Close Reading: A Deep Dive into the Process

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An in-depth guide into applying analysis to a piece of text and extrapolating meaning.

Photo by PicJumbo.com via Pexels.

A close reading is what we call an in-depth analysis of a piece of text, which might be in the case of fiction a short story, or for novels and novellas might be a portion or an extract from the text.

A “text” can refer to virtually anything — this piece is going to focus on reading and interpreting written fiction, particularly short stories and extracts from novels, but a “text” can be anything: a photograph or a painting, an essay or an article, a television show or a film, a videogame, a news bulletin, a play, etc.

Your skills in interpreting meaning of a text will be transferable, but different forms of media might require learning different forms of language and communication — text is text in different languages, of course, but paintings and still images employ visual language; film and television will employ similar visual language, but might also rely on the movement of cameras, music, actors’ subtle choices, etc; videogames will use forms of environmental storytelling to build a larger meaning in the text, such as codices or in-game books, etc.

As a writer, these skills can be vital to building on your own skills in the craft — we often talk about how writers should read to build up their skills, but reading passively only brings you part of the way there. Reading actively and analysing the techniques used by your favourite authors and used in your favourite texts will better allow you to learn from them, and to incorporate those techniques and effects into your own work.

This guide is not about how to write an essay or how to write up and present your close reading of a given text — essays and any other form of meta-writing are a response to a text, and occur in conversation with them: the text has communicated something to you, you’ve read and considered that communication, and then you’re presenting that interpretation to be read and responded to by others. This guide is merely on how to perform your close or in-depth reading of the text, mining it for evidence to use in one of those essays or conversations later on, or simply to allow you to recognise details you wouldn’t with a more cursory reading of it.

Texts can be read and interpreted in a variety of ways, and every person’s reading and interpretation of a text will be unique to them, affected by their own background and perspective — they bring their own unique skills, their own skill sets or areas of knowledge and expertise, their own preferences, biases, even their own emotional state at the time they read the text for the first and subsequent times.

A lot of people are taught how to approach a close reading at school — this might be in Language and Literature classes, in History and Geography, in Classics or other Humanities; it might be as part of a debate module or class. With that said, because a lot of class sizes are pretty big and because a lot of classes are pretty focused on exam and test results these days, with little individual focus, I know a lot of people don’t feel they internalised skills like these as much as they wish they did, or don’t feel confident in them.

Or they feel comfortable in their skills despite what they were taught in their classes, and because they’ve learned to do this intuitively, they feel comfortable in one medium, but not applying their skills to others.

Performing a close reading, or multiple close readings, is foundational to beginning an essay or presentation on a text, sure, but your ability to explore and interpret meanings in a text is valuable in far more situations than that.

Your skills in reading a text might elevate your enjoyment of them, allowing you to see further details or implications; they might aid your ability to draw parallels between comparative texts, and see those connections.

When you see these details and become used to them, you can recognise foreshadowing when it’s first introduced, and sometimes that means you’ll see plot twists or certain beats in a character arc coming — other times, it means you’ll expect certain things to happen, but then be more surprised when those expectations or tropes are subverted.

You might also recognise certain biases or implications in the text that you weren’t cognizant of on your first or cursory readings — you might notice specific pieces of language, notice and keep track of broader patterns, see parallels, et cetera.

It’s important to note that like… Regardless of whether you follow a guide like this or some other guide, simply by existing and going through life, you will gain new skills, you will gain new experiences, you will read and be impacted by new pieces of media, and you will take those experiences with you.

A favourite bit of mine in Transylvania 6–5000 (1985) is when Jack (Jeff Goldblum) chokes out Gil (Ed Begley Jnr) in a very homoerotic fashion while they argue about whether Gil loves Jack or not —

Very gay. You don’t need a comparative to read a gay undertone in this clip, right? The physical intimacy between Goldblum and Begley Jnr, the pushing him away then pulling him close again, the (barely) plausible deniability of it, etc.

It had been years since I watched Fiddler on the Roof (1971), not since I was a kid, and I laughed my head off when I got to Tevye and Golde’s Do you love me? because I realised in retrospect that Jack was quoting it in this scene — and not just quoting the scene, but quoting and putting himself in Golde’s position, not Tevye’s!

And that’s just a silly example, but there are so many things that might wholly change your interpretation of and your perception of a text — a conversation you have in a bar, a Simpsons episode that parodies it, someone’s joke or TikTok, a personal relationship or experience you’ve had that’s similar to the text, etc.

When you read the same book at fifteen, at twenty, at thirty, it can feel like you’re reading a wholly different text, because you’ll be a very different person. You’ll see different details, notice different things, and you’ll be responding as you read not only to the text itself, but to your own recollections of and past relationships with that same text.

You might hold multiple, conflicting opinions about that text, for example — and to do that is honestly a good sign, because if you can have one dominant opinion but see the way(s) someone else might interpret that text while you read it, you’ll have a better ability to understand and respond to other people’s responses to the text in conversation, and get why their perspective is so different to yours.

A reading isn’t just something we do alone in the dark, and that’s then discussed in a lecture hall or a class room, or some other academic setting. These skills are vital for academia, yes, but apart from being useful to any author who wishes to work on and improve their own craft, they’re used in everyday situations too.

When people have arguments in pubs or on Twitter about whether Die Hard is a Christmas movie, they are arguing about their interpretations and readings of the text, and whether the text therefore meets the genre conventions of a Christmas movie.

How To Begin Your Close Reading

A lot of academic guides to a close reading will tell you to start by annotating the text.

You might want to underline or highlight bits that stand out to you, put in little sticky notes or add commentary to the text, put asterisks or stars next to important bits, et cetera.

