Want to be a better writer? Read
An oft-repeated bit of advice for writers is "you gotta read". That said, I pretty often see people confused about what this means-- or arguing about a narrow set of what "counts" as reading for that advice.
This is my attempt to wrangle with my own perspective on how to execute on that advice, according to my own attempts over the last few years to live up to that. (And indeed, while this is primarily aimed at writers, this'll probably be broadly applicable to writers across a wide variety of genres, formats, and even mediums. just move things a little to the left if they don't apply)
If you want to get better at writing, what should you read? More or less, everything. But to give some guidelines:
1. Read Widely Within Your Genre
Genres are more or less conversations composed of stories. They are built upon break out hits, popular tropes, emerging trends, current concerns, stylistic flourishes. You can't be part of the conversation if you don't know what's already been discussed. You don't want to bumble your way into a genre you barely know, talk a big game about "revolutionizing it", and end up writing a trite replication of a 50-year-old pillar of the genre.
2. Read Widely OUTSIDE Your Genre
At their best, genres are conversations. At their worst, they are the bland copying of other peoples' homework. You need to bring new conversational partners in (or, to mix metaphors, new DNA) to keep things fresh. I'm a spec fic person first and foremost, but I make sure I mix that diet up with other genres, from "literary" fiction, mysteries, romance, etc, because they'll teach you the elements your own preferred genre(s) might be missing.
Non-fiction are stories too, just stories about true facts. (Some of those stories are truer than others; some are more convincing; the two aren't necessarily the same). Learning how those narratives are built is vital. Not to mention, the information itself can inspire you— real life science, history, sociology, economics, etc, are fertile beds for world-building, characterization, and plot.
4. Read From Other Backgrounds and Cultures Besides Your Own
I'm hardly the first person to say that the publishing industry, like so many industries, primarily elevates certain voices— white, western, male, often privileged— over others. This is gonna give you a bit of a narrow perspective of how the world works. It is also likely to give you a narrow perspective of how stories are constructed. There are a LOT of pieces of writing advice that's treated like universal (the Three Act structure, the Hero's Journey, etc) that are really just extremely common in Western literature, and looking at pieces from outside it will expand your ideas of how to create stories.
5. Read From Other Time Periods
Honestly, this is sort of just a different take on the last one ('The Past Is A Different Country', or so they say), but it's different enough that I want to clarify it. Tropes and trends and story convention change overt time. Read stories from 50 years ago; 200; 500; 2000. Plays, fairy tales, ballads, poems. Seriously, ancient mythological epics are SO cool to read because you truly feel connected to a storytelling tradition stretching back generations.
6. Read Books for Kids and Youth
The best kids books have stunning clarity of purpose. They have to be REALLY good at communicating their information. Learn from that.
I wish we had a better word for this, because 'consumption' does bring to mind someone just ploughing through food endlessly without thought or discernment, but we don't have another word for the breadth of ways we enjoy media. Watch television and movies and short films (and consider how those formats differ). Listen to podcasts and radio plays. Watch stage plays. Read the scripts of all the above. Read comics and graphic novels. Play video games. Watch the news. Listen to music. Go to art museums and galleries of all stripes. All of these have different strengths and weaknesses, different pacing, different styles. Learn from them.
8. Pay Attention to the Media You Might Not Even Think About As Media
Yes, we're taking the last one even further. I'm talking about the media often overlooked, either because it's often denigrated by society, or because frankly, it just blends in the background. In the first category, that's stuff like reality TV and social media posts and graffiti. In the second we have things like Facebook Marketplace posts or the backs of cereal boxes or the technical manual for your new air conditioner. (Advertisements live somewhere in the Venn diagram overlap between the two.) These all also have their own structure, styles, and merits.
9. Read Bad (and Simply Mediocre) Media
Recommendation lists will usually be filled with examples of good stories, because, well, they're good. But if you're reading in part to learn how to write, there's a lot to be gleamed by pieces that just... miss the mark. Whether it's clocks or cars or electronics, when things break you can gleam insights into how they're supposed to work; much is the same with the not-so-great media.
Pretty much every medium's industry has formal publisher who help distribute art, and in theory, vet for quality. They are, broadly, successfully at that... but as I've discussed before, those same publishers can often act as gatekeepers, with overly narrow view of what counts as "quality". Across mediums, the indie space is often where you'll find the most unique, experimental, and boundary-pushing art. It can be harder to navigate, but oh, is it worth it.
I'm sharing this on Tumblr, so I suspect I'm mostly preaching to the choir here, but nonetheless. In addition to the aforementioned benefits of indie media, fanfiction is capable of teaching you how to write transformative works. I'd argue transformative works have always been the bedrock of human storytelling, and that has not changed at all in the modern day. Mainstream media is choc-a-block with remakes, reboots, and adaptations, most of it bad. Why? Because they don't know what makes for a good transformative work. So open up AO3, my children, and read!
12. Read Other Writers' Thoughts About The Writing Process
Well, since you've gotten to the twelfth point, you've succeeded there.
Okay, but seriously, I put this so low on the list because I do think it can sometimes be overstated; it is very easy to get lost in a weed of theory over simply just writing. But it is good to process and reflect o nall the things you've been reading, and this is a good way to do so.
And above all else, as you explore the wide wealth of pieces people throughout time and cultures have created, to paraphrase my friend Artemis: be curious about it. Curiosity is where the cool things happen.
