A story is a set of choices

Word	What it means
Conflict	The struggle that drives the plot: character versus self, another character, nature, society or fate.
Protagonist	The central character whose struggle the story follows. Not necessarily likeable.
Antagonist	The opposing force. It need not be a person.
Exposition	The opening situation — who, where, when, and what normal looks like.
Climax	The point of greatest tension, where the outcome is decided. Not necessarily the loudest moment.
Resolution	How things settle afterwards.
Direct characterization	The narrator telling you what a character is like.
Indirect characterization	Showing it through action, speech, thought and effect on others.
Foil	A character whose contrast highlights another's qualities.
Dynamic / static character	One who changes internally, and one who does not.
Point of view	Who tells it and how much they know.
Theme	What the story says about its subject — a statement, not a topic. “Ambition” is a topic; “ambition severed from conscience destroys the person who holds it” is a theme.

Internal and external. Character versus self covers doubt, guilt, temptation and divided loyalty. Many strong stories run both at once, and the external conflict is often a way of dramatising the internal one.

Flashbacks. Ask why it appears where it appears. One placed just before a decision usually tells you what is really driving that decision.

Theme is a sentence. A one-word answer is a topic. If you cannot state the theme as a claim the story argues for, you have not found it yet — and an essay thesis is usually a theme statement with evidence attached.

Indirect characterization is better evidence. “She was generous” gives you nothing to analyse. A character quietly paying someone else's bill gives you an action, a motive to infer and a quotation to use.

Foils. A cautious friend beside a reckless protagonist is a foil, and writing about the foil is often the clearest way to write about the protagonist.

Dynamic characters. The change has to be in understanding, values or self, not merely in circumstances. Showing what caused it is almost always a better paragraph than showing that it happened.

Point of view	Access	Effect
First person	One character's thoughts, from inside	Immediate; limited to what they know and admit
Third limited	One character's thoughts, from outside	Closeness with some distance
Third omniscient	Every character's thoughts	Breadth; the reader can know more than anyone in the story
Third objective	Actions and speech only	Detachment; the reader must infer everything

Setting is doing work when moving the story elsewhere would break it. If it would change nothing, the setting is scenery and there is little to say.

Symbolism needs a pattern. One appearance is a detail; a concrete object recurring at moments that link it to an abstract idea is a symbol. Pointing to the repetition is what makes the reading persuasive rather than imposed.

• Summarising the plot instead of analysing choices.
• Giving a theme as one word. It is a sentence.
• Treating first person as automatically unreliable.
• Asserting a symbol from a single mention.