Creative Writing

Short Story
By:
Venn Che C. Manalili
SHS Teacher
ELEMENTS OF A STORY
What you need to know!
 Story Elements
Setting
Characters
Plot
Conflict
Theme
 SETTING

• Setting is the “where and

when” of a story. It is the time
and place during which the
story takes place.
 Setting
Time and place are where the action
occurs
Details that describe:
 Furniture
 Scenery
 Customs
 Transportation
 Clothing
 Dialects
 Weather
 Time of day
 Time of year
 The Functions of a Setting
To create a mood
or atmosphere
To show a reader a
different way of life
To make action
seem more real
To be the source of
conflict or struggle
To symbolize an
idea
 MOOD
• Mood is the feeling that the author tries to
convey throughout the story. The
atmosphere or emotional condition
created by the piece, within the setting.
Does the author want the reader to be
frightened or sad, or does the story make
the reader laugh and think happy
thoughts?
• To figure out mood, examine how you feel
while reading the story. Often mood is
conveyed by the story’s setting.
 CHARACTERS
•The person,
animals,
and things
participatin
g in a story
 CHARACTERS
• Protagonist and antagonist are used to
describe characters.

• The protagonist is the main character of the

story, the one with whom the reader identifies.
This person is not necessary “good”.

• The antagonist is the force in opposition of the

protagonist; this person may not be “bad” or
“evil”, but he/she opposes the protagonist in a
significant way
METHODS OF CHARACTERIZATION
 PLOT (DEFINITION)
• Plot is the organized
pattern or sequence of
events that make up a
story.
• Plot is the literary element
that describes the
structure of a story. It
shows arrangement of
events and actions within
a story.
 Parts of a Plot
Exposition - introduction; characters,
setting and conflict (problem) are
introduced
Rising Action- events that occur as result
of central conflict
Climax- highest point of interest or
suspense of a story
Falling Action - tension eases; events show
the results of how the main character
begins to resolve the conflict
Resolution- loose ends are tied up; the
conflict is solved
 PLOT DIAGRAM
3

4
2
1
5
PLOT PLANNER
 1. EXPOSITION
• This usually occurs at the beginning of a short
story. Here the characters are introduced. We
also learn about the setting of the story. Most
importantly, we are introduced to the main
conflict (main problem).
 2. RISING ACTION
• This part of the story begins to develop the conflict(s).
A building of interest or suspense occurs and leads to
the climax. Complications arise
 3. CLIMAX
• This is the turning point of the story. Usually the main
character comes face to face with a conflict. The
main character will change in some way. This is the
most intense moment.
 4. FALLING ACTION
• Action that follows the
climax and ultimately
leads to the resolution
 5. RESOLUTION
• The conclusion; all loose
ends are tied up.
• Either the character
defeats the problem,
learns to live with the
problem, or the problem
defeats the character.
 PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER
1. Exposition Beginning of
Story
2. Rising Action

Middle of Story
3. Climax

4. Falling Action
End of Story
5. Resolution
 Diagram of Plot
Climax

Introducti
on/ Resolution
Exposition
Setting,
characters,
and conflict
are introduced
 Special Techniques used in a Story
Suspense- excitement, tension, curiosity
Foreshadowing- hint or clue about what will
happen in story
Flashback- interrupts the normal sequence of
events to tell about something that happened
in the past
Symbolism – use of specific objects or images
to represent ideas
Personification – when you make a thing,
idea or animal do something only humans do
Surprise Ending - conclusion that reader
does not expect
 CONFLICT
Conflict is the dramatic struggle
between two forces in a story.
Without conflict, there is no plot.
 Conflict
Conflict is a problem that must be
solved; an issue between the
protagonist and antagonist forces. It
forms the basis of the plot.
Conflicts can be external or internal
External conflict- outside force may
be person, group, animal, nature, or
a nonhuman obstacle
Internal conflict- takes place in a
character’s mind
 TYPES OF EXTERNAL CONFLICT

