# Learning about writing from reading



## skip.knox (Oct 19, 2017)

On another thread, a member gave some advice I have seen often: an important way to learn how to write is to read, read, read. Stephen King is often quoted on this.

I'm 66 years old. I've been consuming books by the armload for six decades, across a wide range of genres. I'm sure this must have helped me in some obscure way, but none of it helped in any specific way until I actually began writing. Even then, after ten years of writing seriously, I can count on one hand the number of actual techniques I've noticed. I have never understood how reading was supposed to help writing.

I hear the advice so often, though, and from such accomplished writers, I feel I must be missing something important. So I ask here: what _specifically_ have you learned about writing from your reading? Here I mean reading fiction, of course. Doesn't have to be in-genre.


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## evolution_rex (Oct 19, 2017)

As a younger inexperienced writer, I feel that it certainly is incredibly helpful to read but I agree that I can't exactly describe why. However, If I'm trying to write after not having read anything in awhile, it most certainly isn't as good as it is after I've just read a book. Perhaps because I forget a little bit about how it'll be read and thus stuff like general pacing and fluidity will be off. Also, I feel I pick up on a lot of smaller details like style and vocabulary, which means the larger your variety of reading is the higher chance you will have at finding your own style and a have a larger vocabulary.


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## Chessie2 (Oct 19, 2017)

I'll just copy/paste my answer here lol:

It's in the little things you notice. It's why I don't plot. When we read, we take in the subtleties that make a genre what it is, story what it is. All of those things add up in your head and your subconscious knows how to turn it into story. I just sit down and write and trust that my subconscious knows what it's doing, where it's taking me, and there are twists and turns I never could've thought up on my own that occur. I think it's from reading and catching what other authors do. At least, that's my theory.


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## Penpilot (Oct 19, 2017)

For me, reading, as well as watching movies, is about learning by example.

Just like any other skill, you can learn a bit from osmosis. You see someone else doing something a specific way and you pick up a little of what they're doing subconsciously.

BUT

If you want to learn from a story, IMHO, it has to be an active process.

When I was starting to take writing really seriously, I read a ton of books on writing and studied structure. I've mentioned this more times than I can remember on this forum. Any way, One of the things I did to learn was I took the current book I was reading and broke it down into the individual components, act breaks, inciting incident, midpoint climax, etc. as I was reading it. I also did a breakdown of each chapter, saw how it fit in to a specific structure.

The book was lousy, but I learned somethings from it. Since then, I do a little of this with every book I read and every movie I watch. It's one of the ways I can tell if I'm bored. Generally, the more active I am in breaking down a story as I consume it, the more likely it is that it's not engaging me.

If a story is completely engrossing, I do practically nothing in terms of breaking it down. Most stories are somewhere in between, so I'll identify a handful off things. But on second viewings in movies, I have the luxury of still being engaged while having enough of my brain free to pick out structure elements.

Each time I do this, it gives me an example of how that part of story structure was executed. There are poorly executed examples and well executed examples and everything in between. This goes from high level story elements to low level ones.

Some stories are simple and the structure elements are easy to identify, and other times, the story plays around with these things a little, and it takes a lot of thinking to figure things out. But in doing so you can the different ways certain elements are executed.

For example, for the longest time, I was trying to pick out the various structure elements to the movie Alien, but there was always something that didn't quite fit, the fact that Ripley, who was the supposed to be the protagonist, didn't make certain decisions that protagonists were supposed to make, especially in a Hollywood movie.

After literally years of thinking about this, I realized, Ripley wasn't the protagonist. She was only one aspect of the protagonist, which was the crew itself. Each crew member represented an aspect of a composite personality, greed, lust, logic, fear, etc. and they, as a whole were considered the protagonist. Once I realized that, things fell into place quite nicely, and I understood why she went back for the cat. It was the final act of her arc, to transform from cold logic to compassion, and in doing so redeeming the greater whole.

Any way, my 2 cents.


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## Svrtnsse (Oct 19, 2017)

I'm thinking about this regularly as well, because I don't read very much these days, and I feel like I ought to because everyone keeps saying one should.

I used to read a lot when I was younger though. Loads. That was long before I got into writing though, and I just read for my own enjoyment without thinking about how the story was built or how various plot elements were used.

These days I still don't think much about that, but every now and then after I've finished something I try to think back on it and do a little bit of an analysis in my head. I'm a slow reader though, and I forget the details of longer stories.

What I'm pretty sure I have learned from all the reading I've done is to empathize with different characters, and in the extension also with people around me. This might come in handy when creating my own characters for my own stories, but it's not exclusively a writer's skill.

Another thing I think I've learned is word flow. Getting a feel for what words work wondrously well with... walliterations are stupid anyway.

Okay, seriously now: I think I've learned a lot about prose and readability of text. As young I mainly read in my native Swedish, and while I'm out of practice on that after 10+ years abroad, I'm pretty sure it wouldn't take much to get back into the swing of things.
I know I posted a thread the other week about how some readers complained about how my language is stilted and lacks flow. That's for my English prose, and it does not apply to all readers or I hope I'd have heard more of it.

Reading hasn't really taught me much about developing an interesting story, but it has taught me how to write easily accessible prose, and it has taught me about people.

+´+´+´+

On a vaguely related matter, I read sometime recently that we pick up a lot more knowledge from reading when we're young - teens to early twenties, than we do when we're older. I don't know how much that factors in.

Another question is: how much do you pick up instinctively just from enjoying a story, and how much do you pick up from analyzing it while/after reading?


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## Svrtnsse (Oct 19, 2017)

skip.knox said:


> [...]So I ask here: what _specifically_ have you learned about writing from your reading? Here I mean reading fiction, of course.


I do actually have one specific thing I've learned that I'd like to attribute to having read a lot of fiction: *I've learned how annoying it is when the author gets a description wrong.*

It's a favorite topic of mine and I've written a few articles about various aspects of writing descriptions. Getting it wrong can really break the immersion for me. I get this image of someone or something in my head, and when the author's words don't match my initial impression it's annoying.

Okay, one more thing. I learned this from the Malazan empire books: _*you don't don't have to explain everything.*_
Steven Erikson does this really well. Things just happen and stuff just do things and you'll just have to accept it. This doesn't work for everyone, but it works really well for me, and the effect it has is that it adds a lot of depth to the world of the story. I have more blanks to fill in myself, meaning I put more of myself into the story, meaning I become more attached to it and that it feels more alive.


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## Incanus (Oct 19, 2017)

I'm a lot like Penpilot in this regard.

As a reader I'm very slow, but I read virtually every day, probably about 15-40 pages or so.  I like a constant input of prose hitting my mind, and I like to keep up a mix of old/new, genre/classics.  Sometimes I analyze, sometimes I just take it in.

For me it's not about learning specifics so much as just keeping myself immersed in storytelling.  I like to re-read and re-watch certain favorites and keep them in mind just so I have a number of examples I can dredge up and think over whenever I need to.

