Fiction Terms - American Grain

Terms from Glossary of yellow anthology

Abstract

Possessing qualities apart from an object. Referring to intangible attributes, like love, death, happiness, rather than concrete ones, like frog, desk, or chair.

Ambiguity

Allowing for multiple interpretations

Anticlimax

The "falling action" that takes place after a climax. A sudden drop in tension, often unintentional.

Atmosphere

The mood of a piece, related to setting. It can include everything from descriptions of place, to weather, to time of day.

Backstory

The history of a character or characters as relevant to the present events of a story

Character

A made-up person. Considered one of the key ingredients of fiction

Cliché

An overused, familiar phrase, often of figurative language, that has lost its ability to inform due to excessive use.

Complication

Often used as a synonym for "conflict," that aspect of plot that creates tension and sustains the reader's interest, frequently leading to a climax, or epiphany.

Concrete Detail

Particular material objects, rendered with one or more of the five senses. The opposite of Abstract.

Conflict

Tension arising from opposite forces that is considered necessary by some to sustain a reader's interest. Others feel that this word doesn't adequately describe all the nuanced ways in which a writer can hold the reader's attention.

Convention

An accepted means of expression within a particular form. A tried-and-true means of doing something in literature.

Creative Nonfiction

Fact-based writing that uses fictional techniques to bring the subject to life.

Crisis

Also known as the climax. The point in a narrative where things are at the highest point of tension. The moment after which nothing can ever be the same again.

Dead Metaphor

A metaphor that has been so overused that it has sunk into our language; the comparison is no longer fresh or surprising. For example, "he ran for office" no longer evokes the image of someone actually running.

Denouement

The falling action, following a climax or crisis , after which things in a narrative are resolved.

Dialogue

Words spoken between characters in a scene. Specifically, words spoken between two or more characters.

Distance

The sense of how close (or far) the narrator is from the characters or the action in a narrative.

Epiphany

A literary revelation, or lifting of appearances in order to reveal meaning and truth. A moment of realization by a character, or the reader, or both.

Exposition

Explanation, usually in narration, of information essential to the story.

Falling Action

Denouement, or the wrapping up of loose ends that follows the climax or crisis of a narrative.

Fiction

Made-up events presented as if true in a narrative. Can be either a novel, a novella, or a short story.

Figurative Language

Expressing one thing in terms of something else. Major figurative language includes metaphor, simile, allegory, symbol, and personification.

Flashback

Scene of a prior event juxtaposed against a current scene. Usually triggered by a current event or by a character's memory.

Freewrite

A kind of writing exercise when you don't think about a specific subject or worry about what comes next, but just write whatever comes into your head.

Genre

A literary form such as novel, short story, poem, or play.

Image

Anything that has been rendered by any one (or more) of the five senses. Images are the building blocks of both fiction and creative nonfiction.

Irony

An apparent contradiction or incongruity that dissembles or hides a "truth," not to deceive, but to achieve an effect. Dramatic irony is when the reader knows something the character doesn't.

Melodramatic

When action dominates over characterization. From the Greek "melo" for song; melodrama originally referred to any drama that was set to music.

Metaphor

Figurative language in which two unlike things are directly compared. "The dog days of August" is like a metaphor.

Narrative

The events and characters that make up a story.

Narrator

The intelligence that is telling the story. Can be first person, second person, or third person (see point of view).

Novel

A work of prose of extended length.

Omniscience

Knowing everything there is to know. An omniscient narrator is a godlike intelligence that knows everything about the universe of the story or novel.

Personification

The technique of giving human traits to natural objects.

Plot

That series of events and/or actions that make up the story, arranged in a particular order, and told in a particular way by a narrator.

Point of View

The vantage point from which the events of the story or novel are narrated. Can be first person, second person, or third person.

Resolution

The denouement, or falling action. When the story's elements come together in an emotionally satisfying way.

Scene

Dramatic part of a story, taking place at a specific place at a specific time, between specific characters.

Sentimentality

An excess of sentiment, or feeling that hasn't been "earned" by a story or novel or nonfiction piece. A clichéd or overly familiar rendering of events or circumstances rather than a rendition that is fresh and surprising.

Setting

The place in which a story or novel takes place. The physical surroundings, as described by a narrator.

Simile

A comparison of two unlike things, using "like" or "as." "My love is like a red red rose," and "She had a face as round and as innocent as a cabbage" are similes.

Stereotype

A clichéd character. A stock character familiar to the reader through a standard set of traits. The wh*re with the heart of gold, or the browbeaten husband, are two examples of stock characters that appear in fiction as well as creative nonfiction.

Stock Character

A recognizable, fictional character type based on common social stereotypes or storytelling traditions that audiences immediately understand without needing deep backstory or development

Story

A work of prose with no minimum length and (usually) not exceeding 20,000 words.

Style

A particular writer's way of expressing himself or herself, dependent on such things a choice of point of view, syntax, or material he/she chooses to explore.

Subtext

Meaning that is implied rather than stated. All text has a subtext - the meaning that lies beneath the actual words.

Suspense

The state of being uncertain, unresolved. The sense that something of dramatic importance is about to happen.

Symbol

A concrete object or image (something that can be rendered with the five senses) that stands for something larger than itself. The cross stands for Jesus, Christianity, and all its related tenets; the white whale, in Moby-Dick, stands for some forbidden thing that mankind should not attempty to pursue or possess.

Tension

The juxtaposition of two opposing forces.

Voice

The specific way that a writer has of putting his or her thoughts on paper (similar to style).