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Glossary |
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A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z |
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Abstraction, Level of |
Level of particularity and concreteness of material. Bossy the cow is at a low level of abstraction; bovine is higher; animal higher yet. Generally, the lower the level of abstraction, the more compelling the text.
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Active Voice |
Describes the relationship between a subject and verb when the subject performs or causes the action the verb expresses. Active voice often evokes transitive verbs and direct objects: Carl lost the ball is in active voice. The ball was lost by Carl is in passive voice. Mistakes were made is passive taken a step further: It offers no actor. Passive voice hides the action and evades causation. Active voice communicates actor and action.
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Anecdote |
A short account, a small story. Anecdotes have their own action lines and are often components of plot development. They're a staple of magazine nonfiction. Anecdotes often contribute to exposition and characterization digressively, rather than directly advancing the main line of action.
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Angle of Approach |
An often-ambiguous term that usually refers to the entry point the writer finds for the story. The writer might approach a sewage-problem piece by entering through a scene showing a citizen with a flooded basement or perhaps by showing the deliberations of the town water board.
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Atmospheric detail |
Detail specifically selected to create mood. Thomas Mann fixated on dark, damp streets and created the noir atmosphere of "Death in Venice."
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b |
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Background |
Material important to a story but not directly advancing the narrative. A good writer with an effective voice will supply background while still engaging the reader. The writer may weave background exposition, in brief micro-asides, into the narrative or step to the side for a moment and fill the reader in. (See Exposition.)
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c |
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Character |
A person portrayed in a story whose actions advance the narrative. Characters are essential to narrative. Standard news reporting usually presents people generically, as citizens; good narrative journalism aspires to individuate them, make them characters -- though without relaxing standards of accuracy or romanticizing or overdramatizing human complexity. Characters' activities comprise some of narrative's unfolding action, and conventionally, the main character changes by the end. Characters are often presented through interactions with other characters, revealed through actions, words, emotions, thoughts, aspirations.
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Character Sequencing |
The order and timing of the writer's introduction and use of characters. Character sequencing creates structure, obviously determining the type and placement of scenes the characters are in, and thus, the direction and content of the narrative. In "Among Schoolchildren," Tracy Kidder begins with his teacher, Mrs. Zajak, assigning her fifth-graders seats. She puts the kids likely to cause trouble in the center, and Kidder introduces each as she positions them. This signals Kidder's major points of emphasis and determines his story structure.
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Characterization |
Description of character. Characterization includes actions, physical appearance and gestures, dress, activities, thoughts, feelings, history, biases, idiosyncrasies.
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Characterization, Direct |
The writer's abstracted observations about a character: He was a dumpy little man with a curmudgeon's crankiness.
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Characterization, Indirect |
The writer's selection of detail revealing character. Indirect characterization builds a character by showing rather than telling. Nonfiction writers pursuing indirect characterization limit themselves to observed detail. Rather than asserting that a character is "nervous," for example, a writer might describe him fidgeting in his seat and, with trembling hands, shifting coins and pencils around the top of his desk.
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Cliché |
A trite expression or idea; an overused expression: white as snow. She couldn't believe her eyes. Frequently, clichés are elegant, when you stop to think, but sadly, readers won't, as these familiar phrases invite skipping over.
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Climax |
The point at which the complication is resolved (See Complication and Denoument.)
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Climax, False |
A way of increasing dramatic tension. In a false climax, the complication reasserts itself after the author has led readers to believe that it has been resolved. A crude example is the film "The Terminator." The protagonist appears to kill the android several times before she actually does. Each apparent death is a false climax. (See Protagonist.)
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Complication |
An essential element of narrative: the development that disturbs the status quo, forcing the protagonist to react, setting the story in motion. A complication can be physical (the protagonist's boat sinks) or psychological (the protagonist falls in love). It will usually produce conflict. It always forces action. (See Protagonist.)
