Prose encourages writers to make an effort to learn and relearn the rules of grammar. We learn to write from within the scene and choose exact words to depict it. Close reading brings awareness to the words, and puts us inside the scene. Writing depends on choosing one word over another and asking what each word is conveying. Words to a writer are tools like colors to a painter. When we’re stuck writing a party scene, we can pull up James Joyce’s, The Dead, to see how he orchestrated “the voices of the party guests into a chorus from which the principal players step forward.” She suggests keeping examples of craft aspects in great stories on our reference shelf. We learn something new rereading a classic, and if we dissect a story to see how it’s constructed, a kind of osmosis occurs. We also discover that there are no rules. In Reading Like a Writer, Francine Prose says that by deliberate and slow “close reading” works in literature written by the masters, we become better writers.
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