Literary Devices and Terms

Alliteration

• repeated consonant sounds at the beginning of words or within words

• when a single event or expression can mean two different things to two different people

• the most exciting moment of the story where the main character faces his/her ultimate challenge

Atmosphere

• mood or feeling developed through descriptions of the setting and sense (how things feels, taste, smell, sound, look)

• a person or player in a story; character traits

• when the reader knows things that the characters in the story do not.

Hyperbole

• a suggested comparison between two unlike things in order to point out similarity (no like or as)

• a character's reason for doing what he/she does

• obvious exaggeration which is not meant to be taken literally

Motive

• a character's reason for doing what he/she does

• words that imitate, or sound like, the actions they describe

• the author's attitude toward a subject, revealed by choice of words and details.

Paradox

• a statement that reveals a kind of truth although at first it seems to be self-contradictory and untrue

• a description in which an object (or animal, or idea, or force of nature) takes on human characteristics

• any person, object, or action that has additional meaning beyond itself

Allusion

• what happens in a story, told in a sequenced, chronological order

• when the author presents something as less significant

• a reference in one story to a well-known character or event from another story, history, or place

Dramatic Irony

• a small event that is part of a larger story; it can stand alone as a "mini-story"

• a narrative or picture story enclosed within another story, where both stories are of equal interest

• when a reader knows things that the characters in a story do not.

Analogy

• an action in the story that movies the story forward

• comparing one thing to another very different thing in order to explain it better

• clues used to alert the reader about events that will occur later; used to build success

Foreshadowing

• a brief statement expressing some truth as shown in a story; it can be a moral, or a proverb, or maxim

• clues used to alert the reader about events that will occur later; used to build success

• when a single event or expression can mean two different things to two different people

Ambiguity

• the problem, or challenge, that the main character faces

• exaggeration or distortion of a physical trait or behavior, to make a character appear comic or ridiculous

• when a single event or expression can mean two different things to two different people