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Zusammenfassung von Reading Like a Writer

Name: Reading Like a Writer
Rating: 4.3 (94 reviews)
Author: Francine Prose

Francine Prose

A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them

4.3 (94 Bewertungen)

18 Min.

Themen

Writing Skills

Inhaltsübersicht

Reading Like a Writer
in 7 Kernaussagen verstehen

Audio & Text in der Blinkist App

Kernaussage 1 von 7

What’s in it for me? Become a better reader and writer.

What does it take to write a superb novel – or any novel at all? Do you need to attend a creative writing course or closely follow the formula outlined in a writing manual? Not necessarily.

These blinks will introduce you to another approach, and an immensely rewarding one if you happen to love literature: why not let great writers teach you?

This isn’t just about reading masterful novels and hoping that their mastery will somehow rub off on you; rather, it’s about close, inquisitive reading. As you’ll discover, artful writers take great care to tend to even the tiniest details in a novel, like the choice of a single word. Once you take on their perspective, wondering why exactly they chose this word, opted for that kind of narrator or arranged a sentence quite the way they did, you’ve already start thinking like a true writer.

In these blinks, you’ll also find out

how to create an irresistible character;
how to become a great liar; and
why bad writing is like asthma.

Rediscover the art of close reading to get inside a great writer’s head.

Have you ever watched a child read? Many mouth every word they read to themselves silently. They’re incredibly thorough, and make much better close readers than we adults. Why?

Well, as we grow older, we also grow impatient. We’re able to read faster and tend to read more superficially. This leads to skim-reading, when we’re always on the hunt for quick info, a surprise or a laugh. We devour words like junk food!

Skim-reading certainly has its merits in certain situations where efficiency is the goal. But when it comes to reading literature, skimming is simply counterproductive. It causes us to miss the most important things, like a word that evokes powerful associations, or a subtext that shimmers between the lines.

Great literature, after all, has many layers of meaning. No matter how deep you dig, you’ll always discover more. By slowing down your reading, you’ll make your experience of the text far more rewarding. Paying closer attention to words will also bring you closer to the great masters who wrote them, allowing you to learn from them and improve your own writing in turn.

So how exactly do you relearn the habit of taking it slowly when reading? It can prove rather difficult without the right incentive. But, sometimes, all it takes is one clue to keep your eyes glued to the page.

The author recalls how her English teacher suggested she pay close attention to motifs of seeing and blindness while reading Sophocles’ Greek tragedy Oedipus Rex and Shakespeare’s King Lear. Soon enough, she discovered that both texts were filled with curious patterns, parallels and connections, as if the two authors had hidden them there for her to uncover. Whole new dimensions of meaning emerged in the texts, changing her reading experience entirely.

By taking a closer look at certain patterns of literary texts, you’ll learn to slow your reading down and discover what every sentence really has to offer. But how do you know which pattern to follow? We’ll have a look in the next blink.

Word choice plays a powerful role in plot and character development.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, there are currently 170,000 words in use in the English language. A writer certainly has a lot of choice! But she is also faced with the challenge of finding that one perfect word among 170,000 that expresses exactly what she wants to say.

As a result, every word in every great work of fiction is there as the result of meticulous decision making. To better grasp the genius of a writer, consider what word they could have used instead, why they didn’t and what effect their chosen word has. First sentences of novels make great illustrations of this. Consider the opening of American writer Flannery O’Connor’s short story, A Good Man Is Hard To Find: “The grandmother didn’t want to go to Florida.”

Beautiful sentences are clean, clear, musical and rhythmic.

What makes a sentence beautiful? That’s no easy question to answer. Normally, we just know one when we see one. Though there are no hard and fast rules for fantastic phrasing, we can investigate examples to find some common features. Some of the most stunning sentences are also the simplest, using only the words they need to communicate powerfully with the reader.

German writer Heinrich von Kleist was a master of clear, clean sentences and the opening to his story The Earthquake in Chile provides us with a great example: “In Santiago, the capital of the kingdom of Chile, at the very moment of the great earthquake of 1647 in which many thousands of lives were lost, a young Spaniard by the name of Jéronimo Rugera, who had been locked up on a criminal charge, was standing against a prison pillar, about to hang himself.”

Paragraphs allow the reader to breathe.

Let’s imagine you’re a detective. And not just a detective with any old mission. Like the protagonist in American writer Rex Stout’s story Plot It Yourself, your task is to figure out if three supposedly plagiarized manuscripts are written by the same person. Where would you look for clues? Word choice? Phrasing? Punctuation, maybe?

Well, the best clue would be found in none of those! The most revealing aspect of an individual’s writing style is the way they paragraph. As the detective says: “A clever man might successfully disguise every element of his style but one – the paragraphing.” Paragraphs, it seems, are more important than you’d first expect – they’re a fantastic tool for creating emphasis. But how?

The best narrators are the ones that intrigue you.

Every story can be told from countless perspectives. But while stories from the perspective of an animal or a brick in the wall of a family home might make for interesting stylistic experiments, first- and third-person narration remain the most popular and flexible options.

These two narrative styles each has its own strengths and challenges. Once you’ve decided on your narrator, his attitude and a tone that reflects it, it’s up to you to work through these lenses.

Action, thoughts and dialogue reveal a character’s unique personality to the reader.

In literature as in life, there are three key things that will define you: what you do, what you think and what you say. To these, some might also add how you look. But, to be honest, bookworms like us don’t care much for superficiality!

While the ability to create living, breathing and unforgettable characters is common to all great writers, the path they take to create these characters will always differ. Some writers use a character’s actions to define his personality. Heinrich von Kleist is one of these types; your understanding of his characters is gained by observing what they do, such as how they react to shameless injustice, uncomfortable proposals or even life-threatening earthquakes. The inner thoughts of the character are rarely explicitly expressed.

Details are what makes characters and stories come to life.

Do you consider yourself a good liar or a bad one? If you aren’t sure, here’s a quick way to spot the difference: while bad liars scramble to stack up facts and arguments to give themselves greater credibility, a smart liar knows that what’s really going to keep their tall tales unnoticed is a realistic detail.

Great writers are, in many ways, not so different from great liars. Both make up stories that are untrue yet convincing, and both know how to make themselves convincing by using a few specific, realistic details. Simply adding a trivial, yet very particular aspect of your story will make listeners feel that you simply must be telling the truth – otherwise, why would you think to mention something like that?

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Worum geht es in Reading Like a Writer?

Reading Like a Writer (2006) shows us how to read literary masterpieces with open eyes. These blinks explain the patterns of writing that make fiction memorable, powerful and authentic, helping us slow down our reading and find more enjoyable experiences in every book.

Bestes Zitat aus Reading Like a Writer

In the particular is contained the universal. - Samuel Beckett

—Francine Prose

Wer Reading Like a Writer lesen sollte

Avid readers who want to get more out of their fiction-reading experience
Writers and those dreaming of becoming one
Anyone who promised themselves they’d read the classics, but hasn’t managed to yet

Über den Autor

Francine Prose is a best-selling author and essay writer. She’s also won several literary prizes and was a finalist for the National Book Award in 2000 for her novel, Blue Angel.

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