San Marcos Writers Network

FICTION

Fiction is an imaginative form of narrative, one of the four basic rhetorical modes. Although the word fiction is derived from the Latin fingo, fingere, finxi, fictum, “to form, create”, works of fiction need not be entirely imaginary and may include real people, places, and events. Fiction may be written or oral or may be presented as a film or in theater or on radio or television. Although not all fiction is necessarily artistic, fiction is largely perceived as a form of art or entertainment. The ability to create fiction and other artistic works is considered to be a fundamental aspect of human culture, one of the defining characteristics of humanity. [www.wikipedia.org]

FABLE & PARABLE – A fable is a succinct story, in prose or verse, that features animals, plants, inanimate objects, or forces of nature which are anthropomorphized (given human qualities), and that illustrates a moral lesson (a “moral”), which may at the end be expressed explicitly in a pithy maxim. [www.wikipedia.org]

A parable is a brief, succinct story, in prose or verse, that illustrates a moral or religious lesson. It differs from a fable in that fables use animals, plants, inanimate objects, and forces of nature as characters, while parables generally feature human characters. [www.wikipedia.org]

FOLKLORE, LEGEND, & MYTHOLOGY – Folklore is the body of expressive culture, including tales, music, dance, legends, oral history, proverbs, jokes, popular beliefs, customs, and so forth within a particular population comprising the traditions (including oral traditions) of that culture, subculture, or group. It is also the set of practices through which those expressive genres are shared. [www.wikipedia.org]

A legend (Latin, legenda, “things to be read”) is a narrative of human actions that are perceived both by teller and listeners to take place within human history and to possess certain qualities that give the tale verisimilitude. Legend, for its active and passive participants includes happenings that are outside the realm of “possibility”, defined by a highly flexible set of parameters, which may include miracles that are perceived as actually having happened, within the specific tradition of indoctrination where the legend arises, and within which it may be transformed into many things over time, in order to keep it fresh and vital, and realistic. [www.wikipedia.org]

Mythology (from the Greek μυϑολογία mythología, from μυθολογείν mythologein to relate myths, from μύθος mythos, meaning a narrative, and λόγος logos, meaning speech or argument) is the study of myths – stories that a particular culture believes to be true and that use the supernatural to interpret natural events and to explain the nature of the universe and humanity. In modern usage, “mythology” can also mean the body of myths from a particular culture or religion (as in Greek mythology, Egyptian mythology or Norse mythology). The study of similarities and differences between myths from multiple cultures is called comparative mythology. [www.wikipedia.org]

NOVEL – A novel (from the Italian novella, Spanish novela, French nouvelle for “new”, “news”, or “short story of something new”) is today a long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century. [www.wikipedia.org]

The definition of the term in the last two or three centuries has usually embraced several other criteria: artistic merit, fictional content, a design to create an epic totality of life, a focus on history and the individual. Critics and scholars have related the novel to several neighboring genres. On the one hand, it is related to public and private histories, such as the non-fiction memoir and the autobiography. On the other hand, the novel can be viewed as a form of art, to be evaluated critically in terms of the history of literature and calling for a specific sensitivity on the part of the reader to fully understand and properly appreciate it. [www.wikipedia.org]

SCIENCE FICTION, FANTASY, & HORROR – Science fiction (abbreviated SF or sci-fi with varying punctuation and capitalization) is a broad genre of fiction that often involves speculations based on current or future science or technology. Science fiction is found in books, art, television, films, games, theatre, and other media. In organizational or marketing contexts, science fiction can be synonymous with the broader definition of speculative fiction, encompassing creative works incorporating imaginative elements not found in contemporary reality; this includes fantasy, horror, and related genres. [www.wikipedia.org] Editor’s Note: Non-traditional scientific theories are often presented in a science fiction format, especially when their proponents are unable to present their ideas through the generally accepted, peer-reviewed publications in their field.

Fantasy is a genre that uses magic and other supernatural forms as a primary element of plot, theme, and/or setting. Fantasy is generally distinguished from science fiction and horror by the expectation that it steers clear of technological and macabre themes, respectively, though there is a great deal of overlap between the three (collectively known as speculative fiction). [www.wikipedia.org]

Horror fiction is fiction in any medium intended to scare, unsettle, or horrify the audience. Historically, the cause of the “horror” experience has often been the intrusion of a supernatural element into everyday human experience. Since the 1960s, any work of fiction with a morbid, gruesome, surreal, or exceptionally suspenseful or frightening theme has come to be called “horror”. Horror fiction often overlaps science fiction or fantasy, all three categories of which are sometimes placed under the umbrella classification speculative fiction. [www.wikipedia.org]

