1. The Pedestrian— Literary Focus
Plot
Conflict
Playing with time
Setting
Mood
Theme

2. Plot
The sequence of related events that make a story hang together.

3. Building Blocks of Plot
Exposition
Rising Action
Climax
Resolution or denouement

4. Exposition
Presents a main character who wants something very much and who encounters a conflict while trying to get it.
Cinderella

5. Rising Action A series of events that cause problems.
Cinderella’s fairy godmother helps her go to the ball and gives her a fashion makeover, but she must be home by midnight.
Cinderella dances with the prince, but he doesn’t get her name.
At midnight, as she is fleeing, Cinderella loses one glass slipper.

6. Climax
The high point of the plot—the story’s most exciting or suspenseful moment, when something happens that decides the outcome of the conflict.
The prince discovers that the glass slipper fits Cinderella’s foot.

7. Resolution / Denouement
The last part of the plot when the problems are resolved and the story ends.
Cinderella marries the prince / “they lived happily ever after”

8. Two Types of Conflict
External conflict – pits character against an outside force
Cinderella’s stepmother locks her in her room to prevent her from going to the ball.
Internal conflict – a struggle inside the character’s own heart or mind
If Cinderella could go to the ball, but hesitated out of shyness.

9. Sequence and Timing
Chronological order – begin at the beginning and tell about each event in the order in which it happens
To create suspense, writers might slow time down.

10. Playing With Time
Flashbacks – the present action in a story is interrupted with a scene or scenes from the past.
Flash-forwards – visit a character’s future
Foreshadowing – the use of clues that hint at something that will happen later in the plot

11. Setting Mood Time and place of a story or play.
A story’s atmosphere or the feeling it evokes.

13. Theme
The central idea or insight about human life revealed by a work of literature.
NOT the work’s subject
The message the writer wishes us to discover about the subject
Examples of universal themes:
Heroes must undergo trials and endure losses before they can claim their rightful kingdom.
Arrogance and pride can bring destruction.
Love will endure and triumph over evil.