oh wow… that’s a really good question. i’d say there are at least three layers to it. let’s call them the ummm skeletal system, muscular system, and nervous system. please don’t judge my obvious lack of technical training in writing and reliance on analogies.

the skeletal system is to me the architectural bones of the piece of writing. for fiction, it’s things like the traditional three-act system (beginning–middle–end; thesis–development–conclusion), chekhov’s guns, the “believability” of a character, worldbuilding (which is never exclusive to sff!)—just anything that gives it shape, stability, and a sense of proportion. a weak skeleton produces a text that collapses; at its worst, it’d be meandering, incoherent, or structurally unsound regardless of how well it may be written sentence by sentence. for this, you wanna look at plot or argumentative structure, genre conventions and formal constraints, narrative perspective and temporal arrangement, scene/chapter organization (i.e. did they haphazardly wrap up that chapter bc it’s served its purpose in the narrative?), logical progression of ideas, etc. does the structure support the work’s aims/core? are there missing, redundant, or misaligned components? could the work stand if its stylistic ornamentation were stripped away? this will look different depending on the work, ofc. your standard contemporary novel will not adhere to the usual inciting incident to denouement process—especially stories that are “plotless” (i’m not a believer in such a thing)—but any book, fiction or nonfiction, will have some sort of energy to it that’s upheld by an invisible skeleton.

on to the muscular system! (˵ •̀ ᴗ •́ ˵ ) ✧ this is my personal favourite part of writing, and also a key piece of my fav novels. i think of it as the force and motion of the text: how it moves, exerts pressure, and sustains momentum. it’s like—the rhythm. not just the language but how the language expresses forward energy. that includes pacing, scene dynamics and tension, when and how imagery and figurative language is subbed in, character agency and interaction, argumentative force and rhetorical effectiveness. does the writing carry the reader forward? where does it strain, stall, or overexert? are moments of emphasis & tension earned, and are they effective? a good and easy test here is dialogue, and partly why i like to recommend screenplays to people who ask about different approaches to reading & writing. this layer is also why i love writing arguments/confrontations, and why so many of salinger’s short stories & novellas feel like sorcery to me.

the nervous system is more the stuff they teach you in school, and what we’ve lost when we say we’ve lost media literacy. theme and subtext, symbolic and metaphorical networks, voice and tonal consistency, ethical/philosophical/ideological implications (especially if it’s in conversation with its historical context), and even things like reader engagement and cognitive/emotional impact. it’s more the interpretive and communicative intelligence of the work—not intelligence as in smart-ness, but its depth of thought and how easily accessed its reality is. what is the text aware of, and what does it ignore? how does it process experience and convey significance? does it respond intelligently to its historical, cultural, or literary context? i liken it to nerves bc it’s how the text generates meaning, registers sensation, and responds to context. there’s no such thing, truly, as looking too deep into it. i might say it myself as a marker that i know my opinion is under-argued, but no question is ever “too deep” or too unrelated when examining a text. there is always an answer, even or especially in what a text ignores. even that smut fic or romcom. it knows what it’s ignoring and why.

ultimately, i think of “reading like a writer” as hardly removed from literary criticism. you can get far by asking yourself “is this good? what makes it good/not good?” but a lot of the time it’s less about good-ness and more about which system might be underdeveloped, overdeveloped, or misaligned. a good work to me has smooth momentum from skeletal to muscular (structure enables motion), muscular to nervous (motion serves meaning), and nervous to skeletal (meaning justifies structure).

fingers crossed that this isn’t entirely incoherent and that there’s a takeaway here that counts as a half-answer. i totally understand what you mean, and i think the question is coming from an amazing place. i wish i asked myself this question sooner, and it’s helpful for me, too, to examine what i look at when i read. and to be clear, i don’t mean for this to be strictly objective! you’ll have your own preferences and your own style as a writer to finetune what you look for as an editor and critic, which are the two perspectives that i think makes a “good” writing exercise. but. i have rambled enough 🫢