What kind of writer are you?
Pick your favourite novel. No, not the one you talk about to impress people; being a writer begins with truth. The point of this exercise is to find out what makes you tick, what really works for you, deep down, as a reader and therefore as a writer. So be brutally honest. No one has to know but you. Choose anything from a child’s picture book, to a misty romance, to nihilistic noir. Don’t tell yourself you love War and Peace or White Noise or Samson Agonistes unless you’ve read it ten times, worn it ragged, and had to buy another edition when the first one fell to pieces.
Run your hand over the books on your shelves. Which soft spine makes you pause and smile fondly? That’s the one you want: your old friend, your comfort, the book that takes you away to a time or place where you’ve spent hours living and dreaming, a world that thrills or frightens you, to which you escape when times are tough or you’re ill or under stress.
Take it down. Leaf through it. Remember the best bits. Now work out why you treasure it. Write down your thoughts–keep them to one paragraph. (You’re a writer; learn to leave out what’s not important.) Pick from one to three favourites.
Here are mine.
The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien. A fantasy novel set in Middle Earth. Tolkien’s style is occasionally heavy but he understands the bones of words. He knows they are like icebergs: nine tenths of their meaning lies below the waterline. The meaning is unseen, but it has mass and momentum; it matters. Tolkien’s word choices give heft and veracity to his people and places. And, oh, the glory and the tragedy and the weapons, the valour and joy and despair! This is story. I first read LotR when I was eleven years old and have read it about once a year since. Each time, I learn something new: about myself, about writing, about why language matters.
Fire from Heaven, by Mary Renault. A novel of the young Alexander the Great. Stupendous use of point-of-view (a kind of untethered third person) and historical detail. More than that, though, you can smell and taste and hear Alexander’s world. His story–his relationships with his mother, then his father, then his lover; his gradual understanding that he must conquer the world–is gob-smackingly believable. This novel helped me understand that I want to write novels about high-density characters, people whose existence forces the world to reform around them.
The Aubrey/Maturin novels, by Patrick O’Brian. A twenty-book series; British naval fiction, set in the very early nineteenth century. I picked up the first one, Master and Commander, unwillingly. Despite my reluctance, I fell into it. I came back from the experience delighted, increased, and stunned. Although the quality dims over the last five volumes, the first fifteen are faultless, brilliant in every sense of the word. I marvel at, to quote A.S. Byatt, O’Brian’s “prodigal specificity,” his erudition, his humane touch. I admire his humor and subtlety, how he strikes a perfect balance between exuberance and restraint, and–again–his unerring eye for the exact word. He has a gift for comic detail, and his ability to delineate changes in the friendship between two men with the same authority as volatile politics in South America or a brutal cutlass fight is unmatched. Every reader who loves fiction intellectually and viscerally will find something to treasure in these books. Every writer will find something to envy. These books–essentially one long novel–taught me that I want to write fiction with the quality of fine wine, fiction that matures and grows along with the reader, fiction that tastes different every time you dip into it.
So, at varying times, these are the books I wanted to write when I grew up. They gave me the kind of joy I want to give my readers. They made me ambitious: determined to change readers’ lives just as mine has been changed.
What kind of books do you want to write?
Posted by: Nicola
At this point I really like…jargon dictionaries? WTF.
*Grin* When I first discovered the Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, I was lost for days…
Lord of the Rings was the first fantasy book I ever read, followed by the Silmarillion. The Hobbit, the trilogy and the Silmarillion inevitably headline any favorites list.
Alexander Irving’s ‘Scattering of Jades’ and Frank Peretti’s “The Oath” are the only books that have scared the living daylights out of me. I credit them with my introduction to folklore in fantasy, monster tales and vengeance.
Anne Bishop’s ‘Dark Jewels’ trilogy, and the surrounding books are my favorite recent stories. The characterization is spectacular.
Outside of fantasy, I liked anything by Sir Walter Scott, and Tennyson. Yes, I was that kid that was reading 18th century poetry and the Canterbury tales at 12 years of age.
