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| Placing an event, person, item, or verbal expression in the wrong historical period. |
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| When an author leaves out details/information or is unclear about an event so the reader will use his/her imagination to fill in the blanks. |
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| Arrangement of repeated thoughts in the pattern of X Y Y X. Chiasmus is often short and summarizes a main idea, e.g., "ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country." |
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| Repetition of a consonant sound within two or more words in close proximity. |
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| A formal sustained poem lamenting the death of a particular person. |
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| A quotation or aphorism at the beginning of a literary work suggestive of a theme. One found at the beginning of John Kennedy Toole's Confederacy of Dunces: "When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign; that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him." —Jonathan Swift. |
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| A character constructed around a single idea or quality; a flat character is immediately recognizable. |
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| The arrangement of two or more ideas, characters, actions, settings, phrases, or words side-by-side or in similar narrative moments for the purpose of comparison, contrast, rhetorical effect, suspense, or character development. |
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| A character drawn with sufficient complexity to be able to surprise the reader without losing credibility. |
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| Conventional character types that recur repeatedly in various literary genres. E.g. the wicked stepmother or Prince Charming or the rascal. |
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| A central idea of a work of fiction or nonfiction, revealed and developed in the course of a story or explored through argument. |
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| One word (usually a main very or noun) that governs two other words that are not related in meaning. “He maintained a business and his innocence.” |
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