Literary Devices in a Short Story

Types of Fictions

Allegory - A story in which people, objects, and events stand for abstract qualities.

Anecdote - A short narrative.

Autobiography - An account of a person’s life written by that person.

Biography - An account of a person’s life written by another person.

Fable - A short story that illustrates a moral, often using animals as characters

Gothic - Literature characterized by grotesque characters, bizarre situations, and violent events

Legend - A story passed down orally, frequently over generations, and popularly believed to have an historical basis, sometimes exaggerated.

Myth - A traditional story, usually concerning a superhuman being or unlikely event that was once widely believed to be true.

Narrative  - An oral or written account of an event or series of events.

Parody  - A humorous, exaggerated imitation of another work.

Characters

Antagonist - Character, force or other thing in opposition to the protagonist.

Dynamic character - Character who changes during the story.

Flat character - Character with few personality traits.

Protagonist - Central character; sometimes a hero.

Round character - Character with many personality traits.

Static character - Character who does not change during the story.

Character Development

Direct characterization - When the narrator directly describes the character’s personality.

Indirect characterization - When a character’s personality is revealed through his/her actions or words.

Motivation - The thing or person that causes a character to do something.

Plot structure

Climax - Where the reader’s interest and emotional intensity are at their peak.

Exposition - Provides important background information at the start of the rising action and introduces the setting, characters, and conflict(s).

Falling action - The events in a story after the climax; sometimes the resolution/denouement is also falling action.

Development Techniques

1 st person point of view - When a character tells the story.

3 rd person limited point of view - When the narrator knows and describes only what one character knows

3 rd person omniscient point of view - When the narrator is all-knowing.

External conflict - Struggle between a character and something or someone outside of himself.

Flashback - Description of something that occurs before the story and interrupts the narrative.

Foreshadowing - Hints about what will happen in the story.

In medias res -  Literally: “in the middle of things.” When a story begins in the middle of the action.

Internal conflict  - Struggle within a character’s mind.

Point of view - Refers to the narrative perspective from which events in a story are told.

Stream of consciousness  - A writing technique developed to present the flow of a character’s seemingly unconnected thoughts, responses, and sensations.

Other

Analogy -  A comparison to clarify an action or a relationship.

Aphorism -  Brief statement, usually one sentence that expresses a general principle or statement about life.

Cliché -  An overused expression that has lost its freshness. E.g., “happy as a lark,” “white as snow,”

Dramatic irony - When the reader or viewer knows something that a character does not know; as in a horror movie.

Epiphany -  A sudden understanding or realization that prior to this was not thought or understood.

Euphemism - Word or phrase that takes the place of a harsh, unpleasant, or impolite reality. E.g., “powder room” for “toilet.”

Hyperbole - Exaggeration or deliberate overstatement. E.g., “These concert tickets must have cost a million dollars.”

Litotes - is a form of understatement in which the positive form is emphasized through the negation of a negative form:

Mood - The feeling or atmosphere that the writer creates in a reader.

Moral -  The lesson taught in a work and usually expressly stated.

Oxymoron - A figure of speech that combines two opposing or contradictory ideas. E.g., freezing fire, jumbo shrimp, or cruel kindness.

Paradox -  A statement that seems contradictory or absurd, but that expresses the truth.

Parallelism  - When a speaker or writer expresses ideas of equal worth with the same grammatical form.

Paraphrase - To restate something in one’s own words;

Pun - Humorous use of a word in a way to suggest two or more meanings.

Rhetorical question -  A question to which no answer is expected because the answer is obvious.

Satire  - A technique in which foolish ideas or customs are ridiculed to improve society.

Setting -  Place and time of the story

Situational irony  - An unexpected twist or contrast in what the reader or character expects and what occurs.

Style  - The particular way a piece of literature is written (i.e., how, not what is said).

Symbol - Person, place, activity or object that stands for something beyond itself. E.g., a skull for death.

Synaesthesia  - A rhetorical device in literature which is the description of one kind of sense perception using words that describe another kind of sense perception, as in the phrase “shining metallic words.”

Theme - Perception of life or human nature that is the main idea of a work of literature.

Tone - Writer’s attitude toward the reader, subject or characters.

Understatement - Saying less than is actually or literally true.

Verbal irony - When one thing is said but another thing is meant; puns are a kind of verbal irony