elements of fiction handout

Genre (Four main)

Fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and drama

Subgenre (Divergent)

Dystopian (Post apocalyptic)

Setting

Time and place a story occurs (post apocalyptic in the future, Chicago)

Plot

Sequence of events that make up a story

1st stage or event of plot (2 examples)

Exposition (learning the narrator’s name and 5 factions)

2nd stage or event of plot (2 examples)

Rising action (Learning Tris is Divergent and Choosing Ceremony)

3rd stage or event of plot (Example from Divergent)

Turning point(When they override the serum)

4th stage or event of plot (One example from Divergent)

Falling action (Tobias and Marcus’s interaction)

5th stage or event of plot

Denouement (When they are on the train to Amity)

Conflict: a problem (4 categories of conflict)

Character vs self, character vs character, character vs society, character vs nature

Central conflict of Divergent (Main problem)

The existence of factions, meant to be utopian but is now the opposite

Narrator (Definition and example from Divergent)

The person that tells the story (Tris)

First person

The story is told by a narrator using first person pronouns (I, me, myself, etc)

2nd person

The story is told by a character speaking directly to the reader using 2nd person pronouns (You, Your, etc)

3rd person limited

The story is told through one character’s POV swing third person pronouns (he, she, they)

Third person omniscient all knowing

The story is told through multiple characters POV using third person pronouns (they she he etc)

Character

Protagonist, Antagonist, Dynamic, Static, central vs subordinate

Protagonist (Definition and 2 examples from Divergent)

Main character readers usually root for (Tris and Four)

Antagonist (Definition and 2 examples from Divergent)

Character who opposes the protagonist (Peter and Jeanine Mathews)

Dynamic (Definition and 2 examples from Divergent)

A character who undergoes change throughout the story (Tris and Four)

Static (Definition and 2 examples from Divergent)

Characters who do not change (Eric and Peter)

Central characters (Definition and 2 examples from Divergent)

Essential in the plot of the story (Peter and Christina)

Subordinate (Definition and 2 examples from Divergent)

Not important, barely remember their names (Rita, fell off the roof, Zeke, Uriah’s older brother)

Irony (Definition and 2 examples from Divergent)

The opposite of what’s expected (Caleb chooses Erudite, when Eric calls Al’s suicide brave)

Symbol (Definition and 2 examples from Divergent)

An inanimate object that represents an important concept or theme (The chasm: the fine line between bravery and idiocy, three birds Tattoo: each member of Tris’s family flying toward her heart)

Motif (Definition and example from Divergent)

Subject, ideas, conflicts, images, phrases, symbols that show up again and again (represented in a word or short phrase)

(Faction before blood)

Theme (Definition and 2 examples from Divergent)

A moral lesson or truth about the world in your story (“I think we’ve made a mistake, we’ve all started to put down the virtues of the other factions in the process of bolstering our own. I don’t want to do that. I want to be brave and selfless, and smart, and kind, and honest.” Pg.405. Ex.2 “No one’s perfect, it doesn’t work that way. One bad thing goes away and on other bad thing replaces it” pg. 405

“I have a theory that bravery and selflessness aren’t all that different. All your life you’ve been training to forget yourself, so when you’re in danger it becomes your first instinct. I could belong in abnegation just as easily” Pg. 336

“Fear doesn’t shut you down it lifts you up” pg 313)