Should you only write what you know?

Should you only write what you know?

In recent years, there have been many conversations about if writers should only “write what they know.” It’s a complicated conversation, full of nuance and difficult emotions. While I can’t pretend to have all the answers, I can offer my perspective and some tips for figuring out if a topic, character, or story is appropriate for you to approach.

Truthfully, writers write about things they’ve never experienced all the time. Most science fiction writers have never been on a spaceship or made contact with an alien race. Fantasy writers haven’t cast spells or dealt with evil wizards. Horror writers typically haven’t been hunted by serial killers or haunted by ghosts. Most romance writers haven’t fake-dated someone or fallen in love with their enemy. To some people, this makes the conversation of “writing what you know” seem pretty silly; aren’t we writing about things that depart from our lived experience all the time?

Well, yes and no. Fantastical plots, magical elements, and galaxies far far away are different from, say, a white author writing from the point of view of Black characters or a cis straight screenwriter writing a story about queerness. When you’re dealing with elements of make believe, there are different questions to ask yourself than if you’re dealing with the material reality of someone’s lives.

I’ve heard writers express confusion about this, and while it’s impossible to write something concise that applies to every single situation, my guiding principle when working on a creative project is to write what I know to be emotionally true. 

I cannot write from the perspective of a person of color who experiences racism, because that is not my emotional truth. I can, however, write white characters who have multiracial, multicultural friend groups, families, and communities, because that is my emotional truth. As a queer person, I can truthfully write about what it feels like to be queer in a homophobic, transphobic world, but it’s not my place to write about what it feels like to be the target of transmisogyny, because that is a specific phenomenon only trans women face. I am simply not the right person to tell those stories, and that is okay. There are many stories that I AM the right person to tell, and the same is true for you. 

Some writers are tempted to cry censorship when they are told they aren’t the right person to write a specific story or portray a specific experience. This thought process betrays a basic misunderstanding of what censorship is. Censorship specifically refers to the suppression of words or ideas deemed offensive by a government or private pressure group. Individual people taking offense to your work or declining to publish it or platform your views is not censorship. If you live in the United States, you are protected from censorship by the First Amendment. That is not to say that censorship never happens in the US; it is simply to clarify that someone declining to give you a publishing deal, declining to accept your work into a film festival, or even being mean to you on Twitter is not the same as being censored. You have a right to write whatever you please, protected by the First Amendment, but likewise, people and entities have a right to respond to your work by expressing their own thoughts and feelings. Essentially: censorship is unconstitutional, but you have no basic right to a book deal, and people disliking your work is CERTAINLY not unconstitutional.

Truthfully, if you are debating writing about a certain kind of person or experience and your argument for doing so is that you have a legal right, you are likely not approaching the question of your emotional truth in good faith. Take a moment to think about your reasons for writing in the first place. Do you write because you are legally permitted to do so? Or do you write because you have something you want to express and you wish to share it with others? If you as a white author choose to write about racism from the perspective of a Black character, no one will be knocking down your door to arrest you and burn your work. However, you risk writing a clumsy, inauthentic, and harmful portrayal of a minority group. I want my work to resonate with readers of all kinds, and so I stick to writing what I know; specifically, my emotional truth. I advise you do as well.