Short Fiction I

Characters show who they are through what they say, do and think, and through how other characters react to them, not only through direct description. You learn to read those details and to describe a character's perspective, meaning how they see their own situation.

Setting is the time and place where a story happens. You learn to notice which details of setting a writer chooses to include and what those details suggest about the characters and events.

Plot is the arrangement of a story's events, usually linked by cause and effect. You learn to track how events build tension toward a climax and what each event sets in motion.

Writers decide how much background to give you (the exposition) and in what order to tell events. They don't always go in time order: a flashback, foreshadowing or opening in the middle of the action (in medias res) changes what you know and when you know it, which shapes suspense and what seems most important.

Every story has a narrator (in a poem, a speaker), and that voice is not the same person as the author. You learn to ask who is telling the story, what they know, and how far you can trust what they say.

Point of view is the position a story is told from. A first-person narrator says "I" and takes part in the story. A third-person narrator stands outside it and may know one character's thoughts (limited), many characters' thoughts (omniscient) or only what can be seen and heard (objective). The point of view controls which details you get and how you see the characters.

A good claim about a story is an idea a reader could disagree with, not a plain fact or a summary. You learn to write one and support it with quotations or specific details, then explain how that evidence proves your point.