What Are The 8 Elements of Fiction Writing?

Like building a house, your story must have a solid foundation. Unfortunately, there is simply no way to create a dynamic, note-worthy story without considering its form and structure.

Thus, it is essential that you understand the 8 elements of fiction writing. These elements are what I would call the building blocks of a story. They are your foundation, and they are as followed:

CHARACTERIZATION  

In my opinion, characters are what truly make up a story, because without them, well, there is no story!

Characters are the people, animals, creatures, or other beings that are the catalyst for the story's progression. They are the driving force for each plot turn, and it is through them that your readers can understand the world and the conflict at hand.

The more realistic your characters, the more likely your readers are to connect with them.

This is known as characterization. How you craft your characters is entirely up to you, but you must ensure that they are motivated and have inner drive. Think about what got you out of bed this morning. Did you wake up to go to work? Did you decide that you wanted to get some writing done? For what purpose that you do either of those things? Carefully think about the answers to your questions because that is the way you need to think about your characters.

Think about why your characters take one action over the other. You must also consider how each character’s point of view not only differs moment by moment, but why it might differ from one another.

You do not have to spell it out for the reader, but if you keep it in the back of your head, you will have a better time at fleshing out your characters.

POINT OF VIEW

The point of view you implement largely depends on who is telling the story, how they tell the story to the audience, and to whom they are telling it. For instance, is the story told from your main character's perspective?

 If it is, are you using first-person pronouns or third?

• First-person example: That summer, I had a hunch that something terrible might happen.

• Third-person example: That summer, Christina had a hunch that something terrible might happen.

Your story may also use a narrator that is not directly involved in the action of the piece, such as using a universal narrator to tell the story to the audience, without being a character within it.

For example:

• In the late summer of 2022, Christina had a hunch that something terrible might happen.

As you can see, this sentence is using a third person perspective, but because it is so removed from the main character (in this case, Christina) that I decided to add in additional year detail to make the narrator seem even more distant from the story being told.

You could also use a roaming perspective and switch between the characters. In another chapter, for example, I might add:

• That summer, Timothy had a similar feeling, and yet the two had never met.

This not only establishes the future connection between these two characters, which will be a major plot point in this story, but it also helps the reader understand that they are viewing the story through the lens of a narrator that has no stake in it.

There are many ways you can tell your story.

As mentioned, it is also essential to consider each character's point of view. The audience needs to understand all internal and external elements of the story, but this is made especially possible through the point of view.

To establish your point of view, remember to be consistent and take time to question whether or not it flows well or might be confusing for the audience.

SETTING

The place, environment, and time in which a story or an event occurs are known as the setting. This is something that you, as the author come up with, but before you jot down anything, remember that your reader cannot crawl inside your head and see what you see.

You need to think of the place, or the location of the piece. You must also think about the environment (the area within the location), and the time of day the story, or each scene happens.

For example, let’s say that your story takes place in the middle of downtown, Houston, Texas in the United States. I’ve given you an extremely specific location, but even this is not specific enough. Simply by saying your location, your audience still does not have a good frame of reference as to where we are. Some of you might even assume there are people in cowboy hats or horses walking around.

Like many cities, there are many different districts and counties/townships that look starkly different from one another.

Let’s get even more specific. Let’s say, I’ve set this story in the Montrose area of Houston, Texas in the United States.

Does this tell you anything? Can you visualize it?

Not really, because some parts of this area has a collection of museums, but also parks, gardens, and more green space. The other is filled with nightclubs, restaurants, and niche shops, such as tattoo parlors.

You would also need to consider the time in which the story takes place. For instance, Montrose at 3 pm looks different than Montrose at 3 am. This section of the city would have also looked drastically different in the 1970s versus today.

Rather than telling your reader this information, make use of descriptions and vivid sentences.

Here’s an example:

Christina wiped her brow with the back of her hand, and shuffled through the neighborhood park, a staple in this area of Montrose. After a few minutes, she fanned herself with the collar of her shirt. Houston had always been hot, but this summer felt like it would be a record-breaker. The usual green grass looked yellow and sickly, while the blue sky held no clouds and little hesitation in burning your eyes if you looked up. The statues surrounding her shimmered in the light, here but only here in a blur. The usual crowd of dog walkers and children visiting from school had already gone home, but relief wouldn’t come until a few hours from now, when the sun had already come and gone and night finally settled in completely.

As you can see, I tried to hit on many descriptions that would give the reader a frame of reference as to where they are. You do not have to be specific with names of places, but you do need to think of what your character sees and feels. Use your five senses (touch, taste, smell, sight, and sound) to bring your reader in.

Research is vital when it comes to setting. Even though I lived in Houston for most of my life, I could not tell you what individual sections look like today. Do your research so that your story becomes more authentic. Then spend time thinking of the way you can describe your setting so that the reader can visualize it in their heads without having to fill in the blanks.

PLOT

This refers to what happens in the story. In essence, the plot is the sequence of events that take place throughout the piece. It is essential to understand that the plot does not necessarily have to be in sequential order.

For example, a chapter outline can look as follows:

• Ch 1: Character wakes up in a strange room and doesn’t know where they are

• Ch 2: The character’s backstory is shared, and it’s learned that they wanted to be an astronaut as a kid

• Ch 3: The character is older now and goes to training to become an astronaut, there they meet the love of their life

• Ch 4: The character realizes they are on a spaceship that is sent to blow up an asteroid headed towards Earth

• Ch 5: The character becomes an astronaut and ends up marrying the person they met in training

• Ch. 6: They use their love as motivation to drive the rocket ship into the asteroid, sacrificing themselves but saving humanity.

