Storytelling Techniques

“Now her bosom rose and fell tumultuously. She was beginning to recognize this thing that was approaching to possess her, and she was striving to beat it back with her will–as powerless as her two white… Read more: Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour:” Interiority, Image, Refrain

“There’s something funny about a fellow that’ll do a thing like that,” said the other girl eagerly. “He doesn’t want any trouble with anybody.” “Who doesn’t?” I inquired. “Gatsby. Somebody told me—” The two girls and Jordan… Read more: Fitzgerald’s Rumor-Driven Character Introduction in “The Great Gatsby”

“It was late at night, and a fine rain was swirling softly down, causing the pavements to glisten with hue of steel and blue and yellow in the rays of the innumerable lights. A youth was… Read more: Mood and Tone in Stephen Crane’s “An Experiment in Misery”

“Perhaps ten-year-old John was puzzling to the simple folk there in the Florida woods for he was an imaginative child and fond of day-dreams. The St. John River flowed a scarce three hundred feet from his back door.… Read more: Objective Correlative and Foreshadowing in Hurston’s “John Redding Goes to Sea”

“A large cask of wine had been dropped and broken, in the street. The accident had happened in getting it out of a cart; the cask had tumbled out with a run, the hoops had burst,… Read more: How Dickens Foreshadows Revolution in “A Tale of Two Cities”

“Nemours had long ardently wished for her picture. He saw now an opportunity of getting this treasure into his possession: and as there were many persons at that time present, he knew that Madame de Cleves… Read more: Body Language: Emotional Storytelling in “Princess of Clèves”

“And only now when his head was grey he had fallen properly, really in love—for the first time in his life. Anna Sergeyevna and he loved each other like people very close and akin, like husband… Read more: Chekhov’s Open Ending in “The Lady with the Dog”

“Day had broken cold and grey, exceedingly cold and grey, when the man turned aside from the main Yukon trail and climbed the high earth-bank, where a dim and little-travelled trail led eastward through the fat… Read more: Pacing Techniques in Jack London’s “To Build a Fire”

“This in two words: He looks like a man who could tame anything. If he had married a tigress, instead of a woman, he would have tamed the tigress. If he had married me, I should have… Read more: Count Fosco: Wilkie Collins’s Villain in “The Woman in White”

“I fled his presence everywhere, but found him— O crowning horror!—in his father’s features. Against myself, at last, I raised revolt, And stirr’d my courage up to persecute The enemy I loved. To banish him I… Read more: Plot and Emotion in Racine’s “Phaedra”

“NORA.[after a short silence]. Isn’t there one thing that strikes you as strange in our sitting here like this? HELMER.What is that? NORA.We have been married now eight years. Does it not occur to you that… Read more: Dialogue and Tension: Ibsen’s “A Doll’s House”

“My papa sad for the old country. He not look good. He never make music any more. At home he play violin all the time; for weddings and for dance. Here never. When I beg him… Read more: Dialect and Voice in Willa Cather’s “My Antonia”

‘”Mother, can I come into your room?” Laura turned the big glass door-knob. “Of course, child. Why, what’s the matter? What’s given you such a colour?” And Mrs. Sheridan turned round from her dressing-table. She was… Read more: Foil Characters in Mansfield’s “The Garden Party”

“After standing there a little while, he resolutely opened the first door that met his eyes and walked into an absolutely dark room. Straight in front could be seen the crack in the doorway through which… Read more: Scene Description and Sensory Detail with Chekhov

“Frederick, to get back to his place, pushed forward the grating leading into the part of the vessel reserved for first-class passengers, and in so doing disturbed two sportsmen with their dogs. What he then saw… Read more: Narrative Focalization in Flaubert’s “Sentimental Education”

‘In a deep song voice with a melancholy toneI heard that Negro sing, that old piano moan— “Ain’t got nobody in all this world, Ain’t got nobody but ma self. I’s gwine to quit ma frownin’… Read more: Onomatopoeia in Langston Hughes “The Weary Blues”

“I returned from the City about three o’clock on that May afternoon pretty well disgusted with life.” — The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan Technique In The Thirty-Nine Steps, John Buchan opens the story with a… Read more: Story Hook in John Buchan’s “The Thirty-Nine Steps”

