Fiction Terminology

• The action of the story

  Plot
• The opening portion that sets the scene, introduces the main characters, tells us what happened before the story opened, and provides any other necessary background information

  Exposition
• Building tension for audience and developing characters

  Rising Action
• The moment of greatest tension when an outcome is to be decided

  Climax
• The remainder of the action in the story bringing the story to its conclusion

  Falling Action
• The struggle or encounter within the plot of two opposing forces that serves to create reader or audience interest and suspense

  Conflict
• What a character says or does is motivated by his or her desires, temperament, and moral nature

  Characters
• The process by which an author creates, develops, and presents a character

  Characterization
• The central character in a literary work, typically initiates the main action and is in conflict with the antagonist.

  Protagonist
• Person/thing opposing the protagonist. This may be a character, society, a force of nature, or impulses within the protagonist.

  Antagonist
• Characters that are complex and well developed

  Round Character
• Character that is one dimensional and poorly developed

  Flat Character
• Character that changes during the course of the plot

  Dynamic Character
• Character that remains essentially the same

  Static character
• Arranging events in the plot in such a way that later events are prepared for beforehand

  Foreshadowing
• The story's message or central concerns

  Theme
• The time and place in which the action occurs

  Setting
• The physical setting alone

  Locale
• The speaker; the person from whose perspective the story is told

  Narrator
• A narrator whose knowledge and judgments about the characters or events is sufficiently incomplete or flawed to render him an unreliable guide to the author's intentions

  Unreliable narrator
• The angle or perspective from which the story is told

  Point of View
• When the narrator writes from his/her own experiences. Uses I, we, me, us

  First Person POV
• When the narrator writes from outside of the story; uses they, them, it, he, she

  Third Person POV
• Narrator outside of the story who sees into the minds of all (or some) characters, moving when necessary from one to another

  Omniscient
• When a narrator sees events through the eyes of a single character

  Limited omniscience
• When the omniscient narrator adds an occasional comment or opnion about the characters

  Editorial omniscience
• When the narrator presents the thoughts and actions of the characters, but does not judge them or comment on them

  Impartial omniscience
• The narrator does not enter the mind of any character

  Objective POV
• Something that stands for something else. Any word, object, action or character that embodies and evokes a range of additional meaning and significance

  Symbol
• The author's attitude toward the subject or audience

  Tone