Writing About Expat Life Without Clichés
There is a version of the expat story we have all read before: a sun-dazed newcomer finds themselves on a bicycle in Amsterdam, wind in their hair, tulips blurring past, and suddenly—finally—they understand who they are. It is a beautiful image. It is also, by now, almost meaningless. We have seen it in blogs, in memoirs, in the well-meaning short stories that arrive in our inboxes. The problem is not that these experiences are false. The problem is that they have been flattened into postcards. At Write Now Rebekah, we want to help you write the other version—the one with awkward silences, missed trains, and the strange, specific texture of a life rebuilt in a new country.
Why Expat Stories Fall Into Clichés
Clichés are not lies. They are shortcuts. When we move to a new country, we reach for the most visible symbols because they are easy to name. But easy symbols make forgettable fiction. The Dutch experience is not a windmill. It is a conversation that goes sideways because you misread directness as rudeness, or a Sunday afternoon that feels unbearably quiet because everyone else seems to have a family to visit.
The Tulip and Windmill Trap
Tulips, windmills, wooden shoes, and bitterballen—these are the props of a tourist brochure, not the furniture of a lived life. They appear in expat fiction because they are recognisable, but recognition is not the same as truth. A story that leans on them is asking the setting to do the work of the character. We can do better. The Netherlands is also motorways, gym memberships, and the particular anxiety of a dentist appointment conducted entirely in Dutch.
The ‘Finding Yourself’ Narrative
The ‘finding yourself abroad’ arc is seductive because it offers a clean transformation: arrive broken, cycle through adversity, leave whole. Real expat life is messier. You do not find yourself in one montage. You find a hundred small selves—the one who cries in a supermarket, the one who finally understands a joke at a borrel, the one who still feels like a guest after five years. Fiction lives in that mess, not in the tidy resolution.
How Dutch Directness Becomes a Caricature
Dutch directness is real, but it is not a personality trait that can be pasted onto every Dutch character. Neither is gezelligheid. When we reduce a culture to two adjectives, we stop writing people and start writing mascots. A Dutch colleague who tells you your plan is ‘not so smart’ is not a bluntness machine—they might be tired, kind, or simply Dutch in a way that has nothing to do with the stereotype. Gezelligheid is not candles and hot chocolate; it is a mood that can appear in a crowded train from Utrecht to Rotterdam or fail to appear at a carefully planned dinner.
Mining Your Own Experience for Fresh Material
The antidote to cliché is specificity. Your life in the Netherlands is full of details no one else has. The trick is to notice them before they fade into the background of the ordinary.
Keeping a Sensory Journal
Write down what you smell, hear, and touch—not what you think it means. The chemical tang of a Dutch pharmacy. The sound of a neighbour’s shutters at 7 a.m. The specific damp cold of a January bike ride. A sensory journal trains you to capture the world before your brain edits it into a story you have already heard.
Focusing on Small, Specific Moments
Forget the big ‘I moved abroad’ narrative. Instead, write the first time you navigated the Dutch healthcare system and realised the huisarts is a gatekeeper, not a fixer. Write the misunderstanding at a borrel when you thought you were being invited to dinner and you were not. Write the quiet loneliness of a Sunday in a new city, when the streets are empty and you do not yet know where to go.
Turning Awkward Encounters into Fiction
Awkwardness is a gift. A conversation that went wrong is a scene waiting to happen. Take the moment you accidentally insulted someone by declining a second coffee, or the time you mispronounced a word and everyone laughed. Change the names, heighten the stakes, and you have fiction that rings true because it began in truth.
Techniques to Subvert Expat Clichés in Fiction
Craft choices can rescue a story from stereotype even when the setting is familiar. Here are strategies we return to again and again.
Starting In Medias Res
Skip the arrival. Begin in the middle of the argument, the middle of the bike ride, the middle of the confusion. When you drop the reader into a moment already in motion, you deny them the tourist’s overview and force them to feel the disorientation your character feels.
