1. ELEMENTS OF FICTION
• The Story, whether it is a short story, novel or fork tale, has the following general elements that are used to analyze any written story:
-Author
-Setting
-plot
-Themes
-Characters
-Style
-Language
1.1. ELEMENTS OF FICTION (AUTHOR)
Author: This is the writer of any written work of art or fiction. It is very important to not only know the name of the author, but you should also understand and appreciate his or her background. This will help you the reader to understand what, how and why the author writes any story or novel. For example, authors have different writing styles in their works, and they are motivated variously in their writing the story. Once you appreciate these things about the author, it most likely that you shall understand and enjoy the story you are reading and analyzing.
1.2. ELEMENTS OF FICTION (SETTING)
• This is the place and time in which the story unfolds or takes place.
• Setting is important in understanding the background and impact of the story or incidents in the story. If a story is well told, we will recall the setting later, long after we have put the story aside. Where the setting threatens the characters, it creates the conflict which is as important in fiction writing or literature.
• So, in interpreting or reviewing a setting of a story, you may have to ask and answer such questions as: How does the setting or atmosphere influence the work? Where do the events of story take place? When do they occur? What was the mood when the incident took place?
1.3. ELEMENTS OF FICTION (PLOT)
This is a series or chain of related events that tells us ‘what happens’ in a story. When a plot is well mapped out, it ‘hooks’ us, that is, it catches our curiosity (interest) about what will happen next. A good plot draws us along after the narrator, just as a fish is hooked and played and reeled in by an expert fisherman. The first thing to recognize about plot is the nature of that hook which pulls us along and keeps us reading. What the hook grabs is our own curiosity, making us wonder about the outcome of a conflict. When a story is strong, you can be reasonably sure its conflict is strong.
1.3.1. ELEMENTS OF PLOT
• Let us explore this idea of conflict further because it is a core or basic element of plot in the story. It is conflict or struggle that gives any story its energy.
• This conflict can be between one person or animal and another, one person or animal and a group of persons or a whole society, one person or animal and nature, or one person or animal with something in the person or animal such as fear, shyness, homesickness, or just an inability to make a decision.
1.3.2. ELEMENTS OF PLOT CONFLICT
• A conflict can be external, as when a person struggles with another person, or with an angry warthog or with a hurricane. On the other hand, a conflict can be internal, that is, it can take place inside a person’s mind or heart. This might happen when a character has to make a hard decision, or struggle against fear, or resist an urge to poke his nose into everyone’s business.
• More conflicts in a story result into complications that develop as you read the story that require resolutions. In most cases, these complications are full of suspense that builds up as you anticipate what happens next in the story. This leads to a climax in the story, that is, the most emotional moment or the tensest mood of the story (breath-taking). Lastly, every story with conflicts should come to a resolution or an end. Sometimes the story may end in suspense, leaving you to guess what happens at the end of the story. However, most stories especially short stories will often have a resolution or conclusive end. In other words, your questions are answered at the end of the story whether for good or bad.
• Therefore, in interpreting or reviewing a plot for the story, you may have to ask and answer such questions as: What is the central conflict of the story? Why does the conflict occur? What larger meaning or picture is suggested by the way the conflict is resolved?
1.4. ELEMENTS OF FICTION (THEME)
• Theme: This refers to the controlling, main idea or central insight in the novel or short story. Theme answers the question ‘What does it mean?’ a story’s theme is often hard to state, but it is what the author means or what the reader perceives to mean by the whole story.
• A theme is usually stated in a sentence or statement. This is so because a theme has to say something about the subject rather than just stated as a subject phrase!
• Mostly, questions are framed in such a way as to let you show that you have learnt one or so lessons from the novel that bear on human interests. These are usually challenging questions because they require you to have a good overview of the text with regard to a wide spectrum of issues raised in the novel or short story. Such questions may be asked and answered as: What central idea or insight into life does the work convey? How do other elements help illustrate or reveal this idea or insight?
1.5. ELEMENTS OF FICTION (CHARACTERS)
• Characters: These are persons or animals involved in a story in order to show entertain and show us some truth about human experience and ourselves. A good character should be ‘alive’ to help us appreciate the story well. In a story, we can recognize a character by his/her/its appearance, actions and thoughts, reactions of others (what other characters say or do in relation to the character), and direct statement of the author (comments made by the writer of the story as the narrator).
• However, the best story is one in which the narrator doesn’t tell much directly about what the character is like. Instead, you learn about the character indirectly by how the character acts and how others act toward him/her, and by noticing what he/she thinks and says.
• Characterization refers to the kinds of characters the novel or short story has depending on the level of their development and involvement in the story of the book. For example, are the characters flat or round, protagonists or antagonists, major or minor, stars or backers?
• So, in most cases, questions come in such a way that you need to compare and contrast, describe, discuss pros and cons of one or more characters with regard to the development of the story or show appreciation of the characters generally. In other words, you can ask and answer such questions as: Why do characters act as they do? What are their motives? Do the characters change? How do they change?
1.6. ELEMENTS OF FICTION (STYLE)
• This refers to the way the novel or short story is written in order to have a desired effect on the reader or audience.
• It also refers to the techniques used by the writer of a literary work such as point of view, humor, fantasy, flashbacks, tone, and so on.
• Style of writing if understood and appreciated well, can help you to analyze the story very well.
• On rare occasions, questions are asked to test your knowledge and skills in these literary devices or techniques based on a novel or story that you have read. The questions that may help you interpret or review a work of literature include: What stylistic devices does the author use? What effects do they have? How does the tone, or author’s attitude, affect the work of art?
• Point of View: This refers to the style the writer of a story uses to narrate the story. In other words, writers usually chose who should tell the story or who should be the mouth piece in the story. So, you can tell the story from various angles by using points of view. There are three basic points of view often used in narratives: omniscient, third-person limited, and first-person.
• The omniscient (unlimited) point of view is the point of view of a god-like (all-knowing) being who has created a fictional world and who can tell us everything that is going on in the minds of all the characters. The omniscient narrator is outside the story; he or she is not part of the action at all.
• The third-person (limited) point of view is where the writer has decided to tell the story from the limited point of view of a single person (participant) in the story. This kind of story reads as if a camera is zooming in on just one character. The writer uses the third person singular (he or she, or the actual name) of the character. This is very close to the omniscient point of view in that the writer still takes a prominent role.
• And in the first-person (limited) point of view, the narrator speaks as ‘I’, as a character in the story. This character can tell us only what he or she sees and hears and thinks about what is going on. In other words, the narrator is a participant in the story. The writer chooses to tell the story in the name of another fictitious person and uses the first person pronoun ‘I’ as witness and participant in the events that unfold in the story. In this case, the point of view is also limited in that the narrator can only tell what he or she sees or experiences rather than what others do.
• In order to review the points of view of any story, you may need to ask and answer such questions as:
• What is the point of view used in the story?
• Is it consistently used?
• How does it affect your understanding of the work?
• Why did the author choose that point of view?
1.7. ELEMENTS OF FICTION (LANGUAGE)
• Language is part of style but it stands out to be the most important element of any fiction writing.
• Literary language is often used in fiction writing to ‘relish’ the story so that it is more clear, educative, informative, and indeed interesting or entertaining.
• Some of these language devices include figures of speech and symbolism such as images, symbols, irony, metaphors, similes, satire, and so on.
• The questions that may help you interpret or review a work of literature include:
- What figures of speech have been used? What symbols or images does the work include?
- What do they mean?
- What do they suggest about the meaning of the work as a whole?
- You shall learn more about literary language later when we deal with poetry.
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