3 Reasons You Should be Rereading Stories You've Loved

You've heard to be a good writer, you need to be a good reader before. But did you know that rereading is an integral part of the reading-like-a-writer process? Rereading is one of a million things your middle school and high school ELA teachers droned on about, and for good reason. Let's talk about 3 of them today. 

Reason #1-You'll be able to pick out more craft elements

Your brain, while an amazing thinking machine, cannot put together all of the awesome craft elements on a story after one read. It needs time to stew on the things you've read, and then another change to further interpret the meanings to be found in a text. Making rereading a key element to learning how to pick up on and decipher key craft elements. And if you're reading well-written stories, you'll want to slow down and study all of the magic-enabling elements well-practiced writers are imploring.  

Reason #2-You'll learn more good words to use

Have you ever read a sentence that seemed simple but had such an emotional impact that you had to stop reading, turn to the closest human to you, and declare your awe of the English language? No? Just me? No matter, rereading a text encourages you to slow down and pay closer attention to the words a writer uses. You'll see how they swapped out the word "look" for "glance" and what that seemingly simple word choice did to the scene. 

Reason #3-You'll learn to recognize plot patterns

Now, learning to recognize plot patterns may not sound like the most interesting thing you could get from rereading a story, but it's soooooooooo good for writers who write in a specific genre most of the time. You see, genres come with certain reader expectations, and while diverting from them here and there is a very good idea, you also need to understand which of those plot elements are non-negotiable to the genre itself. And how do you do that? By comparing what you see in the genre-specific books you are reading. Does the main lead almost always end up with their love interest? Ask yourself why. Read a book where that doesn't happen, and ask yourself how that change affected your feelings about the story.

There are clearly way more reasons to reread good stories outside of these three. Which reasons would you add to the list? Comment them below!

Happy Writing.