I have these vignette ideas I wanna string into a series of short stories that are threaded together thematically but I’m super stuck on POV. I’d love some lessons/deep dives/youtube videos from you showing the literary giants and the POV they chose and why it works - some insight on how POV makes or breaks the story you’re trying to tell and why. Very broad, I know. I can watch other booktubers talk about POV and I have but you’re better than them, can you school us on any of your thoughts on POV?
Specially for me, my series is following 3 characters who seem normie/vanilla to their family and friends but secretly chase stimulation in the extreme (a cuck, a shaman, an arsonist). I think of the narration between Breaking Bad and Gossip Girl for some reason lmao, and I want to switch gears to think about some um, more elevated literary narrative voices to help me get inspired with framing these stories - figuring out which angle would be best.
*update, just noticed you made a 30 min video titled ‘how to find the right POV for your story’ so gonna watch that lmao
Met my wife in an English class at university, got married within a few months, and were married for about five years before consciously trying to conceive.
Not a vegan, but I used to be and am into hunting and not eating factory-farmed meat as much.
Not really, but I have an autistic friend who has been trying to read that since high school, fifteen years ago. He finishes a few pages a year, lol.
Brownsville Ka, Cambatta John Mahavishnu, Carbon Based Lifeforms, Midnite
6'2
Righties had the world made for them. We had to create our way through life
Yes, there are more left-handed creative people. I get a lot of data from students.
Wife named the cat.
Can't answer that
Marry DFW, Kill Mishima (unless I want to trad wife, lol) and fuck McCarthy
Hi Ian. I’ve been a fan for 9 months and I now have three months of essentially nothing (other than quotidian family stuff) to do until I go off to university to study french and german.
I have a lot of classics lined up and I’ve started writing book reviews. I’ve published some, but I also plan to release YouTube videos to learn a new skill. I also want to write more fiction and improve sentence structure. So essentially, do everything, but with no structure to my days I am finding it hard. What are some realistic targets I should set myself in terms of numbers, so I can plan my weeks out (although I will be without wifi for a month abroad lol)
Sorry for the long question, but many thanks for all of the work you have done. I am looking forward to your poetry translations !
I would say that with unlimited time, you could complete a fiction piece, a YouTube video, a non-fiction piece, and still have a ton of free time in a week. If you sleep 8 hours a night and do a couple hours of family stuff a day, you'll still have 70 hours or more a week.
So, post one of each category a week, or at the very least, one of any of them once a week.
1) Would you ever consider allowing some voting for the book club? Maybe 1 slot of 8 being chosen by subsciber votes towards a fixed set of options or something.
2) In your experience making videos about the writing and reading space, are there any big no no's? Like anything that just tanks a video? Could be a specific topic, aspect, or whatever comes to mind.
We can do some voting for the next round of books for Q4.
I would say if you're not doing a high-quality, scripted video that's relatable, it's better to focus on something more narrow than broad. You have to be good (which is hard at the start) to break through with videos like "10 writing tips for ficiton authors" or broad videos like that. I see people in the book/writing tube graveyard who've made 100+ broad videos and have nothing to show for it, but if they did 100 more narrow videos with the same effort/quality they'd have thousands of subs.
Hey Ian. Any advice on how to have energy/time for all the reading/writing projects without sacrificing life? I’m really impressed how you’re able to host book clubs, film videos, read a ton of difficult books, write something on your own, and at the same time work as a teacher full time and be a father and husband. Wow! I also have a full time job and a wife, and I often find myself incapable of writing or even reading at the end of the day. I feel like I just inherently have less energy than you lol
If you feel it's an energy thing, then start to clean up your diet and exercise more. More Florida sunshine. Additionally, reduce mental fatigue by making fewer choices throughout the day and minimizing friction. It's a process that can take months or years, but I know that this year, I made it a big goal at my job. They've conducted studies, and teachers make 150 decisions an hour, so I set a goal to create a system for everything and reduce that to 50. My energy skyrocketed!
Cool, thanks a lot for the reply. For me it’s sometimes hard to set the priorities and decide what to do first. For example, should I spend this free hour of time after work on writing, reading infinite jest or some other book or maybe go do some workout.
