Category: What Are

The role of the storyteller is to, erm… tell a story! However, there is a delicate balance between threading in extra details about a backstory or other characters and creating a maze of confusing details that end up confusing the main plot. Subplots are separate arcing stories happening in the background that reveal more information…

Though the saying is to never judge a book by its cover, there are plenty of additional factors that pull people in and persuade them to pick up a book over the billions of others they could choose. And names are also clever ways of introducing meaning and differentiating different objects or people from one…

Literary theorist Gérard Genette stated that external aspects of a book (like the cover and blurb) can work alongside the text itself to provide helpful insights into a literary work. Elements like these are called paratext and they help to frame the work, with the power to influence the reader’s interpretation of the text. Nicholas…

Antithesis is a rhetorical device used to create dissonance between 2 opposite ideas. Often, the gap is so cataclysmic that it paints a clearer picture of an event, person or object. In fact, many classic, modern and just about any type of text uses at least one example of opposition to further their point. The…

Obviously, you’ll have seen letter cases before – such as proper nouns, or the start of sentences being capitalised. And while there are some normal capitalisation and case rules to follow, there are also just as many exceptions to the rule – after all, the author is the one in control of what they’re putting…

First came modernist literature – but in the 1950s and 60s, postmodernist writing emerged as the next logical step on. Characterised by intertextuality and fragmentation, postmodernist writing often rejects meaning in favour of playfulness. In opposition to the modernist search for meaning and purpose, anything that doesn’t take itself too seriously is likely to feature…