Metaphor: a figure of speech in which a term or phrase is applied to something to which it is not literally applicable in order to suggest a resemblance
Examples:
His sword was our savior.
His mouth was a deep cavern of water.
That previous gross sentence was a disgusting worm writhing in your senses.
Ew. I know.
(See also: Simile, Personification)
Oxymoron: A figure of speech by which a locution produces an incongruous, seemingly self-contradictory effect.
Some oxymorons:
Smart Fool.
Unemployed Worker
A list of oxymora (plural of oxymoron):
List of Oxymora, Serious and Humorous.
Special Thanks to Firlodge_the_second
Parable: A short allegorical story designed to illustrate or teach some truth, religious principle, or moral lesson.
Jesus used parables a lot in his teachings. The reason? To do exactly as the definition says: To get across a religious principle or a moral lesson.
Paradox: Oh, Paradox, how I love thee! Seriously, paradoxes are fascinating.
a statement or proposition that seems self-contradictory or absurd but in reality expresses a possible truth.
A demon says "All Demons are liars". Is he telling the truth?
If you say yes, that's impossible, because then he'd be telling the truth, which goes against what he says.
If you say no, that means all demons are NOT liars, which is impossible, because that would mean the demon would have lied to you when he said 'all demons are liars'.
Very confusing, which is why they're so awesome.
In literature, Wikipedia says this about paradoxes:
Wikipedia
In literature, the paradox is an anomalous juxtaposition of incongruous ideas for the sake of striking exposition or unexpected insight. It functions as a method of literary composition - and analysis - which involves examining apparently contradictory statements and drawing conclusions either to reconcile them or to explain their presence.[1]
Literary or rhetorical paradoxes abound in the works of Oscar Wilde and G. K. Chesterton. Other literature deals with paradox of situation; Rabelais, Cervantes, Sterne, Borges, and Chesterton are recognized as masters of situational as well as verbal paradox. Statements such as Wilde’s “I can resist anything except temptation” and Chesterton’s “spies do not look like spies” are examples of rhetorical paradox. Further back, Polonius’ observation that “though this be madness, yet there is method in’t” is a memorable third. Also, statements that are illogical and metaphoric may be called "paradoxes", for example "the pike flew to the tree to sing". The literal meaning is illogical, but there are many interpretations for the this metaphor.
Special Thanks to Firlodge_the_second
Personification:The attribution of a personal nature or character to inanimate objects or abstract notions, esp. as a rhetorical figure.
This means that an inanimate object is given human like qualities.
Example:
monotori67
It is a place where the moon embraces all inhabitants with its glow.
The moon here embraces. Embracing is something that humans do, and since the moon is an inanimate object, this sentence is a personification of the moon.
Special Thanks to Firlodge_the_second
Plot: The story.
Also called storyline. the plan, scheme, or main story of a literary or dramatic work, as a play, novel, or short story.
Plot is pretty self explanatory.
Plot Pyramid: Consists of Introduction (exposition), rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution (denouement).
Introduction: Background information is given. Characters introduced. Catalyst for plot happens somewhere within Introduction.
Rising Action: Initial conflict is complicated. Secondary conflicts introduced.
Climax: Often referred to as "Turning Point". A change happens in the plot for better or for worse.
In comedy, things go from bad to good.
In tragedy, things go from good to bad.
Falling Action: Conflict unravels. A 'winner' is decided. May contain a final moment of suspense.
Resolution: Things wrap up.
In comedy: Protagonist is better off than he/she was in the beggining.
In tragedy: Protagonist is worse off than he/she was in the beggining.
Why is it called a Plot Pyramid?
Information from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plot_pyramid as well as the picture.
Special Thanks to monotori67
Poetry: the art of rhythmical composition, written or spoken, for exciting pleasure by beautiful, imaginative, or elevated thoughts.
The purpose of poetry is to relay an experience.
There are many kinds of poetry. Among them are:
Haiku
Limerick
Sonnet (see Sonnet section)
Fable
Freeverse
I've found a spectacular website that details poetry in all of its forms (dozens of which I've never heard of before viewing it).
It can be found here:
Shadow Poetry--Types of Poetry
Point of View: Through whom the story is told.
