Sociograms
A sociogram is a visual representation or map of the relationships between individuals.
Literary sociogram
A literary sociogram is a visual representation of the relationships among characters within a literary work. Creating a sociogram may help you think more deeply about the characters and the story in general. Sociograms can be used throughout the reading process; constructing sociograms periodically throughout your reading will help you consider how your thinking has developed from beginning to end.
Literary sociogram
A literary sociogram is a visual representation of the relationships among characters within a literary work. Creating a sociogram may help you think more deeply about the characters and the story in general. Sociograms can be used throughout the reading process; constructing sociograms periodically throughout your reading will help you consider how your thinking has developed from beginning to end.
- Place the main character/s at the center of the diagram or make sure they are the focal point.
- The distance placed between characters on the page should reflect the perceived psychological distance between the characters in the story
- Allow the character’s shape, representation, and size to be a metaphor for their personality, importance, power, lack of power, etc.
- Show the nature of a relationship by using arrows or lines (these can be creative), or something similar of your choice
- Use solid lines to represent strong, explicit relationships and broken or discontinuous line to represent broken or ambiguous relationships
- You may also want to use solid lines to circle active characters and indicate less active, dead or otherwise missing characters with broken lines
- You may want to illustrate the character’s personality through color or creative symbols, you can also represent overall tone or theme of the represented relationships in this way
- Don’t hesitate to use descriptive words around or near a character to help illustrate the qualities of relationships or characters, be creative! You may also want to use words or symbols to express how or what might influence the character.
