Short Story and Novel
“The Most Dangerous Game” by
Richard Connell
Genre
 A category or type of literature.
 Epic, tragedy, comedy, novel, short
story, letter, essay, journal, creative
nonfiction, poetry are a few of the
types of genre.
Conflict
A struggle between opposing
forces.
There are two types of
conflict that exist in
literature.
Internal Conflict
 A character in conflict with himself or
herself.
•Man vs. Himself
External Conflict
 The main character struggles against
some outside force, such as another
character, nature, society, or fate.
•Man vs. Man
•Man vs. Nature
•Man vs. Society
•Man vs. Fate
Protagonist
 The main character in a literary work.
Antagonist
 A character or force in conflict with
the main character.
 Non-character entities can be
antagonistic (settings or events) for
example, Nature in Kon-Tiki.
Foil
 A character who provides a contrast to
another character.
 Gaston and the Beast
 Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy
 Cady Heron and Regina George
 Glinda the Good and The Wicked
Witch of the West
Plot
 The sequence of events in a literary work.
 The first event causes the second, the second causes
the third, and so forth. Like the links of a chain the
events are interconnected.
The plot usually begins with an exposition that
introduces the setting, the characters, and the basic
situation. This is introduced and developed. The
conflict then increases by the addition of
complications, rising action, until it reaches a high
point of interest or suspense, the climax. The climax
is followed by the falling action, action that is a result
of the climax, the resolution ends the falling action
and reveals how the story is resolved in the end.
Plot Development
Climax
Exposition
Resolution
Narrative Hook—point at which the
reader becomes “hooked” and
curious about what will happen
next.
Exposition
 Introduces the characters, setting, and
basic situation.
 The “introduction”
Rising Action
All the events leading up to the
climax.
The part of the plot that begins to
occur as soon as the conflict is
introduced. The rising action
adds complications to the conflict
and increases reader interest.
Climax
 A high point of interest or suspense.
 The point of greatest emotional
intensity, interest, or suspense in the
plot of a narrative.
 The climax typically comes at the
turning point in a story or drama.
Falling Action
Events that follow the climax
and lead to the resolution.
The action that typically follows
the climax and reveals its
results.
Resolution
 The ending, in which a general insight
or change is conveyed.
 The resolution is the part of the plot
that concludes the falling action by
revealing or suggesting the outcome
of the conflict.
 It is also called the “denouncement” a
French word for “unraveling the knot.”
“The Interlopers” by Saki (H. H.
Munro)
Allegory
A form of extended metaphor, in which
objects, persons, and actions in a narrative,
are equated with the meanings that lie
outside the narrative itself. The underlying
meaning has moral, social, religious, or
political significance, and characters are
often personifications of abstract ideas as
charity, greed, or envy.
Thus an allegory is a story with two
meanings, a literal meaning and a symbolic
meaning.
Mood/Atmosphere
Mood, or atmosphere, is the feeling
created in the reader by a literary work
or passage.
Writer’s use many devices to create
mood, including images, dialogue,
setting, and plot. Often, a writer creates
a mood at the beginning of a work and
then sustains the mood throughout.
Sometimes, however, the mood of the
work changes dramatically.
Character
A character is a person or an animal
that takes part in the action of a
literary work.
Character Types
 Static character – a character who remains the same.
 Dynamic character – a character who changes.
Character Types
 Round character -a major character in a work of
fiction who encounters conflict and is changed by
it. Round characters tend to be more fully
developed and described than flat, or minor
characters.
Character Types
 Flat Character - a literary character whose
personality can be defined by one or two traits and
does not change in the course of the story .
Characterization
 The method a writer uses to reveal the personality
of a character.
 Direct characterization: the writer makes
direct statements about a character’s
personality.
 Indirect characterization: the writer reveals a
character’s personality through the character’s
words and actions and through what other
characters think and say about the character.
Fantasy
Highly imaginative writing with elements
not found in real life.
Flashback
A flashback is a literary device in which
an earlier episode, conversation, or event
is inserted into the sequence of events.
The flashback interrupts the present
action of the plot to flash backward and
tell what happened at an earlier time.
Often flashbacks are presented as a
memory of the narrator or of another
character.
Foreshadowing
Foreshadowing is the author’s use of
clues to hint at what might happen later
in the story. Writers use foreshadowing
to build their readers’ expectations and
to create suspense. This is used to help
readers prepare for what is to come.
Irony
 Contrast or discrepancy between expectation and
reality—between what is said and what is really
meant, between what is expected to happen and
what really does happen, or between what appears
to be true and what is really true.
There are three types of irony:
• Verbal Irony
• Situational Irony
• Dramatic Irony
Three Types of Irony
 Verbal Irony, occurs when writer or speaker says one
thing, but really mans something completely different.
 Situational Irony, occurs when there is a contrast
between what would seem appropriate and what really
happens or when there is a contradiction between
what we expect to happen and what really does take
place.
 Dramatic Irony, occurs when the audience or the
reader knows something important that a character in
a play or story does not know.
Narrator
 Person telling the story.
Point of View
Point of view is the perspective, or vantage point, from
which a story is told. It is the relationship of the
narrator to the story.
First-person is told by a character who uses the firstperson pronoun “I”.
Third-person limited point of view is the point of view
where the narrator uses third-person pronouns such as
“he” and “she” to refer to the characters.
Third-person omniscient point of view is the point of
view where the narrator knows everything there is to
know about the characters and their problems. This “allknowing narrator can tell about the past, present and
future. This narrator can also reveal what the characters
are thinking. This narrator can also tell what is
happening at other places.
Setting
The setting of a literary work is the time and place of the
action.
The setting includes all the details of a place and time –
the year, the time of day, even the weather. The place
may be a specific country, state, region, community,
neighborhood, building, institution, or home.
Details such as dialect, clothing, customs, and modes of
transportation are often used to establish setting.
In most stories, the setting serves as a backdrop – a
context in which the characters interact. The setting of a
story often helps to create a particular mood, or feeling.
Suspense
Suspense is the growing interest and
excitement readers experience while
awaiting a climax or resolution in a work
of literature. It is a feeling of anxious
uncertainty about the outcome of
events. Writers create suspense by
raising questions in the minds of their
readers.
Symbol
Person, place, thing, or event that stands
for itself and for something beyond itself
as well.
Theme
The theme of a literary work is its central
message, concern, or purpose. A theme can
usually be expressed as a generalization, or
general statement, about people or life. The
theme may be stated directly by the writer
although it is more often presented indirectly.
When the theme is stated indirectly, the
reader must figure out the theme by looking
carefully at what the work reveals about the
people or about life.