Reverse Engineering, Writer style.

Reading has always been one of my favourite pastimes. I had guzzled the entire Agatha Christie collection by the time I was fifteen and the best part-time job I ever had was working in a second-hand bookshop after school. I enjoyed everything from romance novels to spy stories. Each created for me a different world and captured my imagination for hours of delightful escapism.

But when I started writing something changed. As I honed my craft (an ongoing process, I assure you) I grew more discerning. There are a lot of books out there, folks, and a frightening amount of them are littered with all the things the Creative Writing Gurus tell you not to do. The cliche’s, adjectives and adverbs leaped off the pages at me and it was a terrible moment when I realised that writing had, in some ways, ruined reading for me. Would I ever be able to read a novel again for the pure enjoyment of it, without my internal writer/editor’s internal critique running in the background?

The short answer is yes. Perhaps I just had a run of picking bad books but there have been some, since then, that have transported me to a different world and made me forget about literary correctness. (And thank goodness for that!)

One such novel is “Ivory” by Tony Park. I spent every free moment of my weekend reading and finally finished it on Monday morning. Yes,  I know I should have been working on my own manuscript instead, but I guess that’s what they mean when they say ‘I couldn’t put it down’.

“Ivory” is strewn with vibrant background colour, much of it in the form of characters breathed to life through brief but vivid descriptions and dialogue that sets each one apart. I could actually hear their voices in my head. That is a rare talent. So in addition to devouring the book to find out what happened next, I learned from his particular brand of Show, don’t Tell as I went along.

So today’s advice is this:

When you read something that inspires you, read it again to see how it’s done.

I suppose it’s a variation of “monkey see, monkey do”, or perhaps a sort of reverse engineering, but for writers. We each have our own style and voice, but it can’t hurt to watch and learn from those who have already got it right.