reading like a writer–part 4: reading a story

Many of the stories in the new Alice Munro collection, Too Much Happiness, were first published in The New Yorker and are still available online. “Dimensions,” the first story in the collection, will be the story  I’ll take apart in the next post. You can read it here: Dimensions.

As an aside, the story was published in The New Yorker as “Dimension” and in the collection as “Dimensions.” Both the singular and the plural use of the word can be found in the story:

“But they do exist and it must be that there is another Dimension or maybe innumerable Dimensions….”

I think she changed the title to open the story up a little more.

I hope some of you will do this exercise with me so we can compare notes!

I’ll start us off:

Physical details

• 31 pages
• 19 unmarked sections
• First sentence: “Doree had to take three buses—one to Kincardine, where she waited for the one to London, where she waited again for the city bus out to the facility.”
• Last sentence: No.
• Tense: past

Other posts in this series:

Part 1: Reading like a writer

Part 2: Taking it to a new level

Part 3: Questions to ask

Part 4: Reading a story

Part 5: Taking a story apart