Glossary

Creative writing terms: a fiction glossary

Creative writing terms are the shared words writers use to talk about how a story works: narrator, point of view, plot, conflict, scene, pacing. This glossary defines 53 of them in alphabetical order, then 27 terms specific to Story Circle, the app where a community writes one book together, such as chapter slot, branch, path, branching book and Story Coin.

Last updated: September 22, 2026

53 terms · A to Z

What are the most common creative writing terms?

The terms below apply to any story, short story or novel. They are in alphabetical order, and each definition stands on its own. To see most of them at work inside a single story, read how to write a story for beginners; every guide is collected under creative writing guides.

Antagonist: The force working against what the protagonist wants. It is usually a person, but an institution, nature or the protagonist’s own fear can play the part.
Archetype: A familiar pattern of character or situation that recurs in stories across cultures: the mentor, the trickster, the hero who leaves home. An archetype is a starting point; the specific details are what turn it into someone.
Backstory: What happened to a character before the story begins. It explains how they behave now, and it works best revealed in small pieces rather than delivered in one block.
Branching narrative: A story structure that splits at one or more points and continues along different paths, usually because the reader makes a choice. Because the number of paths multiplies quickly, writers merge some branches back together or close them early with an ending.
Canon: The events and facts officially accepted as true within a fictional universe. In fan fiction, canon separates what the source work actually established from what fans have added.
Character arc: The inner change a character goes through over the course of a story. A character who starts out believing one thing either revises that belief under pressure or holds on to it at a cost.
Chekhov’s gun: The principle that every detail a story draws attention to should pay off later. It is attributed to Anton Chekhov, whose advice was that a gun shown hanging on the wall early in a play has to be fired before the end.
Cliché: A phrase, character or plot turn used so often it has lost its effect, like the rescuer who arrives at the last second. Clichés are not forbidden; they do damage when they let the reader predict exactly what happens next.
Cliffhanger: Ending a chapter or a story at the moment of highest tension, before the outcome is shown. It pulls the reader into the next chapter, and in a book written by several people it also hands the next writer a ready-made starting point.
Climax: The point where the conflict reaches its highest tension and nothing can go back to how it was. The protagonist’s hardest decision usually lands here.
Conflict: The tension between what a character wants and what stands in the way; it is what moves a plot. Conflict can be with another person, with society, with nature or within the character.
Dialogue: Characters speaking to each other. Good dialogue reveals character and pushes the conflict forward more than it delivers information; nobody talks exactly like real people, but it should read as if they do.
Epilogue: A short section after the main ending that shows the consequences of the story or where the characters ended up.
Fan fiction: New stories written by fans using the characters or world of an existing work, such as a book, series, film or game; also called fanfic. On Story Circle, a book opened as fan fiction names the source work it is based on.
First draft: The first complete version of a piece of writing, before any revision. Its job is to exist, not to be good: revision can only start once there is text to revise.
First person: Narration in which the narrator says “I” and tells the story from inside it. It brings the reader very close to one character but cannot show anything that character does not witness.
Flashback: A scene that interrupts the present of the story to show something that happened earlier. It is mostly used to give the reader the reason behind a character’s present behavior.
Foreshadowing: A small hint early in a story at something that will happen later. Done well, the outcome surprises the reader yet looks inevitable in hindsight.
Genre: A category of fiction that promises the reader a particular experience: a mystery promises a solution, horror promises dread, romance promises a relationship. Genre sets the expectations a writer either meets or breaks on purpose.
Hook: A sentence, question or situation at the start of a text that catches the reader’s curiosity and keeps them reading. The first line, the first paragraph and every chapter ending are chances for a hook.
Interactive fiction: Fiction in which the reader’s choices change what happens next. It covers choose-your-own-adventure books, text games and branching stories read on a screen.
Interior monologue: A character’s thoughts rendered directly, often in the first person. It is more ordered than stream of consciousness: the thought has already become sentences.
Mood: The feeling a scene or text creates in the reader: unease, calm, suspense. It is built from setting, light, sound and the rhythm of the sentences.
Motivation: The want or need that drives a character to act. When the reader knows what a character wants and why, the character’s decisions feel believable.
