Analyzing?

This is a pretty ultimate question.

I think if you have a look in the Share Your Work section, read up on some critiques. Not necessarily full submissions (although go for gold on that anyway ) but it gives you a general idea. People who critique are in analyze mode, and although you'll likely only see crits of short stories or opening chapters it still might be worth a look. You can learn a heck of a lot from critiques.

Also, ask yourself why you yourself do a certain thing in your story. Aaaalways ask why. Ok the MCs have to go way over there. But why? Is there a bad situation, or is there safety or excitement and intrigue?

Once you get used to thinking like that, apply it to a book you're reading. Why did the bad guys capture the good guys kid, and not their wife? A whole different level of desperation; the kid is innocent, the reader/watcher roots for them harder.

I think there is no short answer to this. Would love to see what others have to say.

Well, books aren't written with magic , it's just a guy/girl on a word processor at the end of it all. If you're reading a book and you come across something you really like, take a look at it and try to figure out how the author achieved it. It might mean analysing a paragraph or a sentence carefully, looking at the rhythm or voice, or it might be something that goes beyond the book and you simply appreciate it for it's accurate reflection of a real world issue.

For instance, I was beta reading today and the author made a fairly unorthodox switch to a different PoV in the middle of a chapter. I liked the effect though, so I said so.

There's a thread open somewhere where people post some favourite extracts from their own writing. It may pay to look at those and think about why people picked those parts in particular

Titan Orion said:

I think if you have a look in the Share Your Work section, read up on some critiques.

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Good idea.

There are also some critique checklists floating around the internet to serve as reminders for critiquers. Addressing each of the items in a checklist would amount to an analysis of a novel, character, etc.

This is one of the best known:
http://www.crayne.com/howcrit.html

I forget if it was Uncle Jim or who said it, but I've read the suggestion of reading a book twice - first for enjoyment, and the second time for analysis.

There are different things you can analyze a book to learn about it. If you want to study plot, you make a plot outline of the book. If you want to study how long books in your target genre are, take 4 or 5 of them and for each one count the number of words on an average-looking page and multiply by the number of pages. If you want to study how much of each scene is dialogue, how much narration, etc., you can take a pack of highlighters and highlight each type of writing a different color. If you want to study the pacing of a character arc or subplot throughout a book you can make a not of the page number each landmark in the arc or subplot happens on.

This is probably the main place where majoring in English helps you become a better writer -- it teaches you how to analyze literature, and by the time you're done you can't *not* analyze *everything* (in my experience, anyway).

Tips above are good. Here's a few more:
-- Learn about conventions and tropes. Not only is it informative, it's fun, too. TvTropes.org is my personal favorite, but beware, it can be very addictive.

-- Any time you feel yourself feeling a particular way about something you read, ask yourself why. Try to think about your feelings logically and work through why some things work for you and others don't.

-- Find a book reviewer blog (or several) and read them. You can also read the reviews on GoodReads, but they won't be as helpful. A good book reviewer is great at analyzing literature.

Once you pick it up, it gets really easy. And fun! Good luck.

celticroots said:

I read a lot. I've heard that to learn to write a novel you have to read a lot, focusing on why the author did what they did, why it worked, etc.

I am not sure how to analyze the books that I read. How can I learn to do that?

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Oftentimes people write with a motive, whether it is to tell an audience what they know, or entertain, etc. Sometimes doing a line-by-line analysis, along with delving into certain historical references can help with this.

I might have more to add, but for the time being, I'm exhausted and going to bed...

Good luck!

Study story structure, especially screenwriting structure, like the book The Anatomy of Story by John Truby. The only downfall is that it might ruin stories for you because more often than not you will know pretty much what is coming next.

Analysing means to break it down - look at individual parts of the whole to see how and why they work/don't work. A lot of this is subjective in that your opinion may not be mine nor anyone elses...

The actual term you probably need to be using here is deconstruction criticism. That is basically analysis as it applies to written work. Most decent english lit courses will cover how to do it and I bet there are a load of resources online that discuss it too if you look...

I agree with the read it twice thing... first reading you get initial impressions as a real reader would and they are important - see it in all its glory. Future readings you look at the details and try to spot the ropes and hidden trapdoors behind the scenes.

A warning, though... sometimes when you get into the habit of deconstructing you cannot stop and it can spoil reading for you a little. I had one friend (an english lit student) who could not help deconstructing everything he read or watched...

celticroots said:

I read a lot. I've heard that to learn to write a novel you have to read a lot, focusing on why the author did what they did, why it worked, etc.

I am not sure how to analyze the books that I read. How can I learn to do that?

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One of the main reasons for reading a lot is because the more fiction you read, the more you absorb the language and rhythm of stories, and the more you (often unconsciously) learn about storytelling.

As you begin to write and to learn about the techniques used to craft a good story, you'll gradually become aware of a book's parts and pieces, and how they fit together. You can begin to see why one story is breathtaking and hard to put down (the writer is good at manipulating tension. Or the stakes are very high), while another leaves you cold (not enough conflict. Or the POV is handled clumsily, making it difficult to engage with the characters.).

But seeing all that comes with time and experience, and until that happens, just read. Read widely, in different genres. Read non-fiction, too.

You've started off on the right foot just by beginning this thread. It's excellent so far. I've learned a lot about analyzing just from reading it.

Take a good grammar course is another option.

