Creative

• Fiction


  A series of imagined facts which illustrates truths about human life. Does not require the presentation of actual people and situations, but characters and incidents may be based on actual people and real life events.
• Types of Fiction


  • Short Story
  • Novel
• Short Story


  • Is a brief, artistic form of prose fiction which centers on a single main incident and intends to produce a single dominant impression. It involves the strict selection of details.
• Novel


  • Is an extensive prose narrative, a book-length story written in prose usually comprising 75,000 to 100,000 words. Its length may range from a hundred and plus pages. Because of its length, it can develop more characters, a more complicated plot, more elaborate settings, and more themes.
• Elements of Fiction


  • Characters
  • Point of view
  • Plot
  • Setting and Atmosphere
• Characters


  Imagined persons who inhabit a story, but characters may also be based on real people whom the writer uses as models. They are the first essential ingredient in any successful story.
• Margaret Lucke: 'Your idea won't come alive, won't begin to become a story, until some characters claim it as their own; the story comes out of their motives, their desires, their actions, and interactions and reactions.'
• Types of Character


  • Stock characters or stereotyped Characters
  • Hero/Heroine
  • Protagonist
  • Major or main characters
  • Foil
  • Flat characters and Round Characters
  • Static and dynamic Characters
• Stock characters or stereotyped characters


  • These are characters that require less-detailed portrayal. We already know them well since they have dominant virtues and vices.
• Hero


  The good guy or leading male character who opposes the villain or the bad guy.
• Heroine


  The leading female character.
• Hero/Heroine


  • Are usually larger than life like those found in epics and swashbuckling tales. They are often stronger or better than most human beings and possess godlike traits and qualities.
• Protagonist


  An older and more neutral term than "hero" for the leading character which does not imply either the presence or the absence of outstanding virtue. He or she is the person with whom readers most closely identify.
• Antagonist


  Protagonist's opponent.
• Major or Main Characters


  • They are also called lead characters. We think of them as more complex than minor characters, the other figures who appear in the story.
• Foil


  Serves as a contrast to the major character to highlight the particular qualities of the latter.
• Flat Characters


  • Are stock characters or stereotypes who are somehow capable of advancing the plot, but require only the barest outlines of description.
• Round Characters


  • They have more than just one trait. They are complex and at times complicated. They possess traits that may even seem contradictory.
• Static characters


  Do not experience basic character changes through the course of the story.
• Dynamic characters


  Experience changes throughout the development of the story.
• Three dimensions of fictional characters


  • Physical
  • Sociological
  • Psychological
• Physical


  Refers to the physical dimensions such as body type, health, clothing, and movement.
• Sociological


  Refers to the character's name, biographical details, social status, economic status, race and ethnicity, family members and relationships, residence, education, profession, and beliefs.
• Psychological


  Refers to personality, speech patterns, attitudes toward self and others, hobbies and interests, talents, likes and dislikes, habits, dreams and ambitions, fears, sources of laughter, anger, worry or stress, his/her attitude toward the opposite sex, teachers, superiors, friends, competition, etc.
• Point of View


  Refers to the narrator in the story, the vantage point from where readers observe the events of the story, or the writer's special angle of vision, the one whose perspective is told.
• Focus


  Functions like a camera, it is the frame through which characters.
• Voice


  Refers to the words that embody the story.
• First Person


  In this POV, the narrator is a participant in the action. It uses the pronoun, "I" or "we," and the narrator may be either a major character or a minor character who tells directly his or her own version of events that happen. It is limited though in the sense that the reader can only know details and thoughts from the narrator, not from the other characters.
• Second Person


  It is used to tell a story to another character with the word "You." It is mostly told in the future tense. A writer uses this point of view to make the readers feel that they are part of the story and that they are characters themselves.
• Third Person


  It is the most common POV and uses the pronouns "he," "she," and "they." It employs nonparticipant narrator who can usually move from place to place to describe action and report dialogue. The author takes the role of the narrator. The words "I," "You," and "Me" only appear in dialogues.
• Stream of consciousness


  A narrative technique intended to render the flow of myriad impressions – visual, auditory, physical, associative, and subliminal, as they occur in the narrator's mind, and not in a smooth, sequential, or flowing way.
• Interior monologue


  A device used by writers to make the character speak out loud like delivering a speech for the readers to overhear.
• Plot


  A sequence of events that "has a beginning, a middle, and an end."
• Exposition


  The writer introduces the characters, situation, and, usually, the time and place of the narrative. It signifies that you have chosen a particular opening more than any other.
• Rising Action


  The events that build toward the climax of the story.
• Conflict


  An event, situation, or circumstance that shakes up a stable situation. It is a struggle between two opposing forces.
• Types of Conflict


  • External Conflict (Man vs. Nature, Man vs. Man, Man vs. Society)
  • Internal Conflict (Man against Self)
• Climax


  The central movement of crisis in a plot. It is the point of greatest tension which initiates the falling action.
• Resolution/Denouement


  The final part of a plot. It is a moment of insight, discovery, or revelation by which a character's life, or view of life, is greatly altered.
• Denouement


  Refers to the untying of a knot.