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Go Ahead, Spill Some Ink! Literary Devices

Character Antagonist: One who opposes and contends against another; an adversary Character: the representation of a person in a narrative work of art Protagonist: the leading character, hero, or heroine of a drama or other literary work Foil: In fiction, a foil is a character who contrasts with another character (usually the antagonist) in order to highlight particular qualities of another character Doppelganger: ghostly counterpart of a living person, a double, an alter ego Nemesis: an act or effect of retribution, a formidable and usually a victorious rival or opponent Persona: the social role of a character

Talking Points Dialogue: conversation between two or more persons Dramatic Monologue: a combination of the words dramatic and monologue. The "dramatic" says that it could be acted out, and is a form of drama, while the "monologue" defines it as a speech that one person makes, either to themself or to another. Unreliable narrator: a narrator, whether in literature, film, or theatre, whose credibility has been seriously compromised Narrative / narrator: the entity who tells the story Point of View: the lens by which the reader experiences the story Stream of consciousness: spontaneous, unedited thoughts, or expressions; as if the story is given in real time Authorial intrusion: a part of a story where the author stops the story and speaks to the reader

Page |2 Tone: the attitude of the author shown through the story Mood: how the story makes the reader feel Aside: speech directed at an audience Apostrophe: the speaker is addressing an absent person or the dead, or an inanimate object, as if present

Story-wide Myth: A traditional or legendary story, usually concerning some being or hero or event, with out without a determinable basis of fact or a natural explanation, especially one that is concerned with deities or demigods and explains some practice, rite, or phenomenon of nature Setting: gives the time, location, and everything in which a story takes place, and initiates the main backdrop and mood for a story Symbol: something which represents an idea, a physical entity or a process but is distinct from it Theme: a broad idea, message, or moral of a story Conflict: the inherent incompatibility between the objectives of two or more characters or forces Tragedy: a form of art based on human suffering that offers its audience pleasure Archetype: a generic version of a personality Motif: a recurring object

Poetic Devices Couplet: a style of poetry where the endings of the lines rhyme Epigram: a poem that includes ridicule or sarcasm Lyric: a song-poem written to express feelings Rhyme: a repetition of the exact word or similar sounding words Rhyme scheme: the pattern of the poem

Page |3 Slant rhyme: an imperfect rhyme; instead of similar sounding you will have accented and unaccented words (spilled and spoiled, chitter and chatter) Sonnet: a poetic style that uses an a-b-b-a, a-b-b-a structure Verse: the metrical structure of a poem Stanza: a division of a poem consisting of a series of lines arranged together in a usually recurring pattern of meter and rhyme Anagram: using one word and mixing the letters up to create another word Alliteration: pattern that includes a repetition of consonant sounds Assonance: resemblance of sound in words or syllables Consonance: harmony or agreement among components Euphony: a harmonious succession of words having a pleasing sound Cacophony: harsh or discordant sound Spoonerism: a transposition of usually initial sounds of two or more words (as in tons of soil for sons of toil) Anastrophe: inversion of the usual syntactical order of words for rhetorical effect compare Asyndeton: omission of the conjunctions that ordinarily join coordinate words or clauses (as in I came, I saw, I conquered) Caesura: a rhetorical break in the flow of sound in the middle of a line of verse Chiasmus: an inverted relationship between the syntactic elements of parallel phrases Juxtaposition: the act or an instance of placing two or more things side by side Polysyndeton: repetition of conjunctions in close succession (as in we have ships and men and money) Ballad: a narrative folk song Epithet: a characterizing word or phrase accompanying or occurring in place of the name of a person or thing Hyperbation: A figure of speech that uses disruption or inversion of customaryword order to produce a distinctive effect

Page |4 Internal rhyme: a rhyme created by two or more words in the same line of verse Rhyme scheme: the pattern of rhyme between lines of a poem or song Port Manteau: a blend of two (or more) words or morphemes into one new word Faulty parallelism: when the elements put into pairs and series "go in different directions" because they do not have the same form Ambiguity: a device which deliberately uses a word or expression to indicate two or more distinct references, attitudes or feelings Figurative Language Metaphor: a literary figure of speech that uses an image, story or tangible thing to represent a less tangible thing or some intangible quality or idea Personification: giving human traits (qualities, feelings, action, or characteristics) to non-living objects (things, colors, qualities, or ideas) Simile: a figure of speech that directly compares two different things, usually by employing the words "like", "as" Onomatopoeia: a word that imitates the sound it represents Hyperbole: an elaborate or extravagant exaggeration Oxymoron: a combination of contradictory or incongruous words Pun: The pun, also called paronomasia, is a form of word play which suggests two or more meanings, by exploiting multiple meanings of words, or of similar-sounding words, for an intendedhumorous or rhetorical effect Analogy: a similarity between like features of two things, on which a comparison may be based Allegory: narrative that serves as an extended metaphor Synecdoche: a figure of speech by which a part is put for the whole (as fifty sail for fifty ships), the whole for a part (as society for high society), the species for the genus (as cutthroat for assassin), the genus for the species (as a creature for a man), or the name of the material for the thing made (as boards for stage) Metonymy: a figure of speech where terms are substituted to grant greater meaning e.g. by the sweat of your brow you will eat your food

