Voracious Readers Do Not Make Better Writers

Here’s a fun fact about me that will make passionate readers clutch their books: I didn’t read my first novel until I was in my early 20s. Nope, I didn’t even read the Harry Potter series growing up—I watched the movies. My ADHD was so severe that I couldn’t enjoy any literary medium other than picture books. Amelia’s Notebook by Marissa Moss, for example, had enough drawings in it to keep me turning the pages, but I didn’t care much about the story. Now that I’m in the middle of my 30s, I can finally say I’ve read the book (and cherish it)!

I didn’t attempt to write my first novel until I was seventeen. I did not finish it. I haven’t finished a single novel I’ve ever set out to write, but I don’t regret it. I’ve moved on from novels because they just don’t play nicely with my ADHD (which is still severe, by the way), and, contrary to popular belief, the novel is not the epitome of the written word. As writers, we are constantly told that the novel is the mark of a “real” writer, and that real writers are also supposed to consume libraries of prose. As someone who has read twenty books or less in her life so far (I don’t care to keep count), I’m here to push back on such claims and shed light on what actually makes a good writer.

To be clear, I am not saying that fledgling writers don’t have to read any books. But there is a difference between consuming and deconstructing, and a small sample size can be sufficient.

The Difference Explained

Popular culture tells us that the more we read, the better our output will be. The problem with this pervasive myth is that it treats reading like a quantitative processing machine, as if the brain simply downloads everything it needs to know about writing well through sheer volume of exposure. It is not the case.

When someone reads, let’s say, fifty novels a year for pleasure, they are experiencing narrative linearly. They become immersed in the plot, feeling the emotional beats as intended, but high volume often leads to passive intake: the mechanics of why the story works fade into the background, and the dominant tropes and stylistic quirks of current publishing trends bleed into their subconscious without much filtering.

Deconstruction, on the other hand, is intentional and architectural.

When you read with an analytical eye, you aren't just absorbing words, you’re studying the skeleton. You are looking for patterns and connections. You notice how dialogue carries unsaid subtext, how tension escalates in a scene, and how character motivations clash or combine forces to drive the plot forward.

One book analyzed with surgical focus yields more knowledge of the craft than fifty books devoured for pure entertainment.

My brain operates like a collage studio (and I’m not just saying that because I’m a collage artist). Instead of absorbing and recycling trends and tropes from contemporary literature, I gain structural understanding and functional intuition through different sources, namely:

1. Visuals: When you’ve spent years engaging with visual media, you absorb spatial knowledge of composition, framing, and pacing. You learn how to raise the stakes and when to let a moment breathe. You can effectively analyze character arcs, dialogue rhythm, and plot twists just as you can through print-based mediums.

2. Psychological observation: Real life is the raw experience. By studying how real people behave and interact, you develop eyes and ears for subtext (and maybe some degree of regret). I’ve observed countless people online and in person, individuals as well as groups and communities. Truth be told, you will come away enlightened, but no longer surprised. Your characters might continue to surprise you, though.

3. Rabbit holes: Pulling structural inspiration from outside novels—history, folklore, religion, and other bodies of knowledge, especially more niche corners—is how you broaden your perspective and deepen your understanding of the world. This mental cross-pollination fosters nuances that written fiction can’t replicate alone.

Why the Myth Persists

Western society is weirdly Protestant about suffering. If you’re not suffering, are you even living? Are you even learning? Do you even have a soul?

The literary establishment has always had a history of elitism, looking down its nose at every other non-literary storytelling medium. Popular culture romanticizes the tortured, solitary genius surrounded by stacks of first-edition greats, making blood sacrifices upon the altar of the masters to birth their 500-page-long magnum opus.

I’ll admit, I kind of like the aesthetic too. But I don’t envy it. I prefer gliding through short stories and fairy tales, feeling the sweet, magical winds on my face. A novel is a commitment that I can’t pretend to enjoy if I’m not enjoying it, and really, I just don’t enjoy novels in general. I think many of them could have been cut down in length, but because writing and publishing cultures value the novel above all other literary forms (especially since publishers want to stay in business), most people will continue believing that they must write a novel if they wish to be a “true” writer.

I’ll say one good thing about the literary establishment of the past, though: there was a real focus on treating books like fine wine, savoring and evaluating them with the same care and attention to detail. A slow, reflective, methodical approach was once encouraged and appreciated, the mark of a sophisticate. Now we have book hauls, book challenges, and book influencers. It’s all about what’s hot. It’s all about how many books you can read in a year so you can brag to strangers on the internet. Sure, people are reading, but are they reading?

There is another, rarely discussed benefit to keeping a small literary footprint: it protects your work from the echo chamber.

When a writer consumes a large number of contemporary bestsellers a year, it is almost impossible not to absorb the styles, pacing, archetypes, and tropes of the current publishing climate. Admitting that non-literary mediums are just as valuable would raise the curtains on MFA programs and literary gatekeepers, exposing them as the (expensive) middlemen we don’t actually need that much.

So consider this your permission to drown out the noise about reading as much as you can, to stop treating reading like a competition, and to start spending more time with the books you genuinely love (to deconstruct), however few.