We’ve all heard “write what you know”. The phrase’s original intention may have been lost with repetition but it is interpreted in limiting ways.
Speaking for myself only, the older I get, the less I’m positive that I “know” anything. Taking “write what you know” literally would narrow my writing topics to shoe-tying and song lyrics from the eighties. (Maybe the song lyrics are wrong, so that’s not even true.)
On the other hand, I’ve read stories and books by authors who had no idea what they were talking about. Some things can’t be faked even if they’re thoroughly researched.
One of those subjects is the South. If you’re not a Southerner, you probably can’t fake it. A woman at a writer’s workshop wrote a story set in Tennessee and all of her dialect and customs were clearly set in Georgia. I told her, and she said, “That’s still the South.” Tennessee and Georgia have vast differences. It’s not the same at all.
Another is writing about teachers. If you haven’t taught or lived with someone who has, you can’t fool real teachers. However, you can probably get by with the general public.
Most things can be researched well enough to pass as reality. Places, history, professions—if you stay general when you should and develop specifics through characterization, it may work. As for race, ethnicity, and sexuality, it gets trickier. Again, the experience of being part of a certain group is unique and sometimes ineffable, so your research can’t be felt on a level you need to write about it authentically.
Maybe it depends more on the theme of the work. If you’re writing a murder mystery and the main character is a gay, Catholic man from Uruguay and you, the writer, are a hetero, Buddhist woman from Russia, you may be able to pull it off. If the theme were the hardships of being a gay, Catholic man from Uruguay, you may have some serious problems becoming believable.
Readers are likely to forgive a writer for ignorance in details, but not if the ignorance influences the overall point of the book. How to judge your level of ignorance? If you feel comfortable in your character’s skin, chances are your reader will believe what you write. But don’t count on it. Some things can’t be known without experiencing them firsthand.
Write what you know? Write what you can experience, perhaps. Write what is universal to the human experience–it is what everyone knows.
