The Five Elements of Fiction

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The Five Elements of Fiction
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What is Fiction?

• Fiction is writing about imaginary people none
  of it is real.
• Fiction is made up, just like the Tooth Fairy,
  Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and unicorns!
• Examples of fiction include
• Short stories
• Novels
• Plays

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What are the Five Elements of Fiction?

• Character Who the Story is About
• Plot What Happens to the Characters
• Point of View Who is Telling the Story
• Setting When and Where the Story Takes Place
• Theme The Meaning of the Story
• (The Why or Purpose)

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Who is the Story About?

• Characters the actors, usually people, in a
  story
• What is another name for the main character?
• The Protagonist (e.g. Batman)
• Who is the person that goes against (opposes) the
  protagonist?
• The Antagonist (e.g. The Joker)
• Helpful Hint the prefix anti means against

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How Does the Author Create a Characters
Character?

• By giving each of them different characteristics
  (meaning qualities or personalities).
• The author gives us a lot of information about
  each characters personalities (some more than
  others) so that we get a better understanding of
  each of them.
• Some of the information that authors give us
  about characters include

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Character Information

• Physical Appearance
• Age
• Size (height weight)
• Dress (clothes they wear)
• Hairstyle

• Personal Identity
• Ethnicity (e.g. Caucasian, African-American)
• Religion (e.g. Jewish, Muslim)
• Language (e.g. Italian, Spanish, English)
• Culture
• Family
• Friends
• Special Skills (e.g. computer whiz)
• Interests (e.g. sports, reading)
• Hobbies (e.g. rock collecting)
• Job (e.g. doctor, cashier)

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Character Information

• Background Experiences
• Important events the character has lived through
  (e.g. segregation, the Great Depression)
• Actions the character has taken or has not taken
  (e.g. killed someone in war)
• Decisions the character made or did not make
  (e.g. got a divorce)
• Challenges the character has faced (e.g. battled
  cancer lost a loved one)

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Character Information

• What he/she says
• e.g. Kenny says he wishes he had never told Byron
  about Larry Dunn picking on him.
• What did that tell us about Kenny?

• What he/she thinks, feels, or dreams
• e.g. Kenny thinks about his crossed eye all the
  time.
• What did that tell us about Kenny?

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Character Information

• What others say about him/her and how others
  react to him/her
• e.g. Kennys teachers have him read to other
  classes.
• What does that tell us about Kenny?

• What actions he/she does or does not take
• e.g. Kenny gets help right away when Byron gets
  stuck to the car instead of picking on him.
• What does that tell us about Kenny?

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What Happens to the Characters?

• Conflict is the dramatic struggle between two
  forces in a story.
• Without conflict, there would be no plot.
• There are TWO main kinds of conflict
• Internal Conflict a struggle inside your own
  heart and/or mind
• e.g. the character must make an important
  decision, overcome pain, quiet their temper,
  resist a temptation, etc.
• Hint Think of your conscience battling itself!
• External Conflict a struggle with something
  outside of yourself and, often, outside of your
  control
• e.g. an enemy, the law, or an exploding bomb

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Plot What Happens in a Story

• There are FIVE parts of the plot

Climax
Rising Action
Falling Action
Exposition
Resolution
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First Part of the Plot

• The Exposition
• introduces the setting
• introduces the characters
• sets up the conflict

Climax
Rising Action
Falling Action
Exposition
Resolution
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Second Part of the Plot

• The Rising Action
• develops the storys conflict or problem
• builds suspense

Climax
Rising Action
Falling Action
Exposition
Resolution
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Third Part of the Plot

• The Climax
• The moment of GREATEST suspense, emotion and
  interest
• Hint Think of
• it as the pinnacle
• of the story!

Climax
Rising Action
Falling Action
Exposition
Resolution
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Fourth Part of the Plot

• The Falling Action
• reveals what happens to the characters after the
  climax
• moves the story toward a conclusion

Climax
Rising Action
Falling Action
Exposition
Resolution
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Fifth Part of the Plot

• The Resolution
• Completes the falling action
• Reveals the final outcome of the conflict

Climax
Rising Action
Falling Action
Exposition
Resolution
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Who is Telling the Story?

• Every story has a voice whose view we share. The
  person telling the story is the narrator.
• -Note The narrator is not always the author!

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Who is Telling the Story?

• Point of View the perspective from which a story
  is told
• There are three basic types of point of view
  omniscient, first-person, and third-person
  limited.

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Third-Person Omniscient POV

• Omniscient means all knowing.
• He or she can see into the minds of, and describe
  the thoughts of, ALL the characters.
• The narrator knows EVERYTHING that is going on -
  past, present and future.

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The Different Points of View

• First Person the narrator is a character in the
  story
• Uses the following words
• I
• Me
• We
• Us
• My
• Our
• Positives We get to know that character really
  well.
• Negatives We only hear things from that
  characters perspective. We dont know what the
  others are thinking!
• Possibility of bias

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First Person POV Example

• If you really want to hear about it, the first
  thing youll probably want to know is where I was
  born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and
  how my parents were occupied and all before they
  had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of
  crap, but I dont feel like going into it, if you
  want to know the truth.
• -- J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye (1951)

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Third-Person Limited POV

• The narrator can see into ONE characters mind
  and describe his or her inner thoughts and
  feelings.
• We see and feel the events of a story jut as this
  one character does.
• What we know about other characters is limited

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Third-Person Limited Example

• The girl he loved was shy and quick and the
  smallest in the class, and usually she said
  nothing, but one day she opened her mouth and
  roared, and when the teacherit was French class
  asked her what she was doing, she said, in
  French, I am a lion, and he wanted to smell her
  breath and put his hand against the rumblings in
  her throat
  --Elizabeth Graver, The Boy
  Who Fell Forty Feet (1993)

