How to Read Like a Writer

10 Lessons to Elevate Your Reading and Writing Practice

Erin M. Pushman

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781350119420
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Creative Writing
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

"Reliably insightful." – Publishers Weekly The first step to becoming a successful writer is to become a successful reader. Helping you develop your critical skills How to Read Like a Writer is an accessible and effective step-by-step guide to how careful reading can help you improve your craft as a creative writer, whatever genre you are writing in. Across 10 lessons – each pairing published readings with practical critical and creative exercises – this book helps writers master such key elements of their craft as: · Genre – from fiction, creative nonfiction and poetry to hybrid genres such as graphic narratives and online forms
· Plot, conflict, theme and image
· Developing characters – physical descriptions, psychological depths and actions
· Narrators and points of view – 1st, 2nd and 3rd person narratives
· Scenes and settings – time, space and place
· Structure and form – length, organization and media
· Language, subtext and style

LESSON 1

READING GENRE

The Concept of Genre

Let’s talk definitions. When writers write, they write inside a genre, or type of writing. Paying attention to genre will help you think about why a writer picks a particular genre to tell a particular story or communicate a particular idea. This may seem like a lot of particulars, but writers are particular people. When writers read—as when they write—they pay attention to genre.

Consider this sentence:

When I was six years old, I killed my sister with a gun I did not know how to shoot.

Well, that sentence would make a compelling first line, wouldn’t it? The first line of what, though? A story? A memoir? A poem? Why does it matter? Because truth and fiction matter to us in different ways.

We read fiction differently than we read nonfiction, and we read those differently than we read poetry. Genre influences how we read a text. Paying attention to how genre influences the way we read is a fundamental beginning to reading the way writers do.

In creative writing, the prose genres are fiction and creative nonfiction. To keep things interesting (we are creative writers, after all) creative nonfiction is also sometimes called literary nonfiction. To begin considering the way genre influences our reading, we will think about the prose genres first.

Let’s read that opening sentence again, twice.

Read the sentence as the first line of a novel, a work of fiction.

When I was six years old, I killed my sister with a gun I did not know how to shoot.

Reading this sentence as the first line in a work of fiction, what are we thinking about? As readers reading for pleasure, we are probably wondering what the dickens happened and feeling eager to read the next sentence in hopes of figuring it out. Reading this first line of a novel as writers, we might also consider these thoughts:

• Introduction to the narrator (the I who killed the sister)

• Establishment of conflict (the gun, the killing of the sister, the not knowing how to shoot)

• Use of language (simple, uncomplicated words worked into a sentence with an interesting structure—a sentence that begins with a preposition, when, and ends with a verb)

Reading fiction, we care about the characters and the events as they unfold. Think about your favorite novel or short story, and tell me you don’t care—I dare you. But we also know the characters and the events are not real.

Now read the sentence again. This time, read the sentence as the first line of a memoir, a work of creative nonfiction.

When I was six years old, I killed my sister with a gun I did not know how to shoot.

Reading this sentence as a work of creative nonfiction, the stakes are different. We are still wondering what happened and wanting to read on to find out. But we also read the line knowing that this really did happen; somewhere, a real six-year-old killed his or her sister. Reading this first line of a memoir as writers, we might also consider these thoughts:

• Introducing the narrator as a character, even though this is also the real person who killed his or her sister as a child and has now written a book about it

• Being honest while establishing the conflict (the sister really did die; the narrator really was six)

• Use of language (simple, uncomplicated words worked into a sentence with an interesting structure—a sentence that begins with a preposition, when, and ends with a verb)

When we read creative nonfiction, we read in part because we want to learn about what really happened and we care about how it matters in the world or in the lives of the people involved.

Now read the sentence one more time, this time as the first line of a poem.

When I was six years old, I killed my sister with a gun I did not know how to shoot.

