Levels of investment in reading

1
Levels of investment in reading

• How we get stuff on the page into our brains.

2
Scan

• Looking around for specific information
• Get in and get out of the document
• Non-linear

3
Skim

• Looking around for non-specific information
• Getting an overview
• Start to finish
• Linear

4
Receptive Read

• Start to finish
• Linear

5
Critical Read

• Annotating and Marking up the text
• Start to finish
• Repeating in part or whole for clarity and
  further thought
• Rereading
• Recursive

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What are you looking for when you annotate?
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A page from the Babylonian Talmud
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The Elements of Fiction

• The Writers Toolkit

9
Plot

• The sequence of events in a story and their
  relation to one another as they develop and
  usually work towards resolving a central
  conflict.
• The arrangement of events in a story tells what
  happens, but the order of events also implies why
  things happen in the story.

10

• Many plots follow a classic structure
• Exposition
• Introduces characters, setting, and situation
• Rising Action
• Dramatization of events that complicate the
  situation and gradually intensify the conflict
• Climax/Turning Point
• The storys emotional high point
• Falling Action
• Where the problem or conflict proceeds towards
  resolution
• Conclusion
• Bringing the sequence of related events to an end

11
Character

• Round vs. Flat
• Static vs. Dynamic
• Sentimentality
• Stereotypes

12
Setting

• The time and place of a story
• Establishes the context within which a story
  appears
• External reality of the setting often is posed
  against the internal life of the characters

13
Point of View (PoV)

• Involves the authors choice of narrator for the
  story
• PoV dictates the language the author uses to tell
  the story

14
PoV First-Person Narration

• Implies that the narrator is a participant in the
  story. Can be a major or minor character.
• Utilizes the pronoun I

15
PoV Third-Person Narration

• Implies that the narrator is a non-participant in
  the story.
• Uses pronouns he, she, and it
• The narrator can be
• Omniscient seeing into the minds of all
  characters
• Limited Omniscient seeing into one, or
  sometimes two characters minds
• Objective seeing into none of the characters
  minds

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PoV Second-Person Narration

• Rare style of narration
• Uses pronoun you
• Forces identification between reader and
  character
• Difficult narrative stance to maintain
• Bright Lights, Big City, by Jay McInerney
• A Prayer for the Dying, by Stewart ONan

17
Style and Voice

• Style refers to the language the author uses to
  create fiction.
• Includes things like sentence length and
  complexity, word choice and placement,
  punctuation, etc.
• Voice refers to the total effect of the authors
  stylistic choices
• Conveys the imaginary landscape of fiction

18
Symbolism and Allegory

• A literary symbol can be anything in the storys
  setting, plot or characterization that suggests
  an abstract meaning.
• An allegory is a specific type of story, where
  all the details of the story carry symbolic
  value, and their interactions are meant to reveal
  a moral truth.

19
Theme

• A generalization about the meaning of the story.
• To be true, a statement of theme must apply to
  any and all specific details in the story.
• The theme itself is realized through the act of
  writing just writing down the big thematic
  idea is boring and useless.