writing Archives - Page 4 of 5

The Hero’s Journey

The Hero’s Journey is the first plot type that I looked at when it first occurred to me that there was such a thing. I think it may have been the first one that appeared when I began a search. I feel like this plot type ends up in so many places, because it is so easy to recognize. Once I read about it, I immediately thought of Lord of the Rings. Joseph Campbell wrote a book called The Hero with a Thousand Faces. This book goes through all the stages of this plot type. Without further ado, here are the seventeen stages:

The Hero’s Journey: Stages

1. The Call to Adventure

As we’ve seen with Plotting: Freytag’s Pyramid, Plotting: The Three-Act-Structure, and Save the Cat Story Structure plots have a tendency to begin with a “day in the life,” The Hero’s Journey is no exception. Our hero starts out living their normal life, and then something happens, changes, or someone invites them to do something that starts them on their journey.

2. Refusal of the Call

This is also a typical moment. The hero doesn’t want to go on an adventure. They want to keep on living their life, but there are reasons that they cannot say no, or other forces that keep them from saying no.

3. Supernatural Aid

The hero receives some kind of otherworldly help in the beginning of their journey.

4. The Crossing of the First Threshold

This is where they take their first steps into the new world. They really begin their journey at this point.

5. Belly of the Whale

This stage represents the final separation of the hero from their known world and self. The hero is showing their willingness to fully immerse themselves in the unknown and change themselves for the better. The hero may have a minor setback at this stage, or some other struggle where they lose something.

6. The Road of Trials

The hero experiences a series of trials, usually in threes; before he is able to move forward in their journey. These are fluid and ambiguous. They will lose some and have to keep moving forward and gaining confidence in order to move successfully through the story.

7. Meeting with the Goddess

The hero meets someone who provides them with something that will help them later on.

8. Woman as the Temptress

Despite the poor name for this stage; essentially it’s about something that the hero wants, but shouldn’t have. It’s really about the differences between what should be and what is.

9. Atonement with the Father/Abyss

The point of the story that everything has been moving toward. This is a confrontation with an entity that holds the power of both life and death within it. The hero has to trust in the figure that they will be able to confront whatever it is they need to confront, and come out on the other end better/unscathed, etc. The thing given by the other figure earlier in the story will be helpful at this point. The two figures should be mirror images of one another.

10. Apotheosis

The hero reaches a greater understanding. They have learned the lesson that they needed to learn.

11. The Ultimate Boon

The goal of the quest was achieved. Whatever the hero set out to do, was done.

13. The Refusal of the Return

Having found success in the other world, the hero does not want to return to the ordinary world.

14. The Magic Flight

The hero may have to run with the boon, if they have angered the gods, or have made them jealous by winning it.

15. Rescue from Without

Just as they needed aids and helpers to begin their journey, the hero may need help getting back to the ordinary world. This is particularly true if they were wounded or weakened.

16. The Crossing of the Return Threshold

This one seems a bit overly complicated. The hero, not only needs to return to regular life. But, they also need to retain the wisdom they gained on their journey. And they need to share that wisdom with the people around them. That’s a little hard to fit into the last chapters of your novel.

17. Master of Two Worlds

In the end, the hero will be a master of both their inner and outer worlds. They will be happy in both.

So, those are the stages of The Hero’s Journey. Joseph Campbell’s book on the subject was published in 1949, so you will forgive a lot of outdated phrasing. However, you can easily see how any adventure story can fit into the stages. Campbell studies a lot of myths from a lot of different cultures to come up with the ways in which we tell stories across cultures.

This information is always good to know as a teller of tales, because, no matter what kind of stories you want to weave; you are adding to the tapestry of your own culture. You are putting your own mark in your way, making your own folklore if you will. Adding your own voice to the many that have come before you. And it matters. Allow your voice to be heard, remember that the way you see the world is important, your views are important. Your way telling of Beauty and the Beast or that incident that happened a couple of years ago that’s now family legend; it’s yours, and it’s important. I suppose that’s a post for another day though.

