Analyzing Fiction

plot

the relationship and arrangement of events to create significance, raise the level or generality, or to extend/complicate the meaning

character

designed to open up or explore certain aspects of human experience, often depicting particular traits of human nature, complex conflicts, values, or emotions

setting

often will have particularly coded significance, can be used in contrasting and comparative ways to add significance, can be repeated, repeated with variations, etc.

narrator

someone (or more than one) who tells the story. they will see things from a certain perspective, or point of view, in terms of their relation to the eventss and in terms of their attitude(s) towards the events and characters

external narrator

outside the story, may be telling it with an objective and omniscient voice

internal narrator

a character (or characters) within the story, telling the story in the first person (either central or observer characters), may be reliable or unreliable

reflector character

a character that does not know that they are a character, a narration by an omniscient external narrator carries us into their thoughts

figurative language

used to characterize the sensibility and understanding of characters as well as to establish thematic and tonal continuities and significance

representation of reality

different narratives and forms of narrative represent different aspects of reality, and represent reality in different ways

world-view

structure of values, understanding of the world, ideological assumptions, claims made (often implicitly) about the nature of the world as the narrator and their cultural traditions understand it to be

language

abstract or concrete, emotions or of reason, control or of openness, connotations, experience, feeling, meaning, forcefulness, sound

sentence structure

sound, balance, force created by punctuation, stresses on words, rhythm, length, repetitions, parallels, flow

imagery

metaphors, similes, analogies, outlook, sensibilities, recurring motifs, ideas or feelings, people or events brought to mind, setting, mood, state of mind

discourse features

how long does the person speak, are sentences logically joined or disjointed, rational or otherwise disordered or disorderly, what tone or attitude does the talk seem to have, does the speaker avoid saying things, deliberately or unconsciously withhold information, communicate by indirection, to what extent and to what end does the speaker use rhetorical devices such as irony

characterization

what do the ideas expressed in the passage tell you about the speaker, what feelings do they express, what does that tell you about them, are their feelings consistent, does the character belong to a particular archetype or represent a certain idea, value, quality, or attitude,

genre and tradition

is it a satire, comedy, tragedy, romance, is it a certain sub-genre like a detective novel, science fiction, etc., allegory or a satire, realistic or symbolic? how does it use setting, characters, language, mood or tone?