Like a Boss

Literary Terms

(Third Person) Omniscient: The story is told in third person. Knowledge is unlimited.

Third-person limited: The story is told from the viewpoint of one person in the story; A stream of consciousness; the uninterrupted thoughts in a character.

First person: The author disappears into one of the characters who tells the story in first person; I.

Objective: The narrator disappears into a kind of roving sound camera. This camera can go anywhere but can record only what is seen and heard.

Theme: The theme should be expressible in the form of a statement with a subject and a predicate. It is insufficient to say that the theme of a story is motherhood or loyalty to country.

Characterization: The various literary means by which characters are presented

Indirect Characterization: The author shows us the characters through their actions

Direct Characterization: They tell us straight out, by exposition or analysis, what the characters are like, or they have another character in the story describe them.

Dramatized: Shown as speaking and behaving as in a stage play

Stock Character: Stereotyped figures who have recurred so often in fiction that we recognize them at once.

Static Character: Remains the same person throughout the story

Dynamic Character: The developing of a character throughout the story

Epiphany: The moment or insight that usually defines the moment of the developing character’s change

Plot: the sequence of incidents or events through which an author constructs a story.

Structure: Sequential arrangement of events in a plot

Conflict: Clash of actions, ideas, desires or wills.

Suspense: The quality in a story that makes readers ask “What’s going to happen next?”

Mystery: An unusual set of circumstances for which the reader craves an explanation

Dilemma: Position in which he or she must choose between two courses of action, both undesirable.

Happy ending: The protagonist must solve her problems, defeat an adversary, win her man, “live happily ever after.”

Indeterminate: Unresolved. No definitive conclusion is reached.

Chance: The occurrence of an event that has no apparent cause.