Writing Habit, Time Management and Life

When I first decided to do a blog, I got into the habit of writing a post a day. That’s good, but then what about the writing of my current WIP? I got to the point where I was writing for my blog(s) and not doing the more creative writing that I went to school for, the writing that I find to be very important. The question became, how do you use your new writing habit, take up time management, and still have a life? I will discuss what I have done.

Writing Habit

In a previous post about habit-formation, found here: The Habit of Writing, I discuss how it’s important not to try to change everything all at once, and also how good it is to start small. I want to add to that idea and say that it’s also a good idea to prioritize.

Prioritize

I have recently learned that by trying to make sure that I’m posting every day, the more urgent–or creative–or whatever you want to call it–writing got pushed to the back burner, which is not where I want it to be. Because I knew that I wanted to be doing more writing for my novel, I had to re-think which kind of writing I was doing first.

Now, my writing life looks like 1-write AT LEAST X words for my WIP. I have an alert set to let me know when I have written enough. Then, and only then will I move on to post on one of my blogs. The next thing I have changed is to only post on one of the blogs a day. I have two of them. The first one is the actual website (this one) and the other one is a wordpress site, which I have continued to make content for even though I have a website that doesn’t have the .wordpress.com in the name. But, you know, whatever.

Time Management

The time management piece of this whole thing is that I have begun to use a calendar to show me what kind of time I have. What little pieces of time I can use throughout the day. I was hoping, when I started looking at blocking time out on a calendar, that I was less busy than I though, that isn’t exactly true, not if I want to do a good job, be the kind of employee that continues to be gainfully employed, but, at least I know now. I still end up doing writing at night mostly.

There are many ways to use the calendar method for blocking out time. You can plan to do focused work in the morning before you get busy, and I could, in theory wake up and do some writing before anyone in my house gets up. And, actually I used this method when I had only one child. My second one is a bit of an early bird and has a tendency to want to ‘help’ with everything, so that probably won’t work. But, it is a thought.

Conclusion

The ideas here are: 1-begin to block your time-out on a calendar, if you start to feel like you don’t have any time to write. Find those little pockets of time that you do have, and identify the blocks that will actually work for you to write. 2-Prioritize your writing life. If you find yourself working on several projects. Some of which are taking up a lot of time, but are not as high priority to you. Then, put the one that is the highest priority above the others. Only work on your other, lower-priority projects once you’ve reached a certain goal on the highest priority project. 3- Finally, keep your writing goals within reach. As with habit formation, make sure that you are taking baby steps before you are trying to sprint. Walk before you run, if you will.

Thank you for reading…this was my post about writing habit, time management and life. Feel free to share your tips for solving these writerly problems.

Tension and Conflict in Writing: What is the difference?

Tension and conflict are the heart of a story. Both are important tools to use, it is necessary to a successful story that the tension raises throughout the tale. The tension needs to pull the reader/audience along, it keeps them turning pages. While the conflict of the story, does the same thing, but in a different way. We will talk about these two important pieces of story. Tension and conflict in writing.

Tension and Conflict in Writing

Tension

Tension is the feeling that something bad is going to happen. That feeling of something around the corner. This is used in a lot of different ways, we up the tension between characters, sometimes it’s two people who don’t get along that well; sometimes it’s sexual tension. Other times, the tension is a feeling of things about to fall apart. The plan, so carefully constructed, isn’t going to work at all. Maybe, if your story is of the thriller or horror variety, the tension is the killer/monster getting closer, while the protagonist remains in the dark.

The tension in the story should draw tighter and tighter, before releasing, and then it should do it again. You should have several moments in the story where tension is released, and then it builds back up, before crescendoing during the climax, and finally breaking once and for all during the resolution

Conflict

Conflict, while easier to understand, can also be easy to misunderstand. Conflict is not always an argument or a fight. It can simply be a moment where the character has two things that clash with each other. Maybe they have two goals; but if they reach one, the other is hindered. That itself would create conflict in the story.

