The Loneliness of the Long Distance Writer

February 28, 2020 12:29 PM

Do Authors Write Where They Know? "That got me wondering: How far from a place they’ve called “home” do writers tend to set their works? The famous saying, of disputed origins, goes “Write what you know.” But do authors usually “write where they know,” like Zadie Smith? To answer this question, we took a look at [a list of] the best 100 books written since 1900. We then calculated every possible distance between book setting and author residence to find the smallest value for each book. This told us if at least part of their book was based on a place familiar to the author."
posted by storybored (22 comments total)

I don't know. Jack London, The Call of the Wild, Yukon, Canada, distance 0 miles. That's a pretty big place to call "home."

Or Stephen King, The Stand, Boulder, CO, distance 0 miles. But the Boulder described in the book is a post-holocaust setting that has no relationship to the actual place.

Or, again, Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged, New York, distance 0 miles. Does reality inform any of Rand's writing about New York or the human race in general?

I found this interesting because Jack London was the first name that came to mind about "writing what you know." But familiarity with a location, beyond getting the street names right, should mean understanding the history and culture of a place. Tim Powers, Last Call, Las Vegas, distance ? miles, captures the sense and feel of the city, for all that Powers lives in California.
posted by SPrintF at 12:59 PM on February 28, 2020 [7 favorites]

This infographic incorrectly calculated the distance between Oxford and Mordor.
posted by betweenthebars at 1:11 PM on February 28, 2020 [20 favorites]

It's certainly not one of the best 100 books written since 1900 but I immediately thought of Franz Kafka's Amerika. Kafka took the complete opposite approach to "Write what you know" and came up with a memorably odd and discordant portrait of a country that he'd never see.
posted by GalaxieFiveHundred at 1:22 PM on February 28, 2020 [4 favorites]

Joyce. Dublin. Inseparable. Though he spent most of his writing career on the continent.
posted by njohnson23 at 1:39 PM on February 28, 2020 [3 favorites]

I'd like to see it over time.

Like, the first surprise hit novel in set in their hometown.
But in subsequent sequels, the main character has to chase a international art thief across Europe or track down a long lost love who moved to Australia.

"Say there, Jill, you sure did submit a lot of travel receipts."

You know, I like my novels to be realistic.

"Well, yes, but does your character really need to spend a month undercover at a Costa Rican resort?

It's research, Bob! You're the accountant, you figure out how to write it off!
posted by madajb at 1:51 PM on February 28, 2020 [1 favorite]

They do plot domicile of the author over time against settings of the books. Lots of first novels set where the author was young. Mostly pre-tax break, AFAICT.

I was expecting more late-in-life novels revisiting the early locations. Don't know why.
posted by clew at 2:13 PM on February 28, 2020

It makes sense for a novelist to set a story in familiar environs. Writing a novel is a very complicated task, so anything to ease the mental load, for example by using locations you already know, allows you to spend more time thinking about characters, themes, style, plot, structure and all the myriad other things that go into making a novel.
posted by Kattullus at 2:25 PM on February 28, 2020

I'm currently about 65k words into a story set in modern day, rural Oregon. I've been to Portland. Once.

But I did a ton of research first. For starters, I picked a real small town to model after. I then cultivated a strong sense of the surrounding areas via satellite mapping, various film, TV, and documentary media. I also spent time talking to friends and family that are familiar with the area. I even researched various plants and animals that are native to the area to make sure I didn't make any offhand references to the scenery that would be impossible.

At the end of the day, the story is about magic, elder gods, spirits and self-discovery. If a few regional details are a bit off, oh well.
posted by Godspeed.You!Black.Emperor.Penguin at 2:28 PM on February 28, 2020 [2 favorites]

I must be missing something, because I only see 11 authors on that page and no easy way to see the actual list of books. There is a button which says "Explore all 100 books yourself" but clicking it does nothing. At least not on a mobile device.
posted by grumpybear69 at 3:43 PM on February 28, 2020

When I was writing, and I was, I always used places that I knew. Usually places in NYC. Down to places that I worked at or frequented regularly. The reason was that I could use small details to cement my picture of the area. I wasn't worried that readers would be amazed by the detail. I had to be solidly in the place, it made the writing easier. And anything that made the story flow was gladly used.
posted by Splunge at 4:41 PM on February 28, 2020 [1 favorite]

I’m pretty sure John Scalia never lived in some of the places he wrote about.

Some of them.

Pretty sure.

Not 100%.
posted by drivingmenuts at 4:53 PM on February 28, 2020 [1 favorite]

I think a lot depends on style. It's very hard to imagine writing something in the style of, say, Berlin Alexanderplatz without having spent considerable time there; the connective tissue of the novel is fragmentary, ephemeral physical details. On the other hand, the settings in the later Henry James novels are more symbolic than anything and the whole effect is not very naturalistic. Having visited several times, I could write as technically plausible a London and Paris as him, I believe, just nowhere near as good a novel set in either.
posted by praemunire at 5:14 PM on February 28, 2020

I've always seen "Write what/where you know" as a form of side-eye from aficionados of so called serious literature toward genre fiction.