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Continuity Devices
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Elements that help keep the look, sound or feel of a scene or story fresh in a reader's mind. After mentioning the beating drums at Anwar Sadat's state funeral, Newsday reporter Pat Sloyan brought them up briefly twice more before concluding his story. The repetition kept the drums beating in the background for the reader as the story progressed.
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Denouement |
Wrapping up the loose ends after the climax has occurred (See Climax.)
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Detachment |
See Narrative Distance.
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Details, Collective |
Details that characterize a group of people or objects rather than individuals: The children wore jeans and T-shirts.
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Details, Concrete |
An essential element of effective narrative: the particulars that distinguish characters, places, scenes and actions
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Dialect |
Dialogue that reveals distinctive patterns of speech, especially regional or ethnic patterns. Good dialect is difficult to do and can seem condescending. On the other hand, putting one form of English into the mouths of characters who speak another can also be condescending. The important thing is that dialect be relevant to essential character development, rather than a literary exercise that serves no storytelling purpose.
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Dialogue |
A conversation between two or more characters. Dialogue is action, just like other events. Dialogue more effectively portrays character and advances story than quotes. (See Quote, Direct.)
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Dialogue, Participatory |
Dialogue that includes the storyteller in the conversation. This technique almost never occurs in classic fiction but is fairly common in literary journalism: I asked him about that first day in the lab. "Were you afraid of handling something that toxic?" "You bet. I wore two pairs of gloves, and I thought through every move I made. I was the slowest guy there."
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Diction, Level of |
The degree of formality in the language. Did your character purchase a vehicle or buy a car or get hisself some wheels?
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Emotional Valence |
A metaphor, borrowed from physics, used to discuss the relative emotional evocativeness of a subject: Sick babies have high emotional valence; production figures for Soviet farms have low EV. It's tough to write engagingly but unmawkishly about the ailing babies and tough to write engagingly (period) about the red-beet production. But the metaphor is useful because it's good to know what you're up against at the start of a project.
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Establishing Shots |
Wide-angle overviews of a scene that writers use to give a general sense of the place before zeroing in on a specific location. The term comes from filmmakers, who often use establishing shots to open a fresh scene. The red rimrock towers over the river. Willows line its banks. At Gila Bend, where a small canyon spills out of the rock face and onto a little meadow, Clayton Jones built his cabin....
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Exposition |
Collectively, the devices writers use to inform readers of the background they need to understand the story. Writers can supply background with authoritative asides. They can also build bits of background into subordinate clauses, modifiers, appositives and other more incidental elements of the text. "I can't seem to recall where we met," she said with an accent that betrayed her South Carolina girlhood. Exposition also refers to the first phase of a story, when the author is introducing the characters and setting the action line in motion.
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Foreshadowing |
Hinting that something significant lies ahead in the story: The cargo shuttle approached fast -- too fast.
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Flashback |
An interruption in the narrative chronology to describe a scene that took place earlier in time. The second scene in a story that begins in medias res is almost always a flashback. (See In Medias Res.)
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Flash-Forward |
A scene that jumps ahead in the narrative chronology. Writers use flash-forwards much less frequently than flashbacks, in part because of t verb tense problems they cause.
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Full-Circle Endings |
Good stories have satisfying endings. One effective way to end a narrative is creating a sense that things have come full circle. Paul Theroux's "Great Railway Bazaar," for example, begins with Theroux's train pulling out of a London station. Thousands of miles later, it ends as Theroux pulls back into the same station. The first paragraph of the book, interestingly, is exactly the same as the last paragraph. The yarn is complete.
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Figurative Language |
Common figures of speech such as similes, metaphors, allusions, personifications. Figures of speech help set scenes by translating unfamiliar aspects of a scene into the familiar: The whole apparatus was the size of a dentist's chair, complete with dangling drills and running water.
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In Medias Res |
Beginning a story in the middle of the action, rather than at the beginning of the chronology. Aristotle coined the term, which was then translated into Latin. In medias res usually refers to the point at which the outcome of the story hangs in the balance.
