I finished reading Kevin Smith's Tough Shit: Life Advice from a Fat Lazy Slow Who Did Good tonight. It was a pretty quick and entertaining read, if you don't mind his frequent references to semen. Aside from his surprising tales about what a dick Bruce Willis is, I realize now that he has made a career out of telling stories about what he knows, and that's pretty cool.
I've discovered in the last year that I really like to read, though much of what I like is non-fiction. A lot of it is quasi-non-fiction narrative (I know we had a clinical term for it in J-school), which is stuff that is loosely based on real events, but heavily stylized for entertainment value. Think Ben Mezrich's books that became movies.
In many ways, I find it easier to write when I read more. That probably makes sense. In some ways, that's probably why I should read more fiction, because then I could write the screenplays that are cloudy in my head. There's some danger of being derivative, I suppose, but what generally helps me is the exposure to structure and use of various literary devices that advance a story. Maybe I should have actually paid attention in those literature classes I despised.
No comments yet.