Story Literary Elements
Some basics that every good story
must have ….
Short Story elements
 Derived from the ancients
 Through oral tradition
 Need to tell and hear stories
•
•
•
•
•
•
Egyptians
Old Testament stories
New Testament parables
Greeks (Odyssey)
Roman (Aeneid)
Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales
Development of Short Story
 19th Century America: art form
– Nathaniel Hawthorne “Young Goodman Brown”; “The
Minister’s Black Veil”
• The mystery of sin
– Edgar Allan Poe “The Tell Tale Heart”; “The Fall of
the House of Usher”
• The power of blackness
– Washington Irving “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”;
“Rip Van Winkle”
• Transition from European to American
By Definition
 A brief fictional narrative in prose
 500 words to 12,000 words
 Unity in plot (beginning, middle, end)
 Reveals character through series of actions
 Gives effects of intensity
 Limited time periods (1 hour; 1 day)
– Poe once said that a short story should be short
enough to be read at one sitting
Plot
 Sets character in motion
 Gives story its direction
 Focuses on exposition “What”
 Focuses on conflict “Why”
 Focuses on narrative structure “How”
Great stories have a conflict
Man vs. Man
Man vs. Nature Man vs. Society Man vs. Machine Man vs. Himself
A hint about what will happen
next is called foreshadowing
For example, if you hear this:
Then you know someone’s about to get eaten!
Linear Plot Structure
Climax
Rising
Action or
Conflict
Exposition
Falling
action and
resolution
Characterization
•Definition: individualized personality
•Behavior: actions, speech, dress
•Qualities: status
•Characteristics: physical, psychological
•Traits: cultural
Every story needs characters
People
Animals
Or Creatures
The protagonist is the “good guy”
The antagonist is the “bad guy”
or force
Methods of Characterization
1. Direct Exposition: the author gives
details
2. Character in Speech: dialect;
vocabulary
3. Character in Action: behavior;
deeds
4. Character in Thought: soliloquies
5. Character to Character: third party
The time and place of the story is
the setting
Setting
Three types of setting
1. historical: social, political,
economic
2. geographical: place (e.g. United
States, Europe, big city, small
country farm, desert, mountains)
3. physical: time, weather, day/night
Four Functions of Setting
1. to provide conflict
2. to illuminate the
characters
3. to establish mood
4. to make fiction
credible
“Araby”
Review the first 3
paragraphs.
Make a list of 25-50
words that reflect
setting.
The point of view is the
perspective of the story
“That rotten wolf
tried to eat us!!!!”
“I was framed! I
just wanted to
borrow a cup of
sugar!”
Point of View
It can describe the way in which the
reader is presented with the materials of
the story or action
Simply put, it is the way a story is told
The perspective of the storyteller
Types of Points of View
•Omniscent or 3rd person: most
common
•First person: intensity of narrator
•Objective: report; facts
•Innocent eye: child-like ; satiric;
reliable
•Stream of consciousness: unorganized
thoughts; flow of memory recalled by
association; thoughts become the basis
for analysis of plot
Symbol, Allegory, Myth
1. Something that represents something else
• Red rose=love
2. A narrative in which the characters personify
ideas, concepts, qualities, or other
abstractions to communicate moral principles
•Young Goodman Brown=an
inexperienced good common man
3. A story that explains or gives meaning to the
values of a culture; partly true, partly false
by which people live and die
•Creation myths=Adam and Eve
Whether you’re the reader, or the
writer, a great story includes all
these literary elements!!!
foreshadowing
protagonist
conflict
climax
characters
setting
antagonist
point of view