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Internal Monologue |
The narrator tells the reader, in third person, what a character is thinking at a given point in the action. Internal monologue made conventional journalists uncomfortable when the New Journalists introduced it in the '60s. Now it's a staple for respectable nonfiction writers, who argue that they get accurate information about the internal states of their characters through careful interviewing and the crosschecking of facts.
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Kicker Quotes |
A punchy quote that ends a paragraph, creates a sense of finality and clears the way for what follows. The best kicker quotes have a natural break about a third of the way through, have a hard consonant sound and end with a monosyllable: "I looked up," she said, "and he was dead."
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n |
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Narrative |
Story. An account of action unfolding over time. For more on defining narrative and narrative journalism, see What is Narrative Journalism (link at the top left of this page).
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Narrative Distance |
Also called detachment. Related to objectivity. The distance a narrator keeps from the beliefs, biases and feelings of the protagonist and other characters. Maintaining narrative distance means not presuming that the reader will share the character's experience. It does not mean objectifying the character, distancing yourself from her experience, but portraying, with compassion and respect, her experience without "buying into" it.She knew that God had saved her life. That statement lacks narrative distance, but both of these statements maintain it: She believed God had saved her life. Or: "I know that God saved my life," she said.
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Narrative, Dramatic |
The opposite of summary narrative. Dramatic narrative almost never appears in conventional news writing, but it is the soul of true storytelling. It operates in something close to real time, describing specific actions in considerable detail: He rose from the chair, strolled to the door, turned the knob and pulled.
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Narrative, Summary |
Abstract descriptions of action such as those often used in everyday news-writing. Summary narrative, which often spans the gaps between scenes in a scenic narrative, compresses time: They moved to three states in three years.
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Ominous Object |
Filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock contributed suspense by focusing the camera on some object that would assume malevolent significance later. If the camera lingers on a paperweight or a bottle of arsenic, you can assume it will play a role in something sinister. Writers sometimes create drama by mentioning such an object early on. Chekhov's shotgun is the classic example. (See Shotgun Rule.)
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Pace |
Each story calls for a certain overall pace. But pace varies within a story depending on position within the story structure. The climax of an adventure narrative, for example, usually unfolds at a brisk pace. The writer deliberately creates this pace with short, punchy sentences built on strong, transitive verbs. In general, pace is a complex mix of word choice; length of sentences, paragraphs and sections; transitions; and structure and sequencing.
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Parallel Structure |
Creating similarities in structural forms as a way of making larger points: He was shy; she was brash. He liked books; she liked movies.
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Passive Voice |
See Active Voice.
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Person, Choice of |
One aspect of the perspective from which the writer tells the story. Writers have three choices: first, second or third person. Most journalism is third-person storytelling: He jumped off the cliff. First person is sometimes permitted when the writer is directly involved in the story: I jumped off the cliff. Second person, once largely banned, is now more common in service journalism: You can reduce your chances of jumping off a cliff by.... Sometimes person can get more subtle or complicated. You might for example, let a character tell all or part of the story in first person, even though the overall perspective is in third person. British reserve sometimes turns first or second person into third person: One can just imagine what the consequences might be.
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Physical Description |
Details of appearance that suggest character traits or that help to bring an image of the character to life in the mind of the reader. Status indicators can be one aspect of physical description because some aspects of physical appearance -- tattoos, for example -- reflect character. But height, weight, hair style, clothing, eyeglasses and many other physical characteristics all are important to creating a character who is something more than a cardboard figure. (See Status Indicators.)
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Plot Point 1 |
The point in the story -- usually near the end of the exposition phase -- at which the protagonist first encounters the complication. (See Complication.) Plot Point 1 in the movie "Rain Man," for example, is the point at which the Tom Cruise character learns that the Dustin Hoffman character has a thing about plane crashes and refuses to fly. This launches the cross-county car trip that constitutes the main body of the film's action line.
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Plot Point 2 |
The point in the story at which the protagonist's insight or change allows resolution of the complication. In "Rain Man," Plot Point 2 comes when Cruise and Hoffman team up to beat the casinos in Las Vegas. Cruise views Hoffman in a different light, which allows the two to finally bond as brothers.
