Glossary of writing craft terms & genres

A

Act Structure (Three-Act Structure) — A narrative framework dividing a story into setup, confrontation, and resolution, each with its own turning points.

Allegory — A narrative in which characters and events symbolically represent a broader moral, political, or spiritual meaning beyond the literal story.

Alliteration — The repetition of consonant sounds at the start of nearby words, used for rhythm or emphasis.

Antagonist — The character or force that opposes the protagonist and drives central conflict.

Antihero — A protagonist lacking conventional heroic qualities — courage, morality, idealism — while still anchoring reader sympathy.

Archetype — A universally recognisable character type, symbol, or story pattern (the mentor, the trickster, the chosen one) that recurs across cultures and genres.

B

Backstory — Events that occurred before the story's present timeline, shaping character motivation and world context.

Beat — The smallest unit of story action or emotional shift within a scene; also used to describe major turning points in a plot outline (as in a "beat sheet").

Bildungsroman — A coming-of-age story tracing a character's psychological and moral growth from youth to maturity. German-to-English translation: Bildung -=formation/education and Roman = novel. German philologists coined it in the early 19th century to describe novels like Goethe's Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship. There isn’t a specific English translation, but the closest description is a coming-of-age novel with a specific formal tradition behind it.

Body Horror — A horror subgenre built around the visceral violation, transformation, or destruction of the human body.

C

Chekhov's Gun — The principle that any significant detail introduced in a story must eventually matter to the plot, or it shouldn't be there at all.

Climax — The story's peak moment of tension, where the central conflict reaches its decisive turning point.

Cli-Fi (Climate Fiction) — Fiction centred on climate change and its consequences, often overlapping with speculative or dystopian genres.

Coming-of-Age — A story focused on a character's transition from adolescence to adulthood, often centred on identity and self-discovery.

Conflict — The central struggle driving a story, commonly categorised as character vs. character, self, nature, society, technology, or fate.

Cozy Mystery — A mystery subgenre with minimal graphic violence or sex, often set in a small community, featuring an amateur sleuth.

Cyberpunk — A speculative fiction subgenre blending high technology with social decay, typically set in near-future urban dystopias.

D

Denouement — The final resolution of a story, tying up loose ends after the climax.

Deus Ex Machina — An implausible or contrived plot device that resolves conflict through an unearned external intervention.

Dialogue Tag — The attribution accompanying a line of dialogue (e.g. "she said"), used to clarify who is speaking.

Dramatic Irony — A device where the reader knows something a character does not, creating tension or anticipation.

Dystopian Fiction — Speculative fiction set in a society characterised by oppression, control, or societal collapse, often as social commentary.

E

Enemies to Lovers — A romance trope in which characters begin as adversaries before developing romantic feelings.

Epic Fantasy — A fantasy subgenre featuring large-scale conflict, expansive worldbuilding, and high stakes, often spanning multiple books (e.g. war between kingdoms, the fate of a world).

Exposition — Information delivered to the reader about setting, backstory, or context necessary to understand the story.

F

Fairy Tale Retelling — A story that reimagines or subverts a traditional fairy tale, often shifting perspective, tone, or setting.

Falling Action — The events following the climax that lead the story toward resolution.

Flashback — A scene depicting events prior to the story's current timeline, used to reveal backstory or motivation.

Foil — A character whose traits contrast with another character's, highlighting the qualities of both by comparison.

Frame Narrative — A story structured as a narrative within a narrative, where an outer story contains and contextualises an inner one.

G

GMC (Goal, Motivation, Conflict) — A character-development framework identifying what a character wants, why they want it, and what stands in their way.

Gothic Fiction — A genre blending horror, romance, and atmosphere, typically featuring decayed or oppressive settings, family secrets, and psychological dread.

Grimdark — A fantasy subgenre defined by moral ambiguity, bleak tone, and unflinching violence, often subverting heroic conventions.

H

Hero's Journey — A common narrative structure (popularised by Joseph Campbell) tracing a protagonist's call to adventure, trials, and eventual transformation and return.

High Fantasy — Fantasy set in a fully invented secondary world, as distinct from low fantasy's grounding in the real world.

Historical Fiction — Fiction set in a real past period, blending invented characters or events with historical accuracy and detail.

I

Imagery — Descriptive language that evokes sensory experience (sight, sound, touch, smell, taste) to immerse the reader.

In Medias Res — Beginning a story in the middle of the action, rather than at a chronological starting point.

Inciting Incident — The event that disrupts a character's status quo and sets the central story in motion.

Irony — A gap between expectation and reality, appearing in dramatic (reader knows more than character), situational (outcome contradicts expectation), or verbal (words convey the opposite of literal meaning) forms.

