Dramatic Structure
Terms
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- Genre
- Type of play based on desired audience reaction
- Tragedy
- Serious, arouses pity and fear, downfall of protagonist is result of his/her own actions, triumph of a larger cosmic order
- Drama
- Serious, arouses pity and fear, three dimensional characters, characters more important than plot
- Melodrama
- characters less 3-D than drama, clearly defined villains and heroes, situations arouse pity and fear. subgenres are mysteries, sci fi, tearjerkers, crime
- Comedy
- Light in tone happy endings, inteded to amuse, subgenres: romances, satire (makes fun of folly and vice) tragicomedy (mixes tragedy and comedy) black comedy (produces immoral glee)
- Farce
- unserious, 2-D characters, plot dominates character, situations are ludicrous. Spoofs
- Character arc
- The change in perspective undergone by a character
- Character
- True nature. CHaracter doesn't change, it's revealed. it doesn't change because it si a ollection of potentials: what a character would or would not do in the given circumstantces
- provides the background information needed to properly understand the story, such as the protagonist, the antagonist, the basic conflict, and the setting
- Exposition
- a related series of incidents in a literary plot that build toward the point of greatest interest
- Rising Action
- It is the high point of the story for the reader. Frequently, it is the moment of the highest interest and greatest emotion. The point at which the outcome of the conflict can be predicted.
- Climax
- The events following the climax that bring the story to a close
- Falling action
- The resolution to the story
- Denouement
- The narrator is a character in the story who can reveal only personal thoughts and feelings and what he or she sees and is told by other characters. He can’t tell us thoughts of other characters.
- First Person
- The narrator is an outsider who can report only what he or she sees and hears. This narrator can tell us what is happening, but he can’t tell us the thoughts of the characters.
- Third-Person Objective
- The narrator is an outsider who sees into the mind of one of the characters.
- Third-Person Limited
- The narrator is an all-knowing outsider who can enter the minds of more than one of the characters.
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Omniscient