THE ELEMENTS OF FICTION
Updated: 6 days ago
THE ELEMENTS OF FICTION
I started this blog with one thing in mind: to teach people the basics about writing a novel, but also fiction in general. A lot of what you use to write short stories you use to write novels. Sure, short stories are, well, short. Having written and published both, I believe short stories are easier to write. But I understand when other writers disagree. Ditto poets. Art, whatever the artist or the consumer, isn’t dictated by the time it takes to create said art. Passion, in my opinion, is what creates art. You don’t have to be David Vann or Kristin Hannah or Kathryn Stockett to write. You just have to write. And then edit and rewrite, until you have something to share with an honest, insightful reader so that you’re writing a well-written novel or short story, poem, memoir, or whatever. Here, we’ll talk about fiction.
HERE ARE THE ELEMENTS OF FICTION. KNOW THEM. USE THEM. REVISE THEM.
1. PLOT
For me, plot is often the most important thing a novel (or any piece of fiction) should have. Plots keep readers reading. Plots force your readers to want to know what happens next. Remember, plot is “this happens and because it happened, this happened, and so on.” The king died of grief is not plot. The king died of grief because the queen died? That’s plot.
Here’s a spoiler alert: there are no new plots. Sorry. But it makes sense, doesn’t it?
Murasaki Shikibu, a Japanese noblewoman and lady-in-waiting is, as far as we know, the first person to ever write a novel. She did it in 1010 AD, and the novel is called The Tale of Genji. The novel was written in a Japanese phonetic script (hiragana) instead of formal Chinese characters. The novel was provided to other ladies-in-waiting in installments, and the novel ends up being structured into three parts.
Genji is the son of the emperor, and, in the first section of the novel, we experience Genji’s romantic conquests. The emperor removes Genji from the line of succession for political reasons, and so Genji is demoted to being a “commoner.” The second section has us learning about Genji’s maturity (read, old age), and eventually his death. And the third section dives into Genji’s maybe/maybe not son and grandson. Her three sections make up the structure she chose within which to write Genji. You can learn more details about the plot of The Tale of Genji by clicking the Wikipedia link.
My preferred structure for a plot is Freytag’s Pyramid. It includes: 1). Exposition, 2). Inciting Incident, 3). Rising Action, 4). Climax, 5). Falling Action, 6). Resolution, and 7). Dénouement). There are other plot structures), which you can see here. But in general, a plot is not a series of events that happen in a novel without connections between them. When you have that sort of narrative, it’s called being episodic. And we don’t want that in fiction. In fiction, we want to know why something happens, and what it leads to, because it’s then going to lead to something else. Causality is the backbone of plot. It makes your novel or piece of fiction compelling, and that’s what you want if you want to keep readers reading.
2. SETTING
Without a setting, we have no story. Where is everything happening? What’s the environment like? Are we in outer space? In a forest full of sprites and dragons and mountains covered in moss? A military base? The home of a family in distress because someone’s an alcoholic? The writer Chelsea Catherine wrote a post titled “3 Tips for a Nuanced, Fully Realized Setting” a few years back that I highly recommend you read. In general, however, settings should do three things: they should 1). Locate the reader, meaning give the reader a place to visualize so they know where things are happening, 2). Create tension and continue building that tension so the reader has something to interest them, and 3). Reveal character.
Good settings in and of themselves can be characters in your novel. Ever read The Call of the Wild? Dune? Any Harry Potter books? The setting, in these novels, is just as important as the stories that happen within the novels. Would The Call of the Wild have the same impact if it took place on a beach in Costa Rica? How about Harry Potter? Would Harry’s adventures hold the same weight if he was flying around Walmart? Doubtful.
The point is, don’t ignore your novel’s setting. Yes, focus on the plot, and the story, the characters and the conflict(s) and themes, but pay as much attention to creating the world of your narrative as you can so you can immerse your readers into a world in which they want to live, at least for a while.
P.S. Bartlett, author of Fireflies and Ivory Dawn: The Razor’s Adventure says he “. . . always strive[s] to create a setting that leaves the readers’ imagination room to roam. That way, every reader sees the story through their own eyes.” Tony Hillerman says, “An author knows his landscape best; he can stand around, smell the wind, get a feel for his place.” And here’s a passage that Cormac McCarthy has in his novel, The Orchard Keeper, that shows how he creates setting in the novel: “The lights of the city hovered in a nimbus and again stood fractured in the black river, isinglass image, tangled broken shapes splash of lights along the bridgewalk following the elliptic and receding rows of the pole lamps across to meet them. The rhythmic arc of the wipers on the glass lulled him and he coasted out onto the bridge, into the city shrouded in rain and silence, the cars passing him slowly, their headlamps wan, watery lights in sorrowful progression.”
