9th Lit Important Terms to Know: Fiction
1. Point of View – the perspective from which the story is told
a. 1st Person – told from the perspective of a character in the story; uses 1st person pronouns (“I”,
“my”, etc)
b. 3rd Person (limited and omniscient) – told from an outside perspective; in 3rd person limited the
narrator only has access to usually one character’s thoughts, feelings, etc. In 3rd person
omniscient, the narrator has access to all the thoughts and feelings of all the characters (both
use 3rd person pronouns: “they, them, he, she, etc.)
c. Innocent Eye - told from the perspective of a child
d. Credible narrator versus biased narrator – a credible narrator can be trusted (usually 3rd person);
a biased narrator only gives the reader one perspective: his/her own, so it cannot be trusted
2. Irony
a. Dramatic – type of irony in which the audience or reader knows more than the characters in the
story
b. Situational – type of irony in which what happens is the exact opposite of what we expect to
happen
c. Verbal – type of irony in which the speaker says the exact opposite of what he/she means
3. Foreshadowing/ Foreboding – Foreshadowing is when the author gives readers clues along the way
about events that will happen later in the story. Foreboding is a negative type of foreshadowing in
which those clues indicate that something specifically NEGATIVE will happen.
4. Mood – the atmosphere of the story (as perceived by the reader)
5. Tone – the speaker’s attitude (not to be confused with the author)
6. Syntax – sentence structure and everything grammatical about a piece of writing
7. Diction – word choice
8. Parallel Structure – a technique in speaking and writing that uses the same grammatical order for
phrases or words in a list (similar to parallel lines)
9. Paraphrase – a transliteration of text into your own words
10. Summary – a concise overview of the main ideas in a piece of text
11. Exposition – the beginning of a story in which the following are revealed:
a. Setting – date, time, place of a story
b. Characters – who the story is about
c. Basic Conflict – the basic problem to be resolved in the story (developed more fully as the story
goes on)
12. Symbolism – when something tangible in a piece of literature stands for something bigger than itself
13. Characterization – the process of determining key information about a character
a. Protagonist – the story’s main character
b. Antagonist – anything or anyone that opposes the main character
c. Static / Flat – a character who does not change or evolve in some significant way throughout the
course of the story
d. Dynamic / Round – a character who does change or evolve in some significant way throughout
the story
e. Direct – when the narrator provides us with straightforward info about a character (she was 17
years old)
f.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
Indirect – when we as the reader have to infer something about the character based on his/her
actions, dialogue, etc.
Conflict – the central problem in a story
a. Internal – when a character struggles with something inside him/herself
i. Man versus Self – examples include guilt, fear, love, etc.
b. External – when a character struggles with something outside him/herself
i. Man versus Man, Society, and Nature
Metaphor – a direct comparison (You should have seem him; he was a cheetah in yesterday’s track
meet)
Simile – an indirect comparison using like or as (she was as delicate as a flower)
Personification – giving human qualities to nonhuman things
Hyperbole – an exaggeration used for effect
Sentence Types
a. Simple – one clause: subject and verb (can also contain one or more phrases)
b. Complex – two clauses: one dependent (subject OR verb) and one independent (subject and
verb)
c. Compound – two clauses: both independent joined with a comma, semicolon, or colon
d. Compound-Complex – three clauses: two independent and one dependent
Suspense – technique used by the author to build tension and engage the reader in a story
Imagery – details in writing that appeal to the senses (touch, taste, sight,, sound, smell)
Euphemism – A word or phrase used instead of the harsh truth
Persuasive Techniques:
a. Ethos – appeal to ethics or morality
b. Pathos – appeal to emotion
c. Logos – appeal to logic
Epiphany – a moment of profound realization
Abstract – a summary of an scholarly journal article, typically provided by the database and found at the
beginning before the article’s content begins
Poetry – writing that utilizes rhythm, lines, and stanzas to achieve artistic meaning
Prose – all writing that is not poetry (sentences and paragraphs)
Freytag’s Plot Pyramid: See next page
Analyzing a story's plot: Freytag's Pyramid
Gustav Freytag was a Nineteenth
Century German novelist who saw
common patterns in the plots of
stories and novels and developed a
diagram to analyze them. He
diagrammed a story's plot using a
pyramid like the one shown here:
Freytag's Pyramid
1. Exposition: setting the scene. The writer introduces the characters
and setting, providing description and background.
2. Inciting Incident: something happens to begin the action. A single
event usually signals the beginning of the main conflict. The inciting
incident is sometimes called 'the complication'.
3. Rising Action: the story builds and gets more exciting.
4. Climax: the moment of greatest tension in a story. This is often the
most exciting event. It is the event that the rising action builds up to and
that the falling action follows.
5. Falling Action: events happen as a result of the climax and we know
that the story will soon end.
6. Resolution: the character solves the main problem/conflict or
someone solves it for him or her.
7. Dénouement: (a French term, pronounced: day-noo-moh) the ending.
At this point, any remaining secrets, questions or mysteries which
remain after the resolution are solved by the characters or explained by
the author. Sometimes the author leaves us to think about the THEME
or future possibilities for the characters.
You can think of the dénouement as the opposite of the exposition:
instead of getting ready to tell us the story by introducing the setting and
characters, the author is getting ready to end it with a final explanation
of what actually happened and how the characters think or feel about it.
This can be the most difficult part of the plot to identify, as it is often very
closely tied to the resolution.