When I was a kid in high school, I practiced speed reading. I read tons of books at ridiculous speeds. I eventually realized, though, that at least with "literary" fiction, I was missing a lot. I started reading more slowly. If I'm reading a writer with a beautiful style, I'll even read aloud. I can't get through as many books this way, but I enjoy the ones I read more, and I understand them better.
What exactly does one gain from reading other literary works that one cannot gain from any other medium or practice that enables one to become a good "writer?"
An ear for language. A sense of proportion in sentences and paragraphs - variety in length and rhythm and so on. Your question sounds like you're trying to find an alternative to reading literary works in order to learn to write well. Why? Why not read good novels?
Look, you might be a Maverick. If you are, you should be busy doing your thing and showing the world, no questions asked. The problem is that there exists a distinct group of people- slackers- who possess a certain number of traits. One, a propensity for daydreaming. Two, unrealistic expectations in regards to what they think they can achieve, and in regards to how much work they think it takes for them to achieve that. Three, a strong desire to take shortcuts. So, I'm a slacker. I like watching Transformers and Walking Dead, and I play video games in my sleep. I got this awesome new killer idea for a zombie story. You see, I KNOW this idea is the s***. It's different than what's ever been done before because its mine and I've made it ultra elaborate in my head on a superficial level (also because my exposure to literature is minimal) . Ideally, this would be made into a video game, or a movie starring Scarlett Johanson and myself, but both those mediums take waaaaay too much work, so, I KNOW, I'll make it a novel! I already have a computer, and I already know how to write from high school. What else do I need? They're totally going to love the idea, anyway, so the writing has to be mediocre at best. I can get this done in a year, tops. I'm in no way suggesting this fits the profile of anyone in this thread. However, these people do exist on the forum. Therefore, when questions like "Do I need to read?" or "Do I need to write every day to get better?" arise here, it should be knee jerk reaction among the more mature of us to say "Yes, absolutely!" Again, if you're a maverick, and you got the touch, just go do your thing. No point asking.
Read 'em. I believe that any author that successfully drags you into a story is an author that has something to teach you.
I am not so much trying to find an alternative. I am more trying to get to the root of the debate. If reading offers something that one cannot gain anywhere else, then it would be obvious that reading is necessary to be a good writer, but if there is nothing like that, then being an avid reader is not necessary. For example, would not one gain an "ear for language" better by actually listening? Sentence and paragraph proportions, rhythm and length are all a matter of style that are better obtained through writing and experimentation. All reading does here is introduce a person to different styles that are probably going to get imitated until one finds his or her own style through actual writing anyway.
I'd say no, because written language and spoken language are really not the same thing. Yes, they use the same language words and rules of grammar, but, just to reel off some differences: - Spoken language is absorbed more slowly. It has facial expressions, tone of voice, and gesture. It tends to be less formal and structured; while it technically uses the same rules of grammar, they're much more often violated. When it flies by it's gone. - Written language is absorbed much more quickly. It has the structure of sentences, paragraphs, punctuation. You can glance back at what you've already read. It more often adheres to the rules of grammar. I'm sure that there are plenty of other differences that I haven't thought of. They're just not the same language.
Consider, for example, the fact that no one talks in iambic pentameter in real life. So how language is used during the writing process is different from how language is used when we speak. Spoken language is spontaneous; written language has form and purpose. That to me is the biggest difference, and it's also the reason why listening is not a substitute for reading.
Written fiction offers some things no other medium of storytelling does. A novel can take you inside the head of the main character (or any character, including the omniscient narrator, if you wish) to discuss thoughts, philosophies, aesthetic judgments on the events at hand, etc. There's a ton of potential available to the novelist that isn't available to the filmmaker. Film and television are limited (usually) to seeing things from outside: the audience watches the characters, but does not sink into the characters' skins. I get frustrated when I see members of this forum saying things like, "I see the movie of my story playing in my mind, and I write down what I see." Writers like that are missing huge amounts of what differentiates a novel from a movie. They treat the novel as a poor, prose-level approximation of the movie, but in fact, the movie is a poor, visual-level approximation of a novel. In addition to this, the novel can go far deeper than movies can. Movies are limited by time - it's very hard for a movie or a stage play to run longer than three or four hours; the audience just won't sit still for it. A novel can be very long, because the reader controls the pace of reading. He can read a hundred pages on a Sunday afternoon, or snatch a few pages each time he goes to the toilet. It's in the reader's control, and that means the writer can add a huge amount of material that would have to be cut from a movie. In that sense, no other medium can give the audience the experience of the novel. You cannot learn to write a novel by watching movies. You can learn a few things, but because the media are different, you will not learn to exploit the strengths of prose fiction. You will merely learn to approximate movie fiction. You can only learn dialogue by actually listening. There are other types of prose: narration, exposition, and description, to name three. The style you'd use to write those would certainly not be the style you'd use in dialogue - dialogue should reflect the characters speaking, not necessarily the writer himself.
