What is cross-training?

Cross-training is training in different ways to improve your overall skill in a field. Cross-training is most commonly found in the world of sports. Athletes will train using different methods, taking advantage of the benefits of each while using the mix to overcome the drawbacks.

Cross-training as a writer is much the same. Engaging in a program of cross-training will strengthen your writing muscles. This article will show you some creative writing exercises and approaches for cross-training in your reading. Later articles will cover cross-training for your writing content and style.

Why cross-train?
Cross-training forces you to stretch your brain and think in ways you aren’t used to. It fires up new neural pathways and deepens your lateral thinking. It will improve the quality of your writing, and allow you to push through ‘stuck’ moments by giving you a deeper reserve of writing resources to draw on.

Cross-training your reading
Before we start this exercise, take a moment to jot down a few notes about what genres and styles you normally read. Here’s a list of genres if you need prompting. I’ll let you decide how detailed you want to get, but my own list looked something like this:

• Fiction
• High fantasy
• Epic fantasy
• Fantasy and Sci-Fi short stories
• Soft Sci-Fi
• Hard Sci-Fi
• Non-Fiction
• Popular Science
• Renaissance History
• Interesting Economics

Your own interests may lie in those areas, or you might branch off into different sorts of fiction and non-fiction. Everyone has their own tastes, and generally over a period of time you learn who the best authors in your favorite fields are, and learn to gauge with friends and booksellers who else to try out within that area. Getting recommendations from like-minded readers is a great way of avoiding the omnipresent duds within a genre, but it can also limit your exposure to new things.

As you progress down a reading path of reading what you like and more-of-the-same, other amazingly well-written books will start to slip you by. Taking the time and effort to consciously read a wider field of books will expose you to more of the gems of our craft, regardless of which genre they may be hidden in.

The best and simplest way to start cross-training as a creative writer is to expand the circle of genres that you read. While initially the thought of ravaging a romance or skimming through a Sci-Fi may have you running for your bedside table and its comfortable favorites, let’s look at the benefits of reading widely.

First, it exposes you to new ideas. Genres like romance and historical fiction will often focus more heavily on the complexities of human relationships than Sci-Fi and Fantasy, which often tend their attentions towards detailed world-building. Crime and horror will have different plot themes and character archetypes than general fiction.

Second, reading widely shows you new problems and new solutions. Given the premise that nearly every story is about overcoming challenges, the problems faced by characters in different genres will vary widely.

Grisham‘s protagonists need to overcome the trials and tribulations of America’s complex legal systems. Allende‘s characters struggle through familiar relationships in heartbreakingly detailed historical settings. Herbert‘s heroes deal with hostile planets and the machinations of interstellar politics. Reilly puts his crews through their paces with breathtaking adventures in high technology and reflex-driven military tactics. Duncan‘s swordsmen-bodyguards buckle swash and manoeuvre through European-style courtly intrigues.

Every genre, every author, every protagonist will face down and overcome their own particular challenges. Reading a wide variety of genres will expose you to problems that you wouldn’t have thought of on your own and solutions that will improve the flow and credibility of your story.
Finally, with the explosion of reader-reviewed databases on the Internet, it’s easy to skip over the worst, the most clichéd of the genres you’re investigating and head straight to the cream of the crop. While no big crime and romance fan, my forays into those genres was made more rewarding by starting with the best and working my way downwards, rather than taking a random approach.

So, how to begin widening your reading horizons?

Exercise 1: Expanding your reading.
Have an internet connection? Good. Do this right now. It’ll take you 20 minutes at most.

• Write out your 10 favourite novels. (This doesn’t have to be perfect. The idea of this step is to give you a broad overview of where your reading trends lie.)
• Scan the list, have a think, and jot down the major genres that you tend towards reading. Have a think for a few minutes and see if there are any genres that you specifically avoid.  (If somebody you trusted – a bookseller, a friend – said to you, “This is the best example of genre X I’ve come across in a long time”… Would you read it?)
• Write down your 6 least-read genres. (Stuck? Another easy way to do this is to think ‘when was the last time I read an X novel?’, and then pick the genres furthest back in your memory. If you can confidently answer ‘never’, then make that one of your three. Again, here’s a list of genres for you to mull over.)
• Do some research and make a quick list of 5 popular, highly rated books in each of those genres. Use Amazon, Librarything, or the suggestions on the genres page to help you in your choices. This will give you 30 books.

Print out the list and stick it on the wall over your writing desk, or on the fridge. We’re going to use this list for the next few exercises.

