I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately: Can you actually write without reading? Most of the inspiration for my past few books have been from other entertainment mediums. False Goddess is heavily inspired by the works of Yoko Taro, who is a videogame director. My Qing dynasty-inspired shaman fantasy is a love letter to Story of Yanxi Palace (延喜攻略), a C-drama.
Please ignore Xu Kai’s terrible fake mustache and focus on the beauty in this scene.
Music is also an important part of my process. I illustrate epic battle scenes in a landscape of snow or emphasise the painful process of character growth depending on whatever that’s blasting in my earphones.
In fact, I don’t seem to read much at all to write. It sounds terrible, I know. But I seem to write fine without reading a lot.
There are plenty of debates about this somewhere in the dredges of Book Twitter (and probably Tumblr). Most people think that to write, one must be a reader first. A completely reasonable train of thought. I read before I became a writer, myself. I started to write because I was so immersed in fictional worlds I wanted to create one of my own.
I used to read extensively until adulting hit me hard. A hard reality that—I believe—most of us have to come to terms with. There are so many social commitments to fulfill, deadlines that never seem to be met, emails that need to be written. Staring at a computer screen for practically 12 hours a day also makes my brain a puddle by the time I get off work, where I can no longer brain words.
With these responsibilities piling up, and with the ever-looming pressure to read and read and read to keep up with the latest publishing trends, I wondered how I could possibly call myself a writer if I wasn’t able to adhere to the fundamentals of writing.
At the same time, I found myself exploring other mediums and the way they told stories. Animes are perfect for me, since each episode is only 25 minutes long (20 if you skip the opening and ending songs) and almost always wrap up a mini arc within themselves. C-dramas and K-dramas, conversely, always felt a bit lengthy to consume; but those that manage to keep me enraptured for the entire length of 1 hour and 15 minutes per episode never fail to leave me in awe at their ability to weave stories so dense and complex and complete (shoutout to Nirvana in Fire and Stranger). Video games, no matter if I love or hate them, make me think about the larger, overarching world the story is set in, and how every little thing can be interconnected (Genshin lore is amazing, even if you don’t like the game).
No you don’t understand my obsession with Bae Doona (image still from Stranger)
Eventually, I found myself incorporating the little things I picked up from these other mediums into my writing. A stunning composition shot from a movie becomes the inspiration for my scenes; I craft the history of a world before I even fully flesh out the characters; listening to a specific song for a specific mood I want to invoke helps facilitate my writing.
On the flip side, consuming these various mediums makes me frustrated with my own writing sometimes. I cannot present my story in a literal visual form, nor can my readers hear my words (unless it’s an audiobook, of course). I can try to push the boundaries of writing all I can, but at the end of the day, I have to make do with the limited words I have at my disposal.
How then, can I write?
The answer: read.
Ultimately, writing has to cycle back to reading. We read our own manuscripts a thousand times over until we puke at the sight of it. We read other published works to understand craft at a deeper level. We read our friends’ unpolished, raw manuscripts and watch as they become brilliant, multi-faceted gems. We cannot write if we, at a fundamental level, cannot look out for what makes good writing.
Does this mean that consuming other forms of media is a waste of time though?
Absolutely not.
Rather, I think it is absolutely necessary for writers to expand beyond their ballgame and see how storytelling is done in other forms of media. My academic supervisors often tell me to read beyond my expertise, to familiarise myself with other academic disciplines to see what breakthroughs have been made. Similarly, I believe that watching anime, listening to music and observing cinematography widens my perspective and allows me to evoke emotions and images the same way these media do.
[spoilers for Genshin Impact’s Sumeru archon quest below]
Yeah you see this tree? It contains all the memories of the world in them and when someone sacrifices their very existence to save the tree every single person the protagonist talks to afterward NEVER mentions that person anymore, even though they were so significant to the history of Sumeru. EVERYONE.
In short, these media enrich me. Do they contribute to my writing at a craft level? Maybe not, but they certainly do contribute to my ideas and character arcs. To write is to express the world in some form. And how can we portray the world if we don’t see the other creative ecosystems existing within it?
Like a lot of things in life, balance is key. Writing cannot exist without reading, but it cannot exist without other forms of media to supplement it. As art continues to grow and find new ways to manifest, books cannot exist in a vacuum either. That’s why we make book playlists and commission character art.
There are also very real, very pressing problems as to why some writers don’t nearly read as much as they’d like to. The biggest example would be money—books are expensive, especially in the Global South. For people whose daily lives hinge on what little money they earn, a book is a luxury, not an affordable hobby. Even if we do have local libraries, they mostly stock general and literary fiction; and unless an author of colour’s book is an international award-winning bestseller, there is little to no chance of their books being ordered.
Perhaps the real reason why I am writing about this is because seeing writers criticise writers who don’t read much grates my nerves. There is no wrong and right way to writing. The beauty of writing is in its subjectivity, in its gray areas. Who are we to judge if some are able to write well even if they do not read 500 books a year?
The point is, not being able to read regularly is a more complex issue than many people assme. There are a ton of intersectionalities between the Global South and the lack of access to English books, and ultimately the lack of Global South authors’ presence, but these challenges are for another discussion.
Now, I want to circle back to what I’ve talked about so far—that to write, you need to read more and consume other media. What if I don’t have enough time to read though?
I admit that this is something that I still struggle with. But just like watching dramas, I have learned to be selective with what I read. I read the books that I’m really interested in, and not just because they’re surrounded by so much hype (though hype does help). It also took me a long time to accept that, yes, I can just DNF books whenever I want to. Life is too short for forcing myself to read stuff that I actually hate.
So should we read or not to write? If you came here looking for answers, unfortunately I cannot give you one. I can only give you my own experience. But there is no doubt that the more we consume, the more our worldview expands. The more we see, the more we can write about too.
For now, I will happily continue to read the books that excite me and watch all the shows I am so hyped for (Jigokuraku I am looking at you!). As a final note, I share this magnificent soundtrack from NieR:Automata; it’s a deeply personal piece which has gotten me out of False Goddess editing ruts one too many times.
Until next time!
xx,
Amy