What happens, and who tells it

Word	What it means
Conflict	The problem that drives the plot. External: against another character, nature or society. Internal: a struggle inside one character's mind.
Exposition / rising action	The opening situation, then the events that build the problem and the tension.
Climax	The turning point, where the conflict is decided. Not always the loudest moment.
Falling action / resolution	What follows from the climax, and how things settle.
Suspense	The reader's uncertainty and worry about what will happen next.
Narrator	The voice telling the story — a character the author created.
Point of view	Who tells the story and how much they can know.
First person	Told by a character using I. Always limited — sometimes called first-person limited — to what that character sees, knows and chooses to tell.
Third-person limited	Told with she, he or they, following one character's thoughts only.
Third-person omniscient	An all-knowing narrator who can report any character's thoughts.
Third-person objective	A narrator who reports only what can be seen and heard, like a camera.
Foreshadowing	An early hint of something that will happen later.
Flashback	A scene from an earlier time that interrupts the present story.
Dialogue	The words characters speak aloud, in quotation marks.

Jonah promised his neighbour he would look after her dog for the weekend. On Saturday he finds the gate open and the dog gone. He searches until dark, rehearsing what he will tell her. On Sunday morning, before anyone else can reach her, he calls her himself.

A model reading. There are two conflicts: finding the dog (external) and whether Jonah will own up (internal). The dog vanishing is the most dramatic event, but it only starts the problem. The climax is the phone call, because that is where the conflict that matters — honesty against fear — is decided.

How suspense is built here: time pressure (searching until dark), withheld information (we never hear what he rehearses) and a delay before the decision. When a question asks how suspense is created, look for what the writer is keeping from you, and for how long.

• First person: “I told Coach my ankle was fine. It wasn't, but the final was Saturday.”
• Third objective: “Ana told the coach her ankle was fine. She walked to the bench without limping.”
• Third omniscient: “Ana told the coach her ankle was fine, and the coach, who had watched her favour it all week, decided to say nothing.”

A model reading. In first person we know Ana is lying because she tells us, but not what the coach thinks — Ana could only guess. In the objective version we cannot even tell she is lying. Only the omniscient narrator shows both minds, so only there do we learn the coach knows. One event, three amounts of information.

A limited narrator can be wrong. A young narrator may report something without understanding it, while the reader sees what it means.

Technique	Example	What it does here
Foreshadowing	Before the hike, Mira's father checked the forecast twice and packed a second jacket she laughed at.	Plants a worry, so the storm that comes later feels earned.
Flashback	At the edge of the pool, Leo was seven again, and his uncle's hand was letting go of his.	Placed just before Leo has to jump, it explains the fear the present scene only shows.
Dialogue	“Did you finish it?” “I started it.” “That isn't what I asked.”	Reveals character with no narrator: one speaker is dodging, and the other is not fooled.

Spotting a flashback: a trigger in the present (a place, a smell, an object), a shift in time, then a return. Ask what the past scene explains about the present one.

Reading dialogue: what a character avoids saying is often more revealing than what they say. Clipped replies and changes of subject are evidence.

• Calling the most dramatic event the climax when the conflict is decided somewhere else.
• Treating the narrator as the author.
• Letting a first-person narrator know other characters' thoughts. They can only guess.
• Mixing up flashback and foreshadowing. One shows the past; the other hints at the future.
• Summarizing dialogue instead of asking what it reveals.