What is Active Reading?
Here, I am talking about active reading to advance your understanding of fiction writing techniques. (As opposed to for educational study)
Active reading is to read fiction with an objective to understand and evaluate it. It is about becoming aware of your immersion, but observing what you enjoy or don’t enjoy about the piece of writing. Actively and critically engaging with the content.
We all have feelings while we’re reading — curiosity, frustration, confusion, delight, fascination or boredom. Active Reading is recognising these responses, and questioning why certain combinations of words or structure have certain effects, and how you can achieve these effects (or avoid them) in your own writing.
How it can help
Active reading allows you to discover how and why successful novels work. Once you learn how published authors deal with writing, you can apply the same techniques to your own works. Active reading develops your evaluation skills which is crucial when it comes to self-editing early drafts of your own writing.
Since I started reading actively I have learnt enormous lessons, that no amount of reading blogs or info-graphics would have helped me fully understand. I knew the rules; but working through an actual published piece cemented them clearly in my practice. I was always able to say I didn’t like novel but it wasn’t able to say why. Now I can. I can see where the novel is failing or succeeding, from beginning to finale. I also now know what mistakes I want to ensure I avoid, because I understand the effect that would have on my own reader. I also understand what works and can work hard during editing to ensure my work contains those elements correctly.
What to Look For
It’s about asking questions of what you are reading.
Does this intro keep me reading? Do I want to know more?
Why am I / am I not connecting with this character? Do I care what happens to them? Do I care if the protagonist succeeds?
What made that scene, description or dialogue so – gripping, cute, exciting, dark, awkward, humorous?
Am I confused at any point? Why and when did that happen?
Do I recognise the structure? Am I enjoying this structure? Is it too obvious and just like everything else?
Finally, how can I incorporate that quality into my own writing and avoid the techniques I didn’t enjoy.
Although I would suggest most of your reading stays within the genre you are writing don’t totally limit your reading genres. You can gain knowledge and inspiration from all genres.
I spoke to a thriller/crime reader who gave me a great piece of technique that he really enjoys and occurs often in those genres, for my own fantasy book. I just hadn’t thought of it, and I already had the perfect character for it.
How to do it
Now knowing what you want to look for. Read, enjoy it or not but observe how your emotions are changing and analyse why. It will slow how you read, it needs to, especially if you have become a skim reader over time.
It may almost ruin how you read, sorry.
This has essentially happened to me, I start a book just for pleasure and I’m enjoying it, but in the background my mind now processes the whole time. It sounds something like, ‘oh love these descriptions, bla bla bored of this person, must make sure mine aren’t dull or write them out if not needed, oh hate that enemy, they’re so horrid, love it, need to make my antagonist grittier, oh I hope they do fall in love, kiss her, do it now, no don’t leave her standing there, oh this is good, must include more tension in my relationships.’
Exercise 1:
A take a book you have read before. This will stop you getting too immersed in the story because you already know it.
Read the first line only, analysis it. Does it make you want to read on? What type of sentence is it, a setting description, a character, a statement, a question? Is it what made you read on? Do you have any questions forming?
Now read the first paragraph. Do the same analysis again.
Now read the first chapter. Do the same analysis.
Now you should be able to pin-point all the reasons you kept reading that book in the first place.
Exercise 2:
Take a book you didn’t enjoy or didn’t finish reading.
Do the same exercise as above.
Now you should be able to actually pin-point why it didn’t work for you and therefore avoid those mistakes in your own writing/ go back and edit those mistakes in your writing.
How it works for layout
Essentially you could choose to write the first draft in almost any layout you personally like however, when it comes to submissions, you’ll have to format your project into the layout of their choosing. Then when it comes to publishing, you’ll need to format your work into what is required.
Active reading can also help with layout/format decisions if you have little experience in this. ie a easy reading text, whether you italic ideas or characters internal thoughts, when and where you indent, whether you use double ” or single ‘ for speech.
If you are not sure of the rules, or preferred methods, then do your active reading with format and layout in mind instead.
In Summary – General learnings I’ve gained with active reading
Started reading a book, but stopped because I just didn’t know what the main character wanted, or if she really was the main character, therefore I lost interest because I just didn’t care if she succeeded or not. (Protag and their goal are essential, and early on. Not great if the reader doesn’t know either by end of chapter 4) Before active reading, I would have tried to keep plodding through it without joy. I don’t have time to waste.
Another fairly good book, but the fights scenes were just too long as were the descriptions of mountains…made me skim read a lot of the middle as I just wanted to get back to what the main characters were doing. The actual story. Fantasy writers do have a tendency to over describe, so will ensure I don’t. Also had lots of names that were similar and I kept getting confused. I finished it because I did like the main characters.
A different book, also finished it, generally well written, but each character had lots of nick names, kept losing track of who was who and having to stop to think (pulled me out the book, big no no).
Another book, dropped straight into action, intro to main character, set her goal. Couldn’t put it down and urged her on every step of the way.
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