I dunno why I always use a question mark on my stuff. Maybe I find it more interesting to advertise this as a topic of discussion? So, I am a bad reader and struggle with reading. Though, I know this and have been trying to improve this. I recently decided to start listening to books. I had actively avoided this in the past because I felt it was cheating or wouldn't be as insightful as actually reading can be. But I am finding myself becoming inspired and gaining ideas, though its a bit soon to see if its actually useful. So my question is this. Do you guys think listening to books is helpful in the same way as reading? Any what pros and cons would you think comes with the territory.
It probably helps with story idea fodder and language (as in word choice and phrasing), sure. I can't really think of a concrete con, because I think it depends on learning style -- I don't absorb information as well when I hear it as when I read it, so I know that I wouldn't get as much out of it as I do reading a book, but you might absorb the information better listening. It seems like grammar and an actual sense of the feel/flow of the prose would be lacking, though. Audiobooks are probably great for enjoyment and inspiration, but maybe not as much for studying* the writing itself -- sort of like how watching a movie can help teach you how to tell a story, but not necessarily prepare you to write a book. It's definitely better than nothing and I don't see how it could hurt, anyway. * Now that I'm saying that, it might be a good way for me to cut off my editor brain and actually enjoy 'reading' without automatically studying ...
I love audio books. You can read while you are commuting. The book experience itself is hardly different. Sometimes I get both the book and the audio so I can keep reading after I get home. The audio reader matters, though. A monotone reader or one who tries too hard to be the other gender when reading character dialogue can mess up the experience. Newer books though have better readers these days.
I agree with izzy that audio is great for just passively absorbing the story, but if you want to really break it down and study it (reread passages, etc.) print is better. And I agree with Ginger that the narrator is important - possibly so important that it makes it difficult to really assess the story itself. I'd listen to Will Patton read the phone book, so just because I enjoy an audiobook he narrates it doesn't mean the story itself was anything special! So for casual reading, absolutely. For improving your writing, maybe.
Ditto what everyone else said... I go through three or four audio books per month, just on my daily drive. I check them out from my local library and any audio book they have at any branch can be ordered and held for me; their collection is pretty extensive. If nothing else it’s a great way to experience new writers, you wouldn’t otherwise read and cover books for which you wouldn’t otherwise have time. For study and disection of story assemblage, print is the way to go.
You have to have a good narrator--a bad one can ruin an otherwise good story. I do think audiobooks are useful for absorbing a story, but I don't agree that their usefulness fails to extend beyond that. When it comes to things like structure, it would be easier (in my view) to study the print version of a book. But an audiobook can teach you a lot about pacing, the cadence of writing, how sentences "sound," which is important even when a reader is reading the print version.
They are pretty sweet. Though you have to take into account there are two distinct types. First being just straight narrator, or narrators depending on if they needed at least a man and woman to read the parts meant for characters of that gender. Also they will do the accents of characters that have them in dialogue segments, which can be done well or comically. The second are the ones where they add some type of ambience to the narration based upon where the scene takes place. Can be a simple score, or background noise that fits the moment. As for other factors, it all falls down to the words themselves. If it is poorly written, then there is little chance you will want to actually hear the story verbalized (unless they have a really pleasing sounding narrator to give it some relief to the otherwise poorly worded story). And yes while it is fun to hear a man with a deep voice try to imitate a woman's voice, or a woman to imitate a man's voice in dialogue, it can be distracting (as well as accented characters). But for the most part it is a good way to 'read' a book and still go about your day. Yay multi-tasking!. In conclusion if you can use an audio book as a substitute for reading the book directly, and in 9+ hours be done with it and move on to the next one. Which makes it much faster than reg. reading, but lacks that more intimate feeling of actually reading. If you are looking to work on actual reading, and find it difficult to do so. I would recommend looking for visual novels, where you both have to read and interact with the story at key points to move (and affect) the story along. It is kinda fun when you can skip the scenery descriptions, and just get lost in the story itself.
