Prose Fiction Writing (The Belles-lettres Style)

Prose consists of writing that does not adhere to any particular formal structures. Prosaic writing simply says something without necessarily trying to say it in a beautiful way, or using beautiful words. Narrative fiction generally favors prose for the writing of novels, short stories and the like. Length often serves to categorize works of prose fiction. Aesthetics is one the most important elements of human culture. Prose writing can provide aesthetic pleasure without adhering to poetic forms. Prose fiction writing also performs educational, informational, hedonistic (entertaining), and evaluative functions. The freedom authors gain in not having to concern themselves with strict rules of structure translates often into a more complex plot or into one richer precise detail. This freedom also allows an author to experi­ment with many different literary styles in the scope of a single novel.

Any work of fiction is based on some principal elements. Any piece of fictional writing is unified by a structured plot. The plot is the sequence of events in a story. The plot serves the author to introduce the story’s characters, setting, and situation to the reader. The narrative hook of the plot marks the beginning of the intensified action which signifies the development of the basic conflict in the story. The rising action leads to the climax. Generally, the climax is the most powerful, exciting, or important part in a story, set of events, which usually comes near the end. It indicates the way in which the conflict between the characters is going to be solved. The falling action reveals the outcome of the climax, and the resolution brings the story to a logical conclusion. The plot also contains a lot of clues, sings of what is coming (foreshadowing details) that prepare the reader for the development of the plot.

Another essential feature of any work of fiction is describing the story’s characters. The characterization can be direct when the author directly states facts about a character’s personality. It can also be indirect, not straight that is achieved through the person’s speech, actions, and attitudes. Depending on how much information the reader is given about the story’s heroes, they can be either major (principle) or minor (secondary). Minor personages can be as important as major ones. Some characters seem very simple, others are complex.

The setting of a story is a place and time in which the story unfolds. The details of the setting have an impact on the personages and the general development of the plot.

Focus on point of view is performed through the voice of the narrator. The story can be written in the first or third person. The tone of the story reflects the author’s attitude toward particular subject.

Any work of fiction has a stated theme that is the main idea, the insight about life, existence that the author reveals in a story. This idea can be delivered to the reader both directly and indirectly.

Most successful stories are created when a writer employs various literary means to support the main idea of the story, to enhance the esthetic effect upon the reader. Authors tend to focus readers’ attention on such powerful devices as a literary symbol, irony, paradox, humour, satire, and fantasy.

Phonetic means – sound reiteration, onomatopoeia (sound imitation), alliteration, euphony, consonance, dissonance, rhythm in prose.

Vocabulary means – the priority of concrete words as ‘artistic spe­ech concretization’, the unlimited choice of vocabulary (including non-literary means, jargon and slang words), multi-stylistic character, a wealth of synonyms and a variety of vocabulary, developed polysemy, no limits in the use of words, which belong to different functional stylistic groups of vocabulary, stylistic resources of ‘combinatory semantics’ of language units, normative and irregular combinatory patterns, decorative and other func­tions of phraseology, decom­position of phraseology, rich, genuine imagery, the use of figures of speech or lexical stylistic devices, as a unique textual system.

Grammatical means of the language: in morphology a variety of stylistic effects of morphological forms and categories for ex­pres­sing ‘artistic speech concretization’, a specific use of aspect and temporal meanings of the verb, ‘verbal speech and plot development’ (increase in the role and currency of the verb), a special use of morphological categories of number, case, degrees of comparison for emphatic and emotive purposes; in syntax a variety of syntactical constructions, colloquial speech stylization. Means of expressive syntax: inversion, parallelism, antithesis, parcellation, gradation, detachment, different models of author and character speech presentation, different models of homogeneous secondary parts of the sentence arrangement with the priority of double and triple patterns.

Compositional textual devices: a three-part compositional canon – introduction, the main part and the ending with a more complex model of prologue and epilogue; deviations from the canon and their stylistic importance, the plot development, the exposition, gradation, the climax and the outcome (the denouement), the exten­sive use of foregrounding (coupling, antithesis, convergence, the effect of de­cei­ved expectancy), the effect of replenished expectancy, parallelism, irony, hyperbole as compositional devices.