Character vs Character

Character vs Nature

Character vs Society

Character vs Fate QuickTime™ and a

TIFF (Uncompressed) decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
 TYPE OF INTERNAL
CONFLICT
Character vs. Self
 POINT OF VIEW
• First Person Point of View- a
character from the story is telling
the story; uses the pronouns “I”
and “me”
• Third Person Point of View- an
outside narrator is telling the story;
uses the pronouns “he”, “she”,
“they”
 TYPES OF THIRD-PERSON
POINT OF VIEW
• Third-Person Limited • Third-Person
• The narrator knows Omniscient
the thoughts and • The narrator knows the
feelings on only ONE thoughts and feeling
character in a story. of ALL the characters
in a story.
 Theme
The theme is the central, general message, the main
idea, the controlling topic about life or people the
author wants to get across through a literary work
To discover the theme of a story, think big. What big
message is the author trying to say about the world in
which we live?
What is this story telling me about how life works, or
how people behave?
 THE THEME IS ALSO
• the practical lesson ( moral) that we learn from a story
after we read it. The lesson that teaches us what to do
or how to behave after you have learned something
from a story or something that has happened to you.
Example: The lesson or teaching of the story is be
careful when you’re offered something for nothing.
ANY QUESTIONS?
FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
“Figuring it Out”
 FIGURATIVE AND LITERAL
LANGUAGE
Literally: words function exactly as defined
The car is blue.
He caught the football.

Figuratively: figure out what it means

I’ve got your back.

You’re a doll.
^Figures of Speech
 SIMILE
Comparison of two things using “like” or “as.”

Examples

The metal twisted like a ribbon.

She is as sweet as candy.

 IMPORTANT!
Using “like” or “as” doesn’t make a simile.

A comparison must be made.

Not a Simile: I like pizza.

Simile: The moon is like a pizza.

 METAPHOR
Two things are compared without using “like” or “as.”

Examples

All the world is a stage.

Men are dogs.

Her heart is stone.

 PERSONIFICATION
Giving human traits to objects or ideas.

Examples

The sunlight danced.

Water on the lake shivers.

The streets are calling me.

 HYPERBOLE
Exaggerating to show strong feeling or effect.

Examples

I will love you forever.

My house is a million miles away.

She’d kill me.

 UNDERSTATEMENT
Expression with less strength than expected.
The opposite of hyperbole.

I’ll be there in one second.

This won’t hurt a bit.

 ONOMATOPOEIA
• A word that “makes” a sound
• SPLAT
• PING
• SLAM
• POP
• POW
 IDIOM
• A saying that isn’t meant to be taken literally.
• Doesn’t “mean” what it says
• Don’t be a stick in the mud!
• You’re the apple of my eye.
• I have an ace up my sleeve.
 Pun
• A form of “word play” in which words
have a double meaning.
• I wondered why the baseball was getting
bigger and then it hit me.
• I’m reading a book about anti-gravity.
It’s impossible to put it down.
• I was going to look for my missing watch,
but I didn’t have the time.
 PROVERB

• A figurative saying in which a bit of “wisdom” is given.

• An apple a day keeps the doctor away
• The early bird catches the worm
 OXYMORON
• When two words are put together that contradict each
other. “Opposites”
• Jumbo Shrimp
• Pretty Ugly
• Freezer Burn
 QUIZ
On a separate sheet of paper…

1. I will put an example of figurative language on the

board.
2. You will write whether it is an simile, metaphor,
personification, hyperbole, pun, proverb, idiom,
onomatopoeia, oxymoron or understatement.
3. You can use your notes.
 1

He drew a line as straight as an arrow.

 2
Knowledge is a kingdom and all who learn are kings and
queens.
 3
Can I see you for a second?
 4

The sun was beating down on me.