Page |5 Imagery: figurative language, mental images created by the story Kennings: is a magic poetic phrase, a figure of speech, substituted for the usual name of a person or thing. Kennings work in much the same way as epithets and verbal formulae, and were commonly inserted into Old English poetic lines Pathetic fallacy: anthropomorphic fallacy or sentimental fallacy is the treatment of inanimate objects as if they had human feelings, thought, or sensations Anthropomorphism: any attribution of human characteristics (or characteristics assumed to belong only to humans) to animals, non-living things, phenomena, material states, objects or abstract concepts

Modes of Writing Description: the details of objects or people that convey the concept or idea to the reader Action: the behaviors of characters that are enhanced by tension, suspense, and dramatization Narration: story-telling Conversation: dialogue between characters Exposition: the background information, setting, and character information at the beginning Summarization: the restating of ideas Introspection: thoughts, monologue, reflections of a character that are not experienced by other characters but experienced by the reader Sensation: perceptions brought by the senses of the character and conveyed to the reader Transition: the movement from one place to another Emotion: the feelings of the character throughout the story Recollection: the thoughts of a character after the fact

Page |6 Playing With Time Reverse Chronology: as its name suggests, when the story begins at the ending and works its way backward In Media Res: when the story begins in the middle of the plot Flashback (Racconto): where the narrative is taken backward, the narrator/character may experience an If I had known line of reasoning Flash-Forward (Analepsis): the narrative is taken forward Dream sequence: this technique has been used to foreshadow and flashback the story, but the essential component is that the character experiences dreams that give the reader a sense of the future or past Prophesy: a prediction about the future by a character in the story Foreshadow (prolepsis): a device where the author suggests certain plot elements

Endings Cliff Hanger: a device where the main character is given a serious revelation or dilemma at the end of the story Twist Ending: the unexpected conclusion of a story Happy Ending: an ending where things turn out best for the characters Poetic Justice: an ending where virtue is rewarded and vice punished Deus Ex Machina: the unstoppable crisis is avoided because of the gods

Story Structure Prologue: the introductory part of a story Epilogue: the conclusion, or ending remarks of a story Plot: the storyline; consisting of a beginning, middle, and end Inversion: a reversal of position, order, form, or relationship Plot twist: a change in the expected direction or outcome

Page |7 Deathtrap: the trap that the villain develops to capture the protagonist Comic Book Death: a death that is not permanent, the hero comes back Inciting Force: the trigger event for the story

Hey You Flashing arrow: a means of drawing the attention of the most distracted reader to something important Red herring: the means of diverting the attention of the reader elsewhere

Wording Connotation: the association that comes with a particular word Denotation: exact meaning of the word Diction: the writer's or the speaker's distinctive vocabulary Colloquial: conversations between friends Obsolete: words no longer used (archaic) Dialect: language of a particular region, race Formal: technical, scholarly Informal: essays, popular magazines, etc. Technical: terminology to a specific study Slang: language of particular social groups Malapropism: the usually unintentionally humorous misuse or distortion of a word or phrase Periphrasis: use of a longer phrasing in place of a possible shorter form of expression Syllepsis: the use of a word to modify or govern syntactically two or more words with only one of which it formally agrees in gender, number, or case

Page |8 Style Satire: a literary work holding up human vices and follies to ridicule or scorn Didactic: refers to other works that are instructional or informative Syntax: the way in which linguistic elements (as words) are put together to form constituents (as phrases or clauses) Amplification: where the writer clarifies by embellishing the sentence Circumlocution: the use of an unnecessarily large number of words to express an idea Bildungsroman: a novel about the moral and psychological growth of the main character Parable: a narrative with a moral lesson Allusion: reference to another work of literature Euphemism: the substitution of an agreeable or inoffensive expression for one that may offend or suggest something unpleasant Bibliomancy: using sacred texts throughout your work Ekphrastic: make the reader envision the thing described as if it were physically present Synesthesia: a concomitant sensation; especially: a subjective sensation or image of a sense (as of color) other than the one (as of sound) being stimulated Periodic structure: the concept of a periodic structure refers to a particular placement of sentence elements such as the main clause of the sentence and/or its predicate are purposely held off and placed at the end instead of at the beginning or their conventional positions Clich: an expression that has been used too much

Truthfulness Verisimilitude: having the appearance of truth Paradox: a statement that is seemingly contradictory or opposed to common sense and yet is perhaps true Understatement: to represent as less than is the case Irony: a person, situation, statement that is not as it seems

Page |9 Aphorism: a concise statement of a principle, formulation of a truth or sentiment Anti-thesis: a counter-proposition and denotes a direct contrast to the original proposition

Plot Items Chekhov's Gun: an item that is introduced early in the story and plays a crucial role later on. MacGuffin: an item whose nature is never quite explained to the reader but is a prime motivation for the characters. Plot Coupon: is an object that is crucial for resolving the conflict and completing the story. Commonly, it is a supernatural artifact divided into several parts and scattered all over the world. Plot Voucher: is an object similar to both plot coupon and Chekhov's gun: it is usually presented to the protagonist at the beginning of the story and plays an important role in the resolving of the conflict.

For More Information http://literary-devices.com/ http://www.writerspost.com/literatefolk/literarydevices.htm http://www.leasttern.com/LitTerms/literary_terms.htm http://www.helium.com/items/197336-fiction-writing-modes-and-how-to-use-them/print http://www.narrati.com/Narratology/Literary_Devices-Plot.htm http://eienglish.org/literms.html