5.6: Vocabulary
- Page ID
- 6623
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Introduction
- Subjective Reading
- Paying attention to the feelings a story gives you when you read it. When you read subjectively, you follow your intuition about characters and plot points.
- Objective Reading
- Paying attention to the character, plot, setting, theme, diction, and syntax when you read a story and using these elements to analyze that story.
- Tone
- The attitude writing can take towards its subject or audience. Tone generally applies to specific sentences or paragraphs, not to the text as a whole.
- Diction
- The word choice used throughout a text.
- Syntax
- The order in which a sentence is put together grammatically.
Character
- Character
- A person participating in, or alluded to, in the action of a story. Characters can also be animals or inanimate objects.
- Conflict
- The main problem in a story. It is tension in a story between two or more characters, groups, things, or events.
- Internal Conflict
- Conflict that takes place within an individual, such as a conflict of morals or of emotions.
- External Conflict
- Conflict that takes place outside an individual, such as a war or feud.
- Protagonist
- The main character(s) of a story. The events of a story focus on the protagonist(s).
- Antagonist
- The character(s), thing(s), event(s), or group(s) that stands in opposition to the protagonist(s).
- Antihero
- A protagonist who does not embody traditional heroic values.
- Secondary/Minor Character
- Characters in the story who are not the protagonist(s) or antagonist(s).
- Archetype
- A character type that has been repeated in literature throughout history.
Plot
- Plot
- The set of events that make up a story.
- Inciting Incident
- The event that sets off the main conflict in a plot.
- Exposition
- Parts of the story that tell us about setting and main characters and hit at theme and possible conflicts.
- Rising Action
- The series of events in a plot that build up to the climax.
- Climax
- The turning point of the story; it is the incident that allows the story to resolve.
- Falling Action
- The events in a story that take place between the climax and the dénouement.
- Dénouement
- The point in the story at which the central conflict is resolved.
Setting
- Setting
- The frame of reference in which the story takes place. This includes place, time, and social/cultural context.
- Mood
- The general feeling the reader gets from the story.
- Internalized Setting
- When an aspect of the story external to a character represents the character’s internal development.
Theme
- Theme
- The unifying idea or ideas behind a story. Theme usually provides a broad statement about humanity, life, or our universe and should be expressed in a complete sentence.
- Motif
- Recurring elements in a story which points to a theme. Motifs can be objects, sounds, statements, etc.