That sentence doesn’t look much like poetry does it? No, it doesn’t. Let’s think about why. A complete sentence written out in a straight line reads like prose, right? Right. As a general rule, a complete sentence written out in a straight line is prose. Of course, in creative writing, there are always exceptions to the general rules. One of them is prose poetry, which we will get to in Lesson 2. If we did read the entire sentence as one line of poetry, we would think about why the language is organized into a complete and measured sentence and why the line is so long.

Thinking of the sentence as a poem, though, we might expect the content to look something like this:

Six years old

with a gun

I didn’t know

how

to shoot

I killed

my sister.

Reading these lines as poetry, we read the words quite differently—almost entirely differently—than we read the words as prose. Readers come to poetry for language and rhythm as much as for the meaning of the words themselves. Reading these words as lines of poetry, we might also consider the following:

• Using the right words to convey a feeling, experience, or narrative

• Evoking rhythm and sound

• Shaping of the poem into lines and stanzas (notice how many words come before line breaks and how that shapes the overall poem: 3,3,3; 1; 2,2,2)

The stakes in poetry are different. As readers, we care how the poem moves us, how the language feels.

We do not usually keep reading poetry to find out what happens next (except in narrative poetry). We keep reading to reach a feeling or insight. And we keep reading to fall into the language and rhythm of the poem. We keep reading to see the world through the lens of the poet. Language, rhythm, image, and feeling are part of the stakes of poetry.

Now let’s come back to the idea of truth. Does poetry have to tell the truth? The truth discussion in poetry is both complicated and simple. Poetry often tells the truth, but it does not have to. Many writers agree that the more honest a poet is in the writing, the more meaningful the poem. But some poetry does invent stories, characters, or events. The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner is a classic example.

While many contemporary poets do choose to write the literal truth that stems from their own experiences, there are contemporary poets who write about experiences they have not had themselves. Poets are free to invent characters or events that reflect certain truths about life or human nature. This is called poetic truth. Look again at my example of the sister and the gun. Although I did not shoot my sister—or anyone else—when I was six, these tragedies do happen. The lines of poetry reflect this type of tragedy and provide some language by which to contemplate it.

Creative writing genres always live up to more than their dictionary definitions. Just like people, genres are more than the words we use to define them. But we are writers, and dealing in words is what we do. To bring us all onto the same page (pun intended), here are some words organized into baseline definitions of genre.

Fiction

When we think of fiction, we think novels and short stories. We probably also think that fiction doesn’t really need a definition. I mean, fiction is fiction, right? Right. Fiction is a narrative form of writing. Fiction tells a story to the reader, using a plot and characters that the writer invents. When we read fiction, we read knowing we are reading something imagined by the writer and delivered to us on the page.

But, you may be thinking, so many great fiction writers write stories inspired by their own lives or based on actual events. (You are wise to be thinking along these lines. Thinking about fiction this way means you are thinking the way writers think.) Much fiction is inspired by real life, including real history or personal experience. An example of this in our Readings section is Sophie Yanow’s graphic novel The Contradictions, a fictionalized version of her own experiences during a study-abroad stint in Europe. Some fiction is also well researched to make it realistic and detailed. Historical fiction (one of this reader’s favorite fiction subgenres) is often researched to make the narrative as historically accurate as possible.

The difference is that while certain events or characters in a piece of fiction may resemble those in real life/real history, a piece of fiction is not bound to the truth. In other words, however much a writer’s life or real events may have inspired a piece of fiction, the writer is still free to make things up.

Fiction holds many subgenres; examples include horror, mystery, science fiction, women’s fiction, historical fiction, dystopian fiction, and on. As a writer, you should know that fiction is often broken into two main categories: genre fiction and literary fiction. “Genre fiction” (also referred to as commercial or popular fiction) is a term writers and publishers use to refer to all popular subgenres of fiction, including those mentioned above. Sometimes, those popular genres have subgenres of their own: vampire fiction and zombie fiction are only two examples. Often, readers pick up genre fiction to be entertained and to escape from their own reality for a while.

