Writing about fiction

Writing about fiction is sometimes less intimidating to students than writing about poetry or drama, but it comes with a unique set of challenges. First and foremost, stories center around plots that tend to bewitch the reader and to obscure the story’s other elements. You might find yourself recalling a story by saying, “Oh, that’s the one about the guy who works in the grocery store,” but as you know, plot is only one element. Most poems are only a page or two long, meaning you can see them all at once and visually compare their elements, whereas fiction tests your power of memory. Plays consist mostly of dialogue, whereas fiction tends to intersperse dialogue and description, sometimes demanding that your imagination make great leaps over time and space. In short, fiction often creates its own world, and its expansiveness is sometimes hard to gather in.

Given the fact that fiction tends to swell over time and space and focuses on the endlessly fascinating subject of human behavior, it is probably best to begin broadly and work toward narrowing down your topic. In writing about poetry, you might start with a single feature of language, like rhythm; in writing about fiction, you will probably be drawn initially toward a character. Fiction offers a wider variety of entry points. We’d suggest that you try to determine what you find unique, fascinating, noteworthy, or perhaps just recognizable within a given story as a way of figuring out where you want to begin.