The First Mini-Analysis: Structure
In this first mini-analysis, you will evaluate a suitable textual artifact using McKee’s method of evaluation (with Butler and Mamet assisting).
Your job will be to reveal how the text is structured at both the global and local levels to produce aesthetic emotions in the audience. The overall aim will be for you to generate some insight into this evaluative practice.
Your text can be a short story, novel, novella, poem, and also so-called “non-fiction works,” and even your own writing: essays, stories, poems, letters. I strongly recommend that you focus on a piece of writing so that you can work with the actual words "on the page."
As with each mini-analysis, to do a complete job introducing and summarizing the method and applying it to your chosen text, it will need to be at the very least three full pages in length. Furthermore, for each mini-analysis, I will ask for several volunteers to present their efforts on the class day prior to the day we will workshop a given written mini-analysis. |
Suggested Procedure for each mini-analysisThe procedure I suggest for you is to write your analysis as a process of uncovering meaning, which means you may use "I" (of course) to project a persona of someone growing in her understanding of the methods of evaluation.
So, for instance, after introducing McKee and perhaps suggesting what the premise of the piece of writing is, you may follow McKee's suggestion to look for what value wins at the last act's climax. Then, continuing to use specific examples from the text, determine the "cause" of that value winning. Walk your audience through how to articulate the counter idea and then show how the story is structured as a back and forth play between these opposing ideas, identifying the aesthetic emotions the audience experiences as they undergo the structure (the "juxtaposition of uninflected images" wherein the audience interprets a progression and then desires to find out what happens next--Mamet). Workshop guide for McKee mini-analysis is available in "Important Documents" folder in Dropbox. |
McKee
Develop your analysis using McKee's "Structure and Meaning" to provide you with key terms and principles of narrative. These terms/principles include:
In any case, to employ these terms, you will need to introduce McKee's chapter, providing a concise summary of his argument, developing the key terms you will be using throughout the analysis. You may find it useful to actually define the terms as you work through the specific details of the text. Do not forget to draw from Butler and Mamet to help you to focus on specific textual features of the artifact. Key here is the focus on the moments or beats (represented in the language used in the text) during which "shots" are juxtaposed that then trigger an audience to generate meaning depending on the point of view they bring to the event of evaluation. Using Butler, focus on the effects of transitions (cuts and dissolves), proximity (from the intimate to the distant), telescoping or stretching time, and abstraction/exposition versus direct sensual detail (i.e., register).
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