Short Story Terms

Complications occur when the characters take action to resolve their problems & met with more

The author directly states what the character’s personality is like.

Present scene in the story is interrupted to go back & tell what happened in an earlier time

Vantage point from which the writer tells the story.

A character struggles against an outside force

Events following the climax or turning point in the story.

Comparing two unlike things using “like” or “as.”

Centers on one character’s thoughts and actions

The central message or insight into life revealed through a literary work

Showing a character’s personality through their actions, thoughts, feelings, words, appearance

Brief work of fiction, main character faces a conflict that is worked out in the plot

Series of related events that make up a story.

Takes place in a character’s own mind

Language that appeals to the senses.

Involves some imaginative comparison between two unlike things.

How the author develops the characters, especially the main character.

Saying one thing but meaning something completely different.

A person in a story, poem, or play.

Main character of the story that changes.

Object, person, or event that functions as itself, but also stands for something more

A contrast between expectation and reality.

A major character who opposes the protagonist

Uncertainty or anxiety the reader feels about what is going to happen next in the story.

Comparing two unlike things

Occurs when the reader knows something important that the characters in the story do not know.

Section that introduces characters, the setting, and conflicts.

The time and place of the story’s action.

The turning point in the story; the highest point of interest and suspense.

Reference to a statement, person, place, or event.

Clues the writer puts in the story to give the reader a hint of what is to come.

The end of the central conflict; it shows how the situation turns out.

Giving human qualities to non-human things.

One of the characters is actually telling the story using the pronoun “I.”

A struggle between two opposing forces

A contradiction between what we expect to happen and what really does happen.