Comments on: Reading Like a Writer. In a Bad Way.

By: Chris

Chris — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 11:35:43 +0000

I’m still very much in the toiling-in-obscurity phase of my writing career, but I find myself doing the same thing - not just with books, but with other media as well.

I was watching Fringe the other night, and about halfway through I realised that I was spending most of my mental energy analysing the structure and pacing of the narrative, rather than immersing myself in what was actually happening in the story.

Still enjoyed the cow, though.

By: Carol Snow

Carol Snow — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 20:38:32 +0000

I probably shouldn’t admit this, but after watching “The Sixth Sense,” I turned to my husband and said, “I don’t get it.” My flair for deconstruction is apparently limited to the written word.

By: Michael Stearns

Michael Stearns — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 15:29:52 +0000

I don’t really see this as a problem, but just a matter of gaining higher and higher standards. It means a lot of mediocre art fails to delight us, but man, when a writer pulls off something truly unexpected? It’s like having the wind knocked out of you. I remember reaching the ends of One Hundred Years of Solitude and Smilla’s Sense of Snow and Gateway and feeling that snap! of a writer seeming to pull the exact right unforeseeable thing out of his ass. Those moments are amazing and why I keep reading, despite the disappointment of figuring out plots from the get-go.

I remember sitting in a movie theater watching The Sixth Sense with my girlfriend. The movie had been on for about half an hour when I figured it out. I made some noise and muttered, “Oh, I get it,” and my girlfriend hit me. “Don’t you DARE say another word, or I will kill you,” she said, and meant it. Didn’t spoil my enjoyment of the movie; just changed the focus of that enjoyment from plot (which is just and then and then and then) to the why and how of things, which is always more fun, anyway.

By: Michael Grant

Michael Grant — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 22:19:58 +0000

I have this same problem and seriously it takes some of the fun out of reading. I can always count the available suspects in a mystery and eliminate most, not for plot points but for writerly “tells.”

By: Doret

Doret — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 20:13:28 +0000

It makes me kind of sad to read that but I do understand a little. Working at a bookstore I read alot so I have a low tolerance for books I don’t think are written well. Its never anything big its just the little things add up quicker