Author: Eckleburg Workshops

As with the chemist at her microscope and the lookout in his tower, fictional point of view always involves the distance, close or far, of the perceiver from the thing perceived. Authorial distance, sometimes called psychic distance, is the degree to which we as readers feel on the one hand ... Read More

Reader-Response Criticism is the conventional notion that a writer or speaker has an "idea," encodes it—that is, turns it into words—and the reader or listener decodes it, deriving, when successful, the writer or speaker's "idea." The reader-response critics assume, however, that such equivalency between sender and receiver is impossible. The ... Read More

Action beats are short modifiers before or after a piece of dialogue that describe what the character is doing in relationship to what the character is saying. Beats can be used effectively to change the pacing within a longer dialogue stream. Using them sparsely, at just the right moments, and they can ... Read More

Developmental editing is the first phase in the editorial process when the writer and/or editor focuses on structural elements within the narrative including but not limited to characterization ... Read More

In Sausserian Linguistics, the two elements of a piece of language—the signifier being the relatively concrete and the signified the relatively abstract. In some situations, there are chains of signifiers: The written "road" signifies the spoken "road," which in turn signifies the idea of "road," which, in turn, in an ... Read More

The classic definition of a protagonist is the character who is the focus of the overall narrative and undergoes the most significant change. A literary protagonist is rarely ever considered to be morally “good.” Literary protagonists are complicated and will often challenge the reader’s concept of “good” and “bad.” Keep in ... Read More