Literary Devices for Middle Grades, High School & College --> N, O, & P
- Nonfiction Prose = prose writing that presents and explains ideas or that tells about real people, places, objects or events
- Novel = a long work of fiction, has a plot that explores characters in conflict (a book)
- Narration = writing that tells a story, the act of telling a story (narrating)
- Narrative = a story told in fiction, nonfiction, biographies or autobiographies, news stories, poetry, or drama (writing which tells a story)
- Narrator = a speaker or character who tells a story
- Narrative essay = type of essay which tells a true story
- Narrative poem = poetry that tells a story
- Onomatopoeia = a word whose sound imitates its meaning (swoosh)
- Octet = (octave) an eight-line stanza
- Oxymoron = the use of opposite words for effect (jumbo shrimp)
- Orchestra = a circular area where the chorus performed (Greek drama)
- Poetry = type of literature which is highly concise, musical, and emotionally charged
- Parallelism = the repetition of a grammatical pattern, used to emphasize and link ideas
- Personification = a figure of speech in which an object, abstract idea, or animal is given human characteristics
- Pun = an expression that achieves emphasis or humor by utilizing two distinctly different meanings for the same word or two similar sounding words
- Protagonist = the main character in a literary work
- Props = in dramas, objects such as a sword or cup of tea that are used on stage
- Persuasive essay = essay that tries to convince the reader to do something or to accept the writer's point of view
- Parody = a work done in imitation of another, usually in order to mock it, but sometimes just in fun
- Plot = the sequence of events/action in a literary work, involves characters and a central conflict
- Prose = the ordinary form of written language, usually not poetry, drama, or song
- Paradox = a statement that contradicts itself, expressed in believable thought
- Parable = a short story, not true, that teaches a lesson or is an example of a moral attitude
- Premise = a proposition from which an argument is formed or based or from which a conclusion is drawn
- Powers of observation = closely looking to evidence to surmise what has occurred
- Paradigm = a short story illustrating a quality such as love, loyalty, or faith in a positive way
- Pentameter = verse written in five-foot lines
- Point of view = the perspective from which a story is told, who is telling the story (the narrator's story)
- Peripetia = a sudden turn of events or an unexpected reversal, comes before the denouement
- Panoramic = material presented as exposition by a summary with no details