How Reading Fiction Can Make You a Better UX Writer
Think before you speak. Read before you think. By all means — read. These 3 types of reading will give you greater control of your UX writing process. See for yourself.
Before I say anything, I want to thank two UX Writing rockstar educators Nicole Michaelis and Yuval Keshtcher. Their podcasts, articles, and pieces of advice have been immensely helpful in my UX Writing journey. It was their conversation on Writers in Tech that inspired me to write this article.
How Samuel Johnson viewed it
I never desire to converse with a man who has written more than he has read. — Samuel Johnson
If you are a person who writes for a living, whether as a UX writer, ghostwriter, or sales copywriter, this piece of advice may sound a little too obvious.
To give out, you need to take in first. You’ve always known that, right?
The man who said these words knew full well the importance of reading. His name was Samuel Johnson. He was an 18th-century English scholar who won fame namely as the author of A Dictionary of the English Language. It was the first modern dictionary in the English language that became widely used by the public.
Johnson is often referred to as England’s first influencer. Rightfully so, he knew a lot and had a lot to say.
Being the son of a bookseller, young Samuel grew up surrounded by quality literature. They were his family’s livelihood and eventually helped him enroll in Oxford. Though having frail health, Samuel grew to be a prominent literary critic and a prolific writer. He wrote 104 essays on the most random of topics, such as vanity, vultures (yes, the bird), and uncertainty of friendship.
Johnson spent a large amount of time on his masterpiece — the Dictionary. He employed several assistants for the copying and mechanical work but did most of the heavy lifting himself. His family house was filled with noise and disarray for at least ten years. (Although he promised he could finish the work in three). Finally, after a decade of meticulous work, writing, flipping through countless reference materials, and battling into self-doubt… he completed the work.
If you have ever worked on a written text, you surely know what self-doubt is.
Although Samuel Johnson might sound like a bookworm who rarely leaves the comfort of his library, his inner life did not resemble a stoic study at all.
Johnson was plagued by crippling anxiety, poor eyesight, and bouts of depression which he took for madness. This is what Walter Jackson Bate, a Pulitzer-winning author of Johnson’s biography had said about Johnson's early twenties:
One of the ironies of literary history is that its most compelling and authoritative symbol of common sense — of the strong, imaginative grasp of concrete reality — should have begun his adult life, at the age of twenty, in a state of such intense anxiety and bewildered despair that, at least from his own point of view, it seemed the onset of actual insanity. — Walter Jackson Bate
A person of strong emotions, he loved and suffered a lot.
We can only imagine what peace, consolation, and strength Johnson must have drawn from reading Homer, Milton, and Shakespeare, his favorite authors.
(Johnson was also funny and self-ironizing. Here is his own definition of the word dull: Not exhilaterating (sic); not delightful; as, to make dictionaries is dull work.” That's a dictionary-maker, speaking. Check out this great article about Johnson's humor on Vox.)
This was in the 18th century. Probably like me, you too have found comfort, inspiration, and your livelihood in reading and writing.
This article will discuss the theory of reading fiction and its three types. You will learn how each of them can improve your UX writing skills and put you in greater control of the writing process.
If you consider yourself a bookworm, you’ll love it.
If you don’t consider yourself a bookworm, please, don’t give up on me just yet.
You’ll be surprised how much you can gain in as little as 6 minutes.
What the scientists say
There is no doubt that reading has many benefits.
According to Alexandra Akinchina from the World Literacy Foundation, “reading is found to decrease blood pressure, lower heart rate, and reduce stress to significant degrees.” She backs up her claim with a 2009 research conducted by the University of Sussex. This research stated that “stress is reduced up to 68% just by reading. Only six minutes of reading can slow down the heart rate and improve overall health. Reading relaxes the body.”
Reading is the one thing you will never be able to go without, no matter your age, writing experience, or seniority.
Inspiration
If you’ve ever been anywhere around UX writing, you’ve most probably come across their names. Yuval is the CEO of UX Writing Hub, and the host of the Writers in Tech podcast. Nicole is a Senior UX Writer at Spotify and the host of the Content Rookie podcast.
Both podcasts are crème de la crème in the world of UX Writing. They are packed with practical advice for both aspiring and senior writers and anyone working with content.
Sharing is caring, and because I care — please go check them out.
Right from the start, Nicole admits she manages to average 2,5 books a week(!) Yet…
Yuval: “It’s hard to read, with all the attention grabbers.”
Nicole: “Yeah, it’s difficult.”
All readers struggle with buying out time to read, so you're not the only one whose time is short.
Then they go straight to the point.
Yuval: “How does your reading impact your work as a UX Writer?”
