How Writers Should Read

Authors love to read. It’s obvious, right? Anyone who loves books so much that they would actually sit down and write one must find joy in reading them.

What’s less obvious is that writers — and I’m speaking about fiction-writers in particular — should approach reading as part of their job and take a methodical approach to their reading. That’s not to say they have to love it any less. Football players have to spend hours in the weight room as part of their job, but that doesn’t mean they don’t love lifting weights. But scribes should have a clear idea of what they need to get out of their hours with a book in their hands.

Here are a few tips on how writers should read so their favourite pastime is as productive as it is joyous.

1.       Master your genre. Assuming you limit your work to one genre, become an expert in it. Read the greats, the recent bestsellers, the authors who pioneered the genre way back when. Find out how your genre evolved and keep abreast of where it’s going.

Crime fiction is my chosen genre, more particularly police procedural, so I devour all the cop novels (and true crime) I can find, especially mid-twentieth-century West Coast noir. I can tell you, it’s hard – no, impossible – to really feel you’ve read enough to be considered an expert. There are just too many books in any genre these days, and it’s impossible to tell what the important work is.

A deep knowledge of your peers’ work will improve your standing within your community, which is important when everyone is scrambling to be noticed. More importantly, reading other authors will reveal literary devices that can be applied to your own work. I always notice things I can improve on – the slow drip of information, pacing, the development and interaction of characters – from other writers.

2.       Pick a hero. Find someone whose work you admire and read everything they have produced: novels, non-fiction, journalism, letters, podcasts. Read everything that’s written about them.

Figure out first what makes them great, and then what you can apply to your work.

Returning to my own experience, my role model is Michael Connelly, whose work I dissected so acutely that I began blogging about it. I’ve learned too much from Connelly to recite it all here, but one thing that stands out is his style. He eschews flowery verbiage, so his no-nonsense prose amplifies the tension of the story and offers an air of authority. The foundation of his lean style is his excellence in research, which few can replicate because his police sources are so superb.

3.       Read outside your genre. I find reading skills need to be honed, and you can lose perspective if you just read one type of book. After reading a stack of whodunits, I worry that any literary novel I pick up will just seem wordy and self-involved. I know I need to “read outside the box”. That means reading or rereading classics, and also reading contemporary literary fiction to understand what modern readers and reviewers are applauding. As William Faulkner said, “Read everything – trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it.”

4.       Read difficult and long books.  Reading is a primary exercise, and finishing a long book feels a bit like finishing a long run. Again, reading skills need to be honed and reading a Middlemarch here or a War and Peace there improves your concentration span and your appreciation of great books. (A trick to simplify things: If you’re going to read a cinderblock book, choose a classic in a foreign language. Most likely, you’ll find a recent translation so the English will be modern and accessible.) I try to read a Dickens novel each year, aiming to read all 15 before I’m finished. I’m about two-thirds through the list. It’s a slog but a joyful slog.

5.       Finish bad books. Reading bad books is really important, especially within your own genre. I read quite a few that I think are dreadful. I can’t say I ALWAYS finish them, but I try to. What I find instructive is trying to understand why I find the book bad. It’s an essential exercise for a writer because the next step is to ask whether I make the same mistakes? And then, how can I avoid making their mistakes?

And again, we should all try to be masters of our genre, which demands we read authors in our genre that we think are overrated – or just plain terrible. We’ll never know if they’re terrible if we don’t read their books.

6.       Read unpublished books. Ever been asked for a blurb? If you’ve read this far, the odds are good that you have. What the authors should be asking is: “Can you please spend five to ten hours reading this book, then publicly praise it, regardless of what you actually think?” With luck, the author is planning a rewrite and wants your advice on how the book can be improved. Admittedly, that’s a rarity.  The experience of reading friends’ books ranges from excruciating to exhilarating and everything in-between. But we should do it.

First, some of the books are really good and it’s flattering to see them before publication. Then there’s the educational aspect outlined in Item No. 5 above.  We grow as authors when we can witness the development of other authors’ work and understand the changes they make with each version. Rewriting and cutting are essential to good writing and it helps to witness other people doing it.

Beyond that, helping other writers is just the proper thing to do. We should all aim to be mensches, because it enriches our lives. I grow weary sometimes seeing Stephen King’s blurbs on so many novels, but he must be one hell of a nice guy to take the time to help so many writers.

7.       Review what you read. Along the same lines as Point No. 6, take the time to review books, especially those by unknown authors. We’re all hoping our work will be noticed, and it’s so hard to make people understand the importance of reviews on Amazon and Goodreads. I’m like a broken record asking people to review or rate my novels. Writers shouldn’t have to be asked. Once again, be a mensch.

If there’s an eighth tip, I guess it would simply be to read. There are writers, some of them dishearteningly successful, who have nothing more than a passing interest in reading. Don’t be one of them. Embrace and embody every clichéd meme on the Internet about books being the spice of life. These memes are true as surely as they’re corny.

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Peter Moreira is the author of The Haight Mystery Series — retro mystery novels set in San Francisco in the late 1960s. Click the link below to sign up for a free prequel novella.