Day 03 Writing Workout

Welcome to Day 3 of the 30-day writing workout with Ace Baker!

Usually, people read for pleasure, and that’s an amazing way to enter a new world for a while and escape the pressures and anxieties of daily life…

BUT

If you are a writer, it’s important to learn how reading as a writer is different.

Most often, I read for pleasure. I want a talented writer to sweep me away to another place with a group of characters I’m meeting in a world that writer created. But when I find a piece of writing I LOVE, I sometimes go back and read it again… as a writer.

So what’s the difference?

ENJOYING vs. NOTICING

Readers experience the story, enjoying the characters, the plot, the tale being told.

Writers dissect a story in more detail. They may delve into word choice, structure, fluency, and style. HOW did the writer make me like this so much?

WHOLE vs. PARTS

A reader can move through a novel or short story quickly, one page leading to the next, to the next, in a linear fashion–beginning, middle, end.

A writer breaks the story into pieces–dialogue, setting, pacing, description–to see HOW the words do their work.

WHAT vs. HOW

The reader enjoys WHAT is in the story.

The writer enjoys HOW it is made.

What it all boils down to is that a reader is consuming and a writer is dissecting. That’s a key difference. It’s how writers learn to become better writers. Learning the framework, the scaffolding holding the story together, the techniques that make it sing–that’s an important skill for any creative writer.

Your exercise today: Go grab a novel or short story book (How to Make a Killing Jar, perhaps?) that you love. Look at the opening chapter or the opening to the story. What you’re searching for are all the ways the writer makes you curious to read on. How are you pulled to the next page and the next and the one after that?

Extra challenge: Use some of the techniques you discover to create the opening of your own story, one very different from the one you just read.

Take some time and have fun with this one, and I hope to see you back tomorrow, for workout number four, which deals with AUTHOR ANALYSIS!