Don’t underestimate the immense value of reading when learning to write: the two activities are inseparably linked. Reading helps you understand what readers want and what you need to bring to your own work. As you read, you absorb a great deal about the writer’s craft, including sentence structure, paragraph patterns, word choice, punctuation and many other elements of effective writing.
“If you don’t have the time to read, you don’t have the tools to write.”
Learning from other writers
Zadie Smith maintains, “Learning to be a good reader makes you a good writer,” while the American novelist George R. R. Martin goes even further: “A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies … The man who never reads lives only one.” Perhaps the greatest advantage of reading is the insight it provides into how writers craft their work. By exploring a variety of genres by contemporary and classic authors, you begin to recognise and understand different writing styles.
Different writing styles can fire your imagination and ultimately help you to formulate and emulate these elements into your own writing. The process is cumulative: the more you read the greater the opportunity to develop and hone your own analytical skills. Whether consciously or subconsciously, engaging with a text allows you to evaluate elements of character development, conflict, plot, pacing, tension, dialogue, themes, while gaining a fuller understanding of subtext.
The relationship between reading and writing is complex. Reading expands your vocabulary, but it also draws attention to an author’s skill in selecting the words that best fit the purpose. It deepens your understanding of the subtle nuances that bring meaning, fluidity and rhythm to writing. Words remain the lifeblood of a writer: every word carries an attitude, and even apparently similar choices can produce different effects. Only through reading do we begin to appreciate these shades of meaning and understand how profoundly word choice shapes a writer’s style.
We all have a personal reading journey, which begins and changes as we grow. I remember being introduced to the children’s classics such as “Treasure Island”, “A Christmas Carol”, “Peter Pan”. Even then I experienced the pleasure and power of the written word. Authors like Mark Twain in “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” could in those early days set my imagination ablaze, while helping me understand how people’s lives and ideas of freedom were very different. Reading as a child wasn’t confined to the classics. “Just William” books, Enid Blyton’s “The Famous Five”, “Biggles”, The Boy’s Own Magazine and the Eagle comic all figured at different times…but as William Faulkner suggested “Read everything–trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You’ll absorb it. Then write. If it’s good, you’ll find out.”
My epiphany in reading came in my adolescence, when I realized certain authors could articulate what I felt and which was universal to the human condition. Alan Bennett in “The History Boys” perhaps puts it better when he says,
“The best moments in reading are when you come across something – a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things – which you had thought special and particular to you. Now here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it is as if a hand has come out and taken yours.”
Later, I read Somerset Maugham, Salinger, George Orwell until my tastes were redirected as a student. Here I then encountered existential writers such as Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Franz Kafka and Fyodor Dostoevsky, as well as Beat writers including Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs, all of whom influenced me. At the time, Kerouac’s work felt particularly spontaneous and adventurous.
Even today, the pathway feels haphazard, untravelled or even random. I’m never sure where these signposts lead or how the idiom of contemporary writing will change, due to the cultural, social and economic pressures of the day. One thing, however, remains certain: reading is the lifeblood of every writer.
Reading can help structure your writing
Haruki Murakami maintains, “To understand a novel you must first understand at a physical level how to put it together.” Just as a film producer uses a story board, so I believe you can deconstruct a novel by summarizing the key elements found in each chapter to see how it works.
In undertaking such a deconstruction exercise, you might also note how plot, tension and pacing is maintained and how the writer develops the character while minimizing the description in order to move the action forwards.
If this seems too difficult, create your own criteria
Alternatively, you could create your own criteria. Consider what you find difficult in writing. For instance, it might be the opening, difficulties in structuring a plot, the development of characters, dialogue and often more poignantly endings. Some endings can be vague, confusing, unsatisfying or even abrupt. A typical ploy used by some authors is to kill off characters just as the book reaches its end. Stephen King always sets out not knowing what ending he will write. For him the element of surprise remains not only for the reader but for himself as the author. There is no fixed way to write a book, although there are techniques which can be helpful like ‘showing rather than telling.’
As Anton Chekhov said, “Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.” The rule of three is another device you may encounter. It presents information in groups of three such as: “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” from the Declaration of Independence or “Blood, toil, tears and sweat” from Churchill’s speech in 1940. A similar memorable rhythm appears in Tesco’s well-known slogan, “Every little helps.” Another narrative tool an author may use is the flashback, which takes the reader out of the present story and into an earlier period in a character’s life.
At the micro-level
Your reading may concentrate on the sentence at the micro-level. A writer may use alliteration, assonance, colloquial language or jargon to create a regional or local identity. The use of diction, good or poor, is another device which can be used by authors to mimic the real world along with the ubiquitous metaphor and simile, or repetition of phrases which create other nuances to the author’s work. Rhythm and rhyme are further techniques, not limited to poetry. Examples like “Under Milk Wood” by Dylan Thomas show the richness of this device.
In one of her famous letters, Virginia Woolf wrote, “Style is a very simple matter: it is all rhythm. Once you get that, you can’t use the wrong words. But on the other hand here am I sitting after half the morning, crammed with ideas, and visions, and so on, and can’t dislodge them, for lack of the right rhythm.”
‘Syntax’ is important too. ‘Word order’ can make the sentence ‘active’ or ‘passive’, just as the length of a sentence can create or alter the pace of the action taking place. ‘Elements of style’ are characteristics of many different genres. The way in which a writer uses these elements helps to create a distinctive voice.
You may also find an author using ‘foreshadowing’. This provides an indication in the novel about what will happen later. Other authors, poets and playwrights may use ‘imagery’ and ‘sensory detail’ to vividly describe experiences, actions, characters, and places through their written language. Sometimes a ‘motif’, a recurring symbol and a common literary device will be used to generate a ‘theme’ or ‘mood’. Golding in “The Lord of the Flies” uses a conch shell to represent democratic order, while Hemingway employs the motif of water to symbolize life’s struggle in “The Old Man and the Sea”.
Many writers such as Shakespeare and Emily Bronte utilise ‘pathetic fallacy’, where nature mirrors or reflects human emotions. In “Wuthering Heights”, Emily Bronte writes, “The sky is darkening, and a light wind is rising from the moors.” Jane Austen is a master of ‘irony’ and ‘social commentary’. ‘Satire’ is another device writers such as Jonathan Swift and George Orwell’s use in a humorous way to ridicule the powers that be. Have you ever read a novel which appears to give the appearance of being true, then you’ve encountered ‘verisimilitude’? A typical example is “Moby Dick”, where Melville uses real whaling terms and descriptions to create a plausible reality, which play their part in storytelling.
‘Ethos’ focuses on the writer or speaker’s trustworthiness and credibility. It’s important because it must be present for you to trust the writer. ‘Pathos’ appeals to the audience’s compassion and empathy (“The Crucible” by Arthur Miller). ‘Logos’ is the persuasive technique to employ logic and reason to sway an audience. A good example is “To Kill a Mockingbird”, by Harper Lee. Then we have ‘juxtaposition’, a literary device that involves the placing of two contrasting or opposing ideas, words, phrases to highlight their differences. In “A Tale of Two Cities”, Charles Dickens writes, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” Stephen King described books as ‘unique portable magic.’
As readers, we should relish this interaction with reading and writing. The two processes are inseparable: reading opens a doorway into the human condition and into our souls, while writing creates the means to emulate the best and to develop our craft with the added gift of enjoyment.
More from John Greeves
Bylines Network Gazette is out!
The latest Bylines Network Gazette is out now. Become a Friend of Bylines Network or upgrade to a paid Substack subscription, and you will get access to a vital collection of citizen articles and stories.
Journalism by the people, for the people.