Conflict can also be direct, the protagonist and the antagonist, a fight or even a war, depending on the story. But, think about everyday life. There are lots of things that are in conflict with each other all the time. You have little arguments with your spouse/child/brother/sister/mother/father/the weird lady at the service counter. You have issues in traffic, or you have conflicting opinions in your own mind. All of these things feed into the story. Every step of the way, you should have tension that raises, and conflicts that need to be resolved.

Every story needs to have both tension and conflict in writing. Hopefully this article gave a little clarification on what that means, and how to apply to your own writing. Thank you for reading, let me know if you would like more of the same types of posts, or different ones.

Rough Draft Completed, What’s Next?

You’ve done it, all blood, sweat and tears have coalesced into the story that is (mostly) completed and told. Now, you’re wondering what to do now? What are the next steps to take in order to make your story shine and become its best self. Below, I will discuss those next steps, what to do after completing a rough draft.

I have previously spoken about editing and rewriting. These are both important steps to take after you have finished your rough draft. However, today I’d like to talk about two other important steps to take after finishing a draft, these are letting it rest, and finding a beta (or even alpha) reader or readers.

Let it Rest

This step is only valid if you don’t have any deadlines. This works if you are a person who hasn’t yet been published, read: a person who hasn’t broken into the field by being traditionally published, or independently publishing your own work somewhere, meaning you don’t have anyone that is looking forward to your work. It sounds a lot simpler than it ends up being. The idea is to put your workaway for a while. My suggestion, work on something else. For me, there is always a new idea waiting in the wings. Take the time after you have finished your rough draft, but before you pull it out again, to start outlining a new project.

Edit and Rewrite

Of course, the middle step is to edit and rewrite until you can’t stand to look at it anymore. Since I’ve already talked about these steps before, I am not going to into a ton of detail here.

Alpha and Beta-readers

After you have taken the story to the point where you can’t get it any more polished. It’s time to bring on outside readers. Alpha readers are people that you trust to look over your story and give you advice while you are in the rough draft stage. So, these are people who understand that the story is either incomplete or barely complete, and will forgive typos and plot holes. They are the people that you can go to who will get excited about the story’s potential, and who will help you make it better in the beginning stages.

Beta readers are the next phase, they are the people who will help you take the story to a level you could not take it to on your own. These are people who will be able to catch the things that you are unable to catch yourself, simply because you are too close to the story.

A word on both of these types of readers, DO NOT ASK FAMILY to do this. ASK FRIENDS with caution. You do not want to have people looking at your work who are close to you, personally. You want an outside eye. Not only that, but you want the type of reader who knows your genre, not a reader who thinks it’s great that you finished the novel. It is not helpful to have mom, whose so impressed by you, read it and tell you it’s lovely. That gets you exactly nowhere. You need a person who can tell you if they see the twist coming a mile away, or a person who can tell you when the story is boring; those kinds of things are helpful.

Thank you for reading! Let me know if you would like articles about different types of things, or more of this.

Save the Cat Story Structure

Save the Cat is a plot type where the different parts of the plot are broken into “beats.” All the beats have a particular percentage associated with them. Which allows an aspiring writer to understand how much of the story belong to each part. Without further ado, here is Save the Cat story structure.

Save the Cat Story Structure Beats

Act 1

Opening Image (0-1%): A snapshot of the protagonist and their world.
Theme Stated (5%): A statement, made by someone else, not the protagonist. It hints at what the character arc for the protagonist is going to be. This is also referred to as a life lesson.
Set up (1-10%): This is what I call the “day in the life of.” This is where you see the protagonist’s world before things change for them.
Catalyst (10%): This is the inciting incident, the thing that happens that changes everything for the protagonist, and makes their old life impossible to go back to.
Debate (10-20%): A section where the protagonist debates about what to do next. This should show their resistance to change.

