The Literary Fictional Story

Literary: writing that is important and memorable with permanent artistic (creative) value

Fictional: describing imaginary people or events

Story: an account of an event or a series of events

The literary fictional story as it has evolved over the centuries is distinct from genre fiction, memoir, nonfiction, autobiography, or creative nonfiction. Consider these key constituents.

Imagination: A literary story is imagined; it is not a memoir that describes events that the narrator knows occurred or has experienced.

Although a real happening can stimulate the imagination and form the basis of a literary story, to present a memoir as a fictional story loses the potential of imagination-based creative elements. Imagination allows growth of characterization, motivation, and setting, and can provide a special, memorable experience for the reader.

Structure and theme: The author of literary fiction explores the imagination for just the right story elements to describe an event in a series of scenes. The author then structures the story and establishes a thematic goal that will influence character and plot development.

Characterization: Characters in the literary story must be interesting, complex, and developed, and must contribute to the story with author-controlled prioritization. The author creates each character's emotional story arc to fit in with the motivations and actions of all characters, and to contribute to the plot's momentum. The characters in a literary story are unique, yet they are not bizarre. They have heroic characteristics, but they are not superheroes with powers beyond human limits. In good stories, the reader has thorough knowledge of who the characters are and why they do what they do. The reader follows a progressive unity and focus of the story, and the development of characters is always consistent with the story's conflict resolution. Story resolution must be in accord with everything the characters have done in the story. That is an essence of storytelling.

Dramatic Plot: A literary story has a character-based, character-driven plot, with carefully developed and sequenced motivations, that is presented through scenes structured with conflict, action, and resolution. It results in sufficient emotional involvement on the part of the reader to inspire either enlightenment or a reversal of thinking. Successful storytelling depends on the author's personal traits, beliefs, and opinions. But the author is not part of the story. A great literary story demands an author's willingness to imagine the most effective characterization and create plot motives to ensure story momentum and significance, and to provoke the reader's delight.

Character in a Literary Fictional Story

Development

Character is everything in literary fiction. Character does not replace plot and setting or theme and meaning, but character intimately relates to all of those. In literary fiction, every character needs complexities and uniquenesses that may or may not be actually written on the page. Two-dimensional, fl at characters are often necessary and useful in storytelling, but there should be the depth of three dimensions for all characters in the creator's mind. Depth of understanding of all characters ensures that underlying motivations are reasonable, dialogue is believable, and logic of action is clear through innovative character development and well-crafted plots.

Fiction is less reliant on the discovery of something already known than on the awareness of how and why something happens based on character and plot. In biography and autobiography, the character is formed before the writing starts. The author chooses descriptions of happenings and there are few decisions allowing change for the betterment of the story.

Complexity

The goal of character creation in fiction is complex, but creating a unique character — one that is not stereotypical — is the essence of great fictional stories. The characters will be adopted by the reader and drive the momentum of the plot. At the start of character development, there are no restrictions to character description or action. A character emerges unencumbered. Then that character in fiction is shaped for credible plot development. The character must be unique, but remain believable and within the boundaries set by the suspension of disbelief all fiction requires. The character must not be stereotypical, and must feel comfortable or familiar to the reader. As a memorable character develops, the reader becomes attached to and admires the character in the same way they would begin to think of a new acquaintance as a friend. This reader attachment is often associated with liking the character, but liking is not absolutely necessary and respect and/or admiration without liking can also be strong pathways to a reader's attachment to a character.

As the author creates an emerging character, subtle choices and imaginative attributes must keep within the overall story guidelines set in the contract between author and reader. In revision, scenes, thoughts, actions, conflicts, and motivations that do not contribute maximally to the character engaging the reader and driving the plot forward should be changed or eliminated.

Maximizing opportunities

To create a character for a reader in a literary story, there are a limited number of things the character can think or do. In a short story, even for the protagonist, there may be only ten to twenty key characterization opportunities. Often, there are fewer. In a novel, with its longer timeline and wider range of development from the direct storyline, there are more opportunities for a character to show his or her true colors, but ultimately even these openings are limited. How do authors recognize key opportunities and make the most of them? First, character development must be reasonable for the story and for the sensibilities of the reader. The actions and thoughts of the character must also be unique, with elements of surprise, so that they embed in the reader's memory. Showing a character's actions, thoughts, and opinions in-scene has more lasting impact than narrative telling. And character development leaves a greater impression on the reader when in-scene story time predominates over back story or the narrator's comments on past character actions.

