The craft glossary
The lenses a story can be read through, each a real term of craft, defined, that you’ll see attached to works and ideas across the map.
What it's about
Theme
13 termsThe underlying idea or question a story is really about, beneath its events. A theme is abstract, you state it as an idea, not a thing.
How to spot it: Ask what the story is arguing about: the cost of ambition, what makes us human, whether the past can be escaped.
Often confused with motif: A motif is the concrete thing that recurs (a mirror); the theme is the idea it serves (identity).
Premise
12 termsThe central “what if” a story is built on, its speculative or situational hook. The engine of the plot, not its meaning.
How to spot it: Finish the sentence “What if…”: what if minds could be uploaded? what if the dead returned?
Often confused with theme: The premise is the setup; the theme is what that setup lets the story explore.
Motif
12 termsA concrete image, object, or detail that recurs through a work and gathers meaning as it returns.
How to spot it: Something you could photograph that keeps coming back: rain, mirrors, a green light, hands.
Often confused with theme: A motif is concrete and repeated; a theme is the abstract idea it points toward.
Patterns
Trope
14 termsA storytelling convention readers recognize and expect, neutral raw material, neither good nor bad on its own.
How to spot it: A pattern you've seen before and can name: the chosen one, the heel turn, the locked room.
Often confused with cliché: A trope becomes a cliché only when overuse drains it of effect.
Cliché
9 termsA trope worn smooth by overuse, so it lands as tired rather than satisfying. A status a trope can reach, not a separate device.
How to spot it: When you can predict it and feel nothing: “it was all a dream”, the last-second rescue.
Often confused with trope: Every cliché was once a fresh trope; the difference is wear, not kind.
Characters
Archetype
12 termsA recurring character role that carries familiar resonance from one story to the next.
How to spot it: A part more than a person: the mentor, the trickster, the antihero, the femme fatale.
Often confused with trope: An archetype is a kind of character; a trope is a kind of situation or convention.
How it's told
Narrative technique
12 termsA method of telling, how a story is constructed and delivered, as opposed to what happens in it.
How to spot it: Describe the telling, not the events: an unreliable narrator, a frame story, present tense, epistolary form.
Often confused with structure: Technique is a local choice of delivery; structure is the shape of the whole.
Structure
11 termsThe architecture of a story, how it is shaped across its full length.
How to spot it: Zoom out to the skeleton: three acts, a hero's journey, a tale told inside a frame.
Often confused with narrative technique: Structure is the overall blueprint; technique is a tool used within it.
Plot device
12 termsA mechanism that drives the plot forward or resolves it.
How to spot it: The thing that makes the next event happen: a MacGuffin, a red herring, a Chekhov's gun.
Often confused with trope: A plot device does a job in the machinery; a trope is a pattern readers recognize.
What kind it is
Genre & subgenre
15 termsA tradition with shared conventions and reader expectations, itself with a lineage of subgenres.
How to spot it: The shelf it belongs on and the promises that come with it: cyberpunk, gothic, cozy mystery.
Often confused with premise: A genre is a whole tradition; a premise is one story's specific hook within it.