You don’t have to physically make notes on a text in order to engage with its details, though — you can make voice notes to yourself as you read it, you can write notes on a separate piece of paper or in a different tab, you might even want to read it out loud and just talk to yourself about it.

The thing about academic guides to a close reading is that their intention is to prepare your close reading to be used as the basis for an essay or another piece of writing or discussion — if you’re doing a close reading for pleasure or for your own purposes, you don’t need to take physical notes to go back and reference if you don’t want to.

You can just make a mental note of the things that stand out to you, you might notice particular details, turns of phrase, and so on — and then if you read on later, you might go back and reread a particular paragraph, page, or chapter if your opinion or perspective changes when you get further into the text.

But what is an important bit in the text? What details are you meant to be looking for? What’s meant to stand out to you, if you’re new to doing close analysis?

In your classes at school, you might be guided toward particular themes or questions to think about as you read a text. You might be told on your syllabus or with a set of preparatory questions, What does this text say about war? What does this text say about feminism? What does this text say about race and religion?

Reading in your own time, there’s no one setting questions for you or telling you what themes to look out for, and sometimes it can feel like you don’t know where to start with interpreting a text, especially if it’s a very different sort of book than you usually read — if it comes in a different format, if its genre conventions and the tropes it might employ are different to those you’re used to, if it comes from a different cultural perspective or drastically different background to your own, or those you’re already familiar with.

School experiences impact a lot of us very negatively.

There can be a fear that follows us from the classroom of engaging with things critically as adults because there’s a terror that we’re going to get it wrong. That we’re going to interpret a text wrongly and embarrass ourselves and show ourselves up, that we’re going to be mocked or embarrassed, that people are going to realise we didn’t get it and think we’re stupid, that we’re going to get a bad grade in reading a book for pleasure, something that is possible to achieve and normal to be frightened of.

But our reading of a text is individual to us. The details we notice, the themes we engage most with, the parallels we draw or the comparisons we make, these will be based on our own perspective — our interpretations might change over time, but just because our interpretation feels in retrospect to be flawed or lacking in evidence doesn’t mean that it was entirely wrong at the time.

You might find that you find it easiest to look for details that answer theoretical questions, the same way you might have been taught to approach a close reading at school — conversely, you might find that having questions in mind stresses you out and makes you search the text for stuff that matches to a question or category and stops you from making more spontaneous connections. That sort of tunnel vision is natural enough — it’s part of the reason a reread of the same book after a period of time might give you a drastically different perspective on the same text.

You might want to read the text through first, look for patterns in it, and then think afterwards about what themes you’d like to look at in closer detail — alternatively, you might have a few themes in mind that you’ve picked up off the blurb or after hearing friends discuss the text, and you might want to look for those as you read.

Do whatever order works best for you.

Some Questions to Ask About The Text

The questions you work to answer about the text can range from the simplest to much more complicated.

Simpler questions might be ones like:

  • How are the characters feeling in the text? What are their relationships to one another? Do they experience significant change or growth through the course of the text — in a full text, over the arc of the text; in extracts, comparing them to one another?
  • What’s the intended mood or vibe to the piece, or to the extract? How is it meant to make me feel, once finished?
  • Is there an overall meaning or message in the text? Is there a moral or morals to the story told?
  • Are any of these relationships, moods, or morals ambiguous or conflicted?
  • Does the piece parallel or reference other texts? Are any of the characters based off of existing characters or tropes, or written in answer to them? Is the piece inspired by, parodying, or pastiching another text or texts?
  • Does the author accomplish those intended goals? Do I think it’s well-written with those in mind? Are the characters written consistently? Has the piece made me feel the emotions I think it’s meant to make me feel? If there’s a moral to the piece, do I think the author’s case has been well-argued? If it’s referencing or mirroring another text, do I think that’s been well-done?
  • Do you like the text? Did you enjoy it? What parts did you enjoy more or less, and why? What characters did you like most, and which did you not like? Do you feel you agree with the author’s perspectives or the message or moral of the story? Did you agree with some but not others? Did you disagree with all of them, but still like the text, or vice versa?

Those latter two might feel like it’s presumptuous or bad to consider, because like…

At school, you’ll repeatedly be told, hey, it doesn’t matter if you like a text. It’s still important! It’s still mandatory for you to read it! This was written by a real, professional, important author, and you’re just a kid who doesn’t know anything!

Of course it matters if you liked a text. Of course it matters if you thought it was well-done or not.

Part of the value of reading, and indeed, in doing close readings and analyses like these, is in the ways that will encourage you to grow. Part of growth is learning what you like and letting yourself like it — that might conversely involve not liking other things.

More than that, when it comes to a close reading of a text, you might find that your interpretation or your ability to analyse a text is impacted by your own biases. If you went through the piece thinking “I hate this story” or “this author’s horrible”, it might be hard to then spend more time with the text, picking it apart — at the same time, you might genuinely like and enjoy a text, but not have much to say about it. It’s easy enough to enjoy something, but not find much in it to analyse and pick apart, you know?

It’s not as simple as only closely reading things you already like and enjoy — you might actually find that loathing for a text fuels a deeper, more robust reading than love and affection for it might!

Moving onto more complex questions… Firstly, you can consider broader themes and just look at how they might apply.

