List of narrative techniques
A narrative technique or narrative device is any of several storytelling methods the creator of a story uses, thus effectively relaying information to the audience or making the story more complete, complex, or engaging. Some scholars also call such a technique a narrative mode, though this term can also more narrowly refer to the particular technique of using a commentary to deliver a story. Other possible synonyms within written narratives are literary technique or literary device, though these can also broadly refer to non-narrative writing strategies, as might be used in academic or essay writing, as well as poetic devices such as assonance, metre, or rhyme scheme. Furthermore, narrative techniques are distinguished from narrative elements, which exist inherently in all works of narrative, rather than being merely optional strategies.
Setting
Plot
| Name | Definition | Example |
| Backstory | Story that precedes events in the story being told—past events or background that add meaning to current circumstances | Though The Lord of the Rings trilogy takes place in a relatively short period towards the end of the 3021-year Third Age, the narration gives glimpses of the mythological and historical events which took place earlier in the Third Age leading up to the action in the novel, and in the First and Second Age. |
| Chekhov's gun | A dramatic principle that requires every element in a narrative to be substantive, with anything redundant or arbitrary removed. | "Remove everything that has no relevance to the story. If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it's not going to be fired, it shouldn't be hanging there." — Anton Chekhov |
| Cliffhanger | The narrative ends unresolved, to draw the audience back to a future episode for the resolution. | Almost every episode of TV shows like Dexter and Breaking Bad ends with one of the characters in a predicament. |
| Eucatastrophe | Coined by J. R. R. Tolkien, a climactic event through which the protagonist appears to be facing a catastrophic change. However, this change does not materialize and the protagonist finds themself benefiting from the climactic event; contrast peripety/peripateia. | At the end of The Lord of the Rings, Gollum forcibly takes away the Ring from Frodo, suggesting that Sauron would eventually take over Middle Earth. However, Gollum celebrates too eagerly and clumsily falls into the lava, whereby the ring is destroyed and with it Sauron's power. In a way, Gollum does what Frodo and the Fellowship of the Ring intended to do through the whole plot of the trilogy, which was to throw the ring into the lake of fire in the heart of Mount Doom. |
| Flashback | Alteration of time sequences, taking characters back to the beginning of the tale, for instance | The story of "The Three Apples" in the Arabian Nights tales begins with the discovery of a young woman's dead body. After the murderer later reveals himself, he narrates his reasons for the murder as a flashback of events leading up to the discovery of her dead body at the beginning of the story. |
| Flashforward | A scene that temporarily jumps the narrative forward in time. A flashforward often represents events expected, projected, or imagined to occur in the future. They may also reveal significant parts of the story that have not yet occurred, but soon will in greater detail. | Occurs in A Christmas Carol when Mr. Scrooge visits the ghost of the future. It is also frequent in the later seasons of the television series Lost. |
| Foreshadowing | Implicit yet intentional efforts of an author to suggest events that have yet to take place in the process of narration. See also repetitive designation and Chekhov's gun | A narration might begin with a male character who has to break up a schoolyard fight among some boys who are vying for the attention of a girl, which was introduced to foreshadow the events leading to a dinner time squabble between the character and his twin brother over a woman, whom both are courting at the same time. |
| Frame story | A story which occupies a small part of the total narrative, such that one or more other stories are recounted within the frame story. Contrast story within a story. | With multiple internal stories: early examples include Panchatantra, Kalila and Dimna, The Book of [One Thousand and One Nights|Arabian Nights], and The Decameron. More modern examples are Brian Jacques's 1999 The Legend of Luke, Ramsay Wood's 2011 Kalila and Dimna update, subtitled Fables of Conflict and Intrigue and Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen's 1964 The Knight of Denmark. With a single internal story: in Frankenstein, the frame story is narrated by an Arctic explorer, who is told the main story by Victor Frankenstein. In Wuthering Heights, the frame story is told by a visitor; the main story begins 30 years earlier and comprises transcripts of letters and journal entries he reads and accounts he hears from the protagonists. |
| In medias res | Beginning the story in the middle of a sequence of events. A specific form of narrative hook. | This is used in epic poems, for example, where it is a mandatory form to be adopted. Luís de Camões' The Lusiads or the Iliad and the Odyssey of Homer are prime examples. The latter work begins with the return of Odysseus to his home of Ithaca and then in flashbacks tells of his ten years of wandering following the Trojan War. The Lusiads starts in the middle of the sea voyage to India and contextualizes the beginning of said journey as well as Portugal's history when the master of the ship tells an African king about it. |
| Narrative hook | Story opening that "hooks" readers' attention so they will keep reading | Many non-fiction books are introduced with an interesting factoid. |
