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Author Topic: Reader Effect, Agency--Emphasis
extrinsic
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Quite times on the boards.

Recent discussion identified writing principles that consensus formed around. Uniquely, Reader Effect enjoyed as near to unanimous agreement as any topic at Hatrack, no contention or combativeness or dissent as to reader effect is one of the higher if not highest ideal goals from narrative.

Agency also enjoyed a large consensus, though terminology may vary. Webster's definitions, though brief and off the mark for the term as it applies to writing, has a useful definition under causality, "1: a causal quality or agency, 2: the relation between a cause and its effect or between regularly correlated events or phenomena." The agency's definitions that apply to writing come into clarity, "2: the capacity, condition, or state of acting or exerting power, 3: a person or thing through which power is exerted or an end is achieved." I'd substitute influence for "power" in either case.

By themselves, reader effect and agency are principles worth consideration at every writing turn, for every motif, though not in and of themselves accessible unless their attributes and aspects are taken in contextual relation to other likewise influence principles. Emphasis is one that deserves as much consideration as those two. Actually, an aesthetic feature with comparable structural features, emphasis signals meaning for the moment of significance as well as meaning set up for later. Foreshadowing, for example.

See, there is an illustration of emphasis and one of its principles for reader effect and agency. The sentence fragment "Foreshadowing, for example," which is a stream-of-consciousness method that signals free indirect thought's free association resemblance to real-world introspection.

How do you deploy emphasis? Using punctuation? Using diction or syntax? Using antagonizing events? Or both? Using free association? Using description length: short or long? Using robust verbs and rhetorical schemes? Where and when does emphasis fit into your writing? At sentence, paragraph, or chapter starts? Midway through a dramatic unit? At ends?

[ August 16, 2014, 07:23 AM: Message edited by: extrinsic ]

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Reziac
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I don't actually think about it in such terms. Rather, I dink with all those varieties of "deployments" (but not toward any specific method) until the Reader Effect is as intended (at least in my mind).

I am starting to suspect that the quality of the reading experience is inversely proportional to how much analysis the author put into it. :/

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extrinsic
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Inverse proportionality, a base principle of the inverse square law, is one of proportionality's axioms; direct, logarithmic, and exponential proportionality being others.

Frankly, my reading experiences encounter far more deliberate exponential proportionality of accomplished writer analysis, at least as a revision product if not a product of planned writing, than inverse proportionality. The making of a narrative discernible by its artifacts and processes. The opposite, though, is an ideal, appearance of less analytical geometric proportionality while no less exponential, actually adding other depth of geometric progression--synergy: the sum of the whole greater than the total of the parts.

On the other hand, how much deliberate analysis any given writer may invest is as well proportionate to how much nonconscious and instinctive influences that may be brought to bear, as well by degrees of inverse, direct, logarithmic, and exponential proportionality.

In other words, To each their own; to each their joys and rewards and heartaches; and to each according to their abilities, intents, and reaches, dissent notwithstanding.

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Grumpy old guy
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In my writing, and the unfolding development of the narrative line as seen from the reader's perspective, I prefer to use what I call the slow boil approach as I build towards a sub-climax. I use the term: sub-climax, for a climactic event in a character's journey rather than the narrative climax of the story.

This slow boil entails a careful, yet largely intuitive adding together of small and sometimes apparently meaningless little scenes and fragments that slowly coalesce into a dramatic emotional climax and denouement.

Once the moment of climax for the character is reached I use highly weighted language through dialogue and confrontation to raise the emotional temperature until it explodes, or implodes, depending on the narrative requirements.

For the critical argumentative dialogue I wait until I can safely work myself up into that same sort of frenetic emotional state and then just sit down and write myself out. I use that text as the road map for further refinement and scene crafting.

I know all this sounds like I put a lot of thought and planning into this but the truth is, it just sorta happens.

Phil.

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