Tag Archives: reading

Expose Yourself

04 Friday May 2012

Posted by in Advice, Experiences, Inspiration, Mike

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I’ve mentioned before how much I dislike the old “Write what you know” advice and instead advocate “Write what you want to read.”

Expanded out a little, that becomes, “Tell the stories you want to experience.”

But to know what kinds of stories those are, you need to do some homework. What, homework? Yes. I know it will be terribly rough for you, but you need to expose yourself to stories.

Note that I very specifically avoided saying “…but you need to read a lot of novels.” If you want to be a novelist, you obviously should be reading a lot of novels, but you shouldn’t limit yourself to just them. Watch movies. Read webcomics. Try graphic novels. A story is a story, and although the way they are told varies by medium, the basics of good storytelling transcend those limitations.

When I wanted to be a fantasy novelist, oh so many years ago, I heard the further piece of advice, “Read a lot of novels, including those outside your genre.” To this day, I believe this is excellent advice for all storytellers, from novelists to webcomic artists to screenplay writers to graphic novelists.

Why?

Well, a good story is a good story, regardless of its medium or genre. Regardless of the often arbitrary category in which it is filed. Don’t be embarrassed by these labels assigned to stories by publishers, bookstore owners, or movie theaters. There are amazing stories told in every kind of genre, in every kind of medium.

Want examples?

When I was an aspiring fantasy novelist and heard that advice I went to my mom and asked her to recommend a good romance novel. She went through her collection and found me a historical romance. I read it. I enjoyed it. I remember little about it except the lead character’s surname, which I later co-opted into my own stories because I thought she was cool. The story was inspiring in at least some way, even though I was so far outside the target audience.

Except I am, because I’m someone who enjoys a good story. And that’s another related point: as a storyteller, you are the target audience of everything.

Let’s go with another example. I have a friend who recommended The Hunger Games trilogy to me, although he was a little embarrassed, because they are YA. I told him it didn’t matter, because of my mantra, “A good story is a good story.”

So go forth, friends, and expose yourself to stories. Not just those in the genre you want to write. Not just those in the medium you want to create in. Experience stories all across the spectrum, from dystopian YA to historical romance to mainstream tales, as novels or movies or sequential art.

Does It Count?

01 Tuesday May 2012

Posted by in Advice, Ann, Experiences

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Several years ago, a friend asked me what I’d been reading lately. What I had been reading at that time was another friend’s novel manuscript for critique. When I explained this, he said, “That’s not a real book.” I said, “I think reading 200k words of story constitutes as a ‘real book,’ whether or not it’s published.”

“Oh,” he said, and dropped the subject.

With the growth of the Internet, we see serials and other web-stories on the rise, and we read them and enjoy them. With social sites like Goodreads, blog networks, and Twitter, we now have public challenges, like “read 52 books in a year.” These are well-intended challenges, trying to get us reading more and widely.

I’ve tried these challenges, had the little counter images, but then found myself trying to figure out what “counted” What is a “real book?”

  • Does it count if I’ve read it already?
  • Does it count if it’s a manga or graphic novel?
  • Does it count if I listened as an audiobook instead of print?
  • Does it count if it’s not yet a collection, or I read it while it was being serialized?
  • Does it count if my friend’s unpublished novel or fanfic?

I’m not sure why these things plagued me, but I wasn’t the only one asking themselves, or others, “does it count?”

Depending on the challenge, maybe it doesn’t count. And it shouldn’t matter, but we like these widgets and memes, and being part of a community doing something together.

Since I took up knitting and spinning, my reading time plummeted as I found myself having to choose to do one or the other. Sometimes I watched television shows and movies instead because I missed stories, and eventually I rediscovered audiobooks, which I’d always been uncertain of before.

I started listening to them while I worked, while I knitted, while I did chores, and I grew to love them. But then I got worried–was I less of a reader because I listened to books instead of reading them in print?

Truth is, I don’t think so. Print versus electronic versus audio–they’re all the same story, all the same words. Whether I’m reading them in print or on a screen, I still hear the story in my head. When I’m listening to an audiobook, it’s still the same words coming into my head–it’s just through my ears instead of my eyes.

Stories are stories. Enjoy stories, and when you worry about whether or not they “count,” ask yourself whether your goal is to enjoy more stories or “read” 52 books this year of a particular kind.” There’s no right or wrong answer here, it’s just a matter of your anxiety about it. If you’re like me and worry about whether or not things “count,” maybe you, too, need a new “counting” system.

Did I enjoy that story? Did I learn something from it? Then it counts.

Six Ways to Interact with Your Story that Aren’t Writing It

03 Tuesday Apr 2012

Posted by in Advice, Ann, Inspiration

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Sometimes, you need a break from your story. Not a real break, but a break from the pounding of words on the narrative you’ve been plotting. Sometimes, you need to let your plot sit and bubble while you figure out what happens next. Sometimes, you need to dig deeper. Sometimes, you’re in the middle of a revision, and you know you want to improve something, but you just don’t know how.

During these times, instead of abandoning your story completely, consider these ideas on how to interact with your story without writing your story:

1) Visit a local (or, if you have the means and ability, far off) place that reminds you of a setting, character, or situation in your story (or the actual place, if it’s based on a real location). This could be a park, a city, a pub, or even a section of the museum. Even if your story is set in a fictional world, there are places you can go that might remind you of these places. A lot of my fictional cities tend to be hybrids of Seattle and San Francisco, which means I can visit them and be inspired. A science museum might give you some atmosphere of your science fiction setting, as could hiking in the mountains for your high fantasy. If you’ve got a Victorian setting, maybe there’s a tea room or museum you could go to draw in atmosphere.

2) Try doing something your characters are doing. Just reading about something isn’t the same as doing it. (Stay safe and legal, folks. Our characters are often doing dangerous and daring things, and while I think we all owe it to ourselves to be daring, I don’t want anyone breaking an arm on my advice.)

3) Create art related to your story. Whether you draw it or make a collage, even if you don’t think you have visual artistic skills, you can put together something that keeps your mind on the story or characters.

4) Write something related to the story. Vignettes about your characters, songs, poetry, setting descriptions, news articles, literature in your world, love letters, undirected freewriting–whatever it is, it doesn’t have to be part of the story at large. I think we often get hung up on the idea that everything we write on a story must appear in the story, and that’s just not true.

5) Create a soundtrack. Find music that fits your characters, story, mood, or themes and put together a playlist. At one time, I used to play my character’s theme songs (which I’d spend hours deciding on) right before I began to write a scene from their point of view, although nowadays I tend to listen to instrumental sets that fit the story’s mood.

6) Read books related to your story–but don’t default to this one in replacement of option 1 or 2 unless those one are completely undoable. I know it’s easier to look up information about the forests in Wikipedia, around the web, or a library book, but it wouldn’t be the same as going to your large city park or hiking trails and experiencing it for yourself.

These suggestions are the most obvious ones to me. Please feel free to share your ideas below.