Allusion - A brief reference to a person, event, or place, real or fictitious, or to a work of art. An allusion may be drawn from history, geography, literature, or religion.
Analepsis and Prolepsis - The rhetorical terms for the narrative technique commonly referred to in film as "flashback" and "flashforward." These are ways in which a narrative's discourse re-orders a given story: by "flashing back" to an earlier point in the story (analepsis) or "flashing forward" to a moment later in the chronological sequence of events (prolepsis).
A good example of both analepsis and prolepsis is the first scene of la Jetée. As we learn a few minutes later, what we are seeing in that scene is a flashback to the past, since the present of the film's diegesis is a time directly following World War III. However, as we learn at the very end of the film, that scene also doubles as a prolepsis, since the dying man the boy is seeing is, in fact, himself. In other words, he is proleptically seeing his own death. We thus have an analepsis and prolepsis in the very same scene.
Aside - An actor’s speech, directed to the audience, that is not supposed to be heard by other actors on stage or in the film. An aside breaks “the fourth wall” of a fiction’s “reality.”
Character - A character is any person, persona, identity, or entity who exists in a work of art. Characters may be entirely fictional or based on real, historical entities. Characters may be human, supernatural, mythical, divine, animal, or personifications of an abstraction. In most conventional narratives, characters are organized into a hierarchy of primary and secondary characters; secondary characters only have importance in relation to main characters as they extend understanding of them through contrast or other forms of informational disclosure.
Closure - Narrative closure refers to not only the ending of the plot, but also the larger epistemological questions of Truth a narrative in grounded in. On the level of plot, closure refers to a formal sense of finality: the story having come full circle, the events having completely played out, the questions generated during the narrative having been given authoritative answers. Detective narratives, for example, depend on strong closure: by the end of the story all the false leads have been explored and tossed aside, with the detective providing the One True Answer to Who Did It. Some narratives refuse closure, refuse to produce a position from which a final authoritative Truth can be derived. Such narratives explore or critique the notion of a single Truth or truths produced by dominant cultural authorities.
Defamiliarization - The artistic technique of forcing the audience to see the commonplace in an unfamiliar or strange way in order to enhance perception of the familiar. It is specifically associated with the work of poet and playwright Bertolt Brecht, whose Verfremdungseffekt ("alienation effect") was a central element of his approach to theater. Brecht’s ideas have been been highly influential on filmmakers like Jean-Luc Godard and Yvonne Rainer who are interested in subverting the “reality effect” of conventional cinema and reminding spectators of the artificial and political, as opposed to “natural,” nature of all narrative.
Diegesis - The diegesis of a narrative is its entire created world. Any narrative includes a diegesis, whether you are reading science fiction, fantasy, mimetic realism, or psychological realism. However, each kind of story will render that “world” in different ways. The suspension of disbelief that we all perform before entering into a fictional world entails an acceptance of a story's diegesis.
Discourse and Story - Discourse and story are terms that refer to the basic structure of all narrative form. "Story" refers to the actual chronology of events in a narrative; not just the plot, but the chronology of events within the plot. In most cases, then, “story,” refers to that which has to be reconstructed from a narrative; the chronological sequence of events as they actually occurred in the diegetic universe of the narrative. The closest a film narrative ever comes to pure story is in what is termed "real time." In literature, it's harder to present material in real time. “Discourse” refers to the manipulation of that story in the presentation of the narrative: events may be presented in a linear or non-linear fashion, through single or multiple points-of-view, through a single or multiple mode of address, etc. Authors may use metaphors or other rhetorical devices, relay a story in verse or prose---all these are part of a narrative’s discourse. In film, discourse also includes such things as framing, cutting, camera movement, camera angles, music, and so forth.
Duration - The actual time lapsed during the events of the plot. Both literary and film narratives compress duration in multiple ways.
First-Person Narration - The telling of a story in the grammatical first person, i.e. from the perspective of an "I." First-person narratives are useful for stories which focus on a character’s subjectivity, their interior “world,” since they focalize the narrative through the perspective of a single character. The question of motivation or psychology is therefore often raised: why is this narrator telling us this story in this way? Are their perceptions accurate? For this reason, unreliable narrators are not uncommon. Such narratives are limited in what they can include in the story: only events that the narrator has directly witnessed, participated in, or been told, can be presented. This form of narration is difficult to achieve in film; however, voice-over narration can create a similar structure as can the use of single point-of-view shots.
Focalize (focalizer, focalized object) - The presentation of a scene through the subjective perception of a character. The term can refer to the person doing the focalizing (the focalizer) or to the object that is being perceived (the focalized object). In literature, one can achieve this effect through first-person narration or free indirect discourse. In film, the effect can be achieved through various camera tricks and editing, for example POV shots, subjective treatment, over-the-shoulder shots, and so on. Focalization is a discursive element added to a narrative's story.
