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56-476: The Whiting Award is an American award presented annually to ten emerging writers in fiction , nonfiction , poetry and drama . The award is sponsored by the Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation and has been presented since 1985. As of 2021, winners receive US$ 50,000. The nominees are chosen through a juried process, and the final winners are selected by a committee of writers, scholars, and editors, selected each year by

112-760: A 1990 series of short stories about the Vietnam War . Fictional works that explicitly involve supernatural, magical, or scientifically impossible elements are often classified under the genre of fantasy , including Lewis Carroll 's 1865 novel Alice's Adventures in Wonderland , J. R. R. Tolkien 's The Lord of the Rings , and J. K. Rowling 's Harry Potter series. Creators of fantasy sometimes introduce imaginary creatures and beings such as dragons and fairies. Types of written fiction in prose are distinguished by relative length and include: Fiction writing

168-404: A certain point of view. The distinction between the two may be best defined from the viewpoint of the audience, according to whom a work is non-fiction if its people, settings, and plot are perceived entirely as historically or factually real, while a work is regarded as fiction if it deviates from reality in any of those areas. The distinction is further obscured by a philosophical understanding, on

224-447: A completely imaginary way or been followed by major new events that are completely imaginary (the genre of alternative history ). Or, it depicts impossible technology or technology that defies current scientific understandings or capabilities (the genre of science fiction ). Contrarily, realistic fiction involves a story whose basic setting (time and location in the world) is, in fact, real and whose events could believably happen in

280-475: A figure from history, Bonnie Prince Charlie , and takes part in the Battle of Prestonpans . Some works of fiction are slightly or greatly re-imagined based on some originally true story, or a reconstructed biography. Often, even when the fictional story is based on fact, there may be additions and subtractions from the true story to make it more interesting. An example is Tim O'Brien 's The Things They Carried ,

336-700: A major impact on the creation and distribution of fiction, calling into question the feasibility of copyright as a means to ensure royalties are paid to copyright holders. Also, digital libraries such as Project Gutenberg make public domain texts more readily available. The combination of inexpensive home computers, the Internet, and the creativity of its users has also led to new forms of fiction, such as interactive computer games or computer-generated comics. Countless forums for fan fiction can be found online, where loyal followers of specific fictional realms create and distribute derivative stories. The Internet

392-513: A new formal approach to the standard narrative of that era. American novelists such as John Hawkes started publishing novels in the late 1940s that played with the conventions of narrative. The spirit of the European avant-gardes would be carried through the post-war generation as well. The poet Isidore Isou formed the Lettrist group, and produced manifestoes, poems, and films that explored

448-570: A subset (written fiction that aligns to a particular genre ), or its opposite: an evaluative label for written fiction that comprises popular culture , as artistically or intellectually inferior to high culture . Regardless, fiction is commonly broken down into a variety of genres: categories of fiction, each differentiated by a particular unifying tone or style ; set of narrative techniques , archetypes , or other tropes; media content ; or other popularly defined criterion. Science fiction predicts or supposes technologies that are not realities at

504-452: A tennis academy and a rehab facility; digressions often become plotlines, and the book features over 100 pages of footnotes. Other writers like Nicholson Baker were noted for their minimalism in novels such as The Mezzanine , about a man who rides an escalator for 140 pages. American author Mark Danielewski combined elements of a horror novel with formal academic writing and typographic experimentation in his novel House of Leaves . In

560-430: A traditional narrow sense, "fiction" refers to written narratives in prose – often referring specifically to novels , novellas , and short stories . More broadly, however, fiction encompasses imaginary narratives expressed in any medium , including not just writings but also live theatrical performances , films , television programs , radio dramas , comics , role-playing games , and video games . Typically,

616-501: A university or a similar institution, and with the continuation of such positions determined not by book sales but by critical acclaim by other established literary authors and critics. On the other hand, he suggests, genre fiction writers tend to support themselves by book sales. However, in an interview, John Updike lamented that "the category of 'literary fiction' has sprung up recently to torment people like me who just set out to write books, and if anybody wanted to read them, terrific,

