Notes for Just Like BUTTERFLIES

Structure, Genre and Readability analysis
By: R. Masri Sareb Putra
Lecturer of Communication Science Universitas Multimedia Nusantara
Times Bookstore, Karawaci, October 01-2010

First of all, I would like to say thank you and congratulation to Mss. Claudia Natasia. Also to her mom and dad for the novel launching this afternoon. I think Just Like BUTTERFLIES is a first novel from you, Natasia. It’s right?

In Multimedia Nusantara University, I teach Creative Writing. How to write and how to plot a novel is one of the most important part of novel writing. The art of story telling is the basic so that every writer, moreover fictional writer, is a storyteller.

Reading is prerequisite in writing. So you are right Natasia when you note in your back cover that you love reading very much, because by reading we discover a new idea and by reading we find our tone, or style, or gaya. So in writing, style is found by reading not by writing! And for a new writer the shortest and easiest way to write is by copying the master. But I do believe in writing Just Like BUTTERFLIES Natasia didn’t copy the master, her novel is original.

In my book 101 Hari Menulis dan Menerbitkan Novel I noted that there is nine genres novel: historical novel, regional novel, roman a these, roman a clef, picaresque novel, bildungs-roman, roman-fleuve, non-fictional novel, and epistolary novel.

Look, Natasia combined 9 genre novels: epistolary novel, bildungs-roman and epistolary novel. On some pages, for example,on page 60, 125, 215-216 the narrative formula is like a letter.

The author also combine facts and fictions, as we see in the beginning of her novel where she described protagonist (Chantel Norton) and the setting (USA, Guangzhou) as facts. When reading this part we believe the story. In novel technique writing it is called: plausibility. In writing novel, although novel is a fictional work, a writer must based on his/ her imagination in a logic framework.

This novel’s structure in accordance with 6 elements of novels: exposition, rising action, climax, falling action and resolution/ denouement.

Point of view: The position of the narrator of the story and what the writer sees from that vantage point. In this novel the point of view is: first person (gaya akuan) in which we read that intended to “I “ is Chantel Norton.

This novel is easy to understand because the sentences consist of 1- 12 words per paragraph. In writing technique, it is called “readability or” in academic world it is known as “Fog Index”.

In making a novel title, there are so many techniques, for example: the name of the protagonist, summary of the story, protagonist+predicate, and symbolic. Just Like BUTTERFLIES is symbolic and it is a right way in making a successful novel title.

And last not but not least, according to Horatius, an ancient roman writer, good literature is dulce et utile (beautiful and useful). Just Like BUTTERFLIES is a dulce et utile novel. ***