Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them

In the opening chapter of Reading Like a Writer, author Francine Prose offers a caveat when it comes to the importance of creative writing workshops. Workshops are useful, she says, and provide a community that can sustain a writer. She herself was once in such a class. “But that class, as helpful as it was, was not where I learned to write” (7), Prose observes. How she learned to write was “by writing and by example, from books” (8). Prose’s statements encapsulate one of the key themes of her book: reading is an essential part of learning how to write. The reading to which Prose refers is specifically “close reading,” which refers to paying careful attention to even the smallest sections of a text. Instead of skimming through a narrative, close reading requires a reader to zero in on the writing itself and to ask why and how it works. Prose compares the process to taking apart a machine to understand its components. When an engineer understands how each component works, they can more effectively put that machine together. Writers have always understood the importance of close reading.