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672-423: A wide awareness of and admiration for an extreme and uncensored freedom. Burroughs also pioneered a style known as cut-up , where newspapers or typed manuscripts were cut up and rearranged to achieve lines in the text. In the late 1960s, experimental movements became so prominent that even authors considered more conventional such as Bernard Malamud and Norman Mailer exhibited experimental tendencies. Metafiction

728-434: A written work of fiction that: Literary fiction is often used as a synonym for literature , in the narrow sense of writings specifically considered to be an art form. While literary fiction is sometimes regarded as superior to genre fiction, the two are not mutually exclusive, and major literary figures have employed the genres of science fiction, crime fiction , romance , etc., to create works of literature. Furthermore,

784-508: Is a part of media studies. Examples of prominent fictionalization in the creative arts include those in the general context of World War II in popular culture and specifically Nazi German leaders such as Adolf Hitler in popular culture and Reinhard Heydrich in popular culture . For instance, American actor and comedian Charlie Chaplin portrayed the eccentric despot Adenoid Hynkel in the 1940 satirical film The Great Dictator . The unhinged, unintelligent figure fictionalized real events from

840-446: Is also used for the development of blog fiction , where a story is delivered through a blog either as flash fiction or serial blog, and collaborative fiction , where a story is written sequentially by different authors, or the entire text can be revised by anyone using a wiki . The definition of literary fiction is controversial. It may refer to any work of fiction in a written form. However, various other definitions exist, including

896-439: Is characterized by a lesser degree of adherence to realistic or plausible individuals, events, or places, while the umbrella genre of realistic fiction is characterized by a greater degree. For instance, speculative fiction may depict an entirely imaginary universe or one in which the laws of nature do not strictly apply (often, the sub-genre of fantasy ). Or, it depicts true historical moments, except that they have concluded in

952-496: Is known as fictionalization . The opposite circumstance, in which the physical world or a real turn of events seem influenced by past fiction, is commonly described by the phrase " life imitating art ". The latter phrase is popularity associated with the Anglo-Irish fiction writer Oscar Wilde . The alteration of actual happenings into a fictional format, with this involving a dramatic representation of real events or people,

1008-446: Is known as both fictionalization , or, more narrowly for visual performance works like in theatre and film, dramatization . According to the academic publication Oxford Reference , a work set up this way will have a "narrative based partly or wholly on fact but written as if it were fiction" such that "[f]ilms and broadcast dramas of this kind often bear the label 'based on a true story'." In intellectual research, evaluating this process

1064-492: Is most long-established in the realm of literature (written narrative fiction), the broad study of the nature, function, and meaning of fiction is called literary theory , and the narrower interpretation of specific fictional texts is called literary criticism (with subsets like film criticism and theatre criticism also now long-established). Aside from real-world connections, some fictional works may depict characters and events within their own context, entirely separate from

1120-427: Is often described as "elegantly written, lyrical, and ... layered". The tone of literary fiction can be darker than genre fiction, while the pacing of literary fiction may be slower than popular fiction. As Terrence Rafferty notes, "literary fiction, by its nature, allows itself to dawdle, to linger on stray beauties even at the risk of losing its way". Based on how literary fiction is defined, genre fiction may be

1176-519: Is quoted in Boswell as saying "The merely odd does not last. Tristram Shandy did not last." Denis Diderot 's Jacques the Fatalist and His Master , drew many elements from Tristam Shandy , a fact not concealed in the text, making it an early example of metafiction. In the 1910s, artistic experimentation became a prominent force, and various European and American writers began experimenting with

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1232-407: Is the process by which an author or creator produces a fictional work. Some elements of the writing process may be planned in advance, while others may come about spontaneously. Fiction writers use different writing styles and have distinct writers' voices when writing fictional stories. The use of real events or real individuals as direct inspiration for imaginary events or imaginary individuals

1288-439: Is written as seen from the main character's phone, using emoji and emoticon , moveable gifs , hyperlinks, and memes , as well as depicting email , text , Twitter posts, missed call notifications, and other media commonly viewed on smartphones. Such writing has been variously referred to electronic literature , hypertext , and codework . Others have focused on exploring the plurality of narrative point of views, like

