All language subtitles for MasterClass Walter Mosley Teaches Fiction and Storytelling - 09. Genre and “Rules” of Fiction

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Lots of people come
up to me and say--

like this, they say,
well in order to write,

you have to read, don't you?

I was once being interviewed
on a radio station

and the guy said, in
order to be a writer,

you have to be a
big reader, right?

And I went, no.

You don't.

And he was so upset.

We couldn't even continue
with the interview

because I had-- you
know, this was obvious.

He wasn't a writer,
but he knew what I

needed to know to be a writer.

And it was interesting.

And you can tell this,
because if you go out

on a street corner, some people
are hanging out, some of them

tell great stories.

And people who can tell
jokes-- and jokes are like--

jokes are tiny little novels.

They can just tell one
joke after another.

They might not ever
read a book, you know.

Homer was blind and illiterate.

And he's the father of the
tradition of the novel.

Even though what he wrote were
poems, those poems were novels.

The idea of telling a story
is not about reading a story,

otherwise what you
end up with is writers

writing about writers writing.

And there are people like that.

They read books and
they write books.

And they become very similar.

To be a writer you have to
be able to tell a story.

Anybody can tell a story.

Three-year-old kids are
telling stories all the time.

Mothers taking care of
children are telling stories.

Once upon a time, there was--
you know, on and on and on.

And what's so wonderful
about it is the story

that the mother tells the
child is not the story

the child hears.

The child is hearing
something different--

slightly different, maybe,
or maybe very different.

This kid wants to be the wolf.

This kid is
wondering about size.

How does somebody live in a
stomach after they get eaten up

and then come out again?

You know, there's all
kinds of different avenues

that we go on.

We hear stories.

We know stories.

We know stories
about what happened

to our fathers or our mothers
or our lovers or ourselves--

deep, powerful stories
that have nothing to

do with reading a book.

You were walking down a
street and somebody shot you.

Well, you don't
need to read a book

to tell the story about
somebody shooting you.

You need to tell about
that and what it meant,

and who you were,
and where you went.

Now, I'm not trying to say that
reading is a thing that people

shouldn't do.

You like reading books?

Read books.

Absolutely.

But don't mistake the fact
that you're reading books

with the issue of you
becoming a good writer

or a person who can write a
beginning, middle, and end.

Reading and writing are
two different things.

And if we know that,
then it's fine.

And if you like reading, great.

Reading is very important.

It's one of the most
important things we do.

But it's not necessarily
going to make you a writer.

So take it from med--

if you haven't read everything
or half of everything

or 1/10 of 1% of
everything, it's OK.

Even if reading isn't
your favorite thing

and you do it sometimes but
it might be a guilty pleasure,

it's OK.

Whatever it is, it's
not going to stop you

from being a writer.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

One of the great failings of
literature in the university

since, let's say, 1960 has
been all of these programs

about writing--

writing programs.

Iowa starts it, but
it goes everywhere.

And you spend thousands,
tens of thousands,

hundreds of thousands
of dollars, in quotes,

"learning" how to be a writer.

And the university
has these notions,

these kind of cockeyed
notions that they understand

what great writing is.

We understand great writing.

We have the libraries.

We have the professors.

This professor
studied Jules Verne.

And this professor, you
know, whatever they did

and whatever it was.

And they're teaching you
about what great writing is.

And then they're teaching
you how to write,

continually telling
you that you can't

write as well as the
great writers did,

because you've come up in
a different generation,

of course.

And they never seem to
understand that all great

writing in prose, in fiction--

that includes some poetry--

has been popular
writing in its day.

Homer, with "The Iliad" and "The
Odyssey," later the "Aeneid"--

Zola, Alexandre Dumas,
Charles Dickens, Mark Twain,

Herman Melville--

all of these people,
the reason that people

read them and remember
them is because they

were popular writers.

People went out to buy them.

Charles Dickens was the most
popular writer in the world.

But you know, he wrote
great literature,

incredibly powerful literature.

He actually entered
debtors prison

by writing about debtors prison.

I mean, who does that, right?

But people coming up
to you, say, well, this

is not great literary writing.

And I say, you can't know
it's great literary writing

until after I'm dead.

