A long time ago now, there was a fair amount of kerfuffle on twitter about āDo you have to read in order to be able to write?ā I saw a lot of takes that there were other ways to learn craft.
And there are. But Iām still going to argue that you almost have to be exposed to the medium youāre creating in to be good at it (if you donāt want to be good at it, thatās cool, too, have fun!). You have to expose yourself to it, observe it, engage in it. That specific medium. Not others.
There are lots of ways to learn the craft of storytelling. Anime, manga, comic books, webcomics, graphic novels, comic strips, movies, live action TV, cartoons, short films, poetry, screenplays, stage plays (both on the page and on the stage), opera, ballet, music, newsreels, creative nonfiction, podcasts, video games, tabletop gaming, role plays, letās playsā¦the list is basically endless, and they all teach various elements of storytelling.
And a lot of them overlap! You can definitely get inspiration for your novel from anime and movies and podcasts. There are still character ideas and worldbuilding concepts and structure you can gather from them.
But if youāre trying to write prose fiction, you need to learn how to express those ideas in prose fiction. And the only way to do that is byā¦reading and studying prose fiction.
There used to be a Thing in a lot of fanfiction that characters would āsweat-drop.ā This was pretty obviously taken from anime and manga, where the little raindrop marker on a characterās head indicatesā¦oh, I would say the closest word is probably usually chagrin. And that works in anime and manga!
Itā¦kind of doesnāt work in prose fiction. It looks weird, only means something to a very limited subset of people, and itās just kinda awkward. Thereās other ways in prose to indicate that emotion, but itās not described in manga the way it will be in prose, because manga isnāt prose.
If youāre watching a movie and the leitmotif starts playing in a minor key, you start anticipating something tragic will happen. It brings out mournfulness and anticipation and fear, oftentimes. But in a novel, if a character says, āIt was as if minor chords started playing,ā ā¦grief isnāt really the feeling a reader gets. In prose, that same concept reads as cheeky and genre-aware and leaning on the fourth wall. Itās amusing, and even if it tells readers to anticipate a certain thing, they arenāt going to be in the same mood as they will be from hearing it. It just doesnāt translate that way.
There are other ways in prose fiction to built mournfulness and fear. And you wonāt learn what they are if you donāt read it.
I had some classmates, back when I was taking a screenwriting class, who you could tell were prose fiction writers and not great at adapting to the new format, probably because they were so new to it and hadnāt ever even really read it. So we would get stage directions that would read like, āTonkan script covers the pillar in the center of the room. The Tonkan people havenāt been seen in a thousand years and their language was lost long ago. Theyāre mainly known for their weaponry left behind in their ruinsā¦ā
And thatāsā¦great, for prose fiction (itās not because I came up with it in a minute and donāt care about it). But in screenwriting? None of that means anything and itās a useless dump of info in the screenwriting. In screenwriting, that usually looks more like, āTonkan script, a lost language made of sharp angles and edges, mostly squares and rectangles, covers the pillar in the center of the room. A camera pans over it. SEANās eyes widen at the sight.ā Because that actually indicates whatās going to be on screen in the movie. That includes the relevant details to the format. The former? Not so much.
And finding time for reading can be really hard. I get that. I donāt read as much as Iād like to, either.
But itās critical, to learn a craft, to actually engage with that craft. It has its own unique methods and techniques and secrets that you have to know to produce it well.
Maybe itās frustrating. But creating well is hard sometimes! Itās a still that takes a lot of time and effort! It should be appreciated.
germansingergirl
tangentwithtanner
janainaart
titsay
