Literary terms

Story elements and figurative language in one set: plot, setting, conflict and climax alongside simile, metaphor, personification, hyperbole and onomatopoeia. Twenty-four clues, most with a short example, for a reading unit or test review. Quiz Night makes a good end-of-term review for older students.

Games with this list

• Clue Bingo
• Match Up
• Summit Scramble
• I Have, Who Has?
• Talk Around It
• Act, Draw or Say
• Claim the Grid
• Quiz Night

The list

	Clue	Answer
1	The events that happen in a story	Plot
2	Where and when a story takes place	Setting
3	A person or animal in a story	Character
4	The big message or lesson of a story	Theme
5	The problem the characters must face	Conflict
6	The most exciting turning point of a story	Climax
7	How the problem is solved at the end	Resolution
8	The voice telling the story	Narrator
9	Who is telling the story: first person or third person	Point of view
10	Compares using like or as: “fast as a cheetah”	Simile
11	Says one thing is another: “the classroom was a zoo”	Metaphor
12	Gives human traits to things: “the wind whispered”	Personification
13	Repeats the first sound: “silly snakes slither”	Alliteration
14	A word that sounds like what it means, like buzz	Onomatopoeia
15	A huge exaggeration: “I've told you a million times”	Hyperbole
16	Words that end with the same sound	Rhyme
17	A group of lines in a poem	Stanza
18	A category of writing, like mystery or fantasy	Genre
19	Made-up stories	Fiction
20	Writing about real facts and events	Nonfiction
21	The true story of someone's life, written by someone else	Biography
22	The story of a person's life, written by that person	Autobiography
23	The words characters say to each other	Dialogue
24	Hints about what will happen later	Foreshadowing

More english topics

• Grammar and parts of speech
• Synonyms
• Opposites (antonyms)