I know a guy that’s writing his second novel. I’m super impressed and surprised at the process; multiple rewrites and it’s taken like a year to get half the book through an editor. I told him one day I’d love to be a writer but I doubt I’m very good. He told me, “it’s easy!just start!”
Then he told me he doesn’t read. I asked to read part of his completed novel that is ready for publication. It’s terrible.
Which just makes me think, well if he can’t do it, I doubt I’d be any better.
There's some pervassive thought in modern writing/book tok that reading is actually detrimental to your writing skills. That somehow being pure makes you a better and true writer because your writing is not influenced by any outside force.
This is of course completely false and anybody who's subscribed to this train of thought has been a terrible writer that writes like they're trying to describe humans to aliens.
I ran into this a lot back during the Twilight vampire boom. I worked in publishing and had to read a lot vampire books, old and new... literally hundreds. Unfortunately, that included a bunch of new writers. New writers who thought they were the most innovative writer of all time! I'd have to tell them their "brilliant unique story idea" had been done to death in dozens of books. They would get upset. One woman wrote a story where a vampire comes back to life after being electrocuted. She thought it was so clever and one of a kind. Yeah... because no book, TV show, or movie has eeeever had someone come back to time after being electrocuted. 🤦🏻♀️
But actually, I.. kinda get it? I'm a bestselling author for the record, and I stopped reading in my genre years ago. In all the author circles I've been in, all the marketing groups, all the con dinners, every conference and analytics post, I've seen how the stew gets made and it kills it for me. When I'm reading a book and 'sudden trope' appears, I know they put it in because marketing. When certain characterizations or archetypes crop up, I know why it's there, and it's not to best serve the story, it's to serve a potential audience. If I see a series and begin reading it only to realize the back half is being dragged out a bit, I know the author had a novel but split it into a trilogy for more algorithm blessings and pagereads.
I don't want to subconsciously adopt those habits, trends, methods.
But here's the thing.
I've already read so much over my life. I already know my pet tropes and how I best like to produce them. I already feel how I want the characters to interact and to what end. I've already dissected and analyzed my faves down to their threads, so I can afford to not read in my genre.
And still, I will quite often pull up some fanfic and read for days and days, because it's without all the industry motivations and capital trappings that make pro-fiction unappealing for me.
But I can see how readers might be feeling the patterns too and may be eager to read something that doesn't follow the absolute glut of conventional fiction that's out there at any given moment.
One of the worst things about hobbies is seeing how to sausage is made. So I understand where your coming from. But these new "writers" are people who don't know what sausage is or what animal it comes from, have never tasted it nor even seen the sausage and yet feel they can make a recipe that calls for it bring the main dish while simultaneously wagging their finger at people that go to the butchers.
They don't even know the patterns to really understand them and yet they want to redefine what they are. Reminds me of a time on the indie dev reddit someone advertised their game as "2nd person action strategy" but it was all just loose cliff notes and half written ideas.
It's still to a writers benefit to read regardless and more importantly read broadly.
Yes, you can break all the rules and still make a compelling story, but first you must master those rules in order to know when and how to break them. If an ameteur tries to play improvised Jazz, it will (usually) sound horrific.
Writing fiction isn't just about crafting a story, it's about communicating that story in a compelling way, and that means you need to understand both what the story should be, and also how to communicate/structure it so the audience enjoy reading it.
The best way to understand what people enjoy reading is by reading popular books yourself.
I still think prose quality is wildly under-appreciated, you could have all the plot mechanics in the world, interesting characters etc but it has to be pleasant to read, which is a bit like music in a way but not like jazz in the sense that that can be quite jarring.
Then again writers like Pynchon and Joyce wrote horrendously difficult to read prose and are considered geniuses - which is what you were saying about breaking the rules but that's at such a high level only a dozen people globally can really do that. Then again I'm a fan of Cormac McCarthy because his books are very unorthodox but (I find at least) very readable just because of the natural rhythm.
Better to aim for something like Ursula Le Guin, she was a master of really beautiful prose and didn't over-rely on tropes.
Source: me struggling to finish literally anything in my spare time
What makes it into my stories are experiences and things I have read OUTSIDE of the genre I am writing. Sure, I enjoy a good read from inside the genre, but I don't find the stories to be all that inspiring.