What are you
talking about to me?

You know, these
people before, they're

writing their little
philosophical novels.

Nobody's reading them
today, but in 100 years,

they're going to be
considered the greatest

novelist of all time.

You have to understand
that popularity

is a very important
part of literature.

And the popularity is the story.

David Copperfield,
it's the story.

Oliver Twist, it's the story.

The great white whale with
Ishmael and Queequeg and Ahab--

it's the story.

It's a gigantic adventure which
is deeper than almost anything

Shakespeare ever wrote.

Shakespeare-- it's the story.

When you read him--
and you see it, too--

it's the story.

And it has to be a
story that speaks

to us, that helps us understand
our world and ourselves.

And if it lasts, it's
great literature.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Genre is a really
interesting question.

What is a genre?

A genre could be a form.

For instance, you
might write plays.

Play is a genre.

You know, it's written
words and people speak them

and they're on a stage.

And there are people
sitting in the audience.

Well, that's a play.

It could be a screenplay,
which explains not only

where the people are
and what they're saying,

but how everything around
them looks and how it changes

and how we follow them,
how we come close on them,

how we see them from
two directions at once.

Poetry-- probably
the oldest genre--

is a very specific form of
song, actually, which slowly

develops into a more prosaic--

but not prose-- format.

Short stories is a genre.

Novels are a genre.

Within genres, though,
you can have subgenres.

So like within novels, you can
have science fiction stories,

mystery stories, romance
stories, erotic stories.

There are all kinds
of different stories.

And each one of
them has a genre.

And in subgenres, you
can have sub-subgenres.

Like for in crime, for instance,
you can have mysteries.

You can have cozies.

You can have purely
logic-driven mysteries.

There's so many different
kinds of genres.

But in the end,
writing is writing.

It's the same language.

It's the same words.

It's the same grammar.

It's everything put into
slightly different structures,

seen in slightly different
ways, labored over

by slightly different
numbers of people.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

It's true that when I started to
write "Devil," I didn't know--

I don't know that
it was going to be

called "Devil," for one thing.

And I just started writing.

And I got kind of
halfway through it

and I realized it was
going to be a mystery,

a kind of a noir book.

And so I wrote it in that way.

I was successful at it.

It was good.

But also it taught me something.

There are people who read
books because they're

mysteries, period.

They don't care
who wrote the book.

They don't care who
stars in the book.

They just want to
read a good mystery.

Now, if you write a
mystery about black people

in Los Angeles, people--

not only black people--
are going to read that book

and are going to say, wow,
that was a good mystery.

And so I realized
in a political sense

that I could talk
about the people

that I love so much to
a much wider audience

by just sticking
with it, by saying,

I'm going to write
this mystery and then

other people are going to
read it and talk about it,

and I will enter into
worlds that nobody

would have let me in otherwise.

When I'm about to
write a story, I

wonder what it is I'm
trying to talk about.

I remember once-- I'm not
a very religious person.

I'm not a very spiritual person.

The only thing in any of that
that means anything to me

is that I believe in the soul.

I can't help it.

I believe that I have a soul.

I feel like I have a soul.

I can't prove it.

But I believe it.

And I wanted to write a book
in which my characters got

the closest to understanding
and experiencing a soul.

Now, a mystery would be a
ridiculous thing to try to--

so you hire this detective
to go out and find the soul.

I mean, I guess it
might be kind of funny.

But no, I'm not
going to do that.

And a Western?

I don't know.

A short story?

Well, yeah.

But what kind of short story?

A novel?

Yes, I think definitely a novel.

I finally decided,
well, I need to write

a speculative or science
fiction novel called

"Blue Light," in which the
nature of life on Earth

is not what we thought it
was, but something else that's

becoming something else.

And in becoming something
else, the soul is revealed.

And I thought, wow, OK, so I
need to write a science fiction

novel called "Blue Light" in
order to understand the soul.

And that's what I decided to do.

Genre is only
limiting for a writer

if a writer feels
limited by that genre.

If you like writing romances
or cozy mysteries or very

intellectual short
stories, that's

your thing, that's great.

Do that.

The day you feel limited
by it, do something else.