Read Like a Writer
This person's knowledge, experience, and credentials are all important, as are the choices they make about a written work.
What is the author?
A group of words that refers to a sensory experience or to an object that can be known by the senses.
What is imagery?
The people of a work of literature.
What is character?
The speaker of the story.
Uses of language that depart from standard or literal usage in order to achieve a special effect or meaning.
What is figurative language?
This term describes the type or style of a work.
What is genre?
An expression of a direct similarity, using such words as like, as, or than, between two things usually regarded as dissimilar.
What is a simile?
The repetition of identical consonant sounds in words near each other.
What is alliteration?
The events and actions in a narrative work.
What is plot?
Bold overstatement. An extravagant exaggeration of description for effect.
What is hyperbole?
A writer thinks about what this group needs, what knowledge they have, what their attitude is to reading and writing, and how they will respond to a work.
What is audience?
A figure of speech in which two things usually thought to be dissimilar are treated as if they were alike and have characteristics in common.
What is metaphor?
A figure of speech in which something nonhuman is treated as if it has human characteristics or performs human actions.
What is personification?
The context for action: time, place, culture, atmosphere, environment.
What is the setting?
The study of the ways words are arranged into phrases, clauses, and sentences.
What is syntax?
This is what an author or work is trying to say, or what they want their audience to do or know after they have finished reading.
What is message?
A prominent or repeated image or action that is always something concrete, but also conveys abstract meanings.
What is a symbol?
The attempt to reproduce faithfully the appearance of life, especially of ordinary people in everyday situations.
What is realism?
The perspective from which a story is told, or the relation of the narrator to the story.
What is point of view?
A statement of seeming contradiction, or logical opposition, but that can be interpreted in a way that makes sense.
What is paradox?
This is the "why" of writing.
What is purpose?
A general concept, reference, device, or other conspicuous element that occurs frequently in a work of literature.
What is a theme?
A statement in which the implied or intended meaning is sharply different from, even opposed to, the meaning that is ostensibly expressed.
What is irony?
A narrative that has two levels of meaning, a literal, surface level and a symbolic level.
What is allegory?
The depiction of something absent using a sign or symbol. The relation of that sign to the text, and to the context that produces it.
What is representation?