PLOT: "What is character but the determination of incident? What is incident but the illustration of character?"—Henry James
Plot is the structure of a narrative’s actions, as they are rendered and ordered toward achieving particular emotional and artistic effects. Plot, as James asserts above, is linked to character development. There is an important difference between plot and story. Story refers to a simple sequence of events in time, whereas plot refers to how these events are rendered and organized so as to achieve their particular effects, how they are organized. In other words, plot is the arrangements of events to some end.

CHARACTERIZATION: How the writer reveals the characters to the reader, including what the character might say, do, or think, and how other characters react to and perceive him/her. An author reveals character by showing or telling. Characters are interpreted by the reader as having moral, dispositional, and emotional qualities. E.M. Forster defines a flat character (also called a type) as one who is built around "a single idea or quality" and is presented without much individualizing detail, and therefore can be summed up in a single phrase or sentence. A round character is complex in temperament and motivation and represented with subtle particularity.

SETTING: The time, location, and social context in which the story occurs. Setting can serve an important function of generating the atmosphere of a novel, the aura or mood of the story.

THEME: The general point(s) that the story attempts to make. Themes are not limited to the fictional reality of the characters’ lives, but often comments upon the reality of our own existence as well. Sometimes considered the "moral" or "message" of the story. Every narrative makes claims, often implicitly, about the nature of the world as the narrator and his/her cultural traditions understand it to be. A good reader will be aware of the shape of the world that the fiction projects, the structure of values that underlie the fiction (what is implicitly claimed and what is explicitly claimed); will be aware of the distances and similarities between the world of the fiction and the world that the reader inhabits; and will be aware of the significances of the selections and exclusions of the narrative in representing human experience.

TERMS:

Point of View: Through whose eyes does the reader see? There are three main points of view that a writer can use:

Allegory: A story in which characters and events form a system of symbolic meanings. George Orwell’s Animal Farm is a story in which each animal is an allegory for a specific individual from the Russian Bolshevik Revolution.

Allusion- A reference, explicit or indirect, to a well-known person, place, thing or event. An allusion serves to enrich the stories meaning by evoking relevant associations.

Conflict- The struggle that grows out of opposing forces in the story. A conflict can arise between two characters, a character and society, a character and some aspect of their own personality, a character and the past, etc. The suspense generated by the character=s attempt to resolve the conflict keeps the reader turning pages. Every story has a conflict.

Epiphany- Meaning "a manifestation," it describes in fiction the sudden realization made by a character. This realization usually awakens the character to the essential nature of a situation, another person, or herself.

Flashback- A device a writer uses to fill in what happened earlier in the story. Usually it takes the form of a scene relived in a characters memory.

Foreshadowing- The introduction of information early in the story hints at later developments.

Irony- A contrast between the expected and the actual. Verbal Irony exists when there is a discrepancy between what is said and what is meant: AYes, I just love checking the class website every 20 seconds to see what you've added.@ When verbal irony is tinged with mockery it is call Sarcasm. An Ironic Situation exists when there is a marked discrepancy between what occurs and what is expected. A composer who goes deaf illustrates an ironic situation.

Metaphor- A figure of speech in which two unlike objects are compared in order to expand their meaning.

Story of Initiation- A story that tells of the initiation of a character into the reality of experience or maturity. Catcher in the Rye is a novel of initiation.

Stream of Consciousness-A narrative technique that attempts to present the thoughts of a character just as they occur in the character=s mind. Modernist writers are particularly fond of this technique.

Symbol- Any word, object, action, or character that suggests more than its literal meaning. Symbols do not >stand for= any one meaning nor for anything absolutely definite. Symbol hint at, point to, or imply a multiplicity of meanings.

Tone- The tone of a story implies the author=s feelings regarding the subject matter of the story, so far as we can sense them. These feelings may be one of the same as the narrators. The tone of a story may communicate amusement, anger affection, sorrow, contempt, etc.