SCASI

**Using SCASI: Writing Unseen Commentaries** Think of any human activity which involves an audience or spectators – say a soccer match. If we wanted to analyse the match (break it down into its parts) we could do so in different ways, depending on whether we were writing a newspaper report about it, trying to decide whether it had been worth watching, working out why one side rather than the other had won, using it as an illustration of what a ‘good’ game of soccer is, and so on.
 * Things People Do In Front Of Other People**

o Where and when did it take place? (Was the pitch in good shape? What was the weather like? Did the venue favour one side?) We could call that the **Setting** for the event. o Who took part? (The players, and the referee…and the spectators too if their behaviour had an impact on what was happening on the pitch.) They are the people – **Characters** – involved. o What happened? (The story of the game, with as much detail as needed.) That’s the **Action.** o How did it all happen? (An overview of the way the game was played by each team.) We might call that the **Style** of what went on. o What conclusions can we draw from all of the above? (Can we now explain why the winners won? What did we learn from the match about what makes a winning side, or a good game?) These are the **Ideas** we take away with us at the end.
 * //Here’s one way of breaking such an activity down so that we can think about it in an organised way.//**

Sorry if you aren’t at all interested in soccer. Try substituting a rock concert, a political meeting, a school assembly, an English lesson, a bank robbery, a family argument… Then try a novel or a play. That will take us closer to where we’re going – a short discussion about how we can analyse literature. We can then set about exploring ways of doing so effectively, particularly when the literature is chopped up into the small bits called ‘Passages for Commentary’.

What about Style, however? You maybe felt that category that didn’t work too well for soccer etc. Well it works rather better for literature, since most stories are told in words; and language has a whole range of identifiable styles. (There are other kinds of style, though – playing style, teaching style, criminal style – and when you’re studying plays you’ll come across the phrase ‘dramatic style’, which refers to what makes a particular play distinctive as a piece of theatre.)
 * Novels and Plays – and Poems As Well **It’s easy to see that novels and plays can be analysed under the same headings. They tell stories after all, and stories involve action which has to happen somewhere and usually includes people…and stories make us think.

//But poetry? Do all five headings work there?// Narrative poetry presents no problem, since it tells stories (with characters, action and so on). How about ‘ordinary’ poems like most of those you’ve studied so far in school? The answer will vary from poem to poem. The framework we’ve outlined above can be very useful when you come to write about a poem or a prose extract, or a short passage from a play. (It can also be very helpful when you’re studying a whole work, particularly when you’re preparing it for an exam…and it’s an excellent way of organising your notes.)

Setting Characters Action Style Ideas