On Hiatus For A Bit

I am getting ready to move across the country so will be temporarily suspending posts here. Regular posting will resume in January for sure, hopefully sooner, but please feel free to send me any questions you may have. Use the question link on the sidebar, the contact button to email me, or leave a comment and I'll get back to you!

Poetry Game

Time to play! Head to Magnetic Poetry and choose up to 20 word tiles to create your poem and leave it in the comments! :) Have fun!

Here is mine:

A vast universe of time
devours me
work
think
listen
have heart
change
ask
know
wake
dance
laugh
embrace
Do

How To Write an Essay or Paper - Tone

Moving on with our literary tools for analysis - let's take a look at tone.

The relevant dictionary definition for tone is: The sound of a person's voice, expressing a feeling or mood; (or) the general character of something.

Now, obviously, when talking about literature, the tone isn't a literal, audible sound (unless read aloud). But the concept is the same. The tone of the piece expresses the mood of it and the meaning behind it. The tone of something can put quite a different spin on its meaning. For example, look at the sentence:

She's lame.

Said (or read) with a serious or sad tone, this would mean that the person in question is disabled or injured. With a sarcastic, snide, or mean tone, it would be an insult.

So, when analyzing a piece of literature, see if you can determine the tone of the story or a particular scene. Is it:

• serious?
• saracastic or tongue-in-cheek?
  
• sad?
• excited or happy?
  
• toneless? (a simple narration of facts with no clue as to the meaning behind the words)

Then analyze what the tone does for the piece:

• Does it lighten the mood?
• Make the scene more serious?
• Create drama or tension?
• Create a sense of mystery or danger?
  
• Does the tone affect or influence the reader?
• Or maybe purposely, by lack of tone, not influence the reader in any way?
  
• Would a different tone have worked better?
• Why or why not?

 Go through the piece in question and see what the tone does - try reading lines in different tones and see how it works. What does it do? How does it work? And be sure to back up your statements with outside sources :)

Poetry Game - Word Magnets

Time for another game! Go to Magnetic Poetry Online and choose up to 20 word tiles to create a poem. Leave it in the comments!!

Here is mine:

My prisoner
your sacred secret
I remember
squrim
worry
or voice it
and embrace peace

How to Write an Essay or Paper - Point of View

Another literary tool that you could analyze for a literary anaylsis paper would be Point of View.

Simply put, the point of view is the perspective from which the story is told. First, you need to determine what point of view is present in the literature you are analyzing. Here are the common choices:

First person - the narrator is generally the main character in the book and tells the story as "I" (I did this, I said, I felt)

First person plural - more rare, with the story told by "we" (we did this, we said that)

Second person - very rare - the reader is treated as a character and is referred to as "you." This type of POV works well for some non-fiction works. For example, if I was writing a How-to article, I could use this to say "First, you take the paint brush and apply paint. Then you do this and this and this." For fiction though, this POV isn't used often.

Third person limited - the narrator is outside the story but focuses on one character at a time. (He said, she said). While the POV may change between different characters, these changes would be separated by scene or chapter breaks.

Third person omniscient - the narrator is outside the story but doesn't focus on one character. The narrator knows all, sees all, conveys all.

Once you know which type of POV is being utilized in the piece of literature you are writing about, you can analyze how the use of the POV works in the story. Some questions you might ask could be:

• Does the POV work well?
• Why or why not?
  
• Would it work better told from another POV?
• Why or why not?
  
• If the POV is third person limited, is the story told by one character or several?
• If told by only one character, would the story have worked better told by more than one, or by a different character than the one chosen?
• Why do you think the author chose the POV they did?
• Does the POV limit the story? Intensify it? Create mystery? Create confusion?

Go through every aspect of the POV used in the story that you can think of, analyzing if it works well or not, using specific examples from the book and outside sources to back up your statements.

My Apologies

Sorry for the absence of posts this week! I'm battling an allergic reaction to a new medication and the medicine to get rid of the reaction sort of knocks me out :D I'll be back next week!

Poetry - Magnet Game

Well, I found out how to make the magnets for this game, theoritcally, however, had trouble when I actually attempted to do it :)

But, I found another site where you can play this game. So! Everyone go to Poetry Game and create a poem using the poetry tiles. Then post what you come up with in the comments.

This is mine:

Your velvet voice haunts
A ghost of smoke
Devouring my fire
Listen
Remember
For eternity

Remember - if anyone has a question on how to write a specific type of poetry, hit the Ask Me button!