The Internet and the Media
Senior 3 · English
The Internet and the Media
Lesson 5 of 5
25 min
Let's begin
In unit 6 you named the mood and tone of a text. This lesson looks at two related ideas. Atmosphere is the feeling that hangs over a place or scene: a dark road can feel threatening, a crowded kitchen warm. Style is the way a writer writes, the set of choices that makes one writer's sentences recognisable. Read a story in which a village loses its phones for one evening, then compare it with a news report of the same night.
A short story written for this lesson. The village and its people are imagined.
1 At eight o'clock on a Thursday, every phone in Rugarama went silent at once. It was not the comfortable silence of a phone left in a pocket, but a dead one. The little bars in the corner of my screen shrank to nothing. A message to my sister hung half-sent, a grey clock turning beside it.
2 At first nobody believed it. Doors opened up and down the road, and faces appeared, lit blue from below by screens that showed nothing. "Have you got network?" "No. Have you?" People held their phones above their heads, as if they were offering them to the sky.
3 Then the power went too.
4 The street lamp outside the shop flickered, buzzed and died, and the darkness came down so suddenly that I heard someone gasp. Without the hum of the shop's fridge, the night was enormous. A dog barked somewhere far down the valley; another answered. I could hear my own breathing.
5 It was Mama Keza, who sells charcoal at the corner, who struck the first match. She lit a lantern on her step, and people drifted into its small yellow circle the way moths do. Someone brought a mat. Someone else brought a bench and a bag of roasted maize. The children, who were never allowed out at this hour, ran between the adults' legs as if a festival had begun.
6 Without our phones, we had to look at one another. Old Rukundo, who usually says nothing to anyone, told us about a night long ago when hyenas came up to the village, and he made the hyenas' laugh so well that the smallest children hid behind their mothers. Someone began to sing. Others joined in, softly at first, then loudly, as if the darkness were an audience.
7 At ten past eleven the bars crept back onto the screens. Every phone in the circle buzzed at once, like a swarm of tiny insects waking up. People looked down at them. And for a moment, only a moment, nobody picked them up.
Definition
Glossary
Definition
atmosphere: the feeling that a writer creates around a place or scene, through details of setting such as light, sound, weather and time. It is close to mood; many writers use the two words for the same thing.
style: the particular way a writer writes, made from choices of diction, sentence length and structure, imagery and figurative language, point of view and register (formal or informal).
simile: a comparison using like or as. like a swarm of tiny insects.
register: the level of formality of language, chosen to suit the reader and purpose.
Here is how a local news website might report the same evening.
POWER AND NETWORK CUT IN RUGARAMA
Residents of Rugarama were without electricity and mobile network for more than three hours on Thursday evening. The mobile network failed at about 8 p.m., and the power supply was lost shortly afterwards. According to the electricity company, the cause was a fault at a local substation, which was repaired at 11.10 p.m. No injuries were reported.
The report is imagined, like the story.
| Feature of style | The story | The news report |
|---|---|---|
| Point of view | first person: I heard someone gasp | third person, impersonal: residents were … |
| Diction | sensory and emotional: flickered, gasp, drifted, enormous | exact and neutral: supply, fault, substation, reported |
| Sentences | varied: a one-sentence paragraph for shock; long, flowing sentences for the gathering | medium length and even, several in the passive |
| Figurative language | similes: the way moths do, like a swarm of tiny insects; personification: the bars crept back | none |
| Details chosen | sounds, light, feelings, small actions | times, causes, results |
| Purpose | to make the reader feel and reflect | to inform the reader quickly and accurately |
Worked example
Showing how a writer builds atmosphere (paragraph 4)
Worked example
Describing a writer's style in one paragraph
Tip
Change the style, keep the facts. A good way to understand style is to rewrite a passage in a different one. Turn two sentences of the story into a news report, or two sentences of the report into a story, and list every word you changed.
Warning
"What is Diction in Literature?", a literary guide for students from Oregon State University's School of Writing, Literature and Film. Note how word choice shapes meaning, then compare the diction of the story and the news report in this lesson.
Practice
Further reading
Sources and credits
Written by Ganzaa.