| MacGuffin | Object required to initiate the plot or motivation of the characters, but having little significance by itself | "Heart of the Ocean" necklace in James Cameron's 1997 Titanic, which essentially serves as an object to cause Rose to tell her story. |
| Ochi | A sudden interruption of the wordplay flow indicating the end of a rakugo or a kobanashi. | A Rakugo is a Japanese verbal entertainment usually lasting 30 minutes which ends with a surprise punch line, a narrative stunt known as ochi or sage. Twelve kinds of ochi are codified and recognized. The earlier kobanashi was a short comical vignette ending with an ochi. |
| Plot twist | Unexpected change in the direction or expected outcome of the plot. See also twist ending. | An early example is the Arabian Nights tale "The Three Apples". A locked chest found by a fisherman contains a dead body, and two different men claim to be the murderer, which turns out to be the investigator's own slave. |
| Poetic justice | Virtue ultimately rewarded, or vice punished, by an ironic twist of fate related to the character's own conduct | Wile E. Coyote coming up with a contraption to catch the Road Runner, only to be foiled and caught by his own devices. Each sin's punishment in Dante's Inferno is a symbolic instance of poetic justice. |
| Predestination paradox | Time travel paradox where a time traveler is caught in a loop of events that "predestines" them to travel back in time | In Doctor Who, the main character repeatedly finds himself under the obligation of having to travel back in time because of something his future character has done. |
| Red herring | Diverting attention away from an item of significance. | For example, in mystery fiction, an innocent party may be purposefully cast as highly suspicious through emphasis or descriptive techniques to divert attention from the true guilty party. |
| Self-fulfilling prophecy | Prediction that, by being made, makes itself come true. | Early examples include the legend of Oedipus, and the story of Krishna in the Mahabharata. There is also an example of this in Harry Potter when Lord Voldemort heard a prophecy that a boy born at the end of July, whose parents had defied Voldemort thrice and survived, would be made marked as his equal. Because of this prophecy, Lord Voldemort sought out Harry Potter and tried to kill him. His parents died protecting him, and when Voldemort tried to cast a killing curse on Harry, it rebounded and took away most of his strength, and gave Harry Potter a unique ability and connection with the Dark Lord thus marking him as his equal. |
| Story within a story | A story told within another story. See also frame story. | In Stephen King's The Wind Through the Keyhole, of the Dark Tower series, the protagonist tells a story from his past to his companions, and in this story he tells another relatively unrelated story. |
| Ticking time bomb scenario | Threat of impending disaster—often used in thrillers where salvation and escape are essential elements | In the post-apocalyptic novel On the Beach, the main characters face increasing radioactivity drifting across the equator toward Australia. Learning that the worst is predicted to come sooner rather than later heightens the urgency and sense of immediacy felt by the characters and by the reader. |
| Unreliable narrator | The narrator of the story is not sincere, or introduces a bias in their narration and possibly misleads the reader, hiding or minimizing events, characters, or motivations. | An example is The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. The novel includes an unexpected plot twist at the end of the novel. In the last chapter, Sheppard describes how he was an unreliable narrator. |
Perspective
Style
| Name | Definition | Example |
| Allegory | The expression, by means of symbolic fictional figures and actions, of truths or generalizations about human conduct or experience | C. S. Lewis's The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is a religious allegory with Aslan as Christ and Edmund as Judas. |
| Alliteration | Repeating the same letter or consonant sound at the beginning of adjacent or closely connected words. | In the film V for Vendetta the main character performs a couple of soliloquies with a heavy use of alliteration, e.g., "Voilà! In view, a humble vaudevillian veteran, cast vicariously as both victim and villain by the vicissitudes of Fate. This visage, no mere veneer of vanity, is a vestige of the vox populi, now vacant, vanished, as the once vital voice of the verisimilitude now venerates what they once vilified. However, this valorous visitation of a bygone vexation stands vivified, and has vowed to vanquish these venal and virulent vermin vanguarding vice and vouchsafing the violently vicious and voracious violation of volition. The only verdict is vengeance; a vendetta held as a votive, not in vain, for the value and veracity of such shall one day vindicate the vigilant and the virtuous. Verily, this vichyssoise of verbiage veers most verbose vis-à-vis an introduction, and so it is my very good honor to meet you and you may call me V." |
| Amplification | Amplification refers to a literary practice wherein the writer embellishes the sentence by adding more information to it in order to increase its worth and understanding. | E.g., Original sentence: The thesis paper was difficult. After amplification: The thesis paper was difficult: it required extensive research, data collection, sample surveys, interviews and a lot of fieldwork. |
| Anagram | Rearranging the letters of a word or a phrase to form a new phrase or word. | E.g., An anagram for "debit card" is "bad credit". As you can see, both phrases use the same letters. By mixing the letters a bit of humor is created. |
| Asyndeton | When sentences do not use conjunctions to separate clauses, but run clauses into one another, usually marking the separation of clauses with punctuation. | An example is when John F. Kennedy said on January 20, 1961 "...that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty." |
