Don't Write What You Know, Write What You Do

 

There is a particular confidence you feel when reading a novel written by someone who has actually lived inside the world they are describing. It is subtle at first. The dialogue sounds unforced. The procedures feel plausible. The small details land with quiet authority. You do not consciously say, “Ah, this writer must be a lawyer.” You simply relax. You trust the page.

That trust is veracity. And veracity is gold.

Writers are often told to “write what you know,” which is usually misunderstood as “only write autobiography.” That is not what it means. It means draw upon the layers of knowledge, obsession, professional insight, and niche fascinations you already carry. Those layers create texture. They create specificity. They create worlds that behave consistently because you understand how they function.

Look at the number of successful novelists who came to fiction through profession rather than through pure literary ambition.

John Grisham was a practicing attorney before he became a global publishing phenomenon. When you read The Firm or A Time to Kill, you are not merely reading courtroom drama. You are reading someone who understands how lawyers think about risk, leverage, paperwork, negotiation, and institutional pressure. The law in Grisham’s novels is not decorative. It shapes character behavior.

Michael Crichton trained as a medical doctor at Harvard. His early novels and later thrillers such as The Andromeda Strain and Jurassic Park are saturated with procedural thinking. He understood scientific culture. He knew how research teams argue, how grant funding shapes ambition, how laboratories operate. That knowledge gives his speculative plots weight. Even when dinosaurs run loose, the science feels grounded because the mindset is authentic.

Patricia Cornwell worked in a medical examiner’s office. Her Kay Scarpetta novels breathe with the atmosphere of morgues, forensic reports, and the institutional friction between police and pathology. She did not invent that world from Wikipedia summaries. She inhabited it.

Kathy Reichs is perhaps the clearest example in contemporary crime fiction. A working forensic anthropologist, she brought skeletal analysis into mainstream narrative with professional authority. Readers feel that authority even if they do not understand the terminology. It is present in the rhythm of explanation, in the caution of conclusions, in the refusal to oversimplify.

This pattern is not accidental.

Professional knowledge gives you two advantages. First, it provides surface detail. Second, and far more important, it gives you cognitive insight. It teaches you how people inside that profession think.

Thinking patterns are what create believable characters.

If you have spent years in corporate finance, you understand how risk assessment shapes decision-making. If you are a nurse, you know how triage works emotionally as well as medically. If you are a teacher, you understand classroom power dynamics instinctively. Those mental habits are far more valuable than jargon.

Now let us widen the lens.

It is not only formal professions that add depth. Niche hobbies are equally powerful. Suppose you are obsessed with vintage watch restoration. You know how tiny mechanisms interact. You understand patience, precision, and historical craftsmanship. A character who restores watches could easily become a metaphor for someone reconstructing truth from fragments. That hobby supplies both texture and theme.

If you are a competitive rock climber, you understand grip strength, fear management, equipment reliability, and the psychology of exposure. Place that knowledge into a thriller set on a cliff face and you immediately elevate plausibility.

The beauty of niche knowledge is that it differentiates your work. Generic settings feel interchangeable. Specific ones feel lived-in.

However, there is a caution here.

Knowledge must serve story.

Writers sometimes fall in love with their expertise and attempt to display it in full. This is how novels become lectures. Readers do not require a masterclass in neurosurgery unless the procedure advances character or plot. The art lies in integration. Slip detail into action. Let expertise shape decision-making rather than dominating dialogue.

A practical way to think about this is to ask: how does my knowledge create conflict?

If you are a lawyer writing fiction, perhaps your protagonist sees loopholes others miss. That insight could create tension. If you are a biologist, perhaps your character recognizes ecological consequences that others dismiss. If you are a chess enthusiast, perhaps you structure plot as strategic sacrifice and positional advantage. Expertise becomes narrative engine.

Another dimension of veracity lies in cultural fluency. Professionals share language and codes. They joke in particular ways. They respect hierarchy differently. That subculture is difficult to fake convincingly. When you belong to it, you can replicate it without exaggeration.

Readers are extraordinarily sensitive to false notes. A doctor reading a poorly researched medical thriller will notice errors instantly. A police officer will spot unrealistic procedure. Even lay readers sense inconsistency when systems do not behave logically.

This is why drawing from what you genuinely understand creates stability. Your fictional world will operate under coherent rules because your real-world reference points are coherent.

There is also psychological authority.

When a writer understands a field deeply, they write with calm assurance. They do not hedge or overcompensate. The prose feels controlled. Compare that to fiction cobbled together from surface research. It often over-explains because the writer fears exposure.

Authority does not shout. It simply stands.

This principle extends beyond crime and science. Consider authors who build novels around sailing, wine-making, archaeology, mountaineering, fashion, espionage, culinary arts. Each domain, when authentically rendered, expands reader immersion.

The key question for you becomes: what do I know that others do not?

Perhaps you have worked in immigration services. Perhaps you have managed a small-town café. Perhaps you are deeply embedded in online gaming culture. These environments contain friction, ambition, rivalry, bureaucracy, and human vulnerability. They are not “too small” for fiction. They are gold mines.

Start by listing your professional history and serious hobbies. For each, write a paragraph describing what outsiders misunderstand about that world. That misunderstanding often points to story potential.

Then ask how that world intersects with universal themes. Power. Loyalty. Betrayal. Ambition. Fear. Expertise becomes powerful when it illuminates human behavior.

There is also a strategic advantage in the marketplace. Readers gravitate toward specificity. A legal thriller written by a former attorney carries implicit promise. A medical thriller written by a surgeon carries gravitas. Even if you choose not to foreground your credentials publicly, the depth will be felt in the prose.

But let us be honest.

Not every writer is a surgeon or a federal prosecutor.

That does not matter.

Your niche is your leverage. If you have spent twenty years in retail management, you understand customer psychology, supply chain stress, corporate pressure. If you are an amateur astronomer, you understand patience, darkness, cosmic scale. If you collect rare books, you understand provenance and obsession. These details can form the spine of fiction as easily as courtroom procedure.

The task is not to inflate your background. It is to interrogate it.

What do you see differently because of your experience? What details would you include instinctively that others might miss? What emotional truths have you witnessed repeatedly?

Write from there.

At the same time, expand beyond comfort. Your expertise can anchor you, but imagination can still travel. Michael Crichton used medical training to explore genetic engineering. John Grisham used law to examine corruption and moral compromise. Kathy Reichs used forensic anthropology to investigate identity and loss. Their knowledge did not limit them. It enabled them.

In the end, fiction is a negotiation between invention and reality. The more solid your reality, the freer your invention.

When readers sense that you understand the mechanics of the world you describe, they suspend disbelief more readily. They trust you when you take them into danger. They believe you when you present complexity.

And belief is everything.

So stop searching for exotic subjects you think will impress strangers. Look inward first. Examine your work history, your obsessions, your quiet expertise. Somewhere in there lies a world you can render with authority.

Use it.

Let your professional knowledge shape your characters’ thinking. Let your hobbies inform your metaphors. Let your lived experience provide the scaffolding upon which imagination can climb.

That is how veracity enters fiction. Not through mimicry. Through authenticity.

And authenticity, when disciplined and refined, becomes your signature.

Keep Writing.

Rob Parnell