Conversations in Literature

20th Century, High School

Texture & Style
Literary Texture & Style
There is a section on your focus paper called Texture & Style. This information is meant to help
you with that section.

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.

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 Conversations in Literature
20th Century, High School
Texture & Style
Style (personal voice of the author)
An author’s 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 author’s 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 author’s 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 work’s overall mood, and describe the emotions that the author’s
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
person’s physical description when it is important for the story, as in the account of Goliath. A
story’s 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 novel’s overall pace
and feel.