Misconceptions

Literary fiction demands extraordinary skills in the realm of character development. Authors must learn and practice the art of creating characters — skillful characterization is not inherent in every writer — and not accept the often-taught dictum that characters take over the author's stories when the author is in his or her best writing trance. The idea that the character carries the story to successful completion is a common but surefire limitation to developing the best fictional characters. Characters are imagined and created — not discovered and described — in a maximally effective story. And never are great characters conjured from unthinking trances.

Significance

Stories, to be great, should be significant and meaningful. A major way for an author to instill these qualities in storytelling is through effective characterization and valuable thinking that surprises and enlightens.

Although many would instinctively disagree, it is true that memoir, creative nonfiction, and biography do not have the options and do not reach the potential of character development available to the fiction writer. Yet the vast majority of fiction stories today are simply tales by authors relating something that happened to them or someone they know, and calling the result fiction. A character's traits are described. This result does not have the imaginative structure of fiction, and often relies on narrative telling to the reader rather than in-scene engagement and creative excitement. Is through story creation that fiction can reach a unique excellence and significance.

Stereotypes

Stereotypes abound in many stories, and are often essential. Comic superheroes are notoriously rigid; for Spiderman and the like, those writing their adventures must adhere strictly to the visual and story history so familiar to the reader. Hercule Poirot, Agatha Christie's detective, is consistent crime after crime; he has a role that defines him and that is required for the storytelling as she created it.

In literary fiction, every character, by nature of the creative process, emerges from the author's imagination stereotypical, and is then developed to some non-stereotypical threshold. This builds reader interest and augments the quality of the story. But in stories with multiple characters, all characters cannot be unique, vibrant, and memorable; some stereotypes are unavoidable. This is not bad. Overdevelopment of too many characters may create unbelievable and/or ineffective fiction. As in the writing of all fiction, a proper balance must be sought — a balance that is unique and suited to each writer's style and sensibilities.

Character-based plot

A character-based story, with character strengths and weaknesses contributing to plot progression, is one way, if not the best way, to achieve theme and meaning.

Here is a story that has lasted for more than 150 years, "Little Red Riding Hood." It serves as an example of how to clarify the meaning of character-based story.

Once upon a time, in a village near the deep dark woods, was a girl named Little Red Riding Hood. She wants to take Grandma, who is ill, a basket of goodies. Red will have to walk through the woods for half an hour to get to Grandma's house, which is in another village. "Be careful," Red's mother says. "Go straight on the path and do not talk to strangers." Little Red goes into the woods and meets a wolf who wants to eat her but can't because there is a woodsman nearby. The wolf asks where she's going and whom she will visit. Red tells all. The wolf runs off and Red continues her journey. She fails to heed her mother's warning about staying on the path and leaves it to chase butterflies, pick bluebells, and dip her toe in a cold, refreshing stream. When she gets to Grandma's house, the wolf has already arrived; he imitated Red's voice to gain entrance, then devoured Grandma, dressed in Grandma's nightclothes, and crawled in bed. Little Red arrives. He tells her to come in. As the wolf exposes himself little by little, Red listens to his smooth talk then she asks him about his big eyes, hairy arms, and teeth. Unsuspecting, she gets in bed and he devours her.

What has kept this story in the collective consciousness for so long? First, it carries three significant messages: 1) listen to your parents, 2) innocence and naïveté can cause irreversible harm, and 3) don't trust a stranger, especially in grandma's clothing; it can be fatal. There is also the effective metaphor of the wolf as a child predator.

But look how the significance of the story is mainly carried by the narrative structure. The story is character-based because of Red's human characteristics, especially her human foibles: she holds onto her childhood innocence, she disobeys her mother, she talks to strangers even when warned not to.

