Why Read Genre How-To Books?

I don’t write romances or mysteries or true crime or historical novels, but I have books about writing all these and more on my shelves, and I have read some of them and will read the rest. Why?

Romance novels are about exploring emotion, creating emotional tension, and creating and overcoming emotional obstacles. A well-written mystery is a study in suspense, foreshadowing, telling enough without telling all, and solving a problem. A well-written historical novel provides enough of the right kind of accurate detail to put you in the place without making you feel like you’re sitting in a classroom.

All of these are necessary skills for all fiction — and who better to learn them from than people whose writing depends on focusing on those specific things in particular and getting them right? I can’t think of anyone better to learn about writing authentic character emotion from than a romance writer whose publishing career depends largely on doing that one thing effectively. Fill in the spaces in that sentence with the mystery-writer and historical-fiction-writer attributes, and you’ll have the rest of the point.

~ by seriouswriter on September 23, 2007.