To Write, You Must Read

|

That proposition will probably seem self-evident to most of my readers. But I recently heard an acquaintance who is the author of a fiction manuscript admit that she is “not a reader.”

I have to say, I was flabbergasted. Dumbfounded. Bewitched, bothered, and bewildered. To the extent that I couldn’t find words to tell her she must read if she ever wants to succeed as a writer.

As a child, I was so eager to read that I taught myself at age four. I don’t say that to brag, but to emphasize how inconceivable it is to me that anyone would not be interested in reading. So it’s difficult for me to isolate specific reasons that reading fiction is necessary to a fiction writer. Nevertheless, I’m going to try.

1. Reading gives you a feeling for language.

At the risk of belaboring the obvious, language is the writer’s medium. Just as a painter has to learn to use brushes, paints, and canvas, a writer needs to learn to use words. This knowledge includes everything from the mechanics of grammar, spelling, punctuation, and usage to the fine shades of meaning and sound.

I’m convinced that my instinctive feeling for proper and improper English is primarily attributable to years of reading writers who were as skilled in wielding words as Leonardo was in wielding a paintbrush. You can learn rules in a classroom, but you can only internalize the depth, breadth, and infinite possibilities of language through reading the work of writers who have used it well.

2. Reading teaches you how to tell a story.

How would you even know what a story is if you don’t read them? Of course, we all hear stories, or watch them in movies. Certain factors are common to stories in any form, but others are specific to written stories. How do you begin a story in words? How do you develop character? How do you portray a character’s inner life? How do you integrate setting into your story? How do you convey your theme? Movies can’t teach you any of these things, because they use different techniques to accomplish them.

This is just the tip of a whole iceberg of what a writer can learn on a technical level through reading.

3. Reading acquaints you with what has already been done.

If you want to write something fresh, you need to know what has already been written. In every genre, certain stories, character types, patterns, and tropes have been done to death. These may well be the first stories, characters, etc. that pop into your mind when you decide to write a book. You can save yourself a lot of trouble if you know up front what to avoid.

On the flip side, wide reading will give you a cultural context that you can employ to enrich your writing. Allusions to your favorite writers—subtle or obvious, conscious or unconscious—will add depth and resonance to your story as they cause your reader to reflect on the connections implied.

4. Reading acquaints you with the conventions of your genre.

This is the argument I most often hear advanced for writers to read, but to my mind it’s the least important. Nevertheless, if you are going to write within an established genre, it is essential to know what readers (and, correspondingly, agents and publishers) of that genre expect from a story.

Some genres have more specific requirements than others. My understanding (second-hand, as I neither read nor write in this genre) is that category romance is one of the most restrictive, with rules about word count, character professions and personalities, and in which chapter the hero and heroine must meet, kiss, fight, have sex, etc. Literary fiction is possibly the least restrictive in terms of specific elements, although arguably the most difficult to write well.

5. Reading gives you membership in the most fascinating community of people in the world.

When I open a novel, I’m entering a new world. Not just the world the author has created within the story—though that’s a thrilling experience in itself—but the world of the author him/herself and of all the people who have read the story, are reading it now, or will read it in the future. It’s also the world of everyone who had some kind of impact on the author’s life that contributed to the story being what it is. And it’s the world of all the writers the story’s author read and loved, and the people who read their stories. When I open a novel, I’m only six degrees of separation from the greatest minds ever to live on this planet.

I imagine every reader has had the experience of making a new friend through a book. Maybe the person next to you on the plane asked what you were reading, and that author turned out to be one of your seatmate’s favorites too. Maybe you met someone on Goodreads, or at a bookstore or a library. Maybe a teacher recommended a book to you, and through that recommendation you discovered your teacher was a kindred spirit after all.

If you try to write without being a reader, you’ll miss out on this community, and the loss will hurt your writing. It will also substantially impair your chances of getting published. Personal connections are just as important in publishing as in any other field. If publishing professionals you meet sense that you’re not a kindred spirit—because you’re not a reader—you likely won’t get far.

6. Reading shows you what can be achieved.

Those striving in any field of endeavor need to be inspired by the greats who have come before them. You need a sense of what is possible so you know what to strive for. In fact, I would go so far as to say that, unless you’re a born genius like Shakespeare or Dickens:

You will never write better than the best authors you read.

Why Fiction?

This list is far from comprehensive, and it doesn’t even touch on the most basic point of all: Why would anyone who doesn’t love reading fiction even want to write it? If it’s because you have a message to convey, a point to make, there are many better ways of doing that than through fiction. Fiction is (ideally) art, and art does not exist for the purpose of conveying a message or making a point. Art doesn’t so much answer questions as ask them. If you think you have answers, hire a co-writer or ghostwriter and write a nonfiction book, or a blog, or go on the radio and speak your mind.

But please, don’t waste your time writing fiction.

The Literary Ladies Guide to the Writing Life (review)

| 3 Comments

I’ve just finished reading a book called The Literary Ladies Guide to the Writing Life, by Nava Atlas (Sellers Publishing, 2011). It’s a beautifully designed mixture of excerpts from the letters, writings, and talks of a dozen classic female authors with summary meditations from Ms. Atlas. And it’s charming, surprising, inspiring, and an all-around must-read for any female author. Non-writing admirers of these ladies will also enjoy an intimate glimpse behind the scenes of their genius.

