23 Terms
Contributors in Fiction
Fiction
Objective correlative
Literature; Fiction
"The tangible manifestation of an intangible, created and used by the author to help the reader grasp the intangible concept. Most literature is about emotions or ideals — things that you cannot see ...
Mime conversation
Literature; Fiction
A dialogue supposedly loaded with portentous significance to all participants – contorted facial expressions, heavy word emphasis, significant looks – completely opaque to readers because relevant ...
Milepost character
Literature; Fiction
A character who is absolutely unchanging throughout a story. A focus character's different perspectives on him or him show us, in emotional parallax, how the focus character has changed. Examples ...
Motif
Literature; Fiction
A recurring visual objective correlative of the theme. In ''Catch-22,'' for instance, the theme is that war is insane, so the recurring motif is one character calling another character crazy, under a ...
Motivation
Literature; Fiction
Characters act for two reasons: (1) the author wants certain things to happen in a story, and (2) the actions further a character's objectives. The latter is motivation; when it is bad, the reader ...
More ink around the dogs
Literature; Fiction
A colloquial exhortation to emphasise a bit of chrome, taken from an otherwise dreadful storey featuring fascinating dogs, the only feature the critics found worthy in the entire tale.
Nowism
Literature; Fiction
Short for 'now-chauvinism'. The tendency to export present-day forms, conventions, technology or morality to a future setting where they are inappropriate or unlikely.
