Some of the nicest compliments I’ve had on Yule have come from fellow writers. There is nothing like a jury of your peers handing in a good verdict. So today I thought I would talk about how I study other writers to learn, and who I study.
Whenever I come across a writer who does something really extraordinarily well, I will devour books by him or her, looking to see how they do it. Pacing, humor, characterization, structure, theme, dialog, description. Every once in a while you find a writer who seems to do it all and make it look easy, and those are the best ones to study although not if you end up feeling suicidal because you’re comparing your first draft to their final copy. It’s always good to keep in mind that once a book is published, you are seeing the work of an entire team of professionals. Do not compare a first draft to this. It could be the first draft of War and Peace and you’d still be despondant for months.
So who do I study? Lois McMaster Bujold. She does it all and makes it look easy. Linda Howard. She can do erotic, funny, suspense and action all in the same book; the two very best examples are Mr. Perfect and Open Season. Laurell K. Hamilton does action sequences like nobody else, and the detail in her books makes them so visceral and real that you completely buy a person who raises the dead for a living as no more unusual than a postal worker. Come to think of it, Anita Blake probably has a lot in common with postal workers. But I digress. Stephen King. He could write the phone book and make it fascinating and also give you nightmares about telephones while he was at it. (You should see what he did with a harmless thing like a laundromat in the unforgettable short “The Mangler” if you don’t believe me.) Jennifer Crusie for structure. Her stories are flawless examples of structure, and she does everything else right, too. But the structure shines through with a particular genius. Terry Pratchett. I don’t have any words for Terry Pratchett except “read his books”.
In the past I’ve devoured Andre Norton, Robert Heinlein, Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov, P.G. Wodehouse, E.A. Poe, Lovecraft, every piece of classic literature you can name including the Epic of Gilgamesh, Louis L’Amour (his Sacketts are so real, you expect to see them come riding out of the hills with guns at the ready), and comics galore. Comics have amazing stories.
I couldn’t possibly name every writer I’ve learned from, but from Poe I learned atmosphere, from Heinlein I learned how to have a theme without beating readers over the head with it, from Linda Howard I learned that condoms can actually be used in a love scene without being a public service announcement (the scene in Open Season is the ONLY condom-using sex scene I’ve ever seen where it was actually part of the story and couldn’t have been left out without losing something vital), from Crusie I’m still trying to learn structure; I’m getting better. From Asimov I learned that science fiction and mystery can coexist happily. The list goes on and on.
I owe a debt I can’t even measure to every writer who taught me pieces of the craft, whether they knew I was learning from them or not. I think I’ve learned more from reading, picking the book apart to see what made it work and writing, writing, writing than I have from any book on the craft or any class I’ve taken.
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