C.S.I. your novel!

Be a Grissom when it comes to studying your text. To help me make make my point here about this next study tip, try to recall the one episode of a police crime investigation that got you rivetted to the screen. Did you follow the whole thinking process that drove the investiating officer to his grisly conclusion? Do you recall the evidence that nailed the suspect? Do you remember how impressed you were at how determined they were to retrieve and recover the evidence? What about the objects at the scene of crime that allowed them to infer what had gone on minutes before the dreadful deed? Is the distress etched somewhere deep in the disarray of the room? Can we make out the motivation behind behind the mess?

I have gone ahead of myself- I am writing as if you are the forensics man too! But maybe there is some truth in it. Consider this - the forensics expert makes it his duty to ferret out the truth, to postulate a hypothesis about the motivation and sequence of actions. Consequently, he needs the evidence and he sifts, combs and distills until it is captured and irrevocably tells its own story. That story if told always rings louder than any verbal claims. With that your case is closed. If the movie or series was not a legal beagle series, the fate of the guilty is sealed and the innocent released from the the sounds of their happless pleas.

Which is a long, convoluted route to the point i wish to make: Mark out your evidence. How do I say this? Let me count the ways.... Map out the motivation, catch the meaningful silences between the lines, home in on the proof. Show me the meaning!

How do you tell if someone has merely read a text and not studied it? Simple = clean margins and a completely resellable book. If you are engaged in study and not just reading, your book will begin to look less and less like a book and more and more mangled. It would be filled with colourful notes in the margins and shameless highlights in the text. The novel would house your attempts to come up with the smack-right adjectives to describe the character at the very point of comment. Your reward is your ease and confidence in the courtroom of your exam hall.

Make the margins your C.S.I Lab. The evidence doesn't lie.

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