Prose techniques

A. Genre

• conventions

• subverting conventions

• mixing genres

• fiction

• postmodernism

• political and protest writing

• postcolonialism

• bildungsroman

  etc

B. Narrative viewpoint

Where has the writer positioned the reader?

• third person omniscient perspective

• third person limited perspective

• third person intrusive narrator

• first person narrative perspective

• free indirect discourse

• stream of consciousness

• framed narrative

• multiple narrators

• epistolary form

B. Perspective and voice

• tone of voice

• direct speech/thought

• free direct speech

• reported/indirect speech/thought

  Dialogue:

• way that speech is tagged

• untagged speech

• length of character’s utterances

• features of dialect, phonological orthography, Non-Standard English or Standard English - cultural background, age, class

• ways that tone of voice and tone of narrative perspective are indicated - dashes, italics, exclamation marks, tag

• politeness features or a lack of them - commands, colloquialism, taboo words, interruptions

• rhythms of a character’s speech - disjointed, abrupt, controlled, calm

• use of interrogatives, imperatives, declaratives, exclamatives - to suggest personality and power

C. Structure, time and sequence

• chronological

• sequence

• non-linear

• flashbacks

• flashforwards

• slowed down

• sped up

• repeated

• memory

• suspended

• beginnings

• endings

• echoes

• repetition

• analepsis

• prolepsis

• foreshadowing

• external description

• introspection (inner lives)

• juxtaposing of different voices

• gaps and silences

• cohesion

• instances where motifs are used

• chapter headings

• titles of texts contrasts/juxtapositions

• use of tenses

• accumulation of detail

• revelations/epiphanies

D. Characterisation

• name of characters - significance, connections

• physical appearance

• imagery associated

• contrasts between characters

• what the character says and how they say it

• what other characters say about them

• what they do and their motives for action

• character’s thoughts and what others think of them

E. Settings and places

When story is set - era, century, season

Place of the story - United States

Environment - home

• weather

• social/cultural climate

• stage of life - childhood, adulthood

• symbols/motifs within a setting e.g. recurring objects

  Ways settings are presented:

• description - visual, sensory, adjectives

• imagery - repeated imagery or lexical fields

• contrast

• concrete detail

• detail or language strongly associated with the place

F. Literary and rhetorical devices

Syntax

• minor, simple, compound, complex

• repetition, triplication, parallelism, chiasmus, anaphora, epiphora

  Register

• poetic

• heightened

• informal

• colloquial

  Figurative language

• similie, metaphor, personification, dehumanisation, zoomorphism, anthromorphism, symbolism, metonymy, synecdoche

  Connotation

• semantic fields

  Word level

• adjectives, adverbs, verbs, pronouns

  Sound effects

• alliteration, consonance, assonance, sibilance, onomatopoeia

  Rhetorical devices

• hyperbole, hyperbaton, anaphora, epiphora, antithesis, chiasmus, rhetorical questions, emotive language, triadic structure