In the example above, the story uses flashbacks to propel the plot forward. A more linear story would have these backstories within the present scenes, whether as asides or smaller hints to the reader. Either way would be perfectly fine!

No matter how you frame your plot, each chapter or scene, should work together to lead the reader to understand what happened in the narrative.

For instance, if you tell a story about a missing dog returning home, you can intermix the tale of his quest with memories of his time with his family. Like in the space story, the audience understands a linear timeline of events.

There are different plot lines you can tell, as well as additional story structures you can follow. You can use any number of tools to craft your plot, but you must remember how each part of your plot works together to tell the whole story.

CONFLICT

If the plot is what occurs in the story, then the conflict can be why it happens.

Conflict is the internal and external forces that the main character struggles with. This can be either external or internal.

For instance, your story's central conflict may be that they must slay a dragon to save a kingdom. This is a physical conflict.

An example of an internal conflict would be a story in which a character struggles with a gambling addiction.

The story can also have many different conflicts, with one unifying problem that occurs overall. For instance, if the story is about a character's gambling struggles, mini conflicts can include how they are treated when they lose it all, what happens when they lose it all, what happens to their relationships, whether they may need to cut out toxic relationships, etc.

While the primary battle of the story is with addiction, by having these smaller conflicts the story becomes that much more enriching.

In the story about the knight saving the princess, you might have smaller conflicts such as the knight meeting with resistance from the King, the knight having to battle other knights, the knight struggling with their own shortcomings, the knight fighting other monsters to get to the dragon, etc.

As you can see, whether the larger conflict is external or internal, there is a healthy mix of both with these smaller conflicts.

Conflict is what makes the story interesting and gives readers a reason to root for protagonists. Their struggles often model our own.

TONE

What emotions are evoked while reading?

Do your readers need to put down the book after reading a few chapters, and then process what has happened because the material is too heavy, or the tone is somber? Maybe there is a high level of tension, or the reader is taken on a whimsical, joyous journey.

The author dictates this with tone.

The writer uses the above elements, such as point of view and setting, to set the mood. There are many ways you can dictate how the tone of a piece will go.

For example, you can slowly increase the tension within your story, hoping for a big payoff when that tension is realized through a lot of unexpected drama. This is often common in stories like, you guessed it, drama, but also genres such as horror or surprisingly, romance.

For an example of the latter, consider the following:

• The story opens with a man at a coffeeshop. While sipping his tea and looking out the window, he sees a woman outside that catches his eye. He then watches as she is attacked by pigeons and as a result, her wallet slips out of her purse. This gives a reason to talk to her, but his attempt to return the wallet becomes a comedy of errors.

In the above, the clear objective of the story is to pair these two together, but before that happens there will be a great deal of tense, will they/won’t they type of moments. Tension doesn’t necessarily have to draw negative emotions but can also create excitement and anticipation. This is why “sexual tension” is called just that; it creates a sense of expectancy before anything happens.

You can also decide to decrease the pacing and include more descriptions in your work, which is more common when writing fantasy, science fiction, or historical fiction. That is because these stories often rely heavily on character and world descriptions and ensuring that readers have a full understanding of everything they need to know in the novel.

Tone in these stories can seem ambiguous, but they can also create feelings of nostalgia, adventure, understanding, longing, and so forth.

As you can see, there are many ways you can set the tone for your piece. While your readers emotions should change throughout, the larger tone is what will help you determine what scenes to include and what word choice to use.

THEME

This is the meaning that the writer wants to explore within the story.

During my time in the undergraduate creative writing program, I had a professor who would refer to theme as the heart of the story. He would say, “This story is well written, but what is the heart of the piece?"

Essentially, what my professor meant is what part of the human condition does your story tackle?

Your story should serve a specific purpose to the audience, and that is to communicate your view of the world.

For example, a science-fiction piece might commentate on the dangers of climate change without naming it directly. This can be especially common in dystopian type novels. Sometimes, the theme is a little more on the nose, such as apocalyptic tales that directly deal with a ruined world brought on by the folly of humankind.

A romance novel might have a theme about daring to love after loss, while a horror may have a theme about what happens when someone goes looking for danger.

As with many other elements on this list, there can be minor themes throughout, but typically there is one universal theme that your novel explores. Spend time considering what big takeaway you want your reader to have.

This will especially help you when it comes to making your novel more cohesive.

STYLE

Do you like to use shorter sentences or longer sentences?

How lyrical is your prose?

Do you focus more on descriptions, or do you try to weave your descriptions into your dialogue or actions?

All of these will determine what kind of writing style you have.

For example, I use concise, to-the-point sentences in my writing. That is because my fiction is almost exclusively short-form horror. Lately, I have been dabbling into poetry and I find that my poems use similar tactics – I suppose I enjoy brevity. Ironically, I love to get lost in a book that has long, detailed prose.

Your writing style may differ from what you like to read, or you may enjoy similar styles in what you write and what books you seek out.

Style is perhaps the most subjective of all the fiction elements. The goal is to experiment with different styles, find inspiration in other authors or works of heart, and then use the sentence and story structure that comes natural to you.

By understanding these elements, you can now incorporate them into your manuscript so that you have a proper foundation for your story!

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