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A SCRAPBOOK OF STUFF I'M READING / LISTENING TO / LOOKING AT.

Jun 10, 2010

» Kelly Link on reading like a writer

Oh, this is a delicious post. My favorite part:

10. Learn to read other kinds of narrative. Think about narrative when you’re watching television, or a movie. Apply all of the rules above. Read comic books. Read Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics and Lynda Barry’s What It Is. Read Bryan Lee O’Malley’s Scott Pilgrim series. Learn how to read advertisements — what they want to accomplish, and how. Learn to read other people — your friends, your family,your coworkers. Think about how they present themselves, their patterns of speech, the stories they tell about themselves. Again, be sympathetic here. Everybody is the hero of their own story. Be observant, not a sociopath.

Dang, Kelly is awesome. I came across her work five years ago. She was reading in the basement of Mac’s Backs in Cleveland, Ohio (actually, that was a pivotal night for me as a writer — I also met my friends Maureen and Dan). That’s when I first started drawing fiction readings (not particularly well):