening in your story, it will probably ring false. Critics will say, "But what are the chances of that?"

This is because fiction works off rules of probability, not what actually happened. The less probable something is, the more likely your audience will be skeptical. It's even worse if you stack up multiple improbabilities into one piece. This is one of the reasons you may hear about the "one impossibility rule," which is the idea that audiences can only believe in one impossibility per book. Of course, there are ways to break this rule, and it is broken in many works, but generally speaking: one impossibility. And this works off the suspension of disbelief that audiences come to a story with, which is a topic all its own.

There are a few tricks to getting around the probability issue. One is validating the audience's skepticism, but it has to be done with care and not overused. Otherwise, it will still ring false.

But almost always,

Probability > Reality

Tension is More than Conflict and Spectacle

Another avenue unbelievability takes to get in, is through conflict and spectacle. This usually happens when the writer is trying hard to make the story "really good" by making it intense, skyscraping stakes, and putting in massive hooks. The story may start fine, but suddenly, conflicts are going crazy, and the writer is throwing in intense scenarios that don't actually fit the story or aren't portrayed with real-life consequences.

For example, you might feel that your romance story is getting a bit boring for the audience, so you throw in a serial killer. The protagonist knows about the serial killer, but has no problem walking home alone after midnight, or she encounters the serial killer, but decides (for no legitimate reason) not to contact the police, because that's not the direction, you, the writer, want to take the story. Or maybe your character gets accused of murdering someone (because crazy conflict is good, right?), but that's not actually what you want the story to be about, so you don't flesh that part out, and eventually get back to the main storyline.

These sorts of things happen because the writer thinks the crazier the conflict, the better. They might be afraid their story is too boring, and so they are trying to liven it up for the audience. What they don't realize is that tension is what keeps the reader reading, far more than conflict.

Tension doesn't necessarily need outlandish conflict. It doesn't need a spectacle to be interesting. Tension can happen in a conversation between a father and daughter. It can be present when a protagonist is deciding who to invite to a concert when she only has four tickets and six friends. Tension can be there in a job interview, where the characters are trying to appear cool and collected and professional, but inside are not.

Tension > Conflict

You don't need to throw in crazy conflicts to make your story interesting. You just need to learn how to take advantage of tension.

Now, if you want to throw in crazy conflicts, fine, but the consequences, facets, and ramifications of such things must be spoken to, to be realistic. Some things you just cannot turn a blind eye to. And don't forget to incorporate the probability aspect.

You can read more about tension vs. conflict here.

 Writing What You Don't Know

Sometimes something is unbelievable just because the writer didn't do their research. For example, if you were writing about the Mormon church at a part in your story, and you told me that Mormons worship Joseph Smith and have a golden Bible, as a Mormon, I'm going to giggle.

Look, the research part of writing is perhaps my least favorite part of writing (others say it's their favorite), so I understand that it can be annoying, especially when you just want to write the story. But sometimes you've got to do the research. And honestly, research has never been easier to do than it is to do today. You can find much of what you need online or in books. If you can't find that, you can find knowledgeable people to talk to or ask. Try not to feel stupid about asking questions. Most people you will talk to will probably want to tell you more than you want to know. And of course, make sure you are choosing reliable sources to get your information.

The other facet of this problem is inexperience, and in some ways, I feel that inexperience is its own topic.

Maybe you want to write about what it's like being a Chinese woman in the West, but you are a Caucasian teenage boy in a small town in the South. Maybe you want to write about an astronaut on Mars, but the furthest you got into your science career was high school chemistry and biology. Maybe you want to write a story about how a Christian helped convert an atheist--but you've never spent sincere time speaking with atheists about their genuine perspective and end up writing a two-dimensional caricature that turns a blind eye to the intricacies and complexities of the argument, "Is there a God?"

Really, inexperience can crop up in any number of things.

All of us are inexperienced in some way.

Does that mean you should only write about what you have lived? Of course not. That's ridiculous. You think everyone who has written a female character has been a female? Do you think only straight actors portray straight character? We're writers--we are imagining things we haven't lived all the time. It's likely we'll all write something wrong from our inexperience at some point.

In some situations, you can go out and gain the experience you need. If you've never been to the beach, maybe you can go to the beach. But if you've never been a Chinese woman, then maybe you need to speak and spend some time with one. And don't do anything stupid that compromises your moral standards just to gain firsthand experience.

Even if we don't have personal experience of something, we can sometimes draw from past experiences that may be similar or relate to said experience, and go from there. In some cases, for very specific set-ups or information, we can bluff it as writers, but it takes practice to make such bluffs believable. If you have access to someone who may have experience with whatever you are writing, you can ask them to read over your passage.

Convenient Human Behavior

One area in particular that audiences don't have a lot of patience for when it come to unbelievability, is human behavior. We will read about aliens and superheroes and not blink an eye, but when a character doesn't act human (or within the realms of whatever species he is, if you are writing speculative fiction), we won't believe it. In some beginners' stories, it may manifest itself in characters not having logical or probable reactions to certain things.

For example, if your protagonist's child dies unexpectedly, and then the next scene shows us the protagonist still moving forward preparing a holiday party with no sign of grief or distress, the audience is going to be skeptical (unless your protagonist is villainous and was the one who killed the child). This sort of problem usually relates to the tension/conflict problem. The writer throws something big into the story to make it more interesting, but then doesn't want to actually include the ramification of such a thing, so out of convenience, they continue the story without showing the character grieving. It's convenient human (or "inhuman") behavior.

Other times this happens because the writer simply doesn't know how to write a character who is in that particular emotional state. In my example, the writer may not know how to write a parent grieving for a child, and so, they don't. They continue on with the rest of the story. In that way, this problem can relate to the research and inexperience section too.

In some cases, it's not so much about a character not acting logically human as it is a character acting out of character--out of the boundaries the writer has already set. If your protagonist is a huge pacifist that believes in the sanctity of all human life and then goes and shoots an innocent bystander, without explanation or development, the audience isn't going to buy that. Maybe it was convenient for the plot, but it doesn't fit the character.

In general, problems in this area stem from the above three sections. However, unbelievability in human behavior can be so damning and so common, that I've put it as its own section.

Now go forth and write believable fiction!

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How to do Research for Your Novel

Kerstin said: Hi, I recently stumbled over your blog when I was researching dieselpunk for our online rpg and not only did it answer my question, it also revived my buried passion for writing. Well done! 

But that also revived the old problem I always had when I sat down to put pen to paper: 

How do you do research for your story? 

I don't mean mere facts - we all know how to google. I'm talking of the little details in the setting and interactions of the characters that make the world you create "real."

. . . Say I want to write a sci-fi story that plays on a space station. The closest real world example could be an oil-platform, but to the average writer it's as exotic and unapproachable as the space-station itself. If you want to write something in a milieu that has nothing to do with your own life, how do you research that, especially when you're not an established author that can ask for interviews or an "externship"? 

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