A gradual decrease in the brightness of an image or the audibility of a sound; a video editing technique used to signal a major transition or the end of a work figurative language The use of words in nonliteral ways Figures of speech such as similes, metaphors, and personification are examples of figurative language first-person point of view When the narrator is involved in the events of the story, he or she is telling the story from a first-person point of view First-person narrators can be unreliable, so the reader may have to figure out what is actually going on See narrator, point of view, third-person point of view font A set of type of one size and face; a style of typeface free verse Poetry that does not have a regular pattern of rhythm, rhyme, or stanzas, but uses the natural rhythm of spoken language