Reading is an enjoyable way of effortlessly learning the craft of writing. By that I mean that your subconscious picks up on the flow of words without the labour of 'real' study (and hopefully that knowledge will kick in when you need it). Can you be a writer without being a reader? Most people would answer 'No!' to that Question. But I have a friend in Glasgow whom can neither read nor write, yet she is one great story teller, a far better story teller than I am. I could and often did, sit and listen to her for hours. I often thought if only she could read and write she would make a brilliant writer.
I suppose one could argue that that is writing... the act of putting words in an order unique to you. Does writing mean the physical act of putting words to a page or computer screen? Or were the early bards, who memorised all their tales, considered writers as we see them now? Discuss.
Difference typically is unfathomable. But for a writer, nothing should be unfathomable. We make the unfathomable seem possible and sometimes even likely. I think the point is that the art is the story, and you're constantly getting 'story' from every angle. Unless you fall into a coma, you get nonstop sources of the true inspiration for what writing is, the heart of it. Why waste too much time with something that is NOT helping you when you already got what you need? People saying that something works doesn't make it so if past experiences have shown you otherwise. If something doesn't help you, it's benefits for other people don't mean all that much. And for me, reading has had limited roles and benefits in my writing. That is because I see writing as bigger than the "book." Sure I read good books but they are but one medium for me and I don't try to make them any more special than they really are. For my story, I use whatever is at my disposal that best suits my needs for the moment, which sometimes is a book. As for expectations of success, I've found expectations are the biggest causes of disappointments. I don't want my story to be a slave to expectations.
Presumptuous of you. And quite wrong, besides. To an educated person, difference should usually be understandible, even if we do not agree. That sounds like you are saying that writers should know everything, which is nonsense. We are human and are only capable of imperfect knowledge. Even the worlds and lives we create can only ever be imperfect, as is the way in which we create and portray them. I would argue that the way you tell a story is at least as important as the story you tell, and probably moreso. I would argue that that you get nonstop sources of the inspiration of what life is, what the stories are and can be. But to say that it is the inspiration of how to tell the stories...no. You have expectations whenever you write. It's just a matter of what they are. It is obvious that if you are writing for your own edification, you may do whatever you like and not give a rip what anyone else might think. But lots of writers - a good many of whom are members here - have aspirations of some kind of extended audience, and that's where the expectations come in. And it is specious, I think, to proliferate a fantasy that there are no standards against which their work will be judged, no prior examples of what good writing should look like. I also think that a writer who does not read, who is not open to additional new influences, is not going to be much of a writer.
I'm always caught shaking my head and giving a bit of a bemused smile when I hear budding "writers" proclaiming loudly their love of writing and literature, only to watch as the same "writers" complain just as loudly about reading anything meaningful -- if they even read for pleasure at all -- as having a classic crammed down one's throat thanks to a hated class does not mean one has actually read the book in question. Read as in absorbed and understood the story, and gleaned something meaningful from it. Reading was for me the foundation upon which I was able to build my writing, and without it I would definitely be at a loss. I love to read. I am (or was, when I had more time on my hands) a voracious reader. As for those claiming that the average adult will have read "quite a bit" by the time they graduate (presumably from college)? Well, I must most respectfully disagree. Quite strongly, actually. Suffice to say, the amount of reading (and writing, too) that college exposed me to was absolutely pitiful compared to the reading I did prior, for nothing more than pleasure, and completely insignificant in comparison to the reading I did for school. To put the matter in perspective, I would consider "quite a bit" of reading to be something along the lines of what I occasionally managed when I was much younger -- a half dozen full-length novels sometimes devoured in the course of a single week or less, dependent on how much time I had on my hands. The amount of reading and writing demanded of students in some colleges these days is nothing short of pathetic, and anyone who thinks it "sufficient" clearly has a bit of a misunderstanding. I read less in college than I did at almost any point in my life before that.
I'm a bit of a sponge when it comes to reading and then writing. I can see the writers reflected in what I wrote at the time. Certainly that shows that reading is an essential part of learning to write. Reading also develops vocab and general language skills. Being a good talker is important I think. I've head it said that good prose should be the best sentences you've ever heard. I assume that is what you mean?
I didn't answer my own question lol Reading for me is amazing, exciting, wonderful, time to sit and be transported to another world. Something I do as readily reading a science or maths textbook as I do a work of fiction. The story in an equation excites me a lot - or reading poetry or short stories. I learned to read at 2.5-3 and by time I was seven was tackling Dickens, Bronte Sisters (not a good idea to read Wuthering Heights whilst watching cartoon wih an orange cat called Heathcliff). I would read four books a day during the Summer holidays. What I find it has given me is a huge general knowledge and also an understanding of what I love to read about in a story. When I came across one of my characters I knew she would be a perfect malaprop etc I have confidence my plot is good but also know my own weaknesses. I also have a desire not to be a great writer as such but to tell a story that entertains, excites and transports the people reading it. That for me is a goal that comes before anything else.
