Years ago, a coworker at my then-job began talking of his upcoming involvement in the annual writing challenge National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo. This was not his first year participating, and I—as a fledgling editor and participant myself—felt my ears sufficiently perked. And, after further discussion, he bravely agreed to share his work in process for my review and (hopeful) enjoyment.
The story…needed improvement. Logistical errors aside (like not factoring in the speed of parachute descent with how long the scene was taking), the writing was poorly paced, elementary, and bland. I hesitantly approached our next conversation with a question: What books do you enjoy reading? “Oh,” he replied, “I don’t really read.” Instant alarm bells.
That response of his is not the primary point of this post. Enough has been said of the importance of reading as a writer, and I imagine that any writer who has found themselves here has already taken that to heart. So, let’s skip past the question of whether or not you, dear reader, read.
What, then, do you read?
I’m a horror author, one might say, so I read horror. Great, and what else?
First off, I am not poo-pooing reading within your own genre. Not at all. Self-published, high-output authors who are writing to market, for instance, must be intimately familiar with the current tropes and structures in their respective genres. The trap, of course, is becoming marooned on the island of “your genre.”
The literary world is, quite thankfully, a flower field blooming faster than its borders can handle. Books are being published at an ever-increasing rate—a rate driven primarily through the means of online self-publishing. (One estimate puts the number of books not published through traditional publishers at around seventy-five percent, if not more, and that statistic is dated.) Understandably, then, it is easy to be overwhelmed by the number of titles in one’s preferred genre alone and not have the time or energy to venture beyond.
But then, that reality in and of itself might be the push needed. I, for one, feel that I have paid my dues to the worlds of science fiction and fantasy. I spent years reading those genres exclusively, and I no longer have the energy to keep up. Have I abandoned those books completely? No. Of course not. But I have read enough to be familiar with a wide variety of styles within those genres. (Quite frankly, I was also burned out. Now, it’s much healthier for me to be picking up a sci-fi yarn about, oh, every sixth book.) And so I forced myself to read other genres. Yes, “forced.” Doing so is something that—more often than not—requires a conscious effort. But here’s the secret: I promise that once you start, it gets a hell of a lot easier.
Enough about the what. How about the why? Why the importance of reading across genres? Again, this is not a new question, and most of you have some answer already. Among the other reasons given, Masterclass points out how reading widely develops critical thinking skills. Not only can you decide if you are reading good writing, but why it is good. What about the story makes it shimmer for you? Is it the syntax and the flow of the sentences? The suspense and concealing of clues? Character development? What details are provided about the world and when?
They also point out how varied reading is like a grammar hack. How does a particular writer navigate certain sentence structures? When is the information unclear, or what helps it to be communicated clearly; if you had to reread a sentence, where did it go wrong? Who tends toward semicolons over independent sentences, and why does it work—or not? When, if ever, can you get away with comma splices?
The first answer that occurs to me is exposure. To style, to vocabulary, to structure…. As mentioned before, each genre tends toward a certain structure, an established framework of beats and must-have inclusions; any fan of Coyne’s Story Grid will know this well. Why not, then, explore other structures? Why not feast upon other styles?
Looking for bleak and frank explorations of human and societal nature in the mid-20th century? Check out Joyce Carol Oates and Flannery O’Connor. A fan of subtle absurdist humor (though not without its occasional grim moments)? Calvin Trillin and John Irving. The comic tragedy of war? Joseph Heller and Herman Wouk. Need a different take on intrigue beyond John Le Carré? Try Graham Greene. Blending story across multiple generations? One of my favorites, Salman Rushdie (and don’t miss Jeffrey Eugenide’s Middlesex). Magical realism? Gabriel Garcia Márquez is a must (though Rushdie also succeeds well here). And seeking “the great American novel”? Well, I think Thomas Wolfe has you covered.
Style? How about an exploration of true grammatical rules breaking? José Saramago. Terse sentences and vivid description? Cormac McCarthy (who also qualifies for the preceding) and, of course, “Papa” Hemingway, the granddaddy of efficient prose. Pure, authentic, and beautiful voice? Alice Walker, Orhan Pamuk, and the—excuse the pun—beloved and magnificent Toni Morrison. And if you really feel the need for a writer to flex how much smarter they are (but also provide an incredibly detailed historical setting), Umberto Eco is your guy. (Sorry, not sorry, Umberto.)
And then there is the minefield of ideas that lies waiting. We’re writers, and we steal our inspiration from others. Who knows where the next plot will be found? As Ray Bradbury wrote, “When did you last read a book of poetry or take time, of an afternoon, for an essay or two? Have you ever read a single issue of Geriatrics, the Official Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, a magazine devoted to ‘research and clinical study of the diseases and processes of the aged and aging’? Or read, or even seen, a copy of What’s New, a magazine published by the Abbott Laboratories in North Chicago, containing articles such as ‘Tubocurarene for Cesarean Section’ or ‘Phenurone in Epilepsy,’ but also utilizing poems by William Carlos Williams, Archibald Macleish, stories by Clifton Fadiman and Leo Rosten; covers and interior illustrations by John Groth, Aaron Bohrod, William Sharp, and Russell Cowles? Absurd? Perhaps. But ideas lie everywhere, like apples fallen and melting in the grass for lack of wayfaring strangers with an eye and a tongue for beauty, whether absurd, horrific, or genteel.”
(Not to be dismissed is the evidence that reading across genres could be one of the top factors in increasing reading comprehension. Most teachers, I’m sure, can point to how many students predictably—and perhaps begrudgingly—grab titles from the same section of the library over and over. One study, albeit a small one, showed that a majority of the fourth-graders in the study group demonstrated improvement in their reading comprehension when assigned different genres, fiction and non-fiction, to read across a six-week period. However, it also showed that many needed encouragement to continue this practice once the study was completed.)
I firmly believe that we as writers are a consequence of what we read. Hence my coworker’s struggle. Perhaps, when we first start, we might copy an idolized author’s style. (Thanks for being there for me, William Gibson.) But—hopefully—we abandon it quickly upon recognizing that that is not the path to success. Our voice, over time, becomes an amalgamation of everything we’ve read. Most of this happens subconsciously, I think, but only if the fuel is provided. The more we have read, and the more diversely we have read, the greater our experience and inspiration from which to draw.
One of the biggest hurdles to this undertaking is perhaps just knowing where to begin. If tasked with walking the stacks in my local library and pulling books at random, I know that I can freeze up. But a great place to start would be the Recommended section; after all, who knows books better than librarians? Same with recommended titles at your local used bookstore; ask the staff for their favorites. One of the strategies I employed was a simple Google search for the “top 100 books you should read.” The result will be numerous lists providing a year’s-plus worth of titles to get you going (though I recommend ignoring the obvious; focus on titles that you don’t recognize). Others emerge out of strange places. I was drawn to Thomas Wolfe through the letters of his editor, Maxwell Perkins. A mention in Dawkins’s The God Delusion led me to Evelyn Waugh, and if you earn praise from Dawkins, that’s enough cause for notice for me.
I fear that I may be beating an already-decaying horse, but I don’t think the point can be emphasized enough, particularly to writers who may just be venturing out, first drafts clutched in trembling hands. This life of words requires a constant effort to never lie still, to not let our patch of ground grow starved. We grow as writers by how much material, and the variety of, that we can take in. Literary diversity is the steady wind that breaks us free of pruning in a stagnant pond and sets us sailing upon the wide and glorious sea of genre.