philosophical reflections on reading fiction for fiction writers

[marycatelli]

Ran across a comment recently wherein someone said that he stuck to read SF because that was what he was writing.

This is imprudent.

All right, he added it was for market research, but even for that it's imprudent.  There's too much of a gap between when you read and when you might conceivably get published.

But reading is good for other reasons.  It helps you absorb tricks of the trade and the like.  And reading outside your genre is particularly important because such works have the tricks and the twists and the things that are not familiar within your genre.  Cross-pollinating is healthy.  It also helps prepare you for plots and characters unusual in your genre by increasing the variety of models you can draw on.

Comments

[bratfarrar]

To this I would add the recommendation to read cross-generationally, especially for SF/fantasy writers, as this helps you recognize some of the underlying assumptions of our current day. If you're trying to write a new culture/world, this could help you avoid simply writing our culture with different clothing and funny names.

[marycatelli]

Yes, you can use fiction for your primary source reading.

It does have the little disadvantage that it's fiction and has its own rules for the gentle art of reading between the lines, but having rambled at length here I won't go into depth here.

[bratfarrar]

Well, I wasn't thinking so much of using antique fiction (to distinguish it from 'historic fiction' as a genre) as source material for details as for the underlying cultural understandings. The knights in medieval romances, the lords and ladies of Elizabethan drama, the heroes of Homer, all value things we don't. They interact with each other in ways that we find strange and at times inexplicable. Their understanding of how the universe works is different from ours (not that we now all agree on everything, but we're at least using pretty much the same vocabulary).

Um. Does this distinction make sense?

[marycatelli]

Actually what primary source is really great for is to knock your block off so that you no longer assume that things are the way they are around you, so you know when to research. Such as being aware that they might have a different underlying cultural understanding.

But when picking up info, which is another nice trait, you do have to watch out for the problem that the writer isn't writing to do that, probably, and even if he is, he has some agenda that he's pushing by telling you things.

[bratfarrar]

Sooo... I think we're basically saying the same thing, just a little differently.

[metaphorsbwithu.livejournal.com]

Hmmmmm ... that'd be a little like saying people who write for TV should only watch TV.

Bad idea I think, although on second thought - many apparently do and they're still working.

I wonder who and what the pioneers read? - like Margaret St. Clair, who, as I recall, had such a beautiful style & unique and quirky way of telling a story in the handful I read so many years ago in my public library.

[marycatelli]

It does derive from the principle that you should read what you write, and should probably write whatever you read and enjoy the most.

I suspect the pioneers read a lot of folks. Many sources contribute.