Writing From Fiction

After a little hiatus because I was madly finishing the first draft of my latest novel (yay), I'm back with my series on WRITING FROM FICTION, where I look at novels I'm reading through the lens of a writer. I ask myself, what can we take away from these books and bring to our own stories, our own writing skills and techniques and interests?

I'm always learning so much from the amazing novels I read that I guess these posts are just an overflowing of that excitement and love, a longing to share with you what I find wonderful and helpful and interesting.

Today's offering is the gorgeous BEAR by Julia Phillips (highly recommend this read) and in this episode I explore how our stories often benefit from being connected to stories that have come before: fairy tales, folk tales, plays, poems, myths - any story, really, that captures something that we want to capture too, in our own work. It might be a kind of retelling like in BEAR, of a Brothers Grimm story, but set in the modern day, or it could be just a little nod, a theme, a character, a name a place, that might resonate with the reader, that might tap into a sort of collective literary consciousness. Or maybe it's just for you, the author, and the pleasure that comes from knowing that your story never stands alone but is always, somehow, connected to stories that came before and to stories that will come after.

I hope you enjoy this. Let me know about any books you've read that use older stories in some way and whether you've used this technique yourself.

Happy writing, friends, and keep going.

Virginia🤍