#reader stuff
I usually tell my students that “close reading” means looking at what is actually on the page, reading the text itself, rather than some idea “behind the text.” It means noticing things in the writing, things in the writing that stand out. To give you some idea of what this means, I’ve made up a list of five sorts of things that a close reading might typically notice: (1) unusual vocabulary, words that surprise either because they are unfamiliar or because they seem to belong to a different context; (2) words that seem unnecessarily repeated, as if the word keeps insisting on being written; (3) images or metaphors, especially ones that are used repeatedly and are somewhat surprising given the context; (4) what is in italics or parentheses; and (5) footnotes that seem too long. This list is far from complete—in fact, no complete list is possible—but the list is meant to begin to give you an idea of what sorts of things we notice when we’re doing close reading.
What all five of my examples have in common is that they are minor elements in the text; they are not main ideas. In fact, your usual practice of reading which focuses on main ideas would dismiss them all as marginal or trivial. Another thing they have in common is that, although they are minor, they are nonetheless conspicuous, eye-catching: they are either surprising or repeated, set off from the text or too long. Close reading pays attention to elements in the text which, although marginal, are nonetheless emphatic, prominent—elements in the text which ought to be quietly subordinate to the main idea, but which textually call attention to themselves.
Most of you have been educated to ignore such elements. You have been taught to seek out and identify the main ideas, dismissing the trivial as you go. This has had to be trained into you: read to a young child sometime, you will notice she has the annoying habit of interrupting the flow of the story to draw attention to some minor thing. Close reading resembles the interruptions of that child. It is a method of undoing the training that keeps us to the straight and narrow path of main ideas. It is a way of learning not to disregard those features of the text that attract our attention, but are not principal ideas.
Jane Gallop, “The Ethics of Close Reading: Close Encounters,” Journal of Curriculum Theorizing, Vol.16, No.3 (Fall 2000), pg.7-8 (x)
If you want to filter out oneshot collections (fics that look like multichaps but are actually a series of oneshots posted as chapters of the same work) from your search results on AO3:
- Start by tapping on whatever tag you want to read. That will take you a page full of results where all of the works use that tag.
- Tap on the Filter button at the top of that list of fics. This will open up the filter menu.
- Scroll down to the bottom of that sidebar and find the box called Search Within Results
- In that box type -oneshot* AND -drabble* AND -ficlet*
- Then press the button labelled Sort and Filter
You will now have works with that tag that do not have the words oneshot, oneshots, drabble, drabbles, ficlet, ficlets in their title, summary, tags, or author’s notes.
If you still want to see oneshots that are actually one 1 chapter long (or fics that have only 1 chapter posted so far), you’ll need to have a second browser window open for the tag :(
To filter for oneshots, do all of the steps above, but at step 4 type this instead expected_number_of_chapters:1
UPDATE
someone smarter than I am told me I could put these two filters together
(-oneshot* AND -drabble* AND -ficlet* AND -imagine*) OR (expected_number_of_chapters:1)
If you want to filter out oneshot collections (fics that look like multichaps but are actually a series of oneshots posted as chapters of the same work) from your search results on AO3:
- Start by tapping on whatever tag you want to read. That will take you a page full of results where all of the works use that tag.
- Tap on the Filter button at the top of that list of fics. This will open up the filter menu.
- Scroll down to the bottom of that sidebar and find the box called Search Within Results
- In that box type -oneshot* AND -drabble* AND -ficlet*
- Then press the button labelled Sort and Filter
You will now have works with that tag that do not have the words oneshot, oneshots, drabble, drabbles, ficlet, ficlets in their title, summary, tags, or author’s notes.
If you still want to see oneshots that are actually one 1 chapter long (or fics that have only 1 chapter posted so far), you’ll need to have a second browser window open for the tag :(
To filter for oneshots, do all of the steps above, but at step 4 type this instead expected_number_of_chapters:1
