Literary Elements

  • Onomatopoeia -  A word or a grouping of words that imitates the sound it is describing, suggesting its source object, such as bang, click, buzz, pop or animal noises such as moo, oink, quack, or meow.  Onomatopoeic words exist in every language, although they are different in each.

 

  • ALLITERATION

   The structuring device characterized by the reiteration of the initial consonant at the beginning of two consecutive or slightly separated words, generally found in poems.

 

  • ASSONANCE

  The repetition of vowel sounds in non-rhyming words.

 

  • MOOD & TONE

The overall feeling in a story characterized for example by formal or intimate, solemn or playful, serious.

 

  • PERSONIFICATION

Authors use this element when giving animals, nonhuman being, or inanimate objects human characteristics.

The Cat & the Fiddle
Hey Diddle, Diddle,
The cat and the fiddle,
The cow jumped over the moon;
The little dog laughed
to see such sport,
and the dish ran away with the spoon.
(Mother Goose)

 

  • HYPERBOLE

I could sleep for a year; 
This book weighs a ton;
She was so mad, she could spit nails.

 

  • METAPHOR

“A sea of troubles" and
"All the world's a stage“
 (Shakespeare).

 

  • ALLITERATION

“They had snarled themselves into a grunting,

groaning mass of goblins on the ground.”

 

  • CONFLICT

This creates the plot identified as:
one vs. one or
one vs. nature or
one vs. society or
one vs self.

The lead character, Ellen, is a 14-year old girl who sees school as something to do, not something to enjoy.  She comes from a well-off uptown New York City family where the mother is a busy interior designer and her father is always away on business but travels more than he cares to travel.  Ellen has an older brother, Link, who is very good friends with James.  The three of them are very close friends.  Ellen has a crush on James and is curious if James and Link are involved in a homosexual relationship.  She is torn between her admiration of Link and her admiration of James, and begins a quest to learn more about the culture of the gay community in an effort to understand herself, her brother, and his friend.  This builds to a frenzied pace as Link and James prepare to depart the safety of high school and enter the collegiate world while she faces remaining at home without her two buddies.
                                                My Heart Beat by Garret Weyr

 

 

  • FORESHADOWING

Literary device in which 
an author drops subtle hints 
about plot developments to 
come later in the story.

 

  • THEME

The broad idea in a story or a message or lesson conveyed by a work?

 

  • DENOUEMENT

Derived from the Old French word denoer, “to untie”

this action that takes place in a story after the climax. 

 

  • POINT OF VIEW

It is the related experience of the narrator and not of the author.

 

  • DIRECT CHARICTERIZATION

What element is used when a picture or imitation of a character’s habits, physical appearance or mannerisms are exaggerated in some way?

 

  • SIMILE

A figure of speech in which two essentially
unlike things are compared,
often in a phrase
introduced by like or as.

 

  • UNITY

If all the parts of the plot are integrated

or closely connected, a story has this.

 

  • DIALOGUE

A reciprocal conversation 
between two or more persons.

 

  • PROLOGUE

Inventing Elliot is about a boy who goes to a new high school in hopes of not standing out and being bullied like in his last school setting. The book opens with a Prologue of an excerpt from his last school setting where he was bullied providing some backstory of his bullied existence:

Hello, Elliot, were you thiking we’d forgotten you?..You’re a loser, Elliot, you know that?...You can’t kill me, he said. I’m already dead.The first punch was right over his heart, and it didn’t even hurt….But then came the second punch, in the side of his head, and a third, right right where the first one landed….Then  a thermonuclear blast obliterated the top of his head, and he was falling down. And, mercifully, he died.