Six of one and a half dozen of the other

Fabulous fiction writing (you know, like the kind I do), just doesn’t magically appear on the page. It’s built around a frame of six major elements, each one essential to the over all narrative. Want to know what they are? I thought you’s never ask!

The Six Major Elements of Fiction

  1. Character — A figure in a literary work (personality, gender, age, etc). E. M. Forester makes a distinction between flat and round characters. Flat characters are types or caricatures defined by a single idea of quality, whereas round characters have the three-dimensional complexity of real people..
  2. Plot – the major events that move the action in a narrative. It is the sequence of major events in a story, usually in a cause-effect relation.

Conflict –  Plot usually involves one or more conflicts, which are problems that need to be solved. The “movement” towards a solution is what drives the narrative forward, and is what occupies most of the protagonist’s time. The more rewarding plots are often built around mental, emotional and moral conflicts.  Plots involving physical conflict, war, exploration, escapes often contain the most excitement and suspense.  Here are the major types of conflict:

  1. Man’s struggle against nature
  2. Man against man
  3. Man against society
  4. Man against himself (i.e. a portrayal of an inner struggle)

The first three types are said to be external conflicts, while the last one is internal.

  1. Point of View — the vantage point from which a narrative is told. A narrative is typically told from a first-person or third-person point of view. In a narrative told from a first-person perspective, the author tells the story through a character who refers to himself or herself as “I.” Third –person narratives come in two types: omniscient and limited. An author taking an omniscient point of view assumes the vantage point of an all-knowing narrator able not only to recount the action thoroughly and reliably but also to enter the mind of any character in the work or any time in order to reveal his or her thoughts, feelings, and beliefs directly to the reader. An author using the limited point of view recounts the story through the eyes of a single character (or occasionally more than one, but not all or the narrator would be an omniscient narrator).
  2. Setting –- That combination of place, historical time, and social milieu that provides the general background for the characters and plot of a literary work. The general setting of a work may differ from the specific setting of an individual scene or event.
  3. Style — The author’s type of diction (choice of words), syntax (arrangement of words), and other linguistic features of a work.
  4. Theme(s) — The central and dominating idea (or ideas) in a literary work. The term also indicates a message or moral implicit in any work of art.

Got it? Now get writing!