Reading and researching, for new writers

On three separate online writing forums, I’ve recently been treated to the same unfortunate spectacle: writers (often very young ones, but not always*) who know very little about classic or even current science fiction and fantasy, and who want to write in the genre.

They don’t read it, or they may not read much at all. They may come to SFF from movie tie-ins, fanfiction, or Dr Who (and about 75% of those seem to have only seen post-reboot Who from the last ten years). They may come from anime and manga, with the mistaken idea that anime is only about crazy hair, superpowers, and explosions, and struggle to tell similarly vivid stories in text form. (When someone comes to me with a bad case of Dragon Ball Z, I usually prescribe Cowboy BeBop or Ghost in the Shell. Or at least Trigun. Vash has Hair and a Backstory.)

This is like announcing that, although you are overweight and out of shape, you will be entering a triathlon next week. Are you likely to win, or even place? Nope. Are you likely to hurt yourself? Possibly – if you even get to the physical stage. At the very least, you might derail your progress by setting unrealistic goals.

The simple, brutal solution for the triathlon? Hit the gym and actually train. For writing?

Jon Stewart 'Read a book' GIF

If you don’t read, you are probably not going to be able to write readable stories. You can happily wank around with bad fanfiction and self-published shorts on Amazon, but the odds are not good on you winning a Nebula or Hugo Award. Or earning J.K. Rowling or E.L. James-levels of moolah. Who knows? You might. But the lottery’s probably a better long shot.

One example last week was particularly salient: a person loftily asked whether the fantasy-reading world was ready for a mainstream fantasy book with an openly gay M/M relationship. Within a couple of hours, other writers had offered links to several hundred mainstream recent and older SFF books with LGBTQ characters and relationships, and more discussion as to why it’s no longer even a point of contention for many SFF publishers. Part of the discussion veered off into a snide rant about ‘Pink SFF’ being forced upon readers, and how manly men were hoping to reclaim spec fiction for the survival of the species (which was hilarious to read.) The original poster was a bit stunned, but now has a reading list. And hopefully new inspiration.

All too often, when more seasoned writers gently point out that 1) the SFF community has been having a deep, wide-ranging dialog for over a century, and that 2) the Shiny Young Thing’s* shiny new world-changing idea is likely to be a familiar old trope…there is much gnashing of newbie teeth. Much flouncing and declamation of ‘I am New! I am Shiny!’ Or there is a disheartened and demoralized newbie creeping away, certain that nothing they create will amount to much, so why even try?

The best battle-plan falls somewhere in between. Ideas, after all, are ridiculously common. Most writers and artists have more ideas for projects than they can ever fulfill. What we do with ideas is more important: how we frame them, dress them up in philosophy or action, and make them uniquely ours. I joke that N.K. Jemisin and I stole the same trope from Tanith Lee, but filed off different serial numbers…but that’s not far from how older ideas really do spark newer ones.

If the problem is simple unfamiliarity, the new writer can read. Read Best-of lists and the best four or five-starred books on Amazon or Goodreads. Brush up on the critical skill of Google-Fu, and learn how to use Wikipedia, TV Tropes, and various compiled booklists to narrow down your focus. Take the books that spark your interest, and try to analyze them for what made them work. Not even the strongest speed-reader can hope to absorb a 100+ years of speculative fiction quickly, so it’s wiser to take it slow, in easy portions. From there, you can go into writing exercises, revision tricks, how to research the publishing industry itself…

But it all starts with reading a book.

*The same reaction also seems to come from writers between 55 and 75 of age, often male, often self-published, who haven’t kept up with genres and technologies, either. Several of the most entertaining recent AuthorFails have come from this group. It has happened enough that it’s a data point in Filigree’s Rule.