Prose Techniques

setting

plot and timescale

voice (narrative perspective and dialogue)

symbolism

characterisation

structure

3rd person omniscient

understanding and knowing everything, and feelings and thoughts of everyone

3rd person limited

narrator appears to be confident/omniscient but is missing some key information

third person - direct authorial intrusion/address

directly addresses reader

1st perosn limited

1st person narrative giving impression of omniscience but doesn’t have it

1st person unreliable/naive

deliberate mistakes by author to reveal character/theme

1st person introspective

looking at thoughts and feelings of narrator

free indirect discourse

text is contaminated/infected by thoughts of a character

stream of consciousness

often inpunctuated outburst of words

dialogue

speech

framed narrative

story within a story

multiple narrators

epistolary form (letters), diaries etc.

echoes

repetition

analepsis

prolepsis

external description

introspection (inner lives)

different voices

narrative expansion

narrative contraction

declarative

interrogative

imperative

exclamative

minor sentence

simple sentence

compound sentence

complex sentence

triplication

epizeuxis

parallelism

chiasmus

anaphora

epiphora

polysyndeton

asyndeton

hyperbaton

embedded clauses

simile

metaphor

personification

dehumanisation

zoomorphism

anthropomorphism

symbolism

metonymy

semantic field

pattern of (antithetical) imagery

ambiguity and contradictions

adjectives/epithets

adverbs

(fronted) adverbials

verbs

nouns (abstract, proper, common, collective)

pronouns

prepositions

latinate

polysyllabic

technical

jargon

monosyllabic

borrowing/loan words (from another language)

alliteration

consonance

assonance

sibilance

onomatopoeia