A Glossary of terms relating to Creative Writing

Where the dramatic mood and pace is punctuated by a rapid series of high-tension events and actions.

The wider context or background, which sheds light on the current story.

Causality or causation denotes the relationship between one event (called cause) and another event (called effect) which is the consequence (result) of the first.

A fictional person, with a specific identity and recognisable traits, depicted in a novel or drama.

Allied to mystery or murder mystery genres, ‘crime’ presents a story involving crime, the police and the law.

The lines spoken by characters in novels, plays and films.

Originally applied to a particular kind of writing emerging from America in the early 1980s, though it was much in evidence before the term was coined, this is fiction that engages particularly with subjects considered marginal to ‘traditional’ literary material. (Including ‘everyday’ subjects, for example, a scene at a Laundromat; or ‘dirty realities’, such as the life of a vagrant or prisoner.)

A riddle, puzzling person or thing; something that cannot absolutely be known or resolved.

Often drawing on myths handed down orally through the world’s various different cultures, fairy tales feature a number of recognisable formulae and character ‘types’. A ‘fairy-tale’ ending is meant to imply a happy ending to a story, however this isn’t always the case, and often a fairy tale evokes a complex moral lesson.

Where the story focuses on the activities and histories of one or more families, shown over time, often related in a series of lined novels, dealing with different periods in the family’s history.