Plot + Setting Flashcards
Plot
The plot of a short story or novel consists of several basic events that form a whole narrative.
Narrative
A short story
Conflicts
The tension, opposition, or struggle that dives a plot. External conflict is the opposition or tension between two characters occurs within a character. Conflict usually arises between the protagonist and the antagonist in a story.
Exposition
At the beginning of the narrative, we learn important background information about the characters, the setting, and we may begin to understand the nature of conflict, and the situation.
Rising Action
After an inciting incident or significant event, the conflict becomes more clear, and the main character starts to experience complications.
Climax
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 happen fairly quickly.
Falling Action
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.
Denouement
Denouement means “untying the knot” in the French, and this part of the plot is often the shortest. Traditionally, readers learn how conflict has reached a resolution, and in the denouement a sense of balance has been restored. The denouement often expresses a sort of “moral of the story” or simply “And they lived happily ever after”. Over the last two centuries, however, authors have begun to leave stories unresolved, and this lack of resolution means readers still have questions about the meaning of a narrative’s events.
in medias res
A Latin term meaning “In the middle of the action,” or just prior to an important event midway through the overall story.
Flashbacks
During which a narrator explains what had happened prior to the story’s beginning, or foreshadowing to hint at events to come.
Foreshadowing
Hinting about upcoming events.
Comedy
Usually used to refer to a dramatic work that, in contrast to tragedy, has a light, amusing plot, features a happy ending, centers around ordinary people, and is written and performed in the vernacular.
Tragedy
A serious dramatic work in which the protagonist experiences a series of unfortunate reversals due to some character trait, referred to as a tragic flaw. The most common tragic flaw is hubris. Hubris comes from the Greek word hybris, which means pride. Modern tragedies tend to depart from some of the genre’s classical conventions, portraying average rather than noble characters and attributing the protagonist’s downfall to something other than a flaw in character- for example, to social circumstances.
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.
Resolution
The working out of a plot’s conflicts, following the climax.
