Francine Prose (2006) Reading Like a Writer. A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those That Want To Write Them.

It’s over 20 years since Francine Prose published her guide for Reading Like a Writer, which I try to. It’s for people that love books, which is me too, and for those that want to write them. Yes, exactly.

Prose is an antonym. Re-reading Reading Like a Writer reminds me of so much that I’ve already forgotten, but I’ve already forgotten it, again. Reading is mostly what I do. But Prose as a bibliophile is at genius check-mate level.  Slow down she tells the reader. Two pages in her writing workshop can take two hours. I get it. But I’d rather not.

‘Read so slowly that every word is "put on trial for its life".’

When reading becomes work, I’m in the wrong vocation.

Know the rules and break them. Many of us book readers have been  in the same situation as Prose, reading before her work, a two-hour bus write to teach a class about books most of them haven’t heard of. Her treat was Anton Chekov.

He’s the genius she’d want to be. She devotes a chapter to him.  Many of us have read Chekov’s The Lady With the Dog (1899). I’ve also read The Cherry Orchard and watched a screening of it. I felt bored. Glad I’d got them over and done with. I could name check them. That’s not close reading. But for a reader to lie to himself or a writer to manufacture feelings that don’t exist then we’re in real trouble.

In the same way, I’ve read many of the books on her reading list, which means I haven’t really read them.

I’m OK with that. More attuned to the more forgiving Anne Lamott Bird by Bird, story-by-story style or reading and writing by symbiosis. Stephen King asks us to turn up every day and write for two to three hours a day. James Gardner asks for total immersion, twelve hours or more, but I’m not sure if that includes reading time. Prose asks us to mimic and learn from the greats.

The commonality with the great and the good is if you don’t read, you can’t write.

Prose is bemused to be teaching Masters to writers that don’t read much.  I just wish I knew what oxymoron meant.  Read on.  

Notes.

1. Word Choice: Read—‘carnivorous’ and slowly.

Prose suggests writers should step away from the macro-level of plot. Words should be the foundation and ‘raw material’ of literature. A simple word choice can change the temperature, rhythm, and reality of any scene.

2. Sentence Architecture: Master Rhythm

Rather than keening over plot, Prose suggests that a writer’s primary concern should be constructing compelling, musically rhythmic sentences.

3. Paragraphing: Treat Paragraphs as Pacing Valves

While grammar books treat paragraphs as topic-groupings, a taxonomy, Prose views the paragraph as a personal statement—the structural breath of a text.

4. Narration and Point of View: Finding the Natural Perspective?

Prose warns against choosing a Point of View (POV) based on conventions. The narrator determines what can be known, felt, and hidden from the reader. Avoid bobbing heads.

5. Characterisation: Action and Paradox versus Physical Descriptions

Many novice writers think characterisation means describing eye colour, clothing, and endless backstories. Prose argues that a list of physical details often feel static and lazy, forgettable characters.

6. Dialogue: Subtext versus Surface Reality

Prose disputes the idea that fictional dialogue should sound like a verbatim transcript of real-life speech. It’s an approximation. Real speech is full of banal pleasantries. Fictional dialogue must operate on multiple levels at once. Gardner’s idea of psychic distance. Subtext works on surface reality but hides its face.  

7. Details and Gesture: Use the Micro to Unlock the Macro

Detail is the current of sensory belief. However, Prose warns that piling on descriptions fill space and suffocates a scene. Overwriting with no purpose. Drowning your writing.

8. Learning from Chekhov: Breaking writing ‘Rules’ Without Judgment

But unless you’re a genius, know the rules.