Hmm. I've said that, or something like it, and this has made me consider what I meant by it. I think that I was using "movie" as an incomplete metaphor. The movie in my head isn't just visuals and sound; it also conveys emotions and thoughts and physical sensations and history and memories to the viewer. But all the same, the "movie" metaphor has meaning to me--that visual/physical/emotional/etc. experience in my head has to be compacted and dehydrated into words, and then the reader re-hydrates those words and creates their own experience in their own head. I don't see the story in words; I see it as an experience and I have to translate it to words. (OK, I seem to have left the movie metaphor and gone to a Kool-Aid metaphor.) And that is part of why just creating a great story isn't enough--it doesn't matter how brilliant the experience is on one's own head; one still has to do the dehydrating so that the rehydrated experience is what it should be. And that requires skill with the written word, and that skill comes in part from experiencing the other side, from being a reader.
I just want to make it clear that when I say, "read," I mean actively picking up books and reading them, rather than just reading text on how to construct a sentence or proper grammar. Those difference really only applies to formal writing, such as manuals and research. They would make fiction novels seem really robotic, for example. I highly doubt that would make for a "good" read since writers tend to try to achieve a natural voice, and that is something best learned through listening. Furthermore, with the knowledge of proper grammar and formalities, one can easily convert spoken language into written language, but this cannot be done as easily the other way around due to the many nuances in natural speech, such as tone and pitch. You can do the same thing by simply talking with people in real life and experiencing things for yourself. People tend to get a better understanding of things when they experience it for themselves and learn things first hand. The best you can say is that reading opens you to more point of views, but this is not exclusive to reading. These are indeed a matter of style. Once a person learns how to do them, all it takes is some creativity to convey them. Narration, especially, is another voice. It can be written just like another character separate from the story, so one can apply what one learned through dialogue to this. What reading does here is offer examples of other styles for inspiration, but it is far from being necessary if you have your own inspiration.
This is an excellent point. Theorists call this the distinction between "story" and "discourse." Story is in your head - the characters, plot, setting, etc. as you imagine them. Discourse is how you present the story to an audience. You can do it in a great many ways. A given story can be presented as a novel, a movie, a stage play, an opera, a comic book, a radio play, a folk song, etc. And in each type of discourse, the story can be approached in many ways. The Dracula story, for example, has not only been presented in novel form as a horror story, but also in movie form as both horror (usually) or comedy (Mel Brooks). The story is essentially the same, but the approach to the material can be very different. Story is pretty much fixed. Discourse can be a huge play of lights and lenses and funhouse mirrors. To me, the fascinating part of writing isn't really the story (so many people say "you have to have a great idea!") but the discourse (other people say "the idea doesn't matter - it's how you write it!").
How does it only apply to those things? Everything I've said applies to creative writing (in fact, that's what I had in mind when posting). This reminds me of Sarah Palin's comment about having foreign policy experience because she can see Russia from her house. There is no substitute for reading.
Because creative writing tend to try to emulate how things are naturally, and naturally is going to be more like spoken language, except maybe for exposition. I understand the difference, but creative writing uses both. You are right. She should have experienced things for herself like I said. You say there is no substitute, so I am wondering what does reading offer exclusively that cannot be substituted?