Using an Unreliable Narrator
An expat narrator who insists everything is fine, who describes the Netherlands through a haze of denial or resentment, can expose more than a sincere narrator ever could. Let them misread situations. Let them be wrong about the Dutch. The gap between what they say and what we sense is where the story lives.
Writing from the Dutch Perspective
What does the borrel look like to the Dutch colleague watching the new expat struggle with the snack table? What does the neighbourhood think of the constant stream of newcomers? Writing from a local point of view breaks the expat-as-protagonist default and reveals the blind spots of the outsider narrative.
Flash Fiction as a Tool for Freshness
Flash fiction forces precision. In under 1,000 words, there is no room for tulips-as-theme or a three-act ‘finding yourself’ arc. You must choose one moment, one image, one turn. This constraint is a powerful cure for cliché—it makes every detail earn its place.
Writing Prompts to Break the Mold
Try one of these prompts when you feel your expat story drifting toward the postcard.
Prompt 1: The Silent Bike Ride
Write a flash fiction piece set entirely during a bike ride through Amsterdam. No dialogue. No internal monologue about identity. Only what the rider sees, hears, and feels—and one small, unexplained decision they make along the way.
Prompt 2: The Borrel Conversation
Two people at a borrel are having the same conversation they have had every month for a year. Write the scene from the perspective of the Dutch host, who has noticed something the expat guest has not.
Prompt 3: The Lost Package from PostNL
A package from PostNL goes missing. Write a short story in which the search for the package becomes a quiet meditation on belonging, bureaucracy, and the things we cannot track. Do not mention tulips, windmills, or ‘finding yourself’.
Publishing and Sharing Your Expat Fiction
Once you have a story that feels honest, you need readers. The Netherlands has a growing English-language literary scene, and there are more places to publish than most writers realise.
Literary Magazines in the Netherlands
Publications such as The Amsterdam Review and Dutch Quarterly welcome English-language fiction, including work about expat experience. They are competitive, so read several issues before submitting. Expat anthologies also appear regularly, often themed around themes like ‘leaving’ or ‘arriving’.
Online Writing Communities for Expats
Online forums and writing groups for expats in the Netherlands offer a supportive first audience. These communities understand the material because they live it. They can tell you when a detail rings true and when it sounds like a stereotype.
Getting Feedback from Dutch Readers
Share your work with Dutch readers, not just expats. They will catch the caricatures you cannot see. A Dutch reader might tell you that your gezelligheid scene feels staged, or that your direct colleague sounds like a parody. That feedback is invaluable.
FAQ
How do I write about Dutch directness without turning it into a stereotype?
Give your Dutch characters contradictions. Let one be direct but also shy. Let another be indirect in a different context. Stereotypes are flat; people are not. Show directness as one behaviour among many, not as a national essence.
Can I write expat fiction if I have only lived in the Netherlands for a short time?
Yes. Some of the freshest writing comes from the early months, when everything is strange and you notice details long-term residents have stopped seeing. Write what you notice now, before it becomes normal.
Where can I submit English-language short stories in the Netherlands?
Start with The Amsterdam Review and Dutch Quarterly, then look for expat anthologies and online magazines. Many accept simultaneous submissions, but always read their guidelines first.
What is the best way to avoid clichés in flash fiction?
Choose one concrete moment and stay inside it. Avoid summary. Avoid explaining what the moment means. Trust the reader to feel the meaning through the details you select.
Should I write from the Dutch perspective if I am not Dutch?
You can, but do it with care and research. Write from the perspective of a specific Dutch person, not ‘the Dutch’. Get feedback from Dutch readers. If it feels like you are ventriloquising a culture rather than portraying a person, reconsider.
Authentic expat stories do not come from postcard images. They come from the specific, honest details of a life actually lived—the missed bus, the misunderstood joke, the Sunday that felt too quiet. Keep observing. Keep writing. The Netherlands is not a backdrop for your transformation; it is a place full of people, systems, and small moments that deserve your full attention.