The lines between literary and genre fiction are blurry. The lines are also drawn more by the publishing industry than by writers. For these reasons, it’s probably better not to worry too much about the distinction now, when you are exploring yourself as a writer and figuring out what it means to read like one. For the sake of definition, though, literary fiction is fiction that is not confined by popular subgenre categories. Readers often pick up literary fiction to experience writing as an art form and to engage in a story that will make them think. Literary fiction is often considered to be “serious” fiction because it tends to explore the reality we live in, often offering us new ways to consider the world we thought we knew. Literary fiction is usually more character-driven than plot-driven, which means what happens to the characters and how they react pushes the story forward more than big events in the plot.

Remember those blurry lines, though. Many excellent genre fiction novels do the same things we have just discussed as being part of literary fiction. (Chances are, you are ticking examples in your head, even as you read this sentence.) The fiction in the Readings section of this book is literary fiction. As you read these selections, consider the ways these stories are different from genre fiction you have read recently.

Creative Nonfiction

As I mentioned earlier, creative nonfiction is sometimes also referred to as literary nonfiction. This genre is also sometimes called the fourth genre, particularly in the United States. Each of these terms works to communicate the fact that this genre is different from plain nonfiction. It is the creative/literary part that places this genre among those of creative writing. In this book, we are going to use the term “creative nonfiction” because that is the term most widely used. We will also use the term “essay” to refer to shorter, stand-alone pieces of creative nonfiction. Literary essays are the creative nonfiction equivalent of short stories in that they are a short (as in not book-length) form of creative writing.

Creative nonfiction is fundamentally different from the other kind of nonfiction because like other genres, creative nonfiction is written as a form of art. A newspaper article reporting the facts is nonfiction but not creative nonfiction. A textbook is nonfiction but not creative nonfiction. Writers of creative nonfiction write creatively; they use language in an artistic or literary way. They write to tell a true story or to explore an idea in a compelling way that will engage and entertain readers. Much, but not all, creative nonfiction is narrative in that it includes plots, characters, and other aspects of narrative writing. Some creative nonfiction is also poetic in its lyrical approach to language and content.

Creative nonfiction is fundamentally different from other genres of creative writing because writers of creative nonfiction do make sure they are presenting real facts. Another way to say this is that creative nonfiction deals in factual content but presents that content in more than a just-the-facts sort of a way. Writers of creative nonfiction enter into a truth contract with the reader. However compellingly written the plot, however poetic the language, however creative the presentation of ideas, creative nonfiction maintains veracity. In other words, creative nonfiction sticks to the truth.

But, you may be thinking, some creative nonfiction writers change the names of people or obscure their identities, or leave out parts of what happened in real life. Yes, sometimes creative nonfiction writers do all of that, but only when doing so has no bearing on the sustenance of the content and does not alter the veracity.

Now, to keep the truth contract (this is a nonfiction book) I want to remind you that, for the purposes of discussion, I made up that earlier sentence about shooting my sister. I did not kill my sister when I was six years old. In fact, I do not have a sister. However real tragic accidents like this may be, the accident has not happened to me. Writing a piece of prose about this happening to me would be a work of fiction.

Like fiction, creative nonfiction can be both short and long. Shorter forms are often called essays and sometimes include their own subgenres, like lyric essay, but also include the same subgenres as book-length creative nonfiction. Book-length forms are usually referred to by their subgenre. Subgenres include narrative nonfiction, memoir, literary journalism, and place-based narrative, nature/environmental nonfiction, etc.

Poetry

Like all writing, poetry conveys meaning through language. More than other genres, though, poetry relies on rhythm, sound, and the structure of lines to create feeling or image. Poetry generally uses language much more sparsely than prose. When we read poetry, we read the words that are on the page, and we make connections among them. In poetry, we read every word more carefully than we read every word in most prose works. Because sound and rhythm help create meaning in poetry, we also pay attention to the way the words and syllables sound when read aloud or inside the reader’s head. Because poets al...