I’ve been doing book analyses on and off as a means to improve my own writing craft. This is something I picked up from the UBC novel writing courses. I mean, it’s a simple enough idea but the key takeaway or revelation was that you could use this to study specific craft elements which means that you can take a more focused approach when analysing a book and basically be more focused on the get-go about which book to handpick for such an exercise.
Personally, I’ve done Under Heaven to study the omniscient voice at first (but then I realised I was wrong in that regard, it’s actually written in third person limit with an omniscient narrative voice) and then I’ve given it another pass to study how tension works in a scene, especially if the conflict is subtle.
I now have a new target- the Banned and the Banished series that I’ve just read. My aim this time is to study the partition of different voices in a story with a reasonably large party written in third person limited and absorb in any other aspects of interest to me such as the non-linear unfolding of time.
And that’s all my share for today. Feel free to leave me your comments you have.
Moonlake's Fiction Space 