Hope that makes sense - I dashed this out faster than usual, because for me, the weekend is just about to start...


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## skip.knox (Oct 19, 2017)

I would distinguish between reading and analyzing. The King Formula (if I may call it that, though it long predates him) says only read, read, read, as if the mere activity somehow teaches. I completely agree that analyzing a book is a good way to study the craft.

I'm honestly ambivalent about this. A musician must play, play, play. Do you know how to get to Carnegie Hall? Practice, practice, practice. But he must also study, and I'd argue the study comes first for the serious musician. I could sit and play my guitar day and night and take great enjoyment therefrom. I could listen to others play and learn therefrom. But I'm going to learn even more if I study chord inversions and different tunings. There is a craft as well as an art to it.

Here's my stab at it. First, read, read, read. Read in your genre but also read outside it. That's first. That kind of "blind" reading, if you will, is akin to gathering raw materials. You can't even begin to think about the craft until you've built up a fair amount of fodder.

At some point, and it will happen at different times and will happen even to experienced writers, something catches your eye. A memorable character, scene, plot twist. If you are just a reader, you'll think how cool that was. But if you're a _writer_, you'll go back to the book, to that scene. How did the author do that? What exactly was done that touched me? 

My earliest exposure to this was Ray Bradbury's _Martian Chronicles_ (I've told this story before). I was fourteen. I was so moved by what I'd read, I read it again. Then I went back again and wrote out whole chapters. Word for word, just for the sheer joy of the words. It may not be coincidental that I soon after began my own writing.

A few years later I read War and Peace. Read that one twice more, once aloud. The scene at Borodino (or was it Smolensk?) when Andrej is shot is seared into my memory. It's an extraordinary scene, as is the entire battle. I have returned to that more than once as a writer. It provided me with insight and with an approach on how to handle a set-piece battle.

It will be different for each of us--how dialog is handled, descriptions, a sex scene, the list is endless. The more you read, the more examples you have, the more potential inspiration you will find. But I would amend King _et alia_ in this way:

read, read, read
then
study, study, study


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## Sheilawisz (Oct 20, 2017)

I am not a great reader, but I have read some great stories in my life.

I think that perhaps the one that influenced my natural learning the most of them all has been _The Neverending Story_ by Michael Ende. Whenever that I mention it, people think of the movies but those are very inaccurate. I recommend reading the original book, it's really good and a great style of Fantasy very unlike that of Tolkien.

My other most important mentor is Lewis Carroll with the _Alice_ stories.

I also received this natural reading-based learning from Jonathan Swift thanks to his _Gulliver's Travels_. I also read Dante Alighieri a long time ago, and Ernest Hemingway's _The Old Man and the Sea_ which I know as El Viejo y el Mar. Tolkien too, even though I only read the first book in the trilogy of _The Lord of the Rings_ in a really good Castilian translation.

Thank you Erich Maria Remarque and _All Quiet on the Western Front_.

Reading _Harry Potter_ has been part of my natural learning history as well. I read the first three books in Castilian, the fourth in both English and Castilian and the final three books in English only. Before HP I seriously doubted my abilities to write stories in English, but reading those books helped me to feel more confident and I improved my English a lot.

Thanks for that, great J.K. Rowling.

Finally, I have to give credit to the legendary Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra and _El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha_.

Reading the eternal _Quijote_ in original 17th century Castilian was an unbelievable experience. It definitely left some magic in my soul, a truly wonderful story and characters. Ever since then, I still get teary every time that I think of the last moments in the life of Alonso Quijano and those last words that he dedicated to loyal Sancho.

Oh God, it hurts so much:

_Perdóname, amigo, por haberte dado ocasión de parecer loco como yo y haberte hecho creer que hay y hubo caballeros andantes en el mundo...
_
Those words marked for me the end of so many adventures, so many great moments and one of the greatest experiences in my life. I could not accept it. I could not accept that Quijote was dying, and then he was dead.

Facing those words I just broke down in tears, to this day it still hurts a lot and I love _Quijote_ anyway.


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## Insolent Lad (Oct 20, 2017)

I try to write out a review of every book I read, put down in words _why_ I like and dislike things about it. This, I think, has helped me quite a bit with my own writing. I started doing it when I read some advice by the poet Annie Finch to analyze writing in this manner—she was addressing the writing of poetry, primarily, but it can apply broadly. Read, yes, read a lot. Then be a critic, actually organizing and writing out your thoughts. It can help one understand what a author did, or attempted to do, and what worked or didn't.


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## Russ (Oct 20, 2017)

As I recently posted in another thread I don't have the facility to get much of anything other than great enjoyment out of reading.

I get totally wrapped up in a good piece of fiction and carried away.  With a good rider I get totally swept up.  I get to the end of a good book and think "that was amazing" but have no clue how they did.  I just can't seem to read for craft and pleasure at the same time.

I can sometimes tell why a book bombs, but not why it is great. 

I suspect I could probably do this on a second read of the book...but who has time for that?


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## Demesnedenoir (Oct 20, 2017)

I have an issue with most “soundbite” advice. Read, read, read! Read the classics! Write a million words!

They’re all good ideas, nothing wrong with them, but the weight some people give them is overblown and are often taken in a simplistic manner. If you write a million words of crap, is 1,000,001 bound to be better? Nope. The assumption of improvement only goes so far. 

The number is obviously arbitrary, but if I were to prescribe advice for improving writing while using 1 million it would be a bit like this:

Write a complete 100k novel. Stuff it in a desk for 3 months, study craft in that time. Pull it out and edit the crap out of it. (count this as 200k) Stuff it back in the drawer, you can now write a second 100k novel (300k total) and when done edit the first novel (400k) now go back and forth editing both novels while studying word and story craft and by the time you get to 1 million, you had better have improved, LOL.


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## FifthView (Oct 20, 2017)

I don't read as much in the last few years as I read in my teens and early twenties, and when I do, it's mostly for entertainment.

I think I picked up a lot during that time. Nowadays while reading for entertainment, I’ll still notice a little thing here, a little thing there—my writer brain is never totally absent as I read for entertainment. But often these things are like the insights you forget to make a note about: they’ll disappear from my conscious mind as I keep reading. Later, after the book is completed, I might or might not recall them, depending on whether the memories are triggered.

The one area reading helps more directly is in the negative case. Something very bad in a book. That throws me out of the story anyway, and I’ll make a long-lasting mental note:  _Don’t do that!_


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## CupofJoe (Oct 20, 2017)

I tend to view any do X and Y will happen advice as cautionary rather than prescriptive. 
The old adage of practice 10,000 hours and you'd become proficient/expert, isn't wrong but its taken the wrong way round...
Most people that are really good at something will have taken 10,000 hours to get good at it.
So the million words thing isn't write a million and you'll become good. It's those that are good have already written a million words.
The same with read to become a good writer. It should be those that are good writers read... a lot.


