Conventional Plot Pattern
At the beginning of a story, characters, setting, and main conflict are typically introduced.
What is exposition?
The context in which the action of the story occurs. Includes time, place, and social environment.
What is setting?
A protagonist with opposite attributes of a traditional hero.
What is an antihero?
Author of "Paper Menagerie."
Who is Ken Liu?
Title of the collection that includes three canticles: Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso.
What is "Divine Comedy?"
Resolves any remaining issues and ends story.
What is the denouement
The central idea, topic, or point of a story, essay, or poem. The meaning behind the story-the deeper reason or reasons the story has been written and shared.
What is the theme?
A character who exhibits contrasting qualities of another character in order to highlight certain qualities of the other. Example: Gaston in Beauty and the Beast.
What is foil?
Author of "The Lottery."
Who is Shirley Jackson?
Dante's last name.
What is Alighieri?
The story begins to slow down and work towards the end, tying up loose ends.
What is the falling action?
A type of irony in which the characters and the audience are unaware of the implications of a situation. An incongruity appears between expectations of something to happen and what actually happens.
What is situational irony?
A character who does not change throughout the story.
What is a static character?
Author of "The Yellow Wallpaper."
Who is Charlotte Perkins Gilman?
The century in which "The Divine Comedy" was written.
What is the 14th century?
The moment of greatest emotional tension.
What is the climax?
The driving force within a plot, pushing characters to act (or not act). Drives the action of the story.
What is conflict?
A character who changes throughout the story.
What is a dynamic character?
Author of "Story of an Hour."
Who is Kate Chopin?
Dante's guide through the Inferno.
Who is Virgil?
Not a conventional plot pattern, the story does not follow a chronological order and begins in the middle of the story or at the end.
What is in media res?
The author's arrangement of incidents in a story. It is the structure-the organizing principle that controls the order of events.
What is plot?
The central character of a story. Usually the hero or heroine, but can be an antihero.
What is protagonist?
Author of "Killings."
Who is Andre Dubus?
The three souls in the mouth of Satan in the Inferno?
Who are Judas, Brutus, and Cassius?