J

Juxtaposition — Placing two contrasting elements side by side to highlight their differences or create meaning through comparison.

K

Kill Your Darlings — A craft maxim urging writers to cut favourite lines, scenes, or characters when they no longer serve the story.

L

Literary Fiction — Fiction prioritising prose style, character interiority, and thematic depth over plot-driven convention.

LitRPG — A subgenre incorporating video game mechanics (levelling, stats, quests) directly into the narrative structure.

Low Fantasy — Fantasy set in the real world with limited magical elements, as distinct from high fantasy's invented secondary worlds.

M

MacGuffin — An object or goal that drives the plot forward through characters' pursuit of it, with little inherent importance beyond that function.

Magical Realism — A genre blending realistic settings and characters with matter-of-fact magical elements, without treating the magic as remarkable.

Metaphor — A figure of speech describing one thing as another to suggest a resemblance, without using "like" or "as."

Mood — The emotional atmosphere a piece of writing evokes in the reader.

Motif — A recurring image, phrase, or idea that reinforces a story's themes.

N

New Adult (NA) — A category bridging Young Adult and Adult fiction, typically featuring protagonists aged 18–25 navigating early adulthood.

Noir — A genre (often crime or mystery) characterised by cynicism, moral ambiguity, and a bleak urban atmosphere.

O

Onomatopoeia — A word that phonetically imitates the sound it describes (crash, hiss, buzz).

P

Paranormal Romance — A romance subgenre incorporating supernatural elements — vampires, shifters, magic — as central to the plot.

Personification — Attributing human qualities or actions to non-human things, objects, or abstract concepts.

Portal Fantasy — A fantasy subgenre in which characters travel from the real world into a magical or alternate one through a literal or symbolic portal.

Protagonist — The central character whose goals and choices drive the story forward.

Q

Quest Narrative — A plot structure organised around a character's journey toward a specific goal or object, often episodic in structure.

R

Red Herring — A misleading clue or detail intended to distract the reader from the true resolution, common in mystery and thriller writing.

Rising Action — The sequence of events building tension and complications toward the story's climax.

Romantasy — A blended genre combining romance and fantasy in roughly equal measure, with the central relationship carrying as much narrative weight as the fantasy plot.

S

Save the Cat — A popular beat-sheet story structure (from Blake Snyder's screenwriting method) widely adapted for novel plotting.

Scene and Sequel — A structural unit pairing a scene of action/goal-pursuit with a sequel of reaction/decision, a framework popularised by Dwight Swain.

Setting — The time and place in which a story occurs, encompassing both physical location and social/cultural context.

Simile — A figure of speech comparing two things using "like" or "as."

Slow Burn — A pacing approach, especially in romance, that delays the central relationship's development for sustained tension.

Soft Sci-Fi / Hard Sci-Fi — A spectrum describing science fiction's relationship to scientific plausibility: hard sci-fi emphasises technical accuracy, soft sci-fi prioritises social or speculative ideas over technical rigour.

Space Opera — A science fiction subgenre featuring large-scale adventure, dramatic conflict, and often romance, typically set across interstellar or galactic scope.

Steampunk — A subgenre blending Victorian-era aesthetics with speculative or anachronistic technology, often steam-powered.

Subplot — A secondary storyline running alongside the main plot, often developing supporting characters or themes.

Subtext — Meaning implied beneath the literal content of dialogue or narration, understood rather than stated.

Sword and Sorcery — A fantasy subgenre focused on personal, action-driven adventures (often a single protagonist) rather than epic, world-spanning stakes.

Symbolism — The use of an object, image, or event to represent a deeper meaning beyond its literal role in the story.

T

Theme — The underlying idea, message, or question a story explores through its plot and characters.

Tone — The author's or narrator's attitude toward the subject matter, conveyed through word choice and style.

Trope — A recognisable, recurring convention, device, or theme within a genre (e.g. the chosen one, forced proximity, the locked-room mystery).

Twist — An unexpected turn in the plot that recontextualises prior events for the reader.

U

Upmarket Fiction — Fiction positioned between literary and commercial, combining accessible plotting with elevated prose and thematic ambition.

Urban Fantasy — A fantasy subgenre set in a contemporary, often real-world urban setting, with magical or supernatural elements integrated into everyday life.

V

Villain — An antagonist specifically defined by malicious or destructive intent, as distinct from an antagonist who merely opposes the protagonist's goals.

W

Worldbuilding — The construction of a fictional setting's rules, history, geography, and culture, central to speculative fiction craft.

Y

Young Adult (YA) — A category aimed at readers roughly aged 12–18, typically featuring teenage protagonists and coming-of-age themes.