Elements of a short story

• Guy De Maupassant is considered the father of the modern short story, a literary form that’s more condensed and immediate than the novel.
• Guy De Maupassant's work was admired by his contemporaries and imitated by those who came after him.
• Protagonist is the main character in a literary work, often portrayed as a hero.
• Antagonist is the opposing character in a literary work, often portrayed as a villain.
• Setting is the locale or period in which the action of a literary piece takes place.
• Theme is the central or dominating idea in a literary work.
• Plot is the parts of a story which work to create suspense, they stay together seamlessly creating a unified story.
• Exposition gives the setting, time, place, locale, background information on what took place before the actual start of the story.
• Complication unfolds the problems and struggles that would be encountered by the main characters leading to the crisis.
• Climax is the part where the problems or conflict is the highest peak of interest; greatest emotion; aka crisis or the point of no return.
• Denouement is the untying of the entangled knots or the part that shows a conflict of a problem is solved, leading to its end.
• Resolution contains the last statements about the story.
• Conflict is a struggle between opposing forces.
• Man vs Man is when a character faces another character.
• Man vs Nature is when a character faces resistance from natural forces as opposed to a supernatural force.
• Man vs Society is when the protagonist conflicts with the values of his society.
• Man vs Himself is when a protagonist struggles within himself or herself.
• Literary Devices are typical structures that the writer uses in the work to transmit his information to the reader in a simple way.
• Foreshadowing is to foretell the readers what will happen in the future through the action of the character.
• In media res is to begin the story in the middle of the action, by plunging into a crucial situation that is part of a related chain or events.
• Point of View talks about the writer’s feelings and attitude towards his subject and determines who tells the story.
• First Person uses the pronoun “i”.
• Second Person uses the pronoun “you”.
• Third Person Limited the narrator only knows the thoughts and feelings of one character.
• Third Person Omniscient the narrator knows the thoughts and feelings of all the characters.