Coraline — 46 of 122

Section of Talking to Someone about Things in the Story (talking WITH)

A thing can be noticed or unnoticed. A thing is usually unnoticed.

Rule for writing a paragraph about something (called x):

if x is unnoticed, now x is noticed.

Talking with it about is an action applying to one visible thing and one visible thing.

Understand "talk about [any thing] to/with [something]" as talking with it about (with nouns reversed).

Understand "talk to/with [something] about [any thing]" as talking with it about.

Understand "tell [something] about [any thing]" as talking with it about.

Understand "ask [something] about [any thing]" as talking with it about.

Carry out talking with it about:

if the noun is not a person:

say "You talk to [the noun], but it feels slightly silly.";

otherwise if the second noun is unnoticed: [so you can't talk about what you don't know yet]

say "You don't learn anything new from the conversation.";

otherwise:

say "You don't learn anything new from a conversation about [the second noun]."