Act 2

Break into 2 (20%): This is the moment where the protagonist accepts the call to action, essentially they decide to take action in a way that moves the story forward.
B Story (22%): A new character is introduced that will help the protagonist along the way. This person will help the protagonist grow, and assist in resolving their character arc.
Fun and Games (20-50%): This is where we see the character in the new world, they are either succeeding or floundering. This section represents the “hook” of the story.
Midpoint (50%): The fun and games section culminates in either a false victory, or false defeat, and should raise the stakes and push the story forward for the protagonist.
Bad Guys Close In (50-75%): If the mid-point ended with a false victory, then everything should start to get worse. If it ended in a false defeat, then things should start to look up for the protagonist. Either way, the protagonist’s deep-rooted flaws are closing in.
All is lost (75%): The lowest point. Something pushes our protagonist to rock-bottom.
Dark Night of the Soul (75-80%): A moment where the protagonist reacts to everything that has happened so far. They should be worse off than they were at the beginning of the story. This is the moment right before they figure everything out.

Act 3

Break Into 3 (80%): The moment when the protagonist realizes what needs to be done to fix the problems from Act 2, and also to fix themselves. Their character arc is almost completed.
Finale (80-99%): The protagonist enacts the plan that they came up with. The world is not only saved, it’s better than it was before.
Final image (99-100%): This is a mirror to the opening image, where everything is fixed.

If you have read some of my other posts, or you have some knowledge of plot structure, you will notice the similarity to Freytag’s pyramid, and to the three-act-story-structure. In reality, most plot types will follow the same trajectory. This is one is good if you need to know about specific things and when they should happen in your story to keep yourself on track.

The next time I discuss plot, we will look at a structure that is near and dear to my heart, the hero’s journey. So stay tuned for that, and thank you for reading and let me know if you have any questions.

Emotional Writing

My philosophy when it comes to writing emotions is that it’s important to understand what feeling them is like. Unfortunately, for me as a writer, this means that when I’m feeling some-kind-of-way, I get all mindful about it. When I feel extreme emotions, I use it for study, I have a tendency to journal about it, so I can come back to it later when I need it. Here is my advice on how to tackle emotional writing.

Photo by **Zaksheuskaya** from **Pexels**

Emotional Writing: write what you know

“They” tell you to write what you know. This advice, I think, really comes into play when we are talking about emotions. You can study the mechanics of spaceships, or make it up as you go along. But, what you can’t really study, what you can’t really just look up, is how it feels when you get dumped, or how it feels to be really sad over the loss of a pet or a loved one. You can’t study those things, and expect it to come out feeling authentic, you need to experience them.

I’m not saying that you need to experience the exact thing you are writing about in order to hit the emotions right. What I am saying is that everyone probably has times in their life where things have happened that made them feel a close enough facsimile to what the character is going through that they can use it. The trick is to remember, and do it safely, if it’s a traumatic event. For example: I’ve never been an assassin, but there have been moments in my life where I have witnessed things that allow me to feel like I can come close to that emotional state.

Use Observation

As a writer, you should be watching the world around you. Hopefully participating, but also observing pretty keenly what is going on around you. This is helpful when there is someone close to you who is going through something. You don’t want to go all Harriet the Spy on them and use them, but you know, it’s okay to file away their emotional state for later writing. An example of this: Your friend is having a freak-out because she found out her boyfriend is cheating, she is crying at points, but also angry, she’s pulling her hair out literally, she’s also asking if it’s her fault, somehow. You are helping her and making sure that she’s okay, of course, but also just noting down in your mind how the different emotions are at play while she’s going through this devastating time. Emotions are tricky and layered, nuanced and sometimes baffling.

Being able to show all of those things to a reader, or an audience is a difficult task, and one of the most powerful tools used to tackle this task is both self-observation, and observing the world around you.