Common themes you might want to explore within a piece of fiction in a general sense are:

  • War and Conflict — How does the text present war and conflict? Is a soldier or warrior presented as noble and masculine, is war seen as a higher calling, or is war presented as something more futile and pointless? Are any characters veterans of any wars or conflicts? How do the characters feel about war?
  • Birth and Death — How does the text present births and deaths? How many people are born, or die, in the course of the narrative? How are birthdays and anniversaries of death treated? Is there any particular fear, dread, excitement, or enjoyment for particular births and deaths? How is parenthood and associated emotion treated? Are any characters meant to experience the joy of motherhood or fatherhood? How is childbirth presented? How is grief presented?
  • Nature and the Natural World — How present is nature and the natural world in the course of the text? How much are characters outside and exposed to forestry and woodland, to meadow and moors, to prairie and plains, to desert, to beaches and sand dunes, to lakes, rivers, and the oceans? When much is their relationship to the natural world outside tempered by human intervention — for example, are they in wild woodland, or are they in orchards and botanical gardens that have been domesticated or in various ways tamed and controlled by human intervention? How much is nature brought into their domestic spaces? Nature can mean trees, plants, and flowers, but it can also be different animals, different elements such as wind and water, even cycles like birth and decay.
  • Race and Culture — How does the text present different races, ethnicities, and cultures? Are the characters racially and/or culturally homogenous, or do they come from varied backgrounds? If there are characters of varied backgrounds, which background or perspective is treated as the “default”, if at all, by the text, and why? Does the text explicitly discuss differences of race and culture, and do the characters?
  • Gender and Sexuality — How does the text present different genders, and different forms of gender expression? If there are men and women in the text, are some held up as better examples of men’s masculinity or women’s feminity than the others? How are masculinity and femininity reckoned with within the text? Are some forms of gender expression or identity punished or rewarded more than the others, by different characters, or by the narrative? Does gender (or characters’ perceived gender, especially their conformity with that gender) impact how much power or resource characters have in their lives, and in the course of the narrative? How about their sexuality and their desire for others or the same gender? How is sexuality presented in the text, for men, for women, and for anybody else?
  • Faith and Religion — How does the text present different forms of faith and religion? Is it written from a particular religious perspective, or multiple? Are there any religious allegories or parallels made to particular passages or sequences of events in relevant religious story or mythology? Is religion or faith important to any of the characters? Does the text present religion as a force particularly for good or bad, for conflict or for unity?
  • Health and Disability — Is everyone in the text “healthy”? In what ways are they shown to be healthy, or not? Do any characters have chronic, permanent, or recurring health conditions, disabling or otherwise? Are any of the characters disabled or ill, such that they have to depend on other characters for care and support? How important are these characters’ perspectives in the course of the text?
  • Love and Affection — How does the text present love and affection? Does it place certain types of love and affection above others? How do characters show their feelings for one another? How does the text present monogamous romantic relationships, or polyamorous ones? Is love presented as important, or is the text more cynical about it? Are some characters denied love and affection, for whatever reason? How? Is infidelity punished? How directly can love and affection be communicated?
  • Marriage and Family — How does the text present familial and married relationships? How important are they in the course of the story or to the different characters? How good, functional, and/or healthy are the different dynamics between partners in “committed” romantic relationships, fraternal relationships, parent-child relationships, and others? Is marriage presented as important? Is the family presented as important? Is engaging with family a choice, or is it presented as an obligation, and/or inescapable?
  • Sex and Desire— How does the text present lust, sex, and desire? How do characters show (or hide) their desire for one another? If characters engage in sex or if it seems like there’s a precursor to sexual expression, what happens to them afterward? Does there seem to be a pattern of punishment or growth in response to acts of sex and desire? Are some presentations of sexuality rewarded or celebrated where others are punished and decried?

Those are obviously just some broader themes that might apply to a huge swathe of texts.

For a genre text, you might want to consider how it compares to other texts within its genre, how much the text’s style is influenced by other stalwart authors and creators in the genre, how much it employs certain genre tropes and conventions. Where it does employ them, why, how? To good effect, or not? Where it doesn’t, why do you think it doesn’t? Why has the author selected some tropes and not others?

For a text set during a particular period and in particular places, how accurate is it to that period of history and/or that location? Do any particular historical events overshadow or seem to influence the events of the text? Are there references to any historical figures or events that feel important or central to the story, and to the emotions felt by the characters?

If the text is set during a period of cultural change, or on the cusp of any attitude and paradigm shifts, how is that communicated? As the story and characters go on, do you think that their experiences are typical of that period, or are they instead subversions of expectations?

How historically accurate are the events or characters presented? Are there any points where it seems highly accurate, but not others? Is it biographical or semi-biographical in places?

For example, you might find that some authors are very accurate when it comes to dates and geography, but don’t necessarily keep track of period-accurate cultural perspectives. An author might get weapons and uniform details perfectly correct, but miss details about domestic life or music. If it is historically accurate everywhere, in what ways does that elevate the text, or help it meet its goals? If it doesn’t feel historically accurate at all, does that feel like a detractor, or does it help the text in its other goals?

