1. Fiction Terms
1. Character: an imagined person in a literary work.
2. Flat characters: are one-dimensional figures with simple personalities. They show none of
the human depth, complexity, and contrariness of a round character or of most real people.
3. Round characters are complex figures. A round character is a full, complex,
multidimensional character whose personality reveals some of the richness and
contradictoriness we are accustomed to observing in actual people, rather than the transparent
obviousness of a flat character. We may see a significant change take place in a round
character during the story.
4. Protagonist: The protagonist or hero is the central character in the story who engages our
interest or sympathy. Sometimes, the term protagonist is preferable to hero, because the
central character can be despicable as well as heroic.
5. Antagonist: the character or force that opposes the protagonist.
6. Motivation is the external forces (setting, circumstances) and internal forces (personality,
temperament, morality, intelligence) that compel a character to act as he or she does in a
story.
7. Plot: the artistic arrangement of events in a story.
8. Chronological Order: the story is told in the order in which things happen. It begins with
what happens first, then second, and so on, until the last incident is related.
9. In medias res: Latin for "in the midst of things." We enter the story on the verge of some
important moment.
10. Flashback: a device that informs us about events that happened before the opening scene of a
work; often a scene relived in a character's memory.
11. Exposition: the opening portion that sets the scene, introduces the main characters, tells us
what happened before the story opened, and provides any other background information that
we need in order to understand and care about the events to follow.
12. A conflict is a complication that moves to a climax. Conflict is the opposition presented to
the main character of a story by another character, by events or situations, by fate, or by some
act of the main character's own personality or nature. More loosely defined for contemporary
fiction, it is the problem or tension that must somehow be addressed (if not perfectly
resolved) by the end of the story.
13. Suspense: the pleasurable anxiety we feel that heightens our attention to the story.
14. Foreshadowing: indication of events to come—the introduction of specific words, images, or
events into a story to suggest or anticipate later events that are central the action and its
resolution.
15. Rising action
A set of conflicts and crises that constitute the part of a play or story's plot leading up to the
climax.
16. Climax: the moment of greatest tension in the story, at which the outcome is to be decided
17. Falling action
In the plot of a story or play, the action following the climax of the work that moves it
towards its denouement or resolution. The falling action of Othello begins after Othello
realizes that Iago is responsible for plotting against him by spurring him on to murder his
wife, Desdemona
18. Denouement (French for "untying of the knot"): resolution; conclusion or outcome of story.
19. Epiphany: a moment of insight, discovery, or revelation by which a character's life or view
of life is greatly altered.
20. Point of View: Point of view refers to who tells the story and how it is told. What we know
and how we feel about the events in a story are shaped by the author's choice of a point of
view.

2. 21. Narrator: the teller of a story (not the author, but the invented speaker of the story).
22. Third-person (limited) narrator uses "he," "she," or "they," to tell the story and does not
participate in the action. This narrator usually tells the story from a single person’s
perspective.
23. Omniscient narrator uses "he," "she," or "they," to tell the story and does not participate in
the action. This narrator can take one of two stances: the narrator knows everything about
everyone and can jump from character to character, telling inner thoughts and feelings.
24. Objective (omniscient) narrator: recounts only actions and dialogue, allowing the
characters to speak for themselves
25. First-person narrator uses "I" and is a major or minor participant in the action. This narrator
knows only his or her perspective.
26. An unreliable narrator is a fictional character whose interpretation of events is different
from the author's or undependable because he or she is naïve or has a bias or a stake in the
outcome of the plot. .
27. Setting: the locale, time, and social circumstances of a story (for instance, an Eastern town in
winter, about 1950, in an upper-class private girls school).
28. Tone: the prevailing attitude (for instance, ironic, compassionate, objective) as perceived by
the reader; the author's feelings toward the central character or the main events.
29. Symbol: a person, object, action, or situation, that, charged with meaning, suggests another
thing (for example, a dark forest may suggest confusion, or perhaps evil), though usually with
less specificity and more ambiguity than allegory. A symbol usually differs from a metaphor
in that a symbol is expanded or repeated and works by accumulating associations.
30. Theme: the central idea or meaning of a story; what the work is about. When you express the
theme in your own words, it should be worded in a complete sentence and universally
expressed.