Novel: A long work of prose fiction that can carry several plot lines, many characters and a long span of time. It is divided into chapters and written to be read over several sittings.
Novella: Prose fiction longer than a short story and shorter than a novel, usually following a single line of events with a small cast.
Omniscient narrator: A narrator who stands outside the events and knows every character’s thoughts, past and future. It allows free movement between characters at the cost of closeness to any one of them.
Outline: A plan of a story’s events, written before or during drafting. It can be a few lines or a chapter-by-chapter map; its purpose is to make decisions before they block the writing.
Pacing: How fast or slow a story feels to the reader. Short scenes, dialogue and action speed it up; description, reflection and summary slow it down.
Plot: The sequence of events in a story, linked by cause and effect. In E. M. Forster’s well-known example, a king dying and then a queen dying is a sequence of events; the queen dying of grief for the king is a plot.
Plotter and pantser: Two ways of drafting: a plotter outlines the story before writing, a pantser discovers it while writing, “by the seat of their pants.” Most writers work somewhere between the two.
Point of view: Whose eyes the story is told through and how much the narrator knows. First person, third person limited and omniscient are the most common choices, and the choice decides what the reader can and cannot know.
Premise: The core situation of a story in one sentence: who wants what, and what stands in the way. It is often framed as a “what if?” question; a premise is not yet a plot, it is what a plot grows from.
Prologue: An opening section before the main story, often set at a different time or told from a different point of view. It leaves the reader with information or a question that pays off later.
Protagonist: The character the story revolves around, whose want drives the plot; also called the main character or hero. A protagonist does not have to be good; the reader only has to want to follow them.
Revision: Rereading a finished draft and reworking its structure, scenes and sentences. Revision is more than fixing typos: cutting a scene or moving it is revision too.
Scene: A unit of story set in one place and in continuous time, in which something changes. If a character’s situation is the same at the end of a scene as at the start, the scene is not moving the story.
Setting: Where and when a story takes place, including the social world around the characters. Setting decides what is possible: the same argument plays out differently in a hospital corridor and at a wedding.
Short story: Short prose fiction built around a single event or moment, with few characters. It differs from a novel in focus as much as in length: a short story aims at one effect.
Show, don’t tell: The principle of letting the reader infer an emotion or trait from behavior, detail and dialogue instead of naming it. “She was scared” tells; a hand that will not stop shaking shows.
Stream of consciousness: A technique that renders a character’s thoughts, associations and sensations as an unedited flow. The sentences follow the jumps of the mind rather than logical order.
Subgenre: A narrower branch of a genre with its own conventions, such as the cozy mystery within crime fiction or urban fantasy within fantasy. A subgenre makes the reader a more specific promise than the main genre.
Subtext: The meaning under a scene that nobody states but the reader picks up. When two characters talk about the weather and are really talking about leaving, the real subject is in the subtext.
Supporting character: A character who is not the protagonist but has a job in the story: helping, blocking, or showing another side of the protagonist. A good supporting character wants something of their own.
Theme: The general, abstract idea a story explores beneath its events: loneliness, justice, the cost of growing up. Theme is rarely stated outright; it comes out of what happens and what the characters decide.
Third person limited: Narration that refers to characters as “he”, “she” or “they” but knows only what one character sees and thinks. It combines the closeness of first person with the flexibility of third.
Three-act structure: A common way of dividing a story: the first act sets up the characters and the problem, the second raises the conflict, the third resolves it. It is a more precise version of beginning, middle and end.
Tone: The attitude a text takes toward its subject, as the reader hears it: ironic, tender, cold, playful. Mood is what the reader feels; tone is how the writing sounds.
Unreliable narrator: A narrator whose account cannot be fully trusted: they may lie, be mistaken, or bend what happened. The reader finds the truth in the gap between what the narrator says and what the story shows.
Voice: The recognizable way a writer or narrator uses language: word choice, sentence length, rhythm and imagery. The same event told in two different voices reads like two different stories.
Worldbuilding: Designing the world a story takes place in: its geography, history, rules and society. It matters most in fantasy and science fiction, and the reader should see only as much of it as the story needs.
Writer’s block: Wanting to write and being unable to. It usually comes from an unmade decision in the story, or from pressure to write perfectly, rather than from a lack of inspiration.
Writing prompt: A short situation, question or opening line given as a starting point for writing. Its job is not to fill the page but to make the first decision easier.