Apart from specific themes, you can examine:

  • What tense is the text written in? Present, past, future? — Does the tense remain consistent throughout the text, or does it change? Are some chapters in past tense where others are in present, for example? Does the tense used make the work feel more current or in-the-moment, or add additional emotional distance or intimacy?
  • Whose perspective is the text written from? — Is the text written in 1st person (with I/me/my pronouns), 2nd person (with you/you/your pronouns), or 3rd person (he/him/his, they/them/theirs, etc pronouns)? Is the narrator named or anonymous? How much or how often does the perspective of the text change, if at all? What difference does that make to the emotional impact of the text on you, on how close the narrator seems to be to the events of the text? Is the perspective limited (meaning that the narrator only relates emotions or happenings that they have knowledge of) or is it omniscient (meaning that it relates emotions or happenings that an individual narrator couldn’t have knowledge of)? Does the author engage in head-hopping, meaning that the text is written in third person limited narration or similar, but that the role of narrator regularly swaps places, so that we as a reader peek into different characters heads, but also are limited by their perspective? (In Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels, we frequently hop between different characters heads, for example).
  • Is the narrative presented in the text a reliable one? — Meaning, do you trust that the narrators are telling you the truth about the story or stories as they have unfolded? Are you, the reader, assumed to be a specific person, or directly referenced or addressed within the course of the text? If a story is told from a specific character’s perspective, do you think they are lying or biased about certain things, or that they might be leaving certain details out? If the text is epistolary (presented in the form of letters) or made up of articles and extracts, do you think some have been left out on purpose, or that the characters might have a vested interest in lying to the reader or each other about the plot?
  • How is colour used in the text? — What colours do characters wear? What colour names are used and repeated most in the course of the text? What colour are important objects, or important rooms? Do the colours change as the text progresses?
  • How much does the text attempt to engage your senses? — How does the text describe sights and sounds? How does it describe light and darkness? How much does it reference music or seem to have a soundtrack in mind of background noise? How does it — and how often does it — describe tastes, scents, and textures? How emotionally evocative are these engagements of the senses? Do any of them communicate deep senses of unease or dread, of happiness and contentment, of discomfort and irritation, of desire and anticipation?
  • How does the text show the passage of time? — How much time passes in the text? Do you know? Is it explicit, or is it implied? How old or young are the different characters? How do they talk about time, about history, about different eras and epochs?
  • How is the text formatted and presented on the page?—Does the author experiment with traditional formatting? Do they use illustrations, photos, or cartoons alongside the text? Do they space text differently, or approach paragraphing or dialogue in non-traditional ways? Do they make use of blank pages, backwards text, changes in font, text size, or colour? Do they change languages or alphabets, shift between poetry and prose, make use of italics, bolds, etc?

Characters

The characters in a text might be as important as the course of the plot, and characters themselves might embody certain themes or feelings within the course of the text.

In simpler texts, particular characters might wholly represent or symbolise in themselves larger thematic elements. In most, however, characters tend to exhibit and represent multiple themes and ideas at once, as with any line — viewed through the different lenses of one reading or another, one might notice certain elements or patterns more than others.

One character might be the face of a particular perspective, political view, or side of a debate, while other characters serve as opposing or otherwise different ones; they might represent certain sections of society, being the face of a certain race, religion, ethnicity, or cultural group, a certain economic class or social stratum, a particular gender or sexuality, et cetera; they might serve to exhibit a particular moral or personal quality, or to depict a particular downward or upward spiral.

Who counts as a character?

It can be worth considering which characters are the most or least important within a text, which might be paid the most attention to.

Which characters are the protagonists (main characters or “heroes”) and antagonists (the “villains”)? Which are the love interests and supporting characters? Which are the minor or tertiary characters?

Might it be a matter of debate which characters are the protagonists and antagonists, and particularly the heroes and villains? Does your reading of a story change drastically depending on which roles each character fits into?

And also —

  • Are there any recurring animals or non-sentient living things that might count as characters? Beloved pets or antagonistic pests, wild creatures, prowling beasts?
  • Do any places, vehicles, buildings, or objects count as characters? Are any of them given names, especially referred to by affectionate titles or nicknames? Are they frequently personified or allotted human or otherwise sentient traits within the text?
  • Are there any themes or broader spirits that might count as characters? Are spirits of justice or love alluded to, either in the guise of gods, or just called on enough that they seem to be alive? Might the weather be counted as a character?
  • If the narrator is not one of the characters within the text, can they be counted as a character in themselves, and analysed as one? Do you know who the narrator or narrator(s) are? Do you consider them to be trustworthy, or are they unreliable narrators?
  • Are you, the reader, being treated as a character by the text? Are you assumed to be a specific person or person(s)? If you are, who? Beyond your assumed name or title, what other details is the imagined reader(s) thought to have by the narrator(s)?

Once you have established who the characters are, you might ask —

  • Do you like the characters? Why, why not? Are they meant to be likeable, sympathetic? Do you support them in their goals or do you root against them? Does the text want you to root for any particular characters, or want you to support any particular causes for or against them? How can you tell? How convincing is the narrative of the text? Does it want you to take the author’s or a particular character’s side, or to draw your own conclusions?
  • Which characters seem to be the most important to the author, to the story, and to you, the reader? Which lead the most meaningful lives, or have the most impactful pieces of dialogue? Which appear most within the course of the text? Whose perspective do we see — whose heads do we get to peek into, if at all, and whose don’t we? Which characters get the most dialogue, and which get the least? Do some characters never appear on the page, or only appear rarely, despite being described and mentioned frequently by the other cast?
  • Do the characters seem realistic or true-to-life? On the other hand, do they seem larger-than-life and exaggerated in their traits and decisions? Do any of them seem similar to people you might know in real life, such as certain family members, people in certain professions, certain celebrities or historical figures? Do they meet with particular stereotypes or recurring character tropes within their genre? Are there any character details that seem unrealistic due to limitations on the part of the narrator and/or the author? For example, do you end up feeling that a cis male author has written a female character based on his assumptions of feminine perspective rather than in reality?
  • Are any of the characters undergoing significant changes through the course of the text? How comfortable or confident are the characters with the changes they’re experiencing ?Are they ageing considerably, having health problems, changing in their relationships, undergoing some form of physical change or transformation, changing professions, moving homes, or being impacted by some other significant choice or experience? How are these changes presented, and how do they impact the broader plot, the characters’ lives, and their relationships with each other?
  • Are the characters comfortable with their relationships and the setting? Are there relationships old and habitual, or are they new and in-progress? Which of the characters are in the process of undergoing significant changes in their relationships — new romantic connections, new professional ones, new bonds of circumstance, etc? How do these changes impact the broader narrative?
  • Are any characters mirrored or contrasted to each other in the text? This could be shown in their relationship and interactions with each other, but two characters don’t necessarily need to meet or interact to exist as parallels or foils for each other — are there two or more characters that for whatever reason seem they should be compared or contrasted, who should be juxtaposed or viewed in mirror image of each other? Characters who share particular trajectories or personal traits, or who are frequently described in similar physical or personal terms?
  • Do the characters seem to match the genre or story they’re in? For example, a gritty detective might be quite at home in a gritty detective novel — will he be similarly at home in a slice-of-life romance or a fantasy series?
  • Are any of the characters representative of a specific moral or ethical standpoint? Are they meant to serve as the face of a particular movement or social element? If they are representative of something, are they good representation? Does their place as the face of that thing make you more sympathetic or less so? Do you support their cause or movement?

