Every once in a while, I hear a writer say something like, “I don’t need to read. I’m too busy writing to read.” Stephen King would have something to say to this, but I keep quiet. Writing is hard enough. I don’t want to make it harder.
For me, though, reading inspires, instructs, and helps me connect with other authors more than any other habit.
Some books on writing claim that a past-tense, first-person narrator can’t be killed off during the story. The reasoning is that if your narrator is narrating in the past tense, he has to be alive at the end of the story, or he wouldn’t be telling it.
Is that true or false?
It’s complicated, but it’s not 100% true.
In short stories and novels, fantasy in particular, readers want to be present or transported to the scenes of the story. One of the best ways to do such a feat is to ‘Evoke the Emotions and Employ the Senses.’
Poetry should be no different.
You have a story you’re afraid to write.
You know the one I’m talking about. The big one. The dangerous one. The one you’ve been putting off. The one you just don’t have time for.
It’s interesting to note that past and overexplored themes keep coming up in new writing, like: world wars, civil wars, racial discrimination, idealized love affairs, and romanticized train journeys etc. etc.
All the mentioned topics are interesting and it seems they have a bigger appeal because they happened in the past, a time marked in literature, history, film. Yet, only because those times seem far away and something not personally witnessed it doesn’t mean the present should be annulled. You own the present, and living it should consequentially shape up majority of the stories you write. What seems boring to you now may sound intriguing to the future generations.
