Reading as a writer is an essential skill for writers of memoir, long fiction, and short fiction alike. It's different from reading for pleasure, because it involves breaking down prose you've enjoyed, working out how the writer did it, and bringing these elements back to your own work.
Reading as a writer is easy to confuse with being widely read. Clients who read voraciously are often puzzled when I suggest that they aren’t yet reading as writers. Having a literature degree, belonging to book clubs and writers’ groups, familiarity with the classics alongside genre favourites and lesser-known edgy or experimental works, and reading in favour of watching TV in an evening, are all plus points. Reading as a writer goes further than this. The idea behind it is to learn to pick apart another writer’s prose or plot in a way which helps you to assess how you might use or develop specific aspects similarly, in your own work.
To read as a writer, find a novel, memoir or short story which really made its mark on you, before taking a closer look at the prose to work out how the author did it.
WORD CHOICES
Unpick a scene you admire (any scene at all, from any book), and look at the word choices the author uses. Scene painting, atmosphere, and manipulation of the reader to suggest or foreshadow what might be coming, or to provoke a particular kind of emotional response, are all things which can be governed by careful and appropriate word choices. When you unpick a scene for word choices, you’re connecting with how the author did it. The theory is, that if this scene really stirred you as a reader, then you can learn which bits to internalise and emulate in your own work, to stir other readers in turn. This is a starting point, because there are additional elements to consider.
ERA OF PUBLICATION
Look at the era your chosen novel, short story or memoir was written in. If it’s a dated book in which styles were more verbose, contained more telling/exposition, longer tracts of dialogue, more characters than currently fashionable, or longer than average sentences, it’s important to view this through the correct lens, and to understand that times have changed. Temper the things you love about dated prose with a writer’s knowledge about the current market. Consider and internalise the sheer number of changes visible in prose of different periods and styles. I've dug into these things in another article (on genre) which can be found here.
SCENE PLACEMENT WITHIN THE NOVEL
Next, you’re ready to think about section/scene placement. If your favourite section opens a book, it perhaps provoked a question and was most likely punchy and dramatic (particularly in modern fiction or memoir). If, on the other hand, this scene appeared a long way into the book, perhaps at an emotional high point, by now you’re already gripped by the characters and narration, so this passage might be longer and more lyrical. Once readers are taken over by the story, they have much more patience with the narrator’s heart being exposed in longer sentences, a little bit more telling as opposed to showing, and a slower pace. In short, if you note where your favourite scene is placed in a story, you’ll be able to see how the author tailored the tension and pace to suit, and how you might emulate the same.
GENRE
Now consider the genre of the work you're looking at. Reading as a writer includes finding out what writers have to say about their fiction and how they think it should be categorised, and reading what literary critics/journalists/book reviewers have to say about it, too. Sometimes, you can make surprising discoveries by reading author interviews, connecting with original and sophisticated genre blends, or finding that a writer you’d always thought was sci fi actually refers to their work as speculative crime fusion, for example. Authors and critics often have conflicting viewpoints; it’s amazing how differently a novelist will describe their work in comparison to a critic who is reviewing it. All these things give a writer a wider awareness of genre, which will then feed into fresh work when you're looking for a new and different way to do something.
TONE
Tone can be tricky, because it isn't so easy to prescribe a clear-cut fix for tone as it is for 'show don't tell'. In terms of tone, it's quite common for a writer to discover there's a gap between their intent and the result on the page. Whether it's thinking that something is funny which perhaps won't work across the board, or portraying a character as rational when they come across as cruel or misguided, conflict in tone happens to all us writers at some point. The gap between intent and result gets less likely with experience, but it can still happen (which is why even best-selling writers still have editors). A client working on a first novel may not realise there’s a gap between intent and result, so it’s the writing coach or editor’s job to identify this, and to give helpful tips to guide the writer to close the gap. Tone issues can arise in humour, for example, if the writer finds it tricky to correctly identify the difference between satire, full-on humour or a novel with occasionally witty bits which might actually be quite dark or grim in tone. Tone also includes understanding that setting doesn’t completely govern the feel of a novel, so a story situated in a run-down UK pit village or an ailing town in the outback isn’t automatically bleak, it could equally be light humour or dark crime thriller depending how the writer handles the material. This makes tone tricky to explain in a one-size-fits-all way, which is why it’s so important for a coach to scratch under the skin of what an aspiring debut author is trying to achieve, so that they can advise appropriately.
Tone is important to consider when writing for younger readers, because it's what separates middle grade fiction from YA or adult fiction. Characters in children's books often find themselves in danger, but this is sometimes expressed with light-touch humour rather than true darkness. Darker themes, sexual content and harsh language are geared towards older readers. A great way an aspiring debut can check all this is out is by reading recently mainstream published new voices in the appropriate age group category. If you want to write middle grade fiction, immerse yourself in it so that you get a 'feel' for how it's written. This might sound obvious, but it's surprising how many clients don't realise that reading their competition matters. Remember that dated novels, signed in a different market, won't be as useful for comparison as searching out new voices and books published in the last five years.
Tips for assessing the tone of your favourite prose include:
How does the author build imagery (and use word choices) to create a specific tone?
How do these word choices extend to character, to manipulate the reader's perception of the person we're reading about?
If your favourite extract is humour, is it social satire, is it grimly funny, is it laugh aloud slapstick? How might you relate this to what you want to achieve in your own MS?
How does the author use the physical setting to convey or reinforce a certain tone throughout the story? How might you adopt the same approach in your own work?
TWO NOVELISTS ON GENRE - when journalists and authors disagree:
The late novelist Anne McCaffrey regularly had her dragon novels reviewed as fantasy. Anne would crossly point out that she actually wrote science fiction, because the dragons of Pern were genetically engineered in a lab on another planet before the story began, specifically to fight the moon parasite Thread, which ate its way through everything when it fell to earth. Anne noted with considerable delight that her critics couldn’t say much in response to her statement. Another fascinating commentator on all things fiction was the late novelist Ursula Le Guin, who couldn’t stand to have her books pigeonholed as this or that. ‘Left to me, I would just call them novels’, she once said.
It's useful to understand, when reading as a writer, that dated novels aren't often the best barometer to emulate if you're writing to be signed in today's market. Dated fantasy, for example, has too much exposition for modern taste, features stories within stories (which are out of fashion now), and the earliest examples have a lack of decent female characters. This is where reading widely comes into play, but reading as a writer only works when you apply what you’ve read in a reflective manner, sometimes challenging received wisdom, always exploring reviews and critical opinion, and basically having a long think about everything you’ve read and researched.
The great news is, once you have it, 'reading as a writer' is a skill you’ll never lose.
Useful links for more information on 'reading as a writer':
The Good Story Company's ‘Reading Like A Writer’;
David Lodge's The Art of Fiction;
Anne Kroeker's article, ‘How Do You Read Like a Writer’?
Francine Prose, Reading Like a Writer.
August 4th 2021