Basic Literary Terms Basic Literary Terms Literary terms for week 1. However, it's important for us all to understand that plot as such does not exist in the real world.
Plot is a device used by writers to impose order on what is essentially chaos.
For simplicity's sake, we'll begin with the linear plot. Gustav Freytag was a 19th century thinker who devised this schematic. The first point is the exposition wherein the writer introduces the setting and characters . I'll come back to these later. The next point on the pyramid is rising action.