What Details to Look For In The Text

Maybe you have questions you want to ask yourself, maybe you don’t — either way, when it comes to looking for important details in the text, how do you know what’s actually important? How do you decide what’s important?

For starters, look for patterns and repetitions.

Does the author repeatedly focus on the same subject, philosophy, or perspective? Do certain questions — or answers to questions — recur within the text? Do any characters have the same conversation or interaction multiple times, or have repetitions of the same experience?

Do any events in the text seem to be cyclical or otherwise recurring? Are any stories, myths, or historical events mentioned that parallel events and happenings within the text? Do events in the text keep occurring on a certain day of the week, at a certain time of year, in a certain season, at a certain place or location, in a certain setting, when certain stars are in alignment?

Do they repeatedly use particular imagery or invoke a specific allegory? Do any words or phrases come up again and again? Which ones? Does the author keep trying to draw attention to a specific detail?

Are any events foreshadowed — for example, if a character makes jokes about their oncoming doom or happy ending in the beginning of a story, or if a prediction is made, does that joke or prediction come true by the end? Are any events or experiences mirrored or reflected between characters, eras, locations?

Does a sequence of events or experiences seem to repeat or recur?

Word Choice and Rhythm

First be aware of the classes of word:

  • Noun — a word used to refer to people, places, or things; a proper noun is generally capitalised, a name, referring to a specific person, place, or thing
  • Pronoun — a pronoun stands in for a noun or phrase
  • Verb — a “doing” word
  • Adjective — a word used to describe a noun’s attributes
  • Adverb — a word used to describe a verb’s attributes

There are also conjunctions (also known as connectives), interjections, prepositions, determiners (including articles and quantifiers), and numerals, although these might not be as relevant to a broader analysis.

Does the author repeat or reuse certain words repeatedly? Are certain things always described with the same adjective or adverb, or are these same adjectives and adverbs applied repeatedly to a variety of subjects? Does the author seem to be avoiding certain specific words, or using them sparingly?

Do they use a variety of synonyms rather than settling on just one word — is the same house also referred to as a home, a dwelling, a cabin, an abode, a residence, a habitation, a domicile?

If the author uses a variety of words, do they share any traits in common that might cause you to associate them together? In a given passage, do you notice that a lot of words:

  • begin with the same or similar letter or sound?
  • end with the same or similar letter or sound?
  • rhyme with each other?
  • have the same number of syllables, or have stresses in the same places?
  • are associated with a specific place, era, class, or community?
  • have their origins in a different dialect to the one you’re reading in?
  • are loanwords from the same language, different to the one you’re reading in?
  • are all constructed, or have their origins in a conlang? (This is particularly relevant in fantasy and sci-fi, where characters might be using different slang or are shown to be speaking in-world languages.)
  • are associated with another book or genre, mythology, text, or style?
  • are associated with another skillset, job, or industry?
  • essentially, have the same or similar vibe?

Do all the words seem to match the class and level of education of the characters? If not, why not? What words stand out as different or out of place?

If a character is a mechanic, do they tend to describe other characters or objects with terms and words that might be associated with their industry?

Is the text itself wordy? What does it describe in detail, and what is described in sparse terms?

Do the passages and paragraphs have a noticeable rhythm or a flow when you read them out loud?

You might have had your attention drawn before to different sentence lengths, such as an author who writes longer sentences but intersperses them with shorter ones and interjections to vary the flow of the passage. This “flow” or level of musicality isn’t determined only by sentence length, however.

Part of it is to do with other punctuation, which I’ll cover in the next session, but it’s also to do with stressed and unstressed syllables.

English is what we call a stress-timed language — syllables are not always said at the same volume or with the same length to them. We pronounce the stressed syllables at regular intervals, and the unstressed syllables are shortened in order to fit in with that rhythm, and this can change between different accents and dialects of English; it might also depend on where the words appear in a sentence or paragraph, dependent on the other words around it.

Here’s a video picking apart how one dialect of American English stresses syllables:

Being aware of the different ways that syllables are stressed or unstressed in words will allow you to better work out the metre or rhythm (or flow) of a passage.

Metre is most relevant to poetry, but some prose is written in verse, or in poetic metres, in order to make certain lines stand out — some characters might speak in a specific metre, for example, to show that they’re educated, or to show that they’re paralleling classic or otherwise loftier characters; some might speak in short, one-syllable words so that every word sounds stressed, giving their speech a staccato rhythm.

