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Fiction Hand Out

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12 views5 pages

Fiction Hand Out

Uploaded by

boyal66
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Fiction

English Language Department

Libyan Open University

Prepared by

.Ms. Fatma Dalla, Lecturer

The difference between Novel and the Drama:


Manifestly, the drama and prose fiction are compounded of the
same raw materials. But quite as manifestly, owing to differences
in conditions, the raw materials in drama and prose fiction are
treated in very different ways.
The drama is the most rigorous form of literary art; whilst prose
fiction is the loosest.
Drama
A drama is a type of literature that is written for the purpose of being
performed in front of an audience.
Fiction
Fiction is literary works invented by the imagination, such as novels or short
stories.
It is the class of literature comprising works of imaginative
narration, especially in prose form.

Function of fiction
To provide amusement for the leisure hour and a welcome relief
from the strain of practical affairs; and any novel which serves its
purpose in this way may, on the sole condition that the pleasure it
affords is wholesome and tonic, be held to have fully justified itself.

The main elements of fiction


Plot, characters, dialogue, time and place of action, style, and a stated or
.implied philosophy of life, then, are the chief elements

The main methods of narration


Three methods—the direct, or epic; the autobiographical; and the
documentary. In the first and most usual way, the novelist is a historian
narrating from the outside; in the second, he writes in the first person,
identifying himself with one of his characters (generally, though not always,
the hero or heroine), and thus produces an imaginary autobiography; In the
third, the action is unfolded by means of letters.
.Occasionally, the methods may be blended

Simple and compound plots


The plot of a novel may be simple or compound; that is, it may be
composed of one story only, or of two or more stories in
combination; and the law of unity requires that in a compound plot
.the part should be brought together into a single whole

Loose and organic plots:


There are what we may call respectively the novel of loose plot and the
novel of organic plot. In the former case the story is composed of a number
of detached incidents, having little necessary or logical connection among
themselves; the unity of the narrative depending not on the machinery of the
action, but upon the person of the hero who, as the central figure or
nucleus, binds the otherwise scattered elements together. Whilst in the
organic plot, the separate incidents are no longer treated episodically; they
are dovetailed together as integral components of a definite plot-pattern. In
these cases, it is clear, something more than a general idea of the course of
the story was necessary before the author began his work.

The entire plan had to be considered in detail; the characters and events
arranged to occupy their proper places in it; and the various lines laid down
which were to converge in bringing about the catastrophe. This distinction,
however, is a rough one.

Two Methods of Characterization


The conditions of the novel commonly permit the use of two
opposed methods—the direct/analytical, and the indirect/dramatic.
In the first method the novelist portrays his characters from the
outside, dissects their passions, motives, thoughts and feelings,
explains, comments, and often pronounces authoritative judgment
upon them. In the other method, he stands apart, allows his
characters to reveal themselves through speech and action, and
reinforces their self-delineation by the comments and judgments of
other characters in the story. I say the conditions of the novel
commonly permit the use of these two methods; but they do not
always do so.

Novelist vs dramatist
The novelist should confine himself within the field, however small,
of his own personal first-hand intercourse with the world, and never
allow himself to stray beyond it.
The novelist's course is the same as the dramatist's: they both
interpret life by representation. But while the dramatist is confined
to this indirect method, the novelist is able, if he chooses, to
supplement it by direct personal commentary and explanation.
A dramatist has a single way of telling his story. While a novelist
has three methods; the direct/epic; the autobiographical; and the
documentary.
A novelist uses two contributory elements of individual power and
technical skill while making a novel.

Two questions to ask before writing a novel?


Is the story interesting, and worth the telling? And, is it well and
artistically told? In other words, we demand, with the most
uncritical reader, that the story shall in its own particular way be a
good one; and also—a consideration to which the uncritical reader
is for the most part curiously indifferent—that it shall be skillfully
put together. By this we mean that, on careful examination of all its
details, it shall reveal no gaps or inconsistencies; that its parts shall
be arranged with a due sense of balance and proportion.

Dialogue
It is one of the most delightful elements of a novel; it is that part of
it in which we seem to get most intimately into touch with people,
and in which the written narrative most nearly approaches the
vividness and actuality of the acted drama.
Humour
One of the greatest endowments of genius and the one which
beyond all others should help to keep a novelist's work sane and
wholesome.
Setting
The entire milieu of a story—the manners, customs, ways of life,
which enter into its composition, as well as its natural background
or environment. We may therefore distinguish two kinds of setting
—the social and the material.

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