I'm not sure if I've said that here, but I know I've said it to @KaTrian way back when we first started writing (and for some time after that). I still do experience our stories in a very visual way, but nowadays rather than imagining them like I was watching a movie, I imagine them from a certain character's POV with myself in their shoes. I've found that doing that has helped with a lot of things, especially action sequences. I always felt the action stuff was my forte, but what this change in the thought process / visualization brought on was that now I manage to insert more emotion into the scenes and give them a more... "personal," immediate feel, and some betas have noticed that, commenting that the scenes feel more real and more intense. Previously I was afraid of even trying to put any emotions into action sequences for the fear of bogging them down, but back then I didn't know how to do it properly (I know I'm still no expert, far from it, but at least there's been a little improvement). You must have misunderstood something. I mean, the part about @thirdwind's post you quoted was talking about the iambic pentameter. How many manuals and research papers have you seen written in iambic pentameter? Also, have you ever tried to transcribe a normal conversation, say, between friends having a cup of coffee? If you put that into writing, as is, you're going to annoy the living crap out of your readers with all the pauses, stammering (I don't mean the speech impediment, but when you stumble on a word), the ums, ehs, uhs, people speaking over each other etc. The trick with natural-sounding dialogue is (at least the way I see it) to make it look natural, like something the reader feels they might hear in a similar setting as I described above, but, of course, fluent, natural dialogue in a book is nothing like real conversations even if it seems like it. Instead, it's an idealized representation of what people usually try to sound like when they're having a conversation. But it's kinda like stuntmen and women acting out a fight scene: it's make-believe and doesn't reflect the real thing. Some take it very close, but it's still not the same. If you don't believe me, use your phone's recorder, record a couple of hours or normal conversation between yourself and your friends when you're out and about, having a few or whatever, i.e. a situation where nobody pays attention to (or even knows about) the recorder, and listen to it afterwards. Transcribe it on your computer and see first-hand just how unreadable dialogue like that would be in a novel. My point is, by reading books with very well executed dialogue, you can pick up the tricks of the trade, i.e. how to make dialogue look and feel natural even though it isn't if compared to the real thing. Here's an example (a pdf file) of a transcript of a real conversation I found by a quick googling: real conversation. Would you want to read 500 pages of that kind of dialogue in a novel (just change the subject matter to something a bit more interesting like sex, drugs, guns, or whatever is your cup of tea)? It's very realistic, yeah, but I'd probably give it a pass in the end. Anyway, this is just one example of how reading differs from, say, listening, but time's running short so I gotta stop here.
Like minstrel mentioned, one of the strengths of fiction is its ability to get inside a character's head. Fiction may therefore use language/word order that we would not ordinarily find in spoken language. Even dialogue is not an accurate representation of how we talk in real life. So I disagree that writers are trying to emulate how things are in real life. You have to remember that writing fiction involves a great deal of interpretation on the writer's part (i.e., how he interprets the world). For one, it gives you an idea of the structure and form used in whatever it is you're trying to write. Someone who has only read poetry will have no idea what a novel looks like and will therefore be unable to write one. Anyone can write a novel. Whether that novel will be good is another issue. In my opinion, I don't think it would be good because someone who only writes short stories will have trouble with the length requirement. Though both are forms of prose, there are subtleties that make the two different.
Can you name a good writer who has admitted to never reading a novel? I think your challenge is refuted by common sense. Sure, there are some writers who aren't book worms. But you're taking the argument to an extreme conclusion. It's not a coincidence that great writers are also a fan of great books. They became great writers because they read those books(and many more books). It is ludicrous not to recognize the causality.
Hunter S. Thompson spent most of his time drunk, high, or out doing research. Hemingway was pretty much the same. Poe would sit in a bar day and night getting drunk and writing.
You are right, but I would like to argue that one can figure out how to use a dialogue tag to cover something like stammers and pauses without having to read much. Reading would certainly help one to realize the tricks sooner, but it is certainly not something taught exclusively by reading. True, about the language usage and about giving you an idea of the structure and form, but I am not questioning that one can write a novel without having ever seen one. I question whether it is necessary to read often, as many people seem to side with. Once one has all the tools necessary to write a novel, I find that reading often only serves as a means of inspiration, rather than any actually teaching anything that could not be learned elsewhere.
Hemingway devoured books. According to one of my professors, as soon as Hemingway finished reading one book, he picked up another one.