Gonna hit you with some books/authors that stuck with me. curious if you know them, like them, hate them, think they’re worthwhile:
James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room
anything by Borges
VS Naipaul The Mimic Men
Awakening to the Great Sleep War by Gert Jonke
Martin Amis The Information
Paul Bowles The Sheltering Sky
Thomas De Quincey Confessions of an English Opium Eater
Dave Eggars Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Any primary or secondary Taoist texts
james Dickey’s Deliverance
Any of william gaddis’s 4 monsters
Franzen’s The Corrections
i haven’t read gaddis or franzen or dave eggars but ive been curious if i should in your estimation. still have plenty of ian-approved homework to do either way. and that concludes a cursory tour of my
bookshelves’ standouts.
oh oh Have you read Sapolsky’s Determined (thesis: we have no free will) i think he’s right but we still have to try
if you answer nothing else im really curious about your thoughts on sapolsky
he’s a stanford neuroscientist. free will doesn’t exist. logical deductions are punishment and reward are equally useless and nonsensical. best you can do is know you’re lucky enough to know how lucky you are. gotta live like you have free will but no one else does. my takeaways anyway.
Thank you for the support and everything that you do, Ian! I hope this comment finds you and all who read it well!
Here is my question: Ever since December I have been working primarily on a short story that is now looking to very likely be about 9,000 words. I have also worked on some other projects along the way including several poems that are finished. And since January I told myself that I will not post anything else on Substack until this short story I started in December is finished.
I estimated then that I would have it done by April, but it still is not complete. I also planned to share multiple notes on Substack sharing my writing process for this short story well ahead of time. That way I can have a nice countdown promoting the short story so I can get as many people looking at the piece when it is finally published while also helping writers with their own projects by sharing my writing process through notes.
So my question is, do you think this is a good idea that I am not posting anything until this post is finished, or is it better for me to post other works along the way, such as the poems I wrote along the way, and not be so obsessed with posting this short story in particular?
You do say in a recent Substack video that there is no reason that people shouldn’t post one thing a month. So a part of me also wants to get more posts out.
The reason why I am so obsessed with posting this short story next is because it shares a similar theme that several of the poems I posted in January, the last things I posted, have. And I thought it would be interesting to post this short story next to continue that theme.
(Edit: I’m also aware that reading other people’s works that I genuinely find interesting and becoming friends with the authors is a good idea too. And posting notes [unrelated to the short story] along the way is a good idea too.)
I don't exactly understand the question, but I assume you already have a good vocabulary but it just sounds weird in your story. Look at Cormac, you sometimes need just to make your story more epic or detached, and then it just works. Or add a character to go on a crazy rant, lol. If you look at even his most mainstream works like The Counselor, No Country for Old Men, or All the Pretty Horses, he uses nature, other characters telling stories, or flashbacks/day dreams to go crazy with vocab.
Do you have any tips for someone who wants to become a "better reader" but cannot organize his thoughts enough to comprehend basic themes (not to mention complex ones)? Is there some kind of synesthesia that allows for you to read deeper and shape meaning? Because for me it is all just thematic chaos.
Spend more time in the game (read more) and become symbol-literate. I would first read a ton of books and keep a journal with quotes that you look at, along with a multiple-page wrap-up by you after each book, exploring your ideas about it. Then, after you do that for 100-200 books, start reading harder classic novels with a ton of secondary literature breaking down the themes/symbolism in the book, and start studying stuff from a more formal/academic lens. Add studying mythology, the bible, the occult and other main symbol texts to become more symbol-literate. Then, after you do that you'll be ready, lol.
Ian I’m a big fan. As someone aspiring to become one of the 50,000 in sparking the literary renaissance I’d love to know your thoughts on how those of us that enjoy spec fiction and other genres besides maximalist literary fiction can contribute to getting people reading again. I think you’ve touched on this with your extensive content on Stephen King among others (I enjoyed your video of you talking about reading the book your wife made you read) but maybe bring it all together and tell us how we can use genre writing that isn’t maximalist (but still wants to dig deeper in these other genres like spec fiction) to do our part.
Things like spec fic are easy to make literary. Genres like romance, thrillers, mysteries, and sometimes horror are much harder to make literary.
Creating an alternate reality forces a reader to examine the causal factors that led to the shift between our consensual reality and the most likely malignant reality presented in a speculative fiction novel. That is inherently transformative.
