Literary Terms

a character who does NOT change much in the course of the story

• comedic character

• round character

• in-line character

• static character

a way of speaking that is characteristic of a particular region or a particular group of people

• dialect

• flashback

• exposition

• dialogue

the beginning part of a plot that gives information about the characters and their problems or conflicts.

• complications or rising action

• resolution or falling action

• exposition

• theme

a scene in a movie, play, short story, novel, or narrative poem that interrupts the present action of the plot to shift into the future.

• flashback

• inversion

• metaphor

• flash-forward

the category that a work of literature is classified under

• irony

• genre

• tone

• classification

contrast between expectation & reality--between what is expected to happen & what really does happen

• situational irony

• dramatic irony

• verbal irony

• irony

a story's atmosphere or the feeling it evokes

• narrator

• paradpx

• mood

• theme

vantage point from which a writer tells a story

• plot

• scene design

• setting

• point-of-view

type of writing that ridicules something--a person, a group of people, humanity at large, a social institution--in order to reveal a weakness.

• tragedy

• comedy

• satire

• exposition

uncertainty or anxiety the reader feels about what is going to happen next in a story

• suspense

• voice

• stanza

• flashback