Education Advice

How Readers Become Better Writers (and Writers Become Better Readers), Part 1

In the past three months, I’ve had a flurry of events: participating as a panelist at LTUE, exhibiting at StoryCon, being interviewed for Write Stats, Bold Journey, and The Last Storyteller podcast, exhibiting at RomCon, being interviewed and featured on the cover of Writers Monthly, exhibiting at the Ogden Art Stroll and Art in the Park in West Jordan, a Literary Titan interview, and a book signing at the newest bookstore carrying my books, Boundless Creations Bookshop in Logan.

It’s been a lot of work, a lot of fun, and a lot-lot-lot of questions. As a result, there’s been a pattern that I noticed, like moisture seeping through cloth. It took a while to identify it other than an earnest desire to learn. Yet it kept nagging at me, tickling at the back of my brain, until I could articulate it and form those patterns in all of those questions and conversations into something coherent. That thread seemed to revolve around the relationship between reading and writing, how one feeds the other, and how one molds the other. So here are my thoughts.

As readers and writers, we treat story as tradition — carried forward from voice to voice, shaped by each new teller. It’s more than entertainment; it’s an unspoken pact between the one who speaks and the one who attends. Readers and writers are not separate roles in that tradition. They are two expressions of the same instinct: to witness, to interpret, and to shape meaning.

(Forgive me, I’m changing my hat, putting on my professor miter.)

In the terms of communication theory, to translate your thoughts (encoding all that stuff rolling around in your head) into a message (the story) and, in turn, decoding that message into understanding.

Let’s break this down into six phases: the core principle, a micro-lesson, something for readers (here in part one), something for writers, a book spotlight, and a short exercise (later, in part two).

Core Principle: Reading as Craft, Writing as Interpretation

As writers, reading is not just entertainment, it is not passive consumption. As writers, reading is studying the craft. As writers, reading is apprenticing.

A writer-reader learns to see the underlying architecture of what’s being read:

• Pressure lines where a scene bends

• Oaths beneath actions (i.e., the unspoken logic of character)

• Cadence of the voice, its rhythm, its beat, its cadence

• Deliberate silences where the author trusts the reader to step into the space

Pressure Lines Example

In Homer's The Iliad, when Hector removes his helmet so his infant son will stop crying, the moment fractures the battlefield persona and reveals the man beneath the armor. It’s a shift from heroic inevitability to intimate vulnerability.

Oaths Beneath Actions Example

In Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Frodo’s decision to spare Gollum’s life isn’t kindness; it’s a moral oath about mercy that shapes the entire arc.

Cadence of Voice Example

In Steven Brust’s Jhereg, Vlad Taltos’ narration carries a sharp, sardonic cadence with quick cuts of dry humor and observations, and sudden drops into deadly seriousness. The rhythm mirrors his life as an assassin navigating the rigid hierarchies of Dragaeran Houses: brisk and edged. His voice becomes its own signature, a beat pattern that tells you exactly how dangerous the world is and how fast you need to think to survive it.

Deliberate Silence Example

In Dune, Frank Herbert never really explains the origins or inner workings of the Bene Gesserit’s long-term breeding program. He reveals fragments through rituals, political tension, and character reactions. The silence forces us to infer the scale and moral ambiguity of their influence, making the unseen machinery feel ancient, massive, and definitely icky.

This is the craft beneath the craft. I write epic fantasy. I like to think of this like a bard recognizing and mastering lore.

Micro-Lesson: Critical Reading

First and foremost, “critical” is not a four-letter word. In this context, it means applying critical thinking to reading. What is critical thinking? The ability to analyze information objectively, evaluate arguments, and make reasoned, informed decisions.

For this micro-lesson, choose a chapter from a book you admire. Approach it as if you’re studying the work of a master. Whether you realize it or not, that work is in your creative bloodline, it’s part of your creative double helix.

In that chapter, identify

• The pivot: when the emotional weather shifts

• The engine: what drives the scene (desire, conflict, revelation, etc.)