“I resisted all the way: a new thing for me, and a circumstance which greatly strengthened the bad opinion Bessie and Miss Abbot were disposed to entertain of me. The fact is, I was a trifle… Read more: Character Agency in Bronte’s “Jane Eyre”

“One morning, when Gregor Samsa woke from troubled dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a horrible vermin. He lay on his armour-like back, and if he lifted his head a little he could… Read more: In Medias Res: Kafka’s “Metamorphosis”

“Move him into the sun—Gently its touch awoke him once,At home, whispering offields half-sown.Always it woke him, even in France,Until this morning and this snow.If anything might rouse him nowThe kind old sun will know.” —… Read more: In Medias Res: Opening Action in Wilfred Owen’s Poetry

“There was a great shouting going on in the grandstand overhead. Maera wanted to say something and found he could not talk. Maera felt everything getting larger and larger and then smaller and smaller. Then it… Read more: Mimesis: Real-Life Experiences with Hemingway

“He took a wife, she bore him sons and daughters, the bar-room prospered, property came and went; he grew old, his wife died, he retired from business, and reached the age when a man begins to… Read more: Narrative Pacing in Short Stories with George Moore

“Jukes could no longer see his captain distinctly. The darkness was absolutely piling itself upon the ship. At most he made out movements, a hint of elbows spread out, of a head thrown up. Captain MacWhirr… Read more: Anticlimactic Ending in Joseph Conrad’s “Typhoon”

“Fifteen years ago I came here with Lily,” he thought. “We sat somewhere over there by a lake and I begged her to marry me all through the hot afternoon. How the dragonfly kept circling round… Read more: Symbolism: Virginia Woolf’s “Kew Gardens”

“no: tongue breaks and thinfire is racing under skinand in eyes no sight and drummingfills earsand cold sweat holds me and shakinggrips me all, greener than grassI am and dead—or almostI seem to me.” — “He… Read more: Describing Love with Sappho: Imagery & Emotion

“But the only one of us for whom Swann’s arrival became the object of a painful preoccupation was I. This was because on the evenings when strangers, or merely M. Swann, were present, Mama did not… Read more: Character Interiority and Sentence Length in Proust’s “Swann’s Way”

“This paper looks to me as if it knew what a vicious influence it had! There is a recurrent spot where the pattern lolls like a broken neck and two bulbous eyes stare at you upside-down. I get… Read more: Objective Correlative: How Objects Carry Emotions in Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper”

“After the long border tunnel, the snow country appeared. The depths of the night became white. The train stopped at the signal. A girl stood up from the seat opposite and opened the window in front… Read more: Editing Novel to Short Story: Kawabata’s “Snow Country”

“Her walls, her cupboards, her bureaux, were teeming with second-hand dealings with life. It takes a bold and authentic robber to get first-hand plunder. Someone else’s marriage ring was on her finger; the photograph taken of… Read more: Character Interiority: Djuna Barnes “Nightwood”

“On his study table, at which he worked, he had placed, as it were a photograph of Odette, a reproduction of Jethro’s Daughter. He would gaze in admiration at the large eyes, the delicate features in… Read more: Love and Superimposition in Proust’s “Swann’s Way”

“In the depths of the mirror the evening landscape moved by, the mirror and the reflected figures like motion pictures superimposed one on the other. The figures and the background were unrelated, and yet the figures,… Read more: Superimposition and Mood in Kawabata’s “Snow Country”

“She had met him through Florence. Florence and she had met at work in the middle of the summer, a year after Richard’s death. John was then over six months old.” — Go Tell It on… Read more: Nonlinear Narrative in Baldwin’s “Go Tell It on the Mountain”

“One remembers points that one has forgotten and one explains them all the more minutely since one recognizes that one has forgotten to mention them in their proper places and that one may have given, by… Read more: Unreliable Narrator: Memory and Revision in Ford Madox Ford’s “The Good Soldier”

“And then the crowd broke up, you went north toSan palace,And if you ask how I regret that parting:It is like the flowers falling at Spring’s endConfused, whirled in a tangle.” — “Exile’s Letter” by Ezra… Read more: Emotional Hooks and Nostalgia in Pound’s “Exile’s Letter”

“She stopped on the threshold of the dining-room and looked in. The first thing she saw was the stranger lying at full length on the floor, close to the wall. He was sleeping, or feigning sleep.… Read more: Show, Don’t Tell Like Guy de Maupassant in “The Olive Grove”