If it’s first person, then it’s told through the POV of the narrator. Many stories are. Oftentimes, the POV is the protagonist.
There are several kinds of Points of View through which the story is told.
First Person- I am describing first person point of view to you right now in the first person. First person consists of 'I', 'We', 'Us', and other words that indicate that the narrator is the speaker. Think Journal Entries, Memoirs, and Autobiographies. ANY kind of fiction/nonfiction prose/poetry can be in first person, however, so don't think I'm limiting you.
Second Person- You are reading this and as you do so, you are learning more about second person. You continue down through the sentences, knowing you will eventually come to a Wikipedia article because Draken isn't remarkably well-versed in second person so will employ the wonderful powers of the internet to speak for him.
Wikipedia
Second-person narration is a narrative technique in which the protagonist or another main character is referred to by employment of second-person personal pronouns and other kinds of addressing forms, for example the English second-person pronoun "you".
You are not the kind of guy who would be at a place like this at this time of the morning. But here you are, and you cannot say that the terrain is entirely unfamiliar, although the details are fuzzy. You are at a nightclub talking to a girl with a shaved head. The club is either Heartbreak or the Lizard lounge. All might come clear if you could just slip into the bathroom and do a little more Bolivian Marching Powder. —Opening lines of Jay McInerney's Bright Lights, Big City (August 12, 1984)
GhostlyHandsPen says this:
GhostlyHandsPen
To sum it all up, this is what I know about second person:
-Second person is where the protagonist or another main character is referred to by second person personal pronouns i.e. "you"
-Used most commonly in guide books, self-help, interactive fiction like the Choose Your Own Adventure series.
Draken began telling you about third person. He said, "Third person is when the story is told through the viewpoint of a character or characters. This viewpoint is seperate from the narrators." Wikipedia says this:
Wikipedia
The participants in the narrative are understood to be distinct from the person telling the story and the person to whom, or by whom, it is read.
The story is told through the view point of a single character and the reader goes through the story with ONLY the experiences of the character.
Wikipedia
Third person limited is where the narrator describes events in third person grammar but as if seen through the eyes of only one character (hence "limited"
wink , the protagonist. The narrative will include the thoughts and feelings of only the protagonist, while other characters are presented externally. Since the reader learns the events of the narrative entirely through the perceptions of the protagonist, anything that the protagonist cannot perceive must be excluded from the narrative otherwise it "breaks" the point of view. Because of this, third person limited is sometimes called the "over the shoulder" perspective.
First, let's define Omniscient. Omniscient means 'all knowing' so you may hear that if you ever wander into the ED and talk about religion.
In Third Person Omniscient- The narrative is omniscient. It knows the experiences of all the characters and relays them to you as such. There are no restrictions.
Wikipedia
An omniscient narrator, as in more limited third-person forms, is also disembodied; it takes no actions and has no physical form in or out of the story. But, being omniscient, it witnesses all events, even some that no characters witness. The omniscient narrator is privy to all things past, present and future - as well as the thoughts of all characters. As such, an omniscient narrator offers the reader a bird's-eye view about the story. The story can focus on any character at any time and on events where there is no character. The third-person omniscient narrator is usually the most reliable narrator; however, the omniscient narrator may offer judgments and express opinions on the behavior of the characters. This was common in the 19th century, as seen in the works of Jane Austen, Leo Tolstoy or George Eliot. Some more modern examples are Lemony Snicket, Philip Pullman and J.K. Rowling.
Wikipedia
The author does not enter a single mind, but instead records what can be seen and heard. This type of person is like a camera or a fly on the wall. This is used by journalists in articles—it only gives the facts, from one fixed perspective. The third person objective perspective mimics real life: we cannot know what another person is thinking, but we can make inferences based on that person's words, behaviour and body language.
Special Thanks to GhostlyHandsPen for helping with this and suggesting its expansion.
Prose: the ordinary form of spoken or written language, without metrical structure, as distinguished from poetry or verse.
To be brief, it is the structure upon which many of us write.
Harry Potter is prose.
To Kill A Mockingbird is prose.
But we must also realise that there are several different kinds of prose, usually defined by length.