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Point of View Guided Practice

• "Christmas won't be Christmas without any
  presents, grumbled Jo, lying on the rug.
• "It's so dreadful to be poor! sighed Meg,
  looking down at her old dress.
• "I don't think it's fair for some girls to have
  lots of pretty things, and other girls nothing at
  all," added little Amy, with an injured sniff.
• "We've got father and mother, and each other,
  anyhow, said Beth, contentedly, from her corner.
• The four young faces on which the firelight shone
  brightened at the cheerful words, but darkened
  again as Jo said sadly
• "We haven't got father, and shall not have him
  for a long time.
• She didn't say "perhaps never, but each silently
  added it, thinking of father far away, where the
  fighting was.
• --From Little Women by
  Louisa May Alcott

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Point of View Guided Practice

• The memory is this a blue blanket in a basket
  that pricks her bare legs, and the world turning
  over as she tumbles out. A flash of trees, sky,
  clouds, and the hard driveway of dirt and gravel.
  Then she is lifted up and held tight. Kind faces,
  she remembers, but that might be the later memory
  of her imagination. Still, when the memory comes,
  sometimes many times a night and in the day, the
  arms that hold her are always safe.
• --From Baby by Patricia
  McLachlan

• Questions
• What point of view is used in this passage?
• How do you know?

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Point of View Guided Practice

• As soon as the snow melts, I will go to Rass and
  fetch my mother. At Crisfield Ill board the
  ferry, climbing down into the cabin where the
  women always ride, but after forty minutes of
  sitting on the hard cabin bench, Ill stand up to
  peer out of the high forward windows, straining
  for the first sight of my island.

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Point of View Independent Practice

• As I walked up the hill, I realized that the
  atmosphere was just too quiet. There was no sound
  from the cardinal who was nearly always singing
  from the top of the maple tree. I thought I saw a
  shadow move high up on the slope, but when I
  looked again it was gone. Still, I shuddered as I
  felt a silent threat pass over me like a cloud
  over the sun.
• What POV does this passage use?

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Point of View Independent Practice

• As the girl walked up the hill, she realized that
  the atmosphere was just too quiet. The cardinal
  tipped his head back and drew breath to sing, but
  just as the first note passed his beak he heard
  the crack of a dead branch far below his perch
  high in the maple tree. Startled, he looked down,
  cocking his head to one side and watching with
  great interest while the man rattled the blades
  of grass as he tried to hide himself behind the
  tree. As the man saw her start up the hill, he
  moved quickly into the shelter of the huge old
  maple tree. If she saw him now, everything would
  be ruined. She thought she saw a shadow move high
  up on the slope, but when she looked again it was
  gone. The man thought if he could stay hidden
  until she came within range, she'd have to talk
  to him. Wouldn't she?
• What POV does this passage use?

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Point of View Independent Practice

• As she walked up the hill, she realized that the
  atmosphere was just too quiet. There was no sound
  from the cardinal who she so often heard singing
  from the top of the maple tree. She thought she
  saw a shadow move high up on the slope, but when
  she looked again it was gone. Nevertheless, she
  shuddered as she felt a silent threat pass over
  her. It felt like a cloud creeping over the sun.
• What POV does this passage use?

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What is the Meaning of the Story?

• Theme The central idea of a work of literature
• Not the same as a subject, which is a word or two
  (like love, childhood, death).
• The theme is the idea the writer wishes to reveal
  about that subject, expressed in a complete
  sentence.
• Reveals a truth about human behavior
• Example
• Subject Love
• Theme Love is more powerful than family loyalty.
  
• (from Romeo and Juliet)

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Finding the Theme

• Theme is not usually stated directly in a work of
  literature.
• Usually, reader must think about all the elements
  of the work and use them to make an inference
  about what the theme is.

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Remember the Three Little Pigs?

• When you were young, you may have read stories
  that ended with and the moral of this story is
• That moral was a lessonor themethat you could
  learn from reading the story.
• Example The Three Little Pigs
• Theme Planning ahead and working hard will save
  you from future disasters.

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Guided Practice Find the Theme

• Once when a lion was asleep a little mouse began
  running up and down upon him this soon woke up
  the Lion, who placed his huge paw on the mouse,
  and opened his big jaws to swallow him. "Pardon,
  O King," cried the little mouse "forgive me this
  time, I shall never forget it. Who knows how I
  could repay you for this some day?" The lion was
  so tickled at the idea of the mouse being able to
  help him, that he lifted up his paw and let him
  go. Some time after the lion was caught in a
  trap, and the hunters who desired to carry him
  alive to the king tied him to a tree while they
  went in search of a wagon to carry him on. Just
  then the little mouse happened to pass by, and
  seeing the trouble in which the Lion was, went up
  to him and soon gnawed away the ropes that bound
  the King of the Beasts. "Was I not right?" said
  the little mouse.

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Guided Practice Find the Theme

• Two Frogs lived together in a marsh. But one hot
  summer the marsh dried up, and they left it to
  look for another place to live since frogs like
  damp places if they can get them. Eventually they
  came to a deep well, and one of them looked down
  into it and said to the other, "This looks like a
  nice cool place. Let us jump in and settle here."
  The other agreed, and without looking they leapt
  into the deep well, only to find that it was
  dried up and very shallow so that they could not
  get back out. It was there that they died.

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Guided Practice Find the Theme

• The animals of the forest gave a wonderful party
  at which the monkey stood up and danced. Having
  delighted the crowd, he sat down while everyone
  clapped for him. The camel, jealous of the
  compliments everyone gave the monkey and wanting
  everyone to instead pay attention to him, decided
  to try dancing, too. However, the camel moved
  about in so ridiculous a manner that the animals,
  upset at him, threw him out of the party.