Entertaining Texts

Understanding Fiction: Entertaining Texts

• Familiarize yourself with the features of entertaining texts. These may include humour, suspense, evocative descriptions, dynamic characters, plot twists, and exciting action.

• Analyze characterisation. How are characters depicted? What actions, dialogue, and details reveal about their personalities, motivations, and roles in the story?

• Assess narrative techniques. Look at the use of perspective (first person, third person), imagery, symbolism, foreshadowing and irony.

• Evaluate the author’s style. Consider elements such as sentence structure, word choice, tone, and pace. How do they contribute to the story’s entertainment value?

• Examine how the author builds tension and excitement. Identifying points of climax and anti-climax can help in understanding how an author interjects entertainment into the text.

• Trace the plot structure: the exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and denouement. This will help you to understand the sequence and flow of events.

• Reflect on your emotional response to the text. What emotions did the text awaken in you? How were these feelings manipulated throughout the reading?

• Understand the setting and atmosphere. How does the author construct a world that is compelling and attractive to the reader? How does this contribute to the entertaining nature of the text?

• Recognize the use of dialogue. How does it contribute to character development, tension, and humour?

• Lastly, form opinions. Decide what you believe makes the text entertaining, back this up with evidence and detail from the reading.

Utilizing the above points will not only increase your comprehension and appreciation of entertaining texts, but also improve your critical thinking and analytical skills in relation to fiction.