Workshop Wednesday: Reading For Writers Part I

Reading For Writers Part I:

I talk often about the importance of reading for writers. It is important; it’s the most-common advice big-name published writers gives when asked for pointers, and I agree with them.

But maybe you’re wondering why it’s so important.

The short answer is that a well-read writer is going to be more articulate, better-seasoned, and more distinctive. Well-read writers have got the mechanics of the written word down pat, and are able to delve deeper into their characters. Their author voices are more well-developed and they’ve established a certain style all their own. A well-read author writes stories that feel and sound like them, rather than rough-sketch parodies of whatever’s popular on the marketplace.

What to Read

When you read only for entertainment, what you read is inconsequential. Reading is an escape, a means of soothing – or exciting – yourself, a way to pass the time, and it’s purely personal. But if you’re an author, if you plan to write books that you ask customers to pay hard-earned money for, then you have a responsibility to educate and better yourself. When you’re a writer, reading is still fun, but it isn’t just for fun; for a writer, reading is also about exposure to people/places/emotions outside of your real life, and a way to explore language critically.

I have two musts: volume and variety. You must read a lot, and you must read a lot of different kinds of books.

But Lauren, you’re thinking, I know I want to write romance and only romance. Or noir thrillers and only noir thrillers. Shouldn’t I read in those genres?

Yes, you should. You should also read books from all genres.

Here’s why: genre politics are dumb. They’re fostered by people who like cliques and petty high school drama. You’ll be a better, more well-rounded writer if you read widely across many genres. The goal is to learn as much as you can, and you can’t do that if you pigeonhole yourself. Different writers have different strengths; you should absorb from them what you can; be a book omnivore.

Romances will show you how to write chemistry and love scenes. Mysteries will teach you how to draw out the kind of suspense that has your shoulders inching up toward your ears. Police procedurals give you a jumping-off point for legal business. Horror shows you how to write a truly scary scene. Fantasy helps unleash the more reckless parts of your imagination, and can teach valuable lessons about world-building.

If you read the same sort of book over and over, your imagination is going to become stagnant, and your own writing will read alarmingly like the books you’ve been reading. If we carry forward the writing-as-exercise metaphor, any athlete switches things up at the gym to work on different muscles. Think of reading as strength-training: you need different weights, different routines, different machines. The more variety in your routine, the more you start to shine through, the more you begin to realize your special and individual strengths as a contributor. Not everyone on the team is a QB, but you won’t know what you are – how you shine – until you start working out. All positions are valuable; you’ve just got to find yours.

I’ve been a voracious reader since age five, and in the twenty-five years of reading since, I’ve learned that detailed settings and richly flawed characters are not just things I enjoy while reading, but areas in which I shine as a writer. That’s something I never would have understood about myself if not for reading. I might have had a sense that I liked those things – but, here’s the catch: an author’s job is not to “have a sense,” but to understand concretely…in order to then deliver it subtly in written language. To write is to take concrete things and render them in beautiful, impressionist tones so that the audience can interpret them in a variety of ways.

Read Good Books

I hate to use the term “good,” because that’s a subjective word. What we should say is “quality books.” Books in which the writing is correct and lyrical. If you want to write strong, clear, artistic sentences, then you have to read books in which the sentences are strong, clear, and artistic. Plenty of books with sloppy, grammatically incorrect, uninspired writing make bestseller lists, but if you’re a writer, you need to excise those from your reading diet (for the most part). My mom has this saying that “everyone has value, even if it’s just to serve as a bad example.” So sometimes it’s good to read one of those sloppily-crafted books in order to see what you shouldn’t do. But, on the whole…you are what you eat. So consume quality in order to produce quality.

Do you need to read the Classics? Well, I don’t know if I’d say it’s mandatory, and all Classics are not created equally, but I would recommend it, yes. For starters, I think if a book manages to have a following of readers who still find it relevant two-hundred years after its publication, it’s a safe bet that the book speaks to something basic and human that transcends its time period. Also, the Classics are the source material and inspiration for countless contemporary books, and I think, when possible, you should always go back to the source. The Classics are where tropes and archetypes originated; borrowing from contemporary works is like running a copy of a copy through a copy machine…it gets fainter and fainter and harder to make out. Thirdly, there is a ton of commentary and discourse on Classic works, and reading thoughtful literary analysis can be very helpful for a new writer learning how to analyze his or her own work.

As you read, it can be helpful to keep a notebook in which to write down your thoughts about the novel/story. Talk about the characters, jot down favorite lines, try to put into words what you did/did not like about the book, write down the ways in which the novel echoed real life.

Next week we’ll look more closely at Originality, and ways to be inspired by the things you’ve read. I’ll leave you with some reading recs (just in general):

Atonement (historical)

The Haunting of Hill House (softcore horror/suspense)

The Things They Carried (war memoir-ish)

Fangirl (sweet, quirky contemporary fiction)

“TheStory of an Hour” (short story)