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One piece of advice beginner writers come across often is "Write what you know!"

But many budding writers understandably ask, "But what if what I know is boring, dull, and something I don't want to write about?"

To answer this question, you must dig deep into the reasons you are writing. This piece of advice will apply differently if you are writing a) creative non-fiction to earn money, b) fiction to earn money, or c) fiction in order to express yourself.

In the first case, writing what you know is a good beginning, because this lets you write comfortably in non-fiction subjects which you know well. What you do not know in that particular field, you can very easily research and find out. This is typically how beginner freelance writers decide their own creative niche and follow it. They become subject matter experts in a given area according to their interests, and then write articles, features, and even entire books in their area of expertise, sometimes using the mores of creative writing to their utmost. This happens over time, but generally pays off very well.

In the second case of those writing fiction to earn money, there are those that write commercial fiction. They are trying to write stories to entertain, to compel a reader to buy, read, then keep on reading and buying more. In this case, writing what you know may form only a limited basis for a beginning. For example, there have been those in the medical profession who have written excellent medical thrillers. But here, research is absolutely key. You just cannot limit yourself even for a moment only to what you know. Your readers expect you to know new and weird things, carry them away for a spell to a different world altogether, which has to be a fascinating world of your creation.

You can do this only after you have studied and researched a lot, and increased your knowledge database to the furthest extent possible. This holds true for fantasy, science fiction, mystery, and even romance. You have to create more and more intriguing situations and settings in order to hook your reader. You really must know a lot of facts in your field, or be able to imagine widely.

The third case, where writers write to express their selves, or write literary fiction, writing what you know might be your savior. You need to inculcate into your writing a fresh perspective of the world, have something true and hitherto unexplored emotion or human fact to declare. This is best done when you mine your own psyche, delve deep into your own life experiences in order to write a story that resonates with your audience. You have to convert your personal journey into the universal, and though this may not be a literal translation, you would do well to know yourself, and stick to writing what you know. You use yourself and what you know to create a piece of fiction which may not exactly follow your life and experiences, but speaks nevertheless of the new truths you have discovered.

Writing what you know is inherent in all creative writing, the only thing that changes, according to the type of writing, is the extent of its involvement in the writing process.

Learn more about this author, Damyanti Ghosh.
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