Regarding Posts

Some lovely young people have made some inquiries regarding posts amounts content, and length. Please allow me to address these concerns. 


1. My "list"  book is shorter than 300 pages, does this mean I can write less?

• No harm in asking, but no. For example books like TheWoman Warrior and Ethan Frome are less than 300 pages, but are complex texts that utilize imagism and symbolism repeatedly. To simply summarize the book would be doing an injustice to the author, slander to your name, and a diservice to future endeavors. 

2.My post are more/less than 125, is this a problem?

• When typing this up I decided to keep the word counts low because I knew I would be commenting on your most excellent work and you would be writing back. So if you're writing less than the required amount, you're giving me less to think about, less to comment about and leaving me with an overall feeling of, "You rushed this didn't you?"
• If you write more, please try to keep it less than 300 words. As some of you have noticed, even with only the 74 word count quote topics, I sometimes will ask many questions. 

3. Is this post okay?

• Ah, the constant question, isn't it? Hm, well, consider these things. Are you just summarizing? If so, please don't stop there. A degree of summary is NEEDED at this point because this is your first engagement with this book, but you should use theses summaries to push toward greater fundamental human experience truth. One young lady has pieced together the symbolism behind colors in her work--an superb posting. Another young lady questions the need for normalcy in a functioning society--heck yeah. Another has captured that art imitates life by reviewing the biographical information of her author--smashing! You should always be trying to push past WHAT happened and try to figure out WHY it happened. Now, not just from a life standpoint, or a historical stand point--because that is also crucial to understanding a work--but also from a literary stand point. 
• Look also for potentially symbolic objects and events, and how they add to the message(s) of the story.
• Characterization is also an essential element of a piece of literature.  Make note of the characters’ physical and psychological traits.  Try to understand the action and motivations of the characters
• In short, remember to do the theme (life statements) and  look for examples of the following stylistic elements and address how these elements contribute to the effect of the work as a whole. (some definitions can be found here)
•  tone
•  mood,
• diction
• metaphors
• simile
• personification
• metonym
• anadiplosis
• apostrophe
• anaphora
• parallelism
• allusion
• assonance
• imagery
• point-of-view
• organization
• irony
• connotation
• denotation 
• syntax
• juxtaposition
• hyperbole
• synecdoche
• conduplicatio
• motif
• paradox
• symbol
• litotes
• antithesis
• epistrophe
• asyndeton
• understatement
• aosiopesis

4. I'm going to have to read this book more than once aren't I?

• Yes.

By the way, the blogs all look very pretty. I will not be judging their appearances until school starts--so by all means experiment! Also, those of you fighting with multimedia, thank you for trying :) Keep trying to get it right. 

For fun you can copy and paste one of you posts into I Write Like and see what famous writers style you have. 


Apparently today I write like H.P. Lovecraft....I feel so proud and evil.

I write like
H. P. Lovecraft

I Write Like by Mémoires, journal software. Analyze your writing!