Expand Your Horizons
Something I have talked about a little bit before, but not really focused on much, is the idea of media consumption as research. Obviously, I have to do this for the majority of the podcast episodes I record. However, I’m not talking about recording here. I’m talking as a writer.
You have probably heard many other writers echo a similar sentiment: to be a writer, you must also be a reader. This is definitely a sentiment I agree with. However, I would take it a step further. I advocate for not just reading as voraciously as you can, but consuming a wide range of narrative media. I’m sure there are some purists out there who would criticize me for putting other forms of media on the same level as books; but film and television, comics, video games, audio dramas and even roleplaying games are all forms of storytelling.
Furthermore, I also think it is a very good idea to study media in genres both within your own and outside it as well. If you plan to write Horror Stories, it makes sense that you will study the writing of horror books and movies. But you would be denying yourself access to a vast pool of excellent storytelling to learn from by refusing to engage with media outside of horror.
I’m going to split this article into two parts. In the first part, I’m going to talk about what you stand to gain from examining different types of storytelling media. In the second, I’m going to talk about what you can learn from studying different genres.
What you can learn from different media
If you’re reading this article and following my content, and are or want to be a writer, I think it’s a reasonable assumption to assume you’re probably working on a book or books. I definitely think that if you plan to write books, it makes sense to prioritise taking your queues from books. But you can still learn a lot by engaging with as many different stories as you can, regardless of the type of medium that story is being told through. The basics of storytelling don’t change much between mediums, only the more specific conventions. So I see little reason to stop yourself from researching a vast percentage of the stories told before you based on false perceptions of difference. Still, all stories being storytelling isn’t exactly a revolutionary idea. So I’m going to briefly go into more specific ideas of what you can gain from different media other than books.
Articles, Blogs and Documentaries
Okay, so this one is cheating a little bit since journalism isn’t supposed to revolve around crafting a narrative (even though so much of it does). But I think it goes without saying that educating yourself can only benefit your stories. The more you know about, the more you can write about convincingly. Of course, you don’t have to go out of your way to study every topic known to man. You can always research things as you need them. Having a wider understanding of things like nature, politics and science can also improve your worldbuilding by allowing you to put together worlds that feel more logical and authentic (in a setting where this makes sense, anyway).
Comics and Graphic Novels
Comics and graphic novels actually present a lot of similar benefits to film and television, so I’m going to skip over those aspects for the next section for the most part. Instead, I want to illustrate something a lot more specific to this medium: comics have a lot less room for text. That means that anything communicated through dialogue or monologue has to be done very concisely. Everything else has to be shown through the visual elements. In writing prose you don’t need to restrain yourself nearly as much in writing a character’s speech or thoughts, but it can still be very beneficial to learn to write concise and snappy dialogue that can get a point across without requiring three pages of exposition.
Film and Television
Movies and TV shows typically have a lot less time to communicate their stories to their audience than prose does. While they have a lot more room for more expanded dialogue and monologues, this is quite similar to how comics have very limited space for text. Because of this, stories told through film and television have to cut out a lot of extra extraneous details. That’s a part of why adapting books into movies is so difficult, you have to decide what details stay or go. That’s why so many adaptations end up feeling underformed or unsatisfying. However, this lack of time means that studying how stories are told in TV and movies is an excellent way to learn how to tell more tightly written and concise stories. Looking at how individual episodes of a show or parts of a series of movies are constructed as self-contained stories within a story is also a good way to learn about structuring the individual chapters of a novel.
Poetry
Poetry is very different to prose in a lot of ways, I touched on that recently. But both are still written mediums and they do use a lot of the same techniques. I would caution against making your prose too poetic, because that can make it become muddy over time and devolve into purple prose. It can also come across as pretentious, which definitely will put readers off. That being said though, poetry is a medium that relies deeply on analogies, metaphors and symbolism to convey feelings and ideas. These are also techniques that are an important part of writing a good story in prose. I think that you can learn a lot about symbolism and crafting strong metaphors through reading poetry.
Video Games
Out of everything on this list, video games are probably the most distinct from all the other mediums. This is for two reasons. The first is the sheer variety in the way this media can take shape. It almost feels disingenuous to call video games a single medium when the experience varies from “basically just a comic or radio drama” to “third person semi-cinematic experience” to “top down omniscient overlord of a hundred units all under your control”. The second is that games add an element to storytelling that is very difficult to meaningfully add to other artistic mediums: audience agency. It is an entire extra dimension of storytelling.
These differences don’t mean those of us who write prose can’t learn something from the people who create games though. A well-written game is still going to be able to be an example of a masterfully crafted and immersive world and complex and layered characters.
This article also does a much better job than I could of explaining how we can learn a lot about structuring our stories from gaming as a medium as well.
What you can learn from different genres
Much as I said in regards to media, I don’t see any reason to assume that not engaging with a vast percentage of storytelling to focus only on examples of your own genre is going to benefit you as much as you think. Imagine all the possible genres of story you can think of as a pie chart. Your genre is one small slice of that pie. The remainder of it is every other story ever told. Consider how much data you are missing if you focus only on that one slice of the pie.
Not only are the most basic conventions of storytelling the same regardless of genre or medium, but you can learn a lot by examining all the different stories you enjoy or don’t enjoy - and yes, I’m saying you should engage at least a little with genres you don’t typically enjoy much too. You can improve your own writing a lot by picking apart other stories and figuring out what parts of them you do and don’t like and why those things resonate with you or fail to.
