Literary Terms for Fiction, pt. 2

A literary work--whether fiction, poetry, or drama-- that holds up human failings to ridicule and censure.

• Narrative

• Myth

• Satire

• Parable

The verbal aspect of point of view, the acknowledged or unacknowledged source of a story's words; the speaker; the "person" telling the story and that person's particular qualiities.

• Voice

• Tone

• Plot

• Point of View

A work of prose fiction that falls somewhere in between a short story and a novel in terms of length, scope, and complexity

• Novel

• Satire

• Myth

• Novella

The internal truthfulness, lifelikeness, and consistency of the world created within any literary work when we judge that world on its own terms rather than in terms of its correspondence to the real world.

• Synecdoche

• Syntax

• Verismilitude

• Personification

The arrangement of the action. The five main parts or phases are exposition, rising action, clmax, or turning point, falling action, and conclusion or resolution

• Plot

• Tone

• Realism

• Simile

The time and place of the action in a work of fiction, poetry, or drama.

• Setting

• Syntax

• Theme

• Voice

A figure of speech in which the name of one thing is used to refer to another thing associated with it. When we say, "The White House has promised to veto the bill," for example we uuse the White House as a ____________ for the president of and his administration.

• Synecdoche

• Personification

• Protagonist

• Metonymy

A story, whether fictional or true and in prose or verse, related by a narrator or narrators, rather than acted out onstage, as a drama.

• Parable

• Narrative

• Thesis

• Verisimilitude

A short work of fiction that illustrates an explicit moral but that, unlike a fable, lacks fantastic or anthropomorphic characters. Escpecially familiar examples are the stories attributed to Jesus in the Bible-- about the prodigal son, the good Samaritan, and so on.

• Short Story

• Fable

• Parable

• Myth

A relatively short work of prose fiction (approximately 500 to 10,000 words) that, according to Edgar Allan Poe, can be read in a single sitting of two hours or less and. works to create a "single effect."

• Short Story

• Novella

• Novel

• Narrative