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    Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them
    Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them
    Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them
    Ebook305 pages5 hours

    Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them

    By Francine Prose

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    About this ebook

    A distinguished novelist and critic inspires readers and writers with this inside look at how the professionals read—and write

    Long before there were creative writing workshops and degrees, how did aspiring writers learn to write? By reading the work of their predecessors and contemporaries, says Francine Prose.

    As she takes us on a guided tour of the tools and the tricks of the masters—Dostoyevsky, Flaubert, Kafka, Austen, Dickens, Woolf, Chekhov—Prose discovers why these writers endure. She takes pleasure in the signature elements of such outsatanding writers as Philip Roth, Isaac Babel, John Le Carré, James Joyce, and Katherine Mansfield. Throughout, she cautions readers to slow down and pay attention to words, the raw material out of which literature is crafted. Written with passion, humor, and wisdom, Reading Like a Writer will inspire readers to return to literature with a fresh eye and an eager heart.

    Editor's Note

    A great teacher…

    Covering gesture, characterization, narration, and dialogue, Prose shows you how to get the most out of your reading — and how to apply those lessons to that manuscript shoved in the back of your desk drawer.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateMar 17, 2009
    ISBN9780061751899
    Author

    Francine Prose

    Francine Prose is the author of twenty-two works of fiction including the highly acclaimed The Vixen; Mister Monkey; the New York Times bestseller Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932; A Changed Man, which won the Dayton Literary Peace Prize; and Blue Angel, which was a finalist for the National Book Award. Her works of nonfiction include the highly praised Anne Frank: The Book, The Life, The Afterlife, and the New York Times bestseller Reading Like a Writer, which has become a classic. The recipient of numerous grants and honors, including a Guggenheim and a Fulbright, a Director’s Fellow at the Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library, Prose is a former president of PEN American Center, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is a Distinguished Writer in Residence at Bard College.

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    Reviews for Reading Like a Writer

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    • 4/5
      Great excerpts. This left me wanting to read more, and with a list of books to move to the top of the pile.