On a separate note, have you ever proofread or edited for other authors who are not yet published? Quite often I find they haven't learned the basic skills that authors take for granted: don't be obviously derivative, use good grammar unless you know why you are not doing so, don't tell the reader what they already know, etc.
I don't think one needs to be a reader to have good or original concepts/ideas. I also don't think that one needs to be a reader to tell a captivating story. My father is one of the best storytellers I've ever met, he could be telling you a story about how his feet got wet and he left his socks in the work van, and you'd be hanging on the edge of your seat. I've never once seen him with a book in his hands.
But I also think that the more you read, the more exposure you get to how a book "works", the different 'tools'/tropes you can use/lean on, the different ways that stories are structured and paced, different literary concepts like 1st/3rd person writing, etc.
I think having exposure to that means you can make better decisions and tell your story even better and more effectively.
" he could be telling you a story about how his feet got wet and he left his socks in the work van, and you'd be hanging on the edge of your seat. I've never once seen him with a book in his hands."
There's a difference between just telling a story and writing a book where characters go through arcs, denouements, themes, plotting ETC. The two aren't really comparable. If he were to sit down I'd bet dollars to doughnuts you wouldn't get the same result.
It's also not really for the sole purpose of getting an idea. It's to broaden your horizons and see what's out there. How do other authors express their ideas? What's the latest trend going around? Is it worth persuing? Also just because you enjoy it. And just maybe somewhere an idea pops in your head from everything you've consumed.
It's not uncommon to read a story and go "I can do this better, or I think it'd be cool if it was this..BUT"
Yeah I'm a great storyteller, terrible writer. Pretty much the only thing I've ever written that my friends thought might be good enough to publish, was a journal I kept while I was locked in a state mental hospital. Which, being a good or bad writer doesn't even factor into because it's a completely dry recording of basically everything I heard/saw while I was in there and occasionally what I thought about it.
One of my friends said they while reading it that they'd find characters really funny in their absurdity before being like "oh these are real people, that were probably extremely irritating to actually be around."
I don't write professionally, but I don't like to read while I write if that makes sense because reading will affect how I write and I'd rather keep a stable style within a story. Once I'm finished/abandoned the project though I'll read my ass off for a while because I love reading.
I'd argue that people who can do that, and get good results more often than you'd expect from pure chance, 100% know theory, even if they didn't formally study it. They were just able to absorb it by listening to and reproducing to music that has similar elements to the stuff they want to write.
It's the same with learning to write by reading. There are writers out there who've never set foot in a creative writing class, but developed a good understanding of what things work or don't work by reading enough books and short stories.
Doesn't work for everyone though. I'm definitely too disorganised to do both without at least some formal training. The majority of the music I wrote when I first picked up guitar sucked, and picking up some theory fixed that right up.
There's some pervassive thought in modern writing/book tok that reading is actually detrimental to your writing skills.
Sounds like the number of musicians out there who run around saying learning music theory makes you less creative. Then they can't figure out how to replicate something cool sounding they did just wanking around.
Once upon a time I would tell them why what they did sounded cool after they couldn't replicate it, because I like to help musicians music and all that.
Then they'd get pissy when I tried to explain the theory behind it. "Like, theory makes you boring and formulaic, man."
OK, fine then. Have fun being musically illiterate and losing those bits of creative inspiration because you don't know why they work or how to build upon them. No skin off my back.
It's true. To know what good writing looks like you gotta read really bad writing.
That's what got me writing. I was reading some serious sci-fi dreck and I thought "This is terrible!" and then I thought "Hell, I could do better than this, I should give it a go."
The next trick is to actually devote solid time to it, still working on that one.
I've read some really poorly written novels that had a good story to tell. I can forgive the bad writing because I was still entertained, but could see how it could be improved.... Being a bad writer and a bad storyteller, though? Ugh.
I'm an author and I do panels at writing cons as well as run a writing series.
So many people are convinced that they can be a good writer without reading anything. I even did a piece a few weeks ago talking about how the kind of reading matters, after encountering in the wild someone saying "Well, I don't read but I play a lot of videogames with stories so I'm good."
Different mediums have drastically different strengths and weaknesses. For example, a video game can rely entirely on visuals for descriptions and voice actors for unique character voices, but a book has to do those itself.