The system of stylistic devices: the systemic use of imagery – textual, developed and simple non-developed metaphors, meto­nymies, epit­hets, similes, hyperboles, litotes, puns, oxymorons, zeugmas, different in form (contact and distant) repetitions: anaphoras, epiphoras, framing, anadiplosis, chains, refrains.

Prose Nonfiction Writing (The Belles-lettres Style)

An autobiography is a biography written by the subject or composed conjointly with a collaborative writer (styled “as told to” or “with”). Biographers generally rely on a wide variety of documents and view­points; an autobiography may be based entirely on the writer's memory.

A memoir is slightly different from an autobiography. Traditionally, a memoir focuses on the “life and times” of the character, while an autobiography has a narrower, more intimate focus on his or her own memories, feelings and emotions. Memoirs have often been written by politicians or military leaders as a way to record and publish an account of their public exploits. A life memoir can be framed as an oration, not the public kind, but the literary kind that would be read aloud in the privacy of one's study. This kind of memoir refers to the idea in ancient Greece and Rome that memoirs were like “memo”, pieces of unfinished and unpublished writing which a writer might use as a memory aid to make a more finished document later on. In more recent times, memoirs are also life stories which can be about the writer and about another person at the same time. Modern memoirs are often based on old diaries, letters, and photographs. Although the term “memoir” may have begun to replace “autobio­graphy” in its popular usage, the former term applies to a work more restrictive in scope.

An essay is a sketch, a short composition in prose, the author’s reflections on a certain theme. An essay consists of a discussion of a topic from an author's personal point of view, exemplified by works by Francis Bacon or by Charles Lamb. ‘Essay’ in English derives from the French ‘essai’, meaning ‘attempt’. Thus one can find open-ended, provocative and/or inconclusive essays. Genres related to the essay may include: the memoir, telling the story of an author's life from the author’s personal point of view and the epistle: usually a formal, didactic, or elegant letter.

Authors of nonfiction prose widely use a great range of stylistic means typical of fiction prose.

Philosophy, history, journalism, and legal and scientific writings traditionally ranked as literature. They offer some of the oldest prose writings in existence.

The “literary” nature of science writing has become less pronounced over the last two centuries, as advances and specialization have made new scientific research inaccessible to most audiences. Science now appears mostly in journals. Scientific works of Euclid, Aristotle, Copernicus, and Newton still possess great value but since the science in them has largely become outdated, they no longer serve for scientific instruction, yet they remain too technical to sit well in most programs of literary study. Many books “popularizing” science might still deserve the title “literature”.

Philosophy, too, has become an increasingly academic discipline. More of its practitioners lament this situation that occurs with the sciences; nonetheless most new philosophical work appears in academic journals. Major philosophers through history – Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Descartes, Nietzsche – have become as canonical as any writers. Some recent philosophy works are argued to merit the title “literature”, such as some of the works by Simon Blackburn; but much of it does not, and some areas, such as logic, have become extremely technical to a degree similar as that of mathematics.

A great deal of historical writing can still rank as literature, parti­cu­larly the genre known as creative nonfiction. So can a great deal of journalism, such as literary journalism. However these areas have become extremely large, and often have a primarily utilitarian purpose: to record data or convey immediate information. As a result the writing in these fields often lacks a literary quality, although it often and in its better moments has that quality. Major “literary” historians include Herodotus, Thucydides and Procopius, all of whom count as canonical literary figures.

Law offers a less clear case. Some writings of Plato and Aristotle, or even the early parts of the Bible, might count as legal literature. The law tables of Hammurabi of Babylon might count. Roman civil law as codified in the Corpus Juris Civilis during the reign of Justinian I of the Byzantine Empire has a reputation as significant literature. The founding documents of many countries, including the United States Constitution, can count as literature; however legal writing now rarely exhibits literary merit.

Most of these fields, then, through specialization or proliferation, no longer generally constitute “literature” in the sense under discussion. They may sometimes count as “literary literature”; more often they produce what one might call “technical literature” or “professional literature”.

The kinds of writing described below do not belong to literary writing. They serve completely different purposes from literary writing, and texts therefore are more precise.