There are all sorts of metres that someone might write in, but one of the most useful to look for and to know to recognise is iambic pentameter. Much of Shakespeare’s work is written in iambic pentameter — each line of text is separated into 10 syllables of 5 sections with a pattern of unstressed, then stressed syllables.

Each iamb goes da-dum, da-dum, da-dum. To be or not to be.

Iambic pentameter is written to the same rhythm as the average human heart.

You can normally recognise it as soon as you hear it spoken out loud, or as soon as you start reading it aloud yourself. Here’s another explainer that explains iambic pentameter in Shakespeare’s work:

Has the author chosen certain words or strings of words because they meet a certain rhythm or metre? When read aloud, does a sentence sound more poetic or verse-like not because it rhymes, but because it’s written with a regular metre in mind?

Punctuation & Typeface

A poster showing different forms of punctuation, via Grammarly.

Punctuation might seem as if it’s not super useful to a close reading, because it’s so basic, but the form and presentation of a fiction text can heavily influence its pace and how we read it.

Punctuation shows the stops and gaps between clauses or sections in sentences, which means that punctuation can be vital to understanding the meaning of a text, removing ambiguities — or introducing new ones.

Commas for address are a good example, where a comma should appear between a statement in dialogue and the speaker addressing someone — a common mistake is to forget this comma, which means that instead of someone saying, “Let’s eat, Grandma!”, they say, “Let’s eat Grandma!” instead.

Dropping this comma for address will sometimes be done intentionally, however, to convey the urgency or speed with which someone is speaking, or that the word and the address exist as one phrase — frequently “Yes, sir!” will instead be written as “Yes sir!” or even “Yessir!”

Different forms of parentheses such as brackets (()), but also dashes (-) and em dashes( — ) and even commas can show a statement is interrupting another, especially when showing multiple thoughts or an interrupting thought in the flow of a line; exclamation points and question marks (? (in English, although in Greek ;)) can indicate the tone or feeling of a line; varying sentence structure and length can extend and change the rhythm of a paragraph.

A paragraph of rhetorical questions, for example, all indicated with question marks, might convey a certain hopelessness — that hopelessness might be further emphasised if the author does not use question marks, but instead ends each rhetorical question in a full stop / period.

I mentioned the varying of sentence length when talking about rhythm and flow, but the end and beginning of a sentence, not to mention multiple clauses with a sentence, are controlled by the punctuation used.

We read punctuation in written text in much the same way we read music on the bar — it tells us, when reading aloud (or when we’re imagining a voice in our head) where to pause, where to breathe, where to run-on and continue speaking.

We might pause and take a full breath after a full stop, an exclamation mark, a question mark, especially if these ending punctuation marks are paired with a paragraph break or a new line.

A run-on sentence with lots of commas and parentheses doesn’t give us time as a reader to take a full breath, so instead we might take half-breaths or shorter gasps so that we can continue to read the paragraph as intended.

One of these longer run-on sentences might require that we read faster and therefore with more urgency than a shorter sentence; in contrast, a paragraph made up of short, simple sentences that feature a singular clause before ending and beginning a new one will allow us a lot of room to breathe.

It might be the other way, too — a piece that’s very given to long, run-on lines with a lot of extended sentences might require that you read the whole thing slowly and take your time breathing regularly throughout, especially if it’s written in a way that’s poetic or given to speeches. Hugo’s Les Misérables, for example, has a great many protracted and ponderous sentences.

Short sentences in quick succession can be delivered bullet-fast without the ordinary breaths between them, with only a beat between them to allow the sentence to make its impact.

If measuring the beats and rhythms in written text is something that you struggle to do intuitively, it might sound frustrating that I would say the same techniques can mean exactly the opposite thing from one text to another, especially given that the interpretation of a piece’s beats and rhythm is down to whoever chooses to read that piece aloud and perform it, and might differ hugely between one reader and another.

The same must be said of delivering a close reading, as I outlined in the introduction.

You might glean from the general tone of a passage and the subject matter how fast or slow some lines should be read, or how punctuation should be interpreted — it can be worth reading it back through a few times and having a different take on it each time.

Punctuation is unlikely to be the most significant factor in your reading, but using it can add textual support for your interpretation.

In regards to form, apart from paragraph and line spacing, as well as more unorthodox presentations of text on the page, such as the use of blank pages, arranging words and letters in shapes, having lines of text or paragraphs overlap, and so on, you might also look at the typeface used for the text.

Of course, text might be put in a specific typeface to emphasise individual words, and the choice of which words to emphasise is very important.

The below sentence takes on a significantly different meaning depending on where the emphasis lands in the sentence, conveyed in this case with bold text:

I never said she stole them. 
I never said she stole them.
I never said she stole them.
I never said she stole them.
I never said she stole them.
I never said she stole them.

The word “never” being in bold might show how emphatic the statement is — the speaker is emphasising that they never said that, with greater feeling on the word never.

The others may all prompt a reinterpretation of past statements on the part of the speaker.

When “I” is emphasised, the implication is that someone else said it; when “said” is emphasised, the implication is that while the speaker never outright said these words, perhaps they implied them; for “she”, we understand that the speaker said somebody else did; for “stole”, that they said she had done something else, perhaps taken them with permission; for “them”, that she stole something else.

Text might be formatted in:

  • italics
  • bold
  • all caps or all lower-case

Apart from single word or phrase emphasis, italics might be used to convey hallucinations, unclear speech, or internal monologue; bold might convey a command or a statement from above, for example from a tannoy speaker or from a sign; all caps might show hallucinations or a command from above, or convey loud volume and/or shouting.

