JosephB

I could post this elsewhere, and it was inspired by Tips and Advice, but I wanted to open up a larger discussion.

I get the feeling that many new writers haven't read the classics or great authors. To me, many of the questions asked -- "I have trouble with beginnings," "how much description should I use," etc, can be answered by reading.

Not Dan Brown or Stephen King. But Fitzgerald or O'Conner, or some other great time-tested author. (I realize greatness is subjective.) I mention these only because I like 20th century America literature. But there are many authors who are masters of the short story. Why not learn from them?

I was having trouble with openings and so I picked up FlanneryO'Connor's "A Good Man is Hard to Find." Why not? It's acknowledged as one of the best short stories ever written:

The grandmother didn't want to go to Florida. She wanted to visit some of her connections in east Tennessee and she was seizing at every chance to change Bailey's mind.


Establishes the place, characters conflict. In one sentence.


Bailey was the son she lived with, her only boy. He was sitting on the edge of his chair at the table, bent over the orange sports section of the Journal. "Now look here, Bailey," she said, "see here, read this," and she stood with one hand on her thin hip and the other rattling the newspaper at his bald head. "Here this fellow that calls himself The Misfit is aloose from the Federal Pen and headed toward Florida and you read here what it says he did to these people. Just you read it. I wouldn't take my children in any direction with a criminal like that aloose in it. I couldn't answer to my conscience if I did."


The rest of the opening paragraph sets up the whole story, describes the characters, and foreshadows events. Wow! It gives me goosebumps. And something to shoot for as writer. This is better than any "how to" book, self-professed writing guru or website. And it's free if you have a library nearby. It doesn't matter if it's not the genre you like. It's just brilliant writing and there is much to be learned from reading it. And of course this doesn't apply to just short stories.

I don't mean to come off as though I'm lecturing. But I feel there is just no way I could write to my potential without being familiar with great writing.

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"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources."
-- Albert Einstein

"I am really only interested in a fiction of miracles."
-- Flannery O'Connor

BOURBON

The man is right. A writer who doesn't read widely of the classics is like a musician who only listens to Kylie. And it's important not to restrict yourself to the genre you wish to write yourself. Read Chaucer, Shakespeare, the Brontes, Arthur C Clarke, Len Deighton, Raymond Carver...read everything...eat words like a hungry dog eats trash...

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Bourbon thinks, therefore she am...

smilinghelps

You are so wise Joseph.



All sarcasm aside, you are right. I'm leaving for vacation tomorrow and trying to decide which books to bring, so I have enough to read but won't overcrowd the van (or completely ignore my family--oops).

Reading is like on-the-job-training. There's nothing like experience. In order to have a natural command of the language, you need to swim in it--in as many different genres as you can. (as much as I love writing poetry, I have the hardest time reading other poets' work).

Good advice Joe. And what I like about this advice from you is, you're not telling anyone anything that you haven't actually done yourself (and it's worked). You're not preachy, you're letting others in on an obvious secret which is often overlooked.

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"I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day."
E. B. White

lin

That's the common wisdom, of course.

But I'd add this proviso. Your "classics" might not be mine. Nor genres nor style. It doesn't have to be some forced process. (Everybody wants to make writing out to be some heavy WORK thing requiring all this study and drudgery.)

Some kid loves space opera. He will read the stuff he likes best, the people he thinks are the coolest. He's not going to give a damn about Shakespeare or Milton or Carver or any of that. For him a "classic" might be like Asimov. But he might not even read that because he's immersed in the latest and coolest stuff that he and his pals dig.

So when he decides he wants to try writing... guess who he's going to write like? And guess what is his best ticket for trying to sell to the market he identifies with?


It's funny that "literary" has become a separate genre anymore--and a dwindling one in comparison to other genres--but it's always assumed that an aspiring writer wants or needs to be more "literary".

99% of those kids writing Clone Wars clones won't make it. Guess what, 99% of all the lit majors reading how to books and NPR-endorsed tomes won't make it either.

You read what you like, you go in that direction. It's a completely natural process that has guided writers for centuries. The old timers all read classics and wrote them because THAT'S THE ONLY BOOKS THERE WERE. Maybe if Shakespeare had seen a manga or gumshoe noir he'd have flipped out and had at it. Who knows.

I sometimes push myself to read something that doesn't initially appeal to me, but rarely find it rewarding.

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PageOfCups

Sorry, but this started to anoy me ages ago.

Shakespere was never meant to be read. It's a play, so find somewhere performing it and go watch something that the guy wrote. It's the reason he wrote it after all.

Don't you think that reading the scripts for films is a bit pointless unless you're learning to write them?

Even song lyrics. On their own they might be good, but they don't really come alive untill you listen to them with the music they come with.

Pluss you get forced to read Shakespere in school and you have to over analyse it so much that at least 90% of the class goes away loathing it.