I've learned that this is a phenomenon even in writing programs. I heard a writer giving a talk say "I hear people say that they don't want to read great authors so that their style doesn't rub off them. You should be so lucky!"
the problem isnt the lack of reading. its the lack of writing. 1,2 or 5 years are nothing. its a craft that takes an enormous amount of practice. there are numerous extremely accomplished writers that dont read all too much or completely stopped. but they keep honing their craft. another thing is life experience. like any other endeavour, and especially art, it just takes time and the will to keep going for the sake of it.
That's pretty disappointing. But I can one up you there. There's a guy I know who loves AI and has published a book on Amazon that AI wrote for him which he says has earned him a small amount of money (like a few dollars here and there). Then someone asked him if he'd read the book himself and of course I assumed he must have. The answer was no... he has not.
It makes sense alright. But who was the “author” assuming would read the book if he himself wasn’t bothered to read it? An AI book that no one has read serves no purpose.
You know it's filled with glaring errors. I've listened to too many AI stories, and names can change, new characters added at random, entire relationship swaps, and that's before you get to plot holes, contrived situations that could be solved with one discussion, irrational decisions, etc.
I just watched a community theater production written by someone local and it was terrible. It crushed any remaining fantasy of writing my own play or book, because holy shit it must be way harder than I ever thought I thought.
But then I realized, the thing I’m really scared about is putting myself out there. And if they can out themselves out there with THAT, why can’t I?
Don’t give up on being a writer just get, Mr. Dick Energy.
Stephen King says you have to read a lot to write a lot and goes on to explain it further in his book 'On Writing.'
If you haven't read the books that sell 500,000+ copies or understand why they're so widely read and constructed to be widely read, you can still be a writer but then don't be surprised when your 14 digital novels have less than 5 purchases between them.
Somebody or other who had interviewed a lot of established writers in all genres - fiction, nonfiction - said the only consistent was that they read a lot.
You should read or listen about how the Scientology founder L Ron Hubbard is also legitimately the author with the most published books on record, mainly in the science fiction genre. Most of them are single trains of thought put to paper and they're god-awful. But they got published. He's from a bygone era of publishing and would have had a hell of a time in today's digital age, probably would have produced even more with how much easier it is now. It definitely makes you sit and wonder why so many people are too hard on themselves. At the same time I wonder how his word count stacks against a modern grad student, too.
Over 1,000 publications in his lifetime and that's not touching on his works within Scientology.
Guh I've been wasting time on threads recently, and aside from being a literal toxic waste dump, it's chock full of hundreds of "authors" that are writing the worst dogshit I've ever read and then complaining the algorithm is out to get them.
He is correct in the sense if your livelyhood doesn't depend on it it's fine to be bad! I bet my manga I am working on is a jumbled mess with ugly af art (I never drew before February). That's fine! My music pays the bills not my drawing! 😅
Most people are terrible writers. I've had occasional flashes of brilliance and clarity. The different between those and my usual writing is stark but a smaller gap between my best writing and the writing of someone who is actually good at it.
After I read someone's writing (he asked me to), ages ago, I felt so awkward and embarrassed that I ghosted him. I still feel bad about it. It was only technically literate.
I have a friend who wrote a book and never got it published. The thing is, it's intelligent writing, and quite controlled. But it just doesn't have the feel to it. It's a decent book technically, but it just kind of misses... There's so much that you have to successfully convey to be a good writer, it's daunting to even try for an amateur...
I read a ton and the only thing I think it qualifies me for is editor. But that doesn't even mean a good editor. Still, I considered it as a possible career path at some point.
Finishing the first manuscript is one thing most people don't manage. But then, many do and then think they have produce an absolute masterpiece.
Every new story I wrote, I thought it was the best stuff ever, and was let down when no agency wanted it. And then, after every new story, reading the older one, I... knew why.
Although, there is a magic to it. Some sort of raw passion. I still enjoy reading the early works of many online, unprofessional and raw as fuck, even if many are... tough. I hope AI will not kill that too drastically.
Though there are always some people writing their first novel and creating something amazing, usually stories with less emphasis on narrative. ...Frankenstein being a wild exception. Because it's their way of thinking that blows you away. And of course, that's why so many think they can do it too.
