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Write What You Know: Difference between revisions
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* Melville went on a couple whaling voyages (and wrote books about them - ''Typee'' and ''Omoo'') before writing ''[[Moby Dick]]''.
* Beverly Cleary's job as a children's librarian undoubtedly gave her lots of insight into children's lives and thoughts.
* [[Osamu Tezuka]] bore a degree in medicine, which becomes evident from time to time, mostly in his [[Sci Fi]] stuff, but most notably in ''[[
* [[Michael Crichton]] spent years in medical school and then wrote a bunch of books about doctors and medicine, and also created the TV show ''[[ER]]''.
* [[John Grisham]], a lawyer, writes basically nothing but courtroom dramas.
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** In a similar vein but much less famous, or controversial, RAF Tornado pilot John Nichol co-wrote two non-fiction books about his Gulf War experiences with navigator/WSO John Peters before embarking upon a solo career as a writer of thrillers whose protagonist is invariably a male RAF pilot... who [[Wish Fulfillment|always has it off with a beautiful woman before the end of the story,]] but he's good enough that nobody really minds.
* Forensic anthropologist Kathy Reichs writes the original novels, ''Bones'' (later used to create [[Bones]]). Two guesses what Temperance "Bones" Brennan does for a living.
* ''[[
* Elinor M. Brent-Dyer, the creator of the ''[[Chalet School]]'' series, was a teacher herself. She actually tried to start up her own school (in Hereford, which became one of the Chalet School's locations), although unlike its fictional equivalent, the school was unsuccessful in the end. Like Joey, the series' heroine, she also converted to Catholicism.
* [[
* It shouldn't come a surprise that [[
** The battles in his stories were based on his experiences in [[World War One]].
* [[Elizabeth Moon]] was in the Marine Corps in the late 60s, thus her books are chock full of fairly realistic [[Military and Warfare Tropes]].
* T. H. White, author of ''[[The Sword in
* [[Ian Fleming]] and David John Moore Cornwall (writing as [[John Le Carre]]) both had backgrounds in intelligence.
* This is probably the reason there are so many songs about being a musician.
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* After being head writer for ''Saturday Night Live'', a comedy sketch show, Tina Fey created ''30 Rock'', a show which centers around a comedy sketch show. Besides creating the show, Fey has written or co-written several episodes, and portrays the head writer of the show within the show.
* [[Kevin Smith]] has stated this as the reason for him becoming a filmmaker. Specifically, [[Clerks]] is actually set and shot in the store than Smith worked in.
** And ''[[Zack and Miri Make
* [[Monty Python]] were veteran British comedy writers, and much of the humor satirizes the, well, [[TV Tropes|tropes]] that British comedy writers (and British entertainment in general) were fond of that Python found suspect or trite. When they weren't [[Lampshade Hanging]] it, they were doing their best to twist them or avoid them altogether.
* [[Martin Scorsese]] has a writing credit on only a handful of his films, but they happen to be the ones that deal most intimately with Italian American and Catholic culture in New York.
* A good number of [[Stephen King]]'s novels and short stories take place in Maine, feature main characters that are writers, or writers that live in Maine. Some of his works are also set in an industrial laundry ("The Mangler" and the novel Roadwork), a fabric mill ("Graveyard Shift"), or feature teachers as main characters (11/22/63, Salem's Lot); all are jobs that King held at some point.
** And before him you have [[
** Also, King's novels frequently serve as metaphors for alcoholism and poor parenting, two issues he has struggled with his whole life.
* [[John Ringo]] used to serve in the military. Most of his main characters either used to serve, or currently serve.
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** His ''Nick Adams Stories'' were based on his <s>getting drunk</s> [[Coming of Age]] as a youth in Michigan.
** The novel ''[[The Sun Also Rises]]'' was an account of <s>getting drunk</s> life experiences while living in Spain after WWI.
** And, of course, there's ''[[The Old Man and
* When [[Spider Robinson]] wrote his first story, ''The Guy with the Eyes'', he didn't want to do any research or try to bluff his way through. So he went through all the things that he had sound personal experience of, and decided to use his knowledge of bars and drink. He imagined the bar that he'd most like to drink in, gave it a first person narrator [[Author Avatar|based on himself]], and set his tale involving an {{spoiler|alien assassin}} there. Thus began the ''[[Callahan's Crosstime Saloon
* F. Scott Fitzgerald based many of his novels on his own life.
* [[FoxTrot|Bill Amend]] majored in physics and won a mathematics prize in college. Needless to say, most of the jokes involve advanced mathematics and physics formulae. One of the more recurring high school teachers is for Physics.