27 terms · Story Circle

What do Story Circle’s own terms mean?

Because a Story Circle book is written by a community rather than one author, the app has its own words for who is writing a chapter, where the story splits, and which path a reader takes. The empty place under a chapter is a chapter slot, and the first writer to start writing in it writes that chapter. How to write a branching story covers how branches and paths are planned.

How a book is shaped

Chapter: On Story Circle, one part of a book written by a single author. The person who set up the book writes the first chapter; a published chapter’s text is not edited directly, and other authors write continuations under it.
Chapter slot: On Story Circle, the empty place under a published chapter where the next chapter can be written but nobody has started yet. The book’s paths-per-chapter setting decides how many slots a chapter has, and the first writer to start writing in an empty slot is the one who writes that chapter.
Book written in order: A Story Circle book that grows as a single line, shown in the app as “Written in order.” Each chapter has one slot under it, every reader reads the same story, and the book completes itself when the line reaches its target chapter count.
Branching book: A Story Circle book in which one chapter can have several continuations, shown in the app as “You choose the path.” Different writers can write different continuations of the same chapter at the same time, and readers choose which way to go at every fork.
Branch: On Story Circle, one of the alternative continuations written under the same chapter of a branching book; readers see it as a path to choose. The number after the dot identifies the branch: 3.2 is the second branch at chapter level three.
Paths per chapter: On Story Circle, the largest number of continuations that can be written under one chapter. The person who sets up the book chooses it and it cannot change once the book is live; in a book written in order it is one.
Path: In a branching Story Circle book, the single line of chapters a reader follows from the first chapter to an ending, made of the branch chosen at each fork. Two readers of the same book can take different paths to different endings.
Main path: In a branching Story Circle book, the default path that follows the first branch at every fork. When such a book is exported as a file, the main path goes into it rather than the whole tree.
Road map: The Story Circle screen that shows every branch, ending and empty chapter of a branching book at once. Readers see which path they are on, which chapters they have read, and which branches have not been continued yet.
Target chapter count: How many chapters a Story Circle book is planned to run along one path, counting the first chapter. A target of 10 means the first chapter plus nine continuations; the book owner can raise it later by spending Story Coin.
Ending: On Story Circle, a chapter that has reached the target chapter count, so nothing more can be written under it. A book written in order has one ending; a branching book can have several, one at the end of each path.

Writing and publishing

Timed writing window: The time a Story Circle writer has to submit a chapter after starting to write in a chapter slot; during that window the chapter is theirs alone to write. The person who sets up the book picks 6, 12, 24, 48 or 72 hours (24 by default), and when the window closes the slot opens to everyone again.
Reading requirement: On Story Circle, the rule that you read the path leading to a chapter before you start writing it. In a book written in order that means every published chapter; in a branching book, only the chapters before the branch you are writing. Chapters you wrote yourself count as read.
Draft: Chapter text written on Story Circle but not yet submitted. It is saved as you write and stays with you even if your writing window closes; if the chapter slot is still empty, you can start again and continue from your draft.
Character range: On Story Circle, the minimum and maximum length of a chapter, counted in characters. The person who sets up the book chooses it, and a chapter outside the range cannot be submitted.
Submission: A chapter sent for publication on Story Circle. It goes through automatic content review first; if it passes, it is published without waiting for anyone’s approval, unless the book owner has turned on reviewing chapters before they go live.
Content review: The automatic check every chapter submitted to Story Circle goes through before it is published, against the platform’s content rules. A chapter that passes is published; one that does not is flagged and the author sees the reason. If the check cannot run, the chapter is not published and the check is tried again.
Appeal: A Story Circle author’s request for a human moderator to look at a chapter that content review flagged. While the appeal is open the chapter slot stays open to other writers; if the appeal succeeds and the slot is still empty, the chapter is published. The author can also fix the text and submit it again instead.
Chapter revision: A change to a chapter already published on Story Circle. The live text is not edited directly: the change goes through review again, and if the book owner approves it the text is updated and the previous version is kept.
Consecutive-author rule: A Story Circle setting a book owner can turn on that asks writers to wait a while (6 hours by default) before continuing their own chapter, so other writers get a chance first. It is off by default, and the book owner is exempt.

The book and its people

Book owner: The person who set up a Story Circle book. They write the first chapter and set the premise, characters, story rules and structure. They cannot edit another author’s text, and can remove a chapter only with a stated reason and only if nothing has been written under it.
Participation mode: The Story Circle setting that decides who can write in a book. In an open book any writer can start writing in an empty chapter slot; in an approval book writers apply to the book owner first and can write once accepted.
Character guide: The list a Story Circle book keeps of its characters, their roles and relationships, so that authors writing different chapters describe the same people the same way. The book owner manages it, and other authors can suggest characters.
Story Coin (SC): Story Circle’s in-app unit, SC for short. You earn it by writing chapters, reading books and coming back each day, and spend it on setting up a book, raising a book’s target chapter count and exporting a book as EPUB or PDF. SC can’t be bought, has no cash value and cannot be transferred.
Appreciation: A permanent mark a Story Circle reader gives a chapter they liked by spending Story Coin. A reader can appreciate a chapter once, and the SC spent does not go to anyone; it leaves circulation.
Level: A Story Circle writer’s standing, which rises with the points earned by writing. Only writing in public books earns points, and a book owner can require a minimum level for writing in their book.
Badge: A permanent mark a Story Circle writer earns on passing a threshold. Some badges measure output, such as publishing a first chapter or many chapters; others measure behavior, such as submitting on time, taking over and finishing a chapter someone else left empty, or writing the chapter that ends the story.