Even though I'm not a genre fiction fan, the phrase makes the sick rise in my throat a little.
posted by gohabsgo at 5:35 PM on February 28, 2020 [2 favorites]

I mostly see “write what you know” here, where people use AskMe to tell them all kinds of weird stuff about a place they’ve barely heard of, but sounds cool, and they want to set their story there, because it’s a cool place, they’ve heard.

I exaggerate of course but I love tons of genre fic and never got the sense the phrase was a dig at that. Also for that matter most of the greats in genre fic are ultimately writing about the human condition, and part of their greatness is that they do know it, and understand a way to communicate it, much like many good highbrow lit fic authors.
posted by SaltySalticid at 5:46 PM on February 28, 2020 [3 favorites]

I've always seen "Write what/where you know" as a form of side-eye from aficionados of so called serious literature toward genre fiction.

"Write where you know" is, for me, Ponyville. I think the ability to step outside what you "know" into another person's hooves *slap* shoes requires effort and insight, and this expansion of your observable world just makes life so much richer!

OK, laugh, but consider: I have, in the pursuit of pony fiction, chatted with the fine folk of Shetland and struggled to learn (and love!) their ways and their language. Would I have ever reached out to them, reached out beyond my small universe, to learn of them and their lives, if I was content to only write what I "know?"

Epistemic closure is the end of thought. Writing, I've always found, leads me beyond the world I know into unimaginably VAST lives of the folks pass on the street each day. Have you really thought about the barista that serves you coffee every morning, about what making good coffee really entails? We live inside such small worlds that it takes effort to step outside. But if you can learn the nuts and bolts of another person's life, the world just seems so much larger and richer.
posted by SPrintF at 6:41 PM on February 28, 2020 [5 favorites]

I've got a writer friend whose response to "write what you know" is to do more research. He loves doing research. He ends up knowing more.

As for Home specifically, I've found that the one place I can never get excited about (in terms of writing fiction) is wherever I currently find myself. Case in point, right now. I'm on a remote and beautiful island, the kind of place people travel the world to take photos of ... but I'm excited about writing about the murky suburbs I knew in the early part of the 1980s. I guess I require perspective.
posted by philip-random at 11:02 PM on February 28, 2020 [2 favorites]

This infographic incorrectly calculated the distance between Oxford and Mordor.

Understandable since one does not simply walk into Mordor.
posted by srboisvert at 6:03 AM on February 29, 2020 [5 favorites]

Science fiction and fantasy has a love-hate relationship with this issue.

On the one hand: not many people are qualified to write stories set on a space station from real-life experience, much less set on a planet in another galaxy far, far away.

But on the other hand: a distressingly common syndrome is to set a story on a small farming planet far, far away that could be transplanted to the small midwestern farming town $AUTHOR grew up in (or $AUTHOR->{GRANDPA} lived in) just by changing a few names and replacing "spaceport" with railhead.

SF (and to some extent fantasy) is all about alienation and distancing, but that stuff's hard, and it's easier to declare that distance exists than to construct a subjective sense of a thousand miles or a hundred years in the reader's head.

(And on the third hand: I wrote one book which is set within a mile of where I live, and that is maybe the most alien of all, because it was set a decade in a future which was, if not as weird as the one we've ended up living through, similarly weird along a different axis. The familiar setting was both a snare and a tool: it allowed me to ignore the little stuff and focus on the differences.)
posted by cstross at 6:48 AM on February 29, 2020 [6 favorites]

Everytime I hear the 'write what you know' discussion, I am reminded of a quote from Denis Leary:

"Write what you know, kid"

-Jesus to the Apostle Paul, 33 AD
posted by dfm500 at 8:55 AM on February 29, 2020 [1 favorite]

drivingmenuts:

(hides spacecraft)

OF COURSE I HAVE NOT.

(looks away shiftily)
posted by jscalzi at 3:50 PM on February 29, 2020 [3 favorites]

At the end of the day, the story is about magic, elder gods, spirits and self-discovery. If a few regional details are a bit off, oh well.

OMG, WTF ARE YOU DOING? It's like you've never even met an elder god in the Pacific Northwest. Did you just make this up?!? La la la I'm a writer from San freaking Francisco and I know all about the elder gods on the west coast. NO YOU DO NOT. Nodens has a membership at the Waverly Country Club, not Oswego Lake. Ulthar has never done hot yoga, and despite appearances Bast is not a pescatarian. Jesus, would you at least ask around a little...

(Having some fun with you and google. Enjoy your week. 😁 )
posted by Cris E at 2:00 PM on March 2, 2020

I'm burrowed deep in the Pac-North-West and the only elder gods I'm aware of are few sort of withered locals that are prone to making cantankerously xenophobic posts in the local Facebook group. The kind of folks that really ought to get off the island more often.
posted by philip-random at 4:17 PM on March 2, 2020 [1 favorite]