Posted by Athena Scalzi

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2026/03/05/the-big-idea-randee-dawn-3/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=59724

If everyone only wrote what they knew, how many books would we be deprived of? Author Randee Dawn has some concerns about the age-old advice, and suggests writers should get out of their comfort zone in the Big Idea for her newest novel, We Interrupt This Program.

RANDEE DAWN:

There are many phrases writers long to hear: Your book is a best-seller! Your book changed my life! Your book is getting a Netflix adaptation! Your book props open my screen door!

Maybe not that last one.

But if there’s one phrase writers are a little tired of hearing is this: Write what you know.

What does that even mean? For years, I thought it was reductionist and stupid. I write speculative fiction. Spec fic is about dragons or distant planets or zombies or dragons and zombies on distant planets. I have yet to encounter any of those things. But isn’t that what imagination is for? Make stuff up!

Write what you know is a rhetorical piece of advice that sends young writers off on the wrong path, and often confuses older ones. It explains why twenty-two year olds write memoirs. They don’t know anything but their own lives!

But it can have value. My first useful encounter with understanding write what you know came when I plumbed my entertainment journalism past – including time at a soap opera magazine – to write a goofy first novel, Tune in Tomorrow (helpfully given its own discussion in The Big Idea in 2022). I knew what backstage on TV and film sets looked like. I’d spoken to thousands of actors, producers, and directors. It wasn’t so far a leap to imagine how things might be different if magical creatures were running things. 

Then it came time to write the next story in the Tune-iverse. I’d used up a lot of Stuff I Knew. So what could come next to keep things interesting? 

That was when I discovered that the advice isn’t stupid. It’s just not the only advice that matters. Writing what you know can – pick your metaphor – give you a frame, a recipe, or a direction to follow.

But writing what hurts gives you substance. Writing what hurts gets you into the subcutaneous zone. 

With We Interrupt this Program (the next, also standalone, novel in my Tune-iverse), I tried to picture what the rest of the fae entertainment universe – run by the Seelie Court Network, of course – would look like. I imagined whole villages run by fae, populated by humans full-time, whose lives fit into neat little tropey stories. What if all the Hallmark movies were shot in the cutest, sweetest, village ever? What if there was a whole burg populated with humans who’d pissed the fae off and were being punished? What if a seaside town existed where a gray-haired older lady author solved cozy mysteries? 

The latter one gave me Winnie, an older woman whose cozy mysteries about her TROPE Town neighbors were turned into movies for SCN. But Seaview Haven is in trouble when we meet Winnie, and she discovers she’ll have to write a really good story to fix matters. So she writes about a love affair with the town’s Seelie Showrunner/Mayor/Director.

But those who vet it say it isn’t good enough. It’s nice. She wrote what she knew. Then she’s told to write what’s hard.

The novel took me by surprise here. I hadn’t planned to make her write two important stories. The love story should be enough. But it was only good. It wasn’t great. Despite being supernatural, it felt mundane. Tropey.

In going deeper to find Winnie a hard story, I discovered I already had one based on events in my real life. I gave them to her. Sure, it’s about love. But it’s also about betrayal and writerly jealousy, the kind delivered with a stiletto and not a butcher knife. Frankly, I’m a little embarrassed it’s in there. It’s not an epic awfulness. I didn’t commit a crime. 

Probably. 

And in giving it to Winnie, the story worked for me. When she unveils her personal, painful moment, it folds into the story as if I’d planned it. We Interrupt remains slapsticky, punny, and full of lunatic moments. Hopefully, though, that’s why this moment – the hurtful story – hits the hardest.

Readers can sense when we’ve gone deep, and when we skate the surface. A writer always has to find a way to squint at their latest creation and ask if they’ve gone deep enough to make it hurt, no matter what the genre is. That’s what – if I’ve done it right – it means to stick the landing.

So let’s look at that old hoary advice once more. Yes, write what you know. 

But don’t stop there. 

After you figure out what you know, figure out what’s hard. What hurts. Pull out the stiletto, not the butcher knife … and get cutting. 

We Interrupt This Program: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Bookshop

Author socials: Website|Instagram|Facebook

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2026/03/05/the-big-idea-randee-dawn-3/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=59724

Posted by Athena Scalzi

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2026/03/04/the-big-idea-lauren-c-teffeau-2/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=59707

Futuristic fiction doesn’t always have to be dystopian, and in fact author Lauren C. Teffau wanted to show readers a more hopeful narrative where people work together for the betterment of the planet and a goal of reaching a brighter future. Follow along in her Big Idea for Accelerated Growth Environment and see what a more optimistic future could look like.

LAUREN C. TEFFEAU:

We are living at the intersection of competing futures. Ones we thought were inevitable and others being forced down our throats by billionaires, technocrats, and foreign interests that are counter to our own. This fight over our collective future is happening while the climate crisis rages on, institutions are tested, and the informationsphere weaponized. It’s no longer a question of how to avoid the worst outcomes, but how bad those outcomes will be. 

But I firmly believe optimistic stories about the future are our way out of the doomloop. Not because they’ll accurately predict what is to come, but because they give us something to work toward, together. To that end, I wanted to explore what an international response to the climate crisis would look like in my latest book, the eco-thriller Accelerated Growth Environment, and introduce a generation of readers to one possible future full of cooperation, resilience, and competency porn. 

Such a goal is not completely out there. Once upon a time, the world came together to reduce ozone emissions in response to the discovery chlorofluorocarbons were punching a hole in the atmosphere. The effort was so successful, the ozone layer is on track to completely regenerate, according to Wikipedia, by 2045. That’s amazing, even moreso considering that level of international coordination seems impossible today. But maybe, just maybe, it’s something we can work toward in the years to come. 

So imagine things change, and the political will is finally ascendant to tackle the climate crisis. Enter the Climasphere, a groundbreaking megastructure that can support nearly every biome on Earth and grow plants essential to rewilding efforts across the world, signifying a new era of climate cooperation. It’s also the high-tech setting for Accelerated Growth Environment. Principal Scientist Dr. Jorna Beckham just wants to focus on her research while her horticulture techs are on break following the grueling inaugural harvest.

She manages the habitat with the help of her trusty robot sidekick Savvy while Commander Kaysar sees to everything else. But when an explosion rocks the Climasphere, Jorna is the commander’s number one suspect. Her family belongs to a technology-adverse religion that believes the Climasphere’s genetically-altered plants are a rejection of God’s gifts to humanity. Jorna must clear her name if she wants to keep her dream job and any possibility of a future with the commander.

I’m honored Accelerated Growth Environment is the first acquisition and release from Shiraki Press, a new publisher specializing in hopepunk stories for a brighter future. Keep an eye out for more titles from them in the months to come. 

And never forget we are capable of great things—we need to be. No matter all that has happened this year as we grapple with betrayals of the past and the predatory power grabs of the present, we must remember all the amazing things we can do in preparation of the future we will build together.

Accelerated Growth Environment: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Bookshop|Shiraki Press 

Author Socials: Website|Instagram|Bluesky|Linktree  

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2026/03/04/the-big-idea-lauren-c-teffeau-2/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=59707