But they're not books!

Ok, I'm pretty tired, so only a short post today, and one that may be entirely superfluous: the reasons why I talk so much about media that aren't books when it comes to lessons about writing.

It's not just because I love Anime, movies, and videogames that I take lessons from them--it's that in the search to differentiate oneself in a genre that, let's face it, is chock full of conventions that have grown a bit tired (why else do you think publishing houses aren't looking for new high or epic fantasy?), one has to draw from whatever outside sources are available.

Movies, anime, and videogames offer lessons to be learned in different ways of storytelling, which is where writers of everything but literary fiction really earn their keep, at least in my book. A close study of a particularly well written tv series, movie, or videogame can not only teach you about plot structure, story arcs, and character development, but can also offer you entirely new ways of writing. Videogames, for instance, generally have no narrator---but must convey the same information that a book must. So to learn how to do away with the narrative backstory one often finds in fantasy, one can do much worse than learn from them. And Anime, with its emphasis on using facial expressions to convey emotion, has a great deal to offer simply in learning which expressions convey which emotions effectively ("his jaw tightened" vs. "he became angry").

This is not to say that these same lessons can't be learned from reading books as well, but for me they have been much more easily accessible through other forms of storytelling--and perhaps more importantly, there is much less likelihood of directly ripping off another author's style when you're translating between media.

This seems a somewhat obvious point to me, but it is one that I think is nonetheless important--and I have found to be remarkably absent from all the "learn to write" books and lectures I've been exposed to.