Literary Elements
Language that appeals to the senses, helping readers imagine sights, sounds, smells, and more.
What is imagery?
Events that build tension and lead to the climax of a story.
What is rising action?
Writing arranged with a rhythm, often divided into lines and stanzas.
What is verse?
The repetition of beginning consonant sounds.
What is alliteration?
A direct comparison between two unrelated things.
What is a metaphor?
The sequence of events in a story, typically including exposition, rising action, climax, and resolution.
What is plot?
The part of the story after the climax, when events begin to resolve.
What is falling action?
A group of lines in a poem, similar to a paragraph in prose.
What is a stanza?
The repetition of vowel sounds within nearby words.
What is assonance?
A comparison using “like” or “as.”
What is simile?
the struggle between opposing forces in a story
what is conflict?
The end of the story where loose ends are tied up.
What is resolution?
two successive lines that are usually linked by sharing the same rhyme, meter, and length, forming a complete poetic unit
What is a couplet?
The repetition of consonant sounds, typically at the end of words.
What is consonance?
Giving human qualities to non-human things.
What is personification?
The way an author reveals a character’s traits through actions, speech, and thoughts.
What is characterization?
The final part of a story where all plotlines are resolved; often called the “unknotting.”
denouement
A four-line stanza, often with a rhyme scheme.
What is a quatrain?
Words that imitate natural sounds.
What is onomatopoeia?
An exaggerated statement not meant to be taken literally.
What is hyperbole?
The central idea or message the author wants to convey.
What is theme?
A hint or clue about what will happen later in the story.
What is foreshadowing?
A poetic meter with five iambs per line, common in Shakespeare.
What is iambic pentameter?
The pattern of rhymes at the end of lines in a poem.
What is rhyme scheme?
A figure of speech where two opposite ideas are joined to create an effect.
What is oxymoron?