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Characteristics of Fiction

This document outlines the key characteristics and elements of fiction. It discusses how fiction is dramatic, concrete, representative, instructive and entertaining. It also examines how fiction is creative, dependent on life, and embodied through symbols. The core elements of fiction listed are action/plot, character, setting, atmosphere/tone, theme, narrator/point of view, and language. Finally, it explores literary techniques for manipulating events, including beginning stories in medias res or using deconstruction to show a text can have multiple meanings.

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Shayne Buhayan
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174 views1 page

Characteristics of Fiction

This document outlines the key characteristics and elements of fiction. It discusses how fiction is dramatic, concrete, representative, instructive and entertaining. It also examines how fiction is creative, dependent on life, and embodied through symbols. The core elements of fiction listed are action/plot, character, setting, atmosphere/tone, theme, narrator/point of view, and language. Finally, it explores literary techniques for manipulating events, including beginning stories in medias res or using deconstruction to show a text can have multiple meanings.

Uploaded by

Shayne Buhayan
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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A.

Characteristics of Fiction
1. Fiction is Dramatic - it is an imitation of life
2. Fiction is concrete and specific - embodied by dramatic symbols
3. Fiction is generally representative
4. Fiction instructs and entertains - it broadens and extends our sympathies; it helps us
understand life and humanize ourselves.
5. Fiction is related to life - dependent upon its relationship to life
6. Fiction is creative and imaginative.

B. Elements of Fiction
1. Action and plot
2. Character
3. Setting
4. Atmosphere and tone
5. Theme
6. Narrator and point of view
7. Language

C. Manipulation of Events
1. In medias res - Latin for "into the middle of things." It usually describes
a narrative that begins, not at the beginning of a story, but somewhere in the middle
usually at some crucial point in the action.
- refers to a literary technique in which a story begins after the action has already
begun and the explanation of plot, character roles, the importance of setting, and so
on are left to be revealed via flashback, a character's thoughts or dialogue, or a
"reverse chronology" in which the story is told backwards
2. Deconstruction - a theory used in the study of literature or philosophy which says
that a piece of writing does not have just one meaning and that the meaning depends
on the reader.
- suggests that all interpretation of a text simply constitutes further texts, which means
there is no outside the text at all. Therefore, it is impossible for a text to have stable
meaning. The practice of deconstruction involves identifying the contradictions
within a texts claim to have a single, stable meaning, and showing that a text can be
taken to mean a variety of things that differ significantly from what it purports to
mean.

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