As with before though, I’d like to dip into some more specific examples. While those basic storytelling conventions change little, there are definitely some things that well-written examples of different genres excel in. So I’m going to touch on a handful of broad genres and point out what they tend to do well and why they are beneficial to learn from.
Comedy
Comedy has a reputation for being low-brow and unintelligent. That is both unfair and I think makes us unwilling to learn from it if we’re trying to tell serious stories. In reality though, I think that comedic stories can teach those of us who aren’t comedic writers more than you’d think. For one thing, being able to inject some levity into even the grimmest stories can be beneficial. Too much darkness can become monotonous, so being able to break that up keeps your audience engaged. Having a little light in your story also makes the darkness feel all the darker for it.
You can also learn a lot about crafting engaging analogies and metaphors from comedy. You can say a lot about a topic through parody and satire, and those skills can serve you well if applied to crafting stories in different genres too.
Lastly, comedic stories can show you a lot about crafting compelling characters. Many comedic stories depend on making characters relatable, likable or detestable. A normal person thrown into a zany situation needs to be relatable and likable to make the madness of what they are experiencing hit home, they need to have believable responses to those situations. If you want people to enjoy a villain’s karmic defeat, it helps to make sure they hate the bastard.
Drama and Romance
Drama and romance, while often linked together, are far from being the same thing. In fact, drama is an umbrella genre that essentially covers every non-comedic story ever. Where, obviously, a romance is a lot more specific and could be comedic, dramatic or both. However, there is something that both of these have in common: they are typically very character driven.
Even more than comedy, I think these stories specifically excel at creating compelling characters (when done well anyway). When your story is entirely dependent on its characters, it becomes more important for them to be grounded in their reality, believable and engaging - regardless of if the goal is to make them likable, hateable or so morally complicated that it’s hard to tell what you think of them.
Given my near constant refrain that characters get an audience far more invested in a story than plot, I think it pretty much goes without saying that I think you can learn a lot about storytelling from genres that are centred primarily on character drama.
Fantasy & Science Fiction
I suppose I could have just called this section speculative fiction, but I wanted to approach horror separately. That being said though, a lot of this does also apply to horror. Fantasy and sci-fi stories done well tend to be masterclasses in worldbuilding and crafting immersive settings. Even if your story is a lot more mundane, I think you can grow a lot as a storyteller by studying up on how these authors draw their audiences into a world different to our own enough to have them suspend their disbelief and embrace the narrative. Even if your story doesn’t feature dragons or cyborgs, being able to enrapture an audience with your setting and have them get lost in the atmosphere and nuances of the world you create is a skillset that is never going to not be beneficial to a writer.
Horror
Perhaps more than any other genre, horror is dependent on an author’s ability to craft something that their audience can empathise and relate to. Because horror is dependent on eliciting feelings of anxiety, disgust and fear to succeed at what it is trying to do. The only genre that is comparably dependent on creating a specific set of feelings is comedy, because it has to make people laugh. What horror can teach us above all else is how to connect with our readers and craft a specific experience. Horror can show us how to create a character, setting or scene that resonates with readers in a way that isn’t just engaging but in a way that is emotional. Of course, other genres can still achieve this effect plenty, but I think horror just excels at this in a deeper way than other genres because it has to resonate with such specific, primal parts of the human experience.
That being said, horror is also a form of speculative fiction. So a lot of what I said about fantasy and science fiction applies here as well. A lot of what I’m going to say in the mystery and thriller category is also going to be relevant to horror too. Because, something else that horror is fantastic at doing, is mixing with other genres and playing with genre conventions to its advantage: another very useful tool in the kit of any writer. Just think: how many horror stories are actually also fantasy or sci-fi? Or mysteries? Or crime thrillers?
Mystery and Thriller
Something every author needs to be able to effectively and consistently is make their readers want to to turn to the next page over and over again. This is where we can learn a lot from mysteries and thrillers (and horror too, but I mentioned that). Intrigue and suspense are two of the most useful, potent weapons in the arsenal of any storyteller. The ability to elicit that intense curiosity, the desire to know the answer to a puzzling question or the outcome of an event that could end in many different ways is at the crux of pretty much any compelling story. However, this is exemplified nowhere more than in mysteries and Thrillers, because in these stories that feeling is the entire point. Studying how the authors of these stories build that intrigue and suspense and make their audiences hungrily crave the next page of the story is going to be beneficial to any storyteller, regardless of what your genre and medium is.
Conclusion
At this point you have probably noted that a lot of the things I have said about one medium or genre can also probably apply to others. But, rather than defeat the purpose of this article, I want to illustrate that this is actually the point of it. So many of the things you can learn from stories told outside of your genre can also be applied to those within it. I’m not trying to say “only X genre or Y medium is good at Z thing”. I’m saying that stories in those genres or mediums that are done well are almost certainly going to be fantastic examples of those traits, and therefore worth studying. I don’t expect people who have no interest in gaming to pick up Dark Souls just to learn about worldbuilding any more than I expect people who can’t read a few pages of light horror to delve into Lovecraft’s bibliography. But I do want to encourage other writers to branch out a little bit and give stories they might not naturally gravitate to a shot, because there’s a lot of amazing stories to pick apart and learn from that you’re probably missing out on.
