By Marie Moore
“Write what you know” has to be the most-worn-out piece of
writing advice that exists. And the best.
Trying to somehow conjure something that you have never
experienced, smelled, or seen can be managed, or course, but without
authenticity your story may lack that strong sense of realism that only personal
experience brings. Think of a Yankee actor
trying to sound Southern. Think of a man describing giving birth.
Each of us tends to sell our life situations short, viewing
our own careers and environment as deadly dull, plodding and mediocre. Yet great writing comes from the simplest of
situations. One doesn’t have to lead a
glamorous life for our circumstance to be interesting and insightful, even
exciting, to the reader. Do you like to fish? Consider the humble fisherman in
Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea.
My chosen genre, the cozy mystery, is tailor-made for a
person who doesn’t exactly live in the fast lane. I set up a scene, using stuff that I know,
kill off a victim, and I am off and running. Easy, right?
Well, not exactly, but it is made much less difficult and more believable
by utilizing places that I know as settings, and by giving my protagonist a job
I once held.
The “write what you know” thing works for me. For fifteen years, I owned and managed a
retail travel agency. And I’ve been
reading cozy mysteries since I was a kid, reading under the covers with a
flashlight after my mom said “lights out”.
So when I decided to follow my dream of writing such a mystery, I made
my protagonist a travel agent, thus providing her with a vehicle for
discovering and solving mysteries around the world, in places that I had
visited.
Wait a minute, Marie.
That might work for you, but I am a garage mechanic, working in a body
shop. How can I write a mystery about
that? What? You never heard
of the body in the trunk? Of course you
can write a mystery! Write what you
know. Put those hard-earned details in
there and the reader will believe it when you open that crushed trunk of the
Beemer with your crowbar.
In my former career, I sailed on over 19 cruises. I know ships.
So my first book, Shore Excursion,
was murder on a cruise ship. My latest book, Game Drive South Africa ,
and I have been there as well. Those are
exciting settings, no doubt about it, but exciting settings are totally
unnecessary for an exciting book.
The part that is necessary
is that the setting and the people in them seem believable. Team realism with imagination and the magic
begins to work. Even the mundane life of an old lady in a tiny village in the
country can make a great book if the things that unfold before her seem real. Think of Dame Agatha Christie writing about
Miss Marple in the village
of St. Mary
My best advice remains the old saw. Write what you know, whatever that might be.
Look around you, crank up the imagination, and put that pencil to paper. Try
it! Who knows, bail bondsman, you might just turn out to be the next Janet
Evanovich!
____________________________________________________________________
Marie Moore is a native Mississippian. She
graduated from Ole Miss, married a lawyer in her hometown, taught junior high
science, raised a family, and worked for a small weekly newspaper—first as a
writer and later as Managing Editor. She wrote hard news, features, and a
weekly column, sold ads, did interviews, took photos, and won a couple of MS
Press Association awards for her stories. Marie opened a travel agency, and sailed
on nineteen cruises, and visited over sixty countries. The Sidney Marsh Murder
Mystery Series was inspired by those
experiences. She has done location scouting and worked as the local contact for several feature films, including Heart of Dixie, The Gun in Betty Lou’s Handbag, and Robert Altman’s Cookie’s Fortune. She and her
husband now live in Memphis, TN, and Holly Springs, MS. Game Drive is the sequel to Marie’s first novel, Shore Excursion which introduced amateur
sleuth Sidney Marsh, Both books were specially chosen for the onboard libraries
of Holland America and Seabourn Cruise Lines, and The Travel Institute’s
Bookstore. Her website is at
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