bemusedlybespectacled:

my best advice for writing, no joke: read more books.

not just books you think you’ll like, but even books you think (or know) are going to be terrible or boring.

published books. the mainstreamiest of mainstream books. books way over your reading level or in a genre you think is intellectually beneath you. books you pick up and read the back cover of and think “why the fuck would anyone read this?”

because you’ll pick up a couple of things, namely:

• what other people’s writing looks like
• what good writing looks like 
• what bad writing looks like

how did I figure out how dialogue works? did someone tell me? no, I just picked it up from reading other people’s writing, over and over again, and at one point I realized, “oh, you start a new line every time a new person talks.”

how do I know not to overuse a thesaurus for simple words like “said”? I read a lot of books where they didn’t do that (cough ELDEST cough TWILIGHT cough), decided that it looked silly, and didn’t put it in my writing.

you read a lot of books, and you start to pick up on what’s the norm, what you like, what kinds of things you want to write for yourself. I’ve read enough books to know that, for me, consistency and continuity are really fucking important. so now I take a lot of steps to make sure that I keep the continuity going. and that’s because I’ve read a couple of books (even books I’ve really liked! especially books I really liked!) where there was a continuity error, sometimes a blindingly obvious one that took me out of the story. if I’d only ever read books that had a great grasp of continuity, how would I know that it was important?

do you want to write well? I don’t mean “do you want to get published” or “do you want to make it your career,” because you don’t need those things to write. but do you want to write well? even if it’s “just” fic? even if it never leaves your documents folder?

read more books.