Short Stories

Unit Review Sheet

Facts and Definitions

Lesson 1: The Good Deed

• A short story is a work of fiction that can be read in one sitting.
• Short stories have fewer characters, fewer situations, and fewer pages than novels.
• Most short stories focus on one main incident that takes place within one setting.

Lesson 2: Short Story Genre

• A run-on sentence is an error caused by combining two or more independent clauses (groups of words that form a complete sentence) without using punctuation or a conjunction.
• In a high fantasy story the setting occurs in an imaginary world.
• In a low fantasy story, magical elements occur in the real world.

Lesson 3: The Dog of Pompeii

• Through the actions of characters, authors reveal the characters' traits and personalities.
• Irony is a statement or situation that is surprising because it is the opposite of what would be expected.

Lesson 4: Rip Van Winkle

• [none]

Lesson 5: Zlateh the Goat

• A sentence must have a subject and verb, and it must express a complete idea.
• A sentence fragment is an incomplete sentence. It is often incomplete because it is either a prepositional phrase (under the house, around the corner) or a dependent clause (because she was cold, when they were walking).
• A narrator (the person telling the story) who observes what is happening but is not actually in the story is telling the story from the third person point of view. (The narrator does not use the word "I.")
• When the narrator knows all the thoughts, motives, and feelings of each character, the narrator is said to be omniscient.
• When an outside observer tells the story but does not know the thoughts, motives, and feelings of the characters, the narrator is a detached observer.
• In the first person point of view, the story is told by a character within the story using the first person pronoun, "I."
• If the first person narrator is the main character, the point of view is first person protagonist.
• If the first person narrator is a secondary character, the point of view is first person observer.

Lesson 6: Women in Short Stories

• [none]

Lesson 7: Your Choice

• Know the basic elements of a story.

Final Project: Writing a Short Story

• [none]