Download Characterization, Plot, Point of View, and Other Elements of Fiction and more Lecture notes Design and Analysis of Algorithms in PDF only on Docsity! Elements of Fiction Characterization is a means by which writers present and reveal characters – by direct description, by showing the character in action, or by the presentation of other characters who help to define each other. Characters in fiction can be conveniently classified as major and minor, static and dynamic. A major character is an important figure at the center of the story’s action or theme. The major character is sometimes called a protagonist whose conflict with an antagonist may spark the story’s conflict. Supporting the major character are one or more secondary or minor characters whose function is partly to illuminate the major characters. Minor characters are often static or unchanging: they remain the same from the beginning of a work to the end. Dynamic characters, on the other hand, exhibit some kind of change – of attitude, purpose, behavior, as the story progresses. Irony is not so much an element of fiction as a pervasive quality in it. It may appear in fiction in three ways: in a work’s language, in its incidents, or in its point of view. But in whatever form it emerges, irony always involves a contrast or discrepancy between one thing and another. The contrast may be between what is said and what is meant (verbal irony), what is expected to happen and what actually happens (situational irony) or between what a character believes or says and what the reader understands to be true (dramatic irony). Plot, the action element in fiction, is the arrangement of events that make up a story. Many fictional plots turn on a conflict, or struggle between opposing forces, that is usually resolved by the end of the story. Typical fictional plots begin with an exposition, that provides background information needed to make sense of the action, describes the setting, and introduces the major characters; these plots develop a series of complications or intensifications of the conflict that lead to a crisis or moment of great tension. The conflict may reach a climax or turning point, a moment of greatest tension that fixes the outcome; then, the action falls off as the plot’s complications are sorted out and resolved (the resolution or dénouement). Be aware, however, that much of twentieth-century fiction does not exhibit such strict formality of design. Point of view refers to who tells the story and how it is told. The possible ways of telling a story are many, and more than one point of view can be worked into a single story. However, the various points of view that storytellers draw upon can be grouped into two broad categories: Third-Person Narrator (uses pronouns he, she, or they): 1. Omniscient: The narrator is all-knowing and takes the reader inside the characters’ thoughts, feelings, and motives, as well as shows what the characters say and do. 2. Limited omniscient: The narrator takes the reader inside one (or at most very few characters) but neither the reader nor the character(s) has access to the inner lives of any of the other characters in the story.