Even Stephen King says something about like, when he finishes a first draft, he throws it in a drawer and forgets about it for several months so he can see the flaws easier when he reads through it again.
The other one that made me laugh is he talked about highlighting every adverb (ie. all the -ly words). We use them constantly (ha!), but writing filled with adverbs is just clunky and crap.
That is Stephen King and his very hard rules, mind you. Never say never. Many tell too much at first, and adverbs are the most obvious thing breaking the "show don't tell" notion - but that's also is not a hard rule.
You can use adverbs to great effect. You just have to understand what they are doing to your narration. Writers who use a lot of them include Virginia Woolf and Charles Dickens.
Though King probably means in context of dialogues, like J. K. Rowling loved to do in Harry Potter (where it is part of the charm imo). And often, early writers just slap a page or more of one-liner dialogue with adverbs everywhere lol and, on top of that, nothing much interesting happen.
Know the rules, then do what you think works. It's a balance.:)
I'm sure if you edited your work it could be good.
All my first drafts are dogshit.
Once edited though they're good.
(But editing again to a professional level and going through the publishing process is way too stressful and so I don't do that. I just read them myself and share them with interested friends.
)
So many people love the idea of sitting at a cozy coffee shop and inventing worlds and people in their head.
Very few people are willing to sit down and push out several thousand paragraphs. Even fewer are able to go back and edit them mercilessly.
You can tell real writers because they have an almost blue-collar approach to their craft. Like they aren't novelists, they are just sentence brick-layers.
I love the idea of writing a novel. I think I'd enjoy it. But the one thing I get stuck on is coming up with a plot that I myself would find interesting to read. If I can't get past the most fundamental part of writing a novel, then I don't think it's for me.
I was going to mention this. Someone who worked for me once asked how he could become a better writer.
I told him that he would never be a good writer unless he was a great reader.
And he would never be a great writer unless he was a ruthless editor.
I spend most of my day correcting simple grammatical mistakes made by people with advanced degrees. When I point out some of their simple and frankly, stupid mistakes, they take offense. But when I offer a revision, they usually agree that it's better.
And Grammarly and the rest will not help.
If you haven't read hundreds of books in your life, how will you ever be a halfway decent writer? You haven't seen how language can be used.
I'm in the midst of my PhD at the moment. I just spent the past ~18 months writing a paper (finished the paper last week!). From the first draft to the final draft, the difference is truly insane. At every point my advisor's feedback has been ridiculously helpful. There were times in the early drafts I thought something was good, and looking at it compared to the final version, he was right with every single edit he had me do.
not sure what field you are in but 18 months seems like a long time (maybe social sciences?) my first paper in biomedicine took me around 2 months to make the figures and then write, maybe a month of revisions until submission. each subsequent paper has taken fewer and fewer weeks. similarly with grants. my first F31 took over a month to write 6+1 page research proposal. Now I can write a 5-10 page grant in a few days if properly motivated. part of the reason why it is so much faster is that I have read thousands of papers by now and can cite the 70-80% of the background from memory.
I'm in CS. This was a highly unusual paper, and it ended up at 40 pages (of main body text). The writing on my previous papers took like 2-3 months total. Scientific writing does have a structure to it and there are many times where we're just reporting on things (describing your methods and results for example) and while the details change from paper to paper, that mostly stays the same in how you write it. There is usually some storytelling in a paper in the intro/discussions/conclusion, but in a paper you're usually just telling one story so once you figure it out, the writing isn't too bad.
This paper I just finished was closer to a survey and was nothing but storytelling. That made it much harder to write well.
Ah yeah. I write plenty as a hobby, with no intent on publishing my work. I spend liiike 10 hours writing on a good week? I am a decent writer. But only just. Among my fellow hobbyists, i am near the bottom of the barrel. Good thing is i know enough to know where my shortcomings are, and have an idea or two on how to correct them. A lot of writing is just troubleshooting. Being able to look at what you've written and figuring out how to word it better. Figuring out the best perspective and pacing for what you want to convey.
But i still have a long way to go before i could consider myself a good writer, and i write plenty.
The evidence lies in the state of modern blockbusters. So many films have every element working well BUT the script and writing. It's a travesty it's been going on for so long.
