This is a simplified illustration of the five main elements of fiction: voice/point of view, setting, character, plot, theme, revealing detail. Below, is a simplified explanation of these elements.

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Voice/Point of View

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Voice  and  Point of View are closely related, albeit not always one and the same; they refer to who tells the story, how, and in what circumstances.

 

If you consider the storytelling situation for a moment as a matter of levels of complexity, it should be clear that Level Zero is a person telling a story to another person or group. Thus, the storyteller's actual voice is present to the person or persons  listening.

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Level One occurs when the storyteller commits the story to writing and turns it into text. It is here that the two figures of "writer" and "reader" are created.

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In reading, the reader will now have to recreate the writer/author's voice in their imagination. The voice has now become fictitious and the presence of the author has become an illusion. This was not the case at Level Zero when author and voice were both present to the listener.

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One consequence of this arrangement is that the writer/author is transformed from a person into a persona, or, in other words, into a character of sorts. This not just a loss (of presence);  it is also an opportunity. Namely, the opportunity for the writer/author to guide the reader in imagining the voice/persona that tells the story. And so the figure of the narrator appears.

 

The presence of a narrator thus adds an additional level to storytelling; let us call it Level Two.

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In Level Two, the narrative voice has no specific identity, but it might have specific characteristics and attitudes that will be more or less marked, more or less obvious to the reader. This is the voice we most readily (but incorrectly) associate with the author: the Third-Person Narrator. This narrator type can come in two forms:

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Omniscient, when the narrator controls the entire narrative, knows what characters think, feel, and do, and is able to follow any and all characters at will. The narrator is all-knowing, as the word says.

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Limited omniscient, when the narrator is able to follow only one character, knows what that character thinks, feels, or does, but has no access or very limited access to other characters in the story.

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At Level Three, the storytelling occurs through a specific consciousness, a distinct persona that tells the story in their own voice. This is the First-Person Narrator, a character (although a very special one) who has usurped the role of the author, has taken over the storytelling, and reveals not only the story but also him/herself trough the narration.

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Each new level increases the distance between the writer/author and the reader, and each new level looms larger than the one before, obscuring the reader's vision so that only the voice closest to the reader (the higher number) seems present. But because the author/writer is the only figure capable of guaranteeing the realness of the text, the reader is always tempted to collapse these different levels (collapse the distance separating reader from writer) into one, and to read the author in the narrator, or the narrator in the author.

 

This temptation should be resisted in critical analysis, not to diminish and devalue the labor of the writer/author, but to fully recognize the creative effort involved in the writing of fiction. 

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Voice-related questions/heuristics for thinking about narrators

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Is the narrative voice first-person or third-person?

Does the narrator appear to be reliable? (Applies to both first-person and third-person narrators).

Is the third-person narrator's perspective omniscient or limited-omniscient?

Is the first-person narrator a character in the story?

Is the first-person narrator the protagonist of the story?

Is there a frame narrative? (Is there a story within the story?)

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Setting

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Setting is the background against which a story unfolds, the where and when, and the immediate circumstances in which characters exist, act, speak.

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Stories may unfold entirely in a single place or follow the characters over a larger geography that can be recognizably realistic (actual places on actual maps) or the product of a vast world-building effort as one can find in genre like fantasy and science fiction.

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Stories may unfold almost in real time (that is, the time of the action corresponds roughly to the time of reading, or takes a single day as Aristotle required), or they may span any number of days, months, years... without limit.

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A change in setting usually implies a change in scene; a change in scene does not necessarily imply a change in setting.

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Setting is not limited just to place and circumstances; it can also include social and political arrangements as well as cultural norms. Characters act in, and react to, belief systems, moral codes, institutional structures, and so on. Thus, religion, medical ethics, and the Department of Motor Vehicles can all constitute a setting, or part thereof.

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Character

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Character is the reason stories are written and read: they are the focal points of the narrative; they drive the story forward; they bring the fictional world to life; they make us happy or angry, and keep us interested, concerned, and entertained.

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Not all characters, however, are created equal. Some will be flat, secondary, making brief appearances like a casual acquaintance that we know from work or play; others will be rounded, creating the impression of a long time acquaintance, or a partner in a long-term, intense, or deepening relationship.

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Novelist Kurt Vonnegut put together the following list of basic advice for character creation and use in fiction:

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1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
    

2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
    

3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
    

4. Every sentence must do one of two things—reveal character or advance the action.
    

5. Start as close to the end as possible.
    

6. Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them—in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
    

7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
    

8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

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He also added...

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"The greatest American short story writer of my generation was Flannery O'Connor (1925-1964). She broke practically every one of my rules but the first. Great writers tend to do that."

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Plot

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Plot is the way the story unfolds for the reader. Because language is linear (one word after another, one sentence after another), it cannot represent simultaneity (two or more things happening at the same time) directly. This means the writer will have to choose the order in which events, settings, exposition, and action are revealed to the reader.

 

Specific choices are made to achieve specific effects. Sometimes, detailed backstory information is given first as historical setting; sometimes the story begins in the thick of things and the protagonist's (or any character's) past is revealed only later, leaving the reader to guess at reasons and motivations.

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Russian formalist critic Viktor Shklovsky used the term syuzhet for "plot" and distinguished it from the fabula, or "story." In this sense, the story (fabula) is the sequence of events in a narrative, rearranged in chronological order. The plot (syuzhet) is what happens when the story is "defamiliarized" (made less familiar, or, better, made strange) by telling it out of chronological order.

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There is some disagreement among critics over which of the two concepts and practices is primary. Do writers first create a story in chronological order and then defamiliarize it by rearranging its elements into the plot, or do they naturally write plot first leaving it to the reader to put the chronology together as new information is revealed? The most likely answer is that different writers work differently, and most probably mix the two approaches.

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Whatever the case, strict chronological narratives tend to be rather boring and unnatural. Think of it: as human beings existing in time and space, we always present ourselves in media res (in the middle of things), never at the beginning. In other words, the world is always already there when we enter it, going about its business in a myriad different ways. leaving us to discover some of these ways as we pace, rush, or blunder through life. In this sense, literature is a truer reflection of life than a court deposition by an eyewitness who was first here, then there, and saw first this, and then that.

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"Ultimately, in fact, plot exists only to give the characters means of finding and revealing themselves, and setting only to give them a place to stand."

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John Gardner, On Moral Fiction

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Theme

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Theme is the conceptual setting of your story. Theme is NOT what your story is "really about," except in a very general sense. It would be a grave mistake to think that your story has value just because it tackles an "important" theme; what truly matters is how your characters (especially the protagonist/s) navigate the treacherous (ideal or conceptual) waters that the theme presents to them.

 

If setting is material and concrete (including belief systems and behaviors), theme is abstract and pervasive. Characters are immersed in theme, they breathe its air, and bear its weight. Sometimes theme lifts them up; sometimes it crushes them down. What your story is "really about" is how the characters negotiate the social, economic, historical, psychological, or religious pressures identified by the theme.

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Theme-related questions/heuristics for thinking about themes

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What theme or themes emerge from the story?

How/Where does the text introduce the theme to the reader?

How do characters act/react in relation to the theme?

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