A note on notes

A couple of excerpts from Theory into Practice: An Introduction to Literary Criticism

By Ann B. Dobie

(2011, Wadsworth)

[....] advantage of marginal notations is that they don't interrupt your reading very much. They are, however, usually too terse and superficial to serve as the basis of a full-scale analysis. Several other techniques that will connect your reading with your writing in more substantive ways include keeping a reading log and using prewriting strategies, sometimes referred to as heuristics.

If you are reading a narrative, for example, you may want to answer such questions as the following:

■ Where is the action happening?

■ What are the relationships of the characters?

■ Which character(s) do I find to be the most interesting?

■ Which one(s) do I care for most?

■ Which one(s) do I dislike the most?

You might even want to pause in the middle of your reading to speculate about the following:

■ What do I want to happen?

■ What am I afraid will happen? What do I think will happen?

■ What have I read that prompted the answers to these questions?

If you are reading a poem, you may want to record answers to questions like these:

■ Who is the speaker of the poem? (Remember, the speaker is not necessarily the poet.)

■ What do I know about him or her?

■ What is his or her occasion for saying it?

■ Where does the poem take place?

■ Who is listening?

■ Which lines seem to be the most important?

■ Which words resonate powerfully with me?

■ Do they give me insight into the poem as a whole?

When you are more familiar with the work, you will want to address more complex issues in your reading log or journal. You have several different models to follow, including the following:

■ Use it as a learning log (sometimes called a double-entry log or a dialectical log): Divide a page into vertical halves, noting page numbers, phrases, or words from the text on one side and your own response on the other. On your side of the page, you may express confusion, record definitions of words you don't know, question connotations, argue with the text, note the recurrence of an image—whatever you think you should return to later.

■ Use it as a dialogue journal: This uses the same format as a learning log, except you devote one side of the page to your comments and leave the other half for comments from another reader (student, friend, teacher, etc.).

■ Use it as a "what if" journal in which you respond to hypothetical questions such as these: If you could talk to the author (or one of the characters or the narrator), what questions would you ask? What objections would you raise?

■ Use it as a vocabulary journal in which you record all the words with which you are unfamiliar.

■ Use it as a personal writing journal. Include informal freewrites on a passage or a scene; a descriptive paragraph, poem, or short narrative about an experience the text brings to mind; or an imagined conversation between two characters.

When you have finished reading a text, recording a summary paragraph about your reactions on your half of the double-entry log will help you pull together what you think about the work. A word of caution: Don't let too much time pass between reading a work and writing your summary paragraph.

Responses fade quickly, and the longer you wait to set down your feelings and ideas, the less pointed and vibrant they will be.

One way to find out more about your responses to the reading is to use prewriting strategies, the same discovery processes you have most likely used in other writing situations. The notes you took in your reading log can serve as starting places to stimulate further thinking. You might, for instance, have identified in your notes a recurring image that could be at the center of a clustering exercise. Or maybe a question you jotted down about the text could launch . 10-minute freewriting exercise. Other popular techniques include listing, making analogies, and looping. There are many ways to begin; you should use the techniques that are helpful and productive for you. If you want to know more about how these techniques work, you can find explanations in most writing handbooks and rhetoric texts, such as those you may have used in composition courses.

SHAPING A RESPONSE

Up to this point, you have mainly been gathering your responses and ideas, thinking through the work and your involvement in it. At some point—and advantage of marginal notations is that they don't interrupt your reading very much. They are, however, usually too terse and superficial to serve as the basis of a full-scale analysis. Several other techniques that will connect your reading with your writing in more substantive ways include keeping a reading log and using prewriting strategies, sometimes referred to as heuristics….