Write What You Know

― Eric Thomas

Storytellers who write what they know…what they have experienced, what they have observed in others, what they have lived through, and what they deal with on an ongoing basis are the people who write what they know.

You can tell as soon as you start reading, you’re engaged in the story. This person is someone who writes from their soul. Their grammar and punctuation need not be perfect, but still,  you get them. More importantly, they get you.

When, as writers we reach down to the core of who we truly are, we find the truth of our existence. What we call our core story. No matter how many ways we find to tell our story, successful writers never search for a theme. They know their core story and they are successful because they tell it over and over again.

So, how do we recognize our core story? We know it, instinctively from our formative years. Think about it. When you first became interested in story. As children, we all had our favorites. Stories, that is. We had one thing we couldn’t get enough of, a book or story or a type of story we would read over and over again and again.

For many mystery writers it was Nancy Drew, or the Hardy Boys. For me, it was Cherry Ames, Student Nurse. For writers who pursue adventure stories it was usually something like, Robin Hood. Our taste in reading is often a hint to our preference in writing–the type of story that we know and love to tell, over and over again.