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## Chessie2 (Oct 20, 2017)

Svrtnsse said:


> I do actually have one specific thing I've learned that I'd like to attribute to having read a lot of fiction: *I've learned how annoying it is when the author gets a description wrong.*
> 
> It's a favorite topic of mine and I've written a few articles about various aspects of writing descriptions. Getting it wrong can really break the immersion for me. I get this image of someone or something in my head, and when the author's words don't match my initial impression it's annoying.
> 
> ...


Great observation. Just last night as I was laying in bed trying to fall asleep, I was tortured by the thought that I hadn't described the setting in my last scene at all. I briefly mentioned a vanity--and that was it. But when I went back over the scene, I hesitated to add setting details. The emotional intensity is what I wanted to highlight. Sometimes, I think letting readers fill the gaps in in their imaginations while feeding them something else can be just as powerful.


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## Demesnedenoir (Oct 20, 2017)

Like Fifthview, I am more apt to learn what not to do from reading than what to do, at least to fit my tastes.

A lot of successful writers claim to read piles of books per year, and I have no reason to doubt them, but I think this has more to do with keeping up with industry and trends and just loving to read than having anything to do with how well they write.


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## ThinkerX (Oct 21, 2017)

Apart from a few articles and blogs linked to on this site, and a few reference type works (dictionary, thesaurus), I have read all of two books on writing craft - and of those, I view the one as an overly long article.  My expertise, such as it is, comes from reading - lots and lots of reading, on the order of 100+ books a year.  I can't even claim to be that great of a grammarian - my scores on the subject were never more than average. 

The main things I instinctively learned and applied were -

- Keep it interesting.  Put the characters in an immediate predicament straight off and force them to grapple with it. Tension.  Whenever I go back and look through my older works, the best tales (or parts thereof) always feature this element.

- Be sparing with longer descriptive sections.  Unless well done, these get boring in a hurry.  Anymore, this means keep an eye on the passive voice, adverbs, and vague words - these don't have to be eliminated altogether and are frequently necessary, but overuse is not good.  (I got into trouble with 'historical digressions.') 

- Don't get carried away with the worldbuilding.  That can be an endless rabbit hole.  Also, unless well done, worldbuilding notes incorporated into the story are boring. 

Main things I have picked up since coming to MS are -

- Always have at least some notion of the beginning, middle, and end of a story in mind before you start to write.  I had a lot of cool concepts that went nowhere in the old days because I couldn't figure out what came next. 

- Outlining, at least to a minimal extent, has value.  It helps organize the various scenes and concepts.

- Write.  The way to become a good writer is to write, preferably every day.  Sadly, exhaustion and the press of real world events has resulted in me being on a bit of a writing hiatus now.  (Well, that, and slowly figuring out how to approach the rewrite of the WIP.)


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## Heliotrope (Oct 22, 2017)

I agree with Skip 100% about "read, read, read" then "study, study, study." I have nothing new to add to that opinion at all.

What I will add, that has not been touched on, is non-fiction reading. Most everyone has touched on "reading fiction as a way of writing better fiction"... but I'd argue that reading non-fiction is just as important for developing story ideas.

Here is why:

Most people agree that "writing what you know" is important. So is "writing what you are passionate about." I notice with myself that I tend to be the type that reads a TON, but it is not always fiction. I'm constantly keeping updated on news and current events... refreshing my "google news" page a million times throughout the day. When I hit on something I'm interested in, I obviously read it, but then it might spark my interest in another direction, like the meaning of a word I don't understand, or a political viewpoint I may not be quite clear on. So then what do I do? I look it up. I do a bit of light research, which sometimes turns into me spiralling into the the depths of the internet in search of information I didn't even know existed half an hour ago.

So I end up reading about history, and political struggles in other countries, and the viewpoints of world leaders I didn't know too much about. All this reading opens up my world and in turn, opens up my story worlds to new possibilities.

In another direction, say I'm sitting in the doctors office. I'm bored. So I read. I read National Geographic, and Popular Mechanic, and opinion pieces in trashy woman's magazines... all this reading leads to me being able to create characters with different viewpoints, interests, backgrounds and abilities that I may have never known existed before that appointment.

I'm the type of nerd who always has some sort of opinion or odd-factoid about everything. The origin of flip flops. Why boys have more cases of autism than girls. Why baby boomers are divorcing at skyrocketing rates, why people who are into BDSM are psychologically happier in their relationships.... I know all this random stuff because I read. Everything. All the time. I'm constantly reading random stuff about the world. 

"read, read, read" is not just about sitting down and reading as much fiction as you can, it's about paying close attention to your world. Branching out and picking up a different magazine than you normally would at the dentist and _learning _something you never knew before.

All that stuff goes into our stories and makes our characters and worlds richer for it.


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## Rkcapps (Oct 23, 2017)

For the last decade, my reading decreased (young kids didn't help), but it's improving. Audible books help, but if I want to study, I need the book. The tricks of the trade stand out the more you read. I still find it hard to start something that doesn't grab me immediately, so books with prologues don't hold my attention unless short. I want the character.

Recently, I've been watching the Brandon Sanderson lectures on YouTube. I must say ... man, he's well read! One of his guest lecturers taught, "writing comedy". Now, I'd never considered writing comedy before, but I thought I'd like to at least know how. From that lecture I found the Dilbert writing humour website (google it). I'm sure Demesnedenoir knows what I'm talking about. Now, I'm able to dissect (without trying) the humour in Terry Pratchett's "The Colour of Magic". If I didn't keep up some reading, I wouldn't know how to do that or recognise it. I'd just burst out laughing without understanding why. Now, I know. 

Btw, if ever you want a good book to either read or study, that's it. The guy was knighted for a reason!


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## Demesnedenoir (Oct 24, 2017)

Actually, I know nothing about writing humor that I didn’t learn from Monty Python. I did study screenwriter under an ex-stand-up comic turned screenwriter (he wrote Belushi’s K-9) and naturally comedy was discussed, the anatomy of the stand-up joke being the basis for comedy writing (in his opinion). I wrote my comedy screenplay without studying comedy at all, and it worked. I tend to prefer comedy relief over a full blown comedy.

The important thing I learned about comedy is that if you are throwing a party in Hollywood and you want it to be fun and exciting, do NOT invite comedy writers.




Rkcapps said:


> For the last decade, my reading decreased (young kids didn't help), but it's improving. Audible books help, but if I want to study, I need the book. The tricks of the trade stand out the more you read. I still find it hard to start something that doesn't grab me immediately, so books with prologues don't hold my attention unless short. I want the character.
> 
> Recently, I've been watching the Brandon Sanderson lectures on YouTube. I must say ... man, he's well read! One of his guest lecturers taught, "writing comedy". Now, I'd never considered writing comedy before, but I thought I'd like to at least know how. From that lecture I found the Dilbert writing humour website (google it). I'm sure Demesnedenoir knows what I'm talking about. Now, I'm able to dissect (without trying) the humour in Terry Pratchett's "The Colour of Magic". If I didn't keep up some reading, I wouldn't know how to do that or recognise it. I'd just burst out laughing without understanding why. Now, I know.
> 
> Btw, if ever you want a good book to either read or study, that's it. The guy was knighted for a reason!


