I feel like I've been quitting books a lot lately. Reading about improving my writing has made me a more critical reader so when the word 'somehow' is used twice in the space of a page to start a sentence I put that book aside. 'Somehow' is a weak word and using that kind of 'intuition' doesn't really fly in the book world. Readers should know *why* this character is so sure the new charming guy is actually evil and being told that 'somehow I knew I would marry this guy' just destroys your tension dead. You end up together? Okay, well now I know I'll go read a story I don't already know the end to.
Then there's the books without any plot to speak of and lacking sufficient lyricism to make it worth reading for the sake of the words. And the books where you tell me what the characters look like in a block of text before I even know whether I'm supposed to care for this person or if he's just going to be on stage to serve the major character his dinner. (I'm thinking of Dickens; I am half way through rereading David Copperfield and I have stopped because for every page of actual plot there are ten pages of character descriptions. They're good but not *that* good. I keep waiting for the plot I know is coming to hurry up and get here, not to mention the random subplots I don't care about, e.g., Micawber.)
I'm also less tolerant of books that don't grab me because I'm aware I only have a finite amount of time. Some authors recommend you read everything, even the bad stuff, so you know what to do and what not to do. Me personally, I know bad writing when I see it, in my own stuff and in other people's, so I'm not a big fan of going out of my way to read books I don't like. That doesn't mean I won't 'read outside my genre', but I won't slave my way through a three-hundred plus page book when the first fifty pages haven't done anything for me.
What's your attitude to reading as a writer? Do you read with a notebook beside you with an eye to figuring out how the writer does what they do well? Do you read widely or focus on your own genre to see what has already been done? Do you read books you don't enjoy to figure out why you didn't enjoy it or because they do one thing well in spite of the rest being subpar?
I should read with a notebook, but I never do! I mostly read YA, which is the genre I write, but I read it as a form of escape. Highlighting or making notes makes it feel like homework! I do keep an eye on what works and what doesn't (10 pages of character description definitely doesn't work, though I have a soft spot for DIckens!).
ReplyDelete