On writing: reading

[StillStunned]

It seems to be common advice to new writers: read! The more you read, the better your writing will be. Or perhaps the less you read, the more limited your writing will be. I've sometimes told people to reread their favourite books and try to emulate the style, or the bits they enjoyed most.

"But won't my writing be derivative?"

Only if it's bad. And let's face it: if you need to be told to emulate your favourite authors, you probably haven't discovered your voice yet. That comes from writing, and writing some more, and then writing a bit more. But you have to start somewhere, and it probably helps to start from a specific place, particularly if it's a place you enjoy.

But even for us old grognards of the hobby, it's important to keep reading. I won't say we have to keep up with modern trends, but I don't think there's really a downside to absorbing as many possible styles and techniques and tricks as we can. For my sword & sorcery stories, my model is RE Howard. The Countesses of Tannensdal draws heavily on the style of Georgette Heyer's Regency romances, and more indirectly Jane Austen's novels. The hag's speech patterns in Hag-Ridden: A Fairy Tale were based in part on Dr Seuss, but also on alliterative poetry, which I first encountered in The Lord of the Rings - and Gollum's speech patterns, in particularly as narrated by Andy Serkis in the audiobook version.

So what are everyone's thoughts and experiences? Do you prefer to read the classics, or pulp? And which is reflected most in your writing? Do you find yourself inspired by different authors, so that you try something completely different?

If you can, provide concrete examples. I don't think it's particularly useful to say, "I reread Hemingway every week," or "V.S. Naipaul's writing is in the back of my mind when I write dialogue." Show us how.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

With everything that I have going on, it is a choice:

I can either read the works of others or spend the time writing myself. I most frequently choose to make writing my priority.

That's not to say that I don't frequently advise new writers to seek out and read stories that will provide examples and guidance to what they want to accomplish themselves. I don't advocate reading simply for the sake of reading to them.

 

[FrancesScott]

My most recent story here is, A Study In Harlot. At 20,000 words, it’s my longest piece here, and is in the Lesbian category.

If it’s not totally obvious, the story is a pastiche of / homage to the Sherlock Holmes stories of Arthur Conan Doyle. It’s set in present day London (a nod to Mark Gatiss et al) and each of Sherlock, Watson, Mycroft, and Lestrade are now women (Augustine Maison - who has French antecedents in recognition of Edgar Allen Poe’s Auguste Dupin, Johanna Wyson, Marrinette Maison, and Geraldine Strada). Maison and Wyson are lesbian partners.

Aside from the above, I really tried to make it an R-rated Holmes story. Everything from the general set-up, to plot, to Maison’s detective work was meant to reflect Doyle’s work. I even reinterpreted certain things from A Study In Scarlet, like Maison and Wyson’s first encounter.

I tried to write it not only in my approximation to BE, but in a turn of the century style of phrasing. And I got three Europeans / Brits to help (@THBGato, @redgarters, and @Kumquatqueen). I have to write a WIWAW.

My other attempt to ape another author’s style was my very first story here. And I did write a WIWAW all about that.

https://www.literotica.com/s/wiwaw-ice-cream

 

[AG31]

It seems to be common advice to new writers: read! The more you read, the better your writing will be. Or perhaps the less you read, the more limited your writing will be. I've sometimes told people to reread their favourite books and try to emulate the style, or the bits they enjoyed most.

"But won't my writing be derivative?"

Only if it's bad. And let's face it: if you need to be told to emulate your favourite authors, you probably haven't discovered your voice yet. That comes from writing, and writing some more, and then writing a bit more. But you have to start somewhere, and it probably helps to start from a specific place, particularly if it's a place you enjoy.

But even for us old grognards of the hobby, it's important to keep reading. I won't say we have to keep up with modern trends, but I don't think there's really a downside to absorbing as many possible styles and techniques and tricks as we can. For my sword & sorcery stories, my model is RE Howard. The Countesses of Tannensdal draws heavily on the style of Georgette Heyer's Regency romances, and more indirectly Jane Austen's novels. The hag's speech patterns in Hag-Ridden: A Fairy Tale were based in part on Dr Seuss, but also on alliterative poetry, which I first encountered in The Lord of the Rings - and Gollum's speech patterns, in particularly as narrated by Andy Serkis in the audiobook version.