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## pmmg (Oct 30, 2017)

I have a secret.

I am not a reader, and I don't enjoy it. In fact, I almost never read for enjoyment, and almost always just to learn something. This includes reading works that are meant for enjoyment, such as many great works of fiction. I don't know if that makes this a question for me, or not, but I do feel I have something to add.


Without question, I have read a lot of bad fiction, and I have learned the most from it. Mostly, I learn a lot of stuff not to do. Such as, don’t make weird unpronounceable names for your main characters. Or, if the story is going well and engaging, dont trek off to someplace completely away from that. Or don’t just give me a story so I can go, 'wow, what a cool villain' (hint, I won’t think your villain is cool). Or send me a piece of work and expect me to do all of your proof reading for you. Or, miss big items, like conflict (um…is it even a story if there is no conflict?), or good characters, or good opportunities for foreshadowing. Or, bury me in many pages of thick dense prose telling me the color of trees, and the sounds of birds, and majesty of the mountains. In fact, I feel I have learned so much for bad writing, that I think, without question, if someone was to ask me 'what can I do to learn how to write better?' I would tell them to go find a peer review site and start reviewing. IMO, that is the fastest path (along with putting up stuff and getting reviews as well). And stick with anything you start, whether it is good or bad. The bad stuff is more educational.


From the published authors, I also tend to pick up a lot. People tell me I use comma's and semicolon's wrong. Well, I pay close attention to how other authors are using them, and try to put this 'weakness' behind me. (Though I must say, I think a lot of it is just nitpicking, and I kind of go along with, if it succeeds in making the story clearer, then I guess it works). Beyond grammar, I think of my own writing, and things I am struggling with, such as world building, for instance, and I may start to notice how the other authors have incorporated their own world building into their works. Was it subtle, direct, infodumpy...whatever. If I find some ways that I think work, I might say I can use a similar technique on my own. Often I cannot, because my voice is my own and it does not lend itself to others very well, but sometimes, I think, ‘Yeah, I can do something like that which I just read’. Another thing I find I pick up, is just words. Sometimes words I did not know, and sometimes words used in ways I would not likely have considered.


(And I might add, when I read the opening to Game of thrones, I felt I learned something. Cause I had never thought to include a detail like the sweat worn handle of a sword, or the taste of a knife as one was climbing a tree. I don’t know if I can use it, but….It’s got me thinking about fleshing things out.)


Other things I tend to learn, are just trends. What has the evolution of this genre's writing been? What is currently hot, and where do I think it is going? Maybe a little of who does it well, and who is over-rated. I feel I follow that too.


I read Steven King's book on writing (Wasn't that the name, on writing?). I must say, I found I was in agreement with him a lot in that work, but I dont like anything I have ever read that Steven King has done, go figure.

Oh, and I should also add, by reading a lot of stuff (cause I do,) it keeps the idea factory going. Been thinking a lot of Malik's comments about steel and armor of late. And on a bit of other research about leather and gambeson armor, and I am thinking I might make a change, but I might not. I don't know.


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## Annoyingkid (Nov 1, 2017)

The risk in learning writing through reading is internalizing what others have done and being locked into certain patterns of storytelling and use of fantasy tropes.


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## skip.knox (Nov 1, 2017)

I try to find analogies with other arts.
The best way to learn painting is through staring.
The best way to learn music is to listen to music.
The best way to learn to dance is to watch musicals. (ok, cheap shot)

Point is, yes by all means look at other paintings if you wish to paint. But that's only going to be one approach among many, each of which will be of varying value to different artists and will vary in value even over the course of an individual artist's career. 

Go ahead and read, but the benefits are not linear. If A reads 50% more books than B, it does not follow that A will be half again the writer as B. Writer A might very well turn out to be worse. The only thing we can say reliably is that if C never reads a single book, then C is unlikely ever to write a book. Then again, C is unlikely even to try.

Beyond that modest observation I am unwilling to tread.


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## pmmg (Nov 1, 2017)

Mileage may vary.

I hate to say, but I do think there is something to be learned from staring, and listening, and watching musicals (How do you think I got all my moves?). But that would all need to be supplemental to actually engaging in trying to learn a craft or an art form. So, it don't matter how much you read, if you never write anything, you wont become a better writer. I think that would go without saying though.

To say there is no value in reading is equally as false as to say it is all that is needed.


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## Sheilawisz (Nov 1, 2017)

In the arts of Storytelling and also in many other skills, natural learning is excellent.

Did you study your native language when you were speaking your first words? Did you learn it from books and professors, in a classroom? Not at all! We learn our native language by natural means, simply by hearing other people as they talk and then slowly and by instinct trying to do the same ourselves.

I was barely old enough to walk when my parents started showing cartoon movies to me in English.

At first, English was just gibberish to me. I could not understand what the animated characters were saying, but I started to associate their words with their actions in the story. That was my beginning in the natural learning of English, and it continued years later with videogames and also plenty of movies with real people in them.

I got so used to playing games in English, that today I refuse to play them in my native language.

It's true that I also received English classes, and most of them took place at very prestigious bilingual schools. The professors were excellent, and the artificial learning helped me as well but its impact was quite little if compared with the natural thing. Even today my English is not that of a native speaker, but it's good enough for me to participate in these forums and even to write novels in your language.

Just reading some of the great and influential novels out there can help a lot in the natural learning of how to tell stories, but you have to start working on your own stories in order to get experience and become better as time passes. Allow it to be a natural thing, and let the stories be in contact with you and to express themselves through your imagination and your narrative.

There have been many famous authors that created great literary works even if they never studied literature and writing techniques at some academy or college. Miguel de Cervantes was a soldier and a tax collector, his knowledge of literature was limited to natural learning and still he managed to create what is often regarded as the greatest work of written fiction of all times.

Lewis Carroll was a mathematician, and Victor Hugo was a totally natural storyteller and poet as well.

Learning about how to tell stories (in both natural and artificial ways) is the start, but all of the learning and knowledge in the world are not going to matter if you do not have good and powerful stories to tell. Stories are something mysterious and magical, and that's why I believe that being a storyteller is a matter of calling and destiny.


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## Lorna Smithers (Nov 2, 2017)

I find reading is really helpful from both an analytical and inspirational perspective. It helps me get a grip on how other authors handle descriptions, character development, plot, first person and third person narratives, and also to find out what moves me - what excites me and makes me want to read on, what makes me feel sympathy for characters and what makes me hate them, what I find magical and numinous and mysterious, what those moments are that I'll never forget.

Because I know I write much better in the first person and prefer a first person narrative I've been contemplating that in relation to my reading.

