Short Story Terms

Setting (Where and When)

100

• The place where a story happens (like a school, a park, or a house).

What is the setting

200

The time when a story happens (like morning, night, or summer).

What is the time?

300

• A setting with hot sand, camels, and no water.

What is a desert

400

• A setting with spooky trees, ghosts, and dark paths.

What is a scary forest (or haunted house)?

500

• The words we use to describe how a place feels (like "happy," "scary," or "sad").

What is the mood?

Characters (Who)

100

• A person, animal, or creature in a story.

What is a character?

200

• The most important character in the story (the hero).

Who is the main character (or protagonist)?

300

• The bad character who fights against the hero.

Who is the villain (or bad guy/antagonist)?

400

• Words like "kind," "brave," or "lazy" that describe a person.

What are character traits (or adjectives)?

500

• Talking between two or more characters using quotation marks (" ").

What is dialogue?

Plot (What Happens)

100

• The start of the story where we learn the characters and the place.

What is the beginning?

200

• The end of the story where the problem is fixed.

What is the ending (or resolution)?

300

• The transition words we use to order events (like "First," "Next," and "Then").

What are sequence words (or time order words)?

400

• The most exciting or scariest part of the story.

• What is the climax?

500

• An action word in the past tense used to tell a story (like walked, ran, or said).

What is a past-tense verb?

The Problem (Conflict)

100

• The big trouble or bad situation that the character must fix.

What is the problem (or conflict)?

200

• The answer or fix to the story's big problem.

What is the solution?

300

• A problem where a character fights with another character.

What is a fight (or person vs. person)?

400

• A problem where a character gets lost in a big storm.

What is person vs. nature (or a weather problem)?

500

• A problem inside a character's mind, like being too scared to try something new.

What is an internal problem (or fear)?

Writing Tools

100

• The punctuation mark you must put at the end of a regular sentence.

What is a period (or full stop)?

200

• The type of letter you must use for the first letter of a name or a new sentence.

What is a capital letter?

300

• The word we use when a story is told using "I," "me," and "my."

What is first-person?

400

• A short sentence that tells the reader what the story is called.

What is the title?

500

• The lesson or message the story teaches the reader (like "always help your friends").

What is the moral (or theme)?