Communities

Writing
Writing
Codidact Meta
Codidact Meta
The Great Outdoors
The Great Outdoors
Photography & Video
Photography & Video
Scientific Speculation
Scientific Speculation
Cooking
Cooking
Electrical Engineering
Electrical Engineering
Judaism
Judaism
Languages & Linguistics
Languages & Linguistics
Software Development
Software Development
Mathematics
Mathematics
Christianity
Christianity
Code Golf
Code Golf
Music
Music
Physics
Physics
Linux Systems
Linux Systems
Power Users
Power Users
Tabletop RPGs
Tabletop RPGs
Community Proposals
Community Proposals
tag:snake search within a tag
answers:0 unanswered questions
user:xxxx search by author id
score:0.5 posts with 0.5+ score
"snake oil" exact phrase
votes:4 posts with 4+ votes
created:<1w created < 1 week ago
post_type:xxxx type of post
Search help
Notifications
Mark all as read See all your notifications »
Q&A

Post History

60%
+1 −0
Q&A Should I write a novel if I haven't read many?

In all the author biographies I have read, two things seem to be constant. They are all voracious wide-ranging readers, and they all (or almost all) started writing in some form at a very early age...

posted 7y ago by Mark Baker‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

Answer
#4: Attribution notice removed by user avatar System‭ · 2020-01-03T20:41:56Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/31910
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#3: Attribution notice added by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-08T07:29:58Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/31910
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-08T07:29:58Z (almost 5 years ago)
In all the author biographies I have read, two things seem to be constant. They are all voracious wide-ranging readers, and they all (or almost all) started writing in some form at a very early age. It follows that they cannot have been widely read at the time they started writing. Wide extensive reading was clearly part of their development as a writer.

This makes sense. A novel is the most complex piece of art that humans create (far more complex than a movie). You are not going to learn to put all the pieces together in a way that sustains continuous interest and leads to a compelling conclusion without many false starts. Writing will change how you read. As you struggle to achieve some effect in your own work, you will start to read with speciaL attention to that effect in the work of others.

The corpus of literature will become the food you consume to sustain you in your development as a novelist. But just as an athlete needs food to sustain them, but cannot operate by gorging until they are hugely fat before they start training, training and nutrition must go hand in hand.

Read, write, repeat.

#1: Imported from external source by user avatar System‭ · 2017-12-10T12:47:47Z (almost 7 years ago)
Original score: 11