Writers read. You’ve probably heard the advice many times — you can’t expect to write well in a genre you don’t read.

But I’m going to add a caveat. Great writer’s don’t just read. They analyze.

I recently attended Donald Maass’s Fire in Fiction workshop, and among other things, he “deconstructed” Susan Wigg’s romance, Just Breathe. He chose Just Breathe because it’s an “out-of-category” book, a novel that was a huge success among readers who don’t typically read the genre.

But he did more than just note a few things that worked or didn’t work. He did an indepth analysis, one that requires at least two readings, one of them deep.

First, Maass made a list of every character in the book, with a brief description (including significant relationships). Then he listed every scene in the book, and noted who the POV character was and what happened in the scene. When he finished, he totaled the number of scenes and calculated the percentage of scenes that were in each character’s POV.

Of three POV characters, there was a clear main character, the heroine, who has fifty percent of the scenes (the hero has thirty percent, and his daughter twenty). On another day, Maass analyzed an out-of-category suspense novel (The Virgin of Small Plains by Nancy Pickard), and it showed a similar pattern. Pickard had more POV characters, but the vast majority of scenes were from one of three POVs, with one clear main character.

But the most interesting part of the exercise to me was the scene analysis. By looking at the book scene by scene, we were able to see many things a more casual reader wouldn’t notice. Maass listed basic plot points, of course, but he also noted symbolism, parallels with other events in the story, the purpose of the scene, etc. The descriptions weren’t lengthy, but important points were definitely included.

You may not be trying to write an out-of-category book, but the exercise is still helpful. Just choose a well-written book in your genre. As an example, here are the first few chapters of Jeannie Ruesch’s Something About Her. This example isn’t as indepth as it should be because you can’t really analyze just the first few chapters. You need to see the big picture, and to see that, you have to do the entire book. But it’ll give you an idea what an analysis might look like.

I’m eight scenes in (five chapters), and I’ve already learned some things about what makes the book strong. For instance, all the characters have a huge emotional stake in the outcome. They are all passionate, and they are all bigger-than-life, though not perfect. I can see parallells that are going to play out, over and over: Bethie hiding and manipulating her father, Blythe and Michael speaking clearly but misunderstanding each other, Blythe understanding Bethie when no one else does, Michael’s unwillingness to trust women, etc. Now, I have even more respect for Jeannie as an author. This book is extremely well-crafted.

Try it yourself. Choose a book from your genre, one you wish you had written. Go through it, scene by scene, looking particularly at these elements:

• How the author raises the personal stakes/give the POV character a strong emotional investment in the outcome
• Plot layers for the main characters
• Sub-plots (how many, how many needed, how many steps required to develop one)
• Parallels (events echoed by other events) and plants (things set up early in the story that pay off later)
• Symbols and important images
• Universal human experiences
• Purpose of scenes

Nancy Pickard, the other writer Maass analyzed, said her critique group spends one meeting a month deconstructing a book they’ve all read. Imagine how much better our writing would be if more of us did that.

It’s interesting to note that Pickard sat in the back of the room as Maass analyzed her novel — and she took notes. Much of what she’d done was unintentional, but she said she wanted to make sure she could do it again.

That’s OK, Maass said. Part of writing is opening yourself up to the process. ”You just have to trust that the inner storyteller is going to come up with the big stuff.”

So trust your inner storyteller — but give her some mighty powerful tools.