theory

Style, tone and mood have to do with the way the writer uses language to convey his story. Style Sentence length, structure and arrangement, paragraphs, word choice, word order all determine the style of a […]

References to the past and hints to the future are called flashbacks and foreshadowing. Flashback Flashbacks are used by the writer to refer to past events to give context or provide background information. It connects […]

Irony is a contrast between appearance and reality. It is divided into three forms: verbal irony, situational irony, and dramatic irony. Verbal irony The most common form of irony is verbal irony: saying something but […]

Narrative perspective is about who and how the story is told. In novels we can have different narrative perspectives with each a different narrator. It is important to know who is talking, because it says […]

A theme is not the subject of a literary work but rather its central idea, which may be stated directly or indirectly and can often be stated in one word. Story is what gets a […]

A character is a person portrayed in a narrative work. This ‘person’ can also be a personified animal or object, like the animals in Animal Farm and the tiger in Life of Pi. Most main […]

The setting of a novel has two dimensions: time and place. It sets the background or mood of a story. It is often very important to know where and when the story takes place before […]

There are five main elements of fiction to be found in (nearly) every piece of fiction: plot, setting characters, narrative perspective, and theme.   Plot is the sequence of events and their relationship in a […]

What is literature? There is no definition, there are no boundaries that tell what makes a work literary. There is a continuous debate on what is literature, as if the term itself is the holy […]