I get lots of ideas about writing from audio books. Take the trilogy I'm listening to now: Ruby Red, Sapphire Blue and Emerald Green by Kerstin Gier. It's a young YA, the protag is 16 and she's younger than my protagonist. But there are elements that stand out as far as the character's younger voice, and how the author builds empathy for the girl. Just about everything I read, audio or not, I can't help hearing/reading things that I relate to what I'm writing. It's fine if one is into studying paragraphs or whatnot, but the idea passive reading is somehow inferior to reading is a rather old fashioned notion.
Are you reading in order to improve your writing skills, or is this topic just about reading (enjoying books)? If you are struggling with enjoying printed text, then the issue could be with your ability to follow written text, maybe the lack of patience etc. Audio-books can help a little with building patience as you can't skip ahead to check what's gonna happen next but won't cure everything. If you're taking up reading as means to improve writing, then the success of this enterprise will depend on your ability to focus on the audio. I think picking up writing tips from audio is harder than picking up tips from written text as you can't easily go back and re-read a passage in an audio-book. With audio all the great word choices and stylistic devises just float by and quickly vanish, easily forgotten. Outside pure entertainment, I don't think audio-books can replace the written text. For entertainment value, sure, audio rules.
I'm a longtime audiobook listener/lover, but find them less useful for my writing than real books. I'm rarely short on inspiration or imagination, but often struggle with mechanical issues so it's the old fashion book-in-my-lap reading that really helps me past the tricky things I need to learn about composition. I'll also note, that you shouldn't confine yourself to fantasy fiction. I've got some really great ideas and taken some stuff from non-fiction that served to deepen my WIP... I was listening to an audiobook about the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918, and in it there was this lovely Arabic Proverb: The dogs bark, but the caravan moves on. I was so taken by this simple turn of phrase, Life goes on, that I created a character around the proverb, and wrote a nice little interlude wherein one of my protagonists relates a story... Jean-Paul saw her in the dying light of a faint memory. “As I was walking to the theatre, I hoped that it will be the two of us again against the world. But, I’m afraid that our common foes aren’t in agreement anymore.” “They most likely aren’t,” Valerie said, a little stung. “I don’t suppose there’s any magic left in this moth-eaten world. For a time I thought there was. D’you know, while I tarried with the good ladies on their mountaintop, I took an instant liking to one of their flock. A quiet, plump woman from Damascus. Sister Yasmina has a fondness for reciting irritatingly sublime proverbs, but you’d like her. I had returned from a humiliating misadventure in Rome and was horribly depressed. I failed miserably and let everyone down — that night, after we’d all retired to our rooms, it was Sister Yasmina who came to console me with kind words, and a bottle of spiced rum. With sunshine in our bellies we talked into the small hours, went on about trivial things... giggled like schoolgirls we did! When at last she got up to leave, so I could sulk in peace, she said to me, ‘The dogs bark, but the caravan moves on’. It’s true isn’t it? We carry on.”
I have two short stories published. You'll just have to wait for my novel. It's getting there. Got any best sellers yet, anything that has taken off?
[Heh] ... It does work both ways. On the late-night talk shows - my peers, I like to think - come on to Radio 5 Live and read out their stories, and sometimes they're a little flabby, but because you got the author reading the story nobody can see it. That's when I thump the pillow. But then it's always 'How hard It Is Being 32 with a Family and Dog Funny Stories, and I'm so Exhausted,' and I don't really appreciate those stories, so much. Men at sea, maybe. Narrated by Stephen Fry, no.
I agree that all sorts of types of fiction -- as well as other arts and real life -- can help with inspiration, as I commented in my original post. I've gotten idea kernels for character beats from tv shows and story aesthetics from Star Wars / Mad Max crossover fanart. You can get ideas from all over. And like I said, sure, these things help you learn how to tell a story in the general sense. I'm wondering if you missed a word in that final sentence (between 'to' and 'reading'), but either way, the suggestion that passive reading is going to be as helpful in teaching you how to read as actually purposefully studying the writing and applying yourself to learning the craft is 'old fashioned' is ... very strange to me. Is studying old fashioned?
