Literary Terms 26-27

Drama

made up of dialogue and stage directions.

Script

the words spoken by the actors.

Acts

this is how a drama is divided.

Stage Directions

notes included in a drama to describe how the work is to be preformed or staged. These are usually printed in italics and enclosed within parentheses or brackets. They describe the movements, costumes, emotional states, and ways of speaking of the characters.

Scene

a section of uninterrupted action in the act of a drama.

Playwright

a person who writes plays.

Set

the scenery used for a play or a movie.

Theater

a building or outdoor area in which plays and other dramatic performances are given.

Prop

a portable object other than furniture or costumes used on the set os a play or movie.

Flashback

a scene within a story that interrupts the sequence of events to relate events that occurred in the past.

Foreshadowing

the author’s use of clues to hint at what might happen later in the story.

External Conflict

one in which a character struggles against some kind of outside force, such as another person. Another one may occur between a character and some force in nature.

Internal Conflict

it takes place within the mind of a character struggles to make a decision, take an action, or overcome a feeling.

First-person point of view

told by a character who uses the first-person pronoun “I”.

Third-person point of view

there are two kinds, limited and omniscient. This is called “third person” because the narrator uses third-person pronouns such as he or she to refer to the characters.

Dialect

the form of a language spoken by people in a particular region or group. They differ in pronunciation, grammar, and word choice.(The use of it gives a short story a more authentic feel and helps a character’s words sound more realistic.)

Dialogue

conversation between characters. In poems, novels, and short stories, dialogue is usually set off by quotation marks to indicate a speaker’s exact words.

Protagonist

the main character in a literary work It is often a person but sometimes it can be an animal.

Antagonist

this is a character or a force in a conflict with a main character, or protagonist.

Tone

the writers attitude toward toward his or her audience and subject. It can often be described by a single adjective, such as formal or informal, serious or playful, bitter, or ironic.

Mood

the general feeling or atmosphere that a piece of writing creates within the reader.