Write what you know

I recently had an email regarding my script featured on critique saying it didn't sound like my voice and the best thing to do is 'write what you know'. I can understand to a point but isn't writing about creating new characters and settings so you can escape what you know? I personally know very little, I was kicked out of school at 15 and have no qualifications I worked in a warehouse and as a security guard - Not comedy gold if I'm honest. Do all writers 'write what they know? Has Ricky Gervais ever been an 'Extra'? Has Jack Whitehall ever been a teacher? I believe Derren Litten had never been to Benidorm until he wrote the series. If a writer can write about what they know and it's funny, for example 'Inbetweeners' that's great but what about someone like me? Am I wrong to write about things I don't know?

Something you might want to try is to take something you know and exaggerate it for comic effect. A sitcom set in the security business has every right to be as funny as a sitcom about a bunch of misfits on a lost mining vessel (or a bunch of people who work in an office), it's about the characters you populate your stories with and the conflicts you create for them.

I find the whole thing hit and miss - I wrote a script about security guards and was told it was funny but not very original, then when I try and be 'original' I'm told it's funny but doesn't sound like your own voice.

Keep writing and get better at it (and don't expect to see any success until you've been doing it at least 5-10 years).

Quote: PurpleRonnie @ January 30 2013, 3:10 PM GMT

I worked in a warehouse and as a security guard - Not comedy gold if I'm honest.

View original

Wrong. It can be as funny as your characters, your jokes and your writing. Plus, you can write about a warehouse security guard based in Slough or a warehouse security guard based on Mars, you can still pull humour from it that people can relate too. Because at the end of the day, that character is still a warehouse security guard sat at a monitor, eating a big bag of Cheesy Wotsits.

I think 'write what you know' has two strands; one factual, and one sensual.

It's irritating to listen to/view a play when the writer has no idea about the setting or profession in reality (although I have heard and seen a few!).

More importantly, I think all our characters are offshoots of ourselves, no matter how nutty, and only then do they connect with the audience. Be comfortable in the character as part of yourself, and it will be your voice.

imho

Quote: PurpleRonnie @ January 30 2013, 3:10 PM GMT

I recently had an email regarding my script featured on critique saying it didn't sound like my voice and the best thing to do is 'write what you know'. I can understand to a point but isn't writing about creating new characters and settings so you can escape what you know?

View original

To the 'write what you know argument' I always say - Shakespeare didn't write many plays about a bald bloke who worked in a theatre, did he?

On the other hand, 'write what you know' is probably better understood as 'write what you understand', so perhaps he did. You don't have to have been a security guard to write convincingly as one - you just need to channel the emotions you would feel in such a job. Perhaps edginess and boredom. Perhaps officiousness and pomposity.

This does take a certain amount of intellectual rigour, which is why so many writers tediously create characters who are also writers. You gave a good example yourself - Ricky Gervais. Despite working as a manager in a paper merchants Brent never once actually talks about paper. Instead he describes himself as an 'entertainer' and constantly cracks jokes and quotes famous comedy routines, allowing Gervais to just write as himself.

Quote: PurpleRonnie @ January 30 2013, 3:19 PM GMT

I find the whole thing hit and miss - I wrote a script about security guards and was told it was funny but not very original, then when I try and be 'original' I'm told it's funny but doesn't sound like your own voice.

View original

Quote: David Bussell @ January 30 2013, 3:25 PM GMT

Keep writing and get better at it (and don't expect to see any success until you've been doing it at least 5-10 years).

View original

Bussell (despite the creepy photo) is a genius and he's still broke and unknown. Give up.

Ricky Gervais must have met a lot of extras. Bet that however boring you think your life is, you have friends or family that interesting stuff happens to too.

Anyway I think the advice is better summed up as "don't write what your potential audience knows much better"

If you're fairly uninterested in subjects that many people are very interested in like politics, sci-fi, religion or history then you're best off steering clear. On the other hand few, if any, sitcom writers have ever actually been politicians, astronauts, televangelists or alive in the 19th century, they just have enough background knowledge and willingness to research stuff that actually interests them. If you pick a more generic subject you probably won't get many obsessive paper-company employees or odd-job men shaking their heads sadly and saying "that's not how it really works in my industry".