Reading

I would like to think this post will be one your scroll past because you have heard it all before. But just in case, I am going to put it out there because I am worried about the world of writers who aren't reading.

Reading is the only training you will ever get for writing. Alright, English lessons can teach you where to put commas and full stops, but no one can teach you how to write. You learn from books, your brain goes through a lot of things when you read, the intrigued, the immense build up, and then the climax and the happy satisfying ending when all the threads are tied off.

These are things that books teach you how to do, how to build up the suspense, how to let it down easy without just dropping your readers and ending the book too soon. They are important to learning and letting your imagination flow, they give you a starting point. I wouldn't here right now if I hadn't started reading fantasy book at every chance I got. I don't even know where it started, but I know for a fact it isn't going to end.

But I don't just read fiction books in my genre. I read non-fiction books as well, about vampires, werewolves, the myths people grew up with. Stories the months used to tell their children to make them behave. I read about the origins of the stories, but I look up origins of names and specific words. All of these snippets of information will help you through the writing process.

Every genre will have a website somewhere on the internet that will warn you of the cliches and tropes. Things to avoid, or things to add in, sometimes the cliches will help your book, but that is something to go into on another day.

Reading these things will help you understand your genre and knows where it came from and see how it developed into what it is today. Genres are always changing and evolving as writers become more imaginative and work between the lines of different genres. Just because you like writing fantasy but also love reading crime, slap them together! There is nowhere in the world where it says you can't. But it helps to understand the different genres before you start crossing them. There are a million trillion books out there that can aid your research.

Read as widely as you can, that is my only piece of advice from this post! If you are looking for recommendations, let me know I'll see if I can point you in the right direction!

#research #genre #tips