Become a Better Writer by Being a Better Reader

Being a bookworm is a huge part of my personality.

I usually read 50–60 books a year. In my close circles, I’m known for being the one who reads everywhere. And by everywhere, I mean everywhere. I’ve even mastered reading on my way down the stairs (for safety reasons, I wouldn’t recommend it though).

However, I rarely take notes on the fiction books I read. Recently I’ve started doing precisely that, and it’s changed the way I view both reading and writing.

I don’t only devour a book and move on to the next one. I explore it on a new level. And I learn from it. I improve my writing craft not only through osmosis, as I have done for most of my life, but through actual analysis and learning. It makes the way I read more memorable and the information I learn more useful for future reference.

Essentially, I do two things: I highlight quotes, which I later write down, and I focus on various aspects of the book which could be useful for my own fiction writing. Let’s talk about five of those.

Group Dynamics

I find group dynamics super interesting, especially because stories are often memorable and earn the hearts of readers for their characters. The way they interact with each other is what’s usually the most loveable aspect — it’s the reason why readers root for your characters’ relationships, let it be a friendship, a romance, or a mentorship.

While reading, take note of how the author represents individual characters in a group — what role do they have in this particular setting? Who’s the funny one? The one who glues everyone together? The one who creates drama? And do they act differently when they’re alone? Why does the group dynamics work so well?

Which members know each other more intimately, which wouldn’t hang out one-on-one? Let’s look at the sitcom Friends, for example. It would be kind of strange for Rachel and Chandler to be in a scene alone together way too many times, simply because they work much better as a part of the bigger whole.

Thinking about the characterisation of people when they’re in a group and when they’re separated brings about lots of interesting information about creating characters in general.

World-building

It always amazes me how well some fantasy authors weave their world-building into the story. Think about it — there’s so much information that needs to be introduced to have everything make sense, yet info-dumping only overwhelms the reader and makes the reading experience confusing.

Notice how authors introduce this information — is it through dialogue? Description? Do they treat the reader as if she already knew the information, talking about it from the first person’s point of view and inviting the reader to catch up automatically? And how fast do they develop the world to make it clear and understandable?

I absolutely love how Samantha Shannon does this in The Priory of the Orange Tree. There’s so much world-building going on, four different POVs (points of view), and many countries, yet it’s introduced with such perfect speed and clarity that I never once did feel overwhelmed during reading.

There’s a lot to learn there, especially for fantasy authors.

Characters

Why is it that some characters are so very memorable, while others disappear in the maze of many fictional people from various books?

If you find a character vivid and real, write down why you think that is. What is it that makes them so special? Often, characters seem real when they have faults as well as talents, fears as well as joys. Their character arch can be about redemption, self-improvement, or a complete transformation, for example.

Where did they start off, and how changed are they at the end of their journey? Daenerys Targaryen in A Song of Ice and Fire is a good example of that — she starts off as a naïve young girl, only to become a very strong and ambitious woman. Watching her journey in Game of Thrones is what’s captured audiences all across the world.

Once you start to notice these things, you can collect lots of information that can be used when you create your own characters.

Plot Structure

According to Gustav Freytag, every dramatic structure comprises of 5 parts: Introduction, Rising Movement, Climax, Falling Action, and Catastrophe.

When you read fiction, it’s useful to pinpoint exactly where you think one part turns into the next one — what new aspect gets introduced? Where is the twist? After it seems like the issue gets solved, does another, smaller twist come?

Six of Crows is a great example of this — Leigh Bardugo always keeps you guessing. There are twists upon twists, interior motives with even more crooked motives hidden behind them. It’s a great psychological game and it teaches you a lot about how good it is to always make sure you surprise the reader, time and again, to keep them engaged and excited to see what comes next.

Notice the pacing, the focus of individual chapters, and how long these chapters are. I often dislike long chapters, therefore I try to make my own ones more easily digestible by either shortening them or breaking them into parts with dividers.

Description

How much does the author leave to the imagination and how often do they describe? What do they describe?

I find that it’s easier to read books that don’t focus on the description of the environment as much as internal monologue. That’s, of course, just a personal preference. But it does tell you a lot about what kind of audience you’d like to write for, who you want to target and how much description might be too much description for a certain age group.

I couldn’t finish The Lord of the Rings because of how many nature descriptions there were. It was simply tedious, and I wanted to fall asleep. However, I was fourteen at the time, and maybe I will come back to the book series at sixty and feel very differently about it.

One of the examples where a description is done wrong, in my humble opinion, is when the author mentions the colour of a character’s hair for the first time one hundred pages in. Like, really? I’ve already created a mental picture of them in my mind. There’s no way it’s going to change now.

If you want to describe characters’ appearances, make sure to do it early on so that your readers can follow your imagination and get easily adjusted to the images you present them with. That’s one of the main lessons reading descriptions has taught me.

Final Thoughts

When I don’t take notes about the fiction books I read, it’s often out of laziness. I simply can’t be bothered. However, this means that I forget lots of interesting points and quotes that might spark my inspiration and teach me a thing or two in the future.

It’s all about getting into the habit of it. Once you finish a book, make sure to write down all the highlighted quotes and sometimes come back to them and read them — what works for me is that each time I write down quotes from a new book, I tell myself I have to read quotes from one of my past books. This keeps me in the loop.

Brainstorm and write down what stroke you as a very interesting aspect of the book, what characters you liked the most and why, and why you’d give the book a certain rating.

This habit will not only transform you into a better reader who remembers books with more depth and clarity, but it will also ultimately turn you into a better writer. Reading is the key to writing, after all. The latter can’t exist without the first one.

Stephen King famously said:

“If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.”

Let’s take both of these activities to a brand new level by taking the time to analyse them. Let’s set out on our own character journey, one of improving ourselves as writers by becoming better readers.

This article was originally published on Medium.