Unit 3 · Longer Fiction or Drama I

Dynamic character ● (core concept) — A character who grows or alters significantly during the narrative. The change often grows out of a conflict of values or a change in circumstances, and it can show outwardly — in health or fortune — or inwardly, in psychology or emotion, with either kind able to spark the other. Such a character's choices often shape the plot's climax and resolution.

Static character ○ — A character who remains largely unchanged, or unaffected, by the narrative's events. (The CED describes such characters as 'remain[ing] unchanged' in CHR-1.N; 'static' is the standard term.)

Motive ● (core concept) — What drives a character to act. Readers infer motives from what a character does — and from what they pointedly do not do.

Social, cultural, and historical setting ● (core concept) — The human context of a text's events — the social, cultural, and historical situation they unfold in, going beyond mere time and place.

Narrative ● (core concept) — Events told as a story — sequenced so that they all bear on some conflict.

Event ● (core concept) — An episode, encounter, or scene within a narrative. Events introduce and develop the plot, and any single event matters according to how it relates to the narrative, the conflict, and the characters' development.

Significant event ● (core concept) — An event — or a related set of events — whose function in the plot can be explained. Significant events often dramatize the competing value systems behind a text's conflict.

Conflict ● (core concept) — Tension between competing values. A single text can hold several conflicts, which often intersect — and secondary conflicts can intensify the primary one.

Internal conflict ● (core concept) — Tension between competing values inside a character — also called psychological conflict.

External conflict ● (core concept) — Tension between a character and some outside force that obstructs the character in some way.

Climax ○ — The turning point of a narrative's action — the point a dynamic character's choices often build toward. (Named in CHR-1.L; the CED defines it no further.)

Claim ● (core concept) — An arguable assertion about a text — one that only stands up if textual evidence backs it.

Textual evidence ● (core concept) — Chosen details from the text, used on purpose — to show, explain, exemplify, connect, intensify, or limit a point. Evidence works when commentary explains its logical link to the claim, and it counts as sufficient when its quantity and quality properly back the line of reasoning.

Thesis statement ● (core concept) — A sentence expressing an interpretation of a literary text: a defensible claim that may map out a line of reasoning, and that must be defended with textual evidence and commentary.

Line of reasoning ● (core concept) — The chain of linked claims by which an essay defends its thesis — each claim leading logically to the next, with commentary showing how every claim and piece of evidence ties back to the thesis.

Commentary ● (core concept) — The writer's own thinking on the page: explaining how each piece of evidence advances the argument and ties back to the thesis.