Fiction Terms

Here are terms that you should become comfortable using in verbal/written communication about fiction. Note: additional terms may be given in class.

Character: an imagined person in a literary work (Romeo or Young Goodman Brown, for example).

Flat characters: are one-dimensional figures, figures with simple personalities. They show none of the human depth, complexity, and contrariness of a round character or of most real people.

Round characters are complex figures. A round character is a full, complex, multidimensional character whose personality reveals some of the richness and contradictoriness we are accustomed to observing in actual people, rather than the transparent obviousness of a flat character. We may see a significant change take place in a round character during the story.

Protagonist: The protagonist or hero is the central character in the story who engages our interest or sympathy. Sometimes, the term protagonist is preferable to hero, because the central character can be despicable as well as heroic.

Antagonist: the character or force that opposes the antagonist.

Motivation is the external forces (setting, circumstances) and internal forces (personality, temperament, morality, intelligence) that compel a character to act as he or she does in a story.

Verbal irony: the irony is between what is said and what is meant ("You're a great guy," meant bitterly).

Dramatic irony: the contrast is between what the audience knows (a murderer waits in the bedroom) and what a character says (the victim enters the bedroom, innocently saying, "I think I'll have a long sleep").

Situational irony: when an incongruity exists between what is expected to happen and what actually happens (Macbeth usurps the throne, thinking he will then be happy, but the action leads him to misery).

Chronological: the story is told in the order in which things happen. It begins with what happens first, then second, and so on, until the last incident is related.

In medias res: Latin for "in the midst of things." We enter the story on the verge of some important moment.

Flashback: a device that informs us about events that happened before the opening scene of a work; often a scene relived in a character's memory.

Exposition: the opening portion that sets the scene, introduces the main characters, tells us what happened before the story opened, and provides any other background information that we need in order to understand and care about the events to follow.

A conflict is a complication that moves to a climax. Conflict is the opposition presented to the main character of a story by another character, by events or situations, by fate, or by some act of the main character's own personality or nature. More loosely defined for contemporary fiction, it is the problem or tension that must somehow be addressed (if not perfectly resolved) by the end of the story.

Suspense: the pleasurable anxiety we feel that heightens our attention to the story.

Foreshadowing: indication of events to come. The introduction of specific words, images, or events into a story to suggest or anticipate later events that are central the action and its resolution.

Climax: the moment of greatest tension in the story, at which the outcome is to be decided.

Denouement (French for "untying of the knot"): resolution; conclusion or outcome of story.

Point of View: Point of view refers to who tells the story and how it is told. What we know and how we feel about the events in a story are shaped by the author's choice of a point of view.

Narrator: the teller of a story (not the author, but the invented speaker of the story).

There are two broad categories for points of view that storytellers can use:



1. The third-person narrator.
   
2. The first-person narrator.

1. The third-person narrator uses "he," "she," or "they," to tell the story and does not participate in the action.

2. The first-person narrator uses "I" and is a major or minor participant in the action.

3. A second-person narrator, you is possible but rarely used because of the awkwardness in thrusting the reader into the story, as in "You are minding your own business on a park bench when a drunk steps out of the bushes and demands your lunch bag."
1. Third-person narrator (nonparticipant)
   1. Omniscient (the narrator takes us inside the character[s]
   2. Selective omniscient or limited omniscient (the narrator takes us inside one or two characters)
   3. Objective (the narrator is outside the characters)

2. First-person narrator (participant)
   1. Major character
   2. Minor character
1. Third-person narrator: No type of third-person (nonparticipant) may appear as a character in a story.
   1. Omniscient narrator: is all-knowing.
      1. Editorial omniscience: the narrator not only recounts actions and thoughts, but also judges.
      2. Neutral omniscience allows characters' actions and thoughts to speak for themselves.
   2. The selective omniscient narrator is much more confined than the omniscient narrator. With selective omniscience, the author often restricts the narrator to the single perspective of either a major or a minor character. The way that people, places, and events appear to that character is the way that they appear to the reader.
      1. Stream-of-consciousness: when limited omniscience attempts to record mental activity ranging from consciousness to the unconscious, from clear perceptions to confused longings.
   3. Objective point of view employs a narrator who does NOT see into the mind of any character. From this detached and impersonal perspective, the narrator reports action and dialogue without telling us directly what characters feel and think. This point of view places a heavy emphasis on dialogue, actions, and details to reveal character.

2. With a first-person narrator, the "I" presents the point of view of only one character's consciousness. The reader is restricted to the perceptions, thoughts, and feelings of that single character.
   1. The first-person narrator can be a major character like the narrator in "A & P" ;
   2. or a minor character (imagine how different the story would be if it had been told by Lengel the manager or by Stoksie, one of the co-workers).
   3. An unreliable narrator is a fictional character whose interpretation of events is different from the author's.
      1. One type of unreliable narrator is the naive narrator (the innocent eye) who lacks the sophistication to interpret accurately what he/she sees. The reader understands more than the narrator does.

Setting: the locale, time, and social circumstances of a story (for instance, an Eastern town in winter, about 1950, in an upper-class private girls school).

Tone: the prevailing attitude (for instance, ironic, compassionate, objective) as perceived by the reader; the author's feelings toward the central character or the main events.

Symbol: a person, object, action, or situation, that, charged with meaning, suggests another thing (for example, a dark forest may suggest confusion, or perhaps evil), though usually with less specificity and more ambiguity than allegory. A symbol usually differs from a metaphor in that a symbol is expanded or repeated and works by accumulating associations.

Theme: the central idea or meaning of a story; what the work is about. When you express the theme in your own words, it should be worded in a complete sentence and universally expressed.

Literary criticism: discourse--spoken or written--about literature.

Literary theory: criticism that tries to formulate general principles rather than discuss specific texts.