1344-422: The human condition . In general, it focuses on "introspective, in-depth character studies" of "interesting, complex and developed" characters. This contrasts with genre fiction where plot is the central concern. Usually in literary fiction the focus is on the "inner story" of the characters who drive the plot, with detailed motivations to elicit "emotional involvement" in the reader. The style of literary fiction

1400-559: The surrealist movement employed a range of unusual techniques to evoke mystical and dream-like states in their poems, novels, and prose works. Examples include the collaboratively written texts Les Champs Magnétiques (by André Breton and Philippe Soupault ) and Sorrow for Sorrow , a "dream novel" produced under hypnosis by Robert Desnos . By the end of the 1930s, the political situation in Europe had made Modernism appear to be an inadequate, aestheticized, even irresponsible response to

1456-521: The 18th and 19th centuries. They were often associated with Enlightenment ideas such as empiricism and agnosticism . Realism developed as a literary style at this time. New forms of mass media developed in the late-19th and early-20th centuries, including popular-fiction magazines and early film. Interactive fiction was developed in the late-20th century through video games. Certain basic elements define all works of narrative , including all works of narrative fiction. Namely, all narratives include

1512-411: The 1970s and 1980s were Italo Calvino , Michael Ondaatje , and Julio Cortázar . Calvino's most famous books are If on a winter's night a traveler , where some chapters depict the reader preparing to read a book titled If on a winter's night a traveler while others form the narrative and Invisible Cities , where Marco Polo explains his travels to Kubla Khan although they are merely accounts of

1568-467: The Foundation. Writers cannot apply for the prize themselves, and the Foundation does not accept unsolicited nominations. Non-fiction Fiction Fiction is any creative work , chiefly any narrative work, portraying individuals , events, or places that are imaginary or in ways that are imaginary. Fictional portrayals are thus inconsistent with history , fact , or plausibility. In

1624-1040: The Mexican novel " Pedro Paramo " by Juan Rulfo , the Colombian family epic " One Hundred Years of Solitude " by Gabriel García Márquez , the Peruvian political history " The War of the End of the World " by Mario Vargas Llosa , the Puerto Rican Spanglish dramatic dialogue " Yo-Yo Boing! " by Giannina Braschi , and the Cuban revolutionary novel " Paradiso " by José Lezama Lima . Also in Latin America, Ecuadorian writer Pablo Palacio published his experimental novella Débora in October 1927. Some of

1680-514: The Uruguayan American writer Jorge Majfud in La reina de América and La ciudad de la luna . In a different vein, Greek author Dimitris Lyacos suppresses the urge of taxonomizing the text by creating multi-genre narratives, a process he likens to John Keats ' negative capability . In Z213: Exit he combines, in a kind of a modern-day palimpsest, the diary entries of two narrators in

1736-604: The audience's willing suspension of disbelief . The effects of experiencing fiction, and the way the audience is changed by the new information they discover, has been studied for centuries. Also, infinite fictional possibilities themselves signal the impossibility of fully knowing reality, provocatively demonstrating philosophical notions, such as there potentially being no criterion to measure constructs of reality. In contrast to fiction, creators of non-fiction assume responsibility for presenting information (and sometimes opinion) based only in historical and factual reality. Despite

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1792-415: The audience, including elements such as romance , piracy , and religious ceremonies . Heroic romance was developed in medieval Europe , incorporating elements associated with fantasy , including supernatural elements and chivalry . The structure of the modern novel was developed by Miguel de Cervantes with Don Quixote in the early-17th century. The novel became a primary medium of fiction in

1848-505: The boundaries of the written and spoken word. The OULIPO (in French, Ouvroir de littérature potentielle , or "Workshop of Potential Literature") brought together writers, artists, and mathematicians to explore innovative, combinatoric means of producing texts. Founded by the author Raymond Queneau and mathematician François Le Lionnais , the group included Italo Calvino and Georges Perec . Queneau's Cent Mille Milliards de Poèmes uses

1904-581: The context of the real world. One realistic fiction sub-genre is historical fiction , centered around true major events and time periods in the past. The attempt to make stories feel faithful to reality or to more objectively describe details, and the 19th-century artistic movement that began to vigorously promote this approach, is called literary realism , which incorporates some works of both fiction and non-fiction. Storytelling has existed in all human cultures, and each culture incorporates different elements of truth and fiction into storytelling. Early fiction