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Point of View |
The point from which the writer narrates the action, and the reader experiences it. Typical journalistic stance is of the hanging-balloon variety: The writer appears to be observing the action from an indeterminate spot somewhere about 10 feet over the heads of the principal characters. But stance can vary considerably, even in standard news reporting. Writers oblivious to stance may vary it helter skelter, confusing readers who are trying to visualize the action.
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Protagonist
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The character who makes things happen. The protagonist drives the story line, but he or she is not necessarily the hero or heroine. Hitler is the protagonist in "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich," although nobody would call him a hero. Ideally, the protagonist engages the complication early in the story line, struggles with it over time, undergoes some transformation or experiences some insight and eventually resolves the complication. In a tragedy -- Hitler being a case in point -- the protagonist never changes and eventually succumbs to the complication.
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Psychological Distance |
The distance the narrator maintains from the stance of the protagonist and other characters. Close psychological distance puts the reader inside the character's head: The door opens. A cold gust blows his hair across his eyes, blocking the view. Outside, on the porch, the heavy wet snowflakes create intense spots of cold as they land on his face. Middle distance steps back a little: He reached out and turned the door knob. A gust of wind blew in, ruffling his hair. He stepped out onto the porch, closing the door behind him. Remote distance describes only what a stranger could see at some remove: A figure appeared on the porch across the street. (See Narrative Distance.)
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Quote, Direct |
Dialogue is more common than the direct quote in true narrative. But direct quotes can be worked into an action line, and they can help advance the line: Jones later said his wife walked over to the well and peered in. "She stared for a minute," he said. "Then she gave a little gasp and stepped back."
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Rising Action |
The part of the story that follow exposition. During rising action the protagonist becomes increasingly engaged with the complication. Often the protagonist struggles with the complication and fails, raising the level of dramatic tension and setting up the climax.
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Sentence Forms |
Transitive verbs advance the action line by depicting movement. Linking verbs such as "to be" slow it down because they merely define. You cannot tell a story with linking verbs. Nor can you portray rousing action with passive voice. (See Active Voice and To Be Verbs.)
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Sequencing |
The order in which the author introduces material is critical to advancing the plot and creating dramatic tension. Skilled writers delay the introduction of some information for dramatic effect. They also give lots of serious thought to the order in which they introduce key characters. The elaborate butcher-paper outline of yore was a key sequencing tool. Many nonfiction writers now use the outline-mode functions of the major word-processing programs for the same purpose.
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Sequential Experience |
A reader's chronological intellectual and emotional reactions while reading a text
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Shotgun Rule |
Chekhov said that if a play opens with a shotgun hanging on the wall, the gun must be fired before the play ends. The point? Every detail must do some work. Some details help develop character. Others provide necessary background information. But the most important details advance the action line.
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Show, Don't Tell |
Another essential element of narrative. To show is to make a case with evidence, details. To tell is to try to persuade readers by "talking at" them. Showing is more work and much more effective and entertaining.
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Status Indicators |
Details that reveal a character's place in the social order. Tom Wolfe coined the term and argued that questions of social status were prime elements in any attempt at nonfiction storytelling. He subsequently referred to the entire social structure -- as indicated by material indicators such as clothes, cars, jewelry and so on -- as the "statusphere."
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Structure, Scenic v. Topical |
A reference to the basic building blocks a writer uses to construct a story. In "scenic construction," the writer lays out the entire story as a series of scenes, each one unfolding in a specific space and time. A scenic outline for a 3,000-word story might typically contain from three to five scenes -- e.g., the office scene, the building-site scene, the car-on-the-freeway scene. The writer decides which larger points she wants to make and allocates them to the various scenes. The protagonist's impatience, for example, might best be brought out in the car-on-the-freeway scene. Topical construction, which is far more common in journalistic writing, breaks a subject down into sections of related information, e.g., describing what happened, providing background, showing the significance of the event, suggesting possible results.
