Ways of Reading

Reading is a strange business. It's not really about waiting for the writer to 'tell' you what the story has to say; it's only when the author is silent that the work will actually 'speak' to its reader. In other words, you, the reader ,will bring something to a good piece of writing, will work with the characters to construct the story. Imagine, when you read, that someone is saying something to you, and that you will be afforded the opportunity to say something back. Even when you don't fully understand what you are reading, you trust that by the end you will have learned.

There are many ways to 'read' a text. On the one hand, we hopefully learn something new, about the characters and about ourselves. We are given knowledge, new facts, or new ways to look at something old. There are also those things that we bring to the text ourselves, from our own experiences, whether the writer meant them to be there or not. This is what is meant by interpretation. Ten people could read the same text and when they come to discuss it, if it is a good piece of work then there will probably be ten different interpretations of it.

The way we read the books we read should help us when we come to write our own. We should think about what it is that we look for in a book, and what we don't like about some books, and consider these when constructing our own works. We should give to our readers what we expect to find in a story or novel.

Crime Writing

Have you ever read a book of crime and been astonished at the writer's lack of knowledge of police procedure? I have, and I threw the book down in disgust. If you want to be a crime writer, you need to do your research. You might be wonderful prose writer, but if you can't get your facts right, you won't be read.

If it's to be a book about murder, what will be the method of murder you will use in your book? Will it be gun, poison, staged accident, knife ... even if you think you know everything about the method you choose, you will still need to do your research. What about the disposal of the body? How will your protagonist achieve this and what will be the end results. Following on from this will be the methods of detection; forensics is a field that is changing almost daily as new ways of catching criminals out are discovered.

If your work is going as far as the courtroom, there will be criminal law to be researched. What is allowed or not allowed in a courtroom in the country your novel is set in?

Having an expert cast their eye over your work will help but this is not always easy, unless you are lucky enough to know a policeman, or a lawyer. However, you may be able to find a law or forensics student at your local university who would be happy read your manuscript in return for a few dollars.

Breathing Life into your Characters

If you want your reader to care about your characters, you have to make them so alive that they will step off the page. Your readers should continue thinking about those characters long after they have closed the last page of your book. Think about some of the characters you've met in literature. Who are your favourites? Do you feel as if they are alive, or actually lived in some part of the world, even though you never physically met them? Why do or did they seem so alive to you? Character development is one of those elements of writing that you will need to master before you even begin writing your book.

Analysis is a tool every writers should be prepared to use during their apprenticeship. Look at the writings of your favourite authors and try to see what they did to make their characters come to life. What do you know about the characters? Make a list. Don't list what the author 'told' you, but what you deduced on some other level. Look at the clues you, as a reader, were given by the writer - the character's upbringing and traumas they or someone close to them suffered. Everything that happened to them before they stepped into your book will direct their actions.

Humans are moved to do the things they do because they are motivated by some force, either external or internal. You have to give your characters the motivation to act in the ways that they will do in your book. Your characters will have to be well-rounded and do only those things that would fit in with their make-up. Don't 'tell' your readers all about them; plant clues and let the reader fill in the blanks. This will make that character more real to them than if you had placed a photograph on the page. Descriptions are just that - words to describe - but actions, as we all know, speak louder than words.

Make your characterts luminous so that your readers will continue to wonder about their lives, long after the book story is ended.

Creative Nonfiction

For many years I thought that 'creative' and 'nonfiction' were two separate things, that the job of the nonfiction writer was to inform their readers, to teach them, and the creative writer's job was to entertain readers. Not so. Research into how we learn has shown that we learn best when we are entertained as we learn new things. The strongest memories we have come from emotion and if we can arouse emotion in our readers, then our words, what we are aiming to 'teach', will be embedded in their memory.

Keep this in mind as you compose your nonfiction pieces. Make sure you include all the facts, but put some humour in there, if it's warranted, or some nonfactual asides. Be creative in the way you present the facts and write so as to engage your reader. Put something of yourself in there too. Don't keep repeating facts you've already given; credit your reader with the intelligence to understand what you are saying without your having to beat them about the head with the same facts clothed in a different light.

Passion and Writing

Write about what you know. This is good advice for the beginner writer. I would also add that you should write about those things that arouse passion in you. We've all read a piece of work that is flawless but were left unmoved. On the other hand, I've read work that contained errors in grammar and spelling, but which left me feeling as if I'd read a masterpiece. The difference was the passion and sincerity in the one, and the lack of it in the other.

When we write about what we know, we write with authority. We can't fake sincerity and we shouldn't insult our readers by trying to do so. If you don't know your subject well, you can still write about it, but spend some quality time researching the topic. Even if you do know it well, research will confirm this for you and perhaps save you any embarrassement later.