Even some classic literary fiction novels don't make me contemplate our reality, but just force me into some intellectual circle jerk 🤣
Come on Ian you gatta give us more of a heads up on these book clubs! Haha Of course you chose the 2 Clarice Lispector books I havent read. Theirs no way I can finish both by the 12th 😩
Yay! I didnt even realize, I read Jour of The Star last month! When I read the title I confused it with Near to The Wild Heart (I haven't read that) May I just have to read Aqua Viva and its super short as you said.
For sure 1...I actually just grabbed Aqua Viva a few days ago and put it in my "read next" area along with The Brothers Karamazov. Theirs no way im getting done with that before the club haha.
I have a few friends that have said they are interested in reading more literary works instead of non-fiction or genre. What books should I recommend to them/how should I approach getting them into these works?
One book I have had success with is Life for Sale by Mishima. A couple friends bought it, enjoyed it, and we talked about it after!
I can read anything. Why would I want to struggle with some postmodern bullshit when I can read Saramago?
Just because the world is confusing is no reason to intentionally confuse readers. Oooo! Artsy!
It's hard enough to read. Writers should meet readers more than halfway, because work on the writer's side helps innumerable readers. Writing clearly is hard. Writing without thinking is laziness.
BTW, I also hate 800-page novels with no ending. Looking at you, Mr. King.
I have these vignette ideas I wanna string into a series of short stories that are threaded together thematically but I’m super stuck on POV. I’d love some lessons/deep dives/youtube videos from you showing the literary giants and the POV they chose and why it works - some insight on how POV makes or breaks the story you’re trying to tell and why. Very broad, I know. I can watch other booktubers talk about POV and I have but you’re better than them, can you school us on any of your thoughts on POV?
Specially for me, my series is following 3 characters who seem normie/vanilla to their family and friends but secretly chase stimulation in the extreme (a cuck, a shaman, an arsonist). I think of the narration between Breaking Bad and Gossip Girl for some reason lmao, and I want to switch gears to think about some um, more elevated literary narrative voices to help me get inspired with framing these stories - figuring out which angle would be best.
*update, just noticed you made a 30 min video titled ‘how to find the right POV for your story’ so gonna watch that lmao
Lol, let me know if that video was good enough to answer this!
Yess I’ll do what you recommended in the video and draft it out in first and third and see what works best
why did cormac include those bullet points at the beginning of each chapter in BM? i like them they’re weird
when did you meet you wife and how long did you date before marriage and how long married before daughter conceived and were you trying to conceive
veganism?
who hurt you? just kidding
is Guns Germs and Steel still considered good? i read it so long ago
Who is on your mount rushmore
of musical artists alive or dead
are you as tall as you seem to be even tho you’re always sitting
i’m also a lefty. why are we better than normies
follow-up do you think lefties are more represented in your community than general population why or why not
who named your cat griselda
fuck marry kill dance dance revolution guitar hero wii sports
fuck marry kill dfw mishima mccarthy
this is fun thanks Ian xoxoxo
Classic technique in Western Novels.
Met my wife in an English class at university, got married within a few months, and were married for about five years before consciously trying to conceive.
Not a vegan, but I used to be and am into hunting and not eating factory-farmed meat as much.
Not really, but I have an autistic friend who has been trying to read that since high school, fifteen years ago. He finishes a few pages a year, lol.
Brownsville Ka, Cambatta John Mahavishnu, Carbon Based Lifeforms, Midnite
6'2
Righties had the world made for them. We had to create our way through life
Yes, there are more left-handed creative people. I get a lot of data from students.
Wife named the cat.
Can't answer that
Marry DFW, Kill Mishima (unless I want to trad wife, lol) and fuck McCarthy
thank you brother. i suspect more questions to come when i wake up properly
Hi Ian. I’ve been a fan for 9 months and I now have three months of essentially nothing (other than quotidian family stuff) to do until I go off to university to study french and german.
I have a lot of classics lined up and I’ve started writing book reviews. I’ve published some, but I also plan to release YouTube videos to learn a new skill. I also want to write more fiction and improve sentence structure. So essentially, do everything, but with no structure to my days I am finding it hard. What are some realistic targets I should set myself in terms of numbers, so I can plan my weeks out (although I will be without wifi for a month abroad lol)
Sorry for the long question, but many thanks for all of the work you have done. I am looking forward to your poetry translations !
I would say that with unlimited time, you could complete a fiction piece, a YouTube video, a non-fiction piece, and still have a ton of free time in a week. If you sleep 8 hours a night and do a couple hours of family stuff a day, you'll still have 70 hours or more a week.
