Theme/Central Idea
This is the central message, concern, or purpose in a literary work. It is usually expressed as a generalization, or a general statement, about human beings or about life. Although it may be stated directly in the text, it is more often presented indirectly. When it is stated indirectly, or implied, the reader must figure out what it is by looking carefully at what the work reveals about people or about life.
What is Theme?
The perspective, or vantage point, from which a story is told. The storyteller is either a narrator outside the story or a character in the story.
What is Point of View?
This is an author's main reason for writing. They use this to inform, to persuade, to entertain, to describe, and/or to express their point of view. In many cases, an author has more than one of these for writing.
What is Author's Purpose?
This is writing or speech that is not meant to be taken literally. The many types are known as figures of speech. Common figures of speech include metaphor, personification, and simile. Writers use this to state ideas in vivid and imaginative ways.
What is Figurative Language?
This is a form of nonfiction in which a writer tells the life story of another person. Most are written about famous or admirable people. Although they are nonfiction, the most effective ones share the qualities of good narrative writing.
What is Biography?
Sometimes a writer will state this directly, but other times it is implied. When it is implied, a reader can identify it by making an inference. It is what the story is mainly or mostly about.
What is Central Idea?
This point of view describes a story told by a character who uses the pronoun “I.”
What is First-Person?
This is used in writing or speech and attempts to convince the reader or listener to adopt a particular opinion or course of action. Newspaper editorials, letters to the editor, political campaign speeches, and advertisements use this.
What is Persuasion?
This is a type of figurative language in which a nonhuman subject is given human characteristics.
What is Personification?
This is one of the three major types of literature, the others being prose and drama. Most make use of highly concise, musical, and emotionally charged language. Many also make use of imagery, figurative language, and sound devices such as rhythm, rhyme, repetition, and onomatopoeia.
What is Poetry?
This is a logical assumption made about information in a text that is not directly stated. Prior knowledge and key details are used to make these about implied ideas. To figure out the theme of a story, a reader can do this by making an educated guess about implied information in the text.
What is Inference/Infer?
In this point of view, the narrator uses pronouns such as “he” and “she” to refer to the characters. There is no “I” telling the story.
What is Third-Person?
This is the acronym we use when asked to determine an author's purpose, or reason, for writing a text.
What is PIE?
This is a figure of speech in which something is described as though it were something else. Like a simile, it works by pointing out a similarity between two unlike things.
What is Metaphor?
This type of writing features the story of a real person and presents quotations from someone who knew the subject.
What is Biographical Writing?
This is how the theme of a text should always be written.
What is Sentence/Statement?
In stories told from this point of view, the narrator knows and tells about what each character feels and thinks.
What is Third-Person Omniscient?
This is when an author's reason for writing a text is to provide a reader with amusement or enjoyment.
What is Entertain?
This is a figure of speech that uses like or as to make a direct comparison between two unlike ideas. Everyday speech often contains these, such as “pale as a ghost,” “good as gold,” “spread like wildfire,” and “clever as a fox.”
What is Simile?
This is a group of lines of poetry that are usually similar in length and pattern and are separated by spaces. It is like a paragraph of poetry—it states and develops a single main idea.
What is Stanza?
This refers to what a text is mainly about. It is NOT the topic of the text. It can most often be stated in one sentence. It is also referred to as "Central Idea."
What is Main Idea?
In stories told from this point of view, the narrator relates the inner thoughts and feelings of only one character, and everything is viewed from this character’s perspective.
What is Third-Person Limited?
This is when an author's reason for writing a text is to give a reader facts or information.
What is Inform?
This is the use of words that imitate sounds. It can help put the reader in the activity of a poem. The following lines includes two examples of this common figure of speech.
Crunching through snow by the water's edge,
We hear the sad hissing of wind in the sedge.
What is Onomatopoeia?
This is the ordinary form of written language. Most writing that is not poetry, drama, or song is considered as this. It is one of the major genres of literature and occurs in two forms—fiction and nonfiction.
What is Prose?