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1. Allusion: A reference to a famous person, character, or event.
2. Connotation: The extra tinge or taint of meaning each word carries beyond the minimal, strict definition found in a dictionary.
3. Dialogue: The lines spoken by a character.
4. Diction: Word choice.
5. Dynamic: A character whose personality changes or evolves over the course of a narrative or appears to have the capacity for such change.
6. Epiphany: A sudden flare into revelation.
7. Flashback: A method of narration in which present action is temporarily interrupted so that the reader can witness past events–usually in the form of a character’s memories, dreams, narration, or even authorial commentary.
8. Foreshadowing: Suggesting, hinting, indicating, or showing what will occur later.
9. Imagery: The “mental pictures” that readers experience with a passage.
10. Irony: The opposite of what is anticipated or meant.
    1. Verbal Irony: A speaker makes a statement in which its actual meaning differs sharply from the meaning that the words ostensibly express.
    2. Dramatic Irony: A situation in a narrative in which the reader knows something about present or future circumstances that the character does not know.
    3. Situational Irony: When accidental events occur that seem oddly appropriate, such as a pickpocket getting his own pocket picked.
11. Metaphor: A comparison stated in such a way as to imply that one object is another one, figuratively speaking.
12. Motif: A conspicuous recurring element, such as a type of incident, a device, a reference, or verbal formula.
13. Narrator: The “voice” that speaks or tells a story.
    1. Reliable: Unbiased; concerned more with facts.
    2. Unreliable: Biased; voices opinions.
14. Poetic Justice: The phenomenon that occurs when morally good characters reach good, desirable circumstances or happy endings and morally bad characters reach bad, unenviable circumstances or unhappy endings.
15. Point of View: The way a story gets told and who tells it.
    1. First-person: Someone is telling the story, referring to themselves as “I.”
    2. Second-person: The narrator is talking to someone, referring to them as “you.”
    3. Third-person limited: There is no narrator, and the story is told from the perspective of “a fly on the wall,” witnessing what the characters say and do.
    4. Third-person omniscient: There is no narrator, and the story is told from a “God’s-eye” perspective, witnessing not only characters’ actions but their thoughts and feelings.
16. Symbol: A word, place, character, or object that means something beyond what it is on a literal level.
17. Syntax: Sentence structure.
18. Theme: A central idea or statement that unifies and controls an entire literary work.

Plot Structure

19. Exposition: Introduces the narrator, protagonist, and setting, and conveys relevant background information.
20. Rising Action: Action leading up to the climax.
21. Conflict: The opposition between two characters (such as a protagonist and an antagonist), between groups of people, or between the protagonist and a larger problem such as forces of nature, ideas, public mores, and so on. It may also be completely internal, such as the protagonist struggling with his psychological tendencies (drug addiction, self-destructive behavior, and so on).
22. Complication: The introduction of a significant development in the central conflict.
23. Crisis: The turning point of uncertainty and tension resulting from earlier conflict in a plot. At this moment, it is unclear if the protagonist will succeed or fail.
24. Climax: The moment at which the crisis reaches its point of greatest intensity and is thereafter resolved.
25. Denouement: The outcome or result of a complex situation or sequence of events, an aftermath or resolution that usually occurs near the final stages of the plot. It is the unraveling of the main dramatic complications.
26. Falling Action: Events that wrap up a story after the climax.
27. Conclusion: The logical end or outcome of a unified plot.