All lower-case text might convey very low volume, or imply a slur or drunkenness on the part of the speaker, especially if punctuation is removed at the same time. For example:

I told you, you’re not welcome here.
I TOLD YOU, YOU’RE NOT WELCOME HERE. 
i told you youre not welcome here

These are the same line of dialogue, but they all have very different vibes based on the typeface, right? This sort of formatting choice can do a lot to communicate a particular feel or mood to a character or to their speech.

More experimental form changes might be used in certain texts — changes in font style and the font’s typeface (for example, someone might present extracts from letters or notes in Courier or another typewriter font), but also using a different alphabet or alphabets, such as using Greek or Cyrillic characters to stand in for similar-looking Latin characters, as well as accented Latin characters.

And some authors, of course, might use footnotes and/or indices to good effect — Terry Pratchett quite famously used many footnotes in his work, where additional jokes and punchlines would be appended within the course of the text as footnotes.

Indices and references can go a long way to creating or continuing the feeling of a piece operating as a history or collection of letters and other discrete texts — in Tolkien’s The Lord of The Rings trilogy, for example, references and translator’s notes are made in some sections, because they are presented as if they’re translations by Tolkien of Middle Earth’s historical accounts for the English reader, a fiction within a fiction.

Authors’ choices to play with form can convey a lot of additional mood or meaning in text, but might be impacted by their choice of publisher — especially for mass-produced print texts, it might be far more difficult or expensive to do something radically different in one’s format when it comes to printing copies.

While Pratchett’s Discworld famously has footnotes, for example, some publishers avoid texts that include them, as they can be difficult to format efficiently, especially in a text copy versus digital ones.

Mass-produced texts also don’t make it easy to use techniques like overlapping text and illustrations, sideways or upside down text, letters arranged in shapes and so on — home-produced or small presses might be better able to allow for this sort of non-traditional format, especially for small zines or texts that will only have physical copies rather than digital ones.

You might ask why an author would go to so much effort to format text in a way that’s difficult to print or mass-produced — what makes the effect of their unusual formatting so valuable as to be worth pursuing? How great is the impact of it, if it makes a fantasy text feel like a text from within the world the author has created, for example? Does an epistolary or history feel all the more real when it feels like a real text, when it attempts to replicate the feeling or physical print of mismatched pieces of text, like files accumulated in a dossier?

On the one hand, if the text is only online, the author might be able to achieve presentations of text or formatting that simply wouldn’t be possible on the page.

Text on a webpage might utilise hyperlinks and lead you to different pieces of text, music, or images, while you read — I personally used to use the hyperlink HTML feature that previewed text when you hovered over it with your cursor. Using mouseover text, you could put translations of second language or encoded dialogue without needing to use footnotes, for example.

The below Flash game (it does still run using Ruffle instead of Adobe Flash) is called Silent Conversation, by Gregory Weir, and every level takes a piece of text and re-interprets it visually.

Silent Conversation
Read carefully. From futureproofgames.itch.io

You play the game by controlling a cursor with your arrow keys, making each word and piece of punctuation in the text light up once you’ve brushed it — the words and phrases are arranged on the screen to craft the shapes, animals, landscapes, and figures that are being described in the course of the text, creating an even more evocative experience as a reader.

Literary Devices and Figures of Speech

A literary device is generally a technique used in a piece of text to achieve a particular effect, to make a piece of text or phrasing more impactful or meaningful, to make it more beautiful or poetic, to make it better stick in the mind — there are effectively as many literary devices as there are tropes or authors, but there are certain ones that recur repeatedly, especially in works of fiction.

A rhetorical device is also a technique used in apiece of text to achieve specific effect — while literary devices are generally used to make a piece more emotionally impactful or beautiful, a rhetorical device is generally used to make a piece more convincing.

These are loose definitions and in any case, they might cross over or intersect with one another, but even if a rhetorical device won’t ordinarily be used as a literary one, it can be worth being aware of them — just because they typically occur in speeches, editorials or articles, essays, and so on doesn’t mean they won’t be useful to be aware of in fiction, such as a speech in the course of a narrative.

A figure of speech might itself be a literary or rhetorical device, but regardless, it will be figurative and non-literal.

Any literary device can be a trope, and to be honest, almost anything can be a trope — a “trope” is simply a device or figure of speech or specific idea (character archetype, plot element, theme, etc) that recurs in a lot of different media. “Trope” is a non-specific term that can apply to a broad swathe of things, which can make it useful for noticing patterns, but can be too vague unless you’re looking for something specific.

These four phrases won’t necessarily be useful for your actual close readings, but if a particular figure of speech or device is on the tip of your tongue and you can’t remember the specific word, these can be useful search terms, and ditto to look up good lists of them to use and work from.

Metaphor and Simile

A simile is a figure of speech where one thing is compared to another in order to make the description more vivid or emphatic.

He’s like a teddy bear — sweet as sugar.

In the above, he’s compared to a teddy bear, implying that he’s cuddly or gentle, and said to be as sweet as sugar, implying that he’s nice or kind, right?

Similes generally use “as”, “like”, or “than,” comparing it to whatever counterpart is being used as a descriptor, although similes don’t need to use these specific words in order to make a comparison.

Some authors might grab hold of common similes and intentionally use juxtapository comparisons or to subvert the expected phrase, either to make the reader laugh or to draw attention to the flaw or hypocrisy in the original phrasing.

Douglas Adams, for example, uses this line about some spaceships in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy:

The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don’t.

A metaphor is a figure of speech where one thing is said to be another in order to make the description more vivid or emphatic, although it’s still not literal.

He’s a teddy bear — and a cool tall drink of water.

