Whenever my husband buys a new piece of equipment (basically anything with a plug), the first thing he does is break it open to see what is going on inside. I’ve actually seen him pull out the soldering iron and start “tweaking” things within the first hour of owning a new amplifier or D-A converter. He’s not happy unless he knows how something is put together and seeing if he can make it better. It doesn’t matter if it was made by a highly reputable company or not. He always breaks into it, voiding the warranty, to peek inside.
It’s not a bad trait. In fact, this week I am suggesting you start doing the same to books you read. Now before you start throwing arguments about ruining your reading experience with analysis, calm down. Your first reading should be fun. Turn off your internal editor and enjoy the story. Reading is a joy that should be enjoyed as intended, not ruined by peeling back the curtain. But after you’ve enjoyed the story, all bets are off. Go back and dissect the book. (Not physically. I am not advocating tearing up books and making crafts out of them like book taxidermy. I would never.)
What I am advocating is to approach the book like a writer. Investigate what made the book work and fail. Pull it apart into its component parts — plot, character, scene, POV — and see how it was put together. There is no better master class in writing than looking deeply at the books you love and love to hate. But you have to be critical in your analysis.
Here are some things to look for:
The Hook
What attracted your attention in the beginning? Was it the first sentence, the setting, the situation? What was the hook that grabbed your attention and made you stay?
Look at the first few pages carefully and dissect how the author teased your senses and emotions. Figure out what it was exactly that made you want to find out more. It could be an intriguing situation or a line that makes you want to know more. It could be a new situation or a beautiful/sinister/creepy place. Or maybe it was a compelling voice. Pinpoint what it was and you will learn how to craft a beginning that pulls in readers.
What Follows
Did you want to keep reading? If yes, why? If not, why?
Figure out what it was that made you keep turning those pages. Or not. Was it an easy read or did you have to push through it? What made you decide to stick with the story? What specifically grabbed your attention and time?
Characters
What about the characters? What were they doing at the beginning? What did you learn about them and when? Did you care about them early on or what they were going through? Why? Why not? When did you begin to care? The point of this exercise is to determine why something worked or didn’t work. If you didn’t care, figure out why you didn’t care. What wasn’t working? What turned you off? Did you not know enough about the character or were you turned off by the situation, the writing, the voice? What was it exactly that made the character stand out or not.
Structure
I’ve talked about story logic many times before. This is about understanding the structure beneath a work. If you dissect the scenes and beats, you will see the construct underneath—the framework that holds the scenes in place and makes them work. This is a great way to learn structure. Break apart the novel into character arcs, scenes, beats within scenes, overall plot, throughline, theme, subtext and whatever else you can pull from the story. If there are rules for the world the characters are in, make a list of those too. You need to learn how to recognize the various parts of a novel so you can manage them in your own work.
Analysis
Once you have broken a novel into its component parts, you can start analyzing it in depth.
Does the story stay true to the characters and rules? Do the scenes work in the order they appear or would they work better if swapped around a bit? Did the characters ever act in a way that was not in keeping with their character? Did the plot work? Did it make sense? Is there anything that would have made it better?
Setting
Now look at setting. Was it an active part of the story or an afterthought? Was it a character in the book or ambience or basically absent? Figure out the role it played and whether it worked. Could the story have been placed somewhere else and still worked? If not, why did you feel that way? How did the author make the setting come alive? How did she describe the setting? How did you feel about it? Pull out concrete examples of setting throughout the book to see how it was handled.
To be continued…Look for Part II next week.