Fictional Texts

• The characters' wants and needs often drive the action from one point to another.
• There are two types of conflict: external, which is a struggle with a force outside one's self, and internal, which is a struggle within one's self.
• Examples of internal conflict include a person making a decision, overcoming pain, resisting an urge, etc.
• What is conflict?

  the struggle between two opposing forces
• Man vs Self is a type of conflict where the protagonist's emotional journey consists of overcoming their own internal struggles as they are antagonized by their own thoughts.
• Man vs Nature is a type of conflict where some natural disaster or other force of nature threatens the protagonist's existence and they must take the necessary actions to save themselves and others from their demise, usually while facing limiting thoughts that put their ability to succeed in doubt.
• Man vs Society is an external type of conflict where social norms and expectations prevent your protagonist from achieving their goals as they feel like they don’t belong or are being judged by others.
• Man vs Man is the typical clash between a protagonist trying to achieve their key goal in the story and their main antagonist, who has an equal and opposite goal and who’ll try to do everything in their power to stop them from fulfilling theirs.
• Man vs fate is a problem that seems to be uncontrollable.
• plot - the story of the play, the events that happen and the characters that are involved
• exposition - the first part of the story, where the author introduces the characters and the setting
• rising action - the part of the story in which the conflict escalates
• climax - turning point of a story, a moment of maximum tension and excitement
• dénouement - denouement (n) - the final part of a play, novel, or film, resolution of a conflict or solution to a mystery
• frame story - story within a story
• back story - gives the history of characters, objects, places or other elements in the story
• flashback - narrative is taken back in time
• flash-forward - future events are revealed
• foreshadowing - a hint or suggestion of something that is to come in the future
• point of view - shows the attitude of the narrator to the characters and can limit what the reader knows
• unreliable narrator - does not tell the whole truth to the reader
• suspense - created by not giving away too much information, keeping the reader on the edge of their seat, typical of crime or adventure stories
• tense - influences the distance between reader and characters, present tense makes the reader feel close to the action
• irony - can be used as a distancing effect by the narrator
• narration can vary between dialogues, description and comments
• indirect speech - more distance is created
• stream of consciousness - represents, as exactly as possible, what the character is thinking and feeling at that moment; seems unstructured, chaotic and very close to the reader
• third-person omniscient narrator - the narrator knows everything about the characters and the story, tells the story from the outside but knows about the thoughts and feelings of the characters as well as the background of the story, sometimes the narrator comments on the story
• third-person limited narrator - the narrator only tells the story from the perspective of one character, but knows only about the feelings and opinions of this particular character in the story

  The narrator is not identical with this character.
• first-person narrator - the narrator is the person telling the story, and is usually the protagonist, brings the reader close to the feelings and opinions of a particular character in the story
•  Analyse the narrative perspective:

  ''I was thirteen years old when the war began.''

  first-person narrator
• Analyse the narrative perspective:

  She went to practice earlier than always to work on her turns. Her friend secretly thought that Anne was just trying to impress the teacher.

  third-person omniscient narrator
• Analyse the narrative perspective:

  All day he tried to speak to Sophie. He just wanted to explain how sorry he was, but she always turned away as soon as she saw him. He had no ideawhy she would do that.

  third-person limited narrator