An author knows his landscape best; he can stand around, smell the wind, get a feel for his place.
--Tony Hillerman
3. CHARACTER
Do you remember the quirkiness of Ignatius J. Reilly from A Confederacy of Dunces? What about Bridget in Bridget Jones’s Diary? Arthur Less from the novel Less? (I mention him in last week’s post about the 10 best novels I’ve ever read). What about Napoleon the pig in Animal Farm, who represents the Soviet Dictator Joseph Stalin? You do, don’t you?
Characters make or break novels (and fiction). We need heroes in our novels, because that’s who we’re routing for, that’s who we want to overcome the hurdles thrown their way. Without characters, we can’t have plots, we can’t have conflict, we can’t have anything that makes any sense. We have nothing.
Now, a character doesn’t have to be a person. As mentioned above, we can use personification to make pigs (and other animals) the characters of our fiction. A flower can be our hero. A VW bug named Herbie. A saltshaker. Whatever or whoever we want to be our hero, our antagonist, our minor character, we can make them that.
Characters must want something. They must face hurdles, and they must overcome those hurdles (or not). But they must want something so bad that they don’t give up. At least not for long. So, ask yourself this one question: What does my character want. And that question will drive your writing forward.
F. Scott Fitzerald said, “Action is Character.” Stephen King: “I try to create sympathy for my characters, then turn the monsters loose.” However you come up with a compelling character, do it. Make them memorable. If you’re having trouble writing character, throw them in a scene. Have them arguing with another character. But do whatever you need to to make them distinct. Readers should be able to know who’s speaking, so maybe give your readers a tell. Have them use certain words. Move a certain way. But make them memorable.
4. CONFLICT
You’ve sat your butt in the chair, have an idea for a novel, and a few characters auditioning for one of the spots in your book. They’re quirky or mad, they’re happy-go-lucky or naïve. They’re Puerto Rican or Nepalese, midwestern farmers or silent movie actors (I know an author working on a novel about that). But you need to know what these characters want. What’s stopping them from getting it? What’s it called when two opposing forces in your novel—a woman seeking to escape her abuser, a Martian trying to climb a fiery mountain, a child fighting internal psychological issues just so she can be normal—create the tension readers need to want to keep reading? That’s called conflict. And just like setting, without it we don’t have a novel, we have things happening for little or no reason. Even if you’re writing an experimental novel, you need to have something your readers can relate to.
5. THEME
Themes, for me, just happen. And then, when they do, I allow myself to expound upon, or focus on, elaborating on those themes. Matt Haig, author of The Midnight Library, How to Stop Me, and The Humans, says about theme: "The theme is connection. We are all things. And we connect to all things. Human to human. Moment to moment." Themes are the messages in your work. They are the meaning to everything that’s happening. Themes include good verses evil, love, coming of age (bildungsroman), fate versus free will, and so on. And yes, your novel can have more than one theme.
The theme is connection. We are all things. And we connect to all things. Human to human. Moment to moment.
--Matt Haig
6. POINT of VIEW
Point of view tells you from whose perspective we’re watching things unfold. Is the novel written by the narrator using the first-person singular pronoun “I”? Then naturally we’re in the first-person. What about “You?” That’s called the second-person point of view. It’s not as common as first-person or third-person, which uses he, she, it, they, and so on. There’s multiple third-person POVs, including third-person omniscient, where the narrator knows everything everyone is thinking, third-person limited, where the narrator stays inside one character’s mind, third-person objective, where the narrator acts as a neutral camara, meaning they don’t interject, they just report what characters do. An example would be, “She grabbed the knife and put it behind her back.” Whatever point of view you choose, make sure you stick to that POV. Yes, once you know what you’re doing, you can color outside the lines. But you must make sure you’re doing it intentionally and that you don’t lose your readers in the process.
The tone of the novel is also important (is the novel an angry one? Is it ironic? Nostalgic? Consider the tone when you’re writing (or let it happen organically). But you’ll discover the tone pretty quickly through the writing.
Knowing the elements of fiction ensures you’re covering your bases when it comes to your novel. It makes your novel interesting to your readers, ensures they’re getting what they came for, and tells a story that makes sense. Again, you can write a novel that experiments with any of the elements listed above, but just make sure it makes sense. Happy writing!
Cully Perlman is author of a novel, The Losses. You can reach him at Cully@novelmasterclass.com
You can buy The Losses by clicking on the link or the image.
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