If reading the back cover and ruminating on everything you can learn about the book is like meeting someone new, reading the first chapter is like your first date. You’re not going to learn everything, but you’ll come away from it with a really good sense of whether or not you want to know more.

And I have to say, y’all are really lucky you’re getting this lesson from me. I picked up John Sutherland’s book How to Read a Novel at the library today and had to skim all the way through to chapter twelve before he gets around to talking about first lines! (As an aside, the image on the front cover is of an open book with, you guessed it, Post-its sticking out of it!)

Okay, so you’re ready for your first date with your chosen novel. You have your pens and Post-its and notepad. You’ve set your goal for what you want to read, and you’ve answered yesterday’s questions.

Chapter Titles.
After waiting nearly five hours at Barnes & Noble, when I got home with my midnight-edition of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, I averted my gaze as I turned past the table of contents. Why? Because J.K. Rowling has a bad habit of revealing too much in her chapter titles. So, that’s something to consider when you pick up the book to read.

• Is there a chapter title? Does the chapter title reveal or hint at what’s going to happen?
• Is there an epigram/quote? Once you’ve read the entire chapter, does the quote fit what happened?

What’s the First Line?
Remember back a while ago when we had a brief discussion of First Lines? Now might be a good time to review that post to recall what Don Maass, Sol Stein, and Nancy Kress had to say about composing first lines. I also give a couple of examples there of how to break down a first line to see what can be learned from it.

What does the First Line really say?
If you’re a wine drinker, you know that you don’t just guzzle the whole glass down at once. The sommelier pours a tiny bit into the glass. The connoisseur swirls it, raises it to the light to see the color, smells it, then takes it into his mouth. Once in his mouth, he makes sure the liquid touches each area of his tongue, since different parts of the tongue are responsible for sweet, sour, salty, spicy, etc. He may open his mouth slightly and breathe in, which will allow the aroma to reenter his nasal passages, giving him a different experience of the bouquet (since smell is at least 50% of taste). Then he swallows it—all before the full glass of wine is served. This is how you want to treat the opening lines of a book you’re reading critically.

• Break down the sentences into key components (do you know how to diagram sentences?)—the nouns, verbs, and adjectives.
• Does it grab you and not let go? (“Somebody please help me! Somebody please! Can anybody hear me?”)
• Is it tantalizing and mysterious, urging you to read further? (He should never have taken that shortcut.)
• Is it a commentary on the society you’re about to get a glimpse into? (Living in Savannah was my way of being close enough to my family in the South Carolina Lowcountry, yet still far enough away.) 
• Is it “a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma”? (Moon. Glorious moon. Full, fat, reddish moon, the night as light as day, the moonlight flooding down across the land and bringing joy, joy, joy.)
• Is it active (The crack of the pistol’s report came from directly behind the courier) or passive (Ryan was nearly killed twice in half an hour) voice?
• Is the character named or not?
• Is the setting revealed (and not just because it’s written with a date stamp above the first line)?
• What do you learn about the time of day, the location of the character, what you might have just walked in on the middle of?

Read the first chapter. Just the first chapter (oh, okay, the prologue, too, if there is one). This is where you will need your notebook.

• Does the opening page grab your attention and make you want to keep reading? If not, is there something within the next two pages that would have made a better opening? Does the book start slowly with lots of description, or does it open in media res—in the middle of something happening? 
• What’s the setting? (Location, time period, time of year, etc.) On what page is the physical setting first mentioned? Does it feel real to you? What do you learn about the setting?
• Point of View. What Person/tense has the author chosen? Does POV feel tight and deep? Do you like the author’s choice of POV? Who is/are the POV character(s)?
• Characters. Start a list of POV/Main and secondary characters (keeping in mind not all of the POV characters will have a POV in the first chapter). When do you learn the main character’s name? When is the main character physically described for the first time? Do you like the main character? What is revealed about them in the first chapter? What can you surmise about the character’s past and about their personality from the first chapter?
• What kind of tone has the author set on the first page? (Exciting, funny, suspenseful, light, ominous, etc.) Does that match the expectation you had from reading the back blurb?
• Is there any backstory in the first chapter—more than just a hint of something that might have happened?
• Is there a hook at the end of the first chapter that makes you want to read more?

