'contamination'

[RJM Corbet]

I know this is going to be controversial, but is it really such a good idea for someone who is writing in a particular genre - in this case SFF of course - to read that genre?
Ray Bradbury changed the face of Science Fiction with the idea that by visiting the past, you will change your own future, and so never be able to return.
I read that idea years ago. How can I use the same thing in my own book without plagarism?
Who hasn't read 'Lord of the Rings'?
'Dune'?
These are classics, difficult to avoid, and almost any SFF writer will be influenced by them.
But is it such a good thing to read whatever's around? How can a writer still be original?
There's the old saying that those who can, do - and those who can't, teach?
I'm not too sure about this at all, but in my own case, while writing my book, I avoided reading anything close to the genre in which I was operating, so as to avoid 'contamination'.
I know there may be much to say on the subject, but I've finished it now, after years of work, and now it's a pleasure to be able to read SFF, and of course to have stumbled upon this gem of a forum and engage with other writers.
We work 18 hours a day for three months straight, everyone else thinks we're nuts, lazy, wasting our time - we don't do it to be published, although that would be a bonus. An unlikely one. We don't do it for money. We just hope that eventually someone, even one person, will take the trouble to read that into which we have put everything - the whole thing, right to the end.
We are nuts.
But nothing can stop the words ...

 

[Interference]

The biggest danger in not reading others' work is that you may accidentally stumble all over an extant plot-line.

But perhaps that's what forums like this are for.

Other than that, I don't think it's necessarily important to read any particular genre, since the main thing is the story, whatever the dressing is, and how well you can tell it.

 

[Menion]

I don't agree with you. Why would you want to write Fantasy if you don't read it?
I personaly was inspired by many Fantasy novels that I read and also Sf, and "normal" books.
I can't see why somebody would write Fantasy without reading it first.

 

[Interference]

I think anyone can have fantastic ideas. Admittedly, I'm steeped in Sci-Fi, but mostly film and television. My reading habits are usually quite different.

 

[RJM Corbet]

I think anyone can have fantastic ideas. Admittedly, I'm steeped in Sci-Fi, but mostly film and television. My reading habits are usually quite different.

Thank you for your welcome note to my profile, Interference. I did not have enough 'points' to respond. Nice meeting you guys. A most amazing website, and that's no bullexcrement. Was up most last night, so will catch up again tomorrow.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

The problem is that the less fantasy you are exposed to the more you will be influenced by the little that you have already read (or been exposed to at second or third hand). Those who have read little fantasy generally have very limited ideas about what fantasy is, and either write stories that fit neatly inside those narrow limits, which allow little room for originality, or think that originality lies in simply turning those ideas upside down, which is also limiting, because there are only so many ways that you can do that -- and believe me, all of them have been done before. Reading widely in the field, on the other hand, widens your boundaries amazingly.

Don't think of it as contamination. Think of it as giving your imagination a large gene pool from which to breed new ideas.

And you aren't guilty of plagiarism if you borrow a single concept. Plagiarism consists of borrowing large sections of somebody else's work. If borrowing ideas were plagiarism, everybody who writes about a doomed romance between teenage lovers would be plagiarizing from Shakespeare (who borrowed the plot anyway). It is not the idea; it is what you do with it. The most wonderful idea can seem banal and unappealing if you simply throw it on the page and let it lie there. Which a writer is more likely to do if he or she doesn't realize that the idea has been done before and relies on the supposed originality of the concept to wow readers.

 

[RJM Corbet]

I don't agree with you. Why would you want to write Fantasy if you don't read it?
I personaly was inspired by many Fantasy novels that I read and also Sf, and "normal" books.
I can't see why somebody would write Fantasy without reading it first.

I know, I do understand. A musician would be foolish to go on stage without having listened to other musicians. Its a bit of a fine line though?
There are bound to be influences, but its this thing of trying to keep up, find something new, better than the other guy, you know?
Vincent van Gough undoubtedly had influences, but was he really that concerned with what other artists around him were doing at the time? Or was he burning up with trying to express his own vision?
I don't know?
Thanks for your response ...

 

[RJM Corbet]

The problem is that the less fantasy you are exposed to the more you will be influenced by the little that you have already read (or been exposed to at second or third hand). Those who have read little fantasy generally have very limited ideas about what fantasy is, and either write stories that fit neatly inside those narrow limits, which allow little room for originality, or think that originality lies in simply turning those ideas upside down, which is also limiting, because there are only so many ways that you can do that -- and believe me, all of them have been done before. Reading widely in the field, on the other hand, widens your boundaries amazingly.

Don't think of it as contamination. Think of it as giving your imagination a large gene pool from which to breed new ideas.

