Fictional Literary Terms
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56 terms
Terms | Definitions |
|---|---|
 Plot | what happens in story |
| Exposition | beginning situation |
| Rising action | problems that arise (conflict) |
| Climax | turning point and/or highest point of intensity |
| falling action | resolves most conflicts |
| Denouement | work out of final details |
| Conflict | problems that arise |
| Internal Conflict | man v. self |
| External Conflict | man v. nature, man v. man, man v. society |
| Characterization | how the author develops characters |
| Direct Characterization | the author just tells you |
| Indirect Characterization | appearance, speech, actions, thoughts/feelings, reactions of other characters |
| Antagonist | person or situation trying to prevent the protagonist reaching the goal |
| Protagonist | main character trying to acheive a goal |
| Static character | character that remains the same |
| Dynamic Character | character that goes through a change (internal) |
| Flat Character | not much description about the character |
| Round Character | know a lot about the character |
| Setting | time, place, when, where |
| Mood | feeling of the reader |
| Tone | feeling of author to characters/when writing |
| Theme | main idea/lesson |
| Point of View | author's choice of narrator |
| First Person POV | narrator is a character in the story |
| Third Person Omniscient | the narrator is not a character in the story- all knowing of all characters, thoughts, feelings, ideas |
| Third Person Objective | the narrator is not a character in the story- knows no characters, thoughts, feelings, ideas |
| Third Person Limited | the narrator is not a character in the story- knows one to two of the characters, thoughts, feelings, ideas |
| anachronism | something occuring outside its proper time period |
| satire | the art of ridiculing human nature or life in general |
| flashback | a flash into the past to present events that happened before |
| denotation | dictionary defenition of a word |
| connotation | a symbolic meaning of a word |
| allegory | a story where an idea is personified in order to teach/explain |
| parable | a story with a lesson or moral |
| verisimilitude | realistic setting resembling the truth |
| allusion | a reference to history or literature |
| incongruity | two ideas that do no fit together |
| foreshadowing | hints of what is to come |
| inference | the reader draws conclusions on his or her own |
| irony | a contrast |
| situational irony | a situation turns out differently than expected |
| verbal irony | saying one thing and meaning another |
| dramatic irony | the audience/reader knows more about a situation than the characters |
| understatement | an event that is made to seem less important for emphasis |
| symbolism | concrete object representing abstract idea |
| stereotype | fixed ideas about a character, situation, or group |
| style | the way the author uses the language |
| imagery | descriptive details that paint a picture in the reader's mind |
| simile | comparison using like or as |
| metaphor | comparison saying that one thing is another |
| personification | giving human characteristics to inanimate objects |
| alliteration | repitition of sound at beginning of words |
| assonance | repitition of vowel sound within words |
| consonance | repitition of consanant sounds within words |
| epiphany | a great understanding, a coming to knowledge, the lightbulb moment |
| overstatement | exaggeration used for effect |
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