On Reading like A Writer

We all know how to read. Or do we?

There's a way that writers read. Should read. Don't read, most of the time.

Most people read for pleasure, for information, for escape. They let the words wash over them like a warm bath, sinking into the story without a second thought.

You read differently when you write. You have to. 

When you read, do you ask questions? Why this word? Why here? What does it do? 

When you read, do you listen? Do you feel the beat? It’s always there. The literary equivalent of a drummer’s rhythm. The thing that holds down the band. 

Short sentences hit hard. They leave bruises. Long sentences flow like rivers, carrying you along with the current, rising, rushing, building, until they crash into the sea. A phrase repeated strikes like waves on the beach, again and again and again. 

Lean in. Can you hear the writer’s voice? Not the story. How the writer tells it. The man walks into a bar. That’s the story. “The man walked in. The bar was dark.” That’s one way of telling it. Another is, “The drunk stumbled into the dim, smoky dive.” Same man. Same bar. Different style. 

Do you look at a metaphor and see a bridge? From here to somewhere new. The greats use them well. But sparingly. Not always a simile like this sentence. As the page sings, sometimes, so does the phrase. 

Do you read between the lines and see the undercarriage holding up the stories? Like icebergs, great writing is one-eighth above water, seven-eighths below. Things not said, but felt. Details left to the imagination. Underlying themes and subtle nods. Invisible setups and sleight of hand reveals.

Characters, constructed then inhabited.

You learn to look for these things. The spaces between words. The silences. The voices. The shape and the joinery. Stories have bones. As a writer, you feel them as you read.

So, you study. You learn. You write.

Sometimes it works. The words come together. They breathe on their own.

Other times they sit there. Dead on the page. You try again.

That's how it is. Reading. Writing. Living.

It's all connected. One big story. 

True and clean and simple.

That's all there is to it.