Exercise 2: Broad reading practice
Once a week, for a month, do the following:

1. Grab a copy of your reading list.
2. Head to your local library.
3. Get familiar with library’s layout. Have a quick explore through shelves you don’t normally walk down.  (If you get lost, ask a librarian. They’re nicer than they look, and will enthusiastically recommend extra books for you.)
4. Pick out some books from your reading list. If you’re a fast reader, get 5. Then read one book a night. If you’re a slower reader, get a minimum of 2. Enough to keep yourself going for a week.

You can get other books out as well, but you aren’t allowed to cheat and not get books off your list because you run out of room on your card.
(The aim isn’t to starve yourself of familiar, comfortable reading material, but to gently broaden your horizons.)
Take the books home. Treat them well. Read the jacket covers. Look who reviews them. Read them, deeply and well. (More on that in a moment!)
Rinse and repeat until you’ve used up your entire reading list. Then start again with a new list at Exercise 1!

Starting to read new genres
Reading new genres can be a challenge at first, but it’s easy enough once you get used to trying new things. As you jump into the books, remember that the experience will be very different to what you’re used to. If you normally read slower, more thoughtful books, then the faster pace of adventure novels and thrillers might be a bit bewildering. If you’re used to high-octane stuff, then you might get a bit bored to begin with. Don’t give up out of your discomfort. Push through it. It won’t last long.

If you find yourself really resisting reading a certain book or genre, pause and think why. Heading into a new book with a preconceived notion of how you’re going to react to it will stop you from getting the richest experience. Think about your prejudices and then notice if they reflect reality accurately.

Do what you can to make your reading comfortable and enjoyable. Use your intelligence and determine what approach is most likely to give you the best results for the sort of reading you’re doing. Looking at the earlier example, if you’re frustrated by a slower-paced book, then put yourself in an environment where you feel more relaxed leisurely. Head outside and grab some sun in a comfortable chair. Head to the bath.

If a speedy book is making you uncomfortable, don’t retreat from it. Get yourself ready to have your heart pounding. Treat it as you would an explosion-heavy Bruce Willis-ey sort of film. Put on some engaging music. Read a few chapters before heading to the gym, or running around with your kids. Take the book with you on a long trip and see how the hours zip past. Don’t retreat. Immerse yourself head-in. It can be exhilarating if you let it!

Looking at new genres critically
As you read a new genre, look at what the author does differently to the writers you normally read. On the first few books through, you might still be acclimatising to the new style and only pick up on very general differences. That’s OK.

Some common things that will change between genres are the styles of plot you encounter, the pacing of the novel, and the sorts of interactions between characters. I’m not going to provide you with an exhaustive list, because detailed analysis of the different genres isn’t what we’re aiming for here. What’s best to focus on is keeping your mind open to noticing differences as they arise.

For example, I was on my fourth romance novel (about a time-travelling viking-cum-Navy-SEAL, no less) when I noticed that I was getting a much, much clearer visual picture of characters in my head than I normally did with fantasy and Sci-Fi novels. It was being cleverly done, too – no mind-numbing pages of garish description of rippling abs and heaving bosoms. Subtle passages were woven into dialogue and action, but it was increasingly clear that my connection with the appearance of the characters was much more strongly crafted by authors in this genre than in others.

When you notice these differences, jot notes about them down somewhere. It doesn’t have to be formal, but writing down your observations will solidify them in your mind and give you something to come back and refer to.

As you read more books in more genres, you’ll build up an increasing understanding of how language, writing techniques and narrative devices can be bent and shaped into a massive variety of shapes. This is the ultimate goal of deliberately widening your reading circle – to gain an inherent understanding of the vast flexibility you have in how you write.

Reading non-fiction
Reading non-fiction extensively is a great way to improve your creative writing. Non-fiction books can still be well or badly written, and the good ones are a pleasure to read. They present information in a clear, concise and entertaining manner. Good arguments are well phrased and researched. The driest of subjects can be made entertaining enough for you to keep reading long enough to learn something that will stick.

Additionally, reading non-fiction widely is a great way to build up a Renaissance-esque breadth of knowledge. This will expand the topics you can write about with authority. Even if you don’t know a great deal about a field, you’ll find that knowing a little will be enough to get you through in most situations. Generalist knowledge will also let you know where to start looking for more detailed information when you need it.

Being widely read is especially useful if you’re planning on having characters with broad bases of expertise, if you’re going to write plots with an element of mystery of puzzle-solving in them, or if you want to throw unusual knowledge into a normal setting.

