Narrative Techniques

Vocabulary flashcards defining key narrative techniques and what students should notice when analyzing literary texts.

Point of View

Who tells the story and how that perspective shapes what we know or understand.

First-Person Narration

A narrator tells events through their own experience, perceptions, and limitations.

Narrative Voice

The distinctive personality, style, or attitude of the narrator.

Tone

The narrator/author's attitude toward the events, people, or ideas being described.

Diction

Word choice and how it shapes voice, tone, characterization, or meaning.

Imagery / Sensory Detail

Description that allows the reader to experience a scene through the senses.

Characterization

How personality, values, fears, or changes are revealed through actions, thoughts, dialogue, and description.

Dialogue

Conversation used to reveal character, relationships, conflict, or information.

Internal Monologue / Interior Thought

Direct access to a character's thoughts, fears, uncertainty, or reasoning—particularly useful in A Young Doctor's Notebook.

Setting

How place, time, environment, and social circumstances shape the narrative.

Pacing

How quickly or slowly the narrative moves and where the writer chooses to linger or accelerate.

Scene vs. Summary

Whether the writer dramatizes a particular moment or compresses events into a shorter explanation.

Anecdote

A brief story or incident used to illustrate a larger idea, belief, or experience.

Reflection

When the narrator interprets an experience rather than simply recounting what happened.

Juxtaposition / Contrast

Placing different experiences, characters, settings, or ideas beside one another to emphasize their differences.

Irony

A gap between expectation and reality, or between what is said and what is actually

Foreshadowing

Details that anticipate later events or developments.

Flashback / Retrospection

Looking backward from the narrative present to an earlier experience.

Framing

The way a writer establishes a perspective or context through which the reader understands the story.

Narrative Distance

How close the narrator seems to the events emotionally or temporally—especially relevant to memoir and retrospective narration.

Reliability / Limited Perspective

Recognizing that a narrator's understanding may be incomplete, subjective, or shaped by their circumstances.