| Allegory | The concrete presentation of an abstract idea, typically with two levels of meaning. First level is the surface story line, the second is typically moral, political, philosophical, or religious. |
| Ambiguity | Lack of clear or definite meaning or having a dual meaning |
| Analysis | Description of how a character, symbol, or other element of a story works into and supports the whole of the story. |
| Anti-story | An experimental short story that attempts to convey objective reality without using the traditional writing conventions. |
| Central Intelligence | A character (often but not always the narrator) through whose perception the author observes the action of a story and whose perception thus shapes the reader’s view of that action. |
| Close Reading | A method of analyzing literature using careful explication of the text. |
| Complication | The introduction and development of a conflict between characters or between a character and his or her situation. |
| Connotation | The meaning of a word that is implied or suggested by the specific associations the word calls to mind and by the tone in which it is used, as opposed its literal definition. |
| Deconstruction | A critical approach investigating the unstable properties of language, especially the destabilization of single definitions of meaning and the defamiliarization of literary conventions. |
| Didactic | A term used to describe a narrative or other work of art, that is presented in order to teach a specific lesson, convey a moral, or inspire and provide a model for proper behavior. |
| Dénouement (day new mon) | The conclusion of an action or plot in which the falling action is brought to a close and outcome or outcomes of the climax are presented to the reader. |
| Distance | An author’s or a narrator’s spatial or temporal and hence emotional removal or aloofness from the action and from its characters. |
| Editorial point of view | The occasion in a text in third-person narration when the narrator adds his or her own comments, which may or may not be the opinions of the author. |
| Episode | A specific, usually very brief incident, often complete in itself and usually narrated at once and as a whole. A story may consistent of the narration of one or more episodes. |
| Exposition | The presentation of background information that a reader must be aware of, especially of situation that exist and events that have occurred before the action of the story begins. |
| Fantasy | A narrative or events in a narrative that have no possible existence in reality and could not have occurred in a real world. |
| First-person narration | The telling of a story by a person who was involved in or directly observed the action. That form of narrator becomes a character in the story. |
| Frame story | A story within a story. |
| Impartial omniscience | The telling of a story by a third person narrator whose omniscience does not allow for any evaluation or judgment of the characters and their activities. |
| Impressionism | A way of writing in which an author presents characters and events in a highly subjective and personal light, freely admitting an authorial point of view and thereby effectively denying any claim to objectivity. |
| Initiation story | Also called a coming of age story, this form of story presents a child or adolescent with a difficult experience or rite of passage that prepares him or her for adult life. |
| Innocent (naive) narrator | First person narration from the point of view of a young, inexperienced, uneducated, or unintelligent narrator. |
| Limited omniscience | The restricted ability of a third-person narrator to tell the reader directly about any events that occurred, are occurring, or will occur in the plot of the story or the thoughts and feelings of any character. |
| Magical realism | Fiction that interweaves realistic and fantastic details, juxtaposing the marvelous with the ordinary. |
| Minimalism | A literary style exemplifying economy and restraint. |
| Montage | The rapid sequence of brief and often juxtaposing images. |
| Naturalism | An extreme form of realism in which authors present their work as a scientific observation of a world in which people’s acts are strictly determined by their natures. |
| Objectivity | An attempt by an author to remove him or herself from any personal involvement with the characters and actions of the story. To tell the story without bias and without expressing any personal opinions. |
| O. Henry ending | A surprise conclusion that reverses the reader’s expectations. Often achieved by withholding information from the reader until the end. |
| Omniscience | “All-knowingness”; the ability of the narrator to tell the reader directly about any of the characters’ events/thoughts/emotions that are, have, or will occur. |
| Pace | The rater at which the action of the story progresses. Pace may be affected by varying the lengths of words, sentences, and paragraphs by compressing or expanding the narration of events. |
| Plot | The series of events in a narrative that form the action, in which a character or characters face an internal or external conflict that propels the story to a climax and an ultimate resolution. |
The perspective from which an author lets the reader view the action of a narrative; thus, the choice of who tells the story. 1st person narrator took part in the action, 3rd person narrator was not directly involved in the action.
| Resolution | The falling action of a narrative in which the conflict set in motion during the rising action, and reaching its high point in the climax, is settled and the story moves toward its denouement. |
| Satire | A work that ridicules some aspect of human behavior by portraying it at its most extreme; distinguished from parody which burlesques the style or content of a particular work or type of work. |
| Sentimentality | The over reliance on emotional effect or pathos so great as to strain the reader’s willingness to believe; also referred to as bathos. |
| Surrealism | A way of writing that involves the presentation of a super-real, dreamlike world where conventions are upended and rationality is set aside. |
| Unreliable narrator | A fictional character telling the story whose knowledge of judgment about events and other characters is so flawed or limited (deliberately or by circumstances) as to make him/her a misleading guide to the reader. |
| Verisimilitude | The use of certain lifelike details to give a narrative work the semblance of reality. |
| Voice | A term referring to the specific manner chosen by the author to tell the story. Voice encompasses elements of point of view and literary style. |