Story Elements

Novels are complex things, made up of many elements, which are discussed here.

Setting

Setting, in a work of fiction, is the device used by the writer to establish three components that will be defining elements of your story:

These elements of the novel’s setting influence characters and events, and are essential to providing readers with the contexts they need to imagine those characters and events. Setting lets the reader in on the type of literary world he or she is entering.

SIDE NOTE: Novelist/educator John Gardner wrote the influential On Becoming A Novelist, in which he dispensed information good and bad (to my mind), but one particularly powerful concept he used was that of “the real toad in the imaginary garden”. You can imagine viewing a static scene in which something suddenly moves, drawing your eye to this living aspect within this static environment. Something has life.

Gardner used that concept of setting - the “imaginary garden” - and action - “the real toad” - to describe those moments in a two-dimensional narrative when suddenly a third, elevating dimension reveals itself. That’s when fiction comes to life.

Gardner borrowed the phrase from a poem by Marianne Moore (Poetry). In the poem, Moore says that poetry is about creating imaginary gardens with real toads in them, meaning that poetry should combine imagination and reality, and that it should present genuine things in a new and interesting way. That is a Bing robot summary of Moore’s thinking, which may or may not represent a full understanding of her thinking.

You need a setting appropriate for the active toad. If your toad is at all typical, it will probably be an outdoor setting, so already your toad story has parameters, a stage on which to act out the play.

A long work of fiction can have multiple settings, whether that means moving between different locations, different time periods, or different worlds. For example, in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, the setting shifts from the peaceful Shire to the dark Mordor, from the ancient Rivendell to the modern Minas Tirith, and from the Middle Earth to the Undying Lands. Each setting has its own characteristics, history, culture, and mood that affect the plot and the characters.

Setting can also be used to create contrast, suspense, foreshadowing, symbolism, and theme in a long work of fiction. For example, in Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities, the setting alternates between London and Paris during the French Revolution. The two cities represent the contrast between order and chaos, stability and violence, loyalty and betrayal. The setting also foreshadows the fate of some characters who travel between the two cities. Moreover, the setting symbolizes the theme of resurrection and sacrifice that runs throughout the novel.

Therefore, setting is not just a backdrop for a story, but a vital element that shapes and enriches a long work of fiction.

Point of view

Point of view is a term that refers to the perspective from which a story is told. It determines who is narrating the story, how much they know, and how they relate to the reader. It shapes how the reader perceives and engages with the story. Point of view is an important choice for a writer, as it can affect the tone, mood, and meaning of the story.

THREE MAIN TYPES OF POINT OF VIEW

Second person point of view is rare in novels, but it can be found in some experimental or interactive fiction. AUTHOR’S NOTE: I use second person POV from time-to-time in ATWOOD: A Toiler’s Weird Odyssey of Deliverance as a device to break down the wall that effective dramatic presentation is typically all about building. Many readers, not oriented to such audacity, find that jarring, but I chose to use the device (sparingly) to remind the reader that the novel, which seems a lot like historical fiction, is really a fantasy, a thing other than what it seems. It is about the development of the United States of America. You’d have to read the novel for any of that to make sense.

Third person point of view comes in two types: limited and omniscient:

Timeline

Time marches on - and it is good that it does, or your novel would never get off the starting blocks.

The timeline of a novel (and life) tracks the sequence of events, the character development, and the historical accuracy of the story.

Because we humans are quite familiar with the clock, and how it proceeds through every minute, every hour, every day, in a straight-forward fashion, developing a timeline for your novel comes pretty naturally. We think in linear terms, and that’s what a timeline is: a straight shot from the starting line to the final line. Timelines, in novel development, are both story drivers, and planning devices. You can use a graphic tool, a word document, or a spreadsheet.

  1. Start by deciding the time span of your novel. How long does the story last? A day, a week, a year, a lifetime? This will help you determine the scale and scope of your timeline.

  2. Identify the major events and milestones of your plot. These are the turning points, the climaxes, the conflicts, and the resolutions that move the story forward. Write them down in chronological order, along with the date and time they occur.

  3. Fill in the gaps between the major events with smaller scenes and details. These are the actions and reactions that show how your characters react to the events, how they grow and change, and how they interact with each other. You can also add historical facts, background information, or foreshadowing clues that enrich your story.

  4. Review your timeline and make sure it is consistent and coherent. Check for any errors, contradictions, or repetitions. Make sure your timeline matches your genre expectations and your target audience. Adjust or delete any scenes that are unnecessary or irrelevant to your plot.

Pace and Timelines

Developing a graphic timeline for your story is useful in helping the writer stay coordinated and consistent in the story-telling. Even more importantly, it is an aid to the reader, creating an order to events - logical or otherwise - giving them some bearing on how far they have progressed in their reading of the story, their immersion.

That is, of course, tricky for the writer. Events in the story must coordinate with the established timeline in ways that comport with the reader’s expectations given what they have read to at any one point. Writers orient their readers by dint of the pace developed for the timeline of a story. It is important that a writer remain consistent with the pacing of their story, their timeline. A story that rushes to a conclusion in some way not consistent with how the story has rolled out on the way to resolution - or is arrived at in a manner not consistent with what we know of the reality of passing time - will annoy a reader. They’ll feel the error in the writing, in the timeline, and they’ll resent that the story ended poorly, whatever happens in the final chapter. They’ll be responding to the handling of it all - of the writing itself, which is not really what the writer wants readers to be thinking about.

