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10 Steps to Better Fiction Writing Through Reading
If you write, you read. But do you read right? Is your reading helping you write the right way?
Understanding how other successful fiction authors have cleared the hurdles we writers face every day is invaluable. It’s one thing to know that you shouldn’t dump the backstory all at once, it’s another to understand how to weave it in like a golden thread in a tapestry.
By taking a structured approach to your reading, and doing it again and again, the techniques and narrative devices used by successful authors will become part of your writing tool kit.
Below are ten steps to enhance your fiction writing through reading. You can download a free editable template here. Otherwise, I’ve provided instructions if you prefer to create your own.
1. List one or two areas where you’d like to improve in your fiction writing.
This might be characterization, setting, backstory, flashbacks, plotting, character arch, inciting incident, scene development, grammar, dialogue, beginnings, endings, transition, tension, dramatic effect, or narrative devices, for example. Any area of your writing where you feel could use improvement.