Vocabulary for the Short Story and the novel

Plot: The sequence of incidents or events of which a story is composed. :

Antagonist: Any force in the story in conflict with the protagonist. It may be a person, the physical or social environment, a destructive element in the protagonist’s own nature.

Conflict: A CLASH OF ACTIONS, DESiRES, IDEAS, OR GOALS IN THE PLOT of a story or drama.

Irony: a situation in which some kind of incongruity or discrepancy occurs:

Verbal irony: What is said is the opposite of what is meant.

Dramatic irony: Discrepancy between what a character says or thinks and what the reader knows to be true (or what a character perceives and what the author means the reader to perceive).

Irony of situation: Incongruity between appearance and reality, or expectation and fulfillment, or the actual situation and what would seem appropriate.

Point of view: The angle of vision from which a story is told. Four basic kinds are:

Omniscient: The author tells the story using 3rd person, knowing all and free to tell us everything, including what the characters are thinking and feeling and why they do what they do.

Limited omniscient: the author tells the story using 3rd person, but limits the story to the complete knowledge of one character. The story tells only what that person thinks, feels, hears, or sees.

First person: The story is told by one of its characters, using 1st person.

Objective or dramatic: the author tells the story in the third person, but reports only what the characters say or do--not what they think or feel.

Protagonist: The central character in a story

Stream of consciousness: presents private thoughts of character without commentary or interpretation by author.