What does it truly mean to “Write what you know”, Reader?

Do they mean write a story about an office worker in purchasing who watches a few hours of streaming TV a night with his wife and cat on the couch?

Or a retired stay-at-home mom who now spends way too many hours reading social media posts and buying gifts for the grandkids?

Or a former picture book illustrator who has never lived further than an hour from where she was born?

What if “what you know” isn’t that exciting? I mean we all can’t be secret agents and NASA scientists, can we?

No, you’re right. But I think you might be selling yourself and your lived experiences short, Reader.

Because you may not know what fighting a dragon feels like. But you could know what facing an opponent who far exceeds your ability feels like if you’ve been bullied.

And I, for example, may not have the same fears or phobias as my characters, but I know what it is to live with a phobia so bad it’s paralyzing. A fear so overwhelming it makes your heart race even seeing it on the other side of a TV screen.

And that’s what “Write what you know” truly is in a nutshell.

It doesn’t mean creating someone who grew up in the same town, who has the same job, or the same family as you. It means taking the pain and triumphs, the joy and sorrows, that you’ve experienced in life, and transplanting those things into your characters. Infusing them with your realness.

It’s taking these things you know in your skin and bones and writing them into your stories.

Taking those visceral, lived experiences. Those fears and phobias. Those traumas and dreams, wishes and childhood memories, and gifting them to your characters to give them that spark of believability.

Because your characters shouldn’t just be reskinned versions of yourself. But instead, more like fragments of you that have been woven into them.

A trauma here. A wish there. A fond memory and a terrible dream. And the way a favorite food tastes to you.

All of those things mixed together are a magic spell 🪄 you cast on the reader. An incantation that makes them believe your characters and the world you’ve created is real and whole and true.

Because the best storytelling is half lie and half truth.

So go out there and write what you know into your stories, Reader. Because that’s when the real magic ✨ happens.

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Until next time, this is your friendly neighborhood storytelling Kat wishing you a wonderfully creative week.

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Your cohort in storytelling,

Kat Vancil

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PS 👉 Fun Fact: The first person to ever be called a “scientist” was Mary Somerville Fairfax for whom Somerville College at Oxford is named.

In her obituary in 1872, The Morning Post said ‘Whatever difficulty we might experience in the middle of the nineteenth century in choosing a king of science, there could be no question whatever as to the queen of science.’

This basically means for the last 150 years “scientist” has been a feminine term, not a masculine term in English since at the time, men in the fields of STEM were called “Men of Science.” So technically speaking the proper usage is scientist and male scientist.

Fun Fact 2: I know no less than 3 NASA scientists.

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Steven J Morris SJMorris Writes Hi! If you enjoy fantasy with snarky humor, I've got some books for you. My newsletter takes you along the creative journey, and keeps you informed of what's brewing. Subscribe​

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