For all you writers out there: I wrote this piece for the writers' forum, Backspace. It's in answer to the question I often get: "How can you possibly write a main character who is a male Puerto Rican homicide detective?"
Writers are often advised to, “write what you know.” The thinking goes
that only by experiencing something yourself can you portray it authentically.
Here’s what I know:
1. A child’s
need for a bathroom is inversely proportional to the distance from one.
2. If you want
to discuss something really important with a man, hide the remote.
3. Never enter
a swimming pool after a bunch of preschoolers have used it. The same goes for
teenagers and your car.
If I had to write solely from personal experience,
my novels would have all the excitement of a C-span budget hearing. I’m no
Hemingway. I don’t run with the bulls. I type with my hand wrapped around one.
Most writers I know are the same. We don’t write what we know so much as what we want to
know. In my four published books, I’ve collectively written through the eyes of
New York City firefighters, small town detectives, arsonists, high school
students and undocumented day laborers. They’ve been of different faiths,
nationalities and ethnic backgrounds. Some are men; some are women. Some don’t
even speak English.
Don’t get me wrong—writing from personal
experience can make a book feel richer, more nuanced and more self-assured.
When you’ve walked a terrain, you instinctively know how the ground feels
beneath your feet. You have the rock-hard assurance of truth to grab onto when
you find yourself lost in the depths of a manuscript. But not every writer has
a personal story to tell. And some stories would never find their way onto the
page if they had to rely on an eyewitness to set them down. That’s where
imagination comes in. And curiosity.
If you want to write outside your own
experience, you shouldn’t feel intimidated about doing so. Still, there are
some key things to consider:
1.
Some imaginative
leaps are easier than others
I started my first novel at
seventeen, got thirty pages into it and quit. The main reason? I tried to write
about a forty-year-old. I still believe that one of the hardest things to do is
write authentically for an adult audience about someone in a vastly different
age bracket. Most writers who do it well succeed by going backwards. The larger the age difference between author and
character, the less likely, I believe, that a character is going to feel
authentic.
Conversely, it’s
maddeningly difficult in my opinion, to narrate from the point of view of a
character younger than about fourteen. Children think concretely. They don’t
analyze cause and effect the way adults do. They work through problems and
situations without self-pity. Even when they’re victims, they often don’t
recognize themselves as such. When new writers fail to achieve authentic voice,
I think it most often comes from this “age” problem more than gender or
ethnicity.
Another divide that I think
is hard to conquer is the parenthood divide. I’ve found that most writers who
write believably about parents with children have been parents themselves. I
know that before I was a parent, I couldn’t get into the sleep-deprived mindset
that would make you weep with tenderness over your toddler one moment and want
to kill him the next. Almost all of the characters I narrate through are
parents. Whatever else we don’t have
in common, we share the same fierce and fundamental connection to our children.
2.
Learn
everything you can
If you’re going to
write about characters and situations that aren’t your own, you’ll need to
spend a ton of time on research and interviews. Read blogs. Get on chat sites.
Go on field trips. Look for the little stories and details that give a
character credibility.
For my new series
about a suburban detective navigating the world of the undocumented, I
interviewed almost two dozen undocumented men and women and spoke informally to
many others. One small story always stayed with me. A Bolivian man went back
home after many years of separation to visit his mother and sister. One day he
was sitting at his mother’s kitchen table. His mother fixed his sister’s coffee
then turned to him and asked: “How do you take your coffee?” The man broke down
and cried. He realized from her question that she didn’t know him anymore. It
was such a small situation, but such a moving example of the estrangement that
takes place in families separated by immigration. While that story didn’t make
it into my book, the feelings it evoked infused my writing.
3.
Inject
personal experience wherever possible
I’m the daughter of
immigrants. I’ve gone through the death of both parents. I love Twizzlers. I
hate tattoos. My personality comes into play in large ways and small through my
characters—even characters who are otherwise nothing like me. They wrestle with
questions I wrestle with—the demands of parenthood, the obligations of family,
questions of identity and faith. The main character in my new series is a
Puerto Rican police detective who has become estranged from his culture. His
ex-wife is Jewish. His teenage daughter speaks no Spanish. The cops he works
with are mostly Irish and Italian in heritage. I’ve never lived through his particular
experience of displacement but I’ve lived through my own. I grew up as the only
child in a mixed-faith marriage at a time when that was uncommon. Regularly, I
got the question: “what are you?” I never knew how to answer that. I always
felt like I was on the outside looking in so I tried to capture that same sense
in my main character.
4.
Have fun
You’ll be living with
these people for months—possibly years (especially in the case of a series).
Just as in real life, you’ll want to surround yourself with compelling,
inspiring and occasionally humorous people whose exploits surprise and delight
you. If you have that cast already inside of you—great! If not, you shouldn’t
feel inhibited about going out and finding them. Writers are curious people.
Indulge your curiosity.
“I write because I want to have more than
one life,” novelist Anne Tyler was once quoted as saying. I agree. When I sit
down to write, my fun comes, not from looking into a mirror, but from peeking into
someone else’s window.
