I came across some interesting advice about writing

This summer I was reading the 1991 version of Orson Scott Card’s novel, “Ender’s Game.” In his introduction, he has some great insight about writing. He talks about how he had a great idea for his Battle Room, but “[he] hadn’t the faintest idea of how to go about turning the idea into a story…the idea of the story is nothing compared to the importance of knowing how to find a character and a story to tell around that idea.” This sentiment really inspires me, because ideas come to me all the time, but trying to figure out how to turn them into compelling stories is always the hard part. He also says he “learned to separate the story from the writing, probably the most important thing any storyteller has to learn – that there are a thousand right ways to tell a story, and ten million wrong ones, and you’re a lot more likely to find one of the latter than the former your first time through the tale.”

Card goes on to give his opinion about why we read in the first place. He says, “why else do we read fiction, anyway? Not to be impressed by somebody’s dazzling language – or at least I hope that’s not our reason. I think that most of us, anyway, read these stories that we know are not “true” because we’re hungry for another kind of truth: The mythic truth about human nature in general, the particular truth about those life-communities that define our own identity, and the most specific truth of all: our own self-story. Fiction, because it is not about somebody who actually lived in the real world, always has the possibility of being about ourself.”

I don’t always read introductions, but for some reason I read that one and I think it was fate. My husband says all the time that he doesn’t understand why I like to read things that aren’t true. Card explains it here more eloquently than I ever have.