Elements of Plot
Fiction
Non-Fiction/ Literary Skills
Poetry
Drama
100
The events in a story.
What is plot?
100
The main character in the story.
What is protagonist?
100
A shortened version of the text that focuses on the main idea of a work
What is summary?
100
The attitude, or feeling, that the author has about the subject
What is tone?
100
The words that are spoken by actors
What is dialogue?
200
The introduction of the characters, setting, and basic situation
What is exposition?
200
Where and when the story takes place
What is setting?
200
What a passage is mostly about; the who or what plus the most important thing about the who or what
What is main idea?
200
The feeling the reader gets when reading the text
What is mood?
200
A long speech by one single character to other characters
What is monologue?
300
Events that increase tension about the conflict.
What is rising action?
300
When a character is struggling against an outside force
What is external conflict?
300

An educated guess based on the information in a passage and what you already know

What is inference?

300
A collection of lines in a poem; kind of like a paragraph
What is a stanza?
300
Give directions to the actors about how to act on stage
What is stage directions?
400
The point of greatest tension in the story, the turning point.
What is climax?
400
When a character is struggling within himself or herself
What is internal conflict?
400
An organizational strategy where events are arranged in the order they occur
What is chronological order?
400
The person who narrates a poem
What is the speaker?
400
When the author pauses in the story to describe events that happened in the past
What is flashback?
500
The events that follow the climax and reduce tension.
What is falling action?
500
The person telling the story is a character inside the story who says "I."
What is first-person point of view?
500

The reason something happens, and then what happens as a result.

What is cause-effect?

500
The use of the same words or phrases over and over
What is repetition?
500
Hints about events that are to come in a story
What is foreshadowing?
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