Analyzing Fiction Flashcards
What is plot?
The arrangement of events in a narrative. Almost always, a conflict is central to a plot, and traditionally a plot develops in accordance with the following model: exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, denouement.
What is a narrative?
A story
What is the exposition of a story?
At the beginning of a narrative, we learn important background information about the characters, the setting, and the situation, and we may begin to understand the nature of the conflict.
What is the rising action of a story?
After and inciting incident or significant even, the conflict becomes more clear, and the main character starts to experience complications.
What is the climax of the story?
The point at which the story’s suspense, emotions and tensions peak is the climax. This critical turning point marks when everything changes. In a comedy, the protagonist’s situation often improves. In a tragedy, it usually worsens. Usually, the narrative builds to this point, and any events following the climax happens fairly quickly.
What is a comedy?
A dramatic work that in contrast to a tragedy has al ight, amusing plot, features a happy ending, centers around ordinary people, and his written and performed in the vernacular.
What is suspense?
A literary device that uses tension to make the plot more exciting; it is the effect created by artful delays and selective dissemination of information.
What is a tragedy?
A serious dramatic work in which the protagonist experiences a series of unfortunate reversals due to some character trait, referred to as a character flaw.
What is falling action in a story?
Opposite the causes behind the rising action the falling action details the effects of what happens at the climax of the narrative, and the conflict comes to a point of resolution.
What is the denouement in a story?
It is the “untying of the knot.” It shows how the conflict has reached a resolution. Some stories do not have a resolution.
in medias res
some stories start in the middle of the action
flashback
a narrator explains what had happened prior to the story’s beginning
foreshadowing
hints at events to come
Setting
where and when a story takes place