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WELCOME TO GORDIAN PLOT - A THESAURUS FOR WRITERS

Gordian Plot is a writers website. This site includes thousands of helpful articles, currently mostly from copyright expired books on writing.

The original material featured on this site include lists to help you brainstorm ideas.

character thesaurus-A character trait list

Plot thesaurus- A list of plots

Please contribute your ideas

This website is a Wiki. It can be edited by anyone who reads it.

for instructions on how to edit and use this site go to Help:Contents

To communicate with me- edit the discussion page on my user page, or email me-User:Han

HOW TO NAVIGATE
Any word that is blue is a link to another article related to that word.

Click on the word to follow the link. Many pages have category links at the bottom. Follow the category links to see a list of pages in that category. There is a search box. The Go button looks for an article named whatever you entered in the box, the Search button finds the word within any article.

the story components category below is one of the most central categories on this site.it is a good place to start browsing.

Category:story components, topics including- character, setting, point of view- and much more

Elements of fiction

Just as a painter uses color and line to create a painting, an author uses the elements of fiction to create a story:

The elements of fiction are: character, plot, setting, theme, and style. Of these five elements, character is the who, plot is the what, setting is the where and when, and style is the manner in which the question is answered.

Character
A character is any person, persona, identity, or entity whose existence originates from a fictional work or performance.

Characterization is one of the five elements of fiction, along with plot, setting, theme, and writing style. A character is a participant in the story, and is usually a person, but may be any persona, identity, or entity whose existence originates from a fictional work or performance.

Characters may be of several types:
 * Point-of-view character: the character by whom the story is viewed. The point-of-view character may or may not also be the main character in the story.
 * Protagonist: the main character of a story
 * Antagonist: the character who stands in opposition to the protagonist
 * Minor character: a character that interacts with the protagonist. They help the story move along.
 * Foil character: a (minor) character who has traits in aversion to the main character

The narrator is the teller of the story, the orator, doing the mouthwork, or its in-print equivalent.

Plot
A plot, or storyline, is the events and actions of a story.

Plot is inseparable from character. The choices the characters make drive the plot and the plot situations motivate the characters to make choices.

at the core of plot are Category:person to person actions

plots are made out of situations.

Story situation thesaurus

This three act structure forms about 80% of genre fiction.


 * act 1 is the setup. This act includes the protagonist's initial situation.Then something happens that causes the protagonist to commit to a concrete goal.
 * act 2 the first goal is struggled with and brought to some form of resolution. the protagonist commits to a second goal, beginning act 3
 * act 3 the second goal is resolved and the story is brought to closure.

this same formula could be called five acts if you call the opening and close acts.

Setting
Setting is the time and location in which a story takes place.

Setting is the locale and time of a story. The setting is often a real place, but may be a fictitious city or country within our own world; a different planet; or an alternate universe, which may or may not have similarities with our own universe.

Theme
Theme is a conceptual distillation of the story; what the story is about.

Style
Style includes the multitude of choices fiction writers make, consciously or subconsciously, as they create a story. They encompass the big-picture, strategic choices such as point of view and narrator, but they also include the nitty-gritty, tactical choices of grammar, punctuation, word usage, sentence and paragraph length and structure, tone, the use of imagery, chapter selection, titles, and on and on. In the process of writing a story, these choices meld to become the writer's voice, his or her own unique style.

Style includes the multitude of choices fiction writers make, consciously or not, in the process of writing a story. It encompasses not only the big-picture, strategic choices such as point of view and choice of narrator, but also tactical choices of grammar, punctuation, word usage, sentence and paragraph length and structure, tone, the use of imagery, chapter selection, titles, and on and on. In the process of creating a story, these choices meld to become the writer’s voice, his or her own unique style.

Components of Style
For each piece of fiction, the author makes many choices, consciously or subconsciously, which combine to form the writer's unique style. The components of style are numerous, but include point of view, choice of narrator, fiction-writing mode, person and tense, grammar, punctuation, word usage, sentence length and structure, paragraph length and structure, tone, imagery, chapter usage, and title selection.

Point of View
Point of view is from whose consciousness the reader hears, sees, and feels the story.

Tone
Tone is the mood that the author establishes within the story.

Theme is the broad idea, message, or lesson of a story.

People
Author


 * Writer
 * Writer's block

Developing your writing skills

Writing techniques Learning by doing a series of assignments of slowly increasing complexity.
 * Literary technique

Audience

Suspension of Disbelief

Suspension of disbelief is the reader's temporary acceptance of story elements as believable, regardless of how implausible they may seem in real life.

The audience creates Genera through its demands.

Publisher

Literary criticism