I think just being able to structure a story properly
I am sure people have an 'idea' in their head but to actually flesh it out is a whole other thing
I even look at network TV shows and that week to week to week of hitting those beats and doing the 'slight shock' for a commercial break at the exact points in the timing of a show
People mock that and network TV but that's also a skill
I've had people praise my writing - some of it, not all of it - but actual professional writers are so much better in so many ways.
Even just hanging around a bunch of writing groups and reading the behind-the-scenes things they discuss about how to make a story work better in a hundred little ways is both eye-opening and mildly horrifying. I feel like someone who is reasonably confident popping down to the shops in a Mini reading about the technical aspects of driving an F1 racecar after having built it from the screws up.
This is so true even outside of creative writing. I’m a medical writer and there’s been a lot of increased interest in the field from medical professionals lately (obviously the job is not as intense, and usually allows wfh, so it seems like a good switch when they start getting burnt out). However they always seem very surprised that simply having a medical degree and/or training is not the most important part of the job, which can be done without either actually
Just because you can understand the topics does not at all mean you can write well about them, or convey new ideas in the right way. Their medical background is a bonus, but it’s not the main selling point they expect. In the end, most don’t move into the field because even if they could land a job, they’re not keen on starting at entry level
Everyone thinks stringing words together is easy until they realize the painful gap between the brilliant idea in their head and what actually lands on the page.
I have great ideas for stories, plots and all ! I know where I want to start and where I want to go. I picture it all in my mind and it's entertaining me greatly ! I once tried to write a story down, and I couldn't be bothered to write details. My mind processes ideas faster than it can lay them down on papers, and focusing on trying to make it take form is akin to torture for me (adhd peep) so I keep the stories to myself and my respect for authors have increased several folds.
ADHD peep here. I have written and published two novels and ten short stories. Don't let the diagnosis stop you if you really want to do it. It may not be perfect, and you may not operate on the same timeline as everyone else (it took me 4 years to write my first book), but it is possible. It can be incredibly challenging, but for me it is rewarding. And I enjoy it anyway, for the most part. Just the concentration part and finishing are what I find difficult.
I first started querying at 16, got my first personalized rejection at 26, and sold my first story at 32.
After that, I promptly gave up. The amount of reading, studying, fearless self-examination and gradual loosening of inhibitions that it took to gain a foothold in the professional world was insane. To get to the level of my idols, I'd have to double it all.
At 36, I caught the bug again and tried writing my eighth novel and was getting critiques and the only thing people wanted to read more of was the very real self-inflicted humiliation and shame I was using as a basis for the story. Nobody cared about my lavish descriptions of desolate landscapes or the clever wordplay. Desperate to redeem these wasted decades of pointless writing, I decided to lean into that and had a mental breakdown as I evaluated my life from an objective perspective and realized some very unfortunate things about myself.
That was a month ago. I now have constant flashbacks to long-repressed memories and find myself screaming in public for no reason. Yesterday, I was trying to sort through my HMO's website to get help but kept hitting dead ends so I kept going for walks to calm down and eventually a friendly police officer pulled over and explained my insurance would likely cover any urgent care clinic in my state. He waited with me while I called an uber and said this sort of thing is becoming more common.
I should've done this years ago! Turns out you can just have a doctor mute your demons with some pills and then gradually exorcise them through therapy. No need to try and transform them into something meaningful or productive.
I'm not sure what the moral of this story is, I guess what I'm saying is that this is what can happen on the road to becoming somewhat decent at writing.
I guess that’s the common thing I’ve noticed about people who are pretty successful at writing - this is the goal they were doing towards since very early age. I don’t think you may get any far without having that much focus and dedication over the course of really long time.
Editing to add - as you can tell, I myself struggle with writing even Reddit comments - you have started at the proper age at least, you still have plenty of chances.
I've been trying to write on and off for years. I've managed to write a couple of short stories (albeit I haven't gotten any picked up for publication), but writing a novel is an entirely different proposition.
Purely on a mechanical basis, it's legitimately difficult to write a story that takes eighty thousand words and still reads well.
I can make a pretty turn of phrase here and there, but when I tried to carry the action, movement, meter, and feeling of a scene in writing, I quickly realized that I am absolute shit at it. I'm in awe of masters like Stephen King - in how they seemingly effortlessly just convey an entire set of emotions along with everything else...
1.9k
u/Altruistic_Seat_6644 1d ago
Writing.