Reading Dialogue Journals
Reading Dialogue Journals
You must address 1-4 points from the category you choose to write about.
How the Author Wrote
What was his or her subject? Why this topic?
Plot: What happened; what were the significant events of the story? Not a book report synopsis.
Pace: How quickly or slowly did the author move the plot? Was it gradual enough to be plausible and involving? Fast enough to hold a reader’s interest? Was there too much action and not enough character development?
Plausibility: Did the plot ring true? Would characters act and react this way? Were the circumstances believable? Did it matter?
Description and detail: Could we see it happening? Feel it? Hear it? Too little description? Too many details?
Dialogue: Was the talk realistic? Could we hear the individual character’s voices? Too much dialogue? Too little? What did the dialogue show about the moods, ages, intentions, and backgrounds of the characters?
Flashbacks, flash-forwards, and foreshadows: How did the author use shifts in time, and why?
Affect: Did the reader laugh? Cry? Why?
Setting: What time and place did the author choose? Why? Was the setting integral to the story? Was it convincing? Confusing?
Main characters: Who were they? What makes a main character a main character? How can a reader tell?
Character development: How were characters introduced and developed? How were their actions, thoughts, and feelings depicted? Were they believable? Could the reader enter characters’ hearts and minds and see through their eyes? Which characters did the reader relate to? Did the reader care about what happened to any of them? Did any of them remind the reader of characters from movies, plays, or other novels? Or people from the reader’s real life?
Titles: Did it fit? Was it a grabber? Did it give too much away?
Theme: What ideas about life and living come through the story?
Problem: What was the main issue for the main character to try to resolve?
Suspense: Did the reader wonder what would happen next? How did the author establish a suspenseful tone? Did the author surprise the reader?
Formula: Could the reader predict too easily what was going to happen? Was it too much like other books by this author or from this genre?
Conventions: Did a reader notice short paragraphs or chapters? Sentence fragments? British spellings? Why did the author write this way?
Length: Was this book too long? Too short?
Point of View: Who told the story? What voice did the author choose: First person? Third person/anonymous? Single character, dual, multiple, or no character? Why did the author choose this point of view? What were the advantages and drawbacks for the reader? Where did the reader stand in relation to the narrator?
The Author
Titles of other books by an author, including sequels, trilogies, and series
Comparisons with other books by an author
Comparisons with other authors’ style
Concepts of Genre
What are the elements of fiction?
Novels: How do you know the book you are reading is a novel? What makes it a novel?
Short stories: How do you know the book you are reading is a short story? What characteristics make it a short story?
Poetry: How do you know the book you are reading is poetry? In what ways does it differ from prose? What are the elements of poetry? How do different poetic techniques affect a reader?
Fiction and Non-fiction: How do we classify books as one or the other? How do you know if your book is fiction or non-fiction?
The Reader’s Strategies
Choice: How does the reader decide what to read?
Pace: Did the reader skim, skip, slow down, regress, speed up, look ahead? Why? When? To what effect?
Abandoning: How and when does the reader reread a book? What differences are noted a second time through?
Predicting: Did the reader imagine what would happen next? Was the guess confirmed?
The Reader’s Affect
How did the book make the reader feel?
What did the book make the reader think about?
What was the reader’s involvement with the characters?
What did the reader learn about through the story?
What did the reader like or dislike about a book?
What were the best and worst features of a book?
The Reader’s Own Writing
Comparisons with what the reader is writing and how it’s coming
Connections to ideas to use in current or future pieces of writing
Ways the reader might use or has used elements of an author’s writing in his or her own work
Connections between an author’s style or choice of subjects and the reader’s style and writing territories
Recommendations
Is a book worth recommending?
Who might enjoy it?
What reactions did other readers report?
Who are good authors?
What are titles of good books?
What are titles of other good books by this author?
What titles by other authors address a similar subject or theme?
How will the reader arrange to borrow, lend, or return books?
Connections to other books you’ve read.
How do the characters in the book you’re reading connect with characters from another book you’ve read? Genres? Plot? Setting?
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