Good Will Hunting and the art of writing about what you know
This is a must-see-movie for aspiring writers

I avoided watching this movie since I first heard of it in 2008 — when I started university. It wasn’t until the beginning of this year that I finally forced myself to see it and then I realised how terribly wrong I had been in dodging it. Since then, I have seen it three times.
As a journalist (and as an aspiring writer, which I have tried to become for years) I now understand people’s fascination with this film: it teaches about pain, loss, love and friendship but between the lines (the scripted lines) it teaches why you should write about what you know.
The original writers of this movie — Ben Affleck and Matt Damon — spent ten years creating the story of Will Hunting, a math prodigy who has never achieved anything worthy in life, in fact, his many struggles with the law keep him away from achieving his full potential. It isn’t until he agrees to meet with a psychologist (interpreted by the late Robin Williams) that his life turns around. By the end of the movie, he doesn’t fulfill a lucrative career in corporate America like everything wants him to, but instead follows the love of his life, whom he has avoided in order to keep his true feeling hidden.
It’s a simple story interpreted by the Affleck brothers, alongside Damon and Williams and a relatively short set of other brilliant actors. It won two out of nine Oscar nominations, including, and not surprisingly, Best Original Screenplay. Besides being a favourite among the critics, it also achieved great success in the box office, earning over 220 million dollars with a budget of a little more than ten million dollars.
The movie for writers
What isn’t said in this film is as astonishing as what is portrayed in it: the fact that the writers spent so long making this movie, their first ever, and the fact that it went through so many changes until it finally becomes what it now is, an endless Hollywood classic, is what makes this movie so great and a must see for movie fans, writers, and creative people alike.
Ben Affleck and Matt Damon are both from Boston, where the story takes place. They know each other since childhood, just like most of the characters in the film, both took different career paths before and during the writing of this film, just like the main characters of the movie who take construction jobs to get by and both went through serious personal difficulties in their youth, just like the main characters of the film.
While the movie is highly fictional, it feels real, it feels like it could be about any of us, which is the idea of good writing and mostly, writing about what you know: it’s writing something so familiar to you that when you tell the story, others can relate to it, making you believe that the story you’re watching has become your own.
While the film is highly fictional, it feels real, it feels like it could be the life story of any of us
This film manages to capture the viewers’ attention even more so than many blockbuster films of its generation and our generation: and it was all done with time (loads of it), a great script, lots of imagination, great talent, creativity and, of course, a relatively low budget.
While many authors have recommended to write about what we don’t know in order to learn from it, many writers advised — and practiced — the idea of writing about what you know to the extent that they would become something (or someone) to then write about it. Ernest Hemingway, for example, had been world-record-holder in fishing before he wrote The Old Man And The Sea.
It is only natural then that this film which was born out of passion would then become one of the best examples of why we should all write about what we know.