Photo by Maurício Mascaro: https://www.pexels.com/photo/monochrome-photo-of-man-s-face-2943954/

Reading

Of course, you can always go back to your favorite works that have really wonderful emotional writing in them, and see how that author tackled it. This is where being well-read is helpful. If you are stuck on a scene where the character is going through something you have no way of ever fathoming, you can go back and read about it through a different author’s eyes, what did they do that made the scene compelling, how did they make you feel what you want your audience to feel?

Show the emotion, like I mentioned before, not tell it. Don’t say that the character felt happy, but say for example: her face broke out into a grin, her body felt light, she felt as though she could run a marathon without stopping, or jump to the moon. Or something like that, make the readers understand the emotion without being told WHAT to feel.

Projecting

This is one that I have a tendency to use while I’m in the process of writing. I just, kind of, project myself into the situation and think about how I would feel if I was there. I feel like it’s the simplest, just think about being that person in their shoes, how would you feel there–in that moment–and then write out those emotions. However, this idea does have its drawbacks because your emotions may not match those you are trying to convey for the character you’ve created. For example: my stone-cold assassin isn’t going to start crying or screaming when she sees a dead body. She would be cold and calculating and would think about her next move.

Conclusion

There are many ways to get to the heart of the emotion that you want to convey for your character. It is best to remember that emotions are faceted and nuanced things, and that they may start out one way, and then turn into something else, and then finish completely different. Showing emotions is very important, it is boring to read emotion words, it’s much more dynamic to read what kinds of actions those emotions are creating within the character.

Thanks for reading! Let me know if this is something that is helpful and interesting, or if you would rather read about other things.

Showing Versus Telling in Writing

One of the first pieces of advice I came across when I decided to look at writing craft was the ever popular: show, don’t tell. It took me time to piece this advice together. Now I understand exactly what it means and why it keeps being repeated. Here is my take on showing versus telling in writing.

Showing Versus Telling in Writing

When to show, and what does it mean.

Showing is kind of a strange way to put it, when it comes to writing, since everything is written. It’s not as though the writer can somehow make a movie pop out of the book and allow the reader to view something. Showing is simply the act of allowing the reader to visualize what is happening, as opposed to summing it up or “telling” the reader (for lack of a better term) what you want them to know or feel.

Showing versus telling in writing Example(s)

An example of this: The grass was green and warm, the sun shone brightly that day. We sat on the damp ground, unaware that our pants were wet. We picked daisies, the heavy perfume of spring intoxicated our minds, and we drank it in, laughing, finally, our fingers touched, and it was as though sunlight shone from our very souls.

Showing allows the reader to get right into the action, or the emotional center of the story that you are trying to tell. This is a great method during those moments where you have an action scene, or you have a heavy emotional moment, and you want to make sure that your readers are right there with your characters their entire time.

What is Telling, and what does it mean

As you can imagine, telling is the opposite of showing. When you are in telling mode, you are summarizing events, or possibly talking about a person and just letting your readers know what they are like instead of showing actions that they are doing or have done. This is useful for moments when you need to sum up events that happened, or when you have a character that you need to quickly introduce. Also, telling is something that can help you get through parts that aren’t as eventful, but that have a moment you would like to get to.

Showing versus telling in writing, Photo By Mikhail Nilov — Photo by Mikhail Nilov

Showing versus Telling in Writing Example(s)

For example: The old woman was kind. It was apparent in her gray eyes.

Another example: I stopped listening to her yammer on, I’d heard the story so many times, yeah, she’d been through so much, we all knew about it.

In the first example, we are telling our readers that a person is kind, but we don’t have anything to “show.” In the second example, the POV character isn’t listening to the other character, and isn’t what you would call “in-the-moment.” In the second example, you could imagine that there would have been showing before, and showing to come after. But that little piece is telling.

Conclusion

Both showing and telling are important pieces of writing to use. Especially when it comes to storytelling. They say to show as much as you can, but there will be moments where it makes more sense to tell.

It doesn’t make sense to show dialogue for the openings and closings of conversations, you can just tell those parts. It doesn’t make sense to show the parts of the story that aren’t interesting, or don’t develop the character. I am saying that it’s important to be intentional on which scenes you choose to show and which are more tell. Understand the balance. Make it work so that the story flows well.