Flash Fiction Wikipedia
Flash fiction is fiction characterized by its extreme brevity. While there is no universally accepted exact word limit, generally a short story is considered to constitute flash fiction if it is less than 1,000–2,000 words long, and most flash-fiction pieces are between 250 and 1,000 words long.
Thanks, Wiki.
It is said that Hemingway has a famous six-word flash fiction piece.
"For sale. Baby shoes. Never worn."
I don't know about you, but that got to me. =/
Short Story A short story is usually meant to be read in a single sitting and is characterized by its brevity.
Wikipedia
The short story is a literary genre of fictional, prose narrative that tends to be more concise and "to the point" than longer works of fiction
Wikipedia
The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Nebula awards for science fiction define the novelette as having a word count between
7,500 and 17,500 in length.
Wikipedia
the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Nebula Awards for science fiction define the novella as having a word count between 17,500 and 40,000
TL;DR?
Firlodge_the_second did some research:
Firlodge_the_second
- A drabble is strictly speaking exactly 100 words long but it is colliqually used to mean less than 1000 words.
-Most flash-fiction pieces are between 250 and 1,000 words
- A short story is 1,000-20,000 words
-A novellete is 7,500 - 17,500 words
- A novella is 17,500 - 40,000 words
-A novel is technically any work greater than 40,000 words in length.
Endrael
Also, regarding Firlodge's note about length definitions for pieces of fiction: The generally accepted length for any of those mentioned forms varies. Novels, for instance, depending on your reference source, have minimum lengths of anywhere between 40k and 70k words. Not that this makes much of a difference overall except for classification purposes, but it's best to check your source of submission for their particular criteria before submitting an 8k word short story when they're short story criteria is no more than 6k words.
Protagonist: the leading character, hero, or heroine of a drama or other literary work. This does not mean, however, that the protagonist has to be the ‘good guy’. If Harry Potter was written through the viewpoint of Voldemort, then Voldemort would be the protagonist.
The protagonist can also change roles. If you skip around to the viewpoint of different characters, then they are each protagonists.
Punctuation:
Punctuation is like a traffic light. Commas are the yellow lights, periods are the red lights, and stupid people ignore the lights.
Here's what dictionary.com has to say:
the practice or system of using certain conventional marks or characters in writing or printing in order to separate elements and make the meaning clear, as in ending a sentence or separating clauses.
Wikipedia
Punctuation marks are symbols that correspond to neither phonemes (sounds) of a language nor to lexemes (words and phrases), but which serve to indicate the structure and organization of writing, as well as intonation and pauses to be observed when reading it aloud.
The most common punctuation are these:
Periods .
Exclamation points !
Question marks ?
Commas ,
Quotation marks "
Apostrophies '
Colons :
Semicolons ;
"Psh. So what, Draken! So what if I leave out a comma?"
Well, (your name), let me tell you a story that is told on the back of a book I have. The title is "Eats, Shoots and Leaves" by Lynne Truss.
Eats, Shoots and Leaves by Lynne Truss
A panda walks into a cafe. He orders a sandwhich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air.
"Why?" askes the confused waiter, as the panda makes toward the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manal and tosses it over his shoulder.
"I'm a panda," he says, at the door. "Look it up."
The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation.
"Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves."
So, punctuation really does matter, even if it is only occasionally a matter of life and death.
There's a moral to this story, kids.
Anyway.
Fizzlesticks was kind enough to let me link to her
Grammar and Punctuation Guide! Use it. For real. Seriously. Go.
Red Herring: Wikipedia
In literature, a red herring is a narrative element intended to distract the reader from a more important event in the plot, usually a twist ending.
Sergeant Sargent
On Red Herrings...
Writers should use a light touch with these. If the writer goes to too much trouble to convince the reader that the Red Herring is the answer they're looking for, they may be angry with the writer when they discover the red herring is false. Or they may even notice how much effort the writer is putting into the red herring and dismiss it early (I've done this before when reading a book or watching a movie).
I think the trick is to make the red herring seem like a
plausable answer, gradually drawing more similarities to the real McGuffian but never seeming like a definite answer.
Good ol' Wikipedia. Seriously, though, what would we do without it?
