Characterisation: creating a realistic/believable character that engages the reader emotionally

Setting: The where and the when.

Language: The way the talk to each other. (accents/phrases that give a sense of time and place)

Key Incident: An important moment in the text.

Climax: The moment that everything has been building up to.

Plot: The storyline.

Theme: The message of the story (or the moral of the story)

was a package of grants, with the United Nations leading, and it was to build hospitals

and schools. They called it “seed-corn” money. Now, “seed-corn” money is very

important in the way these things work. When a country receives such money, it is a

condition that a proportion of the money is matched by the government, and by other

donor countries too. In this case, that thirty million was going to be added to, by our

government here and by, oh … private investment – the big banks were involved. So that

thirty would, we hoped, turn to sixty or seventy. Seventy million would have changed the

city, Miss Olivia – at that time. But no schools or hospitals were ever built, and the city

stayed poor. Senator Zapanta stole it, and I tried to prove he stole it. It never went to

court, because the senator quickly counter-sued. It seemed he had many more friends

than I, and infinitely more power. I ended up charged and prosecuted. I was convicted –

my appeals were laughed at. Life imprisonment, I got, and …’

He paused again, and winced with pain.

‘I think the sentence is nearly over.’