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Style |
The pattern of language choices a writer makes, including degree of abstraction, diction and vocabulary, length of sentences, syntax, degree of formality and so on. A particular style builds a particular voice. (See Voice.)
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Speculative Action |
Filling out the action line with an intelligent guess about what might have happened, being careful to telegraph the technique to the reader: His horse left lots of tracks right at the head of the trail. Perhaps he gazed at the view from the rim for a while before starting down.
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Story Framing |
A term -- now in vogue among media ethicists -- that refers to the value sets and objectives the writer brings to a story. Is the aim of a crime story to tell it from the victim's point of view with the object of increasing our understanding of victims' psychology? Or to present it from the police point of view with the aim of preventing similar crimes?
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Structure |
The order and relative dominance of the parts of a piece of writing, commonly determined principally by topic. May also refer to the planned arrangement of scenes and digressive background material, secondary scenes, achronological arrangements of material (say, presenting an outcome before describing how something came about) and asides to explain or comment on action.
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Suggested Dialect |
Dialogue that's written in standard English but is introduced in a way that lets readers hear it as dialect. You might introduce a character named Schmidt, for example by telling readers that he still accents his speech with the sounds of his native Germany. "Vell," he might say, "dat's von vay uff lookin' at it." Thereafter, all of Schmidt's comments appear in standard form. But readers are inclined to add the accent as they sound out the words in their heads.
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"To-be" verbs |
Verbs to avoid: be, am, is, are, was, were, been, and (sometimes) being. (See also Sentence Forms.)
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Tone |
The reader's sense of a piece's underlying mood, sensibility, atmosphere.
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Typography |
Variation of fonts to convey different emotional and cultural connotations. You would not, for example, want to present a moody Victorian tale in a breezy 1920s art deco font like Broadway.
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Typographic Indicators |
Devices that break text into structural elements. A star-line break (three asterisks 10 or so spaces apart and centered on the page) is the traditional manuscript indicator of a major break between scenes or topics. In type, break may be indicated by a drop cap, hollow bullet, dingbat or some other typographical device.
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Texture |
Clashing elements that help characterize a scene: A drunk sprawled on the Fifth Avenue sidewalk, directly below a Tiffany's window displaying a $300,000 tiara. Texture can also refer to the surface patterns of objects: Like a herringbone jacket thrown on the hillside, the tile roof....
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Thematic Details |
Details that develop central story themes. In his famed profile of New York Times obituary writer Alden Whitman, for example, Gay Talese noted that Whitman's elevated-train ride downtown passed billboards advertising funeral parlors.
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Unifying Devices |
Repetition of key details throughout the structure as a way of holding everything together: A mystery writer might use an ominous object, for example, as a way of building dramatic tension. A detective briefly notices an old-fashioned rotary phone in an early chapter. The phone returns later as a key to solving the case.
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Verbs |
Words that describe action, existence and occurrence. In narrative the best verbs describe action and are strong, particular and concrete. She strode to the window is better than She went to the window. Verbs also show more than adjectives and adverbs. She ran is more effective than She was in a hurry. (See also To Be Verbs and Show, Don't Tell.)
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Vignette |
An anecdote without a punch line, it serves most of the same purposes. (See Anecdote.)
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Voice |
The personality of the writer as it comes through in the text. Is the writer slightly formal and skeptical? Pompous and afflicted with the insecurity that produces gobbledygook? Folksy? World-wise and cynical? Journalistic writing has tended to suppress individual voice in favor of a communitarian, institutional voice.
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Voice, Active |
See Active Voice.
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Voice, Passive |
See Active Voice.
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World View |
The set of values and assumptions that colors the writer's interpretation of the world. A writer who produces a story on the lack of government gun control after an accidental shooting is approaching a subject with a different world view than a writer who reacts to the same circumstances and produces a story on individual responsibility for gun safety. Traditional journalistic dogma holds that the canon of objectivity eliminates the writer's world view. But most contemporary media philosophers dismiss this notion as simplistic. The definition of news or story depends on world view and will vary from individual to individual accordingly.
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© 2008 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College