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* [[Mark Twain]] worked as a riverboat pilot on the Mississippi before he became a writer, and the Mississippi river appears as a setpiece in many of his works, most notably ''[[The Adventures of Tom Sawyer]], [[The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn]], The Gilded Age,'' and ''Life on the Mississippi.''
** Don't forget that "mark twain" is an order that was often heard on riverboats, telling someone to record ("mark") the deepest part of the river ("the twain").
* Television Producer [[David E. Kelley]], creator of ''[[Ally McBeal]]'', ''[[The Practice]]'', and ''[[Boston Legal]]'' (all Boston based lawyer shows) actually has a degree in law from Boston University.
** Despite that, he engages in severe and frequent [[Artistic License Law]].
* As ludicrous as the events in most ''[[Only Fools and Horses]]'' episodes are, about 95% of them were based on stuff that had actually happened to the show's creator, John Sullivan, and/or members of his family. Reportedly, he didn't have to start thinking of any truly original storylines until near the end of the show's run.
** There is said to be a similar tale about the writers of ''Are You Being Served?''
** Miranda Hart, the writer and star of ''Miranda'' has said in an interview that the majority of the material comes from her own life, and that there are some incidents (inclduing a very funny one about a train toilet) that she can't include in the show because the audience would think they are too far-feteched.
* David Simon worked as a journalist in Baltimore, and spent a year embedded with the homicide squad as research for his book ''Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets''. This was adapted into ''[[Homicide: Life On the Street]]'', which he also produced, and he later created ''[[The Wire]]'', another police show set in Baltimore, which also includes a storyline about newspaper reporters.
** This also applies to Ed Burns, the co-creator of ''[[The Wire]]''. Much of the backdrop of season 4's criticisms towards the education system was based off Burns' experience as a retired-police-officer-turned-teacher.
* The writer of the webcomic ''[[
* The writer of the superhero webcomic ''Union of Heroes'' lives in the area where the stories of his comic take place and is a collector of superhero comic books.
* The creepy apartment in ''[[Domu]]: A Child's Dream'' is based on the one [[Katsuhiro Otomo]] once lived in.
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* [http://www.livingwithinsanity.com/index/ Living With Insanity] is about a writer trying to make a career out of doing comics.
* [[After Forever]]'s [[Concept Album]] ''Invisible Circles'' is based on the abused children that guitarist Sander Gommans met working as an art teacher.
* Doc Nickel of ''[[
* [[User:Max Sinister]], author of the [[
* Peter Puck, author of the German comic ''[[
* A teacher at this troper's high school wrote a play that was basically an autobiography in disguise. (It was a hit with the audience, even though many of the cast members predicted massive failure.)
* [[Alastair Reynolds]] has a [[PHD]] in astronomy and worked as an astrophysicist for the European Space Agency for 13 years. His expertise is very apparent in all of his novels and short stories.
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* [[Bridge to Terabithia|Katherine Paterson]] has said her childhood experiences are the reason children in her stories tend to have [[Abusive Parent|Abusive Parents]].
* Film director Andrea Arnold grew up in a council estate and as a result, often sets her works (''Wasp'', ''Red Road'', ''Fish Tank'') in council estates.
* [[Robert A. Heinlein]] grew up in Kansas City, Missouri in the early 1900s. In ''[[Time Enough for Love]]'', he sends his archprotagonist Lazarus Long on a [[Time Travel]] journey to [[My Future Self and Me|visit his childhood family]] in... 1917 Kansas City, Missouri. The amount of loving autobiographical historical detail present in these chapters is so thick it practically oozes from the page. Much of his work shows similar details of his life experience, from his long ocean voyages influencing ''[[Podkayne Of Mars]]'' and ''[[Friday (
* [[Dashiell Hammett]], author of detective novels such as ''[[Red Harvest]]'', ''[[The Thin Man (
* In-universe example: In the eighth of the ''Haruhi'' novel series, the author wrote about writing, at some point the titular character states that "anyone can write" and she does in fact recruit almost everyone she knows to write for her literature magazine, while each of the characters ends up writing about a subjcet they do actually know about, only the ones who have the reading habit write something at least interesting, everyone else just throw random words together (and the ones who read the magazine does realize this).
* Sort of meta, but the sole programmer (!) Tarn Adams of the game [[Dwarf Fortress]] holds a Ph.D in Mathematics from Stanford. While that doesn't have much to do with dwarves, it certainly goes a long way into explaining the game's near-masochistic levels of complexity (from the point of view of someone else who would design a game). It also explains a lot about the detailed physics of the games, due to the deep connections between mathematics and physics.
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