      Mission accomplished, I'd say.
    • 5/5
      This was an amazing guide to reading more critically, expansively, delicately, and memorably. I was very impressed by this book. There were countless examples of what Prose denoted and her explanations were extremely insightful and well-thought out. She is obviously quite talented at writing and I almost felt that the entire book served as a course in literature. This one is not to be missed for aspiring writers, or people who wish to read literature more clearly and with more cognizance.5 stars- full marks!
    • 5/5
      I really enjoyed this. Would be a good tool to expand discussion in book group.
    • 4/5
      Francine Prose's book is a great guidebook for the literary tourist, a thorough and engaging reminder to actually look at the ways in which what you're reading has been constructed - to look at each word, sentence, and paragraph so as to understand what is and isn't said, what it tells you, and why. Along the way, she introduces you to countless authors you have and haven't heard of, giving you just enough of a taste that you want to read them all. (Well. I don't want to read Pynchon or Flaubert or Nabokov again, but I can see where you'd feel like you might.)She addresses, sort of obliquely, the question of whether writing workshops and classes are "worth it" and whether there are rules of construction that can be taught or imparted or imbibed, and comes to the conclusion that the rules are really more like guidelines, and that there as many good reasons to break the rules as to follow them.The examples in the text form the basis of a great reading list, and following the book is a list - containing some books from which Prose has taken examples, and others that she has not - which is also excellent. She has a definite taste for the old masters, and for Russian lit, but more importantly she has excellent taste in literature, and an excellent eye for how writers do what they do. I disagreed with some of her analyses, but I really enjoyed the book, and highly recommend it to readers and writers alike.
    • 4/5
      Reading Like a Writer is a quite enjoyable read, chock full of good advice and even better examples. I appreciated Prose's distaste for universal rules and principles, and her "show don't tell" method of demonstrating what makes for good writing. All in all, this book just made me feel excited to read more, and made me feel equipped to appreciate what I read more deeply. So I guess it achieved its aim fairly well.I did wish, however, that Prose also included some examples of writing gone wrong, alongside her countless examples of writing done well. Admittedly, she is explicit about wanting to avoid this (saying that aspiring writers get enough negative criticism as it is in workshops), but it seemed to me that she could've made some of her points more effectively (or that I would've understood them better, at least) with the aid of some contrastive evidence.Still, this book is a stirring testament to what good writing can be and accomplish. (Plus, it's a goldmine of recommended reading.) Though probably not a book that every passionate reader need own, it is at least a book that every passionate should borrow and eventually read.
    • 5/5
      Love it. It's one of the important texts for creative writers.
    • 4/5
      Prose's only real advice (wisely) is to read slowly. Only then can we properly understand good literature. She seeds our efforts with a great many of superb writing.
    • 5/5
      Reading Like a Writer is a description of writing. It focuses on the use of the word in literature, and makes excellent use of examples for well-known books to illustrate her points. Francine Prose describes the strengths of her selected passages and why the wording is important. The book is aimed at improving the readers ability to appreciate good literature. She discusses the nuances of word use, picking at the meaning of individual words, and what is not said and why that is important. She talks about the use of paragraphs, and how changing the paragraphing changes meaning of text. She shows how to derive meaning from what isn't stated in the text, and makes me appreciate the effort that a quality writer goes to to get the words right. After reading this work, I feel I have a new respect for literature. I'm eager to try to tackle some of the books she's recommended.
    • 5/5
      I picked up this book because the book's title describes one of my life's goals: to write a book someday (hopefully). I still don't think I'm ready to reach that goal, but this book helped me to start reading books in a different light.Sometimes I think I am the world's worst reader of literature. I tend to read everything literally rather than think of any themes, metaphors or analogies. I enjoy reading for plot, characters, dialogue but skip over the construction of the writing, what the author is trying to say by how they construct their prose. Francine Prose's book tries to teach someone like me, to read between the lines, and to analyze what makes great writing, great.Prose argues that one does not need classes or "how-to" books to learn how to write. She advocates that the best lesson for writing is close reading the work of great writers. Reading like a Writer basically excerpts famous works, and then Prose discusses how each passage shows great technique to construct sentences, character, tone, narration, dialogue, gestures, etc. Prose even includes a chapter on Checkov to show how he "breaks" all the previous rules.As a result of my background, I sometimes found it tough to do the close reading. I am a fast reader and tend to race through books to "find out what happens next". But for once, I really took my time to go through the passages and I do think it's influenced how I read. I'll admit, I still don't understand some of the points Prose tries to make (especially the paragraph section), but I feel I'm closer to understanding than I was before. Maybe I'm just thanking my lucky stars that someone actually tried to explain close reading; all my English lit classes all the way into University never did (and I did well in them!)Reading like a Writer was a NYTimes Bestseller, and it's easy to see why. Prose has a love of books and the written language, and her writing is very accessible. The passages she chose were from a very diverse group of writers and she even includes a list of "Books to be Read Immediately" that I will try to make a must-read for me in the next few years. Definitely Recommended.
    • 5/5
      I found this book in the Literary Criticism section of the bookstore. Yes, it belongs there: this is a book on how to read books. But this book also belongs in the writing section because this is a book on how to read books in order to improve your own writing. Francine Prose organizes this book as one might organize a how-to-write book, starting with a close look at word choice, then widening her focus in each succeeding chapter: sentences, paragraphs, narration, and so on. In each chapter, she draws on classic works of fiction to illustrate her point: examining the choice of individual adverbs with Katherine Mansfield's short stories, admiring a paragraph-long sentence by Virginia Woolf, noting how Chekhov's short stories always seemed to echo a point in a writing class she was teaching. Prose's love of good writing shines through this book and most readers will find it contagious, enjoying new insights into classical works even if they never feel like writing themselves.
    • 4/5
      It's certainly very beautifully written, and Prose has a lot of good advice and examples. Sometimes she gets tiresome, especially when she starts quoting extremely long passages or goes on and on about Chekhov. But other than that, she's pretty cool. And her advice IS good.
    • 3/5
      Don't read this book the way I did -- cover to cover out of general interest. The structure of the chapters are all the same: topic is presented, briefly discussed, then many good examples by famous authors are presented, often through long quotations. As a reader, this was tedious.

      Instead, I think this book could be useful to a novice writer as a reference when they are struggling with a particular concept. In such situation, they can read the corresponding chapter to get some pointers and be exposed to a variety of strong examples. For a writer, this might be helpful.

      The author sets up her exposition as if she is going to share some very important guidelines for writers. Aside from the fact that she acknowledges (in the final chapters) that anytime she gives a Do or Don't to her students she finds an effective example to prove her wrong, she doesn't give guidelines. She gives examples. Take out the quotations from this book and you have an extended newspaper feature article. Boiled right down, her thesis is "read good writing" and proceeds to give you examples of what you should be reading. At least, she does organize the samples to say "this is a good example of ____." I wish she would have closed her examples better; they're almost all intro heavy and exit light (or non-existant). Articulating what specifically was so good about the passage was not a strength. Though perhaps that is her point -- you can't nail down what makes writing good. Yet she has a whole book trying to tell you what good writing is.

