# Introduction

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Throughout this course you have read stories and extracts from established writers. Reading is an important way to expand your own work.

A writer has permanent access to the best teaching: in novels and short stories. In terms of technique, nothing is or can be hidden: it’s all there on the page. It’s up to the person reading as a writer to ‘unpack’ how a novel has been made.

Starting out, and throughout a writer’s career, seeing how other people do things is invaluable. Writing without reading is to write in the dark: it might work, but it’s an unnecessary handicap.

OpenLearn - Start writing fiction: characters and stories
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