Summary Robert DiYanni Book

Robert DiYanni Book

1.      Reading Stories

There are three aspects of the reading process “experience,” “interpretation, ”and”evalution.” (p.22)

      The Experience of Fiction

Our experience of fiction concerns our feelings about the characters, our sense of involvement in the story’s developing action, our pleasure or confusion in its language, our joy or sorrow as its outcome. (p.22)

The Interpretation of Fiction

An Interpretation is an argument about a story’s meaning as we understand it. Interpretation, in short, relies on our intellectual comprehension rather than on our emotional response to the literary work. The interpretation involves four related intellectual acts: observing, connecting, inferring, and concluding. (p.23)

The Evaluation of Fiction

When we evaluate a story we do two different things. First we asses its literary quality; we make a judgement about how good it is, how succesfully it realizes its intensions, how effectively it pleasess us. Second, we consider the values the story endorses-or refutes. An evaluation is essentially a judgement, an opinion about a work formulated as a conclusion. When we appraise it according to our own special combination of cultural, moral, and aesthetic values. (p.25)

The Act of Reading Action

Even though we may read stories line by line, sentence by sentence, page by page, this linearity belies what happens mentally as we read. Our mentally action is cyclical rather than linear. (p.32)

2.      Types of Short Fiction

Early Forms: Parable, Fable and Tale

We defined a parable as a brief story that teaches a lesson, often of a religious or spiritual nature. Like parable, fables are a brief stories that point to a moral. Fables often highlight human failings. They frequently include animals as characters, and their tone is satirical. (p.37)

A tale is a story that narrates strange or fabulous happenings.While we may read fables and parables to understand their meaning, our interest in tales will generally incline more toward what happens and possibly the emotions we experience. (p.38)

The Short Story

Short stories, on the other hand, typically reveal character in dramatic scenes, in moments of action, and in exchanges of dialogue. (p.41)

The Nonrealistic Story

The important thing, however, about nonrealistic stories is to accept them on their own terms. (p.41)

3.      Elements of Fiction

Plot and Structure

Plot is the arrangement of events that make up a story. Many fictional plot turn on a conflict, or struggle between opposing forces, that is usually resolved by the end of the story.

Typically fictional plots begin with an exposition that provides background information we need to make sense of the action, that describes the setting, and that introduces the major characters; these plots develop a series of complications or intensifications of the conflict that lead to a crisis of  moment great tension. The conflict may reach a climax or turning point, a moment of great tension that fixes the outcome; then, the action falls off as the plot’s complications are sorted out and resolved (the resolution or denoument). (p.44)

Character

Character in fiction can be conveniently classified as major and minor, static and dynamic. The major character is sometimes called a protagonist whose conflict with an antagonist may spark story’s conflict. Supporting the major character are one or more secondary or minor charcters  whose function is partly to illuminate the major characters. (p.54)

Characterization  is the means by wich writers present and reveal character. (p.55)

Setting

This place or location of a story’s action along with the time in which it occurs is its setting. (p.60)Setting is important for an additional reason: it symbolizes the emotional state of the characters. (p.61)

Point of View

In a story with objective point of view, the writer shows what happens without directly stating more than readers can infer from its action and dialogue. (p.71) Although third person point of view may take us inside a character’s consciousness or remain objective. It does not assume the perspective of any character. Stories with narrators who participate in the action are presented from a first person point of view. (p.72)

Language and Style

The way writer chooses words and arranges them determines his or her style. (p.79)

In the discussion of the language and style of fiction, we will concentrate on diction, the kind of word choices a writer makes; syntax, the order those words assume in sentences; and the presence or absence of figurative language, especially figures or comparison (simile and metaphor)

(p.80)

Theme

Simply put, a story’s theme is its idea or point (formulated as a generalization). The theme of a fable is its moral; the theme of parable is its teaching; the theme of a short story is its implied view of life and conduct. (p.85)

Irony and symbol

Two traditional facets of fictional works are irony and symbol. Both allow writers to compress a great deal of meaning into a brief space. (p.92)

Irony

Irony always involves a contrast or discrepancy between one thing and another. (p.92)

Symbol

Symbol in fiction are simply objects, actions, or events that convey meaning. (p.94)

Fiction

The Elements of the Short Story

Plot

Plot has been defined as “an author’s careful arrangement of incidents in a narrative to achieve a desired effect.” (p.1)

Causality

A plot is a series of actions, often presented in chronological order, but the ingredient a plot has that a story lacks is causality. (p.1)

Conflict

Traditionally, plot grow out of a conflict-an internal or an external struggle between the main character and an opposing force. (p.2)

Plot Structure

In literature, however, exposition refers to the explanatory information a reader needs to compeherend the situation in the story. (p.3)

The initiating incident is the event that changes the situation established in the exposition and sets the conflict in motion. (p.3)

In the raising action, various episodes occur that develop, complicate, or intensify the conflict. (p.3)

Climax has been defined in a number of ways; the point of greates conflict, the emotional high point, the turning point in the plot, or the point at which one of the opposing forces gains: the advantage. (p.3)

The events that follow the climax are known as the failing action. (p.4)

The failing action leads into the resolution or denouement of the story. (p.4)

Techniques in Storytelling

Authors employ a number of technique in telling their stories. They include flashback, foreshadowing, suspense, and coincidence. (p.5)

Setting

Aspect of Setting

Setting can be general, specific, or very detailed. (p.45)

Purposes of Setting

Setting may serve a number of purposes, such as influencing action, defining character, and contributing to mood. (p.46)

Character

As a literary term, however, a character is a person created for a work of fiction. (p.95)

Round and Flat Characters (p.95)

Major and Minor Characters (p.96)

Active and Static Characters (p.97)

Characterization

Character creation is the art of characterization-what the author does to bring a character to life, to provide the reader with a sense of that character’s personality, to make that character unique. (pp.97-98)

Direct Characterization (p.98)

Indirect Characterization (p.98)

Assesing characterization (p.99)

Point of View and Tone

Point of view is the vantage point from which an author tells a story. (p.151)

First Person Point of view (p.151)

Third Person Point of View (p. 152)

Tone (p.153)

Tone and Mood

The terms tone and mood are sometimes confused. While tone conveys the author’s attitude, mood refers to the atmosphere in a story. (p.153)

Theme

Theme is an author’s insight or general observation about human nature or the human condition that is conveyed through character, plot, and imagery. (p.199)

Style

One of the more difficult literary terms to define precisely is style, a writer’s characteristic way of saying things. (p.243)

Diction

Diction refers to a writer’s choice of words. (p.243)

Imagery and Symbol

Most reader think that imagery refers solely to visual pictures, but in literature, where it may be called sensory imagery, the term extends to all senses-sight, taste, smell, touch, amd hearing. (p.244) In broad terms, a symbol is anything that signifies, or stand for something else. In literature, a symbol is anything concrete-an object, place, a character, an action-that stands for or suggests something abstract. (p.244)

Syntax and Variety

A third component of style is the sentence. Syntax, or sentence structure, pattern or arrangement of individual words and phrases. (p.245)

Popular Fiction

Western (p.317)

Mystery and Detective (p.346)

Fantasy and Science Fiction (p.397)

Ghost and Horror (p.423)