| plot | The series of related events in a story or play. |
| climax | The exciting or suspenseful moment when the outcome of the conflict is imminent. |
| theme | Repreated idea that is incorporated throughout a litary work. |
| aside | a part of an actors lines suposedly not heard by others on stage |
| monologue | soliloquy |
| soliloquy | a speech, usually lengthy, in which a character, alone on stage, expresses his thoughts aloud |
| pun | play on words. The humorous use of a word or phrase so as to emphasize or suggest its different meanings. |
| neologism | to make up a word or give a new meaning to an old word |
| simile | comparison of two unlike things using "like" or "as." |
| metaphor | An association of two completely different objects as being the same thing. Distinuishes itself from a simile by not using "like" or "as." |
| foil | a character than contrasts another character |
| allusion | a reference to a mythological situation or character or to another piece of literature |
| hyperbole | an exaggeration of the truth |
| personification | Using the qualities of a person to describe an inanimate object |
| foreshadowing | The use of clues to suggest what might happen later in the plot. |
| dramatic irony | a circumstance in which characters reveal their inability to understand their own situation. |
| situational irony | a situation that demonstrates an incongruity between what the reader expects or presumes to be appropriate and what actually occurs. |
| verbal irony | a speech in which what is said is the opposite of what is meant. |
| onomatopoeia | The use of a word to indicate a sound. |
| epithet | a describing word or phrase |
| conflict | The opposition between two characters, between two large groups of people, or between the protaganist and a larger problem. |
| characterization | An author's use of description, dialogue, dialect, and action to create in the reader an emotional or intellectual reaction to a character or to make the character more vivid and realistic. |