Francine Prose Reading Like a Writer Close Reading

Reading Like a Writer

Embrace of the first edition
Author	Francine Prose
Cover creative person	Roberto de Viqde Cumptich
Country	United states of america
Linguistic communication	English
Genre	Nonfiction
Publisher	HarperCollins
Publication appointment	2006
Media blazon	Print (Hardback)
Pages	275 pp
ISBN	0-06-077704-4
OCLC	62762325
Dewey Decimal	808/.02 22
LC Class	PE1408 .P774 2006

Reading Like a Author is a writing guide past American author Francine Prose, published in 2006.

Background [edit]

Subtitled "A Guide for People Who Dear Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them," — Prose shares how she developed her writing craft through writing and reading. She uses examples from literature to demonstrate how fictional elements, such as character and dialogue, tin be mastered.

Summary [edit]

• Chapter 1: Close Reading

Prose discusses the question of whether writing can be taught. She answers the question by suggesting that although writing workshops can be helpful, the all-time way to learn to write is to read. Closely reading books, Prose studied word choice and sentence construction. Close reading helped her solve difficult obstacles in her own writing.

• Chapter Two: Words

Prose encourages the reader to slow downwards and read every give-and-take. She reminds the reader that words are the "raw material out of which literature is crafted." Challenging the reader to cease at every word, she suggests the following question be asked: "What is the writer trying to convey with this word?"

• Affiliate Three: Sentences

Prose discusses how "the well made sentence transcends fourth dimension and genre." She believes the author who is concerned about what constitutes a well-constructed judgement is on the right path. Prose mentions the importance of mastering grammar and how it tin can improve the quality of a writer's sentence. In this chapter, she also discusses the use of long sentences, curt sentences, and rhythm in prose.

• Chapter Four: Paragraphs

Prose discusses that, just equally with sentence structure, the writer who is concerned well-nigh paragraph structure is stepping in the correct direction. She states that the author who reads widely will discover there are no full general rules for building a well-constructed paragraph, but "only individual examples to help point [the writer] in a direction in which [the writer] might want to get."

• Chapter Five: Narration

When determining point of view, Prose says audience is an important factor. She gives examples from literature of signal-of-view variations. First person and 3rd person are discussed, and even an example of writing fiction in 2d person is given.

• Chapter Six: Character

Using examples from the works of Heinrich von Kleist and Jane Austen, Prose discusses how writers tin can develop characterization. She mentions that Kleist, in his "The Marquise of O—" ignores concrete clarification of the characters, simply instead "tells u.s.a. just every bit much as we demand to know nigh his characters, and so releases them into the narrative that doesn't stop spinning until the last judgement . . ." Excerpts from other pieces of literature are used to show how activity, dialogue and even physical description tin help develop characterization.

• Chapter Seven: Dialogue

Prose begins this chapter by dispelling the advice that writers should improve and make clean upward dialogue then it sounds less caustic than actual speech. She believes this idea on dialogue tin can exist taken too far and that dialogue can be used to reveal not simply the words on the surface, only the many motivations and emotions of the characters underneath the words.

• Chapter 8: Details

Using examples from literature, Prose explains how one or 2 important details tin can get out a more memorable impression on the reader than a barrage of description.

• Chapter Nine: Gestures

Prose argues that gestures performed past fictional characters should not exist "physical clichés" only illuminations that move the narrative.

• Affiliate 10: Learning from Chekhov

Prose gives examples of what she has learned from reading Anton Chekhov. Equally a creative writing teacher, she would disseminate advice to her students after reading their stories. Equally a fan of Chekhov, she would read his curt stories and find examples of how he would successfully break the "rules" of fiction writing, contradicting something she recently told her students to do in their writing projects. Prose also discusses how Chekhov teaches the writer to write without judgment; she tells how Chekhov practiced not being the "judge of one's characters and their conversations just rather the unbiased observer."

• Chapter Eleven: Reading for Courage

Prose discusses the fears writers may have: revealing too much of themselves in their writing; resisting the pressures that writers must write a certain way; determining whether or not the act of writing is worth information technology when one considers the land of the earth. She concludes her book by stating that the author may fear creating "weeds" instead of "roses." Standing the metaphor, she says reading is a way for the author to see how other gardeners abound their roses.

