AvoleenWrites

I think as writers, we often underestimate the power that reading can have to improve our own writing. We get stuck in our own world and don’t take time to learn from other writers. In this post I talk about 3 main ways that reading widely can help us improve our writing skills.

Reading helps you to build critical thinking skills

Critical thinking is more than the ability to remember and apply information. According to Michael Scriven and Richard Paul:

Critical thinking is the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action.

Phew! That was a mouthful. By reading we expose our minds to different ways of thinking and allow ourselves to see the world through different perspectives. As a writer, especially when it comes to writing fiction, it’s important to be able to look at situations from multiple angles. You will be able to anticipate character issues and holes in your story as you write. This will help improve your storytelling.

The critical thinking skills we develop while we are reading can also be useful in our day to day lives, especially, when we read non-fiction books. The whole basis of the self-help book industry is for you to be able to help yourself – literally. I would say that when it comes to self-help books I am extremely picky about what I read. There’s definitely some positives and negatives when it comes to reading self-help books. But I will not pretend like there are no good self-help books out there. I have read some pretty amazing self-help books that changed the way I see the world and how I live my life. Self-help books are a whole other topic so let me not get distracted. As I was saying, reading widely will help you in the development of your problem-solving skills which will in turn improve your writing. 

Reading will help you develop empathy

You might already be an empathetic person but by reading more you improve your empathetic skills. There’s a lot of opposing theories out there on whether or not reading literary fiction actually helps people to become more empathetic. For the sake of argument I will take the side that states that people who read literary fiction are more likely to be understanding of the beliefs and feelings of others. Before you get too excited, let’s focus on the key word here which is “understanding” and not agreeing.

You can understand someone without agreeing with them. That’s one of the benefits of reading, you get to experience a piece of someone else’s world by reading about their experience. And fiction is really good at drawing us into a character’s mind and understanding how they think. If the writing is really good we can develop an intimate connection to the characters.

Oftentimes when we read a well-written story we find ourselves surprisingly rooting for a character who’s morals contradict our own. We see this happen all the time in the movies and dramas we watch. Being able to step into someone else’s frame of mind and not only seeing what they see but also understanding where they are coming from, is a skill that every writer needs to have. It will definitely make a huge difference in the way you write. As a writer you want your characters to feel real to the reader. It’s important that as a writer you close the distance between your characters and the reader. The reader should feel like they are in the story with your characters. The reader should be able to empathize with your fictional characters. 

Reading will help you to find your voice

Last but certainly not least reading can help you to find your own writing voice. By reading other authors you get to see what works and doesn’t work when it comes to writing. You can see which types of writing styles resonate with you the most and ask yourself why. Exposure to different writing styles will allow you to experiment with your own writing and hence, find what works for you. You can draw inspiration from reading other people’s material (I said inspiration not plagiarism).

At the end of the day one of the main goals of reading is for you to write in a way that is authentic and true to who you are. It’s not to imitate or become like another writer. If you find yourself unintentionally copying someone else and not developing your own voice I would encourage you to take a break from reading. Just focus on your writing instead. Remember to be patient with yourself. Good writing takes time. 

There are so many other benefits of reading that are not directly related to improving your writing skills. Other benefits of reading include the prevention of cognitive decline as you age, a source of entertainment, spending less time on screens (when using a physical book), improves memory and reduces stress. So, even if you don’t aspire to be a writer, reading is still a worthy pursuit.

I will conclude this post with a disclaimer. Though there are so many ways that reading can help you improve your writing, reading can also have a negative impact on your writing if you are not careful. Like most things in life, reading requires balance. There is such a thing as “reading too much”. I will talk about that in another post. For now just read and read widely!