subject
Literature
Close reading of poems, novels, and plays, with attention to how the work makes meaning rather than to summary alone.
12 lessons in literature
Comedy and Tragedy: Two Engines of Story
Imagine a young couple who want to marry, but their families forbid it.
3 min · comparison
First Person and Close Third: Two Modes of Interiority
A woman walks into a kitchen and sees that the bread is gone. Two sentences can carry that moment, and the difference between them is the difference between two of the most common modes in modern fict…
4 min · comparison
How a Story Builds Suspense Step by Step
A girl walks down to the basement to check the fuse box. You already know there is something down there. She does not. Your stomach tightens anyway — maybe especially — because she does not. Suspense …
3 min · deepening
How a Story Decides Whose Head You're In
Two students are arguing in the hallway. You're standing nearby. Depending on where you're standing, you get a different story. If you're inside one student's head, you hear her thoughts. You know she…
3 min · foundation
How Iambic Pentameter Shapes Meaning in English Verse
Say the phrase "to be or not to be" out loud, slowly, and listen for the pulse underneath it.
4 min · foundation
How Unreliable Narrators Force the Reader to Read Twice
Near the end of Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day, the butler Stevens, who has spent three hundred pages defending his life of dignified service, sits on a pier and weeps.
4 min · deepening
What a Plot Twist Actually Does
Near the end of the movie The Sixth Sense, the audience learns that the child psychologist, Dr.
3 min · foundation
What Free Indirect Discourse Lets a Narrator Do
Emma Woodhouse, in the opening pages of Jane Austen's novel, is described as "handsome, clever, and rich." A few lines later we read: "The real evils, indeed, of Emma's situation were the power of hav…
4 min · foundation
What Shakespeare's Soliloquies Are Doing Dramatically
Hamlet stands alone on the platform and asks whether to be or not to be.
4 min · deepening
Why Foreshadowing Is More Than a Hint
Near the beginning of Romeo and Juliet, before the lovers have even met, the play's narrator tells us flatly that they will die.
3 min · foundation
Why 'Show, Don't Tell' Is Half-Right
Open almost any guide to fiction writing and you will find the same commandment, usually in italics: show, don't tell.
4 min · foundation
Why the Modernist Novel Broke from Plot
Open Mrs Dalloway at random and try to summarize what happens.
4 min · synthesis