Authors talk so much about writing that I feel a need to refocus the conversation. So here it is. Are you a good reader?
Here’s a good test. What was the last news article on the internet that you read? Without going back to the link, write down what you think the article was about, the source of the article, and the conclusion the author drew at the end. Also note down what it was about the article that hooked you.
Now go back to the link and see if anything you wrote down bears any resemblance to the reality of the article.
The human brain is a funny thing. We can memorize facts, but for most people these facts go out the window if they are not relevant to us in the long term. We can read, but the eyes tend to pick up only the most important words in a sentence, transmit those words to the brain, and our brain fills in the rest. This is really noticeable with speed readers (like myself). We extrapolate entire sentences based on 3 or 4 keywords. Sometimes we’re right about what the sentence says, sometimes we’re wrong.
Don’t believe me? As you start the next sentence, read it out loud without reading it to yourself first. “I couldn’t believe taht I could actually understand waht was rdgnieg.”
Now look back over the sentence and see what you didn’t catch. Graham Rawlinson had an experience at Nottingham University where he learned that people read words as a whole, not as individual letters strung together. This is a common meme on the internet, mistakenly attributed to a Cambridge Research Study. But it makes a good point. And a similar situation applies to sentences. We parse a few essential words (the subject, the initial verb, and then a few other key descriptors), and the brain fills in what it expects the rest of the sentence to be. BTW, I left out a word in last paragraph’s sentence test. Did you notice?
Side Note: While writing this post, I found an interesting link on how English sentences are parsed: http://www.polysyllabic.com/?q=book/export/html/64.
One of the primary author rules is “writers have to read.” This is more than knowing your genre, and it’s much more than knowing the major books out there to make sure you don’t become an inadvertent copycat. It’s about remembering how readers actually process stories. Humans are primarily story-telling creatures. It’s why math classes use story problems. Stories help us remember and process information far more accurately than mere memorization.
There are a lot of questions I could use to quiz you on your memory. For instance, do you know the name of the last book you read? Do you remember any character name besides the protagonist? Do you remember the foibles of a side character (his or her quirks)? What location(s) did the story use (city, planet, etc.)?
But those questions only tell you if the last author you read was good at their job. It doesn’t tell you if you are a good reader. Good readers consistently pay attention to all the little details, whether they like a story or not. Good readers take their time with a story, getting to know it as they read it. Good readers notice pacing, plot moments, surprise seeds. Good readers don’t get to the end of a book (or news article) and promptly forget everything about it.
I am a firm believer that you cannot be a writer if you do not read. And you can’t be a good writer unless you’re also a good reader. That means focusing on the task in front of you, even if it’s something you’re doing for fun. If you can understand why you’re reading, and what you’re getting out of your reading materials, it can help you with your own structure and voice.
When I write, I sometimes refer to other authors’ works to see how they handled a particular situation. Just the other day, I re-read Patricia Briggs’ Alpha and Omega novella to get a sense of how she starts her shorter, non-novel fiction. I looked at pacing, exposition, situation-normal going to s.n.a.f.u. moments. I use other authors too, and other moments in their fiction. When writing “Silk and Steam,” I went back to a piece by Mel Odom to understand how he used detail and distraction to build up to a particular protagonist reveal that shocked the reader while maintaining the “it was here all the time if you just paid attention” narrative. It helped immensely to see how other authors have dealt with the problems I encounter in my own fiction.
But then, maybe I’m asking the wrong question. Maybe I should be asking this instead: In this day and age of media distractions where people have music and t.v. on while writing and reading, are you even really reading?
