How to read as a writer who wants to write better

If anyone is looking for a guide for people who love books and for those who want to write them, Francine Prose has written Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and For Those Who Want to Write Them. Because I love books and want to write better ones, I checked out.

When Prose published the guide in 2006, she'd taught literature and writing for more than twenty years and had published fourteen books of fiction. She's since published seven more. Her novel Blue Angel was a National Book Award finalist. So she's been around the block a couple times.

Prose begins Chapter One by asking, "Can creative writing be taught?" Because she'd been teaching writing off and on for twenty years she could hardly say that "any attempt to teach the writing of fiction was a complete waste of time." Rather she tells people that a good teacher can show you how to edit your work, and the right class "can form the basis of a community that will help and sustain you." But you don't learn to write by taking a class. "Like most—maybe all—I learned to write by writing and, by example, by reading books."

I have said that I read fiction on two levels: I skate along on the surface, following the story and the character(s) ups and downs. Simultaneously, I try to be conscious of what the author is doing with point of view, continuity, dialogue, and description. Prose is much more thorough. A list of chapter titles in order will give you an idea what else you can be sensitive to: Words, Sentences, Paragraphs, Narration, Character, Dialogue, Details, Gesture.

She illustrates what she's talking about with examples from dozens of sources, from paragraphs to substantial passages, and for even more help she includes a list of "Books to be Read Immediately." The book may be more than dozen years old, but the advice is timeless. For example:

"In the hands of a master, even the shortest paragraphs can be enormously powerful, as are the last two paragraphs of Raymond Carver's story "Fat":
It is August.
My life is going to change. I feel it.
Consider how much less successful this passage would be if all three sentences appeared in the same paragraph. As is, the section seem nearly perfect, because every decision about paragraphing contributes to the strength of the story's ending."

This after she has pointed out that one sentence/one line paragraphs "should be used sparingly, if at all." If you're going to use a one sentence paragraph, the sentence had better have enough content to justify setting it off.

In other words, there are no hard, fast, immutable rules in writing fiction. The only question: Does it work? "Work" in the sense of providing a reader aesthetic satisfaction. And unfortunately for the writer, readers are different. What John finds aesthetically satisfying, Jane finds needlessly complex. What Jane finds aesthetically satisfying, Mary finds banal and formulaic. To see how this works, look up the one-star reviews of a book you loved or the five-star reviews of a book you wanted to throw across the room. Readers respond to different things. But I repeat myself.

I think that Reading Like a Writer should be on every serious fiction writer's bookshelf. I read it straight through for this review, but it is worth returning to periodically to be reminded—shown—how the masters have used narration, dialogue, gesture and more to make masterpieces. The rest of us may not be in the masterpiece class, but we can all do better. Reading like a writer can help.