Nicole: “I think the main benefit is that I’m really open to exploring new ways of approaching my UX writing process but also just different ways of writing… Every time I start a new project, no matter how standard it is, like writing an error message… I feel that reading gives me input from many different types of writers, which makes it easier to approach it as a new thing instead of just getting into a routine mindset.”
Avoiding routine mindset. Thinking outside the box. Challenging industry best practices. Isn’t that how all great inventions and discoveries saw the light of the world?
What else is in it?
Nicole says: “Reading a lot makes me opinionated because UX writing requires you to stand up for your decisions, and reading has given me many different arguments into my back pocket.”
As a mentor myself, I couldn't agree more. I always appreciate (and encourage) when my mentees provide detailed rationales that back up their decisions and explain their thinking process.
Knowing the why makes the difference between a junior and a more senior writer.
With many arguments in the back of your pocket, it’s much easier to convey your point to people who do not understand design or words but bear responsibility.
We read to know we are not alone. — C.S. Lewis
Now, what kind of reading are we talking here about? Reading design-related books only?
Nicole: “You don’t have to read only design-related books. Pick up some fiction. Pick up short stories if you have a hard time focusing on an entire novel. Even if you dislike the book afterward, you can reflect on why didn't you like this book. Is it the specific style the writer uses? Is it the structure, too much jumping around the timeline? There’s so much you can take from reading! It’s really valuable when you reflect on your own writing and your writing process.”
Nicole makes a great point here. Even reading a book that you didn’t like is not a waste of time. If you explain to yourself why you didn't like the book you give your abstract feelings in a concrete form. Support them with evidence, quotes, facts about the book or the author. Go a little further to understand the why. Not only is this valuable training of your argumentative skills, but it also refines your literary taste.
Moreover, when it comes to UX copy exploration, reading fiction opens up new doors, corridors, why, entire palaces. It takes you outside the box of industry best practices. But, most of all, it teaches you to be empathetic with the user (and with the stakeholder, too).
Through fiction, you can step into different shoes, travel through centuries, wade through rivers, cross entire continents, and peer into the minds of those living in cultures and backgrounds very different from your own.
Thinking outside the box, being genuinely empathic, and founding your copy decisions on evidence, not feelings only. Is there anything more important in a UX writer’s skill set?
The entire episode is teeming with practical advice on reading, what to read, how to read, and the implications for the UX world. I recommend you check it out.
Thanks again, Yuval and Nicole.
This podcast episode made me think about what I learned about reading fiction during my university studies.
To control your thinking process, you need to be in control of your reading first. Let’s look at reading fiction from a little off-beat perspective and what it means for us — UX writers.
Author → Text → Reader
Whether a 2-page short story or a novel of the length of War and Peace, every artistic literary work is a form of communication.
How so? Generally, literary scholars visualize it this way:
The author (from lat. auctor — originator) communicates with the reader (or lector) through the text. These are the three basic components of every literary communication.
Authors draw on their unique life experiences and use their own particular language (also known as idiolect) to produce a literary text. The author is always trying to say something in their texts.
That something is very different with each author and each text. In different texts, the same author may strive to convey different messages. Authors use artistic tools, such as symbols and metaphors to encode their ideas in their texts.
Take the famous blue curtains as an example. Sometimes, the curtains in a novel are blue, and it does mean something. Other times the curtains are blue, and it means absolutely nothing. Do seemingly useless arguments with your high-school English teacher make sense now?
What does it depend on, then? The reality, the tradition, and the author’s intent.
Every literary text is anchored in reality and in tradition.
No text is a lone island in the sea of literature. Each reflects reality. The reality can reveal the writer’s own fantastic world (a sci-fi novel) or actual historical events and facts (a novel set in actual past or present). The Martian reflects a different reality than that of Angels and Demons, and both reflect realities different from the one in Ivanhoe.
What is the tradition we’re talking about? As we've said, no literary text stands on its own, but it comes within a particular literary tradition. We all know and admire great masterpieces that “disrupted the industry” by being completely novel, different from other books written and published at that time.
My favorite example is Jean-Jacques Rousseau who brought into the mainstream vivid descriptions of men’s emotions and feelings. It was as if his writing was led by emotions. Something unheard of in the 17th century. (His epistolary novel Julie ou la Nouvelle Heloise is a stellar example of this approach.)
Young adult sagas have been extremely popular in recent years. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Catcher in the Rye, or The Hunger Games at different points either established or contributed to the literary tradition we call today Young adult fiction (YA).
Let’s go back to our example with blue curtains. Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray is rife with symbols, and blue curtains may be one such symbol. In The Fault in Our Stars, blue curtains may mean what they actually are — an interior decoration. Why? Because these books came within a different tradition, were written for different audiences with different purposes, and are reflecting different realities.
