Beginning writers, and even some of us who’ve been
writing for some time, are told to ‘write what you know.’ I have to confess, I’m not at all sure just
what that means. If I write only about
the things that I’ve experienced directly, fantasy and science fiction are off
the table – at least until space travel is within reach of all of us, and magic
is commonplace. I’ve never seen an ogre
or a fairy, but I know in my mind what one would look and act like. I’ve never been to the Planet Mars,
but I think I could do a fairly good piece about a Terran explorer on that
planet, and his or her encounter with a native Martian.
Why would I be able to do this? Because, writing fiction, in the first
instance, is an exercise in using your imagination. This is not to say that you shouldn’t do some
research to make what you make up credible.
For instance, knowing the rotational period of Mars might make your
imaginary Martian society more believable, and we writers are, after all,
asking our readers to suspend disbelief for a while.
I think a better suggestion for a writer
would be to ‘write what you can learn.’
I’ll give you a few examples.
In my historical series for young
adults, Buffalo Soldiers (now up to three volumes), I write about a fictional
small unit of soldiers from the Ninth US Cavalry in Texas a few years after the
Civil War. In the first book, Trial by Fire, I introduced the main
character, Ben Carter, and the men in his unit.
In the story, they had an encounter with a band of renegade Comanche
warriors who were raiding ranches in the area.
I inserted a few historical references, such as the date the unit was
founded and where, and I used the real name of the white colonel who commanded
it. Everything else was made up. In book
two, Homecoming, I had Ben return
home to visit his father. The towns and
terrain, an area of East Texas where I spent my childhood, were authentic, but
everything and everyone else – pure fiction.
In book three, Incident at Cactus
Junction, which was recently released, except for references to the
type of weapons the soldiers used, everything and everyone in the story was a
figment of my imagination.
Now, I was never in the cavalry; my time
in the army was in artillery and subsequently Special Forces; I don’t even ride
a horse very well. I lived in the west,
mostly Texas, Oklahoma, and Arizona, so I’m relatively familiar with the
terrain and some of the towns and cities – but of the twentieth century, not
the late 1800s. I use archive photos and
descriptions in history books, and my imagination, to set the scene. I sort of make up the dialect my characters
use, partly from how I remember people talking when I was a kid, and partly
just out of my mind to provide character tags.
I think it works; at least a few of the
people who’ve bought and read the first two say they found them entertaining
and credible – and, educational.
So there; you don’t necessarily have to
restrict yourself to writing ‘what you know.’
If you have a good story to tell, a little research, and a vivid
imagination might be enough. In the end,
it’s how well you tell the story that really counts. If you can avoid really stupid errors – like having
a cavalryman of the late 1800s firing his rifle repeatedly without reloading;
the US cavalry used the Springfield single shot because of its accuracy,
durability, reliability, and cost, instead of the Winchester repeater that you
often see in movie westerns – you just might help your reader suspend disbelief
long enough to enjoy your story.
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