Virginia Woolfe wrote in 1926: “The only advice, indeed, that one person can give another about reading, is to take no advice, to follow your own instincts, to use your own reason, to come to your own conclusions.” We’re just getting started with this series and I’ve already posted tons of questions to ask—and we’re barely through the first chapter. I know that just with these two posts, you’re probably ready to give up on critical reading already. But this is why you really need to set a specific goal. If you’re not interested in POV, don’t bother analyzing the book’s POV (but do identify what it is, just for the practice). What I’ll be giving you throughout the course of this series is a set of questions that will give you the most in-depth critical reading experience possible. Some of it will be important to you, a lot of it won’t. Think of this series like a giant Sam’s-size bag of M&Ms . . . if you only want the blue ones, that’s quite all right.

As I mentioned in a comment yesterday, critical reading is different than reading for pleasure. The main difference is having a goal when you set out to read. This is not a curl up in the bed half an hour before falling asleep kind of reading. This is sitting in a bright room with pen in hand ready to write things down kind of reading.

Choose your book with purpose.
There should be a reason why you’ve chosen the particular novel to read critically. As I’ve already suggested, choose a book in the genre you write put out by a publishing house you’re targeting.

Set goals. Why did you choose this book?
When I picked books to do this with in grad school, I looked for stories that included elements I wanted to either strengthen or figure out in my own WIP. For example, I chose Happily Ever After and The Celebrity because a key conflict in both plots is that the hero has hidden his celebrity-status identity from the heroine (and everyone else around him), and I wanted to see how these two authors I greatly respect (Susan May Warren and Robert Elmer) handled it in a book published in the CBA. I chose Linda Windsor’s Along Came Jones when I was trying to instill more humor in my writing.

Read the back cover copy and start answering questions:
–What’s the genre listed on the back cover? (It’s usually on or around the barcode.) After reading the cover copy, does that sound like the right genre category? Does there appear to be a subgenre (i.e., is it predominantly a romance or is it a romantic suspense)?

–What do you think is the intended audience? (gender, age, CBA/ABA)

–What does it sound like the thematic conflict is?

–What does the back cover copy make it sound like the master plot is?

–What are competitive/similar books you’ve read before?

–Have you read anything else by this author? What are your general thoughts on this author’s other work?

–Have you read any reviews of this book? Were they positive or negative? Did the reviews affect your choice to read this book?

–Is there an endorsement on the cover by another author? Have you ever read anything by that author? What do you think of that author’s writing? Did the endorsement affect your decision to choose this book?

–Are you committed to reading this book all the way through no matter what?

Once you’ve answered these questions, you’ll be ready to start your critical reading. Make sure you have your Post-its, pens, highlighters, and notepad!

So before we start delving into the “micro and macro” information, I thought I’d share a couple of images of what a critically read book looks like after I’m finished with it:

Here you can see how this can look pretty random—but each note was typed into a summary which I then submitted as part of my reading journal for grad school. (In my defense for the condition of the cover of the book—I purchased it used and it wasn’t in great condition when I received it!)

Here’s what it looks like inside. I know, you’re wondering what the note says . . .
The whole “knowing she’s hurt” thing doesn’t ring true to me. Yes, he’s a pastor, but he’s still a man and he’s shown no clairvoyance into anyone else’s character like that. Better he pull back because he’s a pastor, because he feels (felt) called to stay single, because she’s his boss, because he feels like he doesn’t have anything to offer her.
(I was a little disillusioned with this book by this point.)

This is another book using smaller Post-its. The reason there are two different colors is because I ran out of pink. They’re not color-coded.

And here, you can see where I was taking notes on things I liked in the hero’s character (I chose to analyze this novel because, like my contemporary romance Happy Endings Inc., it has a hidden-identity as part of the plot) as well as breaking down the main storylines and conflicts. Also, notice the difference in my note here about his seeing something locked inside of her—that it works—as opposed to the first example. Part of the analysis process is figuring out why it would work in one book and not another.

Well, I said I was going to wait until after NaNo to start this new series . . . but NaNo is NoNo for me right now—as in, I have the hugest case of writer’s block I’ve ever experienced, so I had to work on something over the weekend, and guess what? You’re getting the new series a few weeks early.

One of my critique partners asked if I could do a series on how to break apart a novel, or, in other words, read critically, so that we can apply what others are doing to our own writing. This is something I had to learn how to do in grad school. As an English major, it was a natural step for me to apply the critical analysis we learned to do in literature classes to popular fiction. But the next step was figuring out how to use it to improve my own writing.

