Pre-Creative Writing at NHIA I had thought I would learn grammar, learn the secrets of structure that the writing Gods had passed along through the ages, and that I'd be writing stories every week: I thought I would get my hands dirty in writing. I was partially right: the one thing I never thought I'd learn, though, is how to read.
Obviously, I have read a book before, only it was in the way a non-writer reads a book. It’s after finishing this semester I now understand I have never truly read a book before. I understand this statement doesn't make sense right now, but allow me to put it in perspective. Every sentence is planned, each word perfectly chosen to occupy the proper space. When we first learn to read we start slow. We analyze every word, we stop and think of its meaning. In doing so, we inadvertently think of how that word is serving the piece: how it advances the plot, the characterization, how it builds a theme, or anything else out of the millions of other things that words can do. As we get older and we begin to better understand the words we see: and eventually, we start to take them for granted. The older we get, the faster we are able to read, and we tend to forget the deeper meanings of the words. We start to gloss over and ignore the subtextual meanings words have and lose the clues and deep meaning hidden inside them. Annotating is a means of slowing down in order to better learn as you’re reading if you’re into that sort of thing.
I felt this is the most important context I can give in the series that I will be writing on writing: what I’ve learned, style, structure, the organs of the monster known as writing. By looking at a book beyond the surface details and plot you can really see what the author is saying. By doing this you will also be able to see the author’s style and emulate it. This is the greatest lesson you can learn in writing. By analyzing how an author writes you are able to see how they implement all the elements of storytelling successfully into a piece. With heavy annotation and analysis, you will begin to absorb their style by means of linguistic osmosis. In order to interact with the text you can either: 1) Write analyses on post-it notes near lines or words that stand out, or you could commit the ultimate sin and 2) Write your annotations in the book.
I know: this may sound like a slight against God.
I felt that way once too.
At one time, I may have been the guy lighting all the torches in protest: until I was forced to do it or fail my class. After chewing my nails to the wrist, I finally tried it, reluctantly: I found it a very effective means of delving into the text. It forced me to analyze each word: to understand the ideas which incubate beyond words themselves.
If you want to improve your writing or want to better enjoy books and stories, practice annotating. Print out a short story or use any book you have, then go through and mark words or sentences that stand out to you. Mark next to them in the margins why they stand out, or what they do in terms of craft, style and technique. I personally use different types of lines to represent certain concepts: wavy lines for context, solid squares for characterization. Do it how best works for you: the only goal is to make sure you are thinking about each word, what it means and why the author chose it as opposed to any other.
Additional exercises can be performed with annotation. Two great ones are: Take a sentence and write it worse; or write a scene and try to capture that author's style. Diversify what authors you do this with and you will add to your proverbial tool belt.
Books and stories are so much more complex than they seem to be. That is the beauty of them. Instead of treating a book like a hardwood floor think of it as a bog: you don’t want to dance across a narrative so much as wade up to your hips in the language.