 5
A flag wags like a fishhook there in the sky.
 6
I'd rather take baths
with a man-eating shark,
or wrestle a lion
alone in the dark,
eat spinach and liver,
pet ten porcupines,
than tackle the homework,
my teacher assigns.
 7
Ravenous and savage
from its long
polar journey,

the North Wind

is searching
for food—
 8

Dinner is on the house.

 9

Can I have one of your chips?

 10
Don’t bite the hand that feeds you.
 11.
• The clouds smiled down at me.
 12.
• SPLAT!
 13.
• She is as sweet as candy
 14.
• I could sleep forever!
 15.
• He drove his expensive car into a tree and found out
how the Mercedes bends
 16.
• I used to have a fear of hurdles, but I got over it
 17.
• The wheat field was a sea of gold.
 18.
• The streets called to him.
 19.
• POP!
 20.
• She was dressed to the nines.
 21.
• The early bird catches the worm.
 22.
• Old news
 23.
• Your face is killing me!
 24.
• She was as white as a ghost.
 25.
• She has a skeleton in her closet.
ELEMENTS OF
POETRY
 ELEMENTS OF POETRY
•What is poetry?
•Poetry is not prose. Prose is the ordinary language
people use in speaking or writing.
•Poetry is a form of literary expression that captures
intense experiences or creative perceptions of the
world in a musical language.
•Basically, if prose is like talking, poetry is like singing.
•By looking at the set up of a poem, you can see the
difference between prose and poetry.
DISTINGUISHING CHARACTERISTICS OF
POETRY
• Unlike prose which has a narrator, poetry has a speaker.
• A speaker, or voice, talks to the reader. The speaker is not
necessarily the poet. It can also be a fictional person, an animal or
even a thing

Example
But believe me, son.
I want to be what I used to be
when I was like you.
from “Once Upon a Time” by Gabriel Okara
DISTINGUISHING CHARACTERISTICS OF
POETRY
• Poetry is also formatted differently from
prose.
– A line is a word or row of words that may or
may not form a complete sentence.
– A stanza is a group of lines forming a unit. The
stanzas in a poem are separated by a space.
Example
Open it.

Go ahead, it won’t bite.

Well…maybe a little.
from “The First Book” by Rita Dove
 FIGURES OF SPEECH
• A figure of speech is a word or expression that is not
meant to be read literally.

• A simile is a figure of speech using a word such as

like or as to compare seemingly unlike things.

Example
Does it stink like rotten meat?
from “Harlem” by Langston Hughes
 FIGURES OF SPEECH
• A metaphor also compares seemingly unlike things, but does not
use like or as.

Example
the moon is a white sliver
from “I Am Singing Now” by Luci Tapahonso

• Personification attributes human like

characteristics to an animal, object, or idea.
Example
A Spider sewed at Night
from “A Spider sewed at Night” by Emily Dickinson
 FIGURES OF SPEECH
• Hyperbole – a figure of speech in which great exaggeration is used
for emphasis or humorous effect.

Example
“You’ve asked me a million times!”

• Imagery is descriptive language that applies

to the senses – sight, sound, touch, taste, or
smell. Some images appeal to more than one
sense.
 SOUND DEVICES
• Alliteration is the repetition of consonant sounds at the
beginning of words.
• Assonance is the repetition of vowel sounds within a line of
poetry.
• Onomatopoeia is the use of a word or phrase, such as “hiss” or
“buzz” that imitates or suggests the sound of what it describes.
 EXAMPLE OF SOUND
DEVICES
“In the steamer is the trout
seasoned with slivers of ginger”
from “Eating Together” by Li-Young Lee

