InsaneJournal

When I was in high school, my English teacher allowed us all to choose a novel we actually wanted to read each quarter. We had four tasks, described below, and had to have a certain total of each one completed by the end of the quarter for our chosen works.

I've decided to rework this into a resource for writers or roleplayers looking to improve their writing skills in one way or another.

For my "example questions", I'll pull from Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles novels.

Vocabulary Enricher

Be on the lookout for especially important words in the reading. You may choose words because they are puzzling, unfamiliar, important, unusual, repeated a lot, key to the meaning of the text, etc.

Example:

commedia dell'arte noun – an improvised kind of popular comedy in Italian theaters in the 16th–18th centuries, based on stock characters. Actors adapted their comic dialogue and action according to a few basic plots (commonly love intrigues) and to topical issues. Lestat participates in commedia dell'arte as the character Lélio from the play "Lélio and Isabella".

Level 3 Questions / "Fat Questions"

• Level One Questions ask for clarifying information and usually have one correct answer.
  Example: Which century was Lestat born in? What year did the French Revolution take place?
• Level Two Questions deal with factual information but can have more than one defensible answer. Although there can be more than one ‘good’ answer, your answers should be defended or opposed with material FROM the story or related materials.
  Example: Does Gabrielle love her son?
• Level Three Questions deal more reading between the lines, and are often thought-provoking. These questions should be thematic (relating to a theme) in your reading material. They should lead to in-depth discussions that apply to real life, other books or stories, songs, etc.
  Example: Lestat says 'evil is a point of view'. Is the concept of morality so "black and white" or is there a gray area?

Connector

Throughout the reading material you will have to make connections between the material and any aspect of your life such as similar events at other times and places, other people or problems, other writings, songs, movies, etc. The connections should include some of the big ideas or themes of the novel, not just simple facts. They should also include your thoughts about the connections.

Example: In his novel The Vampire Lestat, Lestat reminisces on how he as a teenager used to be the breadwinner and provider of food for his family. His father was blind and disabled and his older brothers were often responsible for taking the most care of the Marquis because they were already grown, which left Lestat in charge of collecting food. Today, some children living in the poverty levels are still forced to "grow up" faster than their peers and must sacrifice their social lives and free time to help their family out either by getting a job or staying home to take care of their younger siblings, if they have any.

Literary Luminary

This task is to locate a few special sections of the text. You may choose a section because it is puzzling, important, informative, surprising, controversial, funny, well-written, thought provoking, etc.

Example:

'Why are you saying this? You couldn't do this to me,' he said.

'Of course I could. And I shall. Now. All along I've told you I was evil. I've told you I'm the very devil. The devil in your Faust, the devil in your visions, the tiger in my dream!'

'No, that's not true.' He climbed to his feet, knocking the chair over behind him, and almost losing his balance. He stepped back into the room. 'You're not the devil, and you know that you're not. Don't do this to me! I forbid it!” He clenched his teeth on the last words. 'You are in your own heart as human as I am. And you will not do it.'

'The hell I won't,' I said. I laughed. I couldn’t help it suddenly. 'David the Superior General,' I said. 'David the Candomble priest.'

He backed across the tiled floor, the light fully illuminating his face, and the tense powerful muscles of his arms.

'Want to fight me? It's useless. There's no force on earth that can stop me from doing this.'

'I'll die first,' he said, in a low strangled voice. His face was darkening, flushed with blood. Ah, David’s blood.

-- I chose this passage from Tale of the Body Thief because it's a symbolic revelation of an earlier event in the book. Lestat has a dream of the young David Talbot in the jungle, about to be attacked by a man-eating tiger. For the entire novel, he ponders the meaning of this dream. The dream sticks out to him because he only has it once, where his dreams of Claudia are often repetitive.