SHORT STORY & NOVELLA – The short story refers to a work of fiction that is usually written in prose, usually in narrative format. This format or medium tends to be more pointed than longer works of fiction, such as novellas (in the 20th and 21st century sense) and novels or books. Short story definitions based upon length differ somewhat even among professional writers, due somewhat in part to the fragmentation of the medium into genres. Since the short story format includes a wide range of genres and styles, the actual length is mitigated somewhere between the individual author’s preference (or the story’s actual needs in terms of creative trajectory or story arc) and the submission guidelines relevant to the story’s actual market. Guidelines vary greatly among publishers. [www.wikipedia.org]

A novella is a written, fictional, prose narrative longer than a novelette but shorter than a novel. While there is disagreement as to what length defines a novella, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Nebula Awards for science fiction define the novella as having a word count between 17,500 and 40,000.  [www.wikipedia.org]

NON-FICTION

Non-fiction is an account or representation of a subject which is presented as fact. This presentation may be accurate or not; that is, it can give either a true or a false account of the subject in question. However, it is generally assumed that the authors of such accounts believe them to be truthful at the time of their composition. Note that reporting the beliefs of others in a nonfiction format is not necessarily an endorsement of the ultimate veracity of those beliefs, it is simply saying that it is true that people believe that (for such topics as mythology, religion). Nonfiction can also be written about fiction, giving information about these other works. [www.wikipedia.org]

ACADEMIC PUBLISHING – Academic Publishing describes the subfield of publishing which distributes academic research and scholarship. Most academic work is published in journal article, book or thesis form. Much, though not all, academic publishing relies on some form of peer review or editorial refereeing to qualify texts for publication.

Most established academic disciplines have their own journals and other outlets for publication, though many academic journals are somewhat interdisciplinary, and publish work from several distinct fields or subfields. The kinds of publications that are accepted as contributions of knowledge or research vary greatly between fields, as do review and publication processes.

Academic publishing is undergoing major changes, emerging from the transition from the print to the electronic format. Business models are different in the electronic environment. Since the early 1990s, licensing of electronic resources, particularly journals, has been very common. Currently, a major trend, particularly with respect to scholarly journals, is open access via the Internet. There are two main forms of open access: open access publishing, in which the articles or the whole journal is freely available from the time of publication; and self-archiving, where authors make a copy of their own work freely available on the web. [www.wikipedia.org]

AUTOBIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR – An autobiography (from the Greek, αὐτός-autos self + βίος-bios life + γράφειν-graphein to write) is a biography written by its subject (or sometimes, in modern usage, composed conjointly with a collaborative writer , styled “as told to” or “with”). The term was first used by the poet Robert Southey in 1809 in the English periodical Quarterly Review, but the form goes back to antiquity. Biographers generally rely on a wide variety of documents and viewpoints; an autobiography however may be based entirely on the writer’s memory. Closely associated with autobiography (and sometimes difficult to precisely distinguish from it) is the form of memoir. [www.wikipedia.org]

Memoirs may appear less structured and less encompassing than formal autobiographical works as they are usually about part of a life rather than the chronological telling of a life from childhood to adulthood/old age. Traditionally, memoirs usually dealt with public matters, rather than personal, and many older memoirs contain little or no information about the writer, and are almost entirely concerned with other people. Also, many memoirs deal with one certain moment that is stretched out to show emphasis. They tended to be written by politicians or people in court society, later joined by military leaders and businessmen, and often dealt exclusively with the writer’s careers rather than their private life. Modern expectations have changed this, even for heads of government. Like most autobiographies, memoirs are generally written from the first person point of view. [www.wikipedia.org]

BIOGRAPHY – A ‘biography is a description of someone’s life, usually published in the form of a book or essay, or in some other form, such as a film. An autobiography (auto, meaning “self”, giving self-biography) is a biography by the same person it is about. A biography is more than a list of impersonal facts (education, work, relationships and death), it also portrays the subject’s experience of those events. Unlike a profile or curriculum vitae (resume), a biography presents the subject’s story, highlighting various aspects of his or her life, including intimate details of experiences, and may include an analysis of the subject’s personality. [www.wikipedia.org]

A work is biographical if it covers all of a person’s life. As such, biographical works are usually non-fiction, but fiction can also be used to portray a person’s life. One in-depth form of biographical coverage is called legacy writing. Together, all biographical works form the genre known as biography, in literature, film, and other forms of media. [www.wikipedia.org]

BOOK REVIEW – A book review (or book report) is a form of literary criticism in which a book is analyzed based on content, style, and merit. It is often carried out in periodicals, as school work, or online. Its length may vary from a single paragraph to a substantial essay. Such a review often contains evaluations of the book on the basis of personal taste. Reviewers, in literary periodicals, often use the occasion of a book review for a display of learning or to promulgate their own ideas on the topic of a fiction or non-fiction work. At the other end of the spectrum, some book reviews resemble simple plot summaries. [www.wikipedia.org]