And the stars never rise but I

see the bright eyes
from “Annabel Lee” by Edgar Allan Poe
 RHYME
• Rhyme is the repetition of the same stressed vowel
sound and any succeeding sounds in two or more
words.
• Internal rhyme occurs within a line of poetry.
• End rhyme occurs at the end of lines.
• Rhyme scheme is the pattern of end rhymes that
may be designated by assigning a different letter
of the alphabet to each new rhyme
 EXAMPLE
“All mine!" Yertle cried. "Oh, the things I now rule! A
I'm king of a cow! And I'm king of a mule! A
I'm king of a house! And what's more, beyond that, B
I'm king of a blueberry bush and cat! B
I'm Yertle the Turtle! Oh, marvelous me! C
For I am the ruler of all that I see!” C
from “Yertle the Turtle”
by Dr. Seuss
“Penelope” by Dorothy Parker
A
In the pathway of the sun,
In the footsteps of the breeze, B

Where the world and sky are one, A

He shall ride the silver seas, B
He shall cut the glittering wave. C
I shall sit at home, and rock; D
Rise, to heed a neighbor’s knock; D
Brew my tea, and snip my thread; E
Bleach the linen for my bed. E
They will call him brave. C
 RHYTHM AND METER
• Rhythm is the pattern of sound created by the arrangement of stressed
and unstressed syllables in a line. Rhythm can be regular or irregular.
• Meter is a regular pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables which sets
the overall rhythm of certain poems. Typically, stressed syllables are
marked with / and unstressed syllables are marked with  .
• In order to measure how many syllables are per line, they are measured
in feet. A foot consists of a certain number of syllables forming part of
a line of verse.
 IAMBIC PENTAMETER
• The most common type of meter is called iambic pentameter
• An iamb is a foot consisting of an initial unstressed syllable followed
by a stressed syllable. For example, return, displace, to love, my
heart.
• A pentameter is a line of verse containing 5 metrical feet.
 SIGNIFICANCE OF
IAMBIC PENTAMETER
• Iambic Pentameter is significant to the study of poetry because
• 1. It is the closest to our everyday speech
• 2. In addition, it mimics the sound of heart beat; a sound common to
all human beings.
• 3. Finally, one of the most influential writers of our times uses iambic
pentameter in all that he writes – William Shakespeare.
Example #1
And death is better, as the millions know,
EXAMPLES

Than dandruff, night-starvation, or B.O

from “Letter to Lord Byron” by W.H. Auden

Example #2
When you are old and grey and full of sleep

And nodding by the fire, take down this book.

W.B. Yeats
 CONNOTATION AND
DENOTATION
Connotation - the emotional and imaginative association surrounding a
word.

Denotation - the strict dictionary meaning of a word.

Example: You may live in a house, but we live in a

home.
WHICH OF THE FOLLOWING
HAS A MORE FAVORABLE
thrifty CONNOTATION?
penny-pinching

pushy aggressive

politician statesman

chef cook

slender skinny
 ELEMENTS OF POETRY
When we explore the connotation and
denotation of a poem, we are looking at the
poet’s diction.

Diction – the choice of words by an author or

poet.

