Don’t write what you know, write what you feel: bestselling authors offer tips on World Book Day
The key to being a good writer? It’s being a good reader, authors including Carol Ann Duffy and Alan Moore have said this World Book Day. However, commonly doled-out advice such as “write what you know” is “dreadful”, says Lee Child.
Sharing advice and tips for budding writers, former poet laureate Duffy says that “one of the most important things you can do if you want to write a poem is read a poem”.
“Read lots of poems,” she says. “I believe it probably isn’t possible to write a good poem unless you’ve read some good poetry.”
Moore, whose work includes the graphic novels Watchmen and V for Vendetta, says: “It is probably fair to say that a person will be precisely as good a writer as they are a reader.” He advises people to read with an analytical eye, looking back at work that makes them “suddenly frightened, touched, or amused” to work out how the writer has achieved that effect.
As well as reading good books, though, he believes writers can also get something out of badly written books.
“Read terrible books, because they can be more inspiring than good books,” says Moore. “If you’re inspired by a good book, there is always the danger of plagiarism, of writing something too close to it. Whereas a genuinely helpful reaction to a piece of work that you’re reading is: ‘Jesus Christ, I could write this shit.’
“It’s immensely liberating. Analyse what they’re doing badly and you’ll discover all the mistakes not to make.”
Child, the bestselling author of the Jack Reacher series, says that writers should step out of their lane when it comes to reading. “Read as much as you can in every genre – nonfiction, poetry, plays, Shakespeare – because when it comes to storytelling there is no single way of doing it, and if you get too specialised, too narrowly into techno-thrillers or political thrillers or international intrigue, you risk missing out on what is happening elsewhere,” he says.
Child also believes that the old adage that you should write what you know is “dreadful advice”. He says there are “very few people in the world who know enough to make a story genuinely exciting”.
Instead, he says, “what you must do is write what you feel. Analyse your feelings. Then take those feelings and blow them up huge.”
Malorie Blackman, former children’s laureate and author of the Noughts & Crosses series, says another place to look for inspiration is news stories – but it is essential for writers to try to get ahead of the curve and not simply follow the market.
“The way to do that is to write what interests you, what you’re passionate about,” she says. But she warns about waiting too long before writing something, and risking it becoming “one of many”.
Blackman says she learned her lesson when she began writing a novel called The Real Hannah Well, inspired by news items on cloning. But then the film The Island – a Michael Bay thriller about human clones escaping their secure facility – was released, and Blackman had to throw her story “into the bin”.
“The lesson is, if you’ve got a really good idea, get on with it,” she says. “Especially if you see it on the news – or someone else could have the same idea. No one ever remembers who did it second.”
But Julia Donaldson, creator of The Gruffalo, advises not to “write a story the second you’ve got a vague idea”.
“Instead, keep your ideas on ice, and you may well find that they will knock sparks off each other,” she says. “It’s important not to be too precious about your ideas. And to move on from things that aren’t working. I’ve got far more undeveloped ideas than those I have turned into stories. Don’t forget that sometimes two ideas can come together. That might just be the answer.”
Child adds that everyone has a voice already, but a marker “of being a potential writer is if you’re the sort of person who can have three or four other people sitting at your table listening to what you have to say”.
“It’s not about finding your voice,” he says. “It’s about guarding it and keeping it real and authentic. It’s about keeping it yours.”
• Advice via BBC Maestro’s selection of online writing courses.