Now we’ll do some exercises to include an ever-growing reading list of non-fiction material as well. This will provide you with raw ammunition for stories, as well as providing the occasional flash of inspiration.

Exercise 3: Expanding your non-fiction references
Do this exercise once a fortnight.

1. Head to your faithful library.
2. Grab hold of a Dewey catalog. (Ask that librarian you made friends with a few weeks ago if you can’t find one. They’re often tucked away like the little bits of treasure they are!)
3. Use whatever method you want to pick a number or topic at random. (If inspiration fails you, close your eyes and poke a randomly-opened-to-page.)
4. Make a note of what topic and number you found. If it’s broad, be broad. If it’s specific – Political Essays of the Song Dynasty – be specific! Trust your luck.
5. Repeat until you have 5 different topics.
6. Head to the shelves and grab a book from each area.  (Use your discretion in which books you get, but don’t let yourself branch off into other areas. If you have to get a book about growing bamboo, then don’t wimp out and pick up a herb-growing book instead. Stay strong. Read the backs, browse the insides. Pick ones that look well-written when you can, but do make sure you get a book for every topic.)
7. Take the books home and read them. Take longer with these – give yourself a fortnight to get through the 5 books.

This exercise is great for involuntarily learning about stuff you otherwise would never have been exposed to. Try and absorb the generalities of every book you read. If you’re up for it, take notes. Distill the essence of every book into a few simple, timeless lessons. Create a file in a binder with your notes. Flick through it later for inspiration. Apply the subjects to stories. The more you read, the more you gain an understanding of, the more opportunities you will have in shaping your stories.

The last exercise for this article is entirely voluntary and can be done whenever you want. It’s extremely powerful in exposing you to new ideas and ways of looking at creative writing, so I do encourage you to give each of the ideas a go. Once a month would be fine.

Exercise 4: ‘Read’ new mediums
Good creative writing can be found in many more mediums than books. Do each of the following once a month:

• Watch the pilot episode of a new TV series.

Notice what hooks you in – how do writers immediately build your empathy with the characters? How is the world and setting introduced? For clearer examples, watch Sci-Fi shows, because the writers have to establish an alien, futuristic setting in a believable way within a short amount of time. Everyone knows what the inside of a hospital or classroom looks like. Convincing viewers of the reality of a space-ship’s command bridge is a little harder.

• Read a radio script.

This can be a little harder to get hold of, but there are plenty of excellent radio plays that will be available at your local library. If not, the Internet’s your best bet. I don’t care what you read – it can be something you know, or something picked at random. Some excellent and successful careers and shows started out as radio plays, and their scripts will show you why – I’m a big fan of the The Mighty Boosh and Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy .

Look – and listen – carefully to how writers build worlds and characters using only voices and a few sound effects. If they can do all that without any long, winding descriptive passages, then how can you tighten your writing up to emulate them? How can you clarify the inflection and tone your characters would use when they talked? Does your dialogue flow as naturally and carefully as the radio plays?

• Read a stage script

Again, this is somewhere that your library can help you out with. If you get really stuck, remember that Shakespeare’s plays are set out for stage performance. If you can’t get a hold of one, you’re probably not trying hard enough.

Notice the results of these exercises
After spending a month doing these exercises, you should start to notice some changes in the way you approach new material. For a start, you’ll probably find that you can mentally ‘shift gears’ into reading new styles much easier.

When I started reading family dramas and romance novels, I found them slow and painfully uninteresting. After a few good books, though, I started to appreciate the subtle, skillful pieces of writing, characterization and elegant dialogue that exemplifies good books in that genre.

You may also find that you notice some universal similarities between good books, irrespective of genre. If you do have those thoughts, don’t dismiss them as ‘obvious’, but take the time to really let them sink in. Learn the lessons that your wider reading is giving you, and think of ways to apply it to your own creative writing.

Strong characters, solid plots and tight writing are universal to good storytelling. Actively noting how it applies across genres will strengthen your own writing.

Cross-training for creative writing success
As you can see, cross-training is a valuable exercise that can pay massive dividends to your own creative writing talent. I encourage you to give all of the exercises listed above a good go. A month is the suggested time for each of them, which will be long enough for you to get over any initial discomfort and get your brain used to reading wider material

I’ll write another article about cross-training soon, this time on developing new writing styles and techniques. You will get some exercises in writing in different ways, playing with different sentence structures, trying out different forms of plot, and having lots of fun on the way.
Until then…

Go write!