Reading is just as important in becoming a better writer as writing. A chef who never eats good food will never cook good food, an architect who never examines good buildings will never design good buildings, and a writer who never reads good books will never write good books.
There are so many benefits from reading. You not only increase your vocabulary and phraseology, your tools in your arsenal when doing your own writing, but you also get to see how good stories are written. How do they begin? How do they get you invested? How do they describe things in an interesting way?
And one book does all that particularly well: Almost Perfect by Brian Katcher.
During the last stream, we took a look at the opening chapter to Almost Perfect and examined it sentence by sentence.
One thing I really like about the opening chapter to the book is that nothing much happens. There’s no action, little conflict, and no big mysteries or explosions or anything. And yet, it’s still a very engaging opening.
The reason for this is because the author sets the scene/tone extremely well. Rather than throwing us right into action, as many beginner writers do, he spends time showing us who these characters are and what their lives are like, so that when the action does happen, we care about what happens to them.
Here’s a sample of the annotating that we did.
It’s a bit of a mess, but we had a lot to say!
In the first four paragraphs of the book, we get the who/what/when/where given to us in a fun way that fits the narrator’s voice. We are so firmly grounded in their world that it almost doesn’t matter what happens, we’re buckled in and ready for whatever ride we’re going on.
There’s a lot of great stuff going on in this first chapter, more than I can get into in a short post. If you’re interested in leveling up your own writing, then be sure to watch the full video of the exercise below.
After that the chat voted that we write this prompt by actually_crazy_irl: That creature that you always imagined running beside the car as a kid is still there, looking after you after all these years. They don’t mind that you don’t see them anymore.
If you want to join us and help write a story by trolling in chat, or share your own writing for feedback, then we’d love to have you. We stream on Twitch every Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday at 7:30pm-10:30pm (U.S. Eastern Standard Time).
And you missed the stream, you can still watch Rubbish to Published, the writing exercises, or the writing prompts on YouTube, or watch the full stream reruns.
Hope to see you next time, friend!
Featured image: Amazon