First, let's begin with the full text of my simple advice for writers:
Read a lot.
Write a lot.
Publish a lot.
Let's dive into the first axiom: read a lot.
What do I mean by it?
Well, as writers, we must read. Musicians listen to music and architects study buildings. Now, I remember listening to a podcast once with Brandon Sanderson, who said that his reading time goes down when he's in the middle of working on a big project, but that doesn't mean that prior to his publishing success that he didn't read. He read a ton. Hence his great success.
I'm at a point in my life where I feel like I'm behind the eight ball when it comes to reading certain books, be it classics of science fiction, fantasy, thrillers, etc. But I read. I do read a lot. I sometimes read multiple books at once. But I'm a slow reader. I had purchased the five-ebook box set of George R. R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire series years ago, and it honestly took me roughly a year and a half to get through it. Now, I was reading other books between, but it still took me a while. I also read across various genres and story lengths.
But one could expand the "read a lot" into movies and TV shows as well. As a writer, I can watch a TV show (or series) and figure out what the story is doing at any given point in time. I then incorporate it into my own writing.
The point of all this is to simply state that one can absorb the elements of storytelling in ways other than reading (or listening to) a book. TV shows and movies can also fill this role.
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