For every piece of prose:
1. Chronology: how is time handled? Does the author use
flashback? Foreshadow? Does the narrative take place in a linear
fashion? Does it jump around?
2. Point of view – 1st person central, peripheral; 3rd person
omniscient, limited, cinematic
Monologue
– direct interior monologue; narrator gives details
of thoughts and feelings as they happen; brings
you closer to the character
--narrated interior monologue: thoughts and
feelings of character in 3rd person, usually in past tense
- less intimate
3. Characterization – how the author creates characters
4. Setting: physical setting; usually reflects some feature of the
thoughts or feelings being explored in the text
5. Patterns of meaning – the ideas, themes, motifs that presented
and reinforced through literary features (repetition or restatement)
6. Patterns of syntax – the way that sentences are constructed. Use
parallelism, antithesis, and other rhetorical strategies
7. Patterns of imagery – how the author paints pictures or
represents other senses
8. Patterns of sound – repetition, accumulation, alliteration, and
other “sounds” – can even be dialect – that produce tone, mood,
and atmosphere
9. Sentence structure – simple, complex, lose, fragmented,
balanced
10. Paragraphs – examine length, structure – both internally and
between paragraphs.
11. Overall structure of the piece – chapters, book divisions,
frames, how chapters are sectioned – breaks indicated with blank
lines or with symbols. What changes? How are sections titled?