There's an area called stylistics. It differs from normal crits because is uses a strong element of linguistics. That just means it uses the likes of grammar, syntax and punctuation, and looks at word, clause level in order to try and understand plot, chracterisation etc. After all, It's how the words are chosen and presented that makes the whole. E.g., (a Mick Short example here) you can look at something like this:

We burned daylight

And a critic would say, 'it's a metaphor for wasting time.'

A stylistic will say: You know it's a metaphor for wasting time because something is telling you that 'Daylight' and 'burn' don't go together. As an English user, you expect things like 'burn food, burn skin', so it's going against what you expect 'usually'. 'Burn' is taking an unusual object 'Daylight' and you're able to apply the shared knowledge of 'other things burning and being 'ruined' and then reapply it to daylight. So, we're wasting time.

Sometimes I think learning to crit is too abstract, it doesn't underpin in a clear way why you reach the conclusion. How we infer plot altogether remains difficult. I like the stylistic apprach purely because it gives me a foothold: the words and semantic relatics provide concrete blocks to hold onto and say 'a got to c because it had to bypass c'.

And I'm rambling now....

I don't know, but if you figure it out, let me know, too.

Fiction analysis was something they taught in middle and high school. I never did catch on.

There's lots of great advice on this thread. The only thing I'd add is to first read a story purely for enjoyment. If you want to analyze it, read it again.

If you try analyzing a story while you're reading it for the first time, you'll miss half of what's going on, which kind of defeats the purpose of the whole exercise.

I also think it's important to mention that some people are just more analytical than others, so while it's a skill that can be learned, for many it might just be a natural-born talent.

____________
One Broken Wing

read a book. Actually THINK about what you didn't like, and why. THINK about what you did, and why. Not "it just felt kinda fakey," but WHY.

you're analyzing.

For me, it helps a great deal to talk to another writer who's read the same story. We do it in private, picking apart what we like and what bothered us. For me, the most useful stories to analyze are the ones that we call "almost good." A really bad story needs no analysis. A super good one seems to have a smooth surface that's hard to penetrate. But one that has a promising start then a flat ending, or good characters but clunky language, or good start and ending but a saggy middle--those I can learn from.

Not that any learning is final. I seem to have to keep learning and relearning with each thing I write.

Writing the Perfect Scene was one of those things that when I read it, it was like someone turned on a bright light in a dark room.

I picked five books, copied about three to four successive chapters or so and went through them with different colored highlighters for the different parts of a scene. By the time I was done, I really understood what was going on in the scenes and how they all worked together.

Further reading into where Randy got that, Dwight Swain's Techniques of the Selling Writer, really drove it home for me.

Also echoing Architectus' suggestion of getting a screenwriting book and reading about how to write a screenplay. That was another thing that really opened some analytical doors for me. I found Screenwriting Tricks For Authors (and Screenwriters!) by Alexandra Sokoloff very informative and enlightening.

bearilou said:

Writing the Perfect Scene was one of those things that when I read it, it was like someone turned on a bright light in a dark room.

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Interesting find. Looking at it I can see that I structure my own writing in exactly the same way, except that I don't always put dialogue before thoughts (I don't think. I might do actually.) It may well be the case that this article gives a watertight way to structure A good book, but not ALL good books.

Cool site though

This is all great advice, but the one thing I'll add is that I started doing this with movies and television before I started with books (well, except for character, which I've been analyzing since I was a wee thing). It's easier for me to see the flaws and strengths clearly, because (1) reading books is my first love, so I tend to be more forgiving, and (2) I tend to read as fast as my brain will allow, while filmed media force me to follow along at a slower pace. I'm still better at analyzing movies, which employ a few different techniques for delivery, but with the same basic parts as novels. Prose, narrative voice, etc. are the biggest difference, so I tend to read books with an eye for those.

Not only do I analyze what doesn't work, but when other people don't like something I do, I listen to them and figure out why they don't like it. Because, see, I don't think good storytelling is all that subjective, it's just that different people prioritize different aspects of it. Forums are good for this.

Good sites for critical analysis of television and film are TWoP.com and Redlettermedia.com. The first has a very analytical forum culture, and the second funny movie reviews with an eye towards deconstruction. I strongly recommend RLM.

dawinsor said:

For me, it helps a great deal to talk to another writer who's read the same story. We do it in private, picking apart what we like and what bothered us. For me, the most useful stories to analyze are the ones that we call "almost good." A really bad story needs no analysis. A super good one seems to have a smooth surface that's hard to penetrate. But one that has a promising start then a flat ending, or good characters but clunky language, or good start and ending but a saggy middle--those I can learn from.

Not that any learning is final. I seem to have to keep learning and relearning with each thing I write.

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This. My husband and I do this all the time. He's good at analyzing plot, structure, and perspective; I'm good at doing so for character, setting, and conflict. We learn a lot from each other.

Hiroko said:

Study what appeals to you. Remember what caught your attention or made you think. Study what does not appeal to you, too, so that you can establish better what you want to express. Writing is such an open-ended process - you are the only person who will ultimately decide what goes in your novel and how you want it to look/sound/feel.

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I'd expand on this by asking a few questions after you read a book:

1. Did this book make you sad? How? Did the story set you up for a possible happy ending, then plunge you into despair when things turned tragic? Find the clues that led you down the primrose path, and find the clues that set up the story for the tragic twist. Where were they placed? How? Through conversation, through plot developments, through the author's language?
   
   Do the same thing with a book that makes you happy.
2. Did this book not work for you at all? Why? Was the language repetitive, were there too many coincidences, were the characters unlikable or unrealistic?

In short, start with your reaction, and then pick your way back through the book to find out how you got there. Explain your response to the book in terms of plot, characters, themes, and language.