COMMENTARY, ESSARY, & PROSE – Commentary is 1) a series of explanatory notes or annotations, often forming a treatise on a text, 2) a series of remarks or observations, usually connected in a loose narrative, 3) something having the force of a comment, remark, or illustration, or 4) a historical narrative based on personal experience, e.g. Caesar’s Commentaries. Etymology: L commentarius, notebook, annotation [www.yourdictionary.com]

An essay is usually a short piece of writing. It is often written from an author’s personal point of view. Essays can be literary criticism, political manifestos, learned arguments, observations of daily life, recollections, and reflections of the author. [www.wikipedia.org]

Prose is writing that resembles everyday speech. The word “prose” is derived from the Latin prosa, which literally translates to “straightforward”. Prose is adopted for the discussion of facts and topical reading. Prose is often articulated in free form writing style. Thus, it may be used for books, newspapers, magazines, encyclopedias, broadcast media, films, letters, history, philosophy, biography, and many other forms of communication. [www.wikipedia.org]

FILM REVIEW (FILM CRITICISM, MOVIE REVIEW) – Film criticism is the analysis and evaluation of films, individually and collectively. In general, this can be divided into journalistic criticism that appears regularly in newspapers, and other popular, mass-media outlets and academic criticism by film scholars that is informed by film theory and published in journals.

Film critics working for newspapers, magazines, broadcast media, and online publications, mainly review new releases. Normally they only see any given film once and have only a day or two to formulate opinions.[citation needed] Despite this, critics have an important impact on films, especially those of certain genres. The popularity of mass-marketed action, horror, and comedy films tend not to be greatly affected by a critic’s overall judgment of a film. The plot summary and description of a film that makes up the majority of any film review can have an important impact on whether people decide to see a film. For prestige films with a limited release, such as independent dramas, the influence of reviews is extremely important. Poor reviews will often doom a film to obscurity and financial loss. [www.wikipedia.org]

HISTORY & HISTORICAL NARRATIVE – History is the study of the past, with special attention to the written record of the activities of human beings over time. Scholars who write about history are called historians. It is a field of research which uses a narrative to examine and analyse the sequence of events, and it often attempts to investigate objectively the patterns of cause and effect that determine events. [www.wikipedia.org]

LITERATURE REVIEW – A literature review is a body of text that aims to review the critical points of current knowledge on a particular topic. Most often associated with science-oriented literature, such as a thesis, the literature review usually precedes a research proposal, methodology and results section. Its ultimate goal is to bring the reader up to date with current literature on a topic and forms the basis for another goal, such as future research that may be needed in the area. A good literature review is characterized by: a logical flow of ideas; current and relevant references with consistent, appropriate referencing style; proper use of terminology; and an unbiased and comprehensive view of the previous research on the topic.

According to Cooper (1988) “a literature review uses as its database reports of primary or original scholarship, and does not report new primary scholarship itself. The primary reports used in the literature may be verbal, but in the vast majority of cases reports are written documents. The types of scholarship may be empirical, theoretical, critical/analytic, or methodological in nature. Second a literature review seeks to describe, summarize, evaluate, clarify and/or integrate the content of primary reports”. [www.wikipedia.org] [Cooper, H.M. (1988): The structure of knowledge synthesis - Knowledge in Society, vol. 1, pp, 104-126.]

OTHER LITERARY GENRE

For our purposes, “Other Literary Genre” may be used for types of works that may be ficiton or non-fiction and which do not fit well into any of the other categories on this site. [Editor]

PLAY – A play, or stageplay, is a form of literature written by a playwright, almost always consisting of dialogue between fictional characters, intended for theatrical performance rather than reading. There are rare dramatists, notably George Bernard Shaw, who have had little preference whether their plays were performed or read. Therefore, the term “play” can refer to both the written works of playwrights and to their complete theatrical performance. [www.wikipedia.org]

POETRY & VERSE – Poetry (from the Greek “ποίησις”, poiesis, a “making”) is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning. Poetry may be written independently, as discrete poems, or may occur in conjunction with other arts, as in poetic drama, hymns or lyrics. A verse is formally a single line in a metrical composition, e.g. poetry. However, the word has come to represent any division or grouping of words in such a composition, which traditionally had been referred to as a stanza. [www.wikipedia.org]

The words “verse” and “poetry” are sometimes used synonymously, as distinct from prose, though verse usually indicates the use of rhythm and meter, with the exception of the free verse form. Meter, in this sense, is the basic rhythmic structure of a verse. Each section of a song is often called a verse. [www.wikipedia.org]

SCREENPLAY & SCRIPT – A screenplay or script is a written work especially for a film or television program. Screenplays can be original works or adaptations from existing works. A play for television is known as a teleplay. [www.wikipedia.org]