Recently I've read all of Robin Hobb's Farseer and Liveships books and one of the things that stood out to me was how immersed I was in Fitz's story from a first person perspective. Whilst the Liveships continued the narrative within the magical world and I loved the serpents and dragons I didn't find the human characters quite as engaging - maybe because there were more of them and from a third person perspective. Would I have enjoyed those books more from, say, solely Althea's perspective?

I'm now re-reading the Dragonlance books which are a totally different style - third person omniscient. This made me feel even more distanced from the characters. I almost didn't make it through Dragons of Autumn Twilight in the first trilogy as I didn't feel much rapore with the characters at all and it was only part way through the second book, Dragons of Winter Night, with Lorac's nightmare, that the plot began to come together around the central characters - Raistlin, Caramon, Tanis, Kitiara, Laurana and Tas. The ending of the third book was awesome. I'm now on the 'Twins' trilogy and am enjoying that much more as it centres on Raistlin and Caramon and Tas with the reappearance of Kitiara and a new character - Raistlin's apprentice, Dalamar, who I wish had a bigger role. I will admit to finding myself getting annoyed when the book moves away from those main characters to the clerics of Istar or the dwarves of Thorbardin for the sake of plotting and world building but guess that may work for others.


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## Heliotrope (Nov 2, 2017)

skip.knox said:


> Go ahead and read, but the benefits are not linear. If A reads 50% more books than B, it does not follow that A will be half again the writer as B. Writer A might very well turn out to be worse.



Actually Skip, on a fundamental level educational research has proven this to be false on a variety of levels, one being increased level of vocabulary = kids are better able to express themselves and describe what is in their imaginations = direct correlation to better writing. We see it all the time in the classroom.

_Reading aloud is the best way to help children develop word mastery and grammatical understanding, which form the basis for learning how to read, said Massaro, who studies language acquisition and literacy... 

Study says reading aloud to children, more than talking, builds literacy
_
Moderator Note: Post edited because of Mythic Scribes rules against Duplicate Content.

We see the proof of this research all the time in the elementary classroom. It is obvious who has been read to from an early age and who has spent the better part of their childhood watching tv and playing video games. The kids who are regularly read to have a far better mastery of language, and far higher vocabulary, and thy intuitively understand grammatical structure and story format. Not only that, but they have a far higher wealth of "story ideas" than the kids who watch tv all day. You would think on that level the tv kids and book kids would be equal, as watching TV and movies exposes kids to a ton of different story ideas, but we know that when people are watching TV their brains are not engaged. The brain essentially shuts down, so the TV kids don't process what they are seeing as well as the reading kids do.

So in the classroom 50% more reading absolutely does, and has been proven to = 50% (or more) better writing.


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## Devor (Nov 2, 2017)

Heliotrope said:


> So in the classroom 50% more reading absolutely does, and has been proven to = 50% (or more) better writing.



I think that's maybe apples and oranges. As an adult I read all the time - news articles, websites, emails, facebook posts, subtitles on the screen because the kids won't stop talking - and absolutely that's important for understanding language and articulating clear points. But I think it's implied that we're talking about reading fantasy novels to write fantasy novels, which is a different question entirely.

I was reading an article just yesterday from HBR that suggested that a huge number of creative discoveries are made by those on the fringes of their field - for instance, chemists who make advancements in molecular biology instead of chemistry. That's because they have the skills but haven't been taught how to approach the particular problem at hand. So they approach it differently than everyone else.

Bearing that in mind, I think there's some room for debate about how much any given person needs to read, or rather, to what they should be reading if they want to focus on becoming a writer. I don't think the correlation between the number of books you've read and rated on goodreads and the quality of your writing is going to be 1.  I would guess it's closer to .3, with a crazy distribution.


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## Heliotrope (Nov 2, 2017)

Devor said:


> I think that's maybe apples and oranges. As an adult I read all the time - news articles, websites, emails, facebook posts, subtitles on the screen because the kids won't stop talking - and absolutely that's important for understanding language and articulating clear points. But I think it's implied that we're talking about reading fantasy novels to write fantasy novels, which is a different question entirely.
> 
> I was reading an article just yesterday from HBR that suggested that a huge number of creative discoveries are made by those on the fringes of their field - for instance, chemists who make advancements in molecular biology instead of chemistry. That's because they have the skills but haven't been taught how to approach the particular problem at hand. So they approach it differently than everyone else.
> 
> Bearing that in mind, I think there's some room for debate about how much any given person needs to read, or rather, to what they should be reading if they want to focus on becoming a writer. I don't think the correlation between the number of books you've read and rated on goodreads and the quality of your writing is going to be 1.  I would guess it's closer to .3, with a crazy distribution.



In the OP it didn't say anything specifically about reading fantasy to write fantasy. Skip noted that he has read many books "over a variety of genres" and wondered if it would directly correlate to better writing. My argument is yes, it does. It does in kids, it does in teenagers, it does in adults, period.

Yes, the distribution is for sure varied, but the results of numerous studies holds true.

And as far as the scientists, I imagine that may be true of writers as well as far as genre, as in, a romance writers might write spectacular, new, fresh and engaging sci-fi because she/he is coming at it from a new and fresh angle. But a refrigerator repairman with an eight grade education and an impoverished background with limited access to reading material is not suddenly going to start pumping out best sellers.


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## FifthView (Nov 2, 2017)

Annoyingkid said:


> The risk in learning writing through reading is internalizing what others have done and being locked into certain patterns of storytelling and use of fantasy tropes.



Some of that's also the benefit of reading. I'd love to internalize more of what others have done, just so I could have those tools at hand. Actually, I think I've already done that, although who knows what, exactly, I've internalized at this point. I didn't keep track for the vast majority of it. 

Similarly, knowing all those tropes and patterns helps to avoid repeating them unwittingly and generically.

The "being locked" portion of your comment is spot-on however. I think what helps a writer avoid that is either more reading—to discover the great variety of approaches that aren't always complementary—or letting oneself move beyond the idea that what has been read is what and how it must be done. Or, both.


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## Devor (Nov 2, 2017)

Heliotrope said:


> In the OP it didn't say anything specifically about reading fantasy to write fantasy. Skip noted that he has read many books "over a variety of genres" and wondered if it would directly correlate to better writing. My argument is yes, it does. It does in kids, it does in teenagers, it does in adults, period.
> 
> Yes, the distribution is for sure varied, but the results of numerous studies holds true.



There's also the law of diminishing returns, and the fact that all reading is not created equal. If the studies are based on children, who presumably have nowhere to go but up, they won't necessarily hold for adults, who could very well read a hundred books that don't challenge or push their abilities.

Also, there are many skills involved with writing that reading will not address. Reading alone doesn't activate the problem solving areas of your mind, for instance, and there are many problems to solve in writing a story.

Don't get me wrong, I don't mean to knock reading, just the notion that it's the main way that we learn how to write. There are other things that are equally and often even more important. If I was going to put together an outline for teaching someone to write, I would probably have people spend 1/5 of the time reading, and 4/5ths elsewhere. And I'd be pushing people to read books that are very different.... well you remember the Reading Quest concept.  Look at comedy, then at romance, then at worldbuilding, and get a feel for different corners of the genre, and don't just grab the thing that fancies you most assuming that volume is what matters.