I have to disagree. I might have been required to read, oh, ten to twenty books a year in school, and I think it was fewer than that. I _chose_ to read four to ten books a week in grade school, and more like two to six per week as I got older and moved on to more challenging books. So a person who read only what was required might read 120 to 240 books in a twelve-year pre-college school career, while by the very smallest estimate of three per week, I read over eighteen hundred, _plus_ that 120 to 240. Add roughly one book a week since then--a _very_ low estimate--and we're up to about three thousand books read in my lifetime. And I look a that figure and think that it's embarassingly low, too low even if the real figure is double that, and I need to read more. That means that I've seen every common vocabulary word used in thousands of different contexts. Seen thousands of fictional characters and the way that they were depicted. Seen most of the ways that the English language can be twisted and arranged, and seen most of the ways, again, thousands of times. Is a person ready to be a chef because they've tasted chicken several times? Are they ready to be a musician because they've heard a few songs that include a piano? Does a visual artist have no need to see more than a few dozen paintings and drawings? Does a storyteller need to hear no more than a few stories? Is there really _so little_ to learn from what has come before, that once we've had a sparse few examples, we're done? ChickenFreak
I could have easily got through my degree with just a few notes and quotes out of books. No need to read a whole one.
My SO did that with some courses when she was studying economics at the university - she just read the contents pages of the course books and passed the test, which was based on essay questions. I'm embarassed to say I don't read much literature these days. Even a very well-written text is only moderately interesting to me. Every time I critique something in the review section, I have to watch myself so I don't sound too negative, because even if it's good, it rarely interests me. I understand it must seem strange that someone interested in writing isn't interested in reading, but think of it this way: you have a story to tell, something that you need to get out. Learning to write well is a means to that end, and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with reading. For some reason, I've never felt that I've learned much from looking at examples. I've mostly learnt from feedback (having flaws pointed out to me), theory (knowing about plot, storyline, characterisation, beats & tags, etc), and practice. When I've learnt from examples, it has been from the bad ones. For example, watching a really, really bad movie made me realise that you need to introduce a plot element (a person, an ability, a McGuffin, etc) some time before it has impact on the plot, simply because the movie failed so miserably at it.
I do understand - when editing I can't read other peoples stories the same. I find past tense annoying etc I have this urge to change it into present tense. Sometimes things can be so bad they are genius and fun though - especially with movies.
My reading count is incredibly low given how much time I spend writing. I've read a handful of fiction books. I've read a lot of autobiographies and non-fiction books as well of course. My count consists of a few Michael Morpurgo books, the Harry Potter series, the Fellowship of the Ring, Jurassic Park, Digital Fortress, Prey and The Lost World. I don't separate media as much as a lot of people seem to. I think you can still develop as a storyteller from things such as movies and video games; it flexes your imagination and presents you with a good frame of reference when it comes to creativity. I don't know why. I've developed so many skills in crazy ways. Most of my spelling and competent writing developed from using internet forums People are surprisingly harsh at poor grammar on the internet ^^ You spend 4 years participating in discussions on all kinds of subjects on the internet and your grammar improves dramatically. Here's a snippet of my "writing" that I posted on an internet forum 4 years ago discussing a video game. "ok im new to planetside and after login in were the big button is thats supose to says play, it says "updating" is this just me, if it is then haw do i terminate it to play the game, if not does that mean no1 is playing the game atm" ~tex11 2006 I'm not even joking. It's scary. But I haven't practiced writing or anything in the last 4 or so years (i've been creative with stories in my head but never wrote them down). All my writing improvements came from writing on internet forums. I'm 17 now, and at college teachers usually describe me as having exceptional writing technique. I think my creativity from a writing point of view came from a mixture of books, films and video games. Generally I'm pretty creative, I do a lot of artwork and play a plethora of instruments too (y)
As much as I always loved to write, reading was never there for me. I mean, there are a lot of good books I read, don't get me wrong. Though whenever I click on a thread, I get a since of boredness and lazyness from the start. As awful as it seems, I must find a cure! :3
Take some time off to watch TV or go running? Better advice is to read professionally published books and short stories. If find that when I'm bored for random stuff it's because I feel that I'm not going to get anything out of it or that it's going to be bad and I just don't want to read something like that again. Looking at stuff that's already pro quality can help. I'm going to suggest "Phineas and Ferb" for TV, Sundown for running, and "My Mother She killed Me, My father He Ate Me" as a book. The TV is a well written cartoon full of fun little ideas and phrases. It's the highest rated among kids right now and for good reason. All of the episodes are available streaming from Netflix. It can also be found at random times on the Disney Chanel. Sunset is nice to run becasue there's still light and it's nice and warm. If you live somewhere hotter (it'll be up to 92 where I live), sunset is still nice because you can run away the stresses of the day and work up a good sweat before a shower and an evening of other entertainments. The book is a collection of short stories done by fairly famous writers. What it is is new fairy tales. Some are set in the present while others have a more traditional location. You can get it for about $10 either physically or as an ebook from all major book sellers. If you try one of these or find another solution, I'd love for you to let me (or us) know because some days I feel the same way.
