Can Reading Books Influence You to Be Better at Writing?

Reading books will directly improve your writing skill. It will make you a fast reader as it improves your brain’s ability to absorb information quickly.

Reading makes you feel good by letting your brain to freely imagine what the author of the book wishes to convey to you through his/her work. It will pull you into the work of the author and what’s been going on in his/her brain. Basically, reading will help you to expose yourself to a variety of new words that were not present in your vocabulary.

Remember that “Every master was once an Amateur”. So, when you start to write, you should learn to be patient with yourself as you may not churn out the best-written work yet. You may need many days to hone the craft of writing. Many gurus out there recommend reading more in order to improve writing skills. This is true to a certain extent, as Stephen King quoted, “If you don’t have the time to read, you don’t have the time or the tools to write.” So, in order to get better at writing, you must read as well as write. Writing is also an essential process that is dependent on the more books you read, the better it contributes to the art of fine writing.

Our human brain is wired in such a way that it starts changing as we are exposed to learning new skills. Basically, our brain is like a sponge that soaks up everything we observe, experience and exposed to, including the books. You may not be able to recall all the nursery rhymes you read as a child but you may now recall “Twinkle twinkle little star, How I wonder what you are”. This is because you absorbed this nursery rhyme many years ago and it may still be somewhere in your head.

Reading more and reading well will not only help you gain knowledge and inspiration but you’ll be able to read with a writer’s eye. While reading books, grammar sinks in your brain and eventually, this will become part of your mental makeup. It will also help you to understand the nuances of language, be better at vocabulary and recognize the difference between poor and quality writing.

As we humans are like mirrors, we reflect back into the world through writing by all that we have absorbed in through reading. That being said, a writer’s voice and style, choice of words, spelling, sentence structure, story, and organization are all influenced by the books he/she reads. That is why it is essential to find the authors who resonate with your sensibility and read all their books. Now, this doesn’t mean that you should never choose reading genres outside your chosen area of specialty, else you’ll miss out on diversifying and expanding your writing skills with new techniques and methods.

To conclude, you should concentrate reading books on your genre but not to cut off yourself from reading a few books from rest of the literature.

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Top 3 Ways How Reading Books Influence Your Writing Skills

1) Reading books help to end the writer’s block.

This is because while reading books of other writers, their words flow and the transition will direct the creative juices to flow in your mind that will unconsciously unlock the clues regarding how to proceed with your own writing. Eventually, this will help you accomplish the best-written work by guiding you out of the writer’s block.

2) Reading Books Influence Writing by Helping to Improve Cognition Cohesion

This is because reading is considered as an exercise to the brain. The more you read books, the more cognitively expressive, flexibility and uniqueness will be present in your writing. Additionally, reading helps improving cognition cohesion which allows memory retention that provides you with more information, perspectives, and tools while writing.

3) Reading Books Help to Improve Vocabulary and Creativity

Good readers have seen diverse works of various authors that now they know how to make their writing interesting. They understand the creativity level they need as a writer in order to be able to transport their readers to the scene that he/she is describing.

Apart from these positive influences of reading to be better at writing, reading books allows your imagination to run wild.

Grab a book and start reading now.

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