So what are everyone's thoughts and experiences? Do you prefer to read the classics, or pulp? And which is reflected most in your writing? Do you find yourself inspired by different authors, so that you try something completely different?

If you can, provide concrete examples. I don't think it's particularly useful to say, "I reread Hemingway every week," or "V.S. Naipaul's writing is in the back of my mind when I write dialogue." Show us how.

Gotta say that AH has interfered with my reading. I've always read fiction constantly. I take a book to the doctor's office in case I have to wait. But now, when I read, I can't help analyzing what the author is doing. (See my post from yesterday.) It's not necessarily a bad thing, since I love analysis almost as much as reading. I wonder if I'd be able to put my insights into use if I ever wrote anything again. I have a hard time imagining what it's like to be self conscious about style as one writes. But it's obvious that an awful lot of writers here in AH do just that.

 

[BeechLeaf]

Much as I love reading, and admire details of great writers' style, I can't see how it can apply to my own writing. I am stuck with the little square of ivory I can paint on, and could never get remotely near Jane Austen or Katherine Mansfield. There are so many I admire from afar. And here, I can read onehitwanda with awe, but doing so will never be able to change my style or small world.

 

[dirk2024]

Well, for the last year or so, I've been mostly reading erotica. Most of it from here, some I purchased from Amazon. (which was interesting, but shockingly poorly written).

Before that, it was what I consider to be mostly contemporary classics for me. Rarely anything older than Tolkien. But more recent authors like Jim Butcher, Steven R. Donaldson, George Martin and Suzanne Collins.

But in an effort to get back on the non-erotica horse, I purchased Red Rising by Pierce Brown yesterday. Here is an excerpt:

Darrow is a Red, a member of the lowest caste in the color-coded society of the future. Like his fellow Reds, he works all day, believing that he and his people are making the surface of Mars livable for future generations. Yet he toils willingly, trusting that his blood and sweat will one day result in a better world for his children.

But Darrow and his kind have been betrayed. Soon he discovers that humanity reached the surface generations ago. Vast cities and lush wilds spread across the planet. Darrow—and Reds like him—are nothing more than slaves to a decadent ruling class.

I can't say that I use anyone's voice other than my own. I have recently toyed with changing it up, but not with anything published. I do find myself drawn to Brown's style of writing though. Time will tell if it changes me.

 

[AStrangeDesire]

When I'm working on something in my own writing, I'll read works by other authors who I think are good writers, and see how they handled that particular topic.

Ex. Yesterday I was reading something by someone who posts here a lot (and writes well) to see how they handled their dialogue when it was interspersed with action and descriptions. It's something that I'll now try to work on in the next story I write, and then one I'm starting to edit.

I typically try to work on one, maybe two, things at a time to improve my writing, otherwise I find it's overwhelming.

Of course, some stuff I read just because the story is good and I want to know what happens next, or because I genuinely get sucked into the writing, then the analysis goes out the window

 

[redgarters]

All my lesbian slow burns on here are an emulation of writers I admire. It's so obvious to me that I don't even try to hide it @onehitwanda, @BrokenSpokes, @JCMcNeilly and others from the LS category inspired me to start writing, and the emotional beats in my stories are often conciously or unconciously borrowed from those authors. I've learned a lot reading their stories. Along the way I've met and worked with other great authors in the category, read their works and learned a whole heap of things that I try to keep in mind when I write. It's no question that it has made me a better writer.

My latest story, A Hopeful Hart, could be described as an hommage to Ashley Herring Blake's Clover Lake and Bright Falls sapphic trilogies. I even made it rather obvious by having one of the FMC's listen to her audiobooks.

I don't pretend to be able to match any of those author's level of writing (not even close in my opinion), but I'll gladly acnowledge how much I've learned from reading other authors' works.

 

[NotWise]

I read Hemingway and Fitzgerald and decided they were my models. That was decades before I actually started writing fiction, so now I don't know what, if anything, I've kept from that model.

 

[Bazzle]

Reading is a source of inspiration for me. I love reading good stories on here. Yes, I have a habit of Bazzling versions, but yes, I read.

