The Secret Behind Words

We all know that there’s always improvement in our writing, but we’ve never really used writer’s example. When we read it’s for our own pleasure, to get lost in a world completely different to our own. Other people read because they’re designated to read a certain book for class not because they want to read. But most of all we read for information, we read to understand things, to learn new things, to learn how to do things. Personally, I never read to improve my writing and after reading the article “How to Read Like a Writer” I realized that if I actually put thought into focusing on the writing techniques the writer uses it might actually help me improve my writing.
After recently re-reading The Host I realized that the author has a distinctive way of writing and specifically portraying her characters and making them come to life. The Host is science fiction novel about an alien invasion, these aliens call themselves souls, and take control of the human body erasing the consciousness of the people just leaving behind their memories and knowledge. The author really shows the bonds between her characters and how they grow together. Even though the plot is great I personally believe that the characters bring the story to life because they seem so real.
Her technique is she makes her character emotionally relate to the readers. The characters she creates are so emotionally human, they feel like we do and act like we do. She has an almost accurate definition of our own personal definition of beauty. “It’s not the face, but the expressions on it. It’s not the voice, but what you say. It’s not how you look in that body, but the thing you do with it. You are beautiful.” And even though it’s highly romanticized it’s still very true. Though society has a different opinion of beauty we have our own.
She thinks that there needs to be a balance in life, you can’t know happiness if you don’t know pain. “Perhaps there could be no joy on this planet without an equal weight of pain to balance it out on some unknown scale.” The technique she uses here is using her own characters to portray her own personal opinions. I’ve seen many writers use this, so they speak freely without the responsibility of their words unless they specifically say the words are their own opinion.
Just like her definition of beauty she has her own definition of love and hatred that some of us can relate to in some way. “What was it that made this human love so much more desirable to me than the love of my own kind? Was it because it was exclusive and capricious? The souls offered love and acceptance to all. Did I crave a greater challenge? Or was it simply better somehow? Because these humans hate with so much fury, was the other end of the spectrum that they could love with more heart and zeal and fire?” she describes love through the voice of the protagonist which just so happens to be a “soul” and the alien describes love in what she has learned through her time with the humans. The author uses the “soul’s” voice to portray her own vision of the love and hatred humans feel.
If we look closely there are so many techniques in writing that we should develop ourselves when we write.

Works Cited

Bunn, Mike.”How to Read Like a Writer.” Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing. Ed. Charles Lowe and Pavel Zemliansky. Vol. 1. West Lafayette, IN: Parlor P, 2010. 71-86. Writing Spaces. Web. 2 Feb. 2016.

Meyer, Stephenie. The Host. New York: Little, Brown, 2008. Print.