Fiction Key Terms Posters + Fiction Detectives | Character, Plot, Narrative Structure & Perspective

These four posters explain 34 key terms, from protagonist and exposition to unreliable narrator and motif. They come with a Fiction Detectives activity pack where students put those terms to work.

Created by Clare Madden, secondary English teacher and author of the Touchstones English series.

What’s included

Fiction Key Terms Explained Posters (print-ready PDF, 14 pages, 4 posters)

• Character & Plot: character, protagonist, antagonist, characterisation, plot, key moments, setting and context, themes, dialogue
• Narrative Structure: exposition, inciting incident, rising action, climax, falling action, resolution, chronological narrative, flashback, flashforward
• Narrative Perspective: first, second and third person (limited and omniscient), dual and multiple narrators, narrator reliability
• Literary Techniques: symbolism, foreshadowing, personification, metaphor, simile, motif, irony

Every term card includes:

• a pronunciation guide (“say it”)
• a plain-English definition
• an example from a book students know (Matilda, Charlotte’s Web, Harry Potter, Wonder, The Hunger Games)
• the word’s etymology and a morphology breakdown
• three model sentences

Fiction Detectives (print-ready PDF, 4 pages, about 85 minutes across two or three lessons)

1. Hero or Villain? Sort protagonists from antagonists.
2. Plot Mountain. Map The Three Little Pigs onto narrative structure.
3. Whose Eyes? Retell a moment from Goldilocks in four narrative perspectives, with an unreliable-narrator stretch task.
4. Technique Detective. Spot the literary technique and the clue.
5. Build a Character. Use characterisation and foreshadowing in an opening paragraph.
6. Exit Ticket. Six quick multiple-choice checks.

The pack ends with teacher notes, a full answer key and Literacy Boost support.

Skills covered
Literary vocabulary · narrative structure · point of view · characterisation · identifying techniques · creative and analytical writing · etymology and morphology

Why teachers use it

• Display the posters, or hand them out as reference sheets for any novel or short-story unit.
• Activities 1, 4 and 6 also work as quick retrieval starters.

More free resources from The English Teacher: the Poetry Techniques Poster + Poetry Detectives, the Film Techniques Poster + Film Detectives, and the drama set (What Makes Drama Dramatic?, The Elements of Stagecraft and Drama Detectives).