Analyzing Text
Cynthia Selfe
We see text everywhere we go, and we read the text of our lives and our experiences every single moment of every single day. When you go into Chinatown, for example, you would read the text of the people passing by, the cultures that they come from, the signs in the stores, the goods that people are selling in stores…all those become part of the input that you—part of the sources, many of the sources that you can take and weave into a document or a text in words. Language is the basis for our recapturing experience.

Sue Grafton
I read a book for pleasure. And I read with all the absorption and all the joy and excitement that a piece of fiction can bring. Then I get to the end and go, "Why did I cry? What was it that made me laugh aloud?" And so then I go back and I look at a book or a piece of fiction very analytically. And I'll take it, I'll break it down, I'll start analyzing how a writer has created that effect. Because if you can understand how Elmore Leonard does it, suddenly then you have the tools to do what he does. Or whoever your favorite writer is. Stephen King. How does Stephen King create suspense? Why is it that he can describe a dead cat coming back from over the pile of sticks and give you the creeps when this stinky cat walks through the room? Because he does it with language. He's using the same words the rest of us use. But he's using a little more artfully in some, and so he can create an effect. So I think writers in training can learn from their favorites. You don't have to study Tigrinya or Dostoevsky or even Shakespeare. If you're entertained by Danielle Steel, go read a Danielle Steel book and figure out how she makes your heart go pitty-pat. Same thing.

John Morgan Wilson
All the answers that a beginning writer needs to learn to write well are in what's already being written and being published. All the answers are there on how to do it. Read them, but you have to learn to read differently. Not to read as a reader anymore but to read as a writer. How does someone open a chapter? How does someone, a journalist that you admire, open an article? How do they write their lead sentences? What's the structure of the piece? How do they use quotes? How do they paraphrase? How do they write descriptive passages? How do they write in terms of writing tightly and writing well and pruning? All the answers a writer needs to know are in the writing. That's why reading is so important.

T.C. Boyle
You might consciously sometimes emulate a writer you admire. And try to reproduce something like that. Assimilate everything you've got, and finally drive toward your own style and your own way.

Marty Wallace
Nobody can sit down and read a chemistry book a chapter at a time. I can't do it. I've done really well in chemistry, I have good understanding, I've gotten awards in all the divisions of chemistry, academic awards. But I can't read a chapter of a chemistry book. Ten or 15 pages into it I'd be asleep. And I'd be confused and I'd be bored. But I can read six, or eight, or ten pages at a time. Very successfully. I can sit down for 30 minutes and read, understand it, do a few study problems and stop. Right there while you've got it. But the trick is to do that little 30-minute exercise six or seven days a week.

Thomas Fox
Let's say you find all these articles or are assigned all these articles. In a writing class, one of the things you begin to do is, read those very strategically. Read those as a writer. Read those both with an eye to content, "What is this saying?" and an eye to. "How is this constructed as an argument, or how is this written?" So your reading it also for how it's working together. How people start, how people use evidence, how people make claims. How people document their work.