#CORAL ACADEMY

Fiction and Short Stories

What is Fiction
•Fiction derived from the Latin word fictio, which describes the art of making.
•In the modern sense, it refers to any literary narrative account of an imagined
event and its characters in an imagined location.
•A work of fiction is more than just a short story; it also addresses large issues
and provides commentary on social and political matters.
•Fiction is both ‘artifice and verisimilitude’, that is along with imagination and
creativity it requires a perfect balance of reality.

Elements of Fiction
•Plot: The most elemental aspect of any fiction writing is the plot. A traditional
plot describes the events of the story with a beginning, a middle and an end. The
events take place in such a particular order so as to resolve a particular conflict by
the end. Modern novels often defy the traditional plot structure and end without
resolution.

•Character: Human, animal or any imaginary creature in fiction is referred to as a

character. There are major and minor characters in fiction depending upon the
role they have been accorded in the work.
#CORAL ACADEMY

Static and dynamic characters exist, with dynamic characters exhibiting change
and progress, while static characters lack personality traits and reality alliance.
Round characters are true to life and undergo change.
The unchanging characters, also called flat characters, lack personality traits and
reality alliances, while round characters are true to life and undergo change.

•Setting: The setting of the story is the time and place in which the action of the
story happens. The time may be past, present or future. The events of the story
may unfold in any place real or imaginary. The writer’s descriptions help readers
picture the settings in their minds. Setting can help determine what happens to
the characters and how they resolve their problems.

•Point of View: Any fiction is told from a particular narrative perspective that
acquaints the reader with the characters and setting and sets the tone and mood
of the work. The major types of point of views are as follows: First Person;
Second Person; Third Person; Omniscient.

•Theme: It is the main idea in the fiction around which the story, characters and
setting revolve.

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Types of Fiction
• Short story: A brief work of fiction with a single storyline and unchanging
background setting, typically containing 1000-20000 words and few characters.
In the Postmodern age, short story length is debated, often focusing on short
stories of few words.
The history of the short story in written form can be traced back from the 19th
century and writers recognising the taste of the masses began publishing short
stories.
Along with Edgar Allan Poe, who is known as the father of short stories, Anton
Chekov, O’ Henry and Herman Melville revolutionised the genre.

• Novella: Novella falls somewhere between a short story and a novel because
of its medium size length. It is longer than a short story and takes a wider angle
than it, but in comparison with a novel, it has fewer subplots and limited
characters and setting. It is often satiric or realistic in nature.
The genre originated in Italy in the middle ages but gained recognition in the 19th
and 20th centuries with writers like Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, James, and Orwell.

•Novel: A novel refers to a longer work of fiction with multiple plot lines and
numerous characters that develop throughout the course of the book.
The first novels considered in the world are masterpieces like Murasaki Shikibu’s
Tale of Genji, classical Chinese novels by the Ming dynasty, and Miguel de
Cervantes’ Don Quixote.
Samuel Richardson’s Pamela (1741) is considered the first real novel in English
literature.

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•Genre Fiction In fiction, there are several sub-categories that are classified as
genres. Each genre specifically takes up a tone and style and set of narrative
techniques.
For example, Historical Fiction (Waverly), Science Fiction (Frankenstein), Fantasy
(Alice’s in the Wonderland), etc.

• Realism: Realistic fiction involves a storyline and setting that belongs to the
real world. It originated in the Victorian era with the advent of novels by Dickens
that represented the hardships and everyday struggles of the middle-class English
men and women.

•Metafiction: It is a form of fiction that exhibits its own constructedness

through various ways to the readers. This type of fiction emphasises that what the
reader is reading is unreal and a work of fiction.
The term ‘metafiction’ was coined in 1970 by William H. Gass in his book Fiction
and the Figures of Life.
Mostly employed by postmodern writers, the technique has been taken into
account in several great works like Canterbury Tales, Don Quixote and The Life
and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman. It is mostly used as a form of
parody and to invert the literary traditions.

•Biopunk: Biopunk is a science fiction subgenre focusing on

biotechnology. It is derived from cyberpunk, which focuses on its
implications for mechanical cyberware and information technology.

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Biopunk typically investigates the darker aspects of genetic engineering
and symbolizes the low side of biotechnology, keeping with the dismal
atmosphere of cyberpunk.
Biopunk typically utilizes the written word, but there are physical
examples that exist, especially in movies (the Super Mario Brothers
movie, Pokemon: The First Movie, Repo Men, Gattaca, and even the
Cyberpunk classic Blade Runner and its sequel).

•Conspiracy Fiction: Conspiracy thrillers involve journalists or amateur

investigators unraveling a vast conspiracy, often inadvertently, leading
to the top of the organization.
Conspiracy fiction often involves characters uncovering deceptions,
resulting in difficulty in determining the truth. This genre often includes
themes of secret history and paranoid fiction.
John Buchan’s 1915 novel The Thirty-Nine Steps weaves elements of
conspiracy and man-on-the-run archetypes.
Dashiell Hammett’s 1924 short story “Nightmare Town” is conspiracy
fiction on a small scale, depicting an Arizona town that exists as part of
an insurance-fraud scheme, and a detective slowly uncovering the
truth.

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•Pandemics in Fiction: Pandemic works initially set in the Middle Ages.
Literature's 'tryst' with pandemics has a long history, dating back to
Geoffrey Chaucer's 14th-century Canterbury Tales. The Pardoner's Tale,
set during the plague, symbolizes moral death and serves as a symbol
of the pandemic.
Pandemic literature takes us beyond statistics of global deaths and
degree of spread to show how the crisis has affected the individual lives
of those infected as well as their friends, families and neighbors.
Examples: Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Love In The Time of Cholera, Albert
Camus “The Plague” and “Our Country Friends” by Gary Shteyngart.

◾A drabble: is a short work of fiction of precisely one hundred words in

length. The purpose of the drabble is brevity, testing the author’s ability
to express interesting and meaningful ideas in a confined space.
Example: *Lois McMaster Bujold (whose novel Cryoburn finishes with a
sequence of five drabbles, each told from the point of view of a
different character)
*Jake Bible (whose novel Dead Mech was written entirely in drabble
format).

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◾Paranoid fiction: A term sometimes used to describe works of
literature that explore the subjective nature of reality and how it can be
manipulated by forces in power. These forces can be external, such as a
totalitarian government, or they can be internal, such as a character’s
mental illness or refusal to accept the harshness of the world they are
in.