Reading As a Writer – Part Two
Dear Reader,
I recently participated in a seminar with editor Steve Padilla, and while I shouldn’t have been surprised by the session’s ending point, I was.
I wasn’t surprised by the point, specifically. I was surprised that there would be something in that seminar, which was on writing, that would pertain to this newsletter, which is on reading. The writing advice ranged widely: genuinely insightful, helpful reminders of things any writer or editor should know, and not applicable to me. (As the seminar was intended for journalists, this last was expected.)
Well past our ending time, though, Steve responded to one last question. I can’t remember the exact question, just the response. (I think the question was about how do I develop for myself/my team better and more varied writing?) And Steve responded, “Be a discerning reader.”
Okay, that’s a nice little platitude. Well, it would be if he’d left it there. But he didn’t. Instead, he reminded us of a natural reader response, “That was great. I really loved it.” And then Steve narrowed his focus and said, “a good writer will continue, ‘But why?’”
Think about that simple setup: “That was great. I really loved it. But why?”
Steve further clarified that this is, in fact, really hard for readers to do. It’s much harder to do, in his estimation, than reading to critique. Yet for Steve, good writers focus their reading much more on the “But why?” of what they appreciated than they do focusing on the flaws in what they read.
From this understanding, then, good reading as a writer means looking for the strengths of reads that please us, instead of hunting around for their failings.
Steve did expand a bit on what he meant by this sort of read. He noted that skilled reading as a writer involves looking for “the stitching.” That is, if you appreciated a piece of writing, you start looking at how it was metaphorically stitched together. How does it open? How do the paragraphs connect? What’s the overall structure? What words were used?
And just like that we’re investigating the magic of a read that grabbed us. Again, we don’t always have to read like this, looking for the stitching. It is, however, a way of reading like a writer. Steve’s setup is a pretty simple way of doing it, too. No frills, just an awareness:
“That was great. I really loved it. But why?”
If you missed part one of this series, the two Brian Phillips pieces cited in it demonstrate another writer putting Steve Padilla’s “But why?” into practice. Offers a different spin on being a discerning reader, doesn’t it?
Happy reading to you,
Kreigh