Coming up with Story Ideas

I once had a class where an author came and spoke about the differences between writers, and everyone else. What are these differences? Writers take their weird thoughts and expand on them. Non-writers will just shrug them off, and move on. With that being said, let’s talk about coming up with story ideas.

Photo by **Anni Roenkae** from **Pexels**

How?

How does a person come up with an idea for a story? Lots of ways. I will go over a few that I’ve used below.

Writing Prompts

One of the easiest ways to come up with an idea is to look at a prompt. A writing prompt is a couple of sentences. They will usually detail a situation, and maybe a character. Then they will ask the writer to take the situation/character from there. You can sign up to get writing prompts sent to your email, or they can be found through social media.

Pictures

Grab a picture that you really love. It could be anything, it could be a photograph, it could be a painting, a drawing, maybe even a sculpture. Make a story that revolves around the picture. Imagine what the world of the picture is like, if it’s a surreal, imagine a whole where that kind of landscape can exist. If it’s a photograph, if there is a person in it, what are they like (if it’s a photo of someone you know, then focus on another aspect of the picture).

If it’s a beautiful landscape, what can you imagine happening there? What if that beautiful landscape was previously the site of a large battle, what if that landscape was the home of a fantastic creature, or a horrible murder, or what if the children gathered there on the night their parents died, or their house burned, or maybe the mountain is the one that the woman summited after she’d gone through so much, and she was finally gaining her own power back.

Folk/fairy Tales

Re-told fairy tales have been something that people are interested in reading for a long time now. Because they are well-known, they may be harder to get published. However, that shouldn’t stop anyone from taking their favorite folk and fairy tales and then bringing them into the 21st Century and making them their own. You can even ditch the magical aspects, or maybe remain more faithful to the Grim’s version, or alternatively, you can take multiple tales and weave them together. Maybe Beauty is a badass carpenter, and instead of being pressured to marry the town jerk, she gets called to a mansion to make some kind of chair or railing or something, and on the way there she meets up with red riding hood or Hansel and Gretel.

Also, because the fairy tales have been done so many times and are well-known, it may be worth it to look into legends from different areas, or ones that aren’t that well-known in your area. Or you can use it as a framework for the story, without making it apparent that it came from a folk or fairy tale.

Pay Attention

This last idea is simply about paying attention to the world around you when you are out and about. When you are walking down the street, and you see someone that you find to be completely interesting, put them in a work, or use them as a jumping off point for a story. Or when you have weird occurrences happen to you, and you think “what if,” either write those down, or just try to remember them when it’s time to write.

So when coming up with story ideas, one size doesn’t fit all. But, there are enough ways to come up with a story that everyone should be able to find something to work for them.

Thank you for reading! Please let me know if you want to hear more about how to come up with ideas, or maybe a writing prompt? Let me know what you are looking for.

How to Outline and why?

When looking up outlining a novel, searching it; there are so many options. There are options that have chapter-by-chapter templates, options that go into detail about structures. Because there are so many options out there, I will simply talk about my experience and share my personal thoughts on how to outline, and why.

Beginning: how to outline and why?

I would describe my writing style as more of a “pantser” instead of a “plotter.” By pantser I mean, I’m one of those “by the seat of my pants” kind of writers, who writes and discovers my plot as I go. I’m not, what you would call, a gal with a plan.

When I start writing, it’s with a kind of vague idea. Like, what if there was a society who eschewed the idea of magical people, unless they were taught properly. If their magic just appeared, they were shunned and left to die. Which is the idea I started my first what you would call “trunk novel” with. You know, that one that you finish, and then you realize that it’s a mess, and you may not ever be able to fix it, and so it sits. And it does still, finished, have re-written, just sitting. I hope someday to have the skills to fix it.

So, after the vague idea, I usually come up with a couple characters, and a conflict, or maybe conflict and then characters. Usually I have two characters that are important, and then an antagonist. Then, I get going.