"click on a thread --" Are you saying you have trouble reading stuff on the forum? If so, that's totally understandable. Just keep clicking until you find something that interests you. Or if you're talking about books, try audio books.
Pace yourself. Read the first paragraph, breathe, then muse over it. Read the second paragraph, pause, breathe, muse over it, then relate it to the first. Read the third paragraph ... When your brain becomes like a cheap 30 watt light-bulb and starts fizzling out, stop! (There's that nice bar around the corner. ). The story will always be there and can be returned to. But that exhausted-boredom drink ... priceless!
I also have the same problem; actually I generally hate reading since I'm easily bored (well, I'm easily bored by most stories regardless of medium, as it takes a lot to impress me) so it's really hard for me to get myself to read. Ultimately, reading is still the best way to learn how to write, of course, that is undeniable, but sometimes it might help to get a different storytelling perspective from other forms of media, such as film, TV series, and so forth. You might even want to look at things from other cultures, like anime or French movies or classical Persian literature, in order to find new, refreshing things. Recently, over the last summer, I forced myself to watch craploads of anime (I rarely watched anime before, and all I knew and cared about it came from either my friends or the internet), and it was a very educational experience, exposing me to different styles of storytelling, characterization, and plotting I was only vaguely aware of, and I think that ultimately it helped me with my writing a lot. That's just an example of how a different medium can help your writing. They're all no substitute for reading a good book, of course, but I think they're a good way to divert your time when you don't want to read, but always come back to the reading. Writing is going to be difficult if you don't read.
I can relate to your problem, I easily get bored from reading too, maybe because I need peace and quiet and right now that Im living at my moms house that is hard to find But I also find it difficult to find a book that catches my attention. When I was younger I read A LOT, but nowadays I am so much more picky about what to read. Especially when realizing that the books that I fond the most entertaining is not what you would call "quality litterature", hehe. So it's also some sort of knowing that I "should" read all these "good" books instead of the books I like, which takes the fun away. How do you do that? what does it mean?
It may just be your choice of reading material. Hit the library and see what you can come up with. Try wandering into the children's section and pick up a book from a long series, then wander into the adult area and pick up something from each sorting category. Pick up some monthly story publication like Analogue. I actually had a different sort of problem with my reading material. Some was digital, forcing me to remain upright at my computer. Some of it was paperback, which meant it was hard to hold open. (At least our paperback collection doesn't have scorpions anymore. It was distracting to have a barely-perceptible red dot wandering around the page.) Some of my books are very heavy.
It is your choice of reading material. What do you enjoy writing? There's bound to be something similar that you can read. But you seem to be talking about forum threads. And well, that's an odd sort of complaint.
Read stuff similar to what you write. The idea that writers have to be so eager to read that they'll read anything they can get their hands on never made ANY sense to me. It's like saying musicians need to listen to anything passed off as music, no matter how trashy. Read what interests you and don't feel that you have to read something you don't like just to meet some stereotype that writers have to be obsessed with reading. Reading has always seemed overrated to me in it's usefulness in writing. (And kind of inconsistent.) We're supposed to read to learn how to write by seeing what works with published authors, but whenever we find published books that go against what writing "experts" say, we're supposed to ignore it because those books are the exceptions to the rule. So if you want to read a book, read a book. Find a book that you like and read it. But don't waste time reading something that you don't enjoy just to say you're reading. IMO, you'll do MUCH more harm than good forcing yourself to read something you don't like. (I know I did. I used to HATE all books because I was forced to read book after book that I despised. IMO, it's better to wait for reading that you enjoy.)
This is irrelevant to the point at hand, but I agree with this analysis on reading. I can actually relate to the musical comparison. I hated music in my childhood b/c most stuff I heard was in my native language/classical stuff that I simply couldn't find interest in. Now, it's become a completely different beast. I have a nasty habit of not finishing books I start simply b/c I feel it's a waste of time. On the other hand, I'll go out of my way to find books that I feel interested in.
I disagree. I am one of those people who will read anything I can get my hands on. That being said I know MANY people who are not like me, and several of them are VERY effective writers in their chosen genre. I think the generalization that if you don't read everything you can't write anything is every bit as damaging as saying that if you don't do everything exactly THIS way you'll never make it in the world. Nothing changes that way and everyone is different. Cut people some slack.