And you aren't guilty of plagiarism if you borrow a single concept. Plagiarism consists of borrowing large sections of somebody else's work. If borrowing ideas were plagiarism, everybody who writes about a doomed romance between teenage lovers would be plagiarizing from Shakespeare (who borrowed the plot anyway). It is not the idea; it is what you do with it. The most wonderful idea can seem banal and unappealing if you simply throw it on the page and let it lie there. Which a writer is more likely to do if he or she doesn't realize that the idea has been done before and relies on the supposed originality of the concept to wow readers.

Thank you for bringing up the bard. Last year I decided to read the complete historical works, and was so captivated that I read all the plays. I couldn't read anything else. Nothing but Shakespeare did it for me. I'mreally not showing off. They're plays, you can read one in two hours, they're short but cover huge plots, create immortal characters and quotations and I'm certain he created his own words, if he didn't have a word, he just made one up.
To me the task is to capture the idea you want to express in as few words as possible, but not to give up until you have captured the whole idea.
From there on words are like envelopes that pass an idea from one mind to another. The other person passes the idea along in their own words.
Maybe that's the power of truly great writing?
Thank you for your response and I will think about what you said. Now, straight after I log off and get some sleep : )

 

[The Judge]

Samuel Johnson said "A man will turn over half a library to make one book" and I don't believe he meant solely in the sense of undertaking research in the modern sense (ie checking out facts).

Nearer to our time and genre:

[Terry] Pratchett has said that to write, you must read extensively, both inside and outside your chosen genrehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_Pratchett#cite_note-locus-92 and to the point of "overflow".

[quote taken from wikipedia]

I find it difficult to read when I'm in the middle of writing, because the writing takes up all my time and mental energy, but I'm conscious of my neglect, so try to use otherwise dead time between projects to read a lot.

And since this is very much a question for writers, not just casual SFFers, I'm moving this over to GWD.

 

[Jake Reynolds]

How can a farmer take a cow to market and not know what other farmers are doing?

I think it's part of any job (and writing seriously is a job) to have a thorough understanding of the market in which you operate. I'm not saying you should tailor your writing to suit it, but rather that you should know what's out there, what's being read and what's selling. Though it may not effect you and how you write, it may provide an answer as to why agents/publishers may not be expressing interest.

 

[RJM Corbet]

But surely you get ideas from the world around you, from the media in general? Or do you get them from other SFF writers? Telling a story, plot structure, characterization and so on are common to all good writing. I'm not comparing myself, but do you think Bob Dylan is particularly focussed on what other musicians are doing? He seems to go back to the roots, the classics. Sorry, I don't want to sound argumentative, but it arrives at a point where all these 'artists' are competing with each other to come up with something new and shocking, or whatever - instead of someone having an idea and going for it, regardless of the great and holy 'market' and if people don't like it now, maybe one day someone will. Maybe never, maybe its a complete failure. As long as he (read he/she) knows he has worked to the very peak of his own ability? I'm quite aware that publishers must work by commercial considerations. But why should a writer be dictated to by the market. There was a thread about Jeffrey Archer, he's not that bad, but all the same, there's the market for y'all. Any farmer who doesn't know the difference between and good cow and a bad one, without having to look at everybody else, is in the wrong trade? All writers would like to get published, after all the agony they put into writing a book, but few are. So why not write something you want to write, instead of trying to write something to please the great publishing god? Sorry ...

 

[Ian Whates]

Teresa hit the nail on the head.

I've been asked in interviews what my influences are and I always answer, with honesty, that I don't know. I'm not conscious of being influenced by any specific author(s) but I've read something in excess of 1,000 SF and fantasy books. I've undoubtedly absorbed influences from many of them along the way by a process of literary osmosis.

Am I concerned about that? Heck, no. I write what comes out of my imagination according to my own vision and tell stories in my own voice; undoubtedly these have been influenced by all manner of things, but none of us live in a vacuum.

 

[RJM Corbet]

Teresa hit the nail on the head.

I've been asked in interviews what my influences are and I always answer, with honesty, that I don't know. I'm not conscious of being influenced by any specific author(s) but I've read something in excess of 1,000 SF and fantasy books. I've undoubtedly absorbed influences from many of them along the way by a process of literary osmosis.

Am I concerned about that? Heck, no. I write what comes out of my imagination according to my own vision and tell stories in my own voice; undoubtedly these have been influenced by all manner of things, but none of us live in a vacuum.

Thank you for your continuing interest in this thread. I most certainly respect and value her advice, as I do yours, voices of experience ...

 

[chopper]

by way of a sidenote, Bob Dylan was muttering about Alicia Keys on one of his most recent albums. you don't have to follow the road, you just have to know where it goes to....