Why is critical reading something I should do?
How many times have you heard agents/editors on panels at conferences say that the best piece of advice they can give to aspiring writers is “read, read, read”? You think, I do read all the time, and I’m still no closer to being published. Well, that’s because you probably aren’t reading critically. It’s more than just reading a book and saying, “I liked it,” or “I didn’t like it.” It’s about probing into the whys and hows. Once you learn to analyze your reactions to what you’re reading, you’ll begin to understand the principles of writing better than you ever have before.

Is critical reading different from critiquing?
Yes. Critiquing is reading with the view in mind of helping another writer make their writing better. Critical reading is reading to figure out the mechanics behind a whole work—not just a few chapters at a time—and to try to see it from a more academic viewpoint. What makes it work? What is it about this particular story/writing that would lead to its being published?

So, all I have to learn are a few steps and I’ll be a critical reader?
It’s not quite that easy. There is no one right way to be a critical reader—but there is a wrong way. The wrong way is to approach it with the attitude that you’re going to rip the story apart and find all of the bad parts and show why it should never have been published and yours should be. Yes, you may end up feeling that way afterward, but don’t start out with a chip on your shoulder. Be positive and open minded—this is an opportunity not only to learn from a published author, but to try to figure out what it is about the book and their writing style that works.

What kind of novel should I choose?
I highly recommend choosing a novel published in the genre in which you write, by a publisher you’re targeting. By choosing your own genre, you’re picking what you’re already most familiar with—you won’t be trying to figure out if the author is sticking to the conventions of what’s expected in a certain genre, you’ll know and be able to judge better whether or not it works. By choosing books published by the house(s) you’re targeting, you’ll start getting a better feel for the kinds of things they’re looking for as you analyze more and more books.

This sounds suspiciously like high school English class.
What you learned in high school when it came to evaluating classic literature will come in quite handy in this exercise. You’re going to want to brush up on literary elements such as theme, symbolism, and rhetorical devices.

A few tips and tricks.
–Go ahead and buy the book. While this can be done with a library book, you’re really going to want to have it to refer to in the future.
–Don’t be afraid to write in the book. As John Keating said in Dead Poets’ Society: “It’s not the Bible; you’re not going to hell for this.” Highlight, underline, write.
–If you get caught up in reading and forget to analyze, that’s great! Do your analysis on a second read-through.
–Be brutally honest. This is for you not for a review you’ll be distributing publicly. If you want to write GAG! over a really cheesy dialogue exchange, do it. Don’t filter or censor your gut reaction to what you’re reading. The whole purpose of critical reading is to have that reaction—and then figure out why.

Supplies to have on-hand.
–Post-it Notes. At least 3×3 or larger, lined are great. If you want to go so far as to color-code your notes, get a few different colors depending on just how OCD/AR you want to be with this project.
–Colored pens/pencils. Again—depending on just how in depth you want to get with color-coding, you can survive with one pen or you may want several different colors. I know Margie Lawson teaches a color-coding method of analyzing writing, so if you’re comfortable with that, go for it.
–Highlighters. Same thing as with colored pens: one or several colors.
–Legal pad or single-subject spiral notebook for writing down information on things like characters or setting, for writing questions, for writing your theories of what direction the story is moving in, writing down words you’re not familiar with, etc.

What kinds of things should I be marking?
I’ll be getting into the specific details to look for, but here are some general suggestions:
–Highlight words/phrases you like, good showing/action, great dynamic verbs, good/unusual word choices, character descriptions you like, setting descriptions you like, well-written passages, good things that stand out to you.
–Use the pen to underline pet-peeve phrases (for me, it was/there were are major culprits), incorrect grammar/poorly written passages, passive language that could easily be fixed with an active verb, overuse of certain words (as, was, -ing verbs, -ly adverbs), telling, backstory, repeating information already revealed/rehashing events, anything that just really bugs you.
–When you react to something—positively or negatively—write your reaction on a Post-it Note and affix it to that page (LOL, great description, stilted/unrealistic dialogue, GAG!).
–If you read something that makes you think of a scenario of how the conflict/story might turn out, write it on a Post-it and stick it to that page, or write it in the notebook.
–If something you read sparks an idea for your own work (without plagarizing what you’re reading), write it down immediately and examine what you’ve learned or what emotional reaction you had to what you’re reading that made you think of it.
–Most importantly, don’t forget reading is supposed to be fun. I’ve decided I’m going to start reading critically again, but only if I read a book for fun in between each novel I analyze. Don’t let critical reading rob you of the joy of losing yourself in a good book.