Fourth Wall - The fourth wall is an element of fiction’s “reality effect.” Originally, the term referred to the imaginary "wall" at the front of the stage in a proscenium theater, through which the audience sees the action in the world of the play. The term now applies to the boundary between the any piece of fiction and the audience. When this boundary is broken, it is called "breaking the fourth wall”: the illusion of diegetic “reality” is thus transgressed.
Frame Narrative - A story within a story. This narrative form usually echoes in structure a thematic search for something deep, hidden, or secret at the heart of the narrative. The form thus also resembles the psychoanalytic process of uncovering the unconscious behind various levels of repressive, obfuscating narratives put in place by the conscious mind.
Free indirect discourse - Free indirect speech is a style of third-person narration which combines some of the characteristics of third-person report with first-person direct speech. A third person narration then, is coloured by the syntax and perceptions of a particular character (which would normally be presented directly or indirectly). Examples:
----Direct speech: He laid down his bundle and thought of his misfortune. "And just what pleasure have I found, since I came into this world?" he asked.
----Indirect speech: He laid down his bundle and thought of his misfortune. He asked himself what pleasure he had found since he came into the world.
----Free indirect speech: He laid down his bundle and thought of his misfortune. And just what pleasure had he found, since he came into this world?
Gaze - In feminist film theory, this term refers to the predominantly male gaze of Hollywood cinema, which tends to present women as objects to be looked at (by the audience as well as other characters), rather than subjects with their own voice and subjectivity. Feminist critics examine carefully the ways that camera angles and film editing tends to focalize women as objects perceived by voyeuristic men. The theory of “the gaze” is dependent on Freudian categories of scopophilia (voyeurism) and narcissism (exhibitionism) as gendered psychological formations.
Genre - A category of artistic, musical, or literary composition characterized by a particular style, form, or content. Literary and film genres include: detective fiction, the historical narrative, romance, science fiction, film noir, documentary, the western, and so on. Each genre has specific formal elements which characterize it and thus effect reader and viewer expectations and experiences.
Monologue - A long uninterrupted speech by a single character (see Soliloquy).
Narration - Narration refers to the way that a story is told, and so belongs to the level of discourse (although in first-person narration it may be that the narrator also plays a role in the development of the story itself). The different kinds of narration are categorized by each one's primary grammatical stance: either 1) the narrator speaks from within the story and, so, uses "I" to refer to him- or herself (see first-person narration); in other words, the narrator is a character of some sort in the story itself, even if he is only a passive observer; or 2) the narrator speaks from outside the story and never employs the "I" (see third-person narration).
Narrative Structure - This term refers to the overall ordering of events in a narrative as they are presented to a reader or spectator. Most conventional narratives are linear, that is, they present events in a more-or-less chronological order. While linear narratives may employ analepsis or prolepsis (flashbacks or flashforwards), these do not in anyway confuse the general understanding of categories of past, present and future (indeed, a technique like a flashback is dependent on a clear division between past and present). In linear narratives, causal relations between separate events are usually clear and straightforward. Some narratives use non-linear structures, that is, they present events in an order in which chronology is obscured or even unimportant. Non-linear narratives are often used in stories in which causal relations are thrown open to question.
Third-Person Narration - Any story told in the grammatical third person, i.e. without using "I" or "we." This is perhaps the most common sort of narration with two variations:
----Third-Person Limited Narration or Limited Omniscience - Focusing a third-person narration through the eyes of a single character. Even when an author chooses to tell a narrative through omniscient narration, s/he will sometimes (or even for the entire tale) limit the perspective of the narrative to that of a single character, choosing for example only to narrate the inner thoughts of that one character. The narrative is still told in third-person; however, it is clear that it is, nonetheless, being told through the eyes of a single character.
----Third-Person Omniscient Narration - This is a common form of third-person narration in which a generic “voice” narrates the tale from an omniscient perspective: diving into private thoughts, narrating secret or hidden events, jumping between spaces and times.
Plot - The events of a story. A narrative may have one plot, or a main plot and several secondary or subplots, or multiple main plots.
POV - Point of view is the perspective from which a story is being told or written. It may include the perceptions of main characters or views of a specific or generic narrator.
Setting - The time, place, physical details, and circumstances in which a story occurs. Settings include the background, atmosphere or environment in which characters live and move, and usually includes physical descriptions of the surroundings. A setting may be simple or elaborate, used to create ambiance, lend credibility or realism, emphasize or accentuate, organize, or even distract the reader/spectator.
Soliloquy - In a play, a soliloquy is a long monologue in which a character is speaking his or her thoughts aloud or directly to the audience.
Unreliable Narrator - A narrator that is not trustworthy, whose rendition of events must be taken with a grain of salt. We tend to see such narrators especially in first-person narration, since that form of narration tends to underline the motives behind the transmission of a given story.
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