This story could be framed as genre fiction. It could still be interesting, but it might not be as lasting because of the structure. Here is a possibility:

Red Riding Hood is kidnapped from the woods near her house. A few hours later some bones and scraps of skin are found at her grandmother's house a mile away. The police are called in, and they discover from the gray hairs trapped in grandma's hand-woven throw rug that the wolf did it. The wolf escapes. Red's mother grieves at the funeral, praying for quick justice.

This version is a statement of happenings. Red is a part of the plot, but she is not driving the plot by disobeying her mother and wallowing in her innocence. And the wolf metaphor loses its power when the story moves from fantasy to a more reality-based police procedural.

Here is another possible genre framework for the story, that of action-adventure:

Red decides to go to Grandma's house for a visit. In the deep, dark forest she meets a woodsman who is tracking a wolf that has eaten two children in recent weeks. Red wants to help find the culprit. The woodsman agrees and sends her out as a decoy. The wolf tries to attack Red, but she stabs him with a knife the woodsman gave her. The wolf runs away, but the woodsman follows the trail of blood. He finds the wolf near Grandma's house, and, after a life-threatening duel, the wolf is killed. Red falls in love with the woodsman.

In this story, again, all that happens in the plot is circumstantial. Who Red really is makes little difference. What she says, thinks, or wants is irrelevant. The same story could be written, with minor changes, with Pinocchio as the major character.

An author could restructure so that Red's decisions do drive the plot to become more character-based again, but in another way. And the story gains character-based meaning:

Red Riding Hood's grandma, who lives in another village, is very rich and has a new dress, a box of Swiss chocolates, and bath oil waiting for Red Riding Hood for her birthday party the following week. But Red wants her presents now, even though her mother tells her to wait until next week, when her father can accompany her through the woods, which can be very dangerous; there are evil strangers lurking there. But Red goes anyway to get her presents early, meets the wolf in the forest, and befriends him. She and Grandma are devoured.

Here Red is driving the plot again, and there is significant meaning related to Red's human attributes — greed and impatience along with innocence and the failure to obey — that can be fatal.

Writers seeking to write great literary fiction can take two important points from the Red Riding Hood story: 1) structure the story to demonstrate what it means to be human through character-based plotting, and 2) make the story significant. In Red's case, the significance is partially related to the dire consequences of getting eaten by a wolf after seemingly innocuous actions but contrary to conventional wisdom.

Summary

The author who wants to create great stories must characterize well. Time and multiple attempts are required, and a healthy dissatisfaction with all early opportunities is essential. Authors must never be satisfied with mediocrity.

Narration of Literary Stories

To successfully narrate a story in fiction, authors must know what words mean and not confuse terms or use them interchangeably. Note in particular the difference in meanings between narrative the noun versus narrative the adjective; narrator versus character; and literary fiction versus memoir.

Narrate v: to give an account of something in detail

Narrator n: somebody who tells a story or gives an account of something

Character n: one of the people portrayed in a story

Narration n: the act of telling a story or giving an account of something

Narrative(1) n: an account of a sequence of events in the order in which they happened

Narrative(2) n: a discussion or speech about the policies, opinions, or proposals of a political p a r t y (e.g., the senator's narrative ...)

Narrative adj: having the aim or purpose of telling a story, or involving the art of storytelling

Point of View(POV) (1) n: position in relation to a story being told

Point of View(POV) (2) n: how someone or something is observed

Point of View(POV) (3) n: position or attitude in considering a matter

Author n: the creator or originator of something

Fiction n: stories that describe imaginary people and events

Literary fiction n: serious, character-based fiction (as opposed to genre or popular fiction, which are plot based)

Story n: an account of a series of events

Memoir n: an account of real events written from personal knowledge

Autobiography: an account of someone's life written by that person

Biography: an account of someone's life written by another person

Creative nonfictionn: literary or narrative journalism using literary skills

Written literary fictional stories that are loved and remembered are almost always: 1) imagined and created by an author, 2) told by a narrator created by the author but usually as a separate "narrator" intellect speaking from a unique worldview and experience of his/her individual personality, and often speaking from a different time than the story time or the author's time in writing the story, and 3) acted out by characters imagined by the author for the story (although these may often be inspired — but not copied — from events or characters in real life).