 

[AG31]

I am stuck with the little square of ivory I can paint on,

Modest though you may be, you do have a way with words.

 

[Britva415]

I think it almost doesn't matter what you read, as long as it isn't just your friends' txtsp33k. Some of our authors seem downright illiterate. I don't mean that in the "functionally cannot read and write" sense, but in the sense of having no exposure to correctly proofread material, or to any level of storytelling craft beyond what their Discord buddies type in their bros-before-hoes server.

 

[HordHolm]

There are two authors in particular I have read a lot, and from whom I borrow: Terry Pratchett and George Macdonald Fraser. I wouldn't dare to say I come within light years of them in terms of their use of language, turn of phrase, etc. But what I have tried to take from them is structure: a) limit each section of the story to that which is necessary or entertaining (or preferably both, obviously), b) be concise, even if being concise takes thousands of words, and c) finish each story or part thereof with the reader wanting more.

 

[liliput1]

I think it almost doesn't matter what you read, as long as it isn't just your friends' txtsp33k. Some of our authors seem downright illiterate. I don't mean that in the "functionally cannot read and write" sense, but in the sense of having no exposure to correctly proofread material, or to any level of storytelling craft beyond what their Discord buddies type in their bros-before-hoes server.

Someone once said they didn’t know how they felt about something until they’d had an argument about it.

For some of us writing a story where we go left where someone else went right could be pretty motivating. And some people are right half the time, which is probably even more fertile ground because you can double steal from them and not sound derivative.

But I’ve also got two music albums that are among my favorites, but I hated one and disagreed with the choices the other made. They grew on me. The former sat for a year before I’d played it three times (which vexed me because I was a poor student and I paid good money for that “crap”), and then I played it all the time.

The other was days rather than months. I quickly realized she made a bunch of choices I never would have made and they were still the right choices. I’m parasocially proud of her for making them. I’ve tried to delay my judgments longer because of this. Maybe this actually is good but it’s a sleeper.

 

[StillStunned]

I have a hard time imagining what it's like to be self conscious about style as one writes.

Speaking for myself, when I read, I imagine someone reading the words aloud in my head, as if I were listening to an audiobook.

Then when I try to emulate that style in my own writing, I just imagine the same voice reading my story back to me. I write as if my lines were lines from that book.

 

[SmilingLez]

I read anything from children's stories and non-fiction to poetry and song lyrics. I get inspired when I can feel the author's soul in their words.

 

[SimonDoom]

I'm a stalwart believer in the idea that being a good reader helps make one a good writer.

Personally, I don't understand the concept of wanting to write but not to read. I love reading, and I was a reader of erotica long before I ever started writing it. My reading has been of immeasurable value in guiding me in how I want to write.

 

[liliput1]

I'm a stalwart believer in the idea that being a good reader helps make one a good writer.

Personally, I don't understand the concept of wanting to write but not to read. I love reading, and I was a reader of erotica long before I ever started writing it. My reading has been of immeasurable value in guiding me in how I want to write.

How do you whisper conspiratorially on this thing?

Writing + no reading sounds narcissistic to me. Everyone else is not worth my time but I’m worth your time? Yeah that’s not healthy.

 

[Britva415]

I'm a stalwart believer in the idea that being a good reader helps make one a good writer.

Personally, I don't understand the concept of wanting to write but not to read. I love reading, and I was a reader of erotica long before I ever started writing it. My reading has been of immeasurable value in guiding me in how I want to write.

What makes one a "good reader?"

 

[THBGato]

All my lesbian slow burns on here are an emulation of writers I admire. It's so obvious to me that I don't even try to hide it @onehitwanda, @BrokenSpokes, @JCMcNeilly and others from the LS category inspired me to start writing, and the emotional beats in my stories are often conciously or unconciously borrowed from those authors. I've learned a lot reading their stories. Along the way I've met and worked with other great authors in the category, read their works and learned a whole heap of things that I try to keep in mind when I write. It's no question that it has made me a better writer.

Maybe it's a sign of how much you've influenced ME, but I could have written the above verbatim! (I'd add @bi_cathy and @CreatingKate to that list.)