So, post one of each category a week, or at the very least, one of any of them once a week.
Thanks for the advice!
Hey Ian,
I have a couple of questions.
1) Would you ever consider allowing some voting for the book club? Maybe 1 slot of 8 being chosen by subsciber votes towards a fixed set of options or something.
2) In your experience making videos about the writing and reading space, are there any big no no's? Like anything that just tanks a video? Could be a specific topic, aspect, or whatever comes to mind.
We can do some voting for the next round of books for Q4.
I would say if you're not doing a high-quality, scripted video that's relatable, it's better to focus on something more narrow than broad. You have to be good (which is hard at the start) to break through with videos like "10 writing tips for ficiton authors" or broad videos like that. I see people in the book/writing tube graveyard who've made 100+ broad videos and have nothing to show for it, but if they did 100 more narrow videos with the same effort/quality they'd have thousands of subs.
Hey Ian. Any advice on how to have energy/time for all the reading/writing projects without sacrificing life? I’m really impressed how you’re able to host book clubs, film videos, read a ton of difficult books, write something on your own, and at the same time work as a teacher full time and be a father and husband. Wow! I also have a full time job and a wife, and I often find myself incapable of writing or even reading at the end of the day. I feel like I just inherently have less energy than you lol
If you feel it's an energy thing, then start to clean up your diet and exercise more. More Florida sunshine. Additionally, reduce mental fatigue by making fewer choices throughout the day and minimizing friction. It's a process that can take months or years, but I know that this year, I made it a big goal at my job. They've conducted studies, and teachers make 150 decisions an hour, so I set a goal to create a system for everything and reduce that to 50. My energy skyrocketed!
Cool, thanks a lot for the reply. For me it’s sometimes hard to set the priorities and decide what to do first. For example, should I spend this free hour of time after work on writing, reading infinite jest or some other book or maybe go do some workout.
Gonna hit you with some books/authors that stuck with me. curious if you know them, like them, hate them, think they’re worthwhile:
James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room
anything by Borges
VS Naipaul The Mimic Men
Awakening to the Great Sleep War by Gert Jonke
Martin Amis The Information
Paul Bowles The Sheltering Sky
Thomas De Quincey Confessions of an English Opium Eater
Dave Eggars Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Any primary or secondary Taoist texts
james Dickey’s Deliverance
Any of william gaddis’s 4 monsters
Franzen’s The Corrections
i haven’t read gaddis or franzen or dave eggars but ive been curious if i should in your estimation. still have plenty of ian-approved homework to do either way. and that concludes a cursory tour of my
bookshelves’ standouts.
oh oh Have you read Sapolsky’s Determined (thesis: we have no free will) i think he’s right but we still have to try
if you answer nothing else im really curious about your thoughts on sapolsky
k buddy. cheers
Will have to read Sapolsky!
he’s a stanford neuroscientist. free will doesn’t exist. logical deductions are punishment and reward are equally useless and nonsensical. best you can do is know you’re lucky enough to know how lucky you are. gotta live like you have free will but no one else does. my takeaways anyway.
Hey Man, you said you were getting into dark germanic Gnosis philosophie for a while, could you recommend some books ? Thanks.
Thank you for the support and everything that you do, Ian! I hope this comment finds you and all who read it well!
Here is my question: Ever since December I have been working primarily on a short story that is now looking to very likely be about 9,000 words. I have also worked on some other projects along the way including several poems that are finished. And since January I told myself that I will not post anything else on Substack until this short story I started in December is finished.
I estimated then that I would have it done by April, but it still is not complete. I also planned to share multiple notes on Substack sharing my writing process for this short story well ahead of time. That way I can have a nice countdown promoting the short story so I can get as many people looking at the piece when it is finally published while also helping writers with their own projects by sharing my writing process through notes.
So my question is, do you think this is a good idea that I am not posting anything until this post is finished, or is it better for me to post other works along the way, such as the poems I wrote along the way, and not be so obsessed with posting this short story in particular?
You do say in a recent Substack video that there is no reason that people shouldn’t post one thing a month. So a part of me also wants to get more posts out.
The reason why I am so obsessed with posting this short story next is because it shares a similar theme that several of the poems I posted in January, the last things I posted, have. And I thought it would be interesting to post this short story next to continue that theme.
