Genre Help

Read in your genre because you will learn the ins and outs of your genre, what's already been done, and maybe even be inspired.

Read widely because if you only read in your genre, all you will ever create is based off your limited knowledge of literature. Give your writing flavor by reading all kinds of genres. Whether you want them to or not, those other books you read will influence your writing.

For someone who's writing a book about a boy who triggers the apocalypse by playing his guitar, I don't read a lot of fantasy. I read Terry Pratchett, but that's comedy (and reading comedy has certainly distorted my sense of point of view). I read a bit of Neil Gaiman as well. But honestly, that's it for fantasy. I don't read any of the traditional fantasy, which is probably why I don't write traditional fantasy. No dragons and princesses here, my friend. I'm trying to read some fantasy for the reasons stated above. I've already started reading Night Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko.

One book I read for this research project is Samael's Fall by Marion Webb-De Sisto. I read this book because it's about angels. My book is also about angels...as well as people. I think it's a good idea not to just read in your genre, but also to read in your subject matter. It was interesting to me to see how she made Samael into the protagonist despite all his flaws. I tried to mime her technique in making my antagonist one of the point-of-view characters. For more information on what I learned from reading this book, check out my blog posts (part 1, part 2, part 3).

Each of my storylines almost has a different genre, one of which is The Research Mystery. The research mystery is a mystery that doesn't so much involve tracking down a killer and all that noir business, but looking things up in books and, on occasion, asking people. Now, research is boring even in real life, so how does one create a research mystery that is exciting? The trick is to make sure the reader is as invested in the questions as the characters are.

To study how to compose a good research mystery, I read Paper Towns by John Green (all right, I read it because I wanted to, but it helped me in the end). These are the techniques that I got out of reading this novel:

1. Make the readers care
2. Establish source of research before using it
3. On location
4. Recalling things heard earlier
5. Raise the stakes

To know more about what I learned from reading Paper Towns, read this post on my blog.

What's my point? The point is to read books in order to gather techniques, whether in the genre or not. Read as a writer.