A literary text is one that was written with the purpose of conveying aesthetic experience (e.g. a poem, a novel, or a play). It is not your company’s voice & tone guide or a recipe for Basque-style fish with green peppers and manila clams. Although both of them can have certain aesthetic value, their primary function is to inform, not to facilitate an artistic experience.
If this sounds abstract and philosophical, you bet it is. It’s like that with all humanities — Linguistics, Literature, Philosophy, History, and others. All these concepts exist so abstractly in our heads, but they translate into our actions in such a concrete way.
Isn’t it beautiful?
I can’t write without a reader. It’s precisely like a kiss. You can’t do it alone. — John Cheever
Now to the reader or lector. Who is the author trying to kiss?
The purpose of every literary text is to affect the reader’s emotions and feelings. That’s why we are so happy to revisit that scene in War and Peace where Natasha Rostovova intuitively dances to folk music. For the same reason, we go back to The Grapes of Wrath where Rose gives birth and we read her story over and over again. They incite emotions in us.
The reader is a partner to the author. The text was written to be read, not to be stored on a shelf. By reading the text, the reader completes the communication flow (see the scheme above).
As readers, we perceive the text within the context of reality and tradition we discussed earlier. These influence how we read and interpret a text. When we read, we interpret.
Have you ever realized how much power this position gives you? Your favorite author did not write your favorite book without taking you into consideration. The author wrote it to influence your feelings, convey an idea, or inspire… you. It is through reading a literary text that you, a reader, finish the communication, receive the author's thoughts, and keep it alive.
You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them. — Ray Bradbury
What type of reader are you?
Now you know who's who in the act of reading. But reading has different levels of depth. Scholars categorize readers into these three types.
Type 1 — Naive reader
A naive reader is fully immersed in the story. They read for pleasure, identify fully with the characters, cry when the characters cry, laugh when the characters laugh.
A typical example of a naive reader is a child reading a bedtime story.
The child is completely immersed in the narrative. It and gets very excited when the knight sets out to kill the dragon. It laughs when the evil character trips over and falls into a well and is genuinely relieved when the knight eventually gets to marry the princess
A naive reader does not distinguish the boundaries between reality and fiction. They believe everything they read is true.
(In addition to children reading fairy tales, many naive readers can be found on Facebook.)
Type 2 — Sentimental reader
The sentimental reading reduces the text to particular motives and topics that the reader identifies with. For example, I’m sure many of you like Tolstoy’s famous novel Anna Karenina. Many (if not most) read this novel because of the love story between married Anna and Count Vronsky. The story is captivating, to see how Anna rebels against society and dives deep into an ill-fated love with a handsome military officer is still appealing today. However, like all of Tolstoy’s works, this novel contains profound philosophical passages where characters discuss and meditate on topics like life, death, and happiness.
A sentimental reader is most often not interested in this. They are interested in the story and how it resonates with them.
A sentimental reading can also be referred to as feedback reading. While reading, the reader is looking for the emotions that the text gives them. This is a deliberate action, in contrast with children who may not read a bedtime story with the purpose of experiencing positive (or any) emotions.
Type 3 — Discursive reader
A discursive reader is the most advanced reader. It is often the type of reading that literary critics, scholars, or just any intellectual readers engage in.
Discursive readers read a literary text knowing it is a quasi-universe, that it is not real. They see the clear boundaries between story and reality.
You probably know George Orwell’s novel 1984. If you are a naive reader, you are entirely immersed in the story, horrified at Big Brother’s totalitarian control of everyone’s lives. You nearly cry when Winston is being tortured. You cannot control your emotions as you read. Moreover, you believe the story is real.
If you are a sentimental reader, you go a little deeper, looking for something you can identify with on an emotional level. Perhaps the love story of Winston and Julia, set in a totalitarian apocalypse, strikes a chord with you. If you are a language enthusiast, maybe you enjoy reading the grammatical structure of Newspeak.
However, as a discursive reader, you stand above the text. You accept everything that happens in the story as fiction. You don’t view the story through the prism of your own feelings but through your intellect instead. You study the structure of the novel. Or you examine how George Orwell’s political beliefs are displayed in the story. Or you read the text looking for the influences of Jack London, who greatly influenced Orwell. It’s scholarly work and hard work above all.
Have you ever said to yourself: “Those literary critics, man, all they do for a living is read books! I wish I had a job where I could read the whole day!”
I assure you, any literary critic would promptly disagree. For them, books they work with at work are not their pastime. It’s a demanding mental activity. They are busy being discursive readers all day long.
Please do not think that only discursive reading is acceptable, and if you ever read for pleasure, you’re blatantly wasting your time. Some literary texts aren’t meant to be analyzed in such detail as 1984. Some novels are intended to be simply enjoyed (for me, these are novels from John Grisham).
