The craft of the writer

1
The craft of the writer

• Understanding how writers create meaning

2
Lesson objective

• To explore techniques used to analyse the way in
  which writers create particular effects

3
What kind of text do you think the following
words are taken from?

• worst brown fields dreams
• gunships low flat wounds wolves
  so grievous traumatic gaping sweat
  glossy lavender sky bizarre cruel
  diabolic history images decaying
  innocent suffering beautiful
  forces nature blast storm memory
  live empower drunk noble oddities
  abandonment

4
How do writers make meaning?

• Whenever you read a text, you need to understand
  that everything you read about has been crafted
  by a writer with a specific PURPOSE in mind.
• Youll need to think about how a writer

5
CONVEYS, CREATES, SUGGESTS, MAKES
6
I want to write a story that is full of drama and
suspense with a theme of war
7
My worst dreams have always contained images of
brown water and fields of elephant grass and the
downdraft of helicopter blades. The dreams are in
color but they contain no sound, not of drowned
voices in the river or explosions under the
hooches in the village we burned
8
What has happened to this man to give him such
terrible dreams?
Death, misery, helplessness
How will his experiences affect his future?
9

• Being able to read and write about a text
  successfully, relies on you being able to explain
  how meaning is passed from writer to text to
  reader.
• Whenever you are trying to explain how a writer
  does something, you need to find evidence from
  the text
• CONTENT- what happens
• EFFECT OF LANGUAGE- particular words, phrases
• STRUCTURE- how the story has been organised, use
  of narrative techniques like viewpoint, dialogues
  and flashback

10
Writer
Text
Reader
suggest
What effect is writer trying to achieve?
What evidence can we find in the text to
support this?
What effect does this have on the reader?
create
powerful opening creates atmosphere
worst dreams drowned voices explosions brow
n water
convey
Feeling of futile violence No escape Clear war
theme
11
Task

• Using this framework, go through the extract and
  answer the following question
• How does the writer convey a sense of horror in
  the extract?

12
Which of the following sentences do you think are
the most successful?

• Smith introduces an atmosphere of unease as he
  describes how the wind dropped and a breath of
  cloud crept in front of the moon, covering it
  completely.
• The writer creates suspense by using third person
  and a lot of adjectives.
• The writer creates suspense by slowly letting the
  reader know pieces of information about the mans
  past, which gradually builds a picture of where
  and who he is.
• There is an effective metaphor used in line 12.
• The writer uses a mixture of short and long
  sentences to create variety.
• The writer uses contrasting characteristics like
  sharp and sensuous to describe the man at the
  station, which might suggest that he has two
  sides to him- something which also makes us wary
  of what he will do next.
• The writer uses a lot of superlatives such as
  you and me.
• Its very realistic and makes you want to read on.