The Beauty of a Story

I wrote in a book. I scribbled in the margins, highlighted the most interesting quotes, and underlined until the page looked like a zebra. I probably drew a few frowny faces in there too.

What led me to such desecration of literature? Well, you asked.

It all started with a youtube video, as many things do. The video mentioned annotating as a way to understand books better. Intrigued by the recommendation to write in a book, I watched a couple more videos on the topic, as one does. After seeing multiple videos of beautifully color coordinated highlighters and stickers, I decided to try it myself.

I had a couple of reasons for trying annotating. I wanted to understand what I was reading better, and I wanted to study story craft. How did great authors create their stories? What made a story one we remember and come back to again and again? These were some of the questions I was trying to answer with annotating.

My tools were simply a pen and a blue highlighter. Blue only because I like the color. No fancy tabs, no color coding, I am not that artsy. And besides, all of that was unsustainable for me. Simpler is better in the long run.

I chose ‘The Great Gatsby’ to be my test run annotation. I had read the book before and loved it, yet enough time had lapsed there were things I had forgotten in the story. Did I still love it? Time to find out.

And then, I began.

I won’t go into all of the nitty gritty of everything I did and annotated. Instead, I want to give some general realizations and lessons I learned while annotating.

First, annotating forces me to slow down. Like, really slow down. When I first started I think I got through ten pages in half an hour. Which, for me, is so slow I may as well be crawling along at a snails pace. At first it bothered me, this was going to take so much longer than I thought it would. Later, I appreciated the forced slowing of pace. Sometimes I read so quickly the words don’t have time to sink into my mind until I am off to the next ones. This made me slow down and let the words sink in. I remember more of this story than the book I speed read for book club.

Second, annotating helped me to look beyond the story and into the framework. I always say I am going to study a story or an author, but I usually sink into the story so deeply I forget to analyze it. Which isn’t a bad thing, I can still enjoy stories, thank goodness. But when I want to learn from a story, getting distracted by that same story isn’t the best way to go about it. When I annotated, I analyzed each scene as to why it existed, what it did for the story, and asked myself questions about it. When I did that, I was able to learn what made it a good story and what made it different from other stories.

Third, I don’t understand as much as I pretend too. I am used to skating by on the knowledge I have. If I can’t figure something out, I move on and am content in ignorance. This includes words I don’t understand, what a plot hole is, and why on earth certain scenes are in ‘The Great Gatsby’. If I hadn’t been annotating, I would have shrugged off my ignorance and kept reading. Because I was taking the time to read and study the book, I didn’t move past a scene until I understood what was going on, or realized it was supposed to be a mystery. If I came across a word I wasn’t sure about, I looked it up. I even took a piece of humble pie and admitted when I was completely lost by the story. It was hard to admit this even to myself, but if I think I know everything, I won’t learn anything new.

So far, I have only annotated ‘The Great Gatsby’. Do I plan on doing another book? Definitely. The things I gained were worth the time commitment it takes to annotate a book. I know some people annotate while they read, and it goes much quicker. If I wanted to annotate a book with just my personal thoughts, it would go much faster. It is when I pair it with my goal of understanding a book better that it takes up so much time. Needless to say, I won’t be annotating every book I read, just the ones I want to study closely.

Did it make me a better writer? Well, the jury is still out on that one. I’ll let you know when I figure it out.

Have a great week everyone!

Shaina Merrick

P.S. I did figure out what a plot hole is.