Reading fiction or non-fiction? Which one do you think best serves the budding FICTION writer within and why? Try not to answer with a generic ‘it depends’ please Pick a side and back up your position as best you can. Thanks
Of course it's going to depend. Not everyone writes fiction as well as they do nonfiction and vice versa. And there are a million categories within those two. Maybe a less generic questions would result in less generic answers.
Are you asking which one is better for beginning writers, or are you asking individuals which one works better for them?
I don't think there are good and bad for each or much of an argument. Sorry, but I fail to see what you're trying to gain from a discussion like this. You know your writing better than any of us which probably means you already have the answers you're looking for.
For me, fiction is generally harder and more "iffy," but it's also more rewarding. Creating a little world out of thin air, I think that's really something. However, it can also be exhausting and it can be wasted effort if I can't bring it all together or otherwise turn out what I consider a good quality story. Nonfiction seems to me more like a school assignment, for some reason. It will get finished and it will be okay (in my opinion at least). For the same reason, while I am always happy to finish anything that I think is pretty good, nonfiction doesn't feel to me like as much of an accomplishment as fiction. It just doesn't have the same magic. To me.
Oh! I made a mistake. OP amended :/ I simple case of not making my thought explicit enough. OR (as above) this touch screen has a habit of deleting pieces of text without me noticing! Haha! Insert: t’s a
Oh! I'd say fiction, just because I can think of countless things that you'd learn from fiction and not from non-fiction, and far fewer things for which the opposite is true.
Which leg serves you best while walking in the woods, right or left? Wide spectrum of books, legs, experiences... serve you best. Focusing on one thing becomes more useful by having a lot of emotional, intellectual and cultural capital.
I strive for realism in my fiction writing and I'm reading non-fiction. Why? Because of research, and because I love the impact these tales and the way they are told have. I've yet to read a fiction work that makes me laugh and cry at the same time. The real world is so much more complex and stunning than any fiction I've ever read. Non-fiction widens my world, and it meshes with the way I want to write fiction—as close to reality as I can manage.
Point one, Non-Fic is the opposite of Fiction, so doesn't give much to work with if you want to get overly creative. I am quite invested in the real Fictions, reg Fantasy not withstanding. Reasons being Piers Anthony kinda killed the genre for me, and that it can become a runaway freight train of more and more absurd stuff without much logic or reason to it. Magic is so much less refined than science is, and since it is not bound to any realistic natural laws does not adhere to anything that can be reasonably accounted for. Slippery slope reg Fantasy is. Urban Fantasy can go the same way, but it is a bit easier to reign in with the abstract elements, so as to not go way overboard. However, I will throw Anthony a bone, in the sense that he was nice enough to set exact rules to the magic in the Xanth series, limiting everyone to one random power and not able to McGuffin whatever powers they could need at any point in time. While in turn essentially making Bink far too OP with his power being that magic doesn't affect him. Though I suppose it doesn't work for me as much cause of all the stated, and the fact that it is the simpler to write, since people are much more foregiving of the misc. plot demands or holes that can or do arise in the genre as it moves the story along. Romance is more a sub-plot to me, since I don't think I would be well suited for a full length novel. It would be terrible, and I have yet to find any books in the genre that would benefit me to explore the concept in ways past it being a mere aspect of a much bigger reality. So I will stick to what I seem to be more familiar with, since I enjoy the reading and the creativity of Sci-fi, Horror/Thriller, and on occasion Urban Fantasy. It makes the most sense to write from where you have read, as opposed to where you haven't much more than dipped a toe from time to time.
