Literary Elements Flashcards
Plot
The sequence of events in a story.
Exposition
Introduces the setting, main characters, and the basic situation.
Climax
The highest point of interest in a story.
Resolution
The end of the central conflict.
Denouement
Anything that takes place after the resolution.
Conflict
A struggle between two or more opposing forces.
Protagonist
The main character involved in the center of the action/central conflict.
Antagonist
The force that opposes the protagonist.
The Five Conflicts
Person vs. Person, Person vs. Nature, Person vs. Self (internal conflict), Person vs. Society, Person vs. Unknown (a.k.a Fate at times).
Dilemma
A situation where there is a choice to be made between two equal alternatives.
Irony
A surprising, interesting, or amusing contradiction in a story.
Verbal Irony
When words are used to suggest the opposite of their usual meaning.
Situational Irony
An unexpected outcome.
Dramatic Irony
When the reader knows something that a character or characters do not.
Setting
The time and place of the story’s action.
Foreshadowing
Hints or clues about events that have yet to occur.
Dynamic Character
A character that changes in either attitude, beliefs, or personality.
Static Character
A character that does not change/remains the same.
Characterization
Characterization
Direct Characterization
Used when specifically stating or describing a character’s traits.
Indirect Characterization
Showing a character’s personality through actions, thoughts, feelings, dialogue, or through another character’s observations and reactions.
Point of View
The perspective from which a story is told.
First Person
A character in the story tells the story.
Third Person
Someone outside the story tells the story.
Omniscient
The all-knowing perspective.
Theme
The central idea, concern, or purpose in a story.
Mood
The feeling created in the reader by a story.
Tone
The author’s attitude toward the reader and the subject.
Symbol
Anything that stands for or represents something else.
Suspense
A feeling of growing curiosity about the outcome of events in a story.
Motivation
A reason that explains a character’s thoughts, feelings, actions, or speech.
Satire
A type of writing that ridicules or criticizes the faults of individuals or groups.
Flashback
A section of a story that interrupts the sequence of events to relate an event from an earlier time.
Genre
A division of literature.
Nonfiction
Writing that is based on facts, real events, and real people.
Description
Creating a portrait in words of a person, place, or object.
Sensory Language
Writing or speech that appeals to one or more of the five senses (Visual, Olfactory, Gustatory, Auditory, Tactile).
Image
A word or phrase that appeals to one or more of the five senses.
Biography
An account of a person’s life written by someone else.
Classification
The action or process of classifying something according to shared qualities or characteristics.
Critical Writing
Writing that analyzes, interprets, or evaluates a text.
Personification
Giving human qualities to non-human things.
Simile
A figure of speech that compares two things using ‘like’ or ‘as’.
Metaphor
A figure of speech that compares two things without using ‘like’ or ‘as’.