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## skip.knox (Nov 2, 2017)

I won't get into the scientific evidence except to quote one of my favorite quotes:
studies show that studies show

But my OP was a bit more specific. I wondered if anyone could point to particular things they had learned about writing from reading they had done. I can point to a couple. Not a long list, but one (how to write a battle scene) has been useful more than once. 

Then again, what I learned from Tolstoy is nothing that has not been said in a hundred "how-to" articles--the importance of emotional involvement, focusing on a single character at least for one perspective, seizing on specific moments--so it's hard to make the case that reading Tolstoy or some other fiction is somehow better than just reading the "how-to" articles. In fact, one could probably make the opposite case, as the articles present the information in a more compact manner.

Except for this: the scenes at Borodino still resonate with me. I "learned" how to write a battle scene long before--decades--before I undertook to write one. The scene had an emotional impact that said this was right, this is the way it happens, or at least this is the way best to imagine it in lieu of experiencing it. So when I finally did come to write my set piece, I reached for that approach as naturally as constructing a sentence with subject, verb, object. No practical tips article is going to have that sort of impact. And when in the depths of writing, it's going to be those resonances and echoes that guide the pen.

Anyway, that's my theory. Bowing to Sturgeon's Law, one is going to have to read a great many books in order to glean a handful of insights that make each author who they are at any point in time.


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## Heliotrope (Nov 2, 2017)

Dude, I teach reading and writing for a living. The Reading Quest concept was based on at least 80% time spent reading. Yes, you were reading different genres, with the intent to focus on different things, and that is the point.

Over the last decade we in education noticed a major problem with kid's reading competencies (and ready for it... writing ability) taking a massive nose dive. Skip teaches University, have you noticed this Skip? The students just aren't writing essays or processing the reading in the same way they used to?

Why?

The research has shown, time and time again, that kids are simply not reading enough. They are spending too much time with their brain shut off in front of screens. At school we shifted to a more "open ended/self exploration" approach and stopped teaching basic core skills. We gave students assignments like "Write a poem about the leaves falling outside" and then told them all how wonderful they were and how each poem was a special little snowflake **. We stopped making them read outloud to us and to each other because we "didn't want them to get embarrassed and damage their self-esteem and make them hate reading", so we started giving them busy work like "draw a picture of a scene from the story."

Basically, any meaningful reading and writing abruptly ended in the classroom and we went to a model like the one you described above: 3 parts busy work, 1 part reading.

The curriculum in BC has changed dramatically to incorporate more time for kids to simply read and analyze what they are reading. Listen to reading. Read to others. Read to self. Then work on writing.

So actually, in education today the opposite of what you suggest is true. We do 80% work on reading, 20% work on writing, and the results are insane.

**Note: This special snowflake syndrome is one I think is dominating the self pub world right now. "My stories are amazing and wonderful and no one likes them because they are too stupid to understand them and they just don't get my creative genius."


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## Devor (Nov 2, 2017)

Heliotrope said:


> Basically, any meaningful reading and writing abruptly ended in the classroom and we went to a model like the one you described above: 3 parts busy work, 1 part reading.



I didn't say anything about busy work....

Again, though, you're still talking about education and teaching and "writing" in a very different sense. You're talking about basic learning and critical thinking, not about writing a novel.  I don't feel that we're on the same page of the discussion.  Also, there's this assumption that I'm making, that "reading = fiction books," that also doesn't hold in education, where "reading = shorts, articles, case studies, commentaries, textbooks...."  We're talking about different things, here.  Then in education, it's about 100% exercises, whereas in developing a novel, you have to make time for the actual work.

And then still, there's phases to learning, especially learning a skill. Teachers, for instance, have to spend time in the classroom, and often have to spend 4 years on the job before they really become competent. So are we talking about the in-front-of-the-classroom phase or the college phase?  Are we talking about med school or the surgical residency? Become I'm definitely discussing something closer to the residency.


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## Heliotrope (Nov 2, 2017)

Devor said:


> I didn't say anything about busy work....
> 
> Again, though, you're still talking about education and teaching and "writing" in a very different sense. You're talking about basic learning and critical thinking, not about writing a novel.  I don't feel that we're on the same page of the discussion.  Also, there's this assumption that I'm making, that "reading = fiction books," that also doesn't hold in education, where "reading = shorts, articles, case studies, commentaries, textbooks...."  We're talking about different things, here.  Then in education, it's about 100% exercises, whereas in developing a novel, you have to make time for the actual work.
> 
> And then still, there's phases to learning, especially learning a skill. Teachers, for instance, have to spend time in the classroom, and often have to spend 4 years on the job before they really become competent. So are we talking about the in-front-of-the-classroom phase or the college phase?  Are we talking about med school or the surgical residency? Become I'm definitely discussing something closer to the residency.



True. All true. ^^^^ All of this.

I'm only arguing that more reading = better writing. That is all.

Even at the residency level, when a student is doing their PhD they need to be reading higher level stuff in order to research their thesis. They can't just start writing a thesis with no research. So they read what others have done in the field, draw from that, learn from that, then add their own thoughts and opinions and research.

What I'm saying is you can't write in a vacuum. Reading will always help you be a better writer. Always. No matter what you are reading, whether it is "how to write articles" or genre fiction.

Just as someone who doesn't listen to music or enjoy music isn't going to be a best selling musician.


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## Heliotrope (Nov 2, 2017)

On a slightly more personal level, if I were a successful professional writer (which obviously I'm not) I would find the notion that "Oh, well, I've read enough books. I should be able to just pick up a pen and in a few years or so write a decent novel without any study," really offensive. 

"Oh well, I've listened to enough music. I will just pick up this violin and start playing with it and in a few years I'll play in an orchestra. I don't need to do any formal learning or waste time listening to any more music." 

It just doesn't make any sense.


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## Chessie2 (Nov 2, 2017)

Heliotrope said:


> **Note: This special snowflake syndrome is one I think is dominating the self pub world right now. "My stories are amazing and wonderful and no one likes them because they are too stupid to understand them and they just don't get my creative genius."


The issue is more that these writers refuse to accept a very important fact: the market exists with certain parameters and guidelines whether they like it or not. My response will be slightly off topic at first but I intend to make it back around to the OP thread.

One thing that troubles me about this website in particular are the views of Indie publishing that AREN'T REAL. What you've stated there, Helio, is a myth. You do not self-publish and therefore, do not understand what it means to be involved in that world far as writing and publishing and marketing goes. I'm not saying this to be mean, just that you are coming from a perspective that is literary, traditional, and very much the opposite mindset of what it takes to succeed in self-publishing (which is very difficult, btw, and I don't intent to say that I am an expert). Listen, I read a lot of assumptions about Indie publishing on this site that make me roll my eyes because they're simply untrue. What I see dominating the Indie market are many things (scammers and real writers alike). The market is saturated yet growing, maturing. There is no special snowflake syndrome with just Indies. This syndrome affects writers who want to traditionally publish as well and I'll state that it's an individual thing.

