Notes on Fictional Narratives

Fiction is the form of any narrative or informative work that deals, in part or in whole, with information or events that are not factual, but rather, imaginary and theoretical—that is, invented by the author.

A narrative (or story) is any account that presents connected events, and may be organized into various categories: non-fiction (i.e. New Journalism, creative non-fiction, biographies, and historiography); fictionalized accounts of historical events (i.e. anecdotes, myths and legends); and fiction proper (i.e. literature in prose, such as short stories and novels, and sometimes in poetry and drama, although in drama the events are primarily being shown instead of told).

Types of Fictional Narratives

A short story is a work of fiction, usually written in narrative prose. Often depicting few characters and concentrating a 'single effect' or mood, it differs from the anecdote in its use of plot, and the variety of literary techniques it shares with the more extensive novel.

Although the short story is expressly defined by its length, the precise length of stories that can be considered 'short' varies between critics and writers, especially when taking account of the diversity of the form across genres. As such, the short story is defined relative to other prose forms in various traditions and styles, with the precise length of each story determined by each author's artistic intent or the requirements of the plot or depiction.

A novel is a long prose narrative that usually describes fictional characters and events in the form of a sequential story.

Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance.

Satyr plays were an ancient Greek form of tragicomedy, similar in spirit to burlesque. They featured choruses of satyrs, were based on Greek mythology, and were rife with mock drunkenness, brazen sexuality (including phallic props), pranks, sight gags, and general merriment.

Tragedy (Ancient Greek: is a form of drama based on human suffering that invokes in its audience an accompanying catharsis or pleasure in the viewing.

Ancient Greek comedy was one of the final three principal dramatic forms in the theatre of classical Greece (the others being tragedy and the satyr play). The philosopher Aristotle wrote in his Poetics (c. 335 BC) that comedy is a representation of laughable people and involves some kind of blunder or ugliness which does not cause pain or disaster.

Historical drama tells a story that is set in the past. That setting is usually real and drawn from history, and often contains actual historical persons, but the main characters tend to be fictional. Writers of stories in this genre, while penning fiction, attempt to capture the manners and social conditions of the persons or time(s) presented in the story, with due attention paid to period detail and fidelity.

source: wikipedia.com