The Elements of Fiction
Plot, Setting, Character, Conflict, Symbol, and Point of
View are the main elements which fiction writers use to develop a story and
its Theme.
Because literature is an art
and not a science, it is impossible to specifically quantify any of these
elements within any story or to guarantee that each will be present in any
given story. Setting might be the most important element in one and almost
nonexistent in another.
Just as a Crime Scene
Investigator cannot approach a crime scene looking for a specific clue (e. g.,
shell casings), you as a reader cannot approach a story deciding to look for a
specific element, such as Symbol. To assume could blind you to important
elements. Both the CSI team and you must
examine the entire “area” carefully to determine what is present and how it is
important.
With that understanding,
let’s examine the elements.
PLOT
Literature teachers sometimes
give the impression that plot is not important, that anyone interested in plot
is an immature reader.
Of course plot is
important. It was what got us interested
in reading in the first place. It was
the carrot on the string that pulled us through a story as we wanted to see what
would happen next.
That said, let me emphasize
that plot is rarely the most important element of a good story. As much as I’ve always loved surprise
endings, if the only thing a film or a story has is a great twist ending, it
doesn’t have anything on a second look.
And it’s worth noting that
recent fiction and film have deemphasized plot, frequently stressing character
or conflict for example. In film, for
example, think David Lynch or Pulp
Fiction.
SETTING
Stories actually have two
types of setting: Physical and Chronological.
The physical setting is of
course where the story takes place. The
“where” can be very general—a small farming community, for example—or very
specific—a two story white frame house at 739 Hill Street in Scott City, Missouri.
Likewise, the chronological setting, the “when,” can
be equally general or specific.
The author’s choices are
important. Shirley Jackson gives
virtually no clues as to where or when her story “The Lottery” is set. Examination suggests that she wants the story
to be universal, not limited by time or place.
The first two stories you will read each establish a fairly specific
physical setting; consider what each setting brings to each story.
CHARACTER
What type of individuals are
the main characters? Brave, cowardly,
bored, obnoxious? If you tell me that
the protagonist (main character) is brave, you should be able to tell where in
the story you got that perception.
In literature, as in real
life, we can evaluate character three ways:
what the individual says, what the individual does, and what others say
about him or her.
CONFLICT
Two types of conflict are
possible: External and Internal.
External conflict could be man against nature (people in a small lifeboat on a rough
ocean) or man against man.
While internal conflict might not seem as exciting as external, remember
that real life has far more internal than external conflict.
Film and fiction emphasize
external conflict not simply because “it’s more interesting” but also because
it’s easier to write. In a film script,
you merely have to write “A five minute car chase follows” and you’ve filled
five minutes. How long would it take to
write five minutes worth of dialogue?
SYMBOL
Don’t get bent out of shape
about symbols. Simply put, a symbol is
something which means something else.
Frequently it’s a tangible physical thing which symbolizes something
intangible. The Seven/Eleven stores
understood that a few years ago when they were selling roses with a sign
saying, “A Rose Means ‘I Love You.’”
The basic point of a story or
a poem rarely depends solely on understanding a symbol. However important or interesting they might
be, symbols are usually “frosting,” things which add interest or depth.
It’s normal for you to be
skeptical about symbols. If I tell you
that the tree in a certain story symbolizes the Garden of Eden, you may ask “Is
that really there or did you make it up?” or “How do you know what the author
meant?”
Literature teachers may
indeed “over-interpret” at times, find symbols that really aren’t there. But if you don’t occasionally chase white
rabbits that aren’t there, you’ll rarely find the ones that are there.
In the film 2001, a computer named HAL is
controlling a flight to Jupiter. When
the human crew decides to abort the mission, HAL—programmed to guarantee the
success of the mission—“logically” begins to kill off the humans. Science fiction’s oldest theme: man develops a technology which he not only
cannot control, it controls him.
Consider HAL’s name. Add one letter to each of the letters in his
name. Change the H to I, the A to B, and
the L to M. When you realize how close
HAL is to IBM, the first response is disbelief.
But clearly the closeness of the names is either an absolute accident or
an intentional choice. As much as we are
startled by the latter, we probably agree that the odds against the former—it
being an accident—are astronomical.
Somebody thought that
up. Or maybe a computer.
POINT OF VIEW
Point of View is the
“narrative point of view,” how the story
is told—more specifically, who tells it.
There are two distinctly
different types of point of view and each of those two types has two
variations.
In the First Person point of view, the story is told by a character within
the story, a character using the first person pronoun, I.
If the narrator is the main
character, the point of view is first
person protagonist. Mark Twain lets
Huck Finn narrate his own story in this point of view.
If the narrator is a
secondary character, the point of view is first
person observer. Arthur Conan Doyle
lets Sherlock Holmes’ friend Dr. Watson tell the Sherlock Holmes story. Doyle frequently gets credit for telling
detective stories this way, but Edgar Allan Poe perfected the technique half a
century earlier.
In the Third Person point of view, the story is not told by a character but by an “invisible author,” using the
third person pronoun (he, she, or it) to tell the story. Instead of Huck Finn speaking directly to us,
“My name’s Huckleberry Finn” and telling us “I killed a pig and spread the
blood around so people would think I’d been killed”, the third person narrator
would say: He killed a pig and spread
the blood…..
If the third person narrator
gives us the thoughts of characters (He wondered where he’d lost his baseball
glove), then he is a third person omniscient
(all knowing) narrator.
If the third person narrator
only gives us information which could be recorded by a camera and microphone
(no thoughts), then he is a third person
dramatic narrator.
In summary, then, here are
the types of point of view:
First Person Narrator
Protagonist
Observer
Third Person Narrator
Omniscient
Dramatic
Different points of view can
emphasize different things. A first
person protagonist narrator would give us access to the thoughts of the main
character. If the author doesn’t want us
to have that access, he could use the first person observer, for example, or
the third person dramatic.
THEME
Theme isn’t so much an
element of fiction as much as the result of the entire story. The theme is the main idea the writer of the
poem or story wants the reader to understand and remember.
You may have used the word
“Moral” in discussing theme; but it’s not a good synonym because “moral”
implies a positive meaning or idea. And
not all themes are positive.
One word—love, for
example—may be a topic; but it cannot be a theme.
A theme is a statement about a topic.
For example: “The theme of the story is that love is the
most important thing in the world.”
That’s a cliché, of course, but it is a theme.
Not all stories or poems (or
films) have an overriding “universal” theme.
