You Need to Read Outside of your Genre…

Yes, you do, however, reading outside of your genre doesn’t automatically mean you should feel ashamed of the love and passion you have for your favourite genre. It’s ok to only read fantasy, to only read romance, to only read horror; reading is first and foremost about enjoyment and if that genre brings you the most pleasure- read it!

Reading outside of your genre offers you additional opportunities and perspectives to the ones you might get from your favoured genre. It is a bonus to what you already read, not a criticism of your tastes or a slap on the wrist and a firm guiding hand towards ‘real literature’. Reading outside of your genre can offer you unique insights into writing description, building character, dealing with time periods, race, economic inequalities, and many other techniques or topics. When I wanted to write characters of a certain race in my fantasy story I went away to read dramas and literary fiction focussing on that race/ethnicity written by authors from that community. Reading those books gave me some insight into the concerns and life experiences of those people that could then in turn inspire how my characters might experience and react to the fantasy world I put them in.

Reading new or challenging fiction should inspire you and will educate you in ways you didn’t expect, but it should NEVER be a punishment for your love and passion for your chosen genre.

Read for pleasure! Read to grow!

But most importantly: Read!

A big question I often see is ‘How much world-building should I do for my story?’ The simple but annoying answer is: However much your story needs. It sounds vague but it’s really about proportion. 

- If your story is a small character focussed narrative then you won’t need a massive, overbearing world. Streamlining your info-dumps down into only what is necessary is important for any story, but even more important in a very precise and narrow focussed story. Your reader should always be left with questions in fiction so don’t be afraid if people come out of your story wanting more of your world, that’s a good thing and a compliment to your writing.

- Epic quest, or big journey stories need more world-building because they require the audience to be able to accurately conceptualise of the world the characters are travelling through and what affects their actions will have on it at a grander scale. This applies to stories like LOTR and GoT where the stakes are all very high and the locations widespread. If someone is willing to invest their time into your 6 page description of trees and bushes then they can probably handle an extensive world, but these types of readers are of specific tastes and for wider audiences large quantities of explanation and description can be off-putting. It didn’t stop Tolkien.

A general rule of thumb for any fiction is to look at the proportions in your fiction: How many words do you put into description, how many into info dumps, how many into character scenes. If info dumps or description vastly outweigh character you might need to look at cutting. It can be hard cutting out info dumps, but if you are clever you will be able to find places to slot in the vital information in a more natural and character serving way. Whatever you like and don’t want to cut you can always put into an appendices! (If it’s good enough for LotR and Dune, why not you?!)

If you’re like me and you’re addicted to writing long and wordy descriptions of landscapes… well go ahead, but be aware you are setting a trap out for yourself. Many people won’t like it, but if they don’t well… refer to my previous post about not everyone liking your work. As long as it’s out there and you’re doing your part to advertise and push your work there will be people who share your tastes and enjoy what you create. 

(I’ll make a follow-up post with tips on how to world-build to compliment this one rather than overburdening a single post. See ya later!)