What I learned from my first experience, is that some kind of outline, even if I deviate from it immediately, is paramount to writing success. We all learned how to write outlines in school at some point, some teacher in middle school taught everyone how to outline notes properly.

Outline

You can start there, if that’s where you are comfortable. Remember how the story needs to have: inciting incident, rising action, climax, falling action and resolution. You will use each of these parts of the plot to build your outline.

Example

Inciting Incident: girl finds out she has powers
Rising Action: Tries and fails to use powers, fails to do x, y, z things. Grows in power, gets advice, makes friends, has maybe a romantic moment??? The antagonist is disguised as a friend, gives bad advice or plants an idea that the readers can see will hurt the girl, but the girl’s information at the time leads her to do the thing that hurts her. Antagonist is revealed to girl and group. Antagonist is lost, they run away.
Climax: The girl and the antagonist get into a final showdown. The girl wins, and the antagonist is defeated, or maybe realizes they were wrong.
Falling Action: Romantic moment again, girl gets boy.
Resolution: All subplots are tied up, any friend relationships that need to be resolved are sewn up, maybe something is hinted that that will need to be resolved in a second book.

That could be an outline before you begin writing. I suggest a simple outline before beginning because it will give you something to write toward. You can just mentally remind yourself that during the first chapter or two you need to show your character and where they live, but that you need to be building toward the moment where something that happens that changes the life of your main character.

Conclusion

I don’t suggest going into a lot of detail before beginning, simply because in my experience, things change as you write. If you box yourself into a detailed chapter-by-chapter blow-by-blow of the action, then when you get a brilliant idea, it’s harder to follow it.

So, to sum up, in my experience an outline is a good idea. But, not a detailed one. However, it depends on the kind of writer you are. Thank you for reading about how to outline, and why?

What Books to Read as a Writer

Last time we talked about books, we talked about how to read like a writer. Today, I want to talk about what books to read, as a writer.

First off, you need to know what kind of writer you are. Are you a literary writer, a genre writer, do you write middle grade, or young adult? If you aren’t sure yet, then the answer is to read as much good writing as you can. If you know, then see below.

Genre

An author who is looking to get traditionally published in any genre, will need to have comp (comparable) titles for their work. These titles need to have been published recently (in the last two or so years), and exhibit something that is similar to your own work.

It could be that a story about a girl who learns about herself, in a young adult work, or maybe the tone and narrative voice are really similar to your own, even if the plot and characters are different. You need two of these when you are at the query stage.

With this in mind, as a genre author, you will need to read books within your genre. You need to read enough genre books that you have a good idea what the regular tropes and clichés are that regularly show up. In short, what do writers of the genre expect?

Sometimes, you will be told to stay away from your own genre while you are writing it. I think this really depends on the author. If you find that your work is becoming derivative as you are writing, simply because you are reading things that are similar to what you are writing; then see my next suggestion.

Literary/Classics

Any writer worth their salt should be able to discuss many classic novels. You don’t have to have read everything, but you should be well-versed in the classics (or canon) and you should understand the forerunners of your own genre and why those books are considered the first. For a horror author, you will want to read Mary Shelley, Bram Stoker, H.P Lovecraft, and Edgar Allen Poe, among others. A mystery writer will need to read Agatha Christy, and Arthur Conan Doyle, among others.

You can always look up a list of classic authors, and start reading. You can find authors that you like their writing style and read those.

If you are a literary author, you will want to look to your contemporary peers and read their work. There are lists of award winners in the literary world, and that would be where you would want to start looking for books that will work for you. This also works for genre authors. All genres have their own awards that celebrate great writers. These lists are easy to find:

Here is a Wikipedia page with that shows all the awards. The list is lengthy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_literary_awards

The answer to what to read, is read a lot, read good writers and find award-winning writing. But, if you are looking for those tricky comps, look in your genre!

Thanks for reading! Let me know if you want more of this kind of stuff, or something different.