Literary Texture & Style The term texture refers to the feel of a literary work, which is made up of specific

techniques and devices, and a particular writing style, or voice of the author. When you touch silk, you find that it is incredibly smooth. Linen is rougher and more uneven. Raw wool tickles the palm. Velvet is warmly soft and thick. Embroidery stands up stiffly. All these are textures that you can feel with your hands. Pieces of literature, in a similar way, have textures that you can feel with your mind. In fabric we talk about the texture or feel of the cloth, such as rough or silken or embroidered or smooth. Similarly, in literature we talk about the overall atmosphere, style, and tone of a work, and about the devices or techniques that the artist selects to enrich it: He can create texture with devices (tools) like metaphors, descriptions, irony, and symbols and style (personal voice) with his sentence structure, tone and descriptive style. Devices (tools of the author) Devices are based primarily on the principle of artistic enhancement. Generally speaking, they exist in order to forward or enhance a mood, a plot, a character, a theme, a meaning, etc. An author uses these devices because they are pleasing in themselves and because they are the tricks of his trade that enable him to enhance his themes and delight his audience. The author expects to arouse a certain response in the reader by using long-tested and well proven devices. Specific genres are defined in part by the devices found in them. This is one reason it is important to know the difference between one genre and the next. If you know the genre, you will often know what sort of texture you can expect to find in it. Devices move a book forward and make the content more interesting. There are certain aspects of style that belong to particular genres and an author will choose from these to keep the genre true to itself. An author chooses certain devices and techniques because they work especially well for the genre in which he is writing. That is why, for example, writers of comedies and satires often use a good deal of wit, repartee, sarcasm, and wisecracking. Tragedians and romancers, by contrast, are especially fond of monologues filled with irony, rhetorical questions, or hyperbole.

Style (personal voice of the author) An authors voice is unique to him. He chooses devices that work well with a genre but his voice is always his own. The way he puts sentences together, words he uses to evoke emotion in his reader, and the way he describes things will be unique to his way of telling a story. Sentence Structure refers to the length (or shortness) of sentences, the way they are usually constructed, and the elements included in them. These elements create a leisurely, thoughtful mood, or a passionate one, or even an angry one. When you study an authors style, look at the way he puts sentences and paragraphs together. Ask yourself these questions when you are working on your focus paper section called Texture & Style. Are the majority of sentences long and complex or short and pithy? Does the author like to use parallelism or contrasts to build his sentences and paragraphs? Does the author (or a character) frequently invert his sentences? Is he fond of dashes, semicolons, or exclamation points? Tone is the emotional color of a story. It includes the authors attitudes and emotions as well as the consistent emotional mood(s) of characters (particularly central characters) in the story. The tone can me mournful, celebratory, cynical, longing, or hopeless. Tone affects the emotions of the reader, causing him to feel a certain way about the story. As you describe the tone of a book, mention how it enhances the works overall mood, and describe the emotions that the authors tone calls you to feel. Descriptive Style is the way the author describes everything in the story, including characters, objects, ideas, and places. When studying it, rather than listing everything your author describes, look at HOW he uses description. Ask yourself these questions as you answer the focus questions about Texture & Style. Does he carefully describe every detail or does he merely sketch the setting with a few brief phrases? What kinds of things does your author tend to describe, and what things does he emphasize in his descriptions? Biblical accounts, for instance, tend to give succinct, vivid descriptions of settings or situations and only give a persons physical description when it is important for the story, as in the account of Goliath. A storys descriptions will tell you a lot about what the author thinks is important in his story. If you are taking notes on descriptive style, think about the way it affects the novels overall pace and feel.