41 pages • 1 hour read
Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative
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Chapter 3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 3 Summary: “Write the Book You Want To Read.”
Kleon relates an anecdote where, after seeing Jurassic Park for the first time, he immediately began to write a sequel. Though he didn’t know the term “fan fiction” then, he now thinks that “All fiction, in fact, is fan fiction” (47): Writers identify what they wished happened in stories that came before them and create their own stories about what was missed or what could have been better. Kleon thinks the best writing advice isn’t to write what you know, but what you like or would want to read yourself.
Chapter 3 Analysis
This chapter both reorients typical ideas people might have about making art and provides practical advice for idea creation. In this chapter Kleon leans on a key example to present his ideas, that of fan fiction. Fan fiction is stories written by fans (now online) that derive from an existing story, usually a book, film, or TV series. Kleon relates how, as a child, he wrote a sequel to Jurassic Park, filling it with all the things he wanted to happen next in the story. He says, “I didn’t know it at the time, but I was writing what we now call fan fiction” (45).
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