When I engage with fiction, I don’t tend to do close reads. I reserve these for academic nonfiction works. I was intrigued when I came across a post on Francis Ford Coppola’s notes on The Godfather, a book he eventually scripted and shot as director. The notes are published in The Godfather Notebook.
Obviously, Coppola had a reason to close-read or deep-read, but who among us annotates fiction quite like this? To be honest, I don’t even markup my own manuscripts this heavily. Do you?
I don’t want to comment much past sharing the technique. Open these thumbnails for more details.
NB: I don’t have the book myself. I obtained these images from the Amazon.com product page.
Ridley Park 