| Bathos | An abrupt transition in style from the exalted to the commonplace, producing a ludicrous effect. While often unintended, bathos may be used deliberately to produce a humorous effect. | The ballerina rose gracefully en pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant. |
| Caesura | A break, especially a sense pause, usually near the middle of a verse, and marked in scansion by a double vertical line. This technique frequently occurs within a poetic line grammatically connected to the end of the previous line by enjambment. | E.g., in "Know then thyself. ‖ Presume not God to scan" |
| Distancing effect | Deliberately preventing the audience from identifying with characters in order to let them be coolly scrutinized. | Popularized by 20th century playwright Bertolt Brecht. |
| Dramatic visualization | Representing an object or character with abundant descriptive detail, or mimetically rendering gestures and dialogue to make a scene more visual or imaginatively present to an audience. | This technique appears at least as far back as the Arabian Nights. |
| Euphuism | An artificial, highly elaborate way of writing or speaking. Named from Euphues the prose romance by John Lyly. | "Is it not far better to abhor sins by the remembrance of others' faults, than by repentance of thine own follies?" |
| Hyperbole | Exaggeration used to evoke strong feelings or create an impression which is not meant to be taken literally. Hyperbole can be used for serious, ironic, or comic effects. | Sally could no longer hide her secret. Her pregnant belly was bigger than the planet on which she stood. |
| Imagery | Forming mental images of a scene using descriptive words, especially making use of the human senses. The same as sensory detail. | When the boots came off his feet with a leathery squeak, a smell of ferment and fish market immediately filled the small tent. The skin of his toes were red and raw and sensitive. The malodorous air was so toxic he thought he could almost taste his toes. |
| Leitwortstil | Purposefully repeating words that usually express a motif or theme important to the story. | This dates back at least to the Arabian Nights. |
| Metonymy | Word or phrase in a figure of speech in which a noun is referenced by something closely associated with it, rather than explicitly by the noun itself. This is not to be confused with synecdoche, in which a part of the whole stands for the thing itself. | Metonymy: The boxer threw in the towel. Synecdoche: She gave her hand in marriage. |
| Overstatement | Exaggerating something, often for emphasis | Sally's pregnant belly most likely weighed as much as the scooter she used to ride before she got pregnant. |
| Onomatopoeia | Words that imitate/spell a sound or noise. Word that sounds the same as, or similar to what the word means. | "Boom goes the dynamite." "Bang!" "Bark." |
| Oxymoron | A term made of two words that deliberately or coincidentally imply each other's opposite. | "terrible beauty" |
| Paradox | A phrase that describes an idea composed of concepts that conflict. | "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times." |
| Parody | Ridicule by overstated imitation, usually humorous. | MAD Magazine |
| Pastiche | Using forms and styles from another author, generally as an affectionate tribute. | Such as the many stories featuring Sherlock Holmes not written by Arthur Conan Doyle, or much of the Cthulhu Mythos. |
| Pathos | Emotional appeal, one of the three modes of persuasion in rhetoric that the author uses to inspire pity or sorrow towards a character—typically does not counterbalance the target character's suffering with a positive outcome, as in Tragedy. | In Romeo and Juliet, the two main characters each commit suicide at the sight of the supposedly dead lover, however the audience knows these actions to be rash and unnecessary. Therefore, Shakespeare makes for the emotional appeal for the unnecessary tragedy behind the young characters' rash interpretations about love and life. |
| Personification | Using comparative metaphors and similes to give characteristics to abstract concepts. | Taken from Act I, Scene II of Romeo and Juliet: "When well-appareled April on the heel / Of limping winter treads." |
| Polyptoton | Words derived from the same root in a sentence. | "Not as a call to battle, though embattled we are." John F. Kennedy, Inaugural Address, January 20, 1961. |
| Polysyndeton | Polysyndeton is the use of several conjunctions in close succession. This provides a sense of exaggeration designed to wear down the audience. | An example of this is in the first chapter of Great Expectations by Charles Dickens: "A man who had been soaked in water, and smothered in mud, and lamed by stones, and cut by flints, and stung by nettles, and torn by briars; who limped, and shivered, and glared and growled; and whose teeth chattered in his head as he seized me by the chin." |
| Satire | The use of humor, irony or exaggeration to criticize. | An example is Network. One of the earliest examples is Gulliver's Travels, written by Jonathan Swift. The television program South Park is another. |
| Sensory detail | Sight, sound, taste, touch, smell. The same as imagery. | The boot was tough and sinewy between his hard-biting teeth. There was no flavor to speak of except for the blandness of all the dirt that the boot had soaked up over the years. The only thing the boot reminded him of was the smell of a wet dog. |
| Understatement | A diminishing or softening of a theme for effect. | The broken ends of the long bone were sticking through the bleeding skin, but it wasn't something that always killed a man. |
| Title drop | Line of dialogue used to announce the name of the piece. | In The Breakfast Club, the final line is "Sincerely yours, The Breakfast Club". |