Guest Blog by author Michael Brookes

I hope by now all of you recognize the name Michael Brookes. I have not only reviewed a compilation of short stories he wrote, but he did an interview with me just a few weeks ago.

Since I have already said so much about him, for those of you who do not know, you can find him here:
Michael Brooke's Blog
And on goodreads here: Michael Brookes at goodreads
And Michael on Twitter here: Michael Brookes on Twitter


How reading helps me as a writer
By Michael Brookes

Writing isn’t a job for me (one day maybe, but not yet!), I do it for the love of it. It’s a double whammy of satisfaction, the first is in the writing itself, crafting a story that I am pleased with. The icing on that cake is hearing people’s appreciation for those stories, not everyone likes them of course, but that’s a topic for another post.

As much as I enjoy writing it all started with reading, I’ve been an avid reader as long as I have been able to read, which I was lucky enough to be able to do since a young age. My taste in what I read has changed over the years, but the central love of a good story hasn’t.

When I am asked ‘What is best in life?” I normally respond with a Conan quote, but if I’m being mildly serious then the answer would be ‘a story so good I can lose myself in it’. There’s a common discussion with writers and readers if the story is more important than the quality of the writing and while it can be a close thing story has to be a winner. A good story can carry bad writing more easily than good writing can carry a bad story.

The best reads feature both of course!

So long before I was a writer, I was a reader, but my lifelong love of reading has prepared me for being a writer. I’m not suggesting that all you need is to read a lot and then you can write well, there’s much more to it than that. But reading and understanding what I am reading and how it is put together has provided a solid groundwork upon which I can develop my skill at writing.

Having an eclectic taste in reading can be a big boon, when I was younger I tended to read genre books (horror, sci-fi and fantasy for the most part) with the odd classic sprinkled in. However as I grew older my tastes widened. There are good stories to be found in every genre, there’s also good writing as well and from both of these something can be learned.

When I’m writing, I’m writing a story and I’ll happily borrow from any genre that gives me the tools to express that story. If I’m writing an action scenes then I can call upon techno and military thrillers that excel for such scenes. Horror, science fiction, romance, contemporary and literary all have their elements that can be folded into a story to make it better.

Since I first released my debut novel as an indie author my tastes have widened even further, so much so that I rarely read traditionally published work (although there are still a few mainstream authors that I eagerly await their next release) these days. I think it’s fair to say that like everything you have good and bad books, but if you look there are plenty of gems out there that will probably never be stocked in a book shop, but still provide some of the finest stories (and writing!) you will ever encounter.

So why do I read? Because it helps me become a better writer, but more importantly because I love to lose myself in a story that has been wonderfully crafted.