(I am avoiding nuts). Ok, not literally, but just as meat tastes different depending on the grazing, and wine from the same grape variety tastes quite different from different soils, your writing skill reflects your experience, and the inputs.
‘I’m a plumber, I’ve just never had anything to do with pipes or sewage. I don’t want to learn anything from anyone else, just do it and get very well paid.’
‘I’ve decided I am a gymnast and I am hoping for a place in the Olympics. I don’t ever watch other people doing gymnastics, though. I’m not really interested in that.’
“I call myself as Fred Blogs, Author… but I don’t actually read many books.”
The latter, to me anyway, makes as much sense as the former two. Look, it’s possible – just like the plumber above might be just what you need when the toilet begins to overflow and drip through the ceiling into your living-room. The comment – was made another one of the X writing fraternity – you know, the ones who put ‘Author’ after their names. I am sure there are a few good ones. Anyway, the comment was put up… and a bunch of people with the same ‘Author’ label, leapt forward to say that they too were not big fans of this whole reading thing, but that they were of course, authors.
I am obviously mellowing with age or something, because I took a rapid walk instead of replying. I’m guessing that they think movies are a great role model for their work. Maybe it will work for them, but I suspect it will read like a movie-script (which, in general leaves out a lot of what is in your novel and adds in stuff that makes dull reading.
Please, people: read the genre you’re going to write in. If reading is a chore, or you don’t have the time use audio-books. The terroir WILL affect your wine.
Mad Genius Club 
18 responses to “You are what you eat.”
Apropos to the above, I’ve always felt “terroir” was a pretentious and unnecessary word.
The phrase and concept “genius loci” already exists, describes the same thing, and actively embraces the magical attributes oenophiles infuse into the concept.
🙂 it’s been a term I am used to via my Breton cousins and my wife.
Yeah, basically, any craft/industry picks up words from the cultures that popularized it, and when it comes to wine and the English-speaking world, that means French, even if the Gauls got it from the Romans (we literally have a report from some Roman general telling his superiors that southern Gaul is a promising place to grow grapes).
The one thing I will say about writing in a genre you don’t know well is that sometimes you get a story idea that is obviously in a certain genre because of setting or other elements you can’t get away from, but when you try to read up on the Current Thing in said genre, you quickly realize that what’s fashionable in the genre right now really doesn’t work for you or your story. At that point you either have to ditch the story because it’s commercially enviable or get it out of your head and onto Amazon as efficiently as possible so you can get back to stuff that might sell. In either case, deeper reading in the genre is not going to help you.
“Nonviable”, not enviable . Stupid autocucumber.
There’s also the chance that it’s a cliche.
Cliche is never a sufficient reason by itself not to write something, but it can be a contributing factor in deciding not to write something.
Also, you probably want to be familiar with the usual handling because a cliche needs more than ordinary work.
Not necessarily a twist, to be sure.
The sheer volume of successful isekai slop argues that cliche can sell.
How exactly to harness that… Bugger if I know.
Respect cliches. Cliches are old and wise and powerful. Nothing gets to be a cliche without being used a lot, and nothing gets used a lot without something going for it.
A few times I’ve read in a new-to-me genre and decided that I can’t match what the current expectations are, so I find something close. Urban Fantasy has gone in so many different directions, romance and mystery likewise, that you also need to look at subgenres for marketing, and to see if or how the beats are different.
I seem to recall for a while that younger writers were saying that they didn’t read so that they wouldn’t be “contaminated” or influenced by older works. That way their ideas would be fresh, new, and unique.
Somewhere the ghosts of Aristotle, Homer, Virgil, and Azimov are all sighing and weeping into their drinks-of-choice.
I remember listening to a discussion on Elgar on the Today Programme a fair few years back. One of the commentators said something along the lines of Elgar borrowed from most of the major continental composers of his day, and yet simultaneously produced music that was quintessentially English.
To my mind, that implies a useful goal: To borrow what I need from other writers, and yet produce out of it writing that is mine.
That makes as much sense as trying to reinvent mathematics without ever studying mathematics, or trying to build a bridge without ever studying how bridges have been built.
Exactly. Or ‘I don’t enjoy meat, but I’m going make my fortune selling people the steaks I cook.’
Thinking of the vegetarian hippie contestant on Next Food Network who didn’t know how to grill fish and included a story intended to gross out the judges when serving a pork dish. Still not as dumb as the contestant who tried to pass off Serrano ham (Spanish) as prosciutto (Italian) to Italian born judge Giada De Lauren’s and more or less said: “what’s the difference?” When called out by the Italian lady.
And she didn’t reduce him to prosciutto a la Long Pig on the spot? Patience of a saint….
Well, there were cameras rolling, so Giada was a bit constrained in what she could do to that contestant (who was a woman, IIRC) 😀
As a former reader of slush for Baen Books, I assure you that someone who is not well read in the SF genre, and is not a scientist or engineer, and has no clue of orbital dynamics is painful to read.
Heading for Mars and having to slow down to work through the traffic around the Moon kind of thing . . . Yes, real example.
And urban fantasy . . . Werewolves, whose knees break backwards as they change . . . Dude! Do you even have a dog or cat? Check out which joints are which and what way they bend! Please!
I’ve been asked why I don’t write that popular Alternate History stuff . . . it’s because I didn’t like history in school, and thus my knowledge base is totally insufficient.
Urk! Please, please read in the genre you want to write in!