“If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.” –Stephen King
No good writing is possible without reading. Is there an artist out there who doesn’t look at paintings by other artists? Is there a sportsperson who doesn’t watch sports?
However good your writing skills are, nothing will make you understand your reader better than reading. New writers habitually spend years escaping into other people’s fiction in lieu of writing themselves. Then, magically, they might develop a talent for expressing their ideas in language; their ideas might not be any good, but the practice of constructing sentences around those ideas becomes far less painful. At this point, a writer might start writing more and more each day, and reading a little less.
“Read a lot. Reading really helps. Read anything you can get your hands on.” –JK Rowling
Reading is raw material and provides you inputs and insights. If there are no good inputs how can there be any great outputs?
“Reading—the good and the bad—inspires you. It develops your palate for all the tricks that writers have invented over the years. You can learn from textbooks about the writing craft, but there’s no substitute for discovering for yourself how a writer pulls off a trick. Then that becomes part of your experience.” – Roz Morris
8 advantages of reading for writers:
Reading allows a writer to understand what a reader wants — and what he or she, the writer needs to give to the readers.
Reading helps in mastering fundamentals in story structure and plot development.
Reading provides a feel for and can develop your own ideas of stylistic items such as graceful narration, metaphor, evolution, voice, and more.
Reading can inspire you.
Reading is a good way to gain ideas!
Reading shows you what’s already been done.
Reading lets you take advantage of lessons already learned by generations of smart writers.
“The real importance of reading is that it creates an ease and intimacy with the process of writing… Constant reading will pull you into a place… where you can write eagerly and without self-consciousness.” – Stephen King