Perrine's Literature Structure, Sound, & Sense 11th Ed. (Short Stories)

Fiction intended solely to entertain.

Written with serious artistic intentions with hopes to broaden, deepen, and sharpen the reader’s awareness of life.

Sequence of incidents or events through which an author constructs a story.

A clash of actions, ideas, desires, or wills.

The central character in a conflict.

Any force arranged against the protagonist.

The quality in a story that makes readers ask “What’s going to happen next?” or “How will this turn out?”

An unusual set of circumstances for which the reader craves an explanation.

A position in which the protagonist must choose between two courses of action, both undesirable.

An ending that features a sudden, unexpected turn or twist.

A happy ending.

An unhappy Ending.

An ending in which no definitive conclusion is reached.

Everything is relevant and contributes to the meaning.

A plot that is unjustified by the situation or characters.

Relies too heavily on chance. Also known as Deux Ex Machina.

Latin for “god from machine.” See: Plot Manipulation.

The occurrence of an event that has no apparent cause in previous events or in predisposition of character.

Is the chance occurrence of two events that may have a peculiar correspondence.

For literary fiction writers, the most important element of their art.

Characters are described straight out by exposition or analysis or by another character.

The characters are described through their actions.

Where characters’ words and actions spring from

Usually have one or two predominant traits; they can be summed up in a sentence or two.

Complex and many sided; they have the three-dimensional quality of real people.

Stereotyped figures who have recurred so often in fiction that we recognize them at once.

Remains essentially the same person from the beginning to the end of the story.

There is distinct change of character, personality, or outlook.

A moment of spiritual insight into life or into the character’s own circumstances.

Is the controlling idea or its central insight. The unifying generalization about life stated or implied by the story.

Who tells the story.

The story is told in the third person by a narrator whose knowledge and prerogatives are unlimited.

The story is told in the third person, but from the viewpoint of one character in the story.

The author disappears into one of the characters, who tells the story in the first person.

The narrator disappears into a kind of roving sound camera.

Something that means more than what it suggests on the surface.

A story that has a second meaning beneath the surface, endowing a cluster of characters, objects, or events with added significance; often the pattern relates each literal item to a corresponding abstract idea or moral principle.

Transcends the bounds of known reality.

Is simply language one person uses to belittle or ridicule another.

Is a figure of speech in which the speaker says the opposite of what he or she intends to say.

The contrast between what a character says or thinks and what the reader knows to be true.

Usually the most important kind for the fiction writer, the discrepancy is between appearance and reality, or between expectation and fulfillment, or between what is and what would seem appropriate.

Stories that try to elicit easy or unearned emotional responses.

Comment on the story and, in a manner, instruct us how to feel.

Use an immoderately heightened and distended language to accomplish their effects.