Books are made of other books
The sequel to Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. Miss Peregrine is being adapted for film by Tim Burton.
This is an excerpt from Allan Carreon’s interview with the New York Times bestselling YA authors Ransom Riggs and Tahereh Mafi. The full interview is here.
As young writers yourselves, what advice would you give to aspiring young writers?
Tahereh: Never give up. Never surrender. Read forever. It depends where you are as an aspiring writer. Are you an aspiring writer who’s never written a book? Are you an aspiring writer who’s written a book and is trying to get published? Are you an aspiring writer who’s just looking for basic tips and tricks on how to get through writer’s block? Ransom has unlocked this really beautiful way of describing how to write a book, which was—the answer is in other books, and I think that is so true. You can say this…
Ransom: No, I love hearing you say what I said.
Tahereh: He was saying that books are made of other books, and the answer to how to write a book is in other books. And so I think if you’re an aspiring writer who’s looking for help, just read. Infinitely. I’ve never taken a creative writing course in my life. I read my whole life. That was my creative writing course.
Ransom: You can’t device a lecture to teach someone how to write a book. It’s all instinct and feel, and reading a lot just helps your brain get used to the shape of a book and all of the different ways that story can be told and a character can be developed. It’s really important to develop a library of possibilities in your brain so that when you’re writing your own characters…you immediately have a million possibilities.
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