• Books to Be Read Immediately

Prose includes a list of volume recommendations, many of which have selections from those that are used equally examples for the concepts she discusses.

Books to exist Read [edit]

Here are the books in mostly chronological order. The chapters in which they are discussed are in italics.

• Sophocles (trans. Sir George Young) Oedipus Rex

• Anonymous (trans. Dorothy Fifty. Sayers) The Song of Roland

• Miguel de Cervantes (trans. Tobias Smollett) Don Quixote

• William Shakespeare King Lear

• John Milton Paradise Lost

• Samuel Richardson Pamela: Or Virtue Rewarded

• Samuel Johnson The Life of Roughshod Sentences

• Edward Gibbon Decline and Autumn of the Roman Empire

• Jane Austen Sense and Sensibility Paragraphs Graphic symbol

• Jane Austen Pride and Prejudice Paragraphs Character

• Heinrich von Kleist (trans. Martin Greenberg) The Marquise of O---- and Other Stories Sentences Character

• Stendhal (trans. Roger Gard) The Red and the Black Paragraphs

• Honore de Balzac (trans. Kathleen Raine) Cousin Bette

• Nikolai Gogol (trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky) Dead Souls: A Novel Courage

• Charles Dickens Dombey and Son Narration

• Charles Dickens Bleak House

• Emily Bronte Wuthering Heights

• Ivan Turgenev (trans. Isaiah Berlin) First Honey

• George Eliot Middlemarch Graphic symbol

• Herman Melville Bartleby, the Scrivener Paragraphs

• Herman Melville Moby Dick

• Herman Melville Benito Cereno

• Gustave Flaubert (trans. Geoffrey Wall) Madame Bovary Courage

• Gustave Flaubert (trans. Robert Baldick) Sentimental Educational activity Character

• Fyodor Dostoyevsky (trans. Constance Garnett) Criminal offence and Punishment Narration Courage

• Leo Tolstoy (trans. David McDuff) The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories

• Leo Tolstoy (trans. Aylmer Maude) The Death of Ivan Ilych and Other Stories Backbone

• Leo Tolstoy (trans. Constance Garnett) Anna Karenina

• Leo Tolstoy (trans. Constance Garnett) War and Peace

• Leo Tolstoy (trans. Rosemary Edmonds) Resurrection

• Louisa May Alcott Lilliputian Women

• Marking Twain The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Narration

• James Baldwin Vintage Baldwin Paragraphs

• Henry James The Portrait of a Lady Gesture

• Henry James The Plough of the Screw Narration

• Anton Chekhov (trans. Constance Garnett) Tales of Anton Chekhov: Volumes 1-13 Detail Gesture Chekhov Backbone

• Anton Chekhov (trans. Constance Garnett) A Life in Letters Detail

• William Strunk The Elements of Style, Illustrated Sentences

• Marcel Proust (trans. Lydia Davis) Swann's Way Gesture

• Gertrude Stein The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas Sentences

• Virginia Woolf On Being Sick Sentences

• James Joyce Dubliners Sentences Gesture

• Franz Kafka (trans. Malcolm Pasley) Metamorphosis and Other Stories Detail

• Franz Kafka The Judgement Gesture

• Franz Kafka In the Penal Colony

• Male monarch Stout Plot Information technology Yourself Paragraphs

• Katherine Mansfield Nerveless Stories of Katherine Mansfield Words Gesture

• Raymond Chandler The Big Slumber Sentences Gesture

• Ryunosuke Akutagawa (trans. M. Kuwata and Tashaki Kojima) Rashomon and Other Stories

• Konstantin Paustovsky Years of Hope: The Story of a Life Paragraphs

• Rebecca West The Birds Fall Downward Sentences

• Rebecca Due west Black Lamb and Grey Falcon: A Journeying Through Yugoslavia Sentences