Wikipedia
A rhyme is a repetition of identical or similar sounds in two or more different words and is most often used in poetry and songs. The word "rhyme" may also refer to a short poem, such as a rhyming couplet or other brief rhyming poem such as nursery rhymes.
There are many times of rhymes and they're divided into Perfect Rhymes and Imperfect Rhymes.
Wikipedia
Perfect rhymes can be classified according to the number of syllables included in the rhyme
masculine: a rhyme in which the stress is on the final syllable of the words. (rhyme, sublime, crime)
feminine: a rhyme in which the stress is on the penultimate (second from last) syllable of the words. (picky, tricky, sticky, icky)
dactylic: a rhyme in which the stress is on the antepenultimate (third from last) syllable ('cacophonies", "Aristophanes"
wink
In the general sense, "rhyme" can refer to various kinds of phonetic similarity between words, and to the use of such similar-sounding words in organizing verse. Rhymes in this general sense are classified according to the degree and manner of the phonetic similarity:
syllabic: a rhyme in which the last syllable of each word sounds the same but does not necessarily contain vowels. (cleaver, silver, or pitter, patter)
imperfect: a rhyme between a stressed and an unstressed syllable. (wing, caring)
semirhyme: a rhyme with an extra syllable on one word. (bend, ending)
oblique (or slant): a rhyme with an imperfect match in sound. (green, fiend)
assonance: matching vowels. (shake, hate)
consonance: matching consonants. (lady, lounges)
half rhyme (or sprung rhyme): matching final consonants. (bent, ant)
alliteration (or head rhyme): matching initial consonants. (short,ship)
Setting is simple and can vary. House, mountain, boat on a lake. Stuff like that.
Simile:a figure of speech in which two unlike things are explicitly compared
It's a metaphor using LIKE or AS.
Simile is Metaphor's little brother, if you will.
He was strong like a car.
Her smile was as beautiful as a rainbow.
Sonnet: So why am I going in depth into a particular section of poetry? Because a) I can and b) this is the form in which Shakespeare produced most of his poetry. Best to familiarize yourself with it, eh?
There are two kinds of Sonnets:
Italian, or Petrarchan, sonnets. These are comprised of an octave (a stanza of 8 lines) and a sestet (a stanza of 6 lines). (See Stanza section for help on this term)
English, or Shakespearian, sonnets. These are comprised of Three quatrains and a couplet.
An important part of writing these is Rhyme Scheme (see Rhyme Scheme section).
Shakespearian sonnets follow this rhyme scheme: A,B,A,B C,D,C,D E,F,E,F G,G
Petrarchan sonnets follow tihs rhyme scheme: A,B,B,A,A,B,B,A C,D,E,C,D,E
Source for Italian Sonnet Rhyme Scheme: http://www.rc.umd.edu/rchs/sonnet.htm
Stanza: an arrangement of a certain number of lines, usually four or more, sometimes having a fixed length, meter, or rhyme scheme, forming a division of a poem.
I like to think of them as 'poetry paragraphs'.
There are several types of Stanzas:
2 lines: Couplet
3 lines: Triplet
4 lines: Quatrain
5 lines: Quintet
6 lines: Sestet
7 lines: Septet
8 lines: Octave
For help on Stanzas and other poetry-related subjects (such as meter, which will eventually be covered here), this website is a great resource:
Writing Poetry
Symbolism: The practice of representing things by symbols, or of investing things with a symbolic meaning or character.
For instance.
Let's say in a certain story, a bird represents freedom.
The author of the story may have a character who's breaking out of a jail walk past a bird and have the bird fly away in the same direction he's going.
He meets the bird, or in this case, he meets freedom.
I really hope 'Freebird' isn't stuck in my head all day. =/
Special Thanks to Firlodge_the_second
Theme: a subject of discourse, discussion, meditation, or composition; topic
In writing, this is the unifying topic of your story.
Edgar Allan Poe’s themes were often ‘Death’.
Theme is often interpretive and debatable.
