Reading like a writer is not the same as reading like a normal person. Normal people read for pleasure. Writers read with the same hungry, slightly unhinged gleam that a raccoon has when it spots a picnic basket full of secrets.
“Theft is the sincerest form of storytelling—just ask the bards, the playwrights, and whoever rewrote my autobiography as a romance.”
— Quindle Spatchcock, disgraced court poet and part-time librarian of the Unwritten Archives
If you love a book, don’t just close it and whisper “That was nice” like you’re on a polite date with literature. No—interrogate it. Ask why it worked. Was it the voice? The pacing? The subtle emotional arc? The footnotes about hedgehogs? Then jot it down, underline things, and possibly sketch a map of the author’s subconscious if you’re feeling ambitious.
If you hate a chapter, don’t just hurl the book into the fireplace (unless you’re in a Gothic mansion, in which case it’s tradition). Read it again with a metaphorical scalpel. Or a literal one, if you don’t mind people talking. Where did it go wrong? Did the pacing trip over its own shoelaces? Did a romantic subplot wander in like a confused tourist and derail everything?
Every story is a free workshop run by an author who has no idea you’re watching. You’re a magpie with a library card and no moral compass, here to steal shiny techniques: a clever transition here, a poignant metaphor there, maybe even an elegant chapter ending that you can later disguise in your own story with a fake mustache and a different font.
Read bad books too. You’ll learn just as much. Possibly more. Especially if they include things like “he let out a breath he didn’t know he was holding” or the word “orbs” used unironically to describe eyeballs.
And remember: if a book makes you feel something—wonder, joy, fury, the urgent need to throw it into the sea—it’s trying to teach you something. Pay attention.
And steal it.
Politely, of course.