Understanding Literary Elements: Setting, Character, Plot & More
Literary Elements Explained
Setting: The time and place of a story or play. Setting can also contribute to the conflict in a story.
Character: A person in a story, poem, or play. Most often, a character is an ordinary human being.
The process of revealing the personality of a character in a story is called characterization. A writer can reveal a character by:
- Letting us hear the character speak.
- Describing how the character looks and dresses.
- Letting us listen to the character’s inner thoughts and feelings.
- Revealing what other characters in the story think or say about the character.
- Showing us what the character does—how he or she acts.
- Telling us directly what the character’s personality is like: cruel, kind, sneaky, brave, and so on.
The first five ways of revealing a character are known as indirect characterization. When a writer uses indirect characterization, we have to use our own judgment to decide what a character is like, based on the evidence the writer gives us. But in direct characterization, we don’t have to decide for ourselves; we are told directly what the character is like.
A static character is one who does not change much in the course of a story. By contrast, a dynamic character changes as a result of the story’s events.
A flat character has only one or two traits, and these can be described in a few words. Such a character has no depth, like a piece of cardboard. A round character, like a real person, has many different character traits, which sometimes contradict one another.
Static and flat characters often function as subordinate characters in a story. This means that they may play important roles in a story, but they are not main characters.
The fears, conflicts, or needs that drive a character are called motivation. Characters can be motivated by many factors, such as vengeance, fear, greed, love, even boredom.
Plot: A series of related events that make up a story or drama. Plot is what happens in a story, novel, or play. A plot includes the story’s basic situation or exposition, the conflict or problem, the main events (including complications), and finally the climax, when we learn what the outcome of the conflict is going to be. The resolution or denouement follows.
Conflict: A struggle or clash between opposing characters or opposing forces. In an external conflict, a character struggles against an outside force. This outside force might be another character, society as a whole, or something in nature. By contrast, an internal conflict takes place entirely within the character’s own mind. An internal conflict is a struggle between opposing needs, desires, or emotions within a single person.
Climax: The moment of great emotional intensity or suspense in a plot. The major climax usually marks when the conflict is decided one way or another.
Themes: The central idea of a work of literature. The theme is something that can be expressed in at least one sentence. Some themes are so commonly found in literature of all cultures and all ages that they are called universal themes.
Mood: It is the overall feeling or atmosphere created by a work of literature. A writer creates the mood through images, sound, word choice, and setting.