The Best Writing Teacher You Can Get for $20

Maybe you’d like to work with a writing teacher, but you can’t afford it right now. What if there was a cheaper way to learn more about writing?

I made a trip to Colorado last month.

From my place, that’s about a day’s worth of driving.

I’m not big on long road trips. I suffered a back injury many years ago, and though I’m fully recovered, my body still suffers when I sit for too long. Events required I push through in one day, though, so I knew I’d need something to keep me going. I decided to get an audiobook.

My choice:  Die Trying, by Lee Child—an author I had wanted to read, but hadn’t had a chance to, yet. Fourteen hours of CDs. Perfect for the trip down and back.

The Writing Teacher Many Writers Don’t Know About

It took me awhile to get used to Child’s style. Short, simple sentences, ones that almost sound choppy to my ear, but that efficiently move an action scene, which in Child’s books, happen frequently.

The book did what I hoped—kept my mind focused on the story, so I had little attention left for whatever aches and pains occurred in the later hours of the trip.

About a week later, I returned home and got back into my writing practice. Within a few minutes, I noticed something: Child’s voice in my ear. Not “his” voice, in particular, but his writing voice.

My action scenes moved a little more easily. His ability to describe a room hung with me, too—his way of dropping in the dimensions, the materials used to make the walls, the sounds around the building.

All I could think was: cool. By simply riding in the car and listening, I had learned something that improved my writing. Easily.

I hadn’t expected the effect, but I wasn’t really surprised. Back in 2013, I spent a week listening to master writers read from their works every night. I absorbed more about how to write during that week than I did in years of doing everything else a writer does to improve.

So why don’t we listen more often?

Writers Learn by Listening

I’ve been a music teacher for over 20 years. One thing that all good music teachers do is combine “listening” with other teaching methods.

We play with our students to help them hear how a line should sound. Give them professional recordings so they can absorb the “tone” of a particular instrument.

We accompany them on the piano so they can hear how two parts should flow together. We send them to concerts, when we can, where they can hear accomplished soloists and ensembles.

We learn a second language in a similar manner. If we take a class, we listen to the teacher speak. Often, we aren’t allowed to hear anything but the new language in class. We listen to recordings. If we’re lucky, we travel to locations where people speak the language.

Immersing ourselves is the key—not just through reading and study, but through our ears.

I think we should adapt more of these methods when practicing writing.

A Writing Teacher You Absorb Through the Ears

Talk to most accomplished writers and you’ll learn that they read their stuff out loud.

“Usually at the end of writing every chapter I’ll print out and read aloud,” says novelist Kamila Shamsie. “It’s about the sound of the sentences.” She doesn’t have to think about “why a particular clump of syllables sounds wrong to my ear. I just know that it does.”

Turns out the ears are extremely important to a writer. You need to be able to “hear” how your prose is sounding, and if you have a good ear, you can detect the problems just by listening.

According to the “Writing Center” at the University of Northern Carolina, Chapel Hill, “When you read your draft out loud or listen to someone else read it, your brain gets the information in a new way, and you may notice things that you didn’t see before.”

Hearing your work out loud, you may find gaps in your explanations, clunky sentences, unrealistic dialogue, and other things you never noticed when reading quietly. Perhaps most importantly, it helps you better establish your writing voice.

“Listening to yourself—whether in the moment or recorded—more closely identifies the writing to YOU,” says writing guru Jane Friedman, “helps you think more about how this is YOUR story, and that it’s YOU who uniquely decides what story you want to tell.”

Writer Susan Orlean tweeted that it’s “the single best tool for self-editing.”

For me, though, it’s not just reading your work aloud that helps. If you’re serious about improving as a writer, you need to listen to other writers’ works read out loud.

Try This Writing Teacher: Audiobooks Force You to Pay Attention

Audio books are great for commutes. You can get more books “read” by listening to them while driving, and maybe even while you’re walking, cleaning, or doing something else with your hands that prevents you from holding a book (or ereader). And getting more books read is a great way to become a better writer.

But it’s not just about how many books you get into your brain. Laura Hillenbrand, bestselling author of Seabiscuit and Unbroken, struggles with chronic fatigue syndrome. She takes medications that mask many of the symptoms, but still suffers from chronic vertigo and disorientation. When it gets bad, she can’t focus well enough to read.

So she turns to audiobooks.

According to New York Times reporter Wil S. Hylton, Hillenbrand has trouble focusing her eyes on the page during flare-ups of her condition. Over the last 15 years, she has listened to hundreds of audiobooks, and has stated she believes listening to audiobooks has improved her writing:

“It has taught me a lot more about the importance of the rhythm of language. Good writing has a musical quality to it, a mathematical quality, a balance and a rhythm. You can feel that much better when it’s read aloud.”

When Listening to AudioBooks: You Have to Pay Attention

One other thing I notice when reading audiobooks: you have to tune in. Zone out for even a few seconds and you lose the train of the story.

Audiobooks help you develop your focusing skills, but also help your brain really pay attention to the words, the rhythm of the phrases, and the way the story flows.

Even when reading a book, we can get caught up in the story and zoom through the pages without really registering the prose. Impossible to do when you’re listening. You have to focus on what you’re hearing.

The Writing Teacher That Makes You a Better Writer

I invite you to try it. Listen to more audiobooks. Vary your choices so you are exposed to a variety of different voices. Let them worm their way through your ears and into your brain.

Don’t worry about being overly influenced. Your brain has a way of taking what it receives, churning it up, and spewing out something that’s yours. It’s what we writers do all the time with everything else we’re exposed to in life.

Give your brain more sounds to listen to—sounds that are directly related to writing. Sounds that teach your brain about rhythm, cadence, pace, dialogue, setting descriptions, and more.

Sounds that almost like magic, can make you a better writer.

Do you regularly listen to audiobooks? Have you found they help improve your writing?