Does reading a lot make you write well?
In my early twenties I tutored students for the college entrance essay exam, and the parents I met for the first time asked me one of two questions.
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They say kids who read a lot do well on the essay exam. Mine never reads. What do I do…?
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They say kids who read a lot do well on the essay exam. Mine does read, so why is he like this…?
I told them it doesn’t matter much, and that the time spent worrying is better spent writing one more practice answer.
I don’t know whether the parents liked that answer, but my students seemed to do pretty well.
I have no idea who started the rumor that reading a lot makes you good at the essay exam. (My guess is a publisher’s marketing team.) From what I saw teaching, reading didn’t help that much. Plenty of students walked in confident because they had read a lot and then couldn’t produce a single sentence. Meanwhile I saw plenty of students pass after a few months of drilling nothing but the basic principles of the exam.
Out in the working world, writing turned out to be much the same. Everyone says you have to read a lot to write well.
Open any book on writing and it tells you to read a lot first. I have read more than twenty of them, and not one of them skipped that advice.
But just like with the exam, don’t you know people who have read plenty and still can’t write? I expect you have met a few. Reading a lot doesn’t turn into writing well on its own. Why not?
So what is the problem?
The problem is how you read.
If you want to write well you have to read as a writer, but you read as a reader, so nothing changes. Reading as a reader means reading with your attention on what the piece says. Read as a writer and the content is not where your attention goes. People who write well read a different way.
What if there were a way of reading that grew your writing ten times faster than everyone else’s?
And what if it were easy enough that anyone could do it after one or two tries?
The method is simple, and a little strange.
Before the new way, look at how we normally read. We read with our attention on the content. With a novel we follow the plot. With an ad we weigh whether to buy. You are probably reading this post for its content right now.
But reading for content does not make you better at writing. You are taking in “what was written” and never “how it was delivered.” To write well you have to learn the structure of good writing, so read for structure rather than content. In a novel, how the protagonist is introduced and how the conflict develops. In an ad, how the hook is delivered and how the weak points get dressed up. Read that way and the patterns of good writing become familiar, and you start writing in the patterns you picked up.
I will call this structure-focused reading critical reading. The name sounds hard, but it is simple. You underline and you ask questions. Here is how it works.
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“Critical reading”: focus on structure
First, pick up a pen and watch what you feel as you read. Pay attention to the effect each sentence has on you. Did the opening line make you curious or bore you, did the conclusion convince you or leave you lost, did the metaphor land or fall flat, did the description put the scene in your head or just run long, did the product copy make you want to buy or kill any interest.
Second, when you feel something, underline it. Then work out why you felt it. Ask how that sentence produced that effect. Was it the word choice, was the metaphor too unfamiliar, did the piece flow consistently, or did it contradict what came earlier.
Explained in words alone, this is hard.
In part 2 we will take a good example and analyze it together!
Part 2 link: <The way of reading only good writers know, part 2>
Part 2 link: <The way of reading only good writers know, part 2>