Lotti's Terrestrial Sojourn @mrborba - Tumblr Blog

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The garden awaits us all in the temple built with no hands

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People talk a lot about how reading is necessary for writing, but when you really want to improve your writing, it’s important to go beyond just simple reading. Here are some things to do when reading:

Note how they begin and end the story. There are a ton of rather contradictory pieces of advice about starting stories, so see how they do it in the stories you enjoy. Don’t only look at the most popular stories, but look at your more obscure favorites.

See what strikes you. Is it fast or complicated scenes with a lot of emotions? Is it stark lines? Pithy dialogue? What do you remember the next day?

Pay attention to different styles. It’s not just whether they use past or present tense, first or third person. It’s whether the writing is more neutral or deeper inside character’s heads. Do they use italics? Parentheses? Other interesting stylistic choices? Take the ones you like and try them out in your own writing. See what works and what doesn’t.

Keep track of how they deal with other characters. Do we see a lot of secondary character each for very brief periods of time or are there a couple that show up a lot? How much information do we get about secondary characters? Do they have their own plots or do their plots revolve entirely around the main characters?

Count how many plots there are. Is there just one main plot or are there multiple subplots? Are the storylines mostly plot-based or character-based?

Pay attention to what you don’t like. If you don’t like what’s going on in a book or even just a scene, note what it is. Does the dialogue feel awkward? Are the characters inconsistent? Does the plot feel too convenient or cobbled together? Does the wording just feel off? See if you can spot those issues in your own writing, especially when reading a completed draft or beginning a later draft.

gg-writes

(Great advice! I wanted to tack on other things I look for when reading)

Pay attention to how they introduce characters. Very rarely will it be all at once, and I guarantee the author went over the intro of each major character again and again while editing, so I always like paying extra close attention! Did the intro endear you to the character? Make you dislike them? How did the author impart that emotion?

Note instances of worldbuilding/info dumps, especially parts that don’t seem like worldbuilding/info dumps. Maybe the character mentions something offhand about a location you’ll see five chapters later. Maybe the internal dialogue makes a comparison to the character’s childhood. Was the information effective or did it leave you wanting more? Make note of anything that made you go, “ooh, neat!”

After you finish the story, try to find foreshadowing that you missed the first time through! It can be as simple as skimming and looking for phrases you know are important after finishing the story. Most authors add foreshadowing in the editing stage, so I tend to ponder how the story would read before they added it. Ninety-nine percent of the time, the story seems more magical for it and it’s just nice to appreciate.

What plot structures could the story fit into? We all know about the three arc stories, hero’s journey, etc. Sometimes stories can fit into more than one category. During the read and after, keep it in the back of your mind. Can you predict where the climax of the story will hit? Is it man v man or man v nature? Does the predictability (or lack thereof) add to or take away from the story?

snowdropwrites-deactivated20200

This is the advice I give to everyone who says they don’t have the time or (if they’re like me) the energy to read all the time; you don’t have to have a book in your hand 24/7 to be a good writer, you just have to pay close attention to the ones you DO read. Try to read from different genres, but focus your attention on the genres you write in (or want to write in) to further your understanding of what works and what doesn’t.

If I listened to all the stuck-up writers who say you have to read a million books before you can even come close to writing a good one, I would’ve given up on writing years ago. I almost did. These people take for granted that they have lives and minds that allow them to do this, but for the rest of us things can feel very hopeless when the only advice we’re given is to ‘read more’.

Yes, you have to know how books work to write one – you can’t direct a film without ever having seen one, after all – but the amount of books you read is less important than how you read them.

If you prefer to be absorbed in a new story and not think about things like grammar and story arcs, then read the book once for fun & then the second time (even just skimming through!) to take note of what you liked and disliked about it. Take physical notes if you like, but for most people simply thinking about the way the book was written is enough to improve your writing skill.

Don’t stop writing just because you’re not a big reader. Don’t listen to the condescending gatekeepers who take their own experiences to be universal.

Just keep writing, and do it whatever way works best for you.

mrborba

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