• Isaac Babel (trans. Walter Morrison) The Collected Stories Paragraphs Courage

• Fifty. P. Hartley The Go-Between Gesture

• F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby Words

• F. Scott Fitzgerald Tender is the Night Words

• Ernest Hemingway The Sunday Also Rises Sentences

• Ernest Hemingway A Moveable Feast Sentences

• Elizabeth Bowen The Firm in Paris Detail

• Vladimir Nabokov Lectures on Russian Literature Chekhov

• Vladimir Nabokov Lolita Narration Dialogue

• Nadezhda Mandelstam Hope Against Hope: A Memoir Words

• Christina Stead The Man Who Loved Children Dialogue

• Henry Light-green Doting Dialogue

• Henry Green Loving Dialogue

• Samuel Beckett The Complete Short Prose, 1929-1989 Gesture Backbone

• Francis Steegmuller Flaubert and Madame Bovary: A Double Portrait

• Paul Bowles Collected Stories and Later Writings

• John Cheever The Stories of John Cheever Sentences

• Randall Jarrell Pictures from an Institution

• Jane Bowles 2 Serious Ladies Narration Dialogue

• Juan Rulfo (trans. Margaret Sayers Peden) Pedro Páramo Courage

• Peter Taylor A Summons to Memphis Narration

• J. D. Salinger Franny and Zooey Detail

• William Gaddis The Recognitions

• Mavis Gallant Paris Stories Narration

• Italo Calvino Cosmicomics

• Paula Fox Desperate Characters Paragraphs

• Zbigniew Herbert (trans. Czesław Miłosz and Peter Dale Scott) Selected Poems Courage

• Flannery O'Connor Wise Blood Narration Gesture

• Flannery O'Connor A Skilful Homo Is Hard to Detect and Other Stories Words

• Flannery O'Connor Collected Stories Detail

• Richard Yates Revolutionary Road Words

• Gabriel García Márquez One Hundred Years of Solitude Paragraphs

• Gabriel García Márquez The Autumn of the Patriarch Paragraphs

• William Trevor The Collected Stories

• William Trevor Fools of Fortune

• William Trevor The Children of Dynmouth

• Stanley Elkin Searches and Seizures Sentences

• Harold Brodkey Stories in an Nigh Classical Mode Narration Dialogue

• Donald Barthelme Sixty Stories

• Alice Munro Selected Stories Words

• John le Carré A Perfect Spy Dialogue

• Philip Roth American Pastoral Sentences

• Philip Roth Novels and Stories 1959-1962 Gesture

• Diane Johnson Persian Nights Narration

• Diane Johnson Le Divorce Narration

• Thomas Pynchon Gravity's Rainbow

• Raymond Carver Where I'm Calling From: Selected Stories Sentences Paragraphs

• Raymond Carver Cathedral

• Stuart Dybek I Sailed with Magellan Narration

• Joy Williams Escapes Dialogue

• Scott Spencer A Ship Made of Newspaper

• Tim O'Brien The Things They Carried Sentences

• Charles Baxter Believers: A Novella and Stories Gesture

• David Gates The Wonders of the Invisible Globe: Stories Dialogue

• Denis Johnson Jesus' Son

• Denis Johnson Angels Paragraphs

• Tatyana Tolstaya Sleepwalker in a Fog Words

• Bruce Wagner I'm Losing You Character

• Jay McInerney Bright Lights, Big City Narration

• Jonathan Franzen The Corrections Paragraphs

• Deborah Eisenberg The Stories (Then Far) of Deborah Eisenberg Narration

• Richard Toll Freedomland Narration

• Edward St Aubyn Some Hope: A Trilogy Gesture

• Edward St Aubyn Mother's Milk Dialogue

• James Forest Broken Estates: Essays on Literature and Belief

• Junot Díaz Drown Gesture

• Gary Shteyngart The Russian Debutante's Handbook Paragraphs

• ZZ Packer Drinking Coffee Elsewhere Gesture

• Konstantin Paustovsky (trans. Joseph Barnes) Years of Hope: The Story of a Life

External links [edit]

• Quotes by Francine Prose at Wikiquote
• Study and photos from reading at Strand (Nov 2006)
• The Quarterly Conversation review

vogtfortion.blogspot.com

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reading_Like_a_Writer

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