Indie Publishing Guide: Reading Tip #2: Flex Your Reading Muscles
When I was in college, I complained about reading Shakespeare. It was too hard, too dense, too poetic. I felt like I was spending all of my time interpreting each line rather than being able to get into the plot. And the plots were mechanical and cliche', filled with deus ex machina and silly contrivances. Plus, it felt like I'd seen those plots a dozen times over. Of course, the reason I'd seen or read those plots before was because of Shakespeare's influence, but I was too hard-headed to realize it. I felt the same way about any text that challenged me, actually, and even though I waded through those books, I did so begrudgingly.
I don't feel that way any more. The value in reading challenging works goes beyond being entertained or loving plots and characters, and while I understand knowing one's audience, I also think that can be misinterpreted as "only give your audience what they want." My audience, any audience, for that matter, is smart. Readers enjoy books that are surprising and make them work just as much as they like easy texts, and authors will go a long way to providing that by challenging themselves in their own reading.
With that in mind, it's important for writers to not just vary the kinds of literature they read, but to challenge themselves every now and then. Read something that uses elevated diction and compound complex syntax. Read something that presents difficult to understand ideas. On one level, it improves vocabulary and sentence structure, and at the very least, it reveals some allusions an author can use. On a mechanical level, it forces readers to inspect the text closely, to slow down and chew the language, to admire the poetry of a line, to ponder the nature of a metaphor or a symbol. In terms of ideas, it presents information or complex concepts that to store away for later. It's amazing how these things can, either purposefully or subconsciously, seep into one's own writing.
So yeah, read Shakespeare. You don't have to read every last one. Read one or two that seem interesting. For me, teaching Macbeth was a revelation. I had to know it back and forth to be able to sell it to classes of disinterested high school seniors, so I took my time, broke down each scene, interpreted my favorite lines. Here's one from Act 1, Scene 2, as the Sergeant is explaining Macbeth's badassery to King Duncan:
"For brave Macbeth--well he deserves that name--/Disdaining fortune, with his brandish'd steel,/Which smoked with bloody execution,/Like valour's minion carved out his passage/Till he faced the slave;/Which ne'er shook hands, nor bade farewell to him/Till he unseam'd him from the nave to the chaps,/And fix'd his head upon our battlements."
Macbeth cut a guy in half, from his stomach to his jaw, then decapitated him and stuck his head on the castle wall. And poetically! Shakespeare basically wrote heavy metal lyrics some four hundred and seventy years before Dio.
You don't just have to read early 17th Century Drama, though. Try Patrick Henry's "Speech To The Virginia Convention" (his famous "Give me liberty or give me death" speech). His use of repetition and poetic imagery, his sense of rhythm, all can be used in your own writing in some way.
If you really want to set yourself up a challenging but approachable course of study, read some American 19th Century authors. Try Poe ("The Fall of the House of Usher," "The Black Cat," "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," "The Purloined Letter"), Hawthorne ("The Minister's Black Veil"), Bierce ("The Horseman In The Sky," "An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge") Crane ("An Episode of War," "A Mystery Of Heroism").
You probably won't read this kind of text entirely for pleasure. (At least not at first.) Don't read them in bed or at the beach. You won't get very far. Instead, treat them like something to study. Since the reading might be difficult, underline passages that are interesting or meaningful. Stop and make notes in the margins. STUDY the work, don't just consume it. You'd be surprised how it will inform your own writing.
I wouldn't recommend reading like this all the time, but it does make my last tip more meaningful.
Next up: Varying Your Reading Tip #3—Become an expert in more than one genre
Are you a fan of horror or post-apocalyptic fiction?
CLICK HERE to join my email list and receive a free short story, audio book, and theme song for "Beta":
A monster terrorizes an isolated village in the mountains of Eastern Europe, draining the blood of its victims, leaving them frozen in the snow. The villagers hunt wolves, decapitate “vampires,” but the murders continue. As each new body is found, the residents grow more and more paranoid. The cobbler's son decides to investigate, putting himself in grave danger. Who will be next? Will it ever end?
Sign up here!
www.jamesnoll.net
--JN
I don't feel that way any more. The value in reading challenging works goes beyond being entertained or loving plots and characters, and while I understand knowing one's audience, I also think that can be misinterpreted as "only give your audience what they want." My audience, any audience, for that matter, is smart. Readers enjoy books that are surprising and make them work just as much as they like easy texts, and authors will go a long way to providing that by challenging themselves in their own reading.
With that in mind, it's important for writers to not just vary the kinds of literature they read, but to challenge themselves every now and then. Read something that uses elevated diction and compound complex syntax. Read something that presents difficult to understand ideas. On one level, it improves vocabulary and sentence structure, and at the very least, it reveals some allusions an author can use. On a mechanical level, it forces readers to inspect the text closely, to slow down and chew the language, to admire the poetry of a line, to ponder the nature of a metaphor or a symbol. In terms of ideas, it presents information or complex concepts that to store away for later. It's amazing how these things can, either purposefully or subconsciously, seep into one's own writing.
So yeah, read Shakespeare. You don't have to read every last one. Read one or two that seem interesting. For me, teaching Macbeth was a revelation. I had to know it back and forth to be able to sell it to classes of disinterested high school seniors, so I took my time, broke down each scene, interpreted my favorite lines. Here's one from Act 1, Scene 2, as the Sergeant is explaining Macbeth's badassery to King Duncan:
"For brave Macbeth--well he deserves that name--/Disdaining fortune, with his brandish'd steel,/Which smoked with bloody execution,/Like valour's minion carved out his passage/Till he faced the slave;/Which ne'er shook hands, nor bade farewell to him/Till he unseam'd him from the nave to the chaps,/And fix'd his head upon our battlements."
Macbeth cut a guy in half, from his stomach to his jaw, then decapitated him and stuck his head on the castle wall. And poetically! Shakespeare basically wrote heavy metal lyrics some four hundred and seventy years before Dio.
You don't just have to read early 17th Century Drama, though. Try Patrick Henry's "Speech To The Virginia Convention" (his famous "Give me liberty or give me death" speech). His use of repetition and poetic imagery, his sense of rhythm, all can be used in your own writing in some way.
If you really want to set yourself up a challenging but approachable course of study, read some American 19th Century authors. Try Poe ("The Fall of the House of Usher," "The Black Cat," "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," "The Purloined Letter"), Hawthorne ("The Minister's Black Veil"), Bierce ("The Horseman In The Sky," "An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge") Crane ("An Episode of War," "A Mystery Of Heroism").
You probably won't read this kind of text entirely for pleasure. (At least not at first.) Don't read them in bed or at the beach. You won't get very far. Instead, treat them like something to study. Since the reading might be difficult, underline passages that are interesting or meaningful. Stop and make notes in the margins. STUDY the work, don't just consume it. You'd be surprised how it will inform your own writing.
I wouldn't recommend reading like this all the time, but it does make my last tip more meaningful.
Next up: Varying Your Reading Tip #3—Become an expert in more than one genre
Are you a fan of horror or post-apocalyptic fiction?
CLICK HERE to join my email list and receive a free short story, audio book, and theme song for "Beta":
A monster terrorizes an isolated village in the mountains of Eastern Europe, draining the blood of its victims, leaving them frozen in the snow. The villagers hunt wolves, decapitate “vampires,” but the murders continue. As each new body is found, the residents grow more and more paranoid. The cobbler's son decides to investigate, putting himself in grave danger. Who will be next? Will it ever end?
Sign up here!
www.jamesnoll.net
--JN
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