Ways of Reading in Creative Writing
Creative writers use the following approaches to reading. Each entails a different orientation toward the text that a writer is studying, a different lens that a reader can use to understand a text.
Connective Reading - Reading to hold space for what is being shared.
Contextualizing Reading - Reading to think about how a text might be located within specific genres and traditions.
Craft-Based Reading - Reading to construct how the text works.
Critical Reading - Reading to help the author see the piece's assumptions.
Connective Reading - Reading to hold space for what is being shared.
- Asking: How can I validate the honesty and vulnerability of the author behind this text?
Contextualizing Reading - Reading to think about how a text might be located within specific genres and traditions.
- Asking: Where does this text locate itself in the literary landscape? What genres, traditions, and conventions does it draw upon? What other texts does it remind me of, and why?
Craft-Based Reading - Reading to construct how the text works.
- Asking: What choice is the writer making here? What other choices could the writer have made? What does this choice risk? What does it make possible for the text?
Critical Reading - Reading to help the author see the piece's assumptions.
- Joanna Russ argues that writers “do not make up their stories whole cloth." Writers (sometimes unthinkingly) mobilize certain master narratives that are ‘in the air’." To what extent does this text interrupt or reinforce commonly held attitudes, beliefs, expectations, and assumptions? What are the potential political, social, ecological, etc. consequences of this story?
Outline of Our Workshop Conversations
How We'll Start [5 minutes]
We'll start each workshop conversation by reminding ourselves what happens in this piece—above the waterline of the iceberg, and below.
Then we will move into our four reading strategies:
Four Reading Strategies [25 minutes]
Connective Reading - Reading to hold space for what is being shared.
Asking: How can I validate the honesty and vulnerability of the author behind this text?
SUB-QUESTIONS: Let the writer know that you've invested yourself in the story, that their words have been received.
- What themes, ideas, messages, ways-of-knowing resonate with me as I read this story?
- What in this story runs deep?
- How does this story defamiliarize the world for me? How does the story teach me to perceive the world differently?
- In what ways do I empathize with the characters of this story?
- What will I remember most from this story?
Contextualizing Reading - Reading to think about how a text might be located within specific genres and traditions.
Asking: Where does this text locate itself in the literary landscape? What genres, traditions, and conventions does it draw upon? What other texts does it remind me of, and why?
SUB-QUESTIONS: Help the writer to locate the piece in the textual landscape, to know how the story functions intertextually.
- How is this story similar to or different from other forms of cultural production that I have encountered—literature, films, songs, etc.?
- What does the piece remind me of? What associations am I bringing to the work as a reader?
- What authors seem to take a similar style or approach, mobilize similar themes?
- What ideas from craft-criticism does this piece remind me of?
- Where do I locate this story in the textual landscape? Do I read this piece as belonging to a specific genre? What audiences does this piece speak most directly to?
Craft-Based Reading - Reading to construct how the text works.
Asking: What choice is the writer making here? What other choices could the writer have made? What does this choice risk, and what does the choice make possible for the text?
SUB-QUESTIONS: Discuss the story in relation to the craft principles we've learned this semester.
- What details are emphasized, and what details are left out? Where can significant and specific details be added to the story?
- What are the effects of the writer's choice to use scene versus summary?
- To what extent do the scenes have a sense of time and space? Remember the idea that “nothing happens nowhere”: Do you, as a reader, know enough about the story to be able to feel that the action is actually taking place?
- How can the tension (and/or suspense) in this story be heightened? Are there moments where the story "gives away" its tension or suspense? Does the story answer it dramatic questions too soon?What parts of the story have the most dramatic tension, and which parts have the least?
- Remember that readers are often most invested in central characters who act and are not merely acted upon.
- What decisions are the characters forced to make in this story?
- What does/do the main character(s) want? What compels the character to action?
- In what ways are the central character(s) conflicted?
- What, for the characters, is worth fighting for, and why?
- What stake do the characters have in the story's central tensions?
- Are the voices of the characters consistent throughout the story?
- Is verb tense and POV consistent, and do these choices serve the story?
Critical Reading - Reading to help the author see the piece's assumptions.
Joanna Russ argues that writers “do not make up their stories out of whole cloth." Writers can sometimes unthinkingly mobilize certain master narratives that are ‘in the air’." To what extent does this text interrupt or reinforce commonly held attitudes, beliefs, expectations, and assumptions? What are the potential political, social, ecological, etc. consequences of this story?
SUB-QUESTIONS: Suggest ways that outside research can help to support the story.
- What in the story does not yet seem fully credible?
- What about the story's representation of people or places needs further development and complexity? To what extent are stereotypes affirmed or dismantled in the characterization?
- What about the story's use of language could use further attention (for example, caricatured dialect in dialogue, etc.)?
- How can the writer use multiple modes of research to move beyond received ideas, common notions, cliches, or stereotypes?
- Do you have sources to suggest this writer draw upon in researching and revising this story?
Closing Our Conversations [5 minutes]
At least two people will express words of appreciation for the writer.
Then the writer will have a chance to ask follow-up questions.
