I have a question for the writers of hubski (we seem to have quite a few, which is awesome): How do you go about really analyzing some piece of writing?
When I look at other web sites/apps I often find myself at the very least thing how I would implement their features, and if I really like it looking at their (or something comparable if it's proprietary/server-side) source code. I'll end up learning a lot by doing this by seeing things like how they organize their code, which design patterns they use, etc. As an example, before I joined hubski I spent a lot of time looking at how it all worked: from analyzing HttpRequests so I could make my own API to figuring out how to implement my own version of hubski's disparate parts. This version wouldn't have been a replica of hubski though it would have been similar (much as we are to Hacker News).
Do writers do this for works they love? Pick apart things which moved them in some way to see how it was done? If so, how do you do it? What questions do you ask yourself as you read? Would you do something like write about or from the perspective of a character you felt was convincing to better understand them? Write a similar story with certain aspects changed to see how it comes across?
e: Thanks to everyone who responded, you've all given so much to think about I'm really taken aback.
For short stories, I used to re-write stories I liked, line by line. I don't mean re-type, I mean write down the first line and think about why the next line must inevitably come next and why it could have been different.
Writing well is all about making conscious choices and trying to put oneself into the mind of the author, trying to understand why a particular story had to be told in that way can be extremely instructive.
Then, I would consider how I would write that story and think about why I would approach it from a certain perspective and how my own experiences would shape it.
It's pretty similar with poems, except focusing on music, image, line breaks and movement (including wordplay).