1. Notes on “shape” of a story

2. flashback
a scene in a text set in a time earlier than the main story

3. Zoom in (also called “exploded moment”)
A technique of slowing down the narration of an event, taking more time to describe its details and effects. It might include more sensory imagery, similes, and metaphors to help enhance certain aspects of setting, character, plot, tone, mood, or thematic statement.

4. Zoom past
a technique of accelerating the pace of narration, moving past events with little commentary or description.

5. Narrator aside
a technique in which the narrator stops narrating the events of the story and instead speaks on another topic, potentially commenting on those events or providing some helpful information

6. action
Description of events taking place in an imagined space (a setting) by characters.
Action is usually part of a conflict, and conflicts have their own properties (Internal vs. external, exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, resolution)

7. Dialogue
When the speech of two or more characters is reported in a text using quotation marks. Dialogue is a kind of action, and it allows the reader to gain information from what the characters say as well as indirect characterization about them.

8. Episode
A section of a larger story, perhaps having its own focus, dialogue, or conflict.

9. Backstory/exposition
Background information about prior events, characters, and/or the setting, usually provided early in a text.

10. Juxtaposition
Juxtaposition is a literary technique in which two or more things are placed side by side in a text. For example ideas, places, characters, or settings could be juxtaposed.

11. Foil (sometimes called Literary foil)
A foil is another character in a story who contrasts with another character, usually to highlight one of their attributes.

12. repetition
Repetition consists of repeating a word, phrase, or sentence. It can do many things including adding emphasis, unity, and/or power.

13. Dramatic irony
When the audience/reader knows something (because a text has already revealed it) that a character does not know.

14. Narrative Present
The setting of a story consists of its time and place (both of which could either be specific or general). The main time period of that setting is known as the narrative present. A flashback would go to a time before that narrative present.

15. In Media res
In medias res is Latin for "into the middle of things." It usually describes a narrative that begins, not at the beginning of a story, but somewhere in the middle — usually at some crucial point in the action.