I listen to a lot of audiobooks, while driving or doing mundane work. Not adding much new in saying they can help with creating dialogue and pacing and for overall story structure. And yes, a poor quality narrator can ruin a book, more so, I would say, than a high quality narrator could lift a poor quality novel.
My mind drifts too much for audio books to work for me--I've tried them, but I constantly have to pause or back up. The same thing doesn't happen when listening to material written for the spoken word. I don't know why.
There are probably different techniques used... I find when I read the text of famous speeches, for example, they tend to seem simplistic and repetitive on the page. But when I hear them spoken? Damn. Very effective. So possibly the stuff that's written to be spoken is written differently?
(bolding mine) Learning to read is a different matter than expanding one's reading experience to improve one's writing. What's old fashioned is the idea audio books are inferior to reading. It reminds me of someone who thinks no kids should use calculators ever. Kids need to learn math and reading without tools, of course they do. But if one expanded their 'books read' library by listening to audiobooks everyday commuting to work, how is that inferior to reading every night after getting home? And, I did not say anyone who improved their writing more from reading books than audio books was wrong. Of course they aren't if that's what works for them. I was simply saying that my writing skills grow from consuming more books whether they be audio or not. How can anyone say what works for me is not true? And I wasn't talking about ideas. I was talking about techniques, like the difference between a young 16 yr old's voice and a mature 17 yr old's. In the Winner's Curse trilogy, that 17 yr old protagonist had voice that was much older than fit for a 17 yr old. I don't think reading the text would have improved on my hearing that character's voice. You pick up on subtle things. Going back and oohing and aahing over some gorgeous prose is a whole different thing. Well worth reading mind you, but not the only thing one gets from a book that one then applies to one's own writing. It's technique I can't help noticing with every book I read. I wasn't talking about ideas in the way you may have thought I meant.
That would make sense. I think that when I read I am somehow visually processing the sentence before and maybe the sentence after, while of course with spoken word you just get what you get.
Audio books are amazing in the car--but even then, for me it's not the best place to enjoy a complex story. I'll loose my place switching focus from the road to the book! I do really like informational audio books in the car, though.
I completely misspoke -- I meant to say "teaching you how to write," not read. Crossed wires, my bad. I'm not saying you're wrong, either, or disparaging what works for you. Like I said in my original post, I know that I understand things better when I read them, so reading inherently works better for me on every level, and I try to take that bias into account. But I do think that something of the experience is lost in the translation to audio, which you may refer to as 'oohing and aahing' but that I consider a very important part of the process of learning to write (read "I consider" as "it's what helps me" not "everyone has to do it this way"). It's re-reading and being mindful of word choice and flow and thinking about why the writer picked this particular phrasing at this particular time. You can't do that in an audiobook without a great deal of tedious, choppy rewinding. The notion that studying prose is 'old fashioned' is what I'm objecting to, here. I think it's wild to assert that passive reading isn't inferior to active, mindful reading, which is what I understood you to be saying in the last line of your post responding to Bay. From my perspective you're being quite dismissive of the practice of studying prose ("studying paragraphs or whatnot"), and I don't understand that.
Both of the stories are ones I posted here in the contests. I'm using the pen name, Virginia May. Sanitarium Magazine Issue #47: Bringing you the Best Short Horror Fiction, Dark Verse and Macabre Entertainment Kindle Edition - Stone Games by Virginia May (Author). My story's first so you can read the whole thing in the Kindle Preview and you can read it by clicking on the silver medal under my avatar. Sanitarium Magazine Issue #48 has Even Odds, but you can't see it without buying it and it looks like it's not for sale here in the US. The publisher is in the UK and #48 was the last issue. On the other hand, I posted it here when we had that first contest to interpret a picture. The bronze medal under the avatar is for Where the Wild Things Could Be. You can read that one too by clicking on it.
I have that problem more when trying to listen to them at home. In the car though, I don't have that problem.
I see, we are both cross talking then. The "old fashioned" reference of mine was only to dismissing audio books as if somehow they are inferior to reading. I didn't intend my comment about "studying paragraphs or whatnot" to be dismissive.
