'Write what you know' is solid yet uninspiring advice for new writers. It's fine as long as you don't want to write science fiction, fantasy, historical fiction, superhero graphic novels or a thriller delving into the warped mind of a serial killer who likes to exsanguinate their victims.
How We Got To Today
Of course, I'm assuming you're not a serial killer in this scenario.
A better version of this advice I've seen is, 'write what you're interested in'. You may not know a lot about space travel, or if ogres can reproduce with orcs, or that exsanguinate means to drain the blood or 'make bloodless' (not that other thing you were thinking of), but finding out is one of a writer’s favourite pastimes: procrastinating… no, I mean: researching.
I started my new novel, 'How We Got To Today', with one thought that randomly popped into my head: what if someone couldn't see their own reflection, and they weren't a vampire or anything supernatural, just a normal person?
Now, this isn't a situation I know, but it is one I'm interested in.
It piqued my curiosity, lodging itself inside my brain like an ear worm, burrowing into those six or seven brain cells long enough for me to construct the bare bones of a story. Those bare bones need flesh which can be sparked through research, resulting in following strange but interesting routes on Wikipedia and YouTube to add colour, character and some plot to your story.
This research has a legitimate purpose, it's a learning exercise to properly equip yourself when writing the story. You can now write what you've learned because you were interested enough to learn it. You may not know it in an intimate sense but that's where the writer’s imagination comes in, the empathy, the understanding, those little nuggets of information you picked up on the way whilst watching cat gifs and Russian dashcam videos. You can mould your characters and situations to fit a particular story.
My novel, 'How We Got To Today', starts off with a guy who can't see his face in the mirror, or in any reflection, so how would this affect him? His confidence, his self-esteem, his worries? How would he handle a relationship? What if his girlfriend split up with him but didn't tell him why, what conclusions might he come to?
Everyone needs a job, a way to earn money and live, so what should my character do? I had him be an optometrist as there are a load of ironies and contradictions I could play with. I know nothing about optometry so I did some research, the main male character is called Sheridan because during my optometry research I discovered that those eye test posters with the ever decreasing letters on are called 'Sheridan Gardiner Tests'.
The main female character, Sheridan's girlfriend, is called Heidi because there's an eye test for kids called 'Hiding Heidi'.
Be acutely aware though, research has its limits, don't 'info dump' every last detail you've learned, you'll bore the reader.
So yes, I did a lot of procrastinating research because I knew nothing about optometry and I still don't know very much but I know just enough to write about an optometrist because I became interested enough to find out.
Following a train of thought has infinite possibilities and you can never be sure where it'll lead you. I never thought I'd be writing a contemporary romance novel but here I am.
And I think that's all you need to know, to write. Be interested in what you're writing and make it interesting.
Ben Ellis, author of How We Got To Today, contemporary romantic fiction from Headline Accent Press is out 24th September 2020