Ryan Higa's How To Write Good
Ryan Higa
Little, Brown Books
Nonfiction, YA? Humor/Media Reference/Memoir/Writing
Themes: Cross-Genre, Diversity
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Description
Popular YouTuber Ryan Higa may be the winner of the world's first Nobel Prize for internet videos (not true), but once upon a time he was a bullied preteen misfit struggling to find a reason to live (true.) Here, he presents the story of of his formative years, how he learned to cope with an inherently unfair world and push himself to excellence in unexpected ways, such as sports, comedy, and learning to write good. Or well. Whichever the proofreaders and his ghostwriter companion approve...
Review
I confess I'm not a YouTube connoisseur, more of a light viewer than a binge-watcher or hardcore channel fan. But I saw this book go through the library at work,
and it looked fun in the few moments I had to skim it - and, if I'm not much of a YouTube watcher, I am (something of) a writer. So I suppose I'm coming at this one
a little backwards. Nevertheless, I've always been of the belief that a media tie-in book ought to stand alone, or it's not a well written book. Thus, despite my
lack of familiarity with Higa's work*, I gave it a try.
With humor and frankness, not to mention several illustrated interludes, Higa relates a harrowing tale of childhood alienation and bullying. As someone who went
through both and still bears certain mental tics from those days, I could readily relate despite the generational gap. It's not much of a spoiler to say that things
did get better - if they hadn't, he probably wouldn't be around to have written this book - though Higa's quite honest about just how useful that "it gets better"
advice is to someone going through their own personal hell (read: statistically indistinguishable from zilch.) His illustrated conversations with his ghostwriter and
publisher add needed levity, with some surreal details. As for the writing angle, while it's primarily a memoir, there is indeed some talk about how to write a story.
On the whole, it's a decent and fast read with some nice humor and a message about hard-won hope. My main complaint is the eBook formatting, which insisted on a
locked-in scale and landscape view, not to mention a color screen. Half the benefit of an eBook is the ability to customize font text and choose viewing
preferences... but, I digress.
(* - In retrospect, I believe I've seen him in a few older Smosh videos, though I don't watch them much, if at all, anymore. Changing tastes, changing world, and all that...)