Unit 3: Ficiton


Key Skills in English


■ Examine how the writer varies sentence structure. Check the paragraphs to get a sense of how many sentences are short or abrupt, how many are long and complex and how many are questions or exclamations. Good writers usually vary their sentence structure.


■ Humour is a feature of style which engages and entertains the reader. Humour can be used simply to make the reader laugh; it can also be used in a cynical or dark manner to highlight serious themes.


2. Beginnings and Endings If you understand a writer’s style, you won't have a problem matching the opening of a narrative text with its conclusion.


Beginnings Opening paragraphs have several important functions:


■ Tey serve as a ‘hook’ to grab the reader’s attention. It is very important to grab the reader’s attention from the outset. Many writers achieve this by using language in an unusual or dramatic way or by establishing a unique narrative voice. A surprising piece of dialogue or a startling action can also intrigue the reader and draw them into the story. Whatever method is used, its main function is to encourage the reader to read on.


■ Tey place the reader in a world or setting. Te reader needs to know when and where the story is taking place. Some writers describe the setting or set up an atmosphere at the beginning of the narrative. Certain sensory details give clues about the location, even if we are not told where we are in the first couple of paragraphs.


■ Tey intrigue the reader by presenting a character or group of characters. Characters need to be interesting or unusual in some way if the reader is going to engage with them for the entire novel.


■ Tey create questions which the reader wants answered. A conflict or puzzle needs to be introduced early in the plot to encourage the reader to want to find out what happens next.


Bearing the above points in mind, examine the opening paragraphs from Te Killing Woods by Lucy Christopher and answer the questions that follow.


Something was outstretched arms.


draped across Dad’s


A deer? A fawn that was injured? It was sprawled and long-legged, something that had been caught in a poacher’s trap maybe. A mistake. So this is where Dad had been all this time: in the woods and cutting this creature free. I breathed out slowly, squinted at the mist that hovered around Dad like a ghost. I took my hand from my bedroom window, leaving the memory of my skin on the glass. Ten I


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raced down the stairs, through the hall and into the kitchen out back. Trowing open the door to the garden, I waited for him there.


It was ages since Dad had brought back


something injured, and he’d never brought back a deer, though I could remember helping him free a roe deer from a snare in the woods once. Back then his hands had moved quickly and gently, darting from the wire on the doe’s leg and then to her neck for a pulse, stroking her constantly.


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