      In summary, this is a decent reference book for consultations as needed, but not a read-through kind of book.
    • 3/5
      This is a hard book to review and rate because I have such conflicting thoughts about the content. On one hand, it did make me really think about structure, dialogue, and gestures of my novel. On the other hand, I feel like I learned nothing concrete--just that I should carefully think about those things, which is kind of frustrating.Overall I'd give it a 3.5. Worth the read definitely, if not for the prod into deeper thinking about the smallest things in your novel.
    • 5/5
      This book caught my eye recently mostly because the cover of the book states that it is like a long love letter to reading. This statement really intrigued me and I have to admit that I wanted to start reading this book immediately. I am so glad that I bought this book and began to read it because I really learned a lot of writing, and reading from its pages. Francine Prose discusses a lot of important points in her books about how to be a great writer by being a great reader at the same time. She stresses how to focus on every word, sentence and paragraph because each word or phrase is deliberately chosen by the author to convey their message. Another wonderful point she mentions is that there are no rules in literature and by reading literature we can define how some writers are able to successfully bend these “unspoken” rules. She emphasizes her argumentative points by choosing examples of literature, short stories and poetry to convey to her audience the importance of reading every word. These short blurbs of literature and short stories really made my wishlist of books to read grow by leaps and bounds. She also stresses how literature can been seen as an endless source of courage and confirmation to writers and readers and it an idea I have always found in my own life. Her humor and wit shine throughout the book and she inspired me to focus on every word I read and slow my pace when I am reading a book. I even want to go back to the books that I have loved so long and read every word again and focus on all the things that I learned from this book. This book is a wonderful and inspiring companion for any writer or reader and I plan returning to it often when I find myself rushing through a good book.
    • 3/5
      An author of fiction, and more illuminatingly, a teacher of writing and fiction, explains her approach to reading literature as a study of how to construct sentences, paragraphs and character. Pleasant to read, persuasive, but mostly like a seminar paper in english literature. She is interested mainly in relationships and character, does not address conveying plot or action. There are long passages from other writers in the book, and some personal remembrances, and it feels like it was summarized from lectures. I don’t know if I would want to be the kind of writer she admires, I would rather tell a straightforward story than allow for the dense critical analysis of my word choice and characterization.
    • 5/5
      I love reading, but I am not a creative writer. How to Read Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them, by Francine Prose, intrigued me when I saw it on the shelf in my local library, so I took it home and read it. After I finished, I promptly bought my own copy. This was a book I knew I would treasure and consult often, not to read it from cover to cover again, but to mine it repeatedly for what it reveals about how fine literature is crafted. If you love any art form, it always helps to understand more about the craft behind it. That’s what this book did for me. Francine Prose must be a remarkable teacher. I’d love to experience her classes in person. Reading this book felt like I was sitting through a top-notch course on creative writing. I’ve always wanted to know more about the process of creative writing, but I was always too intimidated to try a creative writing course. Now, if I’d ever seen a course entitled “How to Read like a Writer,” I’d have knocked down the door to try to get in. But I didn’t have to, and you don’t have to either. Prose has transformed all her best lessons on teaching literature by example into this thoroughly enjoyable and accessible guide. She has packed it with probably close to two hundred examples taken from what must be a rich lifetime worth of reading literature closely. The author deftly explicates each example so the hidden craft is exposed. Thank you Francine Prose! This was exactly what I wanted. I recommend it highly to other avid readers of literary classics and modern literary fiction—lovers of the art of using language well; this book will most assuredly improve your overall reading experience.
    • 4/5
      This is a wonderful book. Ms. Prose, an aptly named writer, writing/lit instructor and critic, shares some of her favorite passages from novels and stories to highlight techniques for using words, narrative, character, gesture etc. And she's not shy about her worship of Chekhov (guess I should read him). Very enjoyable to read, it provides great information without being the least bit pedantic or boring. She even provides a list of "Books to Be Read Immediately," from which many of the passages are taken. This is a woman who is truly in love with fiction. I'll be referring back to this often.
    • 3/5
      This book is an oxymoron, a paradox for me - I like it and I hate it; what I like about it I hate and what I hate about it I like. My favourite chapters are the first chapter and the last two chapters. I enjoyed "Learning from Chekhov" the most.
    • 3/5
      more a memoir than a book on writingworth reading only after you "shared" the same readings that the author lists within a) an appendix b) the book itselfotherwise, it is just rambling and asking you to take for granted what the author decided to be relevant: a faith-based reading :)
    • 5/5
