Hey guys! I’m excited to announce that today’s post was written by the one and only Chloe Ann SzymanskI! She runs The Radical Reader, where she reviews and recommends wholesome books you’re sure to enjoy! This post was a great encouragement to me and I hope you find it as insightful as I did!

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Writing is like drinking from a cup. You only get out of it what you put in. If you pour apple juice into your cup, that’s what you’ll be drinking. Orange juice? Same thing. A small amount poured in will give you a scanty drink, while a cup filled to the brim will overflow to meet your thirst.

Pretend your imagination is that cup. You can stab a straw into it, suck as hard as you want, and hope something will come up, but if that cup is empty, there will still be nothing there. Writing with a dry imagination (a dry creative well) won’t produce as much compared to writing with an imagination fully stocked.

If you want to make movies, you need to watch movies.

If you want to compose music, you need to listen to music.

If you want to write books, you need to read books.

I’m going to propose 3 tips for getting the most out of your favorite books and improving your imagination by simply reading… nothing more. So let’s jump in.

Tip #1: Read Your Genre

Reading creatively isn’t about analyzing every line and paragraph. It’s simply about reading. You have no idea how much fodder for the imagination you’ll unconsciously stock when you’re simply reading good stories. 

If you want to write a murder mystery, but you’ve never read or watched one, you likely won’t get far. Not only will you have no concept of the general stereotypes and archetypes (whether good or bad) of the genre, but you won’t have a well of ideas to pull from when you get stuck in the slog of writing. 

If you want to write contemporary romantic comedies, but you’ve only ever read sci-fi action thrillers, you’re likely going to have a hard time developing a plot, keeping the comedy light, and writing an ending that satisfies your reader.

It’s also helpful to read books in your genre that are not limited to the twenty-first century. If you want to write the next greatest romantic comedy of this day and age, I strongly recommend you read Jane Austen if you haven’t already. 

Authors will generally write from the perspective that their time and generation praises or criticizes. The greatest authors are those who have spanned time and century with stories relevant to readers of any time period. Which means Austen and Dickens should be on your reading list regardless of what genre you’re writing.

That leads me to my second tip.

Tip #2: Don’t (Just) Read Your Genre

If you want to study hooks and suspense for your epic medieval fantasy novel, you need to read the best of the mystery, thriller, and dystopian genres. These three genres are generally characterized by suspenseful tension and hooks that surprise their readers. 

If you want to write sweet family relationships in your contemporary romantic comedy, you need to read Jane Austen (because historical romantic comedies still make us laugh), Narnia (because seeing a sibling relationship set in a fantasy kingdom may teach you things you would never learn by simply reading contemporary romcoms), and coming-of-age books like Little House on the Prairie, Anne of Green Gables, and Little Britches.

I remember being distinctly confused the first time I heard that Arnold Schwarzenegger studied ballet as a bodybuilder. It wasn’t because doing pirouettes is the secret to benching five hundred pounds. Rather, isolating one skill (like control), finding an art form that specializes in developing that skill (like ballet), and then bringing that skill back into bodybuilding allowed Schwarzenegger and numerous other athletes like him to control their performance in a remarkable way. 

My grandpa was a carpenter most of his life but he’d studied martial arts as a teenager. Knowing how to roundhouse a punching bag may not affect how fast he could drywall a building, but being able to control his strength to either carry cement bags or execute a perfect flying front thrust certainly was the same.

Isolate one element of your story like hooks, suspense, family relationships, etc.. Then find a genre that is generally known for nailing that specific element and read extensively in that genre, even if it is not the same genre as your story. Your goal is to isolate the one element to study and then read in order to improve that one area.

Remember: there’s a reason bodybuilders study ballet.

Tip #3: Read From Many Authors

Hypothetically speaking, you could look at the last two tips, find an author who writes multiple genres and does them all well, and only read that author for the rest of your life. However, authors will almost always bring their unique tone and voice to the page, regardless of the genre they write. So while you are reading different genres, they’re going to contain very subtle (yet similar) elements.

The same is generally true for smaller publishing houses, especially those focused on a niche genre like only Christian romance or only Christian speculative fiction. Publishing houses tend to print similar books for a reason: they sold once, they’ll sell again. It’s why we see trends in literature take off similarly in so many markets (for example, the Amish Romance trend of the early 2000s). 

So read beyond one author, read beyond one publishing house, and make sure (above all else) that you’re reading books written by women and men. 

If you’re a male author wanting to write female characters, read books with female protagonists written by women. And vice versa, if you’re a female author wanting to write male characters, read books with male protagonists written by men.

Regardless of what modern culture tries to tell us, men and women are uniquely different. Their writing styles at first brush may seem similar, but keep reading and you’ll discover unique and helpful differences.

Read Better, Write Better.

These three tips aren’t overly technical, and they aren’t a get-rich-quick scheme to improve your writing within three days. But spend ten weeks reading two or three books a week, or perhaps spend a year, or maybe five years. You’ll discover just how much stronger of a writer you are when your imagination is fully stocked with rich ideas, characters, action, and dialogue.

The change may be subtle, but it will be there. Because the best writers are those who read and then write out of their store of ideas.

This post was written by Chloe Ann SzymanskI