Conventions are a set of widely accepted techniques and devices that audiences may expect to find in a novel, short story or other narrative. Conventions give the author and the reader an agreed structure within which they can both work.
Setting refers to where and when a story takes place. Description of the setting is often utilised to create mood and atmosphere. Setting can play a significant role in contributing to the meaning of the story.
The people in the story. There are main and minor characters, flat and round characters. Characters are constructions and perform a function in the narrative. They can be representations. They can convey beliefs, values and attitudes. Characterisation refers to the methods used to create characters – by direct description, by their actions and speech, through their thoughts or feelings, by what other characters say about them, by symbolic association with particular objects or ideas.
Plot is the design or structure of events in a story to produce curiosity and suspense in readers. As a reader you ask three questions – Why did that happen? Why is this happening? What will happen next and why?
❖ NARRATIVE STRUCTURE
Narratives are usually organised into an exposition, complications and/or conflict, a climax and a resolution.
❖ NARRATIVE POINT OF VIEW
Point of view is the perspective from which a narrator presents a narrative.
First person narrative – the narrator is a character in the story and refers to himself/herself as ‘I’ and the other characters as ‘he’, ‘she’, ‘they’.
Second person – (this point of view is very rarely used) the narrator directly addresses the reading audience and refers to them as ‘you’ and includes them as a character in the story.
Third person limited – confines the narrator to the experiences of one of the characters in the story. That character is referred to as ‘he’ or...