It may be that the DNA of fiction is, like our own DNA, a double helix, a two-stranded beast. One strand is born of what writers have experienced. The other is born of what writers wish to experience, of the impulse to write in order to know.
– Mohsin Hamid
“Write what you know.”
Likely the most common advice given to aspiring authors, those four words have been mulled, argued, and dissected for almost a hundred and thirty years. They’ve bread entire schools of practice, shaped concepts, and fostered disciplines. And, why not? When someone as influential to the medium as Mark Twain says something about what we, as creators, should do, it would be foolish not to lend it at least some credence.
Also, let’s be honest – it just makes sense. We’ve all read or watched something where the creator clearly had no grasp of the ins and outs of the subject. It shows. This can come through in serious matters, like watching Congressional hearings on the tech industry by people who probably can’t figure out how to use a search engine, but we see it all the time in media. Remember that whole “two people hop on the keyboard to hack faster” thing from NCIS? Grade A meme material. That’s all one aspect of this – abject ignorance of a topic utterly sours the result to those who know any better.
As seems to be the case these days, we look to be leaning hard into the literal sense of the phrase. People of certain races and sexes being told – or, well, “strongly advised” – that they can’t write certain points of view. They can’t tell certain stories. Because, well, they can’t possibly know them. They didn’t live them. You have to write what you know, after all, and we can only possibly know what we’ve experienced.
It’s tempting to agree. Something like The Invisible Man being written by a white guy and not Ralph Ellison feels like it would lack the same weight and miss out of the truth of it. The impact of it. The pain in that novel is born of experience, a life story aching to be told. I don’t think anyone could argue anything else.
And yet, we’re in the world of fiction, here. Most of this topic isn’t being centered around intensely, semi-biographical stories. It’s around things like needing a 100% female writing room for She Hulk because it’s a story about women. As though no man has ever written compelling, truthful stories about women. As though they can’t. As though no woman could write a story headed by a man, or no white person could write a story about a black person, or black person about an Asian person, etc., etc.
It’s a garbage line of thought that likes to imagine we’re all different species, so incapable of empathy we couldn’t possibly get into one another’s shoes to understand basic human motivations. And it’s entirely self-defeating. Read (or watch) a story. A good one, but pretty much any of those. Notice how there are characters? A bunch of different ones? How they’re all compelling? Going to shock you here, but it turns out none of those are the actual author. That author had to create characters. Characters of different backgrounds, different motivations, different objectives and beliefs and desires. Most of them, likely, are at least slightly if not completely opposite the author’s.
That’s our job. No, it’s our calling, really. To invent worlds and sculpt the lives of those inside them. To get in the heads of other people and make them relatable to everyone. If we’re not doing that – if we’re just generating a carbon copy of ourselves into some other setting to gain accolades or make ourselves feel better – we’re not creating. We’re fantasizing. Day-dreaming. Building some narcissistic, indulgent Isekai that isn’t worth anyone’s time.
The longer I keep at this article the more annoyed I get, if that wasn’t obvious. So, I’ll cut it short here. Long story short, if someone tells you that you can’t write a story with certain people, promptly inform them where they can stick that opinion. We’re not in the market of suppressing creativity here. Learn what you must to make those characters real. Do right by them, and the reader will do right by you.
As for me, back to research on shell shock. There’s been a lot of death around the protagonist of Residuum, and the severity and suddenness of it all has to be properly conveyed. He has to feel it, so that you, the reader, can feel it in turn. I have to do my job.
Until next time, Dwellers. May the week treat you well.
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