Karen GoatKeeper's Blog - Posts Tagged "writing-setting"
Reading To Writing
Writers need to read not only their own genre but others as well. No matter how much a writer practices their writing skills, seeing how other writers handle a story helps.
So the reading list should be award winning books, right? After all, these are the ones writers and readers praise. They must be the best examples of writing around.
And, although a writer can learn a lot from reading such books, a writer can learn even more from a book that doesn’t measure up to these ideals. I am reading such a book now: “The Mutiny of the Elsinore” by Jack London.
Sea stories are a favorite read for me from the time I discovered Howard Pease and his Todd Moran series. No one mentions him now. His books are rarely seen now. They were stories of the Captain and his mate on a tramp steamer going to many exotic ports of call.
This present novel was touted as a great novel of the sea. I’m not a big Jack London fan, but that got me to pick the book up at a used book sale. It worked its way to the top of a stack and I opened the cover.
I don’t like this book. I don’t like the main character. I don’t like the minor characters. I don’t like the way the story drags along. There is temptation to shut the cover and put it on my incomplete shelf.
I persevere. Why?
The book isn’t intolerable. It is cluing me in to things I look forward to in characters and plot, things not found in this book.
What is in this book is setting. London’s descriptions of the sea are so well drawn I can see them. I’ve never been and will never go south of the equator, yet I can now picture a ship under sail on the high seas, a sunset that surrounds such a ship with a different look toward each point of the compass, even a torrential storm turning day into night so black lamps must be lit to see.
I may not finish this book for reasons of character and plot. But I very well may just to see how setting is done by a master writer of setting. I hope some of his magic rubs off on my writing.
So the reading list should be award winning books, right? After all, these are the ones writers and readers praise. They must be the best examples of writing around.
And, although a writer can learn a lot from reading such books, a writer can learn even more from a book that doesn’t measure up to these ideals. I am reading such a book now: “The Mutiny of the Elsinore” by Jack London.
Sea stories are a favorite read for me from the time I discovered Howard Pease and his Todd Moran series. No one mentions him now. His books are rarely seen now. They were stories of the Captain and his mate on a tramp steamer going to many exotic ports of call.
This present novel was touted as a great novel of the sea. I’m not a big Jack London fan, but that got me to pick the book up at a used book sale. It worked its way to the top of a stack and I opened the cover.
I don’t like this book. I don’t like the main character. I don’t like the minor characters. I don’t like the way the story drags along. There is temptation to shut the cover and put it on my incomplete shelf.
I persevere. Why?
The book isn’t intolerable. It is cluing me in to things I look forward to in characters and plot, things not found in this book.
What is in this book is setting. London’s descriptions of the sea are so well drawn I can see them. I’ve never been and will never go south of the equator, yet I can now picture a ship under sail on the high seas, a sunset that surrounds such a ship with a different look toward each point of the compass, even a torrential storm turning day into night so black lamps must be lit to see.
I may not finish this book for reasons of character and plot. But I very well may just to see how setting is done by a master writer of setting. I hope some of his magic rubs off on my writing.
