| Term | Definition |
|---|
| Compare | tell similarities |
| Contrast | tell the differences |
| Cause | The action or event that makes something else happen. The word "BECAUSE" points to the cause |
| Effect | the result of the cause |
| Character motivation | the reasons why a character acts, thinks or feels a certain way |
| 5 ways characters are characterized | what the character says/thinks, what the character does, what others say/think about the character, how others act around the character, physical traits |
| Flat Character | A character who is not described in detail; usually a minor character; a character without "layers" to his/her personality |
| Round Character | A character who is more fully developed; detail is provided that shows "layers" to the character's personality |
| Dynamic Character | A character that undergoes a significant change in attitude |
| Static Character | A character who undergoes little or no change in attitude |
| Exposition | the introduction where we learn the setting and meet the characters |
| Setting | WHERE and WHEN the action takes place |
| Rising Action | conflicts |
| Conflict | The battle between two opposing forces: man vs. man (external), man vs. nature (external), man vs. himself (internal) |
| Climax | The highpoint or turning point of the story |
| Falling Action | conflicts begin to resolve |
| Resolution | ending of the story |
| Subplot | a secondary plot to a story; less important than the main story; has its own conflict, climax, and resolution |
| Parallel episode | Authors may create two stories and move back and forth between them |
| Protagonist | the central character or hero |
| Antagonist | The force(s) working against the protagonist. Can be another character, society, force of nature, or a force within the main character |
| Point of View | perspective from which a story is told |
| First person point of view | narrator is part of the action of the story (I, me, we, us...) |
| Third person point of view | narrator is removed from the story (he, she, they, him, her...) |
| Third person omniscient | reader gets two or more characters' thoughts/feelings |
| Third person limited | reader is limited to knowing only one character's thoughts |
| Third person objective | reader gets no characters' thoughts or feelings |
| Third person subjective | reader does not get any characters' thoughts, but the narrator inserts his/her opinion about things |
| Theme | the lesson/message of the story |
| Universal Theme | The theme transcends any time period, place, generation, etc. It could apply to ANYONE at ANYWHERE during ANYTIME |
| Foreshadowing | A hint of what is to come in the story |
| Flashback | An interruption in the story to show an episode that happened at an earlier point in time |
| Mood | a feeling a literary work conveys to the reader |
| Tone | The attitude of the work. May be happy, sad, angry, remorseful, etc. |
| Inference | An educated guess based on evidence given in a story |
Combine with other sets
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