I started writing when I was young and I would obsess over the question: What advice do you give young writers. I would hunt down interviews, scour YouTube, and search blog posts to find how all types of authors would answer.
Want to know what I found?
A lot (and I mean a lot) say the exact same thing. It’s two basic steps.
- Read a lot
- Write a lot
And…
This is absolutely true. 100 percent the most sound advice. But, it felt too simple for me. I’d read a lot. I’d written a lot (kind-of). And yet, I knew my writing wasn’t at the same level as a published author.
So what was I doing wrong exactly? One could argue that it just takes time, that like any skill, it’s practice and practice and more practice. But I think a lot of us have been reading our whole lives and when switching to a mentality of creating our own stories, we get stuck. We treat reading and writing as a hobby instead of treating it like a skill/career/profession. This is why we don’t prioritize it.
I suggest there is a third step that can take your work to the next level. We need to do more than read and write.
We need to study the work of others and then analyze our own writing.
Over time you can teach yourself character and world building techniques. You can improve your grammar and language. But, what’s really hard to teach for new writers is how to structure a book. And of course it’s hard.
- It takes months to years to create
- Not all ideas are fully formed
- We get busy
- There are so many elements to a good story (voice, character, plot, world-building, etc.)
- Then after it’s done we are so close to the project we can’t identify what’s wrong
Even as I got better at the nuance of details like description and point of view, my book sagged in the middle. The idea had a structural error. The plot was wondering, the tension stagnant. Soon, after much writing, I looked back at how much I had improved and realized where my true weaknesses lay.
I suffered at transitions and pacing. This moment of realization was a big step for me. It finally made sense. To become better writers we must constantly self-reflect what is working and what is not. That is what I was missing when I first started out.
When I began to study the books I read, I could pay attention to not only how things were set up on a character and plot level, but on a scene-to-scene level. Slow down and analyze what feels wrong in your work and then go look at how others do it.
- How does this author use breaks to create tension and increase interest?
- How does this author summarize to move the story along?
- How does this author tie in the plots and subplots so they flow together?
These are the kinds of questions that most readers aren’t searching for and stopping to think about when reading for pleasure. Yet, they are the most important for structuring a book. We read and we get ideas like – I want to have a strong character like this. I want even scarier aliens. I want to utilize this romance trope. And we get so excited about learning from reading and creating ideas that we don’t stop and analyze the structure of the plot or the small techniques of tension and how these books work (or don’t work).
Unfortunately, this post isn’t offering a magic potion. Really, what I’m suggesting is more work and practice. But for beginning writers, this change in mentality to reading, writing and editing can save you time in the long run. So, next time you open a book, take a few seconds and study its structure.
Parting Note
Studying your book and analyzing your own writing is in no way easy. For some self-editors, it is an innate process. For others, we need help. This is where listening to beta readers, critique partners, and editors can be the stepping-stone for a good writer to become a great writer.
Happy writing!