: How to annotate short stories Recently I’ve been getting assignments to annotate 1 or 2 short stories in English every day. Are there any good techniques to use when annotating short stories?

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My method was always minimum 2 reads.

First read I do minimal annotations, unless something really strikes me or confuses me, and anything that makes sense later may get changed.

Second read through I really annotate. Depending on what kind of class this is, you may want to write down any questions you have, words you don't recognize, symbols or recurring themes you notice. If you're in a class where you're critiquing each others work you have to make the judgement call of how much criticism you want to give versus how much praise or general feedback.

When I was critiquing other peoples stories in writing class I usually ended up turning in the story itself with my notes on it marking confusing bits, impressions, especially good lines, parts I was vague on, things that prompted questions, and a couple paragraphs of questions, impressions, whether I thought the story in question was focused enough or thought it needed refocusing.

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