Why Critical Reading Is Crucial For Aspiring Novelists

You have probably heard that to be a good writer, you must read and read and then read some more, but this isn’t just to ensure you have a healthy love of reading. 

If you want to be a writer, we can assume that you love the written word; it calls to you and you love nothing more than being absorbed in a good book, hence the reason you want to write them. 

But we are not talking about a love of reading, and we are not talking about a love of books.  We are talking about reading as a way to learn to become a better writer.  

What is critical reading?

Critical reading is ‘critical’ in the academic sense, meaning it’s advancing your understanding.  When you read critically, it’s not about being critical of the work and finding its flaws.  Instead, you are reading analytically.  As you read, you consider how sentences are formed, how the plot is structured, how the language builds into the story, how the author shows details about the characters. 

As the author Tony Hillerman said, ‘The best way to learn to write is by reading.  Reading critically, noticing paragraphs that get the job done, how your favourite writers use verbs, all the useful techniques.  A scene catches you?  Go back and study it. Find out how it works.’

Reading for pleasure is different from critical reading, because critical reading is a very deliberate practice that you can learn from and that should inform how you write.  Likewise, understanding something is ‘good’ is not the same as understanding why it is good—and when you are reading critically, that is what you are looking for.  You think to yourself, what is the author doing here?  Why have they chosen that word, that description, that sentence structure?  When you find something that makes you think, that is how I want to write or I wish I could write like that, you need to start by taking it apart—first paragraph by paragraph, then line by line, and then word by word—to see what made it so wonderful.  

How critical reading improves your writing

Critical reading is the foundation of learning and development.  In critiquing the work of others, you are in turn judging your own work.  By taking the time to consider every word and sentence, and by critically evaluating every minor decision the writer has made, you gain insight into the craft and the way the writer has brought the craft together.  You will begin to understand a text in all its moving parts while still appreciating the whole novel, and the more you learn about how texts operate, the better equipped you’ll be as a writer.

By noticing what the author has done and, most importantly, how the author has done it, you can start applying those same skills, techniques and crafts to your own writing. The opposite is also true; you can see what the author has omitted and left out of the text.  The small gaps that the reader has to fill themselves or read between the lines to catch.  Ask yourself, how has the author made that possible?  At what point have they stopped giving information?  How have they alluded to a truth without saying it?

What is the difference between reading critically as a reader and reading critically as a writer?

We are taught at school how to read critically as readers.  We buy ‘The Companions Guide to Wuthering Heights’ or ‘York Notes on Shakespeare’, we check Spark Notes for endless breakdowns to help us understand the context, narrative arc or critical theory, but we are never taught how to do this as a writer.

When you read critically as a reader, say in an English Literature class, you are often applying critical literary theory to a text.  You read with questions such as, how does this text fit in with feminist theory? Or, what does it tell us about society in Victorian Britain?

As a writer, critical reading serves a different purpose. You read critically to understand craft, method and style.  When you read critically to improve your craft, you allow yourself to reflect thoughtfully and objectively on the prose.  Rather than considering how the text fits into feminist theory, you consider how the author’s choices built the characters’ genders.

How to read critically

If we consider the opening lines of two well-known novels, Moby Dick by Herman Melville and Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, we can already see how the authors have made critical decisions about their work.  In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, it starts:

To Mrs Saville, England

St Petersburgh, Dec, 11th, 17—

You will rejoice to hear that no disaster has accompanied the commencement of an enterprise which you have regarded with such evil forebodings.

This opening is obviously a letter, which already sets the reader one step away from the action because they are reading it “second-hand” as it were.  But we can also see that Shelley is building her character, the writer of this letter, by telling us what they think and what they have done.  Shelley moves rapidly from good to bad in this sentence, starting with the word ‘rejoice’ before moving quickly to ‘evil forebodings’.  It is a wonderfully barbed sentence in which everything hinges on the ‘commencement of an enterprise’.  This beginning begs so many questions, hinting that something terrible is coming while maintaining an element of mystery.  The author of the letter is also expressing some self-congratulation in there being ‘no disaster’ despite misgivings by Mrs Saville.  This gives us an immediate impression of the character’s personality.

Then if we consider Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, it opens with:

Call me Ishmael.

This takes a very different approach to the beginning of Shelley’s Frankenstein.  Obviously, we know the narrators name but more than that, we are pulled straight into his world. Because the first line addresses the reader directly, we are invited into a personal relationship with Ishmael that is intimate and encourages familiarity. There are no speech marks, and although modern literature sometimes represents dialogue without speech marks, in this case the lack of speech marks communicates that Ishmael isn’t speaking aloud. Rather, we are granted access to his innermost thoughts. The novel is a conversation between Ishmael and the reader, and there is a warmth to this that you don’t get from the opening of Shelley’s Frankenstein.

Both novels open and engage the readers in completely different ways, and now that we have given consideration to why and how they do this, we can begin to make important decisions about our own writing.  Do you want the reader to feel like part of the conversation, or for there to be a sense of mystery?  Do you want the reader to feel a warmth or a chill?  Do you want the sentences to be barbed or soothing?  These are all questions that both authors have answered in the opening of their novels and critical reading has allowed us to explore how they have done so.

At Marginalia Manuscripts, we’re huge advocates for regularly practicing critical reading. We publish critical reading tips, as well as lots of other writing advice, to our blog several times a month. If you’d like to be notified of our latest posts, subscribe to our newsletter below.