| A | B |
|---|
| Theme | underlying message about life |
| Red Herring | false hint or clue for distraction |
| Foreshadowing | create expectations or hints that will develop later in the story |
| Setting | the place and time of the story |
| Climax | the highest point of suspense of a story |
| Mood | the overall feeling or emotion created by a story |
| Character Traits | the qualities that make a personality |
| Motivation | the impulse or desire for a character to do something |
| Protagonist | the hero/heroine; the main character we are supporting |
| Character Development | the change or growth of a character within a story |
| Plot | the sequence of events that tell the story |
| Rising Action | the events that build suspense and lead to the climax |
| Resolution | final part of the story when the problems have been solved and the story ends. |
| Conflict | struggle or clash between opposing forces or characters |
| Juxtaposition | events placed side by side for comparison or contrast |
| Antagonist | the one who opposes the main character; the villain |
| Confidant | the trusted friend that is a device for the main character to reveal their thoughts |
| Flashback | to present action that occurred before the beginning of the story usually as a dream or memory |
| Irony | contradictions; words that mean the opposite of their usual meaning or contradiction between what a character says and what the audience knows is true |
| Symbolism | where an object represents an idea |
| Cliffhanger | suspense or mystery at the end of a chapter; it makes you want to keep reading by leaving a character in a perilous situation |
| Allusion | reference to a famous literary person, event or story |
| Exposition | text intended to teach or give information that will be important in the plot; it is also the term used for the beginning of a story using Freytag's Pyramid |
| Plot Hole | a gap or inconsistency in a story that goes against the logic established by the story's plot; the author made a mistake |
| Faulty Narrator | one way authors make red herrings, the character misunderstands information and misleads the readers |
| Freytag's Pyramid | a diagram or graphic organizer that shows the development of a story's plot |
| Simile | a comparison using like, as, than or resembles |
| Metaphor | a comparison that makes one thing another--does not use like, as, than or resembles |
| Personification | describing or talking about a nonhuman thing or quality as if it were human |
| Onomatopoeia | the use of a word whose sound imitates or suggests its meaning. Meow. |
| Alliteration | repetition of the same or very similar consonant sounds in words close together. Molly makes mud pies. |
| Character | a person or an animal in a story. |
| Figure of Speech | a word or phrase that describes one thing in terms of another and is not literally true |
| Imagery | language that appeals to the senses--sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell. It makes an image in your mind. |
| Poetry | a kind of rhythmic, compressed language that uses figures of speech and imagery to appeal to emotion and imagination |
| Point of View | whose eyes are we seeing the story through; also first, second or third person |
| Refrain | repeated word, phrase or line or groups of lines in a poem or song |
| Rhyme Scheme | pattern of rhyming at the end lines in a poem or song. ABAB |
| Stanza | in a poem, a group of lines that form a unit. It's like a paragraph in a poem with one main idea or image. |
| Suspense | anxious curiosity the reader feels about what will happen next |