1960-449: The danger of worldwide fascism , and literary experimentalism faded from public view, kept alive through the 1940s only by isolated visionaries like Kenneth Patchen . In the 1950s, the Beat writers can be seen as a reaction against the hidebound quality of both the poetry and prose of its time, and such hovering, near-mystical works as Jack Kerouac 's novel Visions of Gerard represented

2016-550: The development of experimental literature in the early and middle 20th century. In the Dadaist movement, poet Tristan Tzara employed newspaper clippings and experimental typography in his manifestoes. The futurist author F.T. Marinetti espoused a theory of "words in freedom" across the page, exploding the boundaries of both conventional narrative and the layout of the book itself as shown in his sound poem "novel" Zang Tumb Tumb . The writers, poets, and artists associated with

2072-417: The early 21st century, many examples of experimental literature reflect the emergence of computers and other digital technologies, some of them actually using the medium on which they are reflecting, such as Patricia Lockwood 's 2021 internet novel No One Is Talking About This , which was mostly composed on an iPhone . Terena Elizabeth Bell's 2022 short story "#CoronaLife" (from Tell Me What You See )

2128-442: The elements of character , conflict , narrative mode , plot , setting , and theme . Characters are individuals inside a work of story, conflicts are the tension or problem that drives characters' thoughts and actions, narrative modes are the ways in which a story is communicated, plots are the sequence of events in a story, settings are the story's locations in time and space, and themes are deeper messages or interpretations about

2184-474: The fictionality of a work is publicly expressed, so the audience expects the work to deviate to a greater or lesser degree from the real world rather than presenting, for instance, only factually accurate portrayals or characters who are actual people. Because fiction is generally understood as not adhering to the real world, the themes and context of a work, such as if and how it relates to real-world issues or events, are open to interpretation . Since fiction

2240-578: The given forms. Tendencies that formed during this period later became parts of the modernist movement. The Cantos of Ezra Pound , the post-World War I work of T. S. Eliot , prose and plays by Gertrude Stein , were some of the most influential works of the time, though James Joyce 's Ulysses is generally considered the most essential work of the period. The novel not only influenced more experimental writers, such as Virginia Woolf , but also less experimental writers, such as Ernest Hemingway . The historical avant-garde movements also contributed to

2296-574: The imperial period. Plasmatic narrative, following entirely invented characters and events, was developed through ancient drama and New Comedy . One common structure among early fiction is a series of strange and fantastic adventures as early writers test the limits of fiction writing. Milesian tales were an early example of fiction writing in Ancient Greece and Italy. As fiction writing developed in Ancient Greece, relatable characters and plausible scenarios were emphasized to better connect with

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2352-441: The known physical universe: an independent fictional universe . The creative art of constructing such an imaginary world is known as worldbuilding . Literary critic James Wood argues that "fiction is both artifice and verisimilitude ", meaning that it requires both creative inventions as well as some acceptable degree of believability among its audience, a notion often encapsulated in the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge 's idea of

2408-508: The more the merrier. ... I'm a genre writer of a sort. I write literary fiction, which is like spy fiction or chick lit". Likewise, on The Charlie Rose Show , he argued that this term, when applied to his work, greatly limited him and his expectations of what might come of his writing, so he does not really like it. He suggested that all his works are literary, simply because "they are written in words". Literary fiction often involves social commentary , political criticism , or reflection on

2464-493: The one hand, that the truth can be presented through imaginary channels and constructions, while, on the other hand, works of the imagination can just as well bring about significant new perspectives on, or conclusions about, truth and reality. All types of fiction invite their audience to explore real ideas, issues, or possibilities using an otherwise imaginary setting or using something similar to reality, though still distinct from it. The umbrella genre of speculative fiction

2520-494: The physical book itself to proliferate different sonnet combinations, while Perec's novel Life: A User's Manual is based on the Knight's Tour on a chessboard. The British Angry Young Men of the 1950s rejected experimentalism, but the 1960s brought a brief return of the glory days of modernism, and a first grounding of Post-modernism . Publicity owing to an obscenity trial against William S. Burroughs ' Naked Lunch brought

