Nancy Pearl’s Four Doors to Reading

Nancy Pearl is known in bookish circles as the Super Librarian (she even has an actual, real-life action figure). Besides being an all around awesome librarian, she has one particular theory that is especially helpful for writers. She has identified the four doorways into reading, aka the four reasons people fall in love with books.

The Four Doors

1. Story — Plot. Action. The sequence of events that the character(s) go through to reach the end. These are page turners, the books you can’t down, and that keep you needing to find out what happens next.
2. Character — People. Protagonists. Villains. Heroes. The cast of characters who embark on the story. Books in which the characters feel real and you miss them when the book is over.
3. Setting — Worldbuilding. This is what makes you feel like you’re in another place or time (or even this exact place and time). Makes the world feel familiar, and makes you want to live in or visit that place.
4. Language — Words. Grammar. Style. These books make you want to savor every word, to the point where you’re not sure you even know or care what the book is about.

Every book contains all four of these elements to varying degrees. You can’t write a story without character, plot, setting, and words. But often (usually) one or more doorways are bigger than others. The blockbuster books, the ones that become huge bestsellers across audiences and age groups, have four really big doors. Consider Harry Potter, the Hunger Games, and the Mortal Instruments. Can you think of any doorways lacking in these mega-franchises?

The Perfect Example

The very best, most perfect example I’ve ever seen of the four doors in action is in Joss Whedon’s Firefly. (Okay, yes, I know this is a TV series not a book, but the same rules apply.) If you haven’t seen this one season (plus a movie) space opera, then you are seriously missing out. Here’s how storytelling master Whedon exploits the four doors.

1. Story — Daring heists, old west style shoot outs, spaceship chases, outrunning the law, flesh-eating enemies. Each episode is a thrilling adventure, and the overall plot arc (that only gets resolved in the movie Serenity) keeps you on the edge of your seat.
2. Character — One of the best ensembles ever. Best. Ensemble. Ever. Between the anti-hero captain Mal, the responsible Zoe, the funny guy Wash, the free spirited Kaylee, the questionably-motivated Jayne… Oh, the list goes on. Each character is unique, fully fleshed, and completely compelling.
3. Setting — Part civil war, part Old West, part Star Trek, part The Walking Dead. A mesh of American and Chinese cultures. “Companions” are legitimate business women. From futuristic, sci-fi cities to rough and tumble saloons to uncivilized and barely colonized outer planets, the world of Firefly is broad and deep.
4. Language — Whedon is, as always, clever, witty, and snarky in his writing. He uses Chinese words as slang and makes “shiny” the standard okay/great response. He is also the master of giving each character a unique voice. Anyone who has seen the show can identify who said each of the following:
   • “My days of not taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle.”
   • “Everything’s shiny, Cap’n. Not to fret.”
   • “Also, I can kill you with my brain.”
   • “She is starting to damage my calm.”

If you haven’t seen Firefly and Serenity then please, go watch them. Right now. I’ll wait until you come back. (Seriously, it won’t take long. The entire series is only 13 episodes.) You won’t regret it.

Find Your Door

Discovering your door to reading is the first step in figuring out how to use the four doors to improve your writing. Since you should almost always write the books you want to read, so the books you write will probably have your doorway as the biggest door.

Don’t know which doorway is yours? Try this exercise. Think about your favorite book. Then start to tell someone about it. Usually the first thing you describe is a clue.

For example, I would say that my favorite book is Pride and Prejudice, which is the story of Lizzy Bennet, a girl who… From that, you can guess that I am clearly a character girl. A story can be weaker in plot, worldbuilding, and language, but if it has a compelling character I’m rooting for then I’ll probably love the book.

Writing the Doors

Because I’m a character-first reader, I am usually a character first writer. Once I have that kernel of an idea (a girl at a school for the descendants of Greek gods, a teen mermaid who accidentally bestows her magical first kiss on the wrong boy, descendants of Medusa who hunt monsters) then I spend the first stage of brainstorming working out exactly who will populate my story. Names, appearance, relationships. I have to know most of that before I start writing.

I imagine story-first readers would work on plot first and setting-first readers would work on world building. I’m not sure what language-first readers would work on first. Maybe they would just dive head first (or word first) into the writing.

Using the four doors to improve a story is a far bigger topic than can be tackled in a single blog post. (Though when I started, I totally thought I would knock it out in one go.) So stayed tuned for a short series on the four doors and how they can be applied to make your writing better and bigger.

Explore Some More

• read Hot-Wiring Nancy Pearl’s Sedan on PowellsBooks.Blog
• watch Reading with Purpose: Nancy Pearl at TEDxSeattleU and hear Nancy talk about the four doors in her own words (embedded below)