 

[J Riff]

Reading Shakespeare instead of SFF? For shame. That's like listening t0o Bach instead of Dylan.

 

[Toby Frost]

Dylan uses words? I thought it was just a sort of modulating drone.

Firstly, you need to read the relevant genre in order to know what's been done to death (as Teresa says, this includes "Where cliched story goes right, go left"). If a story in which a computer becomes self-aware seems the most amazing idea ever, you're about 40 years behind the cutting edge. I find it amusing and annoying when "literary" writers decide to dirty themselves with some SF (sorry, Speculative Fiction) and are praised for their originality by "literary" critics who clearly haven't read any SF at all.

Secondly, as Dubrech says, if you do want to be published, you do need to know the market. The market for big fantasy novels has changed considerably in the last 10 years, for instance, even though the more words the better is still the general rule.

Thirdly, plagiarism is not a major risk unless you are ripping someone else off wholesale. Then, you would have to write the story well enough to be able to sell it, get publishers and agents to let you away with the plagiarism and manage not to tell the story in your own style.

To my mind, the real risk is not reading far enough, and I do mean reading: SF films and computer games don't reflect the width of the genre.

 

[J Riff]

In SF, one pretty much has to go back, back to the days of huge anthologies, which basically contained 'new' SF writers along with the pulp era writers. Amazing fun stuff shows up. Reading a raft, maybe a hundred or two short stories, can bring you in touch with most of the authors who made the genre so much fun. And, at any moment, you can pull out a book and essentially choose the approximate length of story you are in the mood for.
Plus, earlier SF novels are generally a short read, and cross over into fantasy fairly often.
It can also be encouraging to see how... glibly well-known authors dealt with far-out SF concepts. Kinda proves the writing and the story are really what matters.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

But surely you get ideas from the world around you, from the media in general? Or do you get them from other SFF writers?

Yes, and yes. You get them from everywhere, including other SFF writers. Nobody is saying that you need to read in the genre exclusively. You must open your mind to many influences. You must read widely, fiction and nonfiction, in more than one genre, authors now and authors who wrote in other centuries. It is all grist for the SFF writer's mill.

But there are things about writing SFF that you can only learn from reading other SFF writers, and what the market wants is less relevant than how the field is evolving.

 

[Malloriel]

As gracious as you are in reading and appreciating the opinions given, which all offer the same advice (keep reading both in and out of your genre) it sounds to me like you're trying strongly to defend your position (to read within your genre is to contaminate your ideas). I felt the same way when I was just starting to take Fantasy seriously as my genre, so for a long time I stopped reading it. For me, the specific drive came from being able to acknowledge that I was actually reproducing the concepts I had seen without bothering to change them by much, and so felt restricted by my own inspirations. I took a break just to cleanse the pallet, as it were, but returned to reading in the end, because having a limited view on Fantasy and Sci-Fi as genres before forging ahead with your own story is like knowing what the first few leagues of ocean are like off the shore of your home country; yes, you could discover a completely new world that enlightens your entire culture, but the odds are that instead of being that one lucky dummy, you'll be one of the thousands whose ships fall to the whims of the sea. You can't KNOW what is out there, PREDICT what will be there, or plan for what SHOULD be there if you don't experience it for yourself.

As for originality, it sounds like you're stuck in the mind set a lot of people have, but shouldn't. That is that "Fantasy/Sci-Fi must always be original, or it won't be good/published/lauded/sell well, etc." What we should acknowledge, though, is that the basic ideas we look to play with have already been done, and done again. It's not about creating an amazing, new concept that the world has heretofore never seen, a concept that will shake it to its core foundations and forever change the genre. It's taking what has been done, and done again, and doing it again in a way that is interesting. I don't even use the words "unique", or "different", or even "special" here, because they're misleading. Yes, your approach may be unique, different, AND special, but if it's not interesting, no one will care how much time, effort, and genius you put into it. Conversely, you can take something that the world thinks is trite, overplayed, and filled with every cliche imaginable, and if you write it in a way that is interesting and engaging, no one will care that they've read the same thing a dozen times already.

If you approach writing Sci-Fi and Fantasy as obstacles of genius which must be conquered and tamed, you're far more likely to end up with a piece of work that manages to engage few, because instead of focusing on the story that should be told, you focus instead on how to revolutionize the genre, and set yourself apart. What sets you apart, though, is the voice you have as a writer, and the perspective you bring to the familiar concepts and how they work with each other. Be appreciated for what you do with the words you have, not for what you can force them to become.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

What sets you apart, though, is the voice you have as a writer, and the perspective you bring to the familiar concepts and how they work with each other.

Absolutely right.