We’ve all heard the adage, “Write what you know.”
It seems like good advice, until you start writing about other cultures, stories set in the land of Faery, or a story about a serial killer. You can only take research so far.
What is really meant by this writing advice is to impose knowledge and experiences from your life onto the landscape of your stories.
Learned to sail as a teenager? Let your serial killer use a boat to escape a crime scene. Had some weird experiences of a supernatural sort? Apply them to a ghost story or to something set in an alternative world. Taken a trip to an exotic country? Transfer your experiences of the culture onto a character’s history or send them on holiday in that country for your story setting. Your own limited knowledge of the place will equal theirs.
Most of the stories by Anne Rice are set in either New Orleans or San Francisco. These are places she lived in and knew well. Chances are she will have travelled to Paris long before her characters, Louis and Claudia, did.
If you set your story in a place where you’ve lived, you’ll have a wealth of details you can slip in.
But what about that serial killer character? Most of us aren’t on intimate terms with people of this description. This is where research can fill in the gaps. A read of Helter Skelter by Vincent Bugliosi can give you a wealth of insight into the sort of mind that will frighten your readers.
What about fantasy worlds? Do you just make them up? Some authors do, but the best fantasy worlds I’ve read about were based at least loosely on real places, legends or history. J.R.R. Tolkien, for example, drew from his extensive knowledge of Norse history to create Middle Earth and historical legends painted the landscape of his books based in that world.
Writing Mystery? Chances are you’ve read a lot of true crime books. Once you become familiar with police procedures and the sort of crimes that fill newspapers and evening news, you’re working with a subject you know something about and can easily research anything you need to make the story work.
Take that information and let it cross over into something you know from your own experience. Did you know someone in school who had qualities that would suit one of your characters? Or maybe you grew up with urban legends of an abandoned house in your neighbourhood that would work well as fodder for a haunted house story.
The possibilities are endless. By the time you’ve reached adult age, you’ve experienced a lot of life, even if you think things have been dull up to now. Perhaps even a grand adventure that existed nowhere outside of your own mind would provide a plot for a story every bit as exciting as you imagined it might have been, or an old hotel might inspire a time travel story.
Even just going to a daily job provides opportunities for observation and imagination. What if that contractor who asked you where your boss could be found, then winked at you, was younger, better looking and single? What kind of Romance story might grow from that?
Have you written stories based in places you’ve been or lived? Have you ever created a character from inspiration by a real person? Let’s chat in the comments.
Jaq D Hawkins
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Chris The Story Reading Ape's Blog 
Mainly I write fantasy, horror novels or faerie tales but tend to draw away from creating worlds. Rather Creating stories from places I know and love. But I suspect that I am luckier than most having been brought up in Argyll. Scotland. On our hill farm we had groupings of Standing Stones C. 4000BCE, Hillforts, C. 300CE, Burial Mounds, C. 5000BCE, Monoliths C. 7000BCE, Duns, C.700CE and Cysts that contained Neandertal remains. All on a small hill farm.
Nearby lies the only Abbey built in honour of the Christian St Fillian, built by Somerled, Lord of the Isles around 950CE, Slightly farther away lies Kilmartin Glen where the structures, Cysts, crypts, burial mounds Standing Stones. Predate the pyramids. I was lucky I lived in a land of wonders. No need to invent anything. I just needed to look outside.
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What a wonderful landscape for inspiring Fantasy worlds! I do love the vibes of standing stones and circles.
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My series of Amanda Travels, are middle grade adventures based on the places I have visited. The adventures are made up, but the places are real. Great advice.
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Great example! You’ll know the terrain and could even have some photos to convert for pictures!
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So true. The photos inspire me and give me ideas! (as well as help me write the descriptions.)
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Research is a great resource, and we have so many wonderful tools at our disposal, but my characters are human (and the odd cat) and are drawn from experience.
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Oooh, my cats wander into my stories as well. You have to be a cat person to depict them accurately.
Khana, from The Wake of the Dragon, is 18 now and no longer climbs ropes into airships, but her personality is still the same.
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You do have to be a cat person. People love Bonkers, and he is the best and worst of the cats we’ve had.
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I write science fiction, so there’s a lot that must just be made up. But I’m an avid reader of astronomy, astrophysics, and cosmology, so I work hard to make my space travel plausible–even the impossible parts.
But most of my scenes take place on Earth, in places I know very well–LA, Bay Area, Hawaii. We did drive up a lava gravel road toward Mauna Loa to describe the landing location for a spaceship. I researched the United Nations building in New York, and Tinian in the South Pacific, where important scenes take place.
And this doesn’t even get into the characters.
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Great examples!
I find Google maps very useful for visiting places and seeing the layout of places I can’t easily travel to on short notice!
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That’s true. But there are parts of the world that are poorly displayed in Google Maps. I believe I did this with Tinian. With the UN, I had to find the nearest heliport. I was surprised the UN building didn’t have one.
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