Literary Writing

• Literary writing

  • entertains or tells a story

  • may also contain beliefs or political messages

  • considered works of art
• Literary writing

  • not bound by the need to provide correct information (like informative texts) or objectivity and fairness (like journalistic texts)
  • mostly fictional
  • can also contain or be based on facts
• Literary writing

  • can also contain or be based on facts

  • serves to entertain the audience, appealing to their creative and emotional side

  • language used in this type is creative and imaginative

  • also uses literary techniques like hyperbole, personification, simile, and metaphor
• Purposes of Literary Writing

  1. To entertain and inform leisurely
  2. To express emotions
  3. To appeal primarily to the emotions
• Common Elements of a Literary Text

  1. Setting
  2. Mood
  3. Characters
  4. Plot
  5. Subplot
  6. Conflict
  7. Theme
• Setting


  The time and place in which a story takes place
• Mood


  The atmosphere or feeling and emotions of a literary work
• Characters


  The individuals whose thoughts and actions make up a story. They are either the protagonist or antagonist, or they can also be flat, static, dynamic, or round characters.
• Plot


  This is the sequence of events in a story, from the Exposition, to the Rising Action, to the Climax, Falling Action, and the Resolution or Denouement.
• Subplot


  This is another story within the main plot of the story, usually added to give clarity to the events in the plot.
• Conflict


  This is the main struggle of characters in the story. Conflicts reach their peak at the Climax of a plot and usually get resolved at the end of the story. It could be one of the following:

  1. A character vs. another character;
  2. A character vs. Nature;
  3. A character vs. destiny or supernatural forces;
  4. A character vs. himself or herself.
• Theme


  Refers to the message or lesson that the author is trying to convey in the story
• Common Literary Techniques

  1. Flashback
  2. Foreshadowing
  3. Imagery and Figurative Language
• Flashbacks

  • scenes that are suddenly inserted in a narrative, taking the story back to a time before its current point
  •  often serve to fill in a crucial backstory or recount events before the story’s primary sequence of events.
• Foreshadowing

  • a literary device used by writers to provide an insight of what is to come in a later part of the story
  • often appears at the beginning of a story or a chapter in the story
  • helps the reader develop expectations about a story’s upcoming events.
• Imagery and figurative language

  •  create visual representations of actions, objects, and ideas in our mind
  • appeal to our physical senses
  • Examples are similes, metaphors, hyperbole, irony, personification, alliteration, and allegory.
• Structure of a Literary Text

  A literary text might have complex sentence structure and linguistic aspects like dialects and ambiguity.