List of narrative techniques
A narrative technique is any of several specific methods the creator of a narrative uses to convey what they want—in other words, a strategy used in the making of a narrative to relay information to the audience and, particularly, to "develop" the narrative, usually in order to make it more complete, complicated, or interesting. Literary techniques are distinguished from literary elements, which exist inherently in works of writing.
Setting
Plots
Perspective
Style
| Name | Definition | Example |
| Allegory | Symbolic fiction as presented in a story | C. S. Lewis's The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is a religious allegory with Aslan as Christ and Edmund as Judas. |
| Alliteration | Repeating the same letter or consonant sound at the beginning of adjacent or closely connected words. | In the film V for Vendetta the main character performs a couple of soliloquies with a heavy use of alliteration, e.g., "Voilà! In view, a humble vaudevillian veteran, cast vicariously as both victim and villain by the vicissitudes of Fate. This visage, no mere veneer of vanity, is a vestige of the vox populi, now vacant, vanished, as the once vital voice of the verisimilitude now venerates what they once vilified. However, this valorous visitation of a bygone vexation stands vivified, and has vowed to vanquish these venal and virulent vermin vanguarding vice and vouchsafing the violently vicious and voracious violation of volition. The only verdict is vengeance; a vendetta held as a votive, not in vain, for the value and veracity of such shall one day vindicate the vigilant and the virtuous. Verily, this vichyssoise of verbiage veers most verbose vis-à-vis an introduction, and so it is my very good honor to meet you and you may call me V." |
| Amplification | Amplification refers to a literary practice wherein the writer embellishes the sentence by adding more information to it in order to increase its worth and understanding. | E.g., Original sentence: The thesis paper was difficult. After amplification: The thesis paper was difficult: it required extensive research, data collection, sample surveys, interviews and a lot of fieldwork. |
| Anagram | Rearranging the letters of a word or a phrase to form a new phrase or word. | E.g., An anagram for "debit card" is "bad credit". As you can see, both phrases use the same letters. By mixing the letters a bit of humor is created. |
| Asyndeton | When sentences do not use conjunctions to separate clauses, but run clauses into one another, usually marking the separation of clauses with punctuation. | An example is when John F. Kennedy said on January 20, 1961 "...that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty." |
| Bathos | An abrupt transition in style from the exalted to the commonplace, producing a ludicrous effect. While often unintended, bathos may be used deliberately to produce a humorous effect. | The ballerina rose gracefully en pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant. |
| Caesura | A break, especially a sense pause, usually near the middle of a verse, and marked in scansion by a double vertical line. This technique frequently occurs within a poetic line grammatically connected to the end of the previous line by enjambment. | E.g., in "Know then thyself. ‖ Presume not God to scan." |
| Distancing effect | Deliberately preventing the audience from identifying with characters in order to let them be coolly scrutinized. | Popularized by 20th century playwright Bertolt Brecht. |
| Dramatic visualization | Representing an object or character with abundant descriptive detail, or mimetically rendering gestures and dialogue to make a scene more visual or imaginatively present to an audience. | This technique appears at least as far back as the Arabian Nights. |
| Euphuism | An artificial, highly elaborate way of writing or speaking. Named from Euphues the prose romance by John Lyly. | "Is it not far better to abhor sins by the remembrance of others' faults, than by repentance of thine own follies?" |
| Hyperbole | Exaggeration used to evoke strong feelings or create an impression which is not meant to be taken literally. | Sally could no longer hide her secret. Her pregnant belly was bigger than the planet on which she stood. |
| Imagery | Forming mental images of a scene using descriptive words, especially making use of the human senses. The same as sensory detail. | When the boots came off his feet with a leathery squeak, a smell of ferment and fish market immediately filled the small tent. The skin of his toes were red and raw and sensitive. The malodorous air was so toxic he thought he could almost taste his toes. |
| Leitwortstil | Purposefully repeating words that usually express a motif or theme important to the story. | This dates back at least to the Arabian Nights. |
| Metonymy | Word or phrase in a figure of speech in which a noun is referenced by something closely associated with it, rather than explicitly by the noun itself. This is not to be confused with synecdoche, in which a part of the whole stands for the thing itself. | Metonomy: The boxer threw in the towel. Synecdoche: She gave her hand in marriage. |
| Overstatement | Exaggerating something, often for emphasis | Sally's pregnant belly most likely weighed as much as the scooter she used to ride before she got pregnant. |
| Onomatopoeia | Words that imitate/spell a sound or noise. Word that sounds the same as, or similar to what the word means. | "Boom goes the dynamite." "Bang!" "Bark." |
| Oxymoron | A term made of two words that deliberately or coincidentally imply each other's opposite. | "terrible beauty" |
| Paradox | A phrase that describes an idea composed of concepts that conflict. | "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times." |
| Parody | Ridicule by overstated imitation, usually humorous. | MAD Magazine |
| Pastiche | Using forms and styles from another author, generally as an affectionate tribute. | Such as the many stories featuring Sherlock Holmes not written by Arthur Conan Doyle, or much of the Cthulhu Mythos. |
| Pathos | Emotional appeal, one of the three modes of persuasion in rhetoric that the author uses to inspire pity or sorrow towards a character—typically does not counterbalance the target character's suffering with a positive outcome, as in Tragedy. | In Romeo and Juliet, the two main characters each commit suicide at the sight of the supposedly dead lover, however the audience knows these actions to be rash and unnecessary. Therefore, Shakespeare makes for the emotional appeal for the unnecessary tragedy behind the young characters' rash interpretations about love and life. |
| Polyptoton | Words derived from the same root in a sentence. | "Not as a call to battle, though embattled we are." John F. Kennedy, Inaugural Address, January 20, 1961. |
| Polysyndeton | Polysyndeton is the use of several conjunctions in close succession, this provides a sense of exaggeration designed to wear down the audience. | An example of this is in the first chapter of Great Expectations by Charles Dickens: "A man who had been soaked in water, and smothered in mud, and lamed by stones, and cut by flints, and stung by nettles, and torn by briars; who limped, and shivered, and glared and growled; and whose teeth chattered in his head as he seized me by the chin" |
| Satire | The use of humor, irony or exaggeration to criticize. | An example is Network. One of the earliest examples is Gullivers Travels, written by Jonathan Swift. The television program South Park is another. |
| Sensory detail | Sight, sound, taste, touch, smell. The same as imagery. | The boot was tough and sinewy between his hard-biting teeth. There was no flavor to speak of except for the blandness of all the dirt that the boot had soaked up over the years. The only thing the boot reminded him of was the smell of a wet-dog. |
| Understatement | A diminishing or softening of a theme or effect. | The broken ends of the long bone were sticking through the bleeding skin, but it wasn't something that always killed a man. |