(Edit: I’m also aware that reading other people’s works that I genuinely find interesting and becoming friends with the authors is a good idea too. And posting notes [unrelated to the short story] along the way is a good idea too.)
Is this your story about the female hunter you submitted for the contest or a new one?
A brand new one.
Who are the worse mainstream writers that are often times hailed as great?
What is the best way to increase written vocabulary without sounding unnatural?
Ocean Vuong
I don't exactly understand the question, but I assume you already have a good vocabulary but it just sounds weird in your story. Look at Cormac, you sometimes need just to make your story more epic or detached, and then it just works. Or add a character to go on a crazy rant, lol. If you look at even his most mainstream works like The Counselor, No Country for Old Men, or All the Pretty Horses, he uses nature, other characters telling stories, or flashbacks/day dreams to go crazy with vocab.
What are some great coming of age literary novels in the vein of books like - Musashi, War & Peace, The Count of Montecristo?
Spring Snow and Runaway Horses by Mishima
Do you have any tips for someone who wants to become a "better reader" but cannot organize his thoughts enough to comprehend basic themes (not to mention complex ones)? Is there some kind of synesthesia that allows for you to read deeper and shape meaning? Because for me it is all just thematic chaos.
Spend more time in the game (read more) and become symbol-literate. I would first read a ton of books and keep a journal with quotes that you look at, along with a multiple-page wrap-up by you after each book, exploring your ideas about it. Then, after you do that for 100-200 books, start reading harder classic novels with a ton of secondary literature breaking down the themes/symbolism in the book, and start studying stuff from a more formal/academic lens. Add studying mythology, the bible, the occult and other main symbol texts to become more symbol-literate. Then, after you do that you'll be ready, lol.
Ian, ch' ch' changes, check this out /mark
https://www.filmsforaction.org/watch/capitalism-and-other-kids-stuff/
Ian I’m a big fan. As someone aspiring to become one of the 50,000 in sparking the literary renaissance I’d love to know your thoughts on how those of us that enjoy spec fiction and other genres besides maximalist literary fiction can contribute to getting people reading again. I think you’ve touched on this with your extensive content on Stephen King among others (I enjoyed your video of you talking about reading the book your wife made you read) but maybe bring it all together and tell us how we can use genre writing that isn’t maximalist (but still wants to dig deeper in these other genres like spec fiction) to do our part.
Things like spec fic are easy to make literary. Genres like romance, thrillers, mysteries, and sometimes horror are much harder to make literary.
Creating an alternate reality forces a reader to examine the causal factors that led to the shift between our consensual reality and the most likely malignant reality presented in a speculative fiction novel. That is inherently transformative.
Even some classic literary fiction novels don't make me contemplate our reality, but just force me into some intellectual circle jerk 🤣
So, keep blazing forward with the spec fiction!
Come on Ian you gatta give us more of a heads up on these book clubs! Haha Of course you chose the 2 Clarice Lispector books I havent read. Theirs no way I can finish both by the 12th 😩
They are short. You can do at least one. Less than 150 pages, I think one is under 100
Yay! I didnt even realize, I read Jour of The Star last month! When I read the title I confused it with Near to The Wild Heart (I haven't read that) May I just have to read Aqua Viva and its super short as you said.
For sure 1...I actually just grabbed Aqua Viva a few days ago and put it in my "read next" area along with The Brothers Karamazov. Theirs no way im getting done with that before the club haha.
I have a few friends that have said they are interested in reading more literary works instead of non-fiction or genre. What books should I recommend to them/how should I approach getting them into these works?
One book I have had success with is Life for Sale by Mishima. A couple friends bought it, enjoyed it, and we talked about it after!
Yeah, Mishima is always a good choice. If they liked him, Murakami is a more surreal Japanese choice.
Still Life with Woodpecker by Tom Robbins is a good one to get friends into reading with you!
I think Murakami is the way to go. A reading of Norwegian Wood with the fellas sounds perfect. Thanks much!!!
I can read anything. Why would I want to struggle with some postmodern bullshit when I can read Saramago?
Just because the world is confusing is no reason to intentionally confuse readers. Oooo! Artsy!
It's hard enough to read. Writers should meet readers more than halfway, because work on the writer's side helps innumerable readers. Writing clearly is hard. Writing without thinking is laziness.
BTW, I also hate 800-page novels with no ending. Looking at you, Mr. King.
I feel you. Sometimes the pay off is worth it.