Reading alone isn’t enough…
I don’t normally write much about my thoughts on my writing process, mainly because in reading the advice of others, I feel like most everything I do is back-asswards. I never wrote an outline that I stuck to for longer than a quarter of the way through, I edit and revise while I’m writing the rough draft, and I don’t write every day. Logic should dictate that I rarely finish anything, and yet, I’ve wrapped up far more projects than I’ve abandoned. Still, I don’t feel like I’m qualified to talk about what others should do when they want to learn the craft. I’m full of bad habits, and my writing lacks the right ingredients to achieve success.
That said, there’s a bit of advice that I want to talk about because I feel it’s not entirely true. I see a lot of writers say that if you want to write, you should read a lot. I don’t think it’s a bad idea to read from many genres to get a feel for how other writers craft their stories, and it is a good idea to read as much as you can to find inspiration for your own stories. But to really find your voice and understand how to craft a story, I think you have to write something. It doesn’t matter if you write every day, or if you write something good or just a lark that few people will see. You do need to read a lot, but you also need to write a lot.
Before 2003, I mostly made failed attempts at writing fan-fiction. I’d get halfway through an idea and lose the point of the story. I would look over my failures with a critical eye, and I couldn’t sort out where I’d gone wrong. I was reading a lot, and my habits helped build the urge to create. But it wasn’t strong enough to sustain me through any idea, and I think part of my problem was trying to emulate the voice of other authors while at the same time struggling to create something that was uniquely mine.
In 2003, my friend Cherry suggested that I write a journal to help me work out my many emotional issues. I couldn’t do it. I didn’t want to talk about myself, not even in a journal that no one else would see. After several failed attempts, I decided to tell a “short” story about a schizophrenic serial bomber meeting a neglected teenager. This was the first draft of The Lesser of Two Evils, and my short story ended up being over 100 pages long. I passed this story to Cherry, and she read it in one night. When she finished, she looked up at me and smiled, and she said, “My God, you really are a writer.”
In the next two years, I wrote several novels, but I rarely showed them to anyone. There was something wrong with my work, and I knew it wasn’t good enough to submit to publishers. But I wanted to know what I was doing wrong, so I passed another story to a friend. This time it was the first draft of Little Monsters, and I gave it to my manager at the movie theater. He agreed to edit it, and along with many notes crammed in red pen in the margins, he wrote on the last page, “What a weird story, but damned fine writing.”
Still, something was wrong.
I did start attempting to publish my stories, but every submission was met with dead silence. It didn’t matter if I sent it to an agent or to a small publisher, no one wrote back. I knew something was wrong, but no one would let me in on the secret. The odd thing was, when I showed my work to various people, they said I had talent. Whether they were friends or strangers, they said I had skills. While it helped my self-esteem, it didn’t help me understand what I was doing wrong.
In 2006, my dad, who’d read one of my first stories, told me about Lulu. I signed up for an account, but it was another year before I self-published my first book, a complete rewrite of The Lesser of Two Evils. I knew the first short story was flawed because neither Jobe nor Wendy were sympathetic characters. But that rewritten book was wrong in a lot of ways. I found someone willing to explain why my writing was rough. I wasn’t handling punctuation in dialogue right, and some of the dialogue felt wooden.
Simply reading more books didn’t help because as a passive reader, I rarely paid attention to the rules the writing followed. I wasn’t studying the craft the right way. Sure, I’d noticed the way other writers described their characters or locations, but I missed things like punctuation or sentence structure. I had to write for close to four years before I started picking up on these things, and even then, I needed other people to point these things out and say, “See? This is how it’s supposed to be done.”
In a lot of ways, I still feel like an amateur, and it doesn’t matter that I’ve had good reviews. It doesn’t matter that stories I emailed to other writers came back with compliments. I always feel like my writing is missing something to keep it from being worthy of the best-seller list. Reading other books don’t help me pin down what’s wrong. It’s something undefinable, some secret ingredient that I’m lacking. Which is not to say I hate my writing. Quite the opposite, when I go back to an old story to hunt for typos, I often find myself reading passively, and I have to force myself to look for mistakes. I’ve been writing the kind of stories I want to read, and even going back years later, I still enjoy my stories. But I also know they’re missing something to be successful, even though I can’t name it.
Writing all these stories has changed the way I read now. I’m always aware of sentence structure, and my internal editor is always actively studying every paragraph and sentence. I’m just as picky as I used to be, but now I can more easily define why one story works for me where another doesn’t. I can tell you that I like objective narrators who don’t tell me how to feel about characters or their actions. I loathe when a narrator tells me “This man is evil, and you should hate him.” If I should hate them, show me why through their actions. Don’t just tell me right off the bat how to feel.
I dislike when a writer tells me a topic is fascinating to a character, but gives me nothing to find it interesting. For a reader already interested in the topic, it’s okay to skip this part. But if I’m not already into the subject, I need to know why it’s fascinating. There are writers who take the time to get me into their interests, and once I’m invested, they can lead me anywhere. But the writers who just say “John had always found the topic fascinating” before moving on to the real story, I feel cheated.
I hate when a writer takes shortcuts or easy paths in a story. I also know it doesn’t bother a lot of readers top be taken through these shortcuts, but it always did bug me, even before I finished my first story. I just didn’t have the experience to define why these things bugged me. Now I do.
Reading by itself isn’t enough to develop that skill. Reading can and will inspire you. The more you read, the more ideas you’ll find to make your own stories. But it’s only one part of the puzzle, and until you sit down and start writing, you can’t begin to appreciate the crafting process. Once you do start writing, yet another piece of the puzzle is finding people willing to read your stuff and tell you bluntly about what worked and didn’t work. Which isn’t to say you have to agree with their interpretation. But if you keep hearing the same complaints from multiple readers, it might be worth your time to make an effort at fixing your “creaky” bits. You’ll also want to find someone willing to explain what rules you’ve broken, and once you know the rules better, reading other books, you’ll begin to see the rules along with the story.
It’s like looking at a jigsaw puzzle from a distance without having ever assembled one yourself. You don’t see the piece or how they fit together. You just see the picture, and you’re judging the puzzle based on whether or not the image pleases you. Once you’ve put together a few puzzles yourself, you develop your own habits. Maybe you’ll start with the corners or work on one of the borders. Maybe you’ll find the most colorful piece and work out from there. Once you’ve developed those habits, from then on, every puzzle you see, you’ll be unable not to notice the individual pieces. Your mind will process the image, but it will also study how you might have worked on this puzzle in your own way.
I think the writing process is the same way. If you read a lot but never write, the bigger picture escapes your attention. Sure, you’ll probably be able to define why one story works for you and another doesn’t. But until you write enough of your own stories, you’ll be missing out on the seams between scenes. Reading alone may inspire you, but until you write, you’re only seeing a portion of the big picture.
