| A | B |
|---|
| Suspense | The uncertainty or anxiety the reader feels about what will happen next in a story. |
| Flashback | An interruption in the action of a plot to tell what happened at an earlier time. |
| Denotation | The literal, dictionary definition of a word. |
| Connotation | The feelings and association that a word suggests. |
| Figure of speech | A word or phrase that describes one thing in terms of something else and is not literally true. |
| Conflict | A struggle or clash between opposing characters or opposing forces. |
| Dialect | A way of speaking that is characteristic of a particular region or group of people. |
| Tone | The attitude that a writer takes toward an audience, a subject, or a character. |
| Atmosphere | The overall mood or emotion of a work of literature. |
| Oxymoron | A phrase that consists of two words that are contradictory. |
| Symbolism | The use, in literature, of objects or events that represent universal, human themes, ideas or emotions. |
| Hyperbole | An exagerated statement used for effect and not meant to be taken literally. |
| Satire | A mode of writing that exposes the failings of individuals, institutions, or societies to ridicule and scorn. |
| Allegory | A story or visual image with a second distinct meaning partially hidden behind its literal or visable meaning. |
| Allusion | A reference to a statement, a person, a place, or an event from literature, history, religion, mythology, politics, sports, or science. |
| Onomatopoeia | The use of words with sounds that echo their sense. |
| Irony | In general, a contrast between expectation and reality. |
| Alliteration | The repetition of the same or very similar consonant sounds in words that are close together. |
| Autobiography | The story of a person's life, written or told by that person. |
| Biography | The story of a real person's life, written or told by another person. |
| Character | A person or animal that takes part of thew action in a story, play, or other literary work. |
| Characterization | The process of revealing the personality of a character in a story. |
| Dialogue | A conversation between two or more characters. |
| Drama | A story written to be acted in front of an audience. |
| Fable | A brief story in prose or verse that teaches a moral or gives a pratical lesson about how to get along in life. |
| Fiction | A prose account that is made up rather than true. |
| Folk Tale | A story with, no known author, that originally wasa passed on from one generation to another by word of mouth. |
| Foreshadowing | The use of clues to suggest events that will happen later in the plot. |
| Imagery | Language that appeals to the senses. |
| Metaphor | An imaginative comparison between to unlike things in which one thing is said to be another thing. |
| Myth | A story that explains something about the world and typically involves gods or other superhuman beings. |
| Nonfiction | Prose writing that deals with real people, events, and places without changing any facts. |
| Novel | A fictional story that is usually between one hundred and five hundred pages long. |
| Personification | A figure of speech in which a nonhuman thing or quality is talked about as if it was human. |
| Plot | The series of related events that make up a story. |
| Point of view | The vantage point from which the story is told. |
| Omniscient | All knowing point of view. |
| Third person | limited point of view. |
| First person | One of the characters using the personal pronoun I. |
| Setting | The time and place in which the events of a work of literature take place. |
| Short story | A fictional prose narrative that is usually ten to twenty book pages long. |
| Simile | A comparison between two unlike things, using a word such as like, than, or resembles. |
| Theme | The idea about life revealed in a work of literature. |
