Write what you know.
It's one of the golden rules of the game. There are many golden rules. Too many but this is the one that concerns me today.
But what does it really mean?
Well, shall I tell you what I think it means? That's a rhetorical question, of course. I'm going to tell you whether you want me to or not, otherwise this blog will be pretty darn short.
On the face of it, write what you know suggests you should only write, you know, what you know. In other words only what you have experienced on a personal level.
Obviously that's not something most writers do. Tolkien, for instance, was not a Hobbit, nor a wizard nor an orc. Ed McBain was not a cop, although Steve Carella did bear an uncanny resemblance to the author himself. Larry McMurtry was never a Texas Ranger.
However, what each of those authors did was make sure that they knew whereof, and whatof, they wrote. Tolkien was an expert on mythology and languages. McBain (or Evan Hunter or Salvatore Albert Lombino or any other names he cared to use) made it his business to understand policework. McMurtry, a Texan, researched and researched and researched until he knew his world.
And that, to me, is what the rule really means. Know your world before you write it.
That world may be a Scottish city, it may be a nuclear submarine or a galaxy far away but before putting pen to paper (figuratively speaking) the writer should know as much about it as possible.
A few years ago I both followed - and broke - the rule.
The Janus Run was set in New York. I am not from New York. I have visited (love the place) but could not do so for various reasons when writing this conspiracy chase thriller. I couldn't set it in Glasgow because the plot needed the pulse, the aura, that only a city like New York can offer.
That was how I broke the rule.
It is also how I adhered to it, for the New York I wanted to write about was not the real one.
Okay, I can hear you scratching your heads so I'll try to explain.
I'm a huge movie fan. Too huge, to be honest. It's all the popcorn and hot dogs and I should go on a diet.
What I wanted to do with that book was create an action movie in prose, something that just kept moving. And although it was set in the present day, it was at its core a tribute to the 70s thrillers I love so much. Films like Three Days of the Condor, Marathon Man, The Parallax View, The French Connection, The 7 Upsm Across 110th Street, Report to the Commissioner. So the New York I wrote about was a movie New York, the one I have been researching for years. I took characters and tropes and even modes of speech from that era while also trying to make it as close to the real-life city as I could.
It made the book highly stylised. It wasn't a parody, it wasn't a spoof. It was designed to be an affectionate nod to those movies, as well as the writing of Ed McBain and Robert Ludlum and William Goldman.
Did I pull it off?
To an extent. It was read by people who had lived in New York and they said the setting was fine but I am certain native New Yorkers would raise a few eyebrows. I also made a rookie error regarding a gun which annoys me now. Most of the readers who have commented seemed to have enjoyed it. One even missed his stop on a train journey because he was so wrapped up in the story.
In my mind I succeeded because I did what I wanted to do. For some readers who were not aware of my intention it did not work quite so well and I get that, I really do. They didn't believe the backdrop, they didn't believe the dialogue, they didn't believe the characters. As such, it is my least successful novel.
But hey, them's the breaks, kid.
Would I do it again? I don't think so, not without at least spending time in the location. I know it can be irritating when a someone writes about your home town without doing the work. Google Earth just don't cut it.
I am still proud of it, though. I did what I set out to do, even though I kinda broke that pesky golden rule.
Yup, I'm a maverick that way.