Check it: a writer wants to write a certain book. They write it. Package it. Publish it. Either it hits or it doesn't. MANY BOOKS DON'T HIT regardless of how they are published. Many writers fight the urge to surrender to the market. This means that if you write fantasy fiction you must know the differences between epic, sword and sorcery, historical, urban, etc if you want to succeed as a published author. Many writers just want to write their art and get away with it without considering that, when you publish a book, you are expecting people to pay money for something that you created. Why would they want to pay for a book that doesn't resonate with them? A book no one wants to read? I read this a lot: "I don't want to write tropes. I want my book to be different. I want to publish my book and don't care if no one reads it or I won't read my reviews." <--- then don't whine when it doesn't sell. 

I have 6 (going on 7) titles up for sale and only 2 of them sell okay. I wouldn't say the rest are duds but there are reasons why they do poorly and I'm striving to improve that part of my business. A huge part of succeeding as an author has to do with the ability to lock down your audience and understand that, when you sell your work, it's no longer about you. PERIOD.

Now, to tie it back to reading, this is why why why reading is so so so important. If you don't read the books you want to write, then how will you know what readers want? Every genre and sub-genre even has nuances and subtleties that make it what it is. Readers expect certain things. For example, I don't read epic fantasy because it's too big a scope for me. I prefer smaller casts with stories that end sooner. I like medieval worlds. I like lots of magic. I like either all elves or all humans. LOVE MYTHOLOGY. The fantasy I read could be on any spectrum from sword and sorcery to fairytales. I expect the authors whose work I read to know the differences. If I pick up a fantasy romance novel expecting it to be high fantasy and instead it's a shifter romance, I'm going to be pissed. Because they aren't the same thing. If I pick up a sword and sorcery book with 2283472 different povs, I'm going to be pissed. Because they aren't the same thing. 

So, in a nutshell, reading books helps you understand and learn what readers expect from those books. The Elven romance I'm writing is similar to Kathryne Kennedy's elven romance stories (minus historical settings). There are similarities because I love those books and know what readers expect. I wouldn't know or understand those things if I hadn't read her books.


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## Devor (Nov 2, 2017)

To get back to the OP:



skip.knox said:


> I hear the advice so often, though, and from such accomplished writers, I feel I must be missing something important. So I ask here: what _specifically_ have you learned about writing from your reading? Here I mean reading fiction, of course. Doesn't have to be in-genre.



I think my own writing style is.... heavier, perhaps, than most of what I've read. But there are many things to learn from reading or be inspired by. There's a big part in Treasure Island that I straight-up decided to steal....



Spoiler: Treasure Island, Major Spoilers



The main characters hope to follow a map and find buried treasure. At one point, they realize that the crew they've hired to man their ship is full of pirates who intend to kill them when they find it.



It's this horrifying moment that sends chills down my back if I just think about it hard enough. In one of my stories, I hope to recreate that same kind of horror because it's just so intense.

There's other things, however. How does a person respond to being insulted? There's so many possibilities, but sometimes you haven't been exposed to many. You might think "With a come back?" or "By being hurt and running off?" or "By getting mad and hitting them?" But if you've read enough, you might also think, "By asking them Is something wrong?" or "By agreeing with them as though it were nothing" or a dozen other ways that you normally wouldn't think about.


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## Heliotrope (Nov 2, 2017)

Yeah, Chessie, it's true it's everywhere. I was drawing from my own personal experience with writers in my local writers group (and a few colleagues of mine who are into self publishing who have this syndrome _bad _lol). They are literary nerds who think everything they do is pure poetry and mind bending but really it just makes no sense.


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## skip.knox (Nov 2, 2017)

>Skip teaches University, have you noticed this Skip?
My colleagues complain about this, but I don't. To my eyes, undergrads generally write poorly. So did I, when I was an undergrad. I grew immensely in grad school, and I think I know wherein the difference lies. At least in my discipline, the lower division courses are heavily either multiple choice or at best short answer tests with no papers. Only with upper division to students begin to write a standard 20-page (or so) paper. It takes a few thousand words even to begin to construct a historical argument, so I argue that students are not doing history until then. They're just reading it. I shall leave to one side whether reading history enables (as distinct from helps) good historical writing.

But many of my students say that other history profs give few comments and even fewer helpful comments. That's what I recall from my own undergrad days as well. Some comments that fall roughly in the category of proofreading, coupled with some general comments at the end. If one was lucky.

From the start in grad school, though, I was receiving more like developmental edits--thoroughgoing critiques that were unblinking though not harsh. That's when I began to improve as a writer. Not by getting general remarks or learning about writing in general--even about writing history in general--but comments about how *I* write history; even more specifically, how I wrote this particular history for this paper. In short, I was being held to a professional standard, and that's how I grew.

When I began teaching, I was determined from the start to do the same for my students. I did not expect them to write like pros, but I did know how to set the bar higher than where they were. And that bar varies by individual. 

The point I want to make here is that most all of us write badly to begin with. The very best help we can receive is direct, personal feedback from someone who knows the field. This is why athletes have coaches; it's a pity writers do not.

But I believe the above is true for every generation and has always been true. I can point to teacher moaning going back at least to the early 20thc. Heck, there's evidence all the way back to the ancient Greeks. The song is always the same: the current generation just doesn't have the chops their ancestors did. If the downward trend is true, we ought all to be utterly illiterate by now. Yet we keep turning out brilliant literature. 

I do not deny or refute the studies, nor the experience of individual teachers. But neither can I deny the historical evidence. So there is a disconnect in our reasoning somewhere. I've never been particularly interested in education theory, especially regarding compulsory mass education, so I've not tried to explore the disconnect. But I can't help pointing it out when discussions wander into this verdant pasture. Lots to chew on here.


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## Chessie2 (Nov 2, 2017)

Heliotrope said:


> Yeah, Chessie, it's true it's everywhere. I was drawing from my own personal experience with writers in my local writers group (and a few colleagues of mine who are into self publishing who have this syndrome _bad _lol). They are literary nerds who think everything they do is pure poetry and mind bending but really it just makes no sense.


It seems that there are two kinds of writers: literary and genre. Rarely do I see one doing both. It's either one or the other. If anyone goes into Indie publishing trying to make a living by selling literary they are in for a big surprise. It's hard enough selling in hot genres.


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## skip.knox (Nov 2, 2017)

Devor, have you read _A High Wind in Jamaica_?  It has kids and pirates, but is very different in tone. I cannot recommend it too highly. It's some of the best prose I've read and is exceeded by no other work in its ability to get inside the head of children. It has become shamefully neglected. I read it by chance, with no prior knowledge or expectations.