      This is a book where as soon as I got to the end I wanted to go straight back to the beginning again. It's no use borrowing it from the library and giving it back (says she who's done just that); this is a book that you need to own, to read and re-read over and over and over again, and to cover with pencil notes in the margin and copious underlining.This book is so good IT NEEDS CAPITAL SHOUTY LETTERS. It's a phenomenal read, whether you're a wannabe writer or simply an avid reader who's interested in learning more about what makes a great book great. Examining all aspects of writing from words to narration to dialogue and gestures, Prose ultimately concludes that there are no fixed rules to great writing, but very different, well-executed strategies and observances which we can learn best through quality reading.For example, we learn how Heinrich von Kleist used little or no physical descriptions of his characters in his writing, yet they leap vividly in our imagination. He defines his characters by their actions, whereas Jane Austen by contrast defines hers through their thinking. Two very different writing strategies, both extremely effective.I warn you that this book, should you choose to read it, will do your wish list no good at all. Many, many pieces of narrative from a wide variety of amazing authors are used to exemplify the various writing points being made, and they were all amazing. I was disappointed that I didn't get to read on to the next part of the story with all of them, and it was a fantastic introduction to many authors I hadn't heard of before, as well as other greats which I just haven't got to yet.If you write fiction, this book needs to be within grabbing distance for your next bout of writer's block.5 stars - meticulously researched and well explained, you'll read in a whole new way after reading this book.
    • 4/5
      Rush, rush, rush. When it comes to reading and the enjoyment of literature, the maxim we're taught is to read more and to read faster. Rejecting that rushed approach, Francine Prose in Reading Like a Writer argues that it's better to slow down and pay attention. To linger and savor, not just mindlessly consume.I read a lot and I'll be the first to admit that sometimes the only way to read the massive amount of new literary work being published every month, the classics on my bucket list, and the literary darlings from previous years is to read fast. But I try to make amends. If I've read too quickly, I'll often re-read. Favorites get read a few times. There are even some books I'll re-read every year religiously (why buy books if not to re-read them and enjoy them again and again?). Usually I'll find that I gain some new insight with each re-reading. Or that life experience and age filters it differently; something that moved me in a certain way at twenty-two moves me in another way in my mid-thirties. But I try not to skim because even judicious skimming ultimately makes the reading experience a hollow one. Like stuffing your face at the buffet bar and not really tasting anything.Prose warns against skimming and rightfully so. “Skimming will not allow you to extract one fraction of what a writer’s words can teach us about how to use the language.” Very true. (Um, so why did our professors in college assign massive, difficult tomes to be read in a week's time? Skimming was, ironically, a survival skill we learned as English undergrads.) As fiction readers, our interface with the books we read is mainly through the plot (what happens) and through the characters (who's involved), but we often miss the more subtle cues of storytelling by glossing over the words, sentences, and paragraphs. Bottom-line, you miss a lot by reading quickly or not reading mindfully. Because even if you're just in it for the story, Prose's point is that the story—all the psychological truths and crucial revelations—also exists in the microcosms: the words used, the sentence structure, or the gestures of the characters as they speak. The story is in the details.We forget that writers often labor painstakingly over a sentence or paragraph for days. Books are the result of multiple drafts. Good writing is never accidental; it's earnestly deliberate. There are effects and subtexts the writer wants to convey—even if we're not consciously aware of them—through the way something is written. In other words, it's not just what is said or written but *how*. Prose advocates for this kind of scrutiny and close reading. Books deserve more than our fleeting attention. She wants us to look at writing in the way we might walk up to a painting to peer at each brushstroke.The idea of close reading might turn a lot of people off but to Prose's credit she makes the process a delightful one. (I wish I had read this as an undergrad!) Taking passages from various works, Prose breaks down what each writer does and achieves, closely examining the language used and how it expresses mood, character, and themes. You'll never look at these works the same way again.Overall, Reading Like a Writer is must-read for any serious reader (and writer).
    • 3/5
      Prose shows us all her favorite passages from a lifetime of good reading. It was a lovely trip and it took me places I would not have thought to go. I especially liked Prose's thoughts on writing, how good writing often breaks the conventional rules of good writing.
    • 3/5
      Prose’s love of classical literature is clear throughout the pages of this well-written and informative guide; as the front cover blurb from USA Today put it, this book is a “love letter to the pleasures of reading.”However, it’s also elitist and takes several superior swipes at genre fiction. In her exhortations to readers who want to be writers, Prose does make a compelling case for learning to write by reading classical literature … and reading it slowly, word by word. Her list of “books to be read immediately” combined with the excerpts she included as her examples has added a considerable number of “must-reads” to my already teetering “to –read” pile.While reading Prose’s well-written guide to writers, I was struck with a sense of someone yearning for a bygone era – an era in which life was slower and more easy-paced, and readers had the leisure time to sit and read 1000- page tomes slowly. For that reason, I found much of the admittedly good advice contained in this book could not apply to me as either a reader or a writer.
