How to review books: questions to ask yourself, structure of a review, literature analysis, and plot summary
Everyone is going to review books differently, and there are many wonderful styles. Here's my thoughts. (Please, share your thoughts with me, because I'm always trying to learn and improve here.) I try to apply these concepts on my youtube channel, Chloe Frizzle.
Things to talk about
Here are some questions that I ask myself when I'm brainstorming what to talk about in a long book review. I don't fill out all of them, just whatever questions strike my fancy that time.
REMEMBER: why is each point important? Did it help or hurt my reading experience?
Unorganized thoughts
- My tagline, main point, general thoughts
- Plot Summary
- Pros
- Cons
My reactions
- How could this book be improved?
- favorite/least favorite parts
- Changing opinions as the book progressed
- Why was I hooked?
- agreeing/Disagreeing with character's decisions. The feels. Times when I laughed. Re-readablitity.
Plot quality
- Pacing, structure, turning point, climax
- mystery and escalating tension and foreshadowing, Confusing/well shaped things
- Satisfying ending?
- Tropes. Genre.
- Where does the plot armor/implausibility show through? What I wish would have happened, fanfic scenes. What is missing from the book? Predictions.
World, words
- Worldbuilding, setting
- Magic system?
- Exposition quality
- Voice and tone and prose and style
Themes
- What is this book ABOUT? What is it's point?
- Symbols and Motifs, irony and contractions, etc.
- What did I learn while reading? Did this book change me? What does this book mean to me?
Character quality
- favorite and hated characters. Relatable? Likeable? Skilled?
- Inner/outer conflict, arcs. motivations, active vs passive. Do they want to change?
- how we learn about them, narrators & POV. The way that they see themselves, the way others see them.
- Roles they play, interactions, foils, relationships!
- Backstory, mental landscape. Where will they go now?
Connections, etc
- What are similar books to this one? Uniqueness / derivativeness. Who would I recommend this book to?
- Compared to other books in the series, by this author
- Sexism, inclusivity, etc.
- How would this be a movie? what song goes with it?
- Audiobook quality
- Other?
How to organize a review
After doing this brainstorming, I will organize the points in a way that they build on each other. Lists can be boring, but a narrative structure is exciting. Therefore, a good book review should have some sort of structure, not just a list of things (this is the hard part).
(A video by Every Frame a Painting talking more about points building on themselves instead of a list of points: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GXv2C7vwX0)
What structure is that? There are lots of different structures that you could apply. Here are my favorite ones to play with.
- Transitions from point to point. Give little segues between your topics/points. "Which leads us to..." "Which is like..." "In contrast, ..." Even if they aren't super connected to each other, this gives the illusion that they are connected. That the order that the points are in matters.
- Build to an actual conclusive thesis/point of it all. Even if the thesis is just something like, "I liked this book." Make every one of your topics/points build to that thesis. Frame your topics/points as evidence to the larger thesis.
- Combining numbers one and two: each of your topics/points should be able to be connected with a but OR therefore. The points build logically on each other and have nice segues.
Audiences and plot summary
In a book review, you have two audiences that you need to consider. People who have already read the book, and people who have not.
For people who have already read the book, too much summary of the book's plot (in a book review) is boring. For people who haven't read the book, not enough plot summary is confusing. So, how do you make the plot summary the right length? Not so short that it's confusing, but not so long that it's boring.
First, only summarize the plot points that are important to your review. If there is a romantic subplot that you don't talk about in your review, you don't need to mention it in your plot summary. Cut out all of the unneeded fluff in your plot summary.
Second, do it in an exciting way. If you are just reading the blurb on the back of the book, that's probably not an exciting way. Do it in your own voice, with your emotion showing through.
Third (and most importantly), you have to give your audience a reason to care. If you start off your review with a plot summary, it's hard to care about it at all. Because the audience doesn't know your relation to the book, doesn't know which parts of this summary are going to be important. So, before you give the summary, give your overall thoughts on the book. What are your main feelings on the book? Positive or negative? Why? You only need a few sentences here, just enough to get your audience to care about your review. Then you can give the summary.
(Great example of great summary-after-initial-thoughts in by Chandler Ainsley https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsBvGsm70Jc&list=PLtvWhKu6HgOm07NARASaO5e37YSoetiCH&index=23)
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