Pass Check: Structure
Analyse how a text is organised and how shifts in focus, time or perspective create effect.
Structure
How a text is built and ordered, including sequencing, focus and shifts across the whole piece.
Narrative perspective
The point of view from which events are told, e.g. first person or third person.
Cyclical structure
A structure where the text ends by returning to an idea, image or setting from the beginning.
Foreshadowing
A hint early in a text about events that will happen later.
Pace
The speed at which events unfold, controlled through sentence length and detail.
Zoom (focus shift)
A structural move between wide description and close, detailed focus, or vice versa.
Time shift
A structural change in when events happen, such as a flashback or flash-forward.
Withholding information
Deliberately delaying key details to build tension or curiosity in the reader.
Quick check
Mixed quiz
1. Two readers disagree about an ending where a character walks away without speaking. Reader A says it shows resolution; Reader B says it shows unresolved tension. Which is the better-supported judgement if the text has built the character's silence as a recurring motif throughout?
2. A writer devotes three long paragraphs to a calm morning routine, then a single line to a sudden car crash. What is the effect of this pacing?
3. A text's tension builds steadily until a sudden anticlimax where the danger turns out to be nothing. Which statement best evaluates the strongest possible effect of this structural choice?
4. A critic argues a text's ending is weak because it does not resolve the central conflict. Which response best evaluates a counter-argument to this critic?
5. Which of these is most likely to appear in the opening of a story?
6. A novel alternates chapters between two characters on opposite sides of a conflict. What effect does this structural choice create?
7. A description begins zoomed in on a single raindrop, then pulls back to describe the whole storm. What structural movement is this?
8. A writer uses increasingly short sentences as a character runs from danger: 'She ran. Faster. Heart pounding. Nearly there.' What is the effect?