Tone/Diction:
Tone:
a particular style or manner, as of writing or speech; mood
Ryiel
Tone: The overall "feel" of the passage. Is it dark and macabre? Is it light and airy? Tone can change a story's very meaning and core. A horror story written in a light and comedic kind of tone suddenly becomes a parody of all things horror (or the characters) whereas a romance written in a way that comes off nonchalant and uncaring (if in 1st person) can paint the MC as a person who is solely sex driven. Tone plays an important role in how the reader will (perhaps only subconsciously at first) view your work. I read a short poem about an old woman dying in her bed. But the thing that sticks in my mind isn't any sort of dark description (there wasn't much) but the line "Chinzy chinzy cheeriness!" Clearly, just from that one line, it becomes clear this is not really a poem venerating or hating death.
Wikipedia has 2 articles on Tone.
One deals with the sound of words:
Tone (Linguistics)
The other deals with the "meaning" of them:
Tone (Literature)
Diction:
1. style of speaking or writing as dependent upon choice of words
2. the accent, inflection, intonation, and speech-sound quality manifested by an individual speaker, usually judged in terms of prevailing standards of acceptability; enunciation
Ryiel
Diction: the choice of words of an author. In my opinion, it is probably the most important rhetorical device. If I use the word "a sliver of blood flowed from the small papercut inbetween the thumb and index finger" instead of the words "It was horrifying pain, causing screams to pierce the heavens and form an agonizing chorus of echoes" you get two very different feels. These actually display the same thing, but one is more objective, the other is more child-like and dramatic, which can paint different pictures about the MC and the story in general. So the word choice can change the tone and even meaning of a passage.
wikipedia
Diction, in its original, primary meaning, refers to the writer's or the speaker's distinctive vocabulary choices and style of expression[citation needed]. A secondary, common meaning of "diction" is better, and more precisely, expressed with the word enunciation — the art of speaking clearly so that each word is clearly heard and understood to its fullest complexity and extremity. This secondary sense concerns pronunciation and tone, rather than word choice and style.
Diction has multiple concerns; register — words being either formal or informal in social context — is foremost. Literary diction analysis reveals how a passage establishes tone and characterization, e.g. a preponderance of verbs relating physical movement suggests an active character, while a preponderance of verbs relating states of mind portrays an introspective character. Diction also has an impact upon word choice and syntax.
Diction comprises eight elements: Phoneme, Syllable, Conjunction, Connective, Noun, Verb, Inflection, and Utterance.
Vignette:
Wiki
In theater script and poetry writing, vignettes are short, impressionistic scenes that focus on one moment or give a trenchant impression about a character, an idea, or a setting. This type of scene is more common in recent postmodern theater, where adherence to the conventions of theatrical structure and story development are jettisoned. It is particularly influenced by contemporary notions of a scene as shown in film, video and television scripting.
Unlike the traditional scene in a play, the vignette is not strictly linked in with a sequential plot development but establishes meaning through loose symbolic or linguistic connection to other vignettes or scenes. Vignettes are the literary equivalent of a snapshot, often incomplete or fragmentary. In poetry, in the quintain form, they can relate to a short descriptive literary sketch or a short scene or incident from a movie or play. The use of vignettes is suited to those plays in which theme, image, emotion and character are more important than narrative, though this doesn't mean that a vignette is out of place as an element in a more narrative play.
Sergeant Sargent
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vignette_(literature) <----- Quoted the entire article, actually.
I first heard of vignette when reading a review of PotC3, where in the critic wrote that the movie is best viewed as a "series of vignettes" rather than one, cohesive story.
Thanks to Sergeant Sargent
Vowel:
Dictionary.com:
(in English articulation) a speech sound produced without occluding, diverting, or obstructing the flow of air from the lungs
And Wikipedia says:
Wikipedia
In phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language, such as English ah! [ɑː] or oh! [oʊ], pronounced with an open vocal tract so that there is no build-up of air pressure at any point above the glottis. This contrasts with consonants, such as English sh! [ʃː], where there is a constriction or closure at some point along the vocal tract. A vowel is also understood to be syllabic: an equivalent open but non-syllabic sound is called a semivowel.
List of Vowels:
A E I O U and sometimes Y and W.
What?
W?!
Yes. W can be a vowel.
W is a vowel when it makes a 'ou' sound as in 'how'.