• The texture: sensory detail, tone, et al

• The negative space: in art, it’s the space around the subject; in writing, it’s what the author withholds

The Pivot Example

In Tolkien's The Silmarillion, a pivot occurs when Fëanor swears the Oath of the Fëanorians. The emotional climate turns instantly from grief and wounded pride to a fierce resolve. That single vow reshapes the fate of the Noldor, darkens the tone of the narrative, and sets the long tragedy of Middle-Earth into motion.

The Engine Example

In Tolkien's The Fellowship of the Ring, the engine of the Council of Elrond is the collision of competing desires: Boromir’s hunger to wield the Ring for Gondor, Elrond’s insistence on its destruction, and Frodo’s dawning realization that the burden is his. The scene moves because each character’s want grinds against the other’s.

The Texture Example

In Michael Jan Friedman's Starfleet: Year One, the founding-era chapters carry a texture of touch-and-go unity and raw institutional birth — starships still smelling of untested alloys, command protocols being drafted in real time, the uneasy blend of Andorian steel, Tellarite pragmatism, and Human idealism echoing through every corridor. It feels transitional and charged, giving the first year of Starfleet a tactile sense of a coalition of people not quite ready to trust while staring into a galaxy that has not yet decided what to make of them.

The Negative Space Example

In Stardust, Gaiman withholds the full nature of the witch queen’s power and intentions, letting small glimpses — a half-spoken spell, a sudden shift in her age, the quiet way she studies Yvaine — suggest a far darker and decidedly more dangerous depth. The story’s tension grows from what remains unspoken, the sense that her magic is older and hungrier than the text ever explains.

Learning how to identify these types of elements in your reading will help you train yourself to read with a more disciplined, thoughtful approach. In learning how to read this way, you will be able to more easily write this way, with clear intent.

For Readers: Reading With Ritual and Precision

I am a big believer in ritual. I was once a high-performing athlete and a huge part of my training was my ritual before walking out on the wrestling mat. It helped me prepare my body but, far more importantly, it helped focus my mind. When in stressful situations away from the mat, I often do many of the same things to prepare (looks a little funny in a coat and tie, I admit), but my mind and body are already trained to be receptive and respond to the ritual.

So here’s something to help develop that ritual in reading. Why? Because readers in the writing community don’t skim. They immerse and experience.

These things may help your develop a ritual to make reading more immersive:

• Mark the moments that strike like omens, where you hear the music (dun-dun-dunnnnn)

• Track character choices as if they were moves on a chess board, looking for tactics and stratagems

• Watch for recurring motifs — the oak leaf, the lantern, the threshold

• Pause after each chapter and ask, “What shifted in the world or in me?”

Moments Like Omens Example

When a crow appears three times in a chapter of a fantasy novel, note it — repetition is rarely accidental.

Character Choices Example

In Robert Adams’ Horseclans series, Milo’s decisions — shielding the clans from ancient technologies, intervening only when their survival hangs in the balance, and refusing to abandon the long arc of rebuilding civilization — all read like steps in a vow forged centuries earlier. Each action reinforces a promise he carries alone: to guide humanity without ruling it, to protect without corrupting, and to endure long after others would break.

Recurring Motifs Example

In Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven’s Lucifer’s Hammer, the repeated imagery of rising water — storm drains backing up, flooded roads, the ocean swallowing the coast — becomes a motif that signals not just the comet’s physical devastation but the collapse of social order. Each recurrence foreshadows another boundary being erased between safety and danger, civilization and survivalism, the world before and the world after.

What Shifted Example

After a chapter in Dragon Prince by Melanie Rawn, the shift is often political or intimate — a calculated courtesy from Rohan, a flicker of defiance from Sioned (ah, Sioned ...!), a dragon sighting that tilts the balance of prophecy. Even a single overheard remark or a moment of restraint can quietly reconfigure alliances. The reader feels the world tighten as each small move nudges the larger game of power, magic, and destiny.

Doing these things might take reading beyond entertainment, exceeding education, and becoming initiation.