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## Devor (Nov 2, 2017)

skip.knox said:


> From the start in grad school, though, I was receiving more like developmental edits--thoroughgoing critiques that were unblinking though not harsh. That's when I began to improve as a writer. Not by getting general remarks or learning about writing in general--even about writing history in general--but comments about how *I* write history; even more specifically, how I wrote this particular history for this paper. In short, I was being held to a professional standard, and that's how I grew.



^ This. If you want to learn how to write, you've got to be thinking and hearing and talking in the developmental level.  Mass reading isn't the answer if you can't break into this level of thinking.  Stop, sit down, pick one book - pick a book you like and break it down, pick a book with problems and fix them - but don't just read 100 million words and think that'll get you ready. You've got to really find some piece of it and break it down to an abstract level and push your understanding of what's going on and how things are being communicated.




skip.knox said:


> Devor, have you read _A High Wind in Jamaica_?  It has kids and pirates, but is very different in tone. I cannot recommend it too highly. It's some of the best prose I've read and is exceeded by no other work in its ability to get inside the head of children. It has become shamefully neglected. I read it by chance, with no prior knowledge or expectations.



I'll add it to my list.


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## Svrtnsse (Nov 2, 2017)

I've definitely been in the _special snowflake_ category, and I probably still am to a certain extent, and will probably always remain there. I'm trying to move on though, pick up what I can from others as and when I feel I'm ready for it. 
I feel like I've got a pretty distinct style, which is a mix of things I've picked up from others and things I enjoy writing. It may very well be there's no market for it, or it's really small and hard to find. 

It's a pretty big decision stepping away from your own personal style in order to get towards something that will work and which will appeal to readers. There's a lot of pride that needs swallowing. I'm taking it in small steps, and I'm trying to move towards stories with some kind of commercial potential while still keeping my own mark on them. Perhaps that's the wrong thing to do, but I think it's the way it has to go in order for it to work. Too big shifts in style and focus and the story would just end up not being written at all.

I think that having read a lot as younger has helped me with developing a style that works for me, but I'm also a bit concerned that not reading very much in recent years I'm zooming in too much on my own style without accounting for what works and what's readable. By this I don't mean what works in recent successful stories, but in general. 
In getting too comfortable with my own style I might end up forgetting it's not as easily accessible as it perhaps could be.


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## skip.knox (Nov 2, 2017)

I'm sort of with Svrtnsse and others, though I'm rather more hapless. I write what I write because I want to tell these stories I have in my head. Simply getting them down on paper in a way that makes sense and doesn't embarrass me is proving to be enough of a challenge. I think I would be unable to write for the mass market. I don't have the chops. The time it would require for me to gain those chops would mean my stories would necessarily go untold. I can't bear that.

So I dive headfirst off the cliff of each new novel, never landing on my feet, hack and slash my way through the Great Swampy Middle, and crawl bleeding and exhausted to the other side. Then I stand up, claim that it was all great fun, and head off for the next cliff. All talk of style and voice and market feels as remote from me as hearing two strangers discuss travel to a city I've never seen. It _sounds_ interesting, but I'm just trying to find my way home.


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## FifthView (Nov 2, 2017)

I wonder if we can make a bullet list of the different areas of potential learning from reading.


Prose. (All the different ways to shape it. Word choice. Punctuation and grammar—traditional and otherwise.. Vocabulary, including special terminology...like pieces of medieval armor.)
Tropes. (What is overused, underused, expected.)
Hardware structures.* (I.e., prologue, scene, chapter, parts, epilogue, interludes...)
Software structures.* (Story structure, scene/sequel, MRUs, building tension, plot twists, pacing techniques.....)
Character and event dynamics. (Like those reactions Devor mentioned. Having a broad range of types of interactions.)
—Ok, there are others probably. Basically, every part of telling and delivering a tale, obviously.

I'm just wondering if breaking things out like this might suggest some areas that reading broadly might help more and areas in which lots of reading is less important.  Maybe, maybe not. It might be an individual thing. I'm just musing.

[*Just trying to categorize different types of structuring or considerations under the general heading of structure.]



skip.knox said:


> I try to find analogies with other arts.
> The best way to learn painting is through staring.
> The best way to learn music is to listen to music.
> The best way to learn to dance is to watch musicals. (ok, cheap shot)



So on this....I can observe paintings, and have observed paintings. But how I _make_ what I see—ah, that's where the frustration can drive me crazy. But lots of practice, so many try/fail cycles, and a little reading of technical manuals would help me succeed in creating what I see. In theory. Meaning, as long as I don't give up. Could take a long time.

Basically, I guess by "learning from reading" we can also mean reading our own writing and comparing it to what we _want_ to see there. But I believe that the art of being objective about one's own creation is...heh, probably an art, itself. Or a discipline. I don't know.

Maybe the closed system sometimes needs to be forcibly opened before the system can change. But a single sharp _Aha!_ can do that to the system. So, quality over quantity.


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## Heliotrope (Nov 2, 2017)

Devor said:


> ^ This. If you want to learn how to write, you've got to be thinking and hearing and talking in the developmental level.  Mass reading isn't the answer if you can't break into this level of thinking.  Stop, sit down, pick one book - pick a book you like and break it down, pick a book with problems and fix them - but don't just read 100 million words and think that'll get you ready. You've got to really find some piece of it and break it down to an abstract level and push your understanding of what's going on and how things are being communicated.
> 
> .



Yes, this is where I think you and I are arguing the same thing. Reading/studying/analyzing/borrowing/ are all so important. Simply saying "I've read enough, I don't need to read anymore because it just get's in the way of writing time, plus I don't like anything I read anyway," is not an attitude that will help with writing. 

You and I are both arguing that it takes study. Of course the practice of actually writing is important. That is obvious. That goes without saying. But suggesting that one won't learn anything from reading is strange.


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## Sheilawisz (Nov 2, 2017)

Hello everyone! Just a reminder:

*Avoiding Duplicate Content*

Please do not repost anything that has previously been posted elsewhere on the Internet (including your own sites or blogs).

If you wish to share an excerpt from an article or page that is located on another site, the excerpt must be no longer that 3-5 sentences, and must include a link back to the original article.

Thanks!


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## DragonOfTheAerie (Nov 4, 2017)

I know for sure that i benefit a ton from reading, but it was hard for me to articulate why until I thought about it. There are a few reasons: 

First, I think it just replenishes my inspiration and freshens my writer brain. I'm well aware that i'm a magpie and borrow ideas and pieces of ideas from stuff I read. But also, it just stimulates the part of my mind where stories live. Similarly, reading poetry makes me want to write poetry and makes the words come easier. 

Also, i think it helps me figure out what and how i would like to write. Generally, i write what i would most like to read. When I read a good book, I dig deeper to find out what made it work and how I can mimic it. When i read a bad book, I try to figure out why it's bad so that i can avoid that! 

My reader and writer identities are so interconnected. I feel like I write to make people feel and experience the things I do when reading. Why would I write if I wasn't a reader?


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