Key incidents and characterisation in "The Curious Incident ..."

Hi everyone,

So for my next upcoming assessment task, I have been asked to write a essay on The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time. I am planning what I am to write about in my essay, and I have come across a few problems.

1. Should I set out my paragraphs, but speaking about themes.
2. Should I being setting out my paragraphs by speaking about 1 - the themes ( all of them, or major ones?), 2 - the form and structure 3 - the language features.

If I chose option 2, how would I incorporate key incidents and characterisation?

What should I be looking for in this close study essay?

If anybody could help me, that would be great!

Thanks a lot!

:)

Hei Caitlin! :D

First of all, you do a great job by planning your essay before writing it! That's the right way to do it.


If you have to write about a book without having been given a concrete prompt, perhaps it would be good to think about a particular incident in it, or a thought or a character that impressed you and build your essay up on that.

In such a case you need to summarise the essay first of all. While summarsing make sure to comment on what's happening. If you plan to add something afterwards, that is not so no good, because it would be pretty much ripped out of context. (Here you will also incorporate your key incidents.)

You should mention themes that seemed to stand for what you're analysing. I haven't read this book, but I'll give you a random example. Let's say you have a novel about war and love, but you want to look closer at the loving part; or, in your opinion, the accent falls on the loving part. In this case you do mention that there is a war going on, but you care more about love. [sorry, for repeating so many words]

I don't really know how relevant form, structure or language features might be to. If you think they are of great importance, perhaps you should mention them, but I never really talk about them so I wouldn't know where to tell you to incorporate them. [I do remember when I was writing essays on plays and such that I would mention language features when talking about a character. Form and structure ... hm, look around and see where they best fit in.]

It is obvious that a charaterisation will fit in perfectly after mentioning the themes. Always remember to create a comparison based upon the interactions between figures.

And then write a great personal opinion down and finish the essay off with a thoughtful conclusion.

Here's all I've been saying as a scheme:

1. Introduction (Give the reader a hint on what you are going to develop in the upcoming essay. You could also choose a quote to begin or talk about the author and such if the events in his life are relevant to what his piece of writing is about.)

2. Body

summarise the given text and comment on what's happening at the same time (key incidents go in here too, even though you are free to talk about them in more detail after)

- mention themes and try to underline the most important one(s) to making your point
- talk about a character
- enclose a personal opinion on the matter you chose

3. Conclusion (Basically, you present the main idea of the intro again and add some more info to it.)

Good luck with this! :D

I don't know if I can improve on that great presentation from Ana, but I want to add a simple rule that helps me a lot. This is very, very simple.

Each paragraph begins with a topic sentence. Then, add explanations, examples, elaboration. Write a paragraph about any topic you want to mention.

Each paragraph is like a building block for the essay, and it has to be about that main idea in the topic sentence.

If you do that, you can make sure you write a paragraph about every concept that needs to be covered, and then switch them around into a sequence that makes a great presentation.

Just write one paragraph for now. One paragraph at a time!

Discussion on"The curious incident of the dog in the night time"by a different author

topic: Discuss how the novel would be different if it were written by another character, for example Ed Boone or Siobhan, or in a third person omniscient voice. What would be lost with such changes and what would be gained.

I really need help with this in all departments eg. what would be some of my topic sentences to start each paragraph and so on, any ideas and help would be much appreciated :)

Research - The Curious Incident of the Dog in the NIght Time (successful novel?)

Hi, everyone!
I have to do an essay for school on, " How A Successful Novel Makes the World Of The Characters Seem Real To The Reader".

Please help, I need ideas and stuff.

Thanks in advance.