Cause and Effect (blog 4A)

I think that cause and effect has a great impact on reaching an audience. For example when cause and effect is used in a narrative, it tells the audience how the characters in the story got from one point in their lives or story to the next point. I think that if cause and effect are used correctly, that is if the writer can make a clear relationship between the events used then cause and effect will be very effective in helping the audience better understand what is going on.

Peer Reviews (Blog 3B)

I think that peer review is such a great idea! The whole idea of having your peers look over your writing and correct it for you is very beneficial to a writer, especially in our case because they are not only our peers but also our audience. It is great to have another couple sets of eyes look over anything that you are writing because they can see things that we as writers might have missed.

Peer reviews also it give us a great opportunity to read our paper out loud and get a feel for how well the writing flows or comes across. I know for me personally it is very helpful to read my papers out loud. All in all peer reviews are a very helpful resource to any writer.

Rhetorical Tools (Blog 3A)

One of the rhetorical tools which I found in Zambreno’s article was how well she used Pathos which is the means of persuading an audience by an appeal to emotions such as pity, guilt, anger, or love. She had a play on our emotions from the very beginning when she opened her essay with a joke. This would make readers believe that she isn’t super strict and give a feeling that we better understand the author.

Pathos can have a very powerful effect on a narrative, but in order to use pathos effectively you have to know and understand your audience and what things are important to them, so that you can shape your writing accordingly. I think that Zambreno is really good at understanding her audiences.

Important Elements of Narrative (Blog 2B)

There are many important elements of narrative. Such as story grammers, setting, plot, characters, and theme. These main elements are often referred to as the backbone of a story. That is to say that they are the building blocks that make a good story. They are also very helpful in getting you started on writing a good story.

The main elements that I used in my last entry were setting and character, and how they relate to each other. The two characters which I used were the man on the surf board and the big shark. As we were able to see that the characters greatly influenced the setting. At first the setting was very peaceful and relaxing. But when you add in the shark it is less peaceful and makes us a bit uneasy about what is going to happen next. As you can see the characters of a story and the setting greatly influence each other.

The Importance of Narrative (Blog 2A)

Narrative is such a broad topic, because there are so many things that go into it. Some of those things include, Story Grammers, Setting, Plot, Theme, Character and Graphs. It is an important form of writing, because it helps us to better prove our point in an argument, or to help us explain something to someone else. By telling a story we have a much easier time explaining things and even getting our point across. One of the essential elements to narrative that I would like to discuss is the characters. The characters are a very important piece to a story, not only do they tell us who the story is about, or who was involved in the events taking place, but they have a major effect on how everything plays out as well. Characters can have an effect on the setting, the plot and even the theme or mood of the story based on their actions and their personalities. They can even change the story completely just by how they come into the story.

For example, if the story is set with a man sitting out on the ocean on a surf board waiting to catch a wave. Looking at the beautiful white sandy beach, listening to the waves crash around him, and feeling that warm ocean breeze on his face. Those of us sitting here in snowy Utah might be jealous. But then the author introduced a new character into the scene. This character happens to be a great big shark swimming silently underneath this man waiting for the opportune moment to attack, we no longer envy this man but are just grateful that it is not us sitting there. As you can see characters can have a great effect on the story even down to how we the reader feel about the story and the things that we take away from it.