PLOT AND SUSPENSE
THE ELEMENTS OF FICTION
The first question to ask about fiction is, Why bother to read it? The eternal answers to this question are two: enjoyment and understanding. The experience of humankind through the ages is that literature may furnish such understanding and do so effectively-that the depiction of imagined experiences can provide authentic insights. "The truest history", said Diderot of the novels of Samuel Richardson, "is full of falsehoods, and your romance is full of truths."
The second question to ask about fiction is, How is it made? Although true fiction, like any other kind or art, is a kind of mystery, which can't be reasonably explained, there are some basic rules any work of fiction follows or meaningfully violates.
We expect that any work of fiction is unified by a structured plot in which a chain of events is separated from the rest of human experience and treated as coherent whole. We expect the characters to be developed enough for us to understand what they do and why. We usually expect that the people and their actions in the story will lead to some understanding on our part of why these things matter - a sense of meaning or theme, We also expect the writer to give us a clear sense of the setting of the story -the place, time and social circumstances within which the narrative unfolds. Finally, we have to know from whose perspective we are seeing the events and the characters - the point of view in the story. These five elements almost always work together to achieve the story's purpose, direction, and movement, so we call them the basic elements of fiction.
PLOT AND SUSPENSE
The plot is the sequence of events in a story. It usually consists of the following elements: exposition, narrative hook, rising action, climax, falling action, resolution.
In the exposition the author introduces the story's characters, setting, and situation to us. The narrative hook is the point at which the author catches our attention and establishes the basic conflict that the story will eventually resolve. The narrative hook marks the beginning of the rising action, which adds complications to the story. The rising action leads up to the climax, the point of our greatest involvement in the story. The climax usually indicates the way in which the story's conflict will be solved. The falling action reveals the outcome of the climax, and the resolution, brings the story to a satisfying and logical conclusion.
Many authors use clues known as foreshadowing,to prepare their readers for later developments in the plot. These clues can_take the form of minor incidents or statements that suggest later developments. Foreshadowing increases our involvement in. any story Such clues enable the alert reader to feel like the detective who eventually unravels the mystery.