Story Literary Elements

Story Literary Elements

Some basics that every good story must have .

Short Story elements

Derived from the ancients

Through oral tradition

Need to tell and hear stories

Egyptians

Old Testament stories

New Testament parables

Greeks (Odyssey)

Roman (Aeneid)

Chaucers Canterbury Tales

Development of Short Story

19th Century America: art form

Nathaniel Hawthorne Young Goodman Brown; The Ministers Black Veil

The mystery of sin

Edgar Allan Poe The Tell Tale Heart; The Fall of the House of Usher

The power of blackness

Washington Irving The Legend of Sleepy Hollow; Rip Van Winkle

Transition from European to American

By Definition

A brief fictional narrative in prose

500 words to 12,000 words

Unity in plot (beginning, middle, end)

Reveals character through series of actions

Gives effects of intensity

Limited time periods (1 hour; 1 day)

Poe once said that a short story should be short enough to be read at one sitting

Plot

Sets character in motion

Gives story its direction

Focuses on exposition What

Focuses on conflict Why

Focuses on narrative structure How

Great stories have a conflict

Man vs. Man

Man vs. Nature

Man vs. Society

Man vs. Himself

Man vs. Machine

A hint about what will happen next is called foreshadowing

For example, if you hear this:

Then you know someones about to get eaten!

Linear Plot Structure

Climax

Exposition

Rising Action or Conflict

Falling action and resolution

Characterization

Definition: individualized personality

Behavior: actions, speech, dress

Qualities: status

Characteristics: physical, psychological

Traits: cultural

Every story needs characters

People

Animals

Or Creatures

The protagonist is the good guy

The antagonist is the bad guy or force

Methods of Characterization

Direct Exposition: the author gives details

Character in Speech: dialect; vocabulary

Character in Action: behavior; deeds

Character in Thought: soliloquies

Character to Character: third party

The time and place of the story is the setting

Setting

Three types of setting

historical: social, political, economic

geographical: place (e.g. United States, Europe, big city, small country farm, desert, mountains)

3. physical: time, weather, day/night

Four Functions of Setting

1. to provide conflict

to illuminate the

characters

3. to establish mood

to make fiction

credible

Araby

Review the first 3 paragraphs.

Make a list of 25-50 words that reflect setting.

The point of view is the perspective of the story

That rotten wolf tried to eat us!!!!

I was framed! I just wanted to borrow a cup of sugar!

Point of View

It can describe the way in which the reader is presented with the materials of the story or action

Simply put, it is the way a story is told

The perspective of the storyteller

Types of Points of View

Omniscent or 3rd person: most

common

First person: intensity of narrator

Objective: report; facts

Innocent eye: child-like ; satiric;

reliable

Stream of consciousness: unorganized

thoughts; flow of memory recalled by

association; thoughts become the basis

for analysis of plot

The Cask of the Amontillado

The catacombs

Catacomb in Italy

The 8,000 or so mummies in the Capuchin catacombs in Palermo, Sicily, are arranged in rooms according to their worldly status: man or woman; priest or professional; child or adult.

Catacombs underneath city of Paris

Symbol, Allegory, Myth

1. Something that represents something else

Red rose=love

2. A narrative in which the characters personify

ideas, concepts, qualities, or other

abstractions to communicate moral principles

Young Goodman Brown=an inexperienced good common man

3. A story that explains or gives meaning to the

values of a culture; partly true, partly false

by which people live and die

Creation myths=Adam and Eve

Whether youre the reader, or the writer, a great story includes all these literary elements!!!

conflict

setting

point of view

climax

characters

protagonist

antagonist

foreshadowing