    • 4/5
      GoodFrancine Prose is an author who starts this book questioning if “creative writing can be taught” and concluding, as a teacher of creative writing, that it cannot. How to improve your writing can be taught but the love of story and the creative inspiration cannot. However the book does attempt to address the second part of writing, improving the craft. The chapters are “words”, “Sentences”, “Paragraphs”, “Narrative”, “Dialogue”, “learning from Chekov” and “Detail” which give you some idea of her approach. Throughout she is a passionate advocate of reading and liberally intersperses her points with quotes (sometimes very long quotes that last several pages) from her favourite writings. Overall – Recommended for anyone interested in the craft of writing
    • 5/5
      "Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them" really was eye-opening for me. I've been a reader practically all my life. The family story goes that I taught myself, but that was too long ago for me to remember how that happened or if it's true. But, like most of us, our education emphasized first *how* to read and memorizing new vocabulary words, then later unfortunately teachers dutifully discussing "classics" without much enthusiasm. In college, I was a science major so I missed out on classes that discussed great literature or classes on writing. One of my biggest regrets in life, really. Especially when I remember that as a kid I wanted to be "an author" when I grew up. Author Francine Prose has helped make up for this void that I, and others, have experienced. She emphasizes being a careful, and slower, reader so as to fully appreciate nuanced meanings. Of course, not all books (i.e. Harlequin romances) require, or need, such close reading, and some books are intended to be true page-turners -- but Prose feels that reading with care makes for a better reader. I myself am guilty of being a fast reader, and I am sure that this trait has made it difficult for me to appreciate several good books over the years that I've tried to approach them. Prose includes several excerpts and an intensive reading list (in the back of the book), and discusses different components of story, in chapters such as "Words", "Character", "Dialogue", "Details". These chapters are for readers and writers, both; they do not make one or the other audience feel left out. She also includes a chapter on Chekhov -- obviously, she is a great fan of him and other Russian writers such as Tolstoy and Nabokov. She even decries graduate students who have never read Dostoyevsky. Her thinking is that if one wants to be a good writer, one must read truly good writers as well, and understand what it is that makes them great. This advice seems to be obvious, actually; but I do agree that not all writers are good or wide-ranging readers. Prose concludes "If we wanted to grow roses, we would want to visit rose gardens and try to see them the way that a rose gardener would" (p. 268). That final sentence summarizes very well her purpose of this book. My edition has a very good section at the end that includes a conversation (Q and A) with Francine Prose. I enjoyed that a great deal, also.There is no index, which is disappointing -- if one wants to recall a certain work or author discussed, it can't be looked up. One has to thumb through the book instead.
    • 3/5
      Really smart about reading and writing. Also lots of GREAT recommendations on books to read. Multiples times I'd read a lengthy excerpt that she quoted for illustration and would have to add that to my reading list, so impressed was I by just that short bit.
    • 5/5
      I want to be a writer, but I'm still really not much good at writing. This book is perfect for me. Prose (what a delicious name!) takes you on a journey through the components of what makes a good book so good, from the right choice of words, to the structure of the sentence, all the way through to narrative and dialogue. It is a genius piece of writing in itself, as well as quoting from a feast of classics (both modern and classical). I will keep it close by next time I try to write something.
    • 4/5
      Informative and relevant to serious writers.
    • 4/5
      Normally I don't much care for "how to write better" books. I don't find them to be very useful; I think if you want to learn how to write better fiction you're better off reading a lot of very well-written novels. However I found Prose's book quite useful, because in addition to her giving advice on such things as dialogue, characters, etc., she includes many excerpts from very good novels and explains what the writer did right. Most of the books she quoted from I haven't read myself, and I found myself wanting to. Although Reading Like a Writer took me awhile to get through, I think it was worthwhile. It's one of the few "how to write better" books I can recommend wholeheartedly to amateur fiction writers.
    • 3/5
      Prose is very good at connecting the big dots. That is, she does a good job at finding great examples of technique, character development, etc. That's where I really found some value in this book, it added some new titles to my "to be read" list that I'm very excited about. If you've ever taken Creative Writing 101 or Journalsim Reporting 101, Prose's concepts will be more of a review (but with GREAT examples) and not much else. But if you like good writing for writing's sake, then this book will whet your appetite for some of the more classic books you may not have read.

    Book preview

    Reading Like a Writer - Francine Prose

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