WRITING WHAT YOU KNOW and Getting Inspiration From the World Around You
Picture a half-dozen old cops sitting around a table. The waitress just removed the dishes, but each man still holds a drink.
The former ranking man of the group takes a sip of single-malt scotch. “We laughed when it was over,” he says, “but for a few minutes, we were all sweating.”
“I remember,” another retired detective says. “Came close to soiling my knickers there.”
A third man at the table speaks, “They shoulda made a TV movie outta that one.”
The six people looked around at their colleagues, nodded, and sampled more of their beverages.
The guy with the single-malt whisky retired and eventually tried his hand at a new occupation. Today he’s writing police mystery novels—only because of the old author’s maxim: ‘Write what you know.’
Suppose you’ve never been a cop? Can you still write mysteries? Why not?
Let’s look at the TV series LAW & ORDER. It ran for almost twenty years and at most utilized one technical advisor with police or prosecutor’s experience. How did the writers knock out so many quality episodes? They looked at the world around them, used real-life drama as a basis for their script, and filled in the blanks.
Every episode came with the disclaimer, ‘Any similarity to an actual event or real persons living or dead is purely coincidental,’ or words to that effect. But as any fan will tell you, that statement is pure hogwash. A blithering idiot could draw parallels with actual events recently in the news; the premise, at times, was blatant.
The show’s producer made a fortune with LAW & ORDER and the subsequent spinoffs, and anyone can cash in on the same idea. Life is full of good stories, just change the names to protect the innocent—and keep yourself out of civil court.
I often say my stories are based on actual incidents. That’s true, but no fiction can be totally unembellished fact or it would be a report and not a novel—probably boring to read. I claim to have a better memory than imagination. That’s true, too, but some imagination is always necessary in fiction. My second novel, A LEPRECHAUN’S LAMENT, was based on an actual case, but I couldn’t resist inventing a beautiful Irish girl and a few other touches just to make fiction better than fact.
Really don’t have the imagination to conjure up an epic fantasy novel, but still feel the call of writing? What’s the problem? What do you do for a living? UPS driver? Server in a posh restaurant? Bank teller? That last one comes with oodles of possibilities for good drama.
Hear about a hostage situation on the 6 o’clock news? How about a UPS driver walking into the middle of that? You’d get all the details of the package delivery business correct and with a little research, fake your way through the police procedures.
The local papers run a story about employees finding a body in the parking lot of a classy restaurant. Okay, server, embellish that event front and back with your knowledge of the food business and what you’ve seen happen in the dining room or bar.
And let’s not waste words on what kind of excitement can come from the customers and staff in a bank.
Look around you. Read the newspapers. Watch the news. Use Life as a basis for a story that becomes uniquely yours when it smacks you between the eyes like a 2×4. It’s not plagiarism unless you rewrite someone else’s work. Draw inspiration from . . . who knows what!
Almost every interviewer has asked, “Where do you get the inspiration for what you write?” The actual plots may come from my past or what I see down the road. The inspiration may come from anything. Often it hits me while driving at 70 on an Interstate. Sometimes my eyes click open at 2 a.m. and I remember something that might make an exciting story. Or I may hear an explosion while sitting on the porch. Like a cop in a street-crime unit who doesn’t get complaints to answer, you have to go out there and drum up your own cases. Writers can’t look for stories in someone else’s books. The world is like a take-out menu waiting for you to select something and go with it.
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