Reading

What has reading taught S.E. Hinton?

“I started reading about the same time everyone else did, and began to write a short time later.  The major influence on my writing has been my reading.  I read everything, including Comet cans and coffee labels.  Reading taught me sentence structure, paragraphing, how to build a chapter.  Strangely enough, it never taught me spelling.”

What has reading taught me?

Whether I read things consciously or not, whether I read music notes or math equations, there is always one thing in common. It always creates an image. Think about it. If you read a receipt it would create an image of what you bought. When I open to a random page in the book The Tale of Despereaux by Kate Dicamillo and read, “At the castle, for the first time in her young life, Mig had enough to eat. And eat she did. She quickly became plump and plumper still. She grew rounder and rounder and bigger and bigger. Only her head stayed small.” it creates a picture in my mind of Mig eating at a feast in a castle. Or if I was reading some music notes, it would create a picture of the piece of music.

With that, reading has helped me to find ways to make a clearer image of what I write. If people read the sentence “It was a beautiful at the beach”, they would probably think of different things. Perhaps one would think of seeing the sun setting while at the beach, while another would think of making sandcastles at the beach. But if the sentence were more defined, like it would probably be in published books, they would probably have more or less the same picture in mind.

You can make a comment about what reading has taught you! Thanks for reading my blog!