Characterization: the methods a writer uses to communicate information about characters to readers.

• When the author tells the reader directly about a character, it is called direct characterization.
  
• When the author shows the character is action and lets readers directly about a character, it is called indirect characterization.

Climax: the moment when the action comes to its highest point of dramatic conflict. Most often, the climax occurs before the actual ending.

Complications: any obstacle that increases the tension of the story conflict.

Conflict: the central source of tension and drama in the story. Conflict is sometimes referred to as the story problem.

Description: verbal representation of characters, scene, or action, used to make the story more vivid for the reader.

Dialogue: the actual words that characters speak. Authors use dialogue skillfully in the short story to portray character and to dramatize conflict.

Diction: The author's choice of words, the vocabulary level of the story.

Dramatic irony: a technique that increases suspense by letting readers know more about the dramatic situation than the character knows.

Exposition: Background material about the characters, setting, and dramatic situation with which the author introduces the essentials of the story to the reader.

Falling action: the part of the story, following the climax and leading to the resolution, in which there is a sharp decline in dramatic tension.

Foreshadowing: a writing technique that gives readers clues about events that will happen later in the story.

Hyperbole: an exaggerated statement used to make a strong effect.

Imagery: the use of selected details to describe one thing in terms of another. This helps suggest additional meanings and feelings.

Irony: a particular tone created when the speaker intends a meaning that is opposite to the words he or she says.

Mood: the overall feeling- light and happy or dark and brooding, for example- created by an author's choice of words.

Narrator: the speaker who tells the story. If the narrator is also a character who participates in the story, it is important not to confuse the narrator with the author- who may, in fact, hold a very different attitude toward the story.

Point of view: the perspective from which a story is told.

• Point of view is said to be omniscient if the author is outside the story and presents the thoughts of all the characters involved.
  
• Point of view is called limited when the story is told from the view-point of one character who can see only a part of the whole story.

Protagonist: the central character of the story.

Resolution: the conclusion of the story. The resolution includes the story's action after the climax until the end of the story.

Rising action: the part of the story, including exposition, in which the tension rises. Rising action builds to its highest point of tension at the story's climax.

Setting: the environment in which the story takes place.

Structure: the framework that determines how a story is put together- its "skeleton." The structure of many stories includes four basic parts: exposition, complication, climax, and resolution.

Style: the characteristic ways that an individual author uses language- including word choice, length and complexity of sentences, patterns of sound, and use of imagery and symbols.

Suspense: techniques used by the author to keep readers interested in the story and wondering what will happen next.

Symbol: an image, abject, character, or action that stands for an idea (or ideas) beyond its literal meaning.

Theme: the story's main idea- the "message" that the author intends to communicate by telling the story. Themes are often universal truths that are suggested by the specifics of the story.

Tone: the clues in a story that suggest the writer's (or narrator's) own attitude toward elements of his or her story.

Understatement: a figure of speech in which the speaker says less than what he or she actually feels.

Verbal irony: the use of figures of speech such as hyperbole and understatement to create an ironic effect.