Monday, January 10, 2022

The Writer's Toolbox, Part I

 Copyright 2022 by Gary L. Pullman

 A writer's toolbox contains instruments that are used to perform specific tasks related to a particular process. These same tools serve both the writer of fiction and nonfiction:


  • Analysis: the separation of an idea or an argument into its constituent parts for the understanding the function of each part individually and their interrelationships with one another; see process analysis

  • Argumentation: the use of inductive and deductive reasoning to advance and support a premise with convincing argument or to refute the premise of an opposing point of view

  • Classification: the grouping of persons, places, things, or ideas or evidence into categories according to common characteristics

  • Comparison: the process of identifying similarities between two or more persons, places, things, or ideas that are alike in a significant way

  • Contrast: the process of identifying differences between two or more persons, places, things, or ideas that are unalike in a significant way

  • Definition: identifying the meaning of a word based on its genus (classification among similar terms) and its differentiae (differences from those with which it is classified)

  • Description: the presentation of the characteristics of persons, places, things, or ideas

  • Division: the separation of persons, places, things, or ideas on the bases of differences between or among them

  • Exemplification: the process of providing examples to illustrate a thesis or topic sentence.

  • Process analysis: the process of identifying and explaining the steps, in sequence, result in a particular outcome


Some of these tools, such as classification and division and comparison and contrast, are opposites but are often used together.

These tools, or patterns of development, may be used on the page (onstage, as it were), while writing a story or a script, or off the page (offstage), during the planning of a story or a script, for example.

In our next post, we will consider how several notable authors of horror fiction use these instruments in the writing of their fiction.



No comments:

Post a Comment