The Elements of Story Reading Response

This reading is useful in many ways. For starters, it reinforced the idea that I was taught in high school that “writing raises the emotions.” By connecting with the audience’s senses, the writer is able to portray a more accurate and specific story line. Descriptions are essential to painting the story within the writer’s mind. Some adjectives are better than others depending on the mood. It is also good for the writer to know when they are being too descriptive or not descriptive enough. For example, the main idea should have the most description, while other sub-ideas should be demoted in details. “All stories are divided into two parts, the action and the commentary.” By separating the story into those two main parts, the author is able to keep the audience mentally involved. Stories need to be entertaining as well as informative in order to keep your audience from becoming bored, as I did while reading this piece. The vocabulary needs to be at a level in which the audience can follow or else it belittles them and they lose interest quickly. In my opinion, this piece was not made to focus on an audience member like me. I found it difficult to understand many of the author’s examples within this text. However, my favorite quote from the text was “you must be factually accurate, but you are not limited by fact in your choice of expression.” I feel that this quote demonstrates how writers focus mainly on fiction details in order to make a non-fiction piece come to life.