The authors—Louisa May Alcott, Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, Willa Cather, Edna Ferber, Madeleine L’Engle, L. M. Montgomery, Anaïs Nin, George Sand, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Edith Wharton, and Virginia Woolf—offer comments from dry to bitter to encouraging to ecstatic on subjects ranging from becoming a writer to conquering inner demons to combining writing with motherhood to rejection, acceptance, and money to handling success.

Some of their situations are notably unlike our own. From the late 19th century to the mid-20th, it seems to have been significantly easier to make a living by writing than it is now—even for a woman. Not to say these women didn’t work hard—they were their own slavedrivers, for the most part. But in that milieu, hard work, excellence, and persistence were almost sure to pay off eventually, whereas now there are no guarantees even for the most dedicated genius.

And on the flip side, these women all faced active discrimination the likes of which have almost disappeared from the current literary scene. (Atlas does quote one statistic that claims male writers still make significantly more money than female writers, but we must all admit the situation has changed greatly for the better.)

But when it comes to matters of the pen and of the heart, all these literary ladies are completely kindred spirits to women writing today. They struggled with other responsibilities, feelings of self-doubt, sometimes opposition from family and friends. They endured rejection, personal and artistic misunderstanding, and the dark side of fame.

Some of them wrote from the heart, while others wrote what their market demanded and produced wildly popular classics—to their own complete surprise (e.g. Little Women, Anne of Green Gables). Some, notably Virginia Woolf, were literary pioneers who were never entirely confident as to whether their work was genius or garbage. Some made a handsome fortune in their lifetimes; others barely got by. But all have a lot to say that can help contemporary writers through all the rough spots of our writing lives.

(One caveat for the terminally particular like myself: This book has a lot of typos. I find that odd given the number of people credited in the acknowledgments who had a hand in making the book—was none of them a proofreader? However, the beauty of the design and the content made up for the typos in my estimation. And that’s saying a lot.)

I found the book quite inspiring. All these famous writers were regular gals—they put their bloomers on one leg at a time like anyone else. They started from nothing, with nothing but a dream and the boldness to pursue it, and they earned a permanent place in the literary pantheon. It gives me hope that if I work hard enough, I may someday be able to do the same.

When Good Characters Die

| 8 Comments

What are we really mourning when we mourn a character’s death?

When we mourn for a real person, we’re usually grieving for ourselves, because we will miss having that person in our lives. If the person’s life, or our relationship with him, wasn’t what it ought to have been, our mourning may be embittered by regret. If the person dies at the natural end of a good life, our grief (if we believe in the resurrection) is tempered by the confidence that she is at peace.

But when we mourn a fictional character, it isn’t quite the same thing. If we miss the character, we can always go back and read the book again. She will live forever in the pages that precede her demise.

Also, our relationships with the characters are not really an issue—unless you get into books a lot more deeply than I do. For Meggie in Inkheart that might have been a concern, but then Meggie  herself is a fictional character. Let’s keep these things in perspective.

We do sometimes mourn characters who have died as a result of their own poor choices. Hamlet, for instance. But think about it: When you look back at the whole play of Hamlet—not immediately after watching or reading it, but at some distance—is it his death you focus on? It isn’t for me. You might say Hamlet died because he had nothing left to live for. It’s everything that happens before his death that causes us to mourn for a wasted life.

A Death Most Moving

When I think about the deaths in literature that have affected me most deeply, I realize they touch me for one (or both) of two reasons:

  1. The character has sacrificed himself to save others.
  2. The character will be deeply mourned by other characters with whom I identify.

Dumbledore. Fred Weasley. Jean Valjean. Gandalf (apparent death). Beth March. Matthew Cuthbert. Bambi’s mother. Jeremiah Land.

It also makes a difference how well we know the character himself and how lovable we find him. I didn’t cry as much over Sirius Black, even though his sacrificial death devastated Harry, because I hadn’t had as much time to get to know and love Sirius—and neither had Harry.

For Those Left Behind

The point I’m trying to make here is that when we mourn for fictional characters, just as when we mourn for real people, our mourning is not so much for the one departed as for the ones left behind. We project ourselves into the characters of Harry, or George, or Frodo, or Jo, or Anne, or Bambi, and feel the same devastation they feel.

Of all the deaths I’ve mentioned, the one that tears at my heart most painfully is that of Fred Weasley—because I can’t imagine how George will go on without him. He won’t even be able to finish a sentence, let alone run Weasley’s Wheezes, without his twin to bounce his thoughts off of, to be the ever-present echo of himself. I can see why some Weasley or other had to die, but I really wonder what J. K. Rowling was thinking when she chose one of the twins. (Note that she didn’t dwell on George’s reaction—it must have been too painful even for her.)

Ultimately, though, we have to forgive her, because Fred died, as one of many, to save his world from Voldemort. His death had meaning, as did his life.

As a reader, then, if you mourn for fictional characters, don’t feel badly about it. You’re exercising your compassion muscles for when you need them in real life.

And as a writer, if you feel compelled to kill someone off and want that death to have the maximum impact, choose someone the main characters will be devastated to lose—but make sure his death means something. Let your readers’ grief be permeated with the light of resurrection.

What characters have you mourned for most? Do you agree with my conclusions?