King me

I’ve been thinking about another thing Stephen King said in his book, and it’s something that’s made me feel better about my next excavation into writing. And something that’s scared me for so long about writing, that in some cases it’s been my strongest excuse to stop.

And it has to do with this: Write what you know and research and backstory.

There are so many ideas I’ve had for stories, and I think “man, I would have to go learn about so and so for like..3 years to be able to write about it”.

And, “I wanna write a story about the Antarctic, too bad I’ll never be able to, I don’t know anything about it”.

Now Mr. King points out that what you know, might be plumbing or the Antarctic. But what you really know is fear, love, anger, relationships, mothers, family, sadness, happiness, crying, laughing…etc.

And the other stuff, the stuff about research, that’s all backstory. It is exposition only. If I want to write about set in Antarctica, well..I’ll have to do some research on it. But the people, the story, the heart of the novel, has essentially nothing to do with Antarctica. It has to do with what I do already know, things about people and life and work and art and love.

This I found to be quite freeing I must say. He says he has his experts too, his gun guy, his death/mortuary guy, all these guys he can throw out his questions to. But it doesn’t really change his story, it just makes it more viable.

So if you want to write a story about vampires in the 1800’s, yeah, you’ll have to do some research, but don’t get bogged down in “only write what you know”. It’s not quite so literal as that. The vampires will have their relationships and fears and everything else, and THAT will be the story. Not the 1800’s.

On another note, Amazing Race family addition is just not as much fun since the Black Family got kicked off. Anyone? Anyone?