Many times, a poet’s diction can help unlock the

tone or mood of the poem.
 ELEMENTS OF POETRY:
Although many times we useTONE
the wordsAND MOOD
mood and tone
interchangeably, they do not necessarily mean the same
thing.
Mood – the feeling or atmosphere that a poet creates. Mood
can suggest an emotion (ex. “excited”) or the quality of a
setting (ex. “calm”, “somber”) In a poem, mood can be
established through word choice, line length, rhythm, etc.
Tone – a reflection of the poet’s attitude toward the subject
of a poem. Tone can be serious, sarcastic, humorous, etc.
 NARRATIVE
• Narrative poetry is verse that tells a story.POETRY
• Two of the major examples of narrative poetry
include:
• Ballads – a song or poem that tells a story. Folk ballads,
which typically tell of an exciting or dramatic event, were
composed by an anonymous singer or author and passed
on by word of mouth for generations before written
down. Literary ballads are written in imitation of folk
ballads, but usually given an author.
• Epics – a long narrative poem on a great and serious
subject that is centered on the actions of a heroic figure
 DRAMATIC POETRY
• Dramatic poetry is poetry in which one or more characters speak.
• Each speaker always addresses a specific listener.
• This listener may be silent (but identifiable), or the listener may be
another character who speaks in reply.
• Usually the conflict that the speaker is involved with is either an
intense or emotional.
 LYRIC POETRY
• Lyric poetry is poetry that expresses a speaker’s personal thoughts and
feelings.
• Lyric poems are usually short and musical.
• This broad category covers many poetic types and styles, including
haikus, sonnets, free verse and many others.
 HAIKUS
• The traditional Japanese haiku is an unrhymed poem that contains
exactly 17 syllables, arranged in 3 lines of 5, 7, 5 syllables each.
• However, when poems written in Japanese are translated into
another language, this pattern is often lost.
• The purpose of a haiku is to capture a flash of insight that occurs
during a solitary observation of nature.
 EXAMPLES OF HAIKUS
Since morning glories
hold my well-bucket hostage
I beg for water
- Chiyo-ni First autumn morning:
the mirror I stare into
shows my father’s face.
- Kijo Murakami
 SONNETS
• Background of Sonnets
• Form invented in Italy.
• Most if not all of Shakespeare’s sonnets are about love or a theme
related to love.
• Sonnets are usually written in a series with each sonnet a continuous
subject to the next. (Sequels in movies)
 SEQUENCE OF SONNETS
• Shakespeare wrote 154 sonnets and can be broken up by the
characters they address.
• The Fair Youth: Sonnets 1 – 126 are devoted to a young man of
extreme physical beauty. The first 17 sonnets urge the young man to
pass on his beauty to the next generation through children. From
sonnet 18 on, Shakespeare shifts his viewpoint and writes how the
poetry itself will immortalize the young man and allow his beauty to
carry on.
• The Dark Lady: Sonnets 127 – 154 talk about an irresistible woman
of questionable morals who captivates the young poet. These sonnets
speak of an affair between the speaker and her, but her unfaithfulness
has hurt the speaker.
• The Rival Poet: This character shows up during the fair youth series.
The poet sees the rival poet as someone trying to take his own fame
and the poems refer to his own anxiety and insecurity.
 STRUCTURE OF SONNETS
The traditional Elizabethan or Shakespearean sonnet consists of
fourteen lines, made up of three quatrains (stanzas of 4 lines each)
and a final couplet (two line stanza). Sonnets are usually written in
iambic pentameter. The quatrains traditionally follow an abab
rhyme scheme, followed by a rhyming couplet.
Sonnet 18 EXAMPLE
William Shakespeare

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date.
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimmed:
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,
Nor shall Death brag thou wand'rest in his shade
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st.
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
 FREE VERSE
• Free verse is poetry that has no fixed pattern of meter, rhyme, line
length, or stanza arrangement.
• When writing free verse, a poet is free to vary the poetic elements to
emphasize an idea or create a tone.
• In writing free verse, a poet may choose to use repetition or similar
grammatical structures to emphasize and unify the ideas in the
poem.
 FREE VERSE
• While the majority of popular poetry today is written
as free verse, the style itself is not new. Walt
Whitman, writing in the 1800’s, created free verse
poetry based on forms found in the King James Bible.
• Modern free verse is concerned with the creation of a
brief, ideal image, not the refined ordered (and
artificial, according to some critics) patterns that
other forms of poetry encompass.
 EXAMPLE OF FREE VERSE
The lunatic is carried at last to the asylum a confirmed case,
He will never sleep any more as he did it in the cot in his mother’s bedroom;
The dour printer with gray head and gaunt jaws works at his case,
He turns is quid of tobacco, his eyes blurred with the manuscript;
The malformed limbs are tied to the anatomist’s table,
What is removed drops horribly in the pail;
The quadroon girl is sold at the stand….the drunkard nods by the barroom
stove…

Excerpt from “Song of Myself” (section 15)

Walt Whitman