Here, he’s not like a teddy bear — he is one. Cuddly, pleasant, maybe big or soft. Tall drink of water isn’t just a metaphor, but is a common trope and turn of phrase; according to Wiktionary it’s guessed to have started in vaudeville performances in the 1910s, but while it used to jokingly describe a gangling or lanky person, especially a man, now it tends to have connotations of attractiveness, especially with the addition of the adjective “cool”, which adds an implication that the sight of them is refreshing.

Metaphors and similes can create more impactful statements, but particularly in the context of a close reading, it’s worth looking for patterns in metaphor and simile and seeing which are used repeatedly.

If a character is a soldier, they might continuously be described in terms of military comparisons, for example; if the work takes place during a hot summer, the narrator might wistfully make multiple similes and metaphors that draw on wintery imagery, suggesting a pre-occupation with the season to come.

Personification and Pathetic Fallacy

Personification is a device wherein non-human and especially non-living things are given human characteristics and traits.

An author might describe a woman’s dress as not just worn threadbare but world weary, suggesting that the dress itself is tired of its existence, for example.

Especially in certain genres, such as fantasy and horror, personification might be more than a literary device used to make lines more poetic or emphatic, but might also be literal — much of time, especially in horror and gothic horror, it’s frequently ambiguous, and closely examining the text might change your opinion one way or the other as to whether the haunted house or the white dress or the old, clapped-out car is truly alive and embodied with its own spirit, or if it’s inanimate and merely being imbued with feeling by the characters observing it, or by the narrative.

Pathetic fallacy is a particular form of personification where the natural world is given these feelings or human attributes, especially the weather and the elements.

As well as personification, you might also see the word anthropomorphism, which is specifically the giving of human traits to non-living and non-human things.

Allegory and Symbolism

An allegory is generally a narrative or character arc that might be used to represent a hidden meaning, especially one of political, moral, or religious significance — a parable, for example, is a sort of simple allegory.

What symbols and symbolism come up within the text? Are any characters, stories, places or similar used as symbols for something else, and are the things that happen to or with them meant to be allegorical?

The above are just a handful of particularly common literary devices — there are dozens upon dozens I could go through here, different forms of descriptive and figurative imagery, onomatopoeia and alliterative techniques, plays on words and puns, further figures of speech, and so on.

Final Notes

I’m hoping that the above guide is useful as a foundation to start from, exploring different techniques in any piece of text and how they can strengthen certain stories and narratives.

One thing I would note about a close reading is that it’s important to consider the intentionality of a text.

I mentioned a certain example in the character section — some of us will read a text written by a cisgender man, and the way he writes women will be laughable. There are many cis male writers who have written passages from women’s perspectives, or about women, that are jokingly parodied with phrases like “she breasted boobily down the stairs”, or have long passages where women examine themselves naked in a mirror at the thought of how sexy they are, and what men must think of them.

Some of these are absolutely rightfully criticised and mocked because they’re written by men who don’t think much of women — but intentionality is important here.

Some narrators are intentionally written with certain flaws and biases in their perspective: this does not mean that the author has all of those same flaws and biases, or that those biases were not intentionally depicted.

To write or depict an act or perspective does not mean that an author shares in or endorses it, and it can be dangerous to assume an author’s beliefs are the same as one of or any of their character’s. It is important to remember when reading a challenging or upsetting text that depiction is not endorsement, certainly, but more importantly, that the purpose of art is not only to morally educate the reader or whomever engages with it.

Some art is made to educate and elucidate, to improve or build upon the moral character of its reader — some is made to challenge the status quo, to shock, to titillate, to evoke emotional responses like disgust and grief and anger.

A question as important to ask as “Did the author do this on purpose, did they imply this or present this perspective intentionally?” might be, “Does the author’s intention matter? Is it relevant to our purposes as a reader?” Roland Barthes’ famous 1967 essay, The Death of the Author, explores this question.

I would also note that close reading is not the only angle from which to explore an analysis. A close reading by its definition is primarily informed by evidence one discovers within the text — useful evidence and information might be found outside of the text.

I mentioned contextual clues a few times in the course of this guide — apart from exploring the context of a particular era or historical events, one might want to delve into the author’s autobiography and their personal experiences and relationships, how they might impact the author’s depiction of certain characters or events, to see if certain characters were modelled off of real friends and loved ones, etc. If the events seem to be autobiographical, how old was the author when those events happened, and how old were they at the time the text was written? How old was the author when the text was published?

If the text is based on real events, what has the author changed, and what have they kept the same? Are there conflicting accounts of the historical events or perspectives on those events?

Has the author themselves written on the subject of their own work? Are there notes available, or the diaries they wrote while working on the text? Have they discussed it, or been interviewed on the topic, anywhere where you can hear the author’s own words?

One might also want to explore comparative texts — are you reading the text in translation, or are there translations of the text in different languages you’re familiar with? How do select passages of the text compare, when viewed from the perspective of different translators?

Is the text abridged, or significantly different to other published editions of the text? Has it been censored by a government or educational body, or are there multiple editions of the text? Was it edited or re-edited by a family member, loved one, or friend of the author?

Is there evidence that the text was plagiarised, and could this be an interesting lens through which to view the work, comparing it to the text or the work of the author the author is thought to have stolen from?

The question you’re always asking yourself when performing any sort of critical or literary analysis is why — Why does the text make me feel this way? Why did the author choose to write it like that? Why does it have the impact it does? Why did the translator make this choice instead of another? Why was this aspect censored? Why was this text abridged, and abridged in the way that it was? Why was it edited in this way rather than another? Why were these illustrations used, or these photographs, and not these others?

Why was a decision made, and why does that decision matter?

That’s the crux of all critical analysis, in the end: the why.

Useful Resources:

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