I read a lot. At least 2-3 hours a day. Aside from the brilliant Lit writers that have inspired me, I often find myself 'reaching' for things I've read when writing: the poetry of Katherine Phillips and WH Auden; plays by Churchill, Miller and Shakespeare; classics by Austen, Steinbeck and Atwood; modern writers like Emma Robinson and Holly Bourne; and song after song after song.

The OP asked for an example. There's a moment in my very short 'I have seen love' where I wanted to emphasize stillness and I found myself reaching for Steinbeck's cadence when his narrator describes Curry's wife after her death. I wrote:

They held their heads together a moment, a long moment, a true moment, their lips seemingly sealed and moving only very lightly.

Steinbeck wrote:

As happens sometimes, a moment settled and hovered and remained for much more than a moment. And sound stopped and movement stopped for much, much more than a moment.

Later in the same story I aped Auden's "Funeral blues":

If we heard them coming back, I would go and intercept them. Block the door. Prevent them from entering. Drag them back to the bar.

 

[SimonDoom]

What makes one a "good reader?"

Many different things. Reading often. Reading broadly. Reading open-mindedly. Reading enthusiastically. Reading attentively, so one learns about methods and styles of writing.

 

[Seurat]

I peruse LW, BDSM, and EH here on a daily basis, although there isn't always a lot to catch my eye. In the real world, I prefer fantasy and mystery and am reading DCCarl and 'And then there were none'. I think that reading keeps the mind active, which leads to better writing. As for comparison to classic authors, y'all are a lot more educated than me.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

What makes one a "good reader?"

There are plenty of readers who read stories just for the plot. They primarily want to know what happened next, and they often miss the finer points that the author tries to make. I suppose that's especially true in erotica and smut.

A good reader in this sense tries to "savor" a good story. And there's so much to savor in a good story. The characterization, the subtleties, the way the author weaves the story...

I've seen something quite similar in the way people listen to music. Many people focus only on the lyrics, on the most basic melody, or on the beat, and they fail to notice subtler stuff, such as harmonies, counterpoint, tempo...

Unlike reading, to truly savor the intricacies of good music, you need to have a natural gift to "hear" it, even if some of it can be taught. There's no real excuse for being a "bad" reader.

 

[bi_cathy]

All my lesbian slow burns on here are an emulation of writers I admire. It's so obvious to me that I don't even try to hide it @onehitwanda, @BrokenSpokes, @JCMcNeilly and others from the LS category inspired me to start writing, and the emotional beats in my stories are often conciously or unconciously borrowed from those authors. I've learned a lot reading their stories.

Same as @THBGato . Could almost copy and paste that paragraph, except that I was already writing but I was focused on the short form, the single scenes that are high on erotism. It was safer to bottle up everything in one or a few short scenes and focus on the height of attraction, and the moments before everything shifts in a relationship.

But reading Wanda, BrokenSpokes, and JC (and briefly helping edit some of JC’s work and seeing her progress behind the scenes) made me realize there was room for much more in erotica. More heart, more complexities, more character development, and more side characters and storylines. They made me want to step outside of that safe zone and try to explore longer stories. That meant changing a lot how I approached writing, what I wrote, and how I wrote things. It also forced me to start writing more smut in my smut, which isn’t always easy for me. My first attempts took 4-5 years to push across the finish line, but it’s become easier/faster since.

I’ll never find the words to explain how much these three influenced my trajectory as a writer.

 

[Rambling_Chantrix]

If you can, provide concrete examples.

A few months ago @896972 introduced me to sevencest and I just thought it was some of the neatest, sharpest writing I've seen in a very long time. I had this very immediate "well, I don't need to write anything else, rosexthorn's got it covered" feeling. For a while now I've used a rubric of "what is this sentence/clause/word doing for me" when editing myself, and thorn's writing is such an obvious distillation of that principle that everything's gotta have a use.

But then, of course, I did keep writing. I've been told that a few lines in greatest american husband have a thorn-esque resonance, which I take as a great compliment. Someday I want to try emulating thorn's style more intentionally, and more closely.

The more you read, the better your writing will be.

Have we ever talked about the inverse? The more you write, the better your reading will be?