2576-411: The short story form included Donald Barthelme , and, in both short and long forms, Robert Coover and Ronald Sukenick . While in 1968 William H. Gass's novel Willie Masters Lonesome Wife added challenging dimensions to reading as some of the pages are in mirror writing where the text can only be read if a mirror is held in an angle against the page. Some later well-known experimental writers of

2632-437: The standard history of the novel that one can't refer to its "breaking" conventions that had yet to solidify. But in its mockery of narrative, and its willingness to use such graphic elements, such as an all-black page to mourn the death of a character, Sterne's novel is considered a fundamental text for many post-World War II authors. However, Sterne's work was not without detractors even in its time; for instance, Samuel Johnson

2688-541: The story that its audience is left to discuss and reflect upon. Traditionally, fiction includes novels, short stories, fables , legends , myths , fairy tales , epic and narrative poetry , plays (including operas , musicals , dramas, puppet plays , and various kinds of theatrical dances ). However, fiction may also encompass comic books , and many animated cartoons , stop motions , anime , manga , films , video games , radio programs , television programs ( comedies and dramas ), etc. The Internet has had

2744-448: The study of genre fiction has developed within academia in recent decades. The term is sometimes used such as to equate literary fiction to literature. The accuracy of this is debated. Neal Stephenson has suggested that, while any definition will be simplistic, there is today a general cultural difference between literary and genre fiction. On the one hand literary authors nowadays are frequently supported by patronage, with employment at

2800-434: The techniques he employed in the book include stream of consciousness and metafiction . Contemporary American authors David Foster Wallace , Giannina Braschi , and Rick Moody , combine some of the experimental form-play of the 1960s writers with a more emotionally deflating, irony, and a greater tendency towards accessibility and humor. Wallace's Infinite Jest is a post-postmodern maximalist work describing life at

2856-454: The then ongoing Second World War in a way that presented fascist individuals as humorously irrational and pathetic. Many other villains take direct inspiration from real people while having fictional accents, appearances, backgrounds, names, and so on. Experimental fiction The first text generally cited in this category is Laurence Sterne 's The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1759) . This text occurs so early in

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2912-509: The time of the work's creation: Jules Verne 's novel From the Earth to the Moon was published in 1865, but only in 1969 did astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin become the first humans to land on the Moon. Historical fiction places imaginary characters into real historical events. In the 1814 historical novel Waverley , Sir Walter Scott 's fictional character Edward Waverley meets

2968-535: The traditional view that fiction and non-fiction are opposites, some works (particularly in the modern era) blur this boundary, particularly works that fall under certain experimental storytelling genres—including some postmodern fiction , autofiction , or creative nonfiction like non-fiction novels and docudramas —as well as the deliberate literary fraud of falsely marketing fiction as nonfiction. Furthermore, even most works of fiction usually have elements of, or grounding in, truth of some kind, or truth from

3024-660: The very city in which they are chatting. Ondaatje's The Collected Works of Billy the Kid uses a scrapbook style to tell its story while Cortázar's Hopscotch can be read with the chapters in any order. Argentine Julio Cortázar and the naturalized Brazilian writer Clarice Lispector , both Latin American writers who have created masterpieces in experimental literature of 20th and 21st century, mixing dreamscapes, journalism, and fiction; regional classics written in Spanish include

3080-407: Was an important tendency in this period, exemplified most elaborately in the works of John Barth , Jonathan Bayliss , and Jorge Luis Borges . In 1967 Barth wrote the essay The Literature of Exhaustion , which is sometimes considered a manifesto of postmodernism. A major touchstone of this era was Thomas Pynchon 's Gravity's Rainbow , which eventually became a bestseller. Important authors in

3136-472: Was closely associated with history and myth . Greek poets such as Homer , Hesiod , and Aesop developed fictional stories that were told first through oral storytelling and then in writing. Prose fiction was developed in Ancient Greece , influenced by the storytelling traditions of Asia and Egypt. Distinctly fictional work was not recognized as separate from historical or mythological stories until

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