December 2018
A good question don’t you think? Even though Randy Ingermanson asked it in 2014 and I did too. But it is still relevant, I believe!
August 2014
How is your writing going? Are you writing or are you on holiday? Or maybe you do both? I do, as it happens. Day job is off for two weeks, but as the best husband in the worldâs back does not allow camping as originally planned we stay home and render Norfolkâs beaches uncertain ;-). Holidays are usually a time for excessive reading for me and a few weeks ago Randy Ingermansonâs newsletter was about reading as well. He voiced the opinion that as a writer you should read a lot. Not only what you like and what is âgoodâ but all the opposites as well. Of course not too much of the bad stuff. Not sure if his newsletter helped me decide to give reading a certain time a day or if it was my Amazon Kindle Daily Deal binge a few Sundays ago. There are so many books I want to read, but I also love to spend time with the family and write andâŠ. getting into a routine does help sometimes :-). I agree with Mr Ingermanson. Right now I am concentrating on both English and German classics as well as self-published authors. Besides all the technical aspects that I might (or might not) learn while reading it always gives me new ideas what to write about. And that for me is another important aspect
That’s why I bugger off and get a book and leave you to ponder Mr Ingermansonâs ideas about âYou are what you read?â
This article is reprinted by permission of the author.
Award-winning novelist Randy Ingermanson, “the Snowflake Guy,” publishes the free monthly Advanced Fiction Writing E-zine, with more than 9,000 readers. If you want to learn the craft and marketing of fiction, AND make your writing more valuable to editors, AND have FUN doing it, visitwww.AdvancedFictionWriting.com.
Craft: You are what you read?
Years ago I was talking to a fellow novelist whom Iâd just met and I asked him what his Top Five favorite novels were.
This is a question I ask writers a lot. Iâm always looking for great books, and one place to find them is on the Top Five list of another writer.
This guyâs answer just about knocked me over. He said, âI donât read fiction.â
I couldnât believe it. I asked him if he meant he didnât read much fiction.
No, he didnât read any. He was a nonfiction kind of a guy.
He wrote fiction, but he didnât read it.
That was years ago, and I havenât seen anything from him recently.
To put it bluntly, I donât see that as a recipe for success. If youâre a novelist, you need to be reading fiction.
Thereâs a saying that âyou are what you read,â and I think this is partially true.
If you read great fiction, youâll absorb some of it, and youâll become a better writer. Youâll learn whatâs possible to do in writing, and it canât help but expand you as a writer.
But I think it goes beyond that. I recommend reading widely, even if it isnât great fiction. Because the fact is that you are MORE than what you read. What you read is fuel for your mindâitâs necessary, but itâs not sufficient.
Novelists need to be reading fiction. A lot of fiction. Not just the bestsellers. Obscure stuff. Good fiction. Great fiction. Horrible fiction (not too much of thisâif you do manuscript reviews at a writing conference, youâll see more than you need).
When you read other peopleâs fiction, you learn things that you couldnât learn any other way. Because when it comes to the craft of writing, you donât know what you donât know. The only way to learn what you donât know is by reading other peopleâs work.
For starters, you should read widely in your category. You need to know. the rules of your genreâwhich ones are ironclad and which ones can be bent.
But thatâs not enough.
Read widely outside your genre. Read outside your demographic. Read outside your worldview.
Read romance fiction. Most novels have a romance thread in them, no matter what their category. If you can improve that thread, your story will improve.
Read suspense fiction. Most novels have some element of fear in them. Learn how to do that better and your novel will be better.
Read fantasy. Even if you, personally, would never want to read a vampire or werewolf story, itâs quite possible that one of your characters would. If you understand that character better, then youâll do a better job writing that character.
Read mysteries. Even if you hate mysteries. Most novels have an element of mystery to themâsome secret that needs to be uncovered. If you know how to unwrap that secret, one layer at a time, then your story can only get better.
Read a spy novel. One of your characters is reading a spy novel right now. Do you know what he likes about it?
Read a historical novel. The better you understand history, the better you understand the present.
Read science fiction. You might learn a bit of science, if itâs a hard science fiction novel. But for sure, youâll expand your universe a bit. Never hurts.
Read YA fiction. Itâll give you insights into your younger characters. It might give you some insights into a few young adults in your life.
Read womenâs fiction. If youâre a guy, youâll understand women better, which is good all by itself. If youâre a guy writing fiction, youâll understand your readers better, because the odds are that the majority of your readers are women.
Read fiction that features characters with wildly different beliefs than yours. I understand hyper-capitalists better after reading Ayn Rand. I understand Jews better after reading Chaim Potok. I understand Wiccans better after reading S.M. Stirlingâs apocalyptic series that begins with Dies the Fire. I understand Muslims better after reading Khaled Hosseiniâs book The Kite Runner. I understand fundamentalists better after reading the first book in the Left Behind series.
The better you understand your characters, the better your novel will be.
Read bad fiction. Yes, really. If you find a particularly bad piece of writing, read it all the way to the end. Figure out why itâs so awful. Resolve never to do the things that the author is doing.
I confess that I have a favorite bad novel, written by a high-school kid who graduated a couple of years behind me. This thing is fearsomely, wonderfully, amazingly awful. Itâs bad on every possible level.
No, I wonât tell you the title. Find your own dreck. Iâm keeping mine a secret. My family knows which book Iâm talking about, and theyâve all read it. We sometimes quote particularly horrible lines at the dinner table.
There are a billion ways to write great fiction, but only about a dozen ways to write truly horrible fiction. Good writing starts by learning to avoid that dirty dozen of Desperately Horrible Writing Follies.
If youâve read some really awful fiction, I guarantee itâll improve your writing. But thereâs such a thing as too much of a bad thing, so stop when youâre had enough. A little goes a long way.
Read a little bad fiction and a ton of good fiction.
Reading fiction is the foundation of writing fiction. Make your foundation broad and strong.
đ The Bee Writes 
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