Sorry about that, rant over.

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Every cloud has a silver lining, but hundreds of people a year are killed by lightning trying to find it.

A-L

I completely agree Page-we are forced to read these so called "classics" then analyze them and write, dare I say it, analytical essays. Damn them! I hate essays and analytical essays make me want to hurt someone. I actually like shakespeare, but reading certain classic authors makes me cringe. If you think about it some of these "classic"authors, were they alive today, wouldn't see publication.

PageOfCups

That's because language has evolved. I've started reading classics recently, the ones that could be described as horror, and the language is the biggest thing to over come.

Words that are used for shock effect and would most deffinitely would have been shocking at the time of publication are now laughable. An example of this is that the Phantom in the Phantom of the Opera calls someone a "booby". I couldn't stop laughing for at least ten mintutes when I read that. Another is Charlse Dickens famous use of "humbug" in A Christmas Carol. In the time it was published humbug was their version of the modern day "bullshit".

It's not just words, but the structure as well. In my A Level English Language class the most noticable thing from the texts that were over about 70 years old was how long and often convoluted the sentences were. One sentance was usually a full and fairly long paragraph. It made me wonder how the authors used to breath when doing public reading. Dickens is a nightmare for this as well, or at least the extract of Great Expectations that I was forced to read was. Add to the sentance length the over abundance of punctuation and the fact that the further back you go, the more capital letters were used (on every noun and adjective if you go back about 500 years).

Language changes over time. The stories might still be relevant or even excellant, but the language barrier is what puts people off. (That's why film adaptions of classic novels are so popular; fantastic stories, monstrous language use by modern standards.)

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Every cloud has a silver lining, but hundreds of people a year are killed by lightning trying to find it.

BOURBON

Shakespeare was a storyteller who understood the basic principles of his craft: the beginnings people find so hard to come by, the development of plot and character which seem to allude so many people - and, last but surely the hardest, endings which reincorporate ideas and satisfy the audience or reader.

To read widely is to educate oneself. To have a closed mind is not the job of a writer.

Having said that, I would rather visit a thousand dentists than read one more, so-called, fantasy novel.

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Bourbon thinks, therefore she am...

A-L

I must say though, that reading some of the classic authors I can really see why they were classics, because some I just can't. For example, Dracula by Bram Stoker, I read this book just for fun and was completely blown away, flippin' loved it. But then I read Heart of Darkness, by John Conrad, and I wanted to punch my teacher in the face.

A-L

What's wrong with fantasy Bourbon?

PageOfCups

I never contested that. I think the stories are fantastic (even though he did steal most of them from other sources) and the way they're told is quite good. It doesn't change the fact that they're plays and designed to be enjoyed as such.

As for having a closed mind, I can asure you I don't. But I think English teachers are accidentally closing the minds of their pupils by forcing them to read and analyse to death what they might otherwise enjoy. I would cry if I had to analyse Carmilla, it's a beautifully written story but if I had to look for meaning and literary tricks that weren't there or were there by accident it would destroy it for me.

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Every cloud has a silver lining, but hundreds of people a year are killed by lightning trying to find it.

BOURBON

My experience of Fantasy, which is limited, leads me to believe that Fantasy writers expend more energy painting their imaginary universe and explaining the backstory of its inhabitants than they do telling an engaging story. Once it is established that the sky is purple and the rocks are all sisters of the sky-witch whose name was Nigel before the sex-change imposed in her by the wood-spirit's magic...then the plot and character development appear generic.

Not for me, hon, that's all - but at least I tried

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Bourbon thinks, therefore she am...

BOURBON

I think we need to go back to the OP. As I understand it, the advice was that, before asking 'how do you write?' questions - the person asking the question might do well to read the work of writers recognised for their writerly skill. I think it is wise advice.

Studying English Lit. crit. is neither useful nor desirable for the creative writer, but READING is.

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Bourbon thinks, therefore she am...

lilacstarflower

I've read this a thousand times and have to disagree. They are full of symbolism and are more period accurate than any contemporary author could ever be. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, for example, was not a boring book - it's considered the first true sci-fi written - and it's really not a long book (not as long as the Count of Monte Cristo, Les Misreables, war and peace and so on). Many have intriguing plot lines and characters and are more psychological that most of the historical fiction trash churned out today.


JosephB is right - people who want to write a novel should really read the classics first - they offer so much insight

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CodeRed

I can see the original point, for a writer, can there be a simpler way to absorb knowledge than to observe how others have managed to generate continued interest in, perhaps even devotion to, their work? Personally, I just read. Anything. That would include everything from classical literature to the cereal box in the morning...

To quote Henry Fool (don't let the name distract you, even though he was referring to pornographic magazines in this quote... )

"I refuse to discriminate between modes of knowing".

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All my best thoughts were stolen by the ancients. Ralph Waldo Emerson