I recently came across the following list on Amazon:  “100 Science Fiction and Fantasy Books to Read in a Lifetime.”

As a fantasy writer myself, I decided to spend the next few years reading every book on this list and record the lessons I learned from each volume on how to be a great writer.

PLOT: On the world called Hyperion, beyond the law of the Hegemony of Man, there waits the creature called the Shrike. There are those who worship it. There are those who fear it. And there are those who have vowed to destroy it. In the Valley of the Time Tombs, where huge, brooding structures move backward through time, the Shrike waits for them all. On the eve of Armageddon, with the entire galaxy at war, seven pilgrims set forth on a final voyage to Hyperion seeking the answers to the unsolved riddles of their lives. Each carries a desperate hope—and a terrible secret. And one may hold the fate of humanity in his hands. – goodreads.com

WHAT I LEARNED: The plot synopsis above leaves out one of the most interesting aspects of the book. Hyperion is actually a collection of six novellas. The pilgrims’ journey is simply the frame story holding them together.

Like The Canterbury Tales, The Decameron, One Thousand and One Nights and Sandman: World’s End, the meat of the novel is actually made up of a series of shorter tales (and tales within tales). While each of these stores are set in the same universe and sometimes reference the events in one another, they all have their own style and personality. “The Scholar’s Tale” is a family drama with a supernatural twist. “The Soldier’s Tale” is a futuristic war (and love) story. “The Detective’s Tale” shadows many classic film noirs and the crime paperback novels that inspired them. Some of the tales are told in the first person point of view while others are told in the third, while one (“The Priest’s Tale”) is told in the format of a journal.

I have read most of Hyperion’s sequels and while they are very well written, none of them are nearly as memorable. There may be a number of reasons for this, but one aspect that is lacking is the original’s unique format. The sequels are told as straight-forward adventure stories. Therefore they don’t have as wide a range in style and feel more like typical space operas.

I don’t have anything against novels with straight-forward, traditional, three (or five) act structures, with a linear beginning, middle and end, but I would still advise aspiring authors to take a page from Dan Simmon’s book and consider whether their story will be improved by a non-traditional format. You could tell the story backwards (similar to the movie Memento) or have the story told from a variety of points of view (like Rashomon) or you could tell your whole novel in “real time” where 1 page equals 1 minute. Obviously you don’t want to get so bogged down in your gimmick that you distract the readers, but using an unorthodox format might be enough to make your work stand out.

OTHER TAKEAWAYS: The most intriguing character in all of the Hyperion universe is The Shrike, a mysterious being made of metal blades. While we learn more about the creature in later books, in the original Hyperion novel it remains shrouded in mystery. Not only mystery but also contradiction. While many view it as a demon (it does little but slaughter those it encounters), others view it as a god and go so far as to seek it out so that it might kill them. The Shrike antagonizes many of the novel’s central characters, while it appears to help others, while remaining an antagonistic figure.

In short, not everything in your novels need to be logical. In fact we are often intrigued by characters who have contradictory natures and unclear motives. While you don’t want the men and women in your novels to break character, it might not hurt to have one individual you keep at arms length so that their goals aren’t entirely clear.

DISTINCT PASSAGE: The following is the opening of “The Poet’s Tale,” which manages to make reference to the Gospel According to John, Francis Bacon and possibly Peter De Vries. It may also nod toward Slaughterhouse Five with the “so it goes.”

This isn’t a great passage because of the references. It’s fantastic because by the end of the second paragraph we know everything we need to know about our next storyteller.

In the beginning was the Word. Then came the fucking word processor. Then came the thought processor. Then came the death of literature. And so it goes.

Francis Bacon once said, “There arises from a bad and unapt formation of words a wonderful obstruction to the mind.” We have all contributed our wonderful obstructions to the mind, have we not? I more than most. One of the twentieth century’s better, forgotten writers – that’s a better-comma-forgotten, once bon moted: “I love being a writer. It’s the paperwork I can’t stand.” Get it? Well, amigos and amigette, I love being a poet. It’s the goddamned words I can’t stand.

Where to start?

Start with Hyperion perhaps?