The point here is to be in control of your own perception as you read. Whether it’s a romantic novel set in the heart of Africa or an existentialist trip into a melancholic soul (also set in Africa), the point is you realize how you’re reading and for what reason. It’s wonderful to immerse into the story, read for the sheer pleasure of reading. I love doing so. And it’s equally okay to read Brothers Karamazov seeking to comprehend the latter decades of Imperial Russia and what lead to its fall.
The point is to be in control of your own perception. Many times, these types of reading overlap! You may read Anna Karenina because you enjoy the story (sentimental reader), but you are more interested in Levin’s philosophical soliloquies because you study them for your thesis (discursive reading).
Note: Content for this section was taken from the lectures in the Theory of Literature by Prof. Andrea Boknikova, PhD. of the Comenius University. The lectures with all references can be accessed here.
I took a speed-reading course and read War and Peace in twenty minutes. It involves Russia. — Woody Allen
What reading fiction can do for your UX writing
How can all this theory help you in your UX writing career?
If you are a UX writer, your main job is to step into your users' shoes. Most likely, in your career, you have worked with different digital products for users who expect to be spoken to in different voices and want to accomplish different things.
The products and users are often as different as a night and a day. One day, you are working on a stock management app for restaurants in the UK. Another day you are designing an app interface that the police and military will use to scan COVID certificates at the borders.
You encounter users from all walks of life and try to understand how you can help them.
Isn’t that what reading fiction does, too?
Reading fiction transports you across cultures, ages, eras, and events. It takes you from past to present to distant future in a blink of an eye. From under the earth (Journey to the Center of the Earth) all the way to distant galaxies (The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy).
The people you meet are very different, too. You meet murderers with an awoken conscience (Crime and Punishment); vicious kings and princes (Hamlet); wealthy merchant families with their broken dreams in pre-war Germany (Buddenbrooks); murderous monks with fiery passions and vices lurking in dark monasteries of medieval Italy (The Name of the Rose). You encounter charismatic Swedish priests with complicated mother-son relationships (The Löwensköld Ring); suicidal lovers suffering from the conflict between the dream and reality (The Sufferings of Young Werther), and first-century Christians persecuted by fanatic and mentally challenged Emperor Nero (Quo Vadis).
You encounter not only people but also animals, like heavily depressed cockroaches in pre-war Prague (The Metamorphosis); even sadder half-dead horses (Don Quixote); but also an aggressive fish that fights its predator with every ounce of vigor (The Old Man and the Sea). You don’t stop there. As if you were hearing living things, letters and grammatical constructions talk to you (La Grammaire Est Une Chanson Douce), but not just them — physical constructions, like an immense Ottoman-era bridge in Bosna that witnessed the change of times (The Bridge on the Drina), recount their story.
You become intimately acquainted with lavish saloons full of hypocrisy in 19th century St. Petersburg (The Idiot), and hungry Moscow besieged by Napoleonian armies (War and Peace). There are no border controls between you a rural English mansion where an old valet mourns his unfulfilled dreams (The Remains of the Day). From there, it is hardly a stretch of the imagination to see a young man ruthlessly climbing the post-revolutionary social ladder in Paris (The Red and The Black). You get to see the international nature of renaissance Istanbul with her workshops (My Name Is Red), and you take a quick flight to the USA, where the absence of love makes two brothers hopelessly reenact the story of Cain and Abel (East of Eden).
Yes, each time you read a fictional, you do something for your writing career.
“Somebody who only reads newspapers and at best books of contemporary authors looks to me like an extremely near-sighted person who scorns eyeglasses. He is completely dependent on the prejudices and fashions of his times, since he never gets to see or hear anything else.” — Albert Einstein
Conclusion
Reading has so many benefits that this article cannot possibly contain them.
If you struggle with finding time to read, start small.
Take a novel you’ve always wanted to read and just start. If a novel is too much, follow Nicole's recommendation and pick up a collection of short stories. And if you don’t have a book on your shelf that you've always wanted to read, pick one of the ones mentioned above. They’re all worth it. All of them were written by renowned authors, mostly Nobel Prize laureates.
Give it six minutes a day, and don't give up.
That is six minutes of traveling a day.
Six minutes of meeting new people.
Six minutes of empathizing with other people's problems.
These six minutes will have an incredible impact on your mind, body, and soul, and on your writing career.
And one more thing.
If you’re reading this, that means you belong to the 86% of this world's population who can read.
Use this privilege to the full.
Reading fiction is important. It is a vital means of imagining a life other than our own, which in turn makes us more empathetic beings. Following complex story lines stretches our brains beyond the 140 characters of sound-bite thinking, and staying within the world of a novel gives us the ability to be quiet and alone, two skills that are disappearing faster than the polar icecaps. — Ann Patchett
