Reading Response Week 12

Chapter 9

This chapter confused me. I do not understand how you can have a story without a plot. I understand descriptions are important, but they are meaningless without a plot. A story has to have a purpose. I think stories can be without dialogue, but they require a plot. The exercise was very challenging. It is hard to just describe a person or a place without actually describing that person. When she says "an action can be something as little as a letter not being sent, or a thought that goes unspoken" it helps me to understand it a little better. I don't necessarily have to say-the letter did not get sent. I could say something like at breakfast she knocked over her milk and grabbed the first thing she could, an envelope, to mop up the mess. It doesn't state that the letter was not sent it uses description to tell the reader the letter was never sent. Too much description can be a bad thing as well. There needs to be a balance between description and plot and dialogue if you include that in the story.