Alliteration

Type: Poetic
Repeating the identical letter or sound at the beginning of closely connected words.
Anthropomorphism
Type: Personification
To apply human-like characteristics to animals or objects.
Aphorism
Concise statement that contains a cleverly stated truth or fact.
Back-story
Type: Background exposure
Story that precedes events to add meaning to the current circumstances.
Cliffhanger
Type: Plot
An unresolved ending that draws reader to a future episode.
Conceit
A metaphor associated with metaphysical poetry that pushes imagination to portray something indescribable.
Dramatic visualization
Type: Descriptive
Representing a character or object with abundant details to make a scene more imaginatively present to the audience.
Epiphany
Type: Literary genre
A sudden revelation or insight.
False documents
Type: Literary genre
A fiction form of something that is real, but actually fake documents.
Fictional character
Fictional existence of characters that appears in a larger work of fiction, such as past family members or the mentioning of an early king of a
country.
First Person narration
A text shown in the view of a character but written in the first person.
Flashback
Changing the time sequences to take characters back to the past.
Flash-forward
Also known as prolepsis, a scene that temporarily jumps the narrative to the future.
Foreshadowing
Type: Plot
Giving hint of a events that will take place later.
Frame story
Type: Framing
A main story that is set into a series of shorter stories.
Hamartia
The flaws of a tragic hero that leads to their downfall.
Imagery
To form mental images in a scene to make the audience understand better.
Incluing
Type: Setting
Gradually exposing background facts about the story's world.
Infodumping
Type: Setting
Authors putting a concentrated amount of background material, all in a go, usually in the form of conversations.
In medias res
Type: Narrative hook
Beginning of a story that takes place in the middle of an event.
Irony
Type: Contextual
The use of words to convey a meaning that is the opposite of its literal meaning.
Juxtaposition
Type: Contextual
Using two aspects, such as characters, words or situations to form a contrast.
Metonym
Words in a figure of speech that stands for the thing itself.
Narrative hook
Type: Narrative hook
The opening of a story that steals the reader's attention.
Overstatement
Exaggerating something.
Onomatopoeia
Type: Poetic
Sound words.

Oxymoron
Type: Contextual
A term made of two words that are of each other's opposite.
Paradox
Type: Contextual
A phrase that describes an idea composed of concepts that conflict.

Parody
Type: Genre
A ridicule of something serious.

Personification
Type: Personification
To use comparative metaphors and similes to give living characteristics to non-living objects.

Plot twist
Type: Plot
An unexpected turn in the plot.

Quibble
Type: Plot device
A device based on an argument that an agreement's intended meaning holds no legal value.

Repetitive designation
Type: Plot device
A repeated reference that first appears insignificant, but later intrusive.

Self-fulfilling prophecy
Predictions that, because are made, comes true.

Side story
A background narrative that explains the world of the main story.

Story within a story
Type: Framing
A story told within another story.

Stream of consciousness
Type: Literary genre
A technique where the author writes their thoughts as they come.

Symbolism
Aspects of a feature that is used to represent something else.

Ticking clock scenario
Threat of impending disaster.

Tone
The attitude of a work.

Understatement
Type: Contextual
A softening of a theme.

Unreliable narrator
Type: Plot device
The narrator of a story that is non sincere and introduces a bias narration.

Word play
Sounds of words used as an aspect. ("Mr E" for "Mystery")

Writer's voice
A combination of structural aspects of an author's style of writing.