Timelines must feel natural, familiar. They are the anchor point we human readers have with fiction, the tether that ties imagination to something we know, think about constantly, and can’t avoid: time, and the passing of it. The writer must respect that and get the pacing of the timeline “right”.

Character Timelines

Because novels typically involved multiple characters, all of different ages, born at different times, maturing through different periods of history, a complex novel will, either actively or passively, be affected by, and possibly deal with, a number of timelines associated with each character.

Character timelines hugely impact character development. A ten year old behaves differently than does a twenty-five year old, because they are at different points in their timelines. Writers may make the choice to develop character back-stories, to explain their behaviors at some point in time.

Writers often use time shifting - flashbacks - to insert stories within the main story to add richness to overall narrative.

Obviously, this takes some careful planning and intuitive insight. If time-shifting flashback scenes are not handled sensitively, they may baffle and frustrate the reader.

Too much jumping aound a novel’s timeline, to tell character back=stories, can feel ham-handed. Here you have one of those differentiators, the type of handling issue that separates incompetent writers from the good, the professional, and the brilliant. AUTHORS NOTE: It seems to be “the professional” who gets the rare traditional publishing deal.

Voice

Voice, in writing a novel, refers to the perspective and tone of your narrator or your characters, and is as complex a topic as is any other aspect of novel writing. Voice is the way you express - through your words, sentences, and paragraphs - personality, opinion, and emotion.

A novel will have a voice - typically the voice of the narrator of the story, that gives the work an overall feel - but most novels involve a number of individual characters. Each of those characters, if you understand the character you are creating well (fully fleshed), you’ll “realize” their own natural voice. It is probably important that writers clearly hear their characters’ voices in his or her heads, at the very least - probably critical to creating truly engaging characters. Voices - the sound-feelings writers place in their readers’ minds - may make stories more engaging, unique, and authentic.

You, the writer, must make decisions asround how, and whether, to use those character voices in your story.

There are three voice types in writing a novel:

Attitude

Attitude in a novel is the way the author or the characters express their feelings, opinions, and perspectives about the subject matter of the story. Attitude can affect the tone, mood, and meaning of the novel, as well as the reader’s engagement and enjoyment of the story. Attitude can be conveyed through various elements of writing, such as word choice, sentence structure, figurative language, point of view, and details.

Some examples of attitude in novels are:

Plot

It may be useful, when thinking about the “plot” of your novel, to put yourself back in math class at school, when you used to “plot” points along the ‘X’ and ‘Y’ axes on graph paper.

Plot, in that example, is a verb, but it didn’t begin that way. How it become part of the lexicon is unclear. The word seems to exist only in the English language, and to have been invented as a noun in the 10th or 11th century to reference a small piece of land or area of ground (according to Dictionary.com).

If you imagine a birdseye view of a plot of land, you have a good starting point for imagining how plot, originally a noun, expanded to become the verb that it is today.

Just as you might place items or objects of interest on your plot of land - green grass, trees, flowers, a monument, a grave - and just as you might plot points on a graph, you will create plot points in the storyline of your novel that progress character development. That sense of the word “plot” seems to have entered into usage in the 16th Century, becoming a verb in hand with the parallel word “complot”, meaning “a secret plan for accomplishing a usually evil or unlawful end”. The 1605 “Gunpowder Plot” - a failed attempt by a group of Catholic conspirators to blow up the Houses of Parliament and kill King James I - cemented the use of the word “plot” as a verb. It describes a series of events leading to a resolution.

As discussed on the Outlining page of this site, the three-act format is a proven winner when it comes to formulating plot lines. It provides a useful way to unpack the basic elements of fiction. The ancient Greek dramatists are credited with developing a formula for story-telling that included the following plot elements (though apparently the word “plot” did not exist in their time):

German writer Gustav Freytag “codified” that formula in the middle of the 19th century. His take was built on the concepts attributed to Aristotle, who organized his plays in two main parts - the “complication” and the “denouement” - sandwiching around a “peripeteia” or a reversal of fortune.

Freytag’s take on the Greek tradition was called Freytag’s Pyramid. and it organized his elements of fiction in the three-act format:

NOTE: I leaned heavily on the Bing robot for language and structure in discussing the above. The language was likely lifted from these sources:

Here is my sense for how this plotting, pyramid approach might be visualized.

Novel Plot

Dramatic Milestones

Dramatic milestones are key events or turning points in a novel that advance the plot, develop the characters, and create tension and suspense for the reader. They are also known as plot points, story beats, or dramatic units. Dramatic milestones are essential for creating a satisfying and coherent story structure that keeps the reader engaged and invested in the outcome of the novel. Dramatic milestones are meant to serve your story and your reader by creating a clear, coherent, and compelling narrative arc that keeps them hooked from start to finish.

There are different ways to organize and identify dramatic milestones in a novel, depending on the genre, style, and purpose of the story. However, some common dramatic milestones that most novels share are:

Depending on your creative vision and artistic expression, you can modify, add, or omit some of these milestones to suit your story needs.

Character development

Character development is the process of creating fictional characters with the same depth and complexity as real-life human beings. It is an essential element of writing a novel, as it makes the readers care about the characters and their journey. Character development involves several steps, such as:

To help you with character development, you can use various tools and techniques, such as:

Back to the Table of Contents

Next - Character Development