Monday, October 21, 2013

Reading as a Writer

At the heart of every writer is a reader.  Many times, I’ve read the advice that if you want to writer better, then you should read.

There is a grain of truth to that.  When reading, a writer can observe how others do it.  What works?  What doesn’t work?  There’s always something to learn.

Over the past two weeks, I read two novels, and I learned from both of them.  One taught me what to do while the other taught me what not to do.


I’ll start with what NOT to do.

1.       Don’t cheat your reader.  This may sound obvious, but I haven’t wanted to throw a book in a long time.  In this story, there was a ‘big bad’, the one thing that no one wanted to happen, the motivation for every characters’ actions.  During the ending, the big bad appeared, and for some reason, it was on the same side as the main characters.  The big bad ended up defeating the bad guy, and defeating the entire purpose of the book.  At least, that’s how I felt.  Don’t take the easy way out.  Your reader went on this journey with you.  Don’t tell them that there’s a short cut after they stayed with you.

2.       Don’t have too many extraneous characters.  I have a hard time with this.  I like creating characters.  But don’t have two characters who fill the same exact function, have the same attitude, behaviors and opinions.  When all that separates them is their name, the reader won’t be able to keep track.  And they won’t really care. 

3.       Don’t keep repeating the same information over and over.  This should be pretty self-explanatory.  If your reader learned something with one character, they aren’t going to want to read it with another one, or a third.  More on that to come.


What to do:

1.       Give your protagonist a unique and strong voice.  This book was in first person.  I’m not a huge fan of first person, but this book was written so well that I barely noticed.  The MC had such a unique voice that I immediately fell in love with her.  Everything she described was from her point of view and seen through her opinion. 

2.       Don’t be afraid to give your characters flaws.  These characters were so flawed they were incredible.  When you have characters that are so ‘perfect,’ who never question who they are, or break down when dealing with trials, it’s hard for the reader to relate.  These characters were as flawed as they could come and I completely understood their point of view, even when I couldn’t imagine being in their situation.

3.       Don’t give everything away all at once.  There were two or three major revelations that occurred near the end of the book.  One that amazed me so much that once I finished, I had to go back and reread the book, now knowing the secret reveal at the end.  That’s the ultimate goal, right?  Making the reader want to reread the book right after reading it?


How about you?  Read any good books recently?

6 comments:

  1. Thanks for posting this Krista! Authors should write what they want to read, and sometimes we forget that. You have done a great job of isolating some common pitfalls and identifying what makes great novels great. Thanks again!

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  2. I read a lot of fanfiction in addition to regular books and one thing that I see a lot with original characters especially females, in fanfiction is authors trying to use fiscal features to make them interesting or different. Like giving them red hair for instance or eyes that change color. More then that its one of the first things they do at the start of a story, they spend a paragraph or so discribing their character and maybe give you a run down on their strengths and weaknesses.

    In my opinion, what your character looks like isn't all that important, its who they are that the reader will remember. I honestly couldn't give you more then a vague idea of what most of my favorite characters look like. Do you know that Tolkien never said what color Lagolas' hair was? And I don't think he described Frodo until they got to Bree though I could be wrong about that one.

    I guess what I'm getting at with this little rant is that its a bad idea to start the story with a description of your character, I'm sure there are ways to do it but most of the time its probably not going to do you any favors. Its also dangerous to rely too heavily on looks when trying to make them interesting, a picture is flat, you need your characters to be more then that.

    Okay rant ended. Some good insight by the way.

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    1. Thanks for your comment, and you bring up a good point. Focusing only on character description can limit yourself since it's only one side of the character. Spending too much time on descriptions at the beginnings can make me want to put the book down (in fact, it HAS made me put a book down.)

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  3. Thanks for sharing Krista. Which book made you want to read it again - I'm dying to know!
    I tend to read certain books depending on what I'm writing to see how that author approached a certain thing (I'm always reading Joe Abercrombie when I want to write a fight scene).
    I read a really good book a while back called reading like a writer by Francine Prose which takes you through things like scene structure and character building the way authors like James Joyce and Chekov do. I learned lots from that and it really made me pay more attention to the way I read.
    Too much character detail can really get in the way of the story. I really agree with Rita on that. Austen was another author who never dwells on hair and eye colour, although there is a fair amount of 'pleasing features' and similar to go around.

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    1. I do a similar thing since I have a hard time with fight scenes. My first one, I read several books that I enjoyed to get an idea of how it's done right. I never thought about Austen's limited descriptions, but I think you're right.

      The book was called Transparent by Natalie Whipple. I would highly recommend it to anyone!

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  4. Thanks Krista - I'll add it to my ever growing reading list.

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