You’ve heard this before: one of the most important things for a writer is to read a lot. That’s true. But it’s also a little bit of a lie. If just reading a lot was enough, there would be a brilliant writer everywhere you turn.
Telling aspiring writers to just read more is like telling aspiring bodybuilders to just eat more. You’ll consume a lot, but it may not turn out like you pictured.
So what to do? There are a handful of things you can bring to your reading to make sure that you get more from it than simple enjoyment. It will take a while for these to become habitual, but once they do you’ll find that your writing muscles gain definition and you’ll finally be able to put them to use (deliberately! whenever you want to!).
Reading like a writer
I recommend reading widely—everything you read, from scholarly monographs to sword-and-sorcerer fantasy, can build your acumen as a writer—but concentrate wherever possible on the format and genre that you want to write in.
Do you want to write popular nonfiction? Pick up a couple of books every time you pass through an airport. Want to write a scholarly banger? Hunt down the coolest new books from your favorite University Press. Read classics and read new stuff. A lot of the core principles won’t have changed, but some things probably have.
Here’s a collection of habits you can employ in your reading to help improve your mastery as a writer.
Read a lot—and when you do, notice these things:
What passages did you read fast? Pause to reflect on what made it flow.
What passages did you read slowly? Did you slow down to savor it, or was it a struggle? What can you identify as the main reason?
What authors, books, or passages felt good to read? Want to know why? It probably has to do with the dynamics of the writing. Sentence length, the texture of the language, and even paragraph length will contribute to how satisfying a piece will be.
Notice the use of imagery and figurative language to convey ideas. Does the author overdo it? Should they have done more?
Anything you had to re-read to understand—find the point where it lost you. How would you rework the sentence or passage?
Anything that sent you off into your own thoughts (not in a bored way, but in an inspired way).
Characters—does the author help you see the people in their book as 3-dimensional beings with their own personalities and desires? Or do they thrown a litany of names at you with no reason other than that those people were present during the events described? (there’s a reason people will say that the Iliad is boring, despite being a blow-by-blow story of a war between legendary foes).
Where did you feel tension or drive—the kind of storytelling that made you need to keep reading? Come back to it and look at the way the author did that to you. Did they stretch time by diving into a scene and delaying gratification by making you wait for the outcome? Did they foreshadow an event effectively?
On the flip side, were there any places where you thought the author squandered an opportunity to create tension and drive?
Pick out some of the great passages you made note of in your reading and copy them down. This takes zero inspiration and just a few minutes, but it’s like learning a new physical skill—the more you practice it the more likely you can do it when it matters. Do this by hand if you can. It will ingrain itself more deeply into your creative process.
Here’s one that I dog-eared recently, from A Gentleman in Moscow, by Amor Towles:
One evening in late December, as he was walking the hallway to the Piazza, the Count distinctly felt a gust of frozen air, despite being fifty yards from the nearest exit to the street. It brushed past him with all the freshness and clarity of a starlit winter’s night. After pausing and searching about, he realized that the draft was coming…from the coatroom. Which Tanya, the attendant, had left unattended. So, with a look to his left and a look to his right, the Count stepped within.
In the preceding minutes, there must have been such a rush of parties arriving for dinner that the winter air had yet to dissipate from the fabric of their coats.
Maybe it’s because one of my favorite things is the way the scent of winter will drift into an otherwise warm Fall day, but the sensory detail in this passage captured my imagination and helped to draw me right into the hallway, into the coatroom, and into the book.
Structure: look at the table of contents and ask why the author organized it that way. Would you have done it differently? Did the book leave you with any lingering questions, or were you satisfied halfway through and found the second half to drag on?
This is a really good list. One thing that I have noticed reading academic writers lately, I often get bogged down in lists of characters within a given scene if they aren't developed properly. There is a book I have tried to read about three times. I love the topic and it is filled with fascinating historical detail. But, each time I have tried to read it I have been bogged down in slow reading because, even though the events of the book are major historical events, the particular characters in this book are all below the surface of standard historical knowledge. And, I keep having to check my reading to figure out who is who in a particular scene. So, I've been thinking about my own writing and noting that one needs to either: keep a very limited set of actors involved in a scene or do a very good job of developing the background of the characters so that you "know" them prior to the main event.