Oh, I agree with LoTR entirely. I was so attached to the characters that, upon thinking Pippin might be dead, I burst into tears and scrambled bleary-eyed to continue through the rest of the book. A few months after I read LoTR I picked up Stephen King’s The Stand, which deals also with character, but in a much more vivid way. I had that same gut response to the lives of the people in the pages. As a result, I’d say characters are definitely what I concentrate most on in any novel project, and while I admire the other trappings of the craft, it’s what drives me to continue. When I feel like the book is lagging, or am feeling disheartened, it always seems that it’s the characters that pull me out.
Good question for weekend mulling…
Natania, characters, oh yes. And for me the setting, particularly landscape, is a character. (All the books I mention have a fantastic sense of place.) This notion–of landscape being of primary importance to me as a writer–is so huge, so ever-present to me as a writer that I didn’t think to mention it. Huh. Now there’s a lesson: the reader can’t read the writer’s mind :)
I find that the action, the conversation that occurs between good characters for me…So when I start writing, I do that part and then go back to fill in the background.
I’m also learning how to cut back the number of conversations.
What can I say? I see the story as a movie, complete with sound, scent, atmosphere and emotion and I hurry to write it all down before I lose it.
I thought hard about all my books and the ones I have read over a lifetime-which is now six decades and counting. I keep coming back to Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. I have never been able to find an early edition hardback copy and my paperback is yellowing and worn. My questions and comments line the page borders.
One of my favorites lines in the book is …”It was a clear picturesque day,a February day without clouds,without emotion or spirit,like a beautiful woman with an empty face.”
I want what I read to pull me into the landscape of the whole story-immerse me into it and it’s characters. Allow me to become a silent observer from within the story! I want depth and color, visceral emotion, I want to be challenged to figure a few things out without direction from the writer,and I want the characters to become alive again each time I open the book cover, and to discover something new each time I read it.
Rhyanna, watching the director’s commentary of an otherwise mediocre film I first came across the notion that films are about what people say and do and novels are about what people feel and think.
As writers I think we’re luckier than film-makers. We can do it all: the action, the conversation, the emotion, the interior life.
Linda, that’s a lovely quote. Dillard is so good.
Your comment reminds me of something I want to talk about soon: leaving room in fiction for a reader to make the story her own.
Sorry to say, Lord of the Rings bored me to tears. It reads like a travelogue. (Perhaps the fact that this was my sister’s favorite author increased my antagonism toward Tolkien?) I grew up on Poe and Asimov and Shakespeare. Of the books from my childhood, I’d have to say Winnie the Pooh, The Martian Chronicles, Madame Bovary, The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, The Seagull and Hamlet have been the ones I’ve most revisited over the years. Later on, when I began “seriously” writing, my favorites were The Exorcist and The Godfather. Of the books I’ve read the past couple years, I’d say my favorites have been the first few Anita Blake novels, The Girls by Lori Lansens, Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher, and The Blue Place.
Having reluctantly given up on writing novels and short stories, I’d like to write a movie like Brick, Blood and Chocolate, or possibly The Lake House.
I’d have to go with Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere. I find that it has lately been influencing my writing a great deal, especially the sort of magical realism that it deals with so well. The style, as well as the aforementioned subject matter, is so compelling that it makes me come back again and again.
Perhaps also Good Omens. Messrs. Gaiman and Pratchett have done such a fine job with a conversational style that draws in the reader but flows easily and seems so simple to write yet is oh so hard to emulate.
Dianne, hey, everyone’s mileage varies. I love LotR–but that’s the only thing Tolkien’s written that I like.
Will, I tend to stop reading fiction when I writing–it’s so easy for others’ styles to creep into the work.
Jaym, Scott. Yes.
Leave your response!
Quote
““Remember, if you sit at your desk for 15 or 20 years, every day, not counting weekends, it changes you. It just does. It may not improve your temper, but it fixes something else. It makes you more free. – Anne Enright, talking of writing
”
Recent Comments
Services
Sign up for our newsletter
Connect