As a rule, a work of fiction is a narrative, with characters, a setting, told by a narrator,
with some claim to represent 'the world' in some fashion.

      1. Plot.

       As a narrative a work of fiction has a certain arrangement of events which are taken to
       have a relation to one another. This arrangement of events to some end -- for instance to
       create significance, raise the level of generality, extend or complicate the meaning -- is
       known as 'plot'. Narrative is integral to human experience; we use it constantly to make
       sense out of our experience, to remember and relate events and significance, and to
       establish the basic patterns of behaviour of our lives. If there is no apparent relation of
       events in a story our options are either to declare it to be poorly written or to assume that
       the lack of relation is thematic, mean to represent the chaotic nature of human experience,
       a failure in a character's experience or personality, or the lack of meaningful order in the
       universe. In order to establish significance in narrative there will often be coincidence, parallel or
       contrasting episodes, repetitions of various sorts, including the repetition of challenges,
       crises, conciliations, episodes, symbols, motifs. The relationship of events in order to
       create significance is known as the plot.

       2. Character.

       Characters in a work of fiction are generally designed to open up or explore certain
       aspects of human experience. Characters often depict particular traits of human nature;
       they may represent only one or two traits -- a greedy old man who has forgotten how to
       care about others, for instance, or they may represent very complex conflicts, values and
       emotions. Usually there will be contrasting or parallel characters, and usually there will
       be a significance to the selection of kinds of characters and to their relation to each other.
       As in the use of setting, in fact in almost any representation in art, the significance of a
       character can vary from the particular, the dramatization of a unique individual, to the
       most general and symbolic.

       3. Setting.

       Narrative requires a setting; this may vary from the concrete to the general.
       Often setting will have particular culturally coded significance -- a sea-shore has a
       significance for us different from that of a dirty street corner, for instance, and different
       situations and significances can be constructed through its use. Settings, like characters,
       can be used in contrasting and comparative ways to add significance, can be repeated,
       repeated with variations, and so forth.

       4. The Narrator.

       A narration requires a narrator, someone (or more than one) who tells the story. This
       person or persons will see things from a certain perspective, or point of view, in terms of
       their relation to the events and in terms of their attitude(s) towards the events and
       characters. A narrator may be external, outside the story, telling it with an ostensibly
       objective and omniscient voice; or a narrator may be a character (or characters) within the
       story, telling the story in the first person (either central characters or observer characters,
       bit players looking in on the scene). First-person characters may be reliable, telling the
       truth, seeing things right, or they may be unreliable, lacking in perspective or
       self-knowledge. If a narration by an omniscient external narrator carries us into the
       thoughts of a character in the story, that character is known as a reflector character:
       such a character does not know he or she is a character, is unaware of the narration or the
       narrator. An omniscient, external narrator may achieve the narrative by telling or by
       showing, and she may keep the reader in a relation of suspense to the story (we know
       no more than the characters) or in a relation of irony (we know things the characters are
       unaware of). In any case, who it is who tells the story, from what perspective, with what sense of
       distance or closeness, with what possibilities of knowledge, and with what interest, are
       key issues in the making of meaning in narrative.

      5. Figurative language.

       Figurative language tends to be used to characterize the sensibility and understanding
       of characters as well as to establish thematic and tonal continuities and significance.

       6. Representation of reality.

       Fiction generally claims to represent 'reality' (this is known as representation or
       mimesis) in some way; however, because any narrative is presented through the
       symbols and codes of human meaning and communication systems, fiction cannot
       represent reality directly, and different narratives and forms of narrative represent
       different aspects of reality, and represent reality in different ways. A narrative might be
       very concrete and adhere closely to time and place, representing every-day events; on the
       other hand it may for instance represent psychological or moral or spiritual aspects
       through symbols, characters used representatively or symbolically, improbable events,
       and other devices. In addition you should remember that all narrative requires selection,
       and therefore it requires exclusion as well, and it requires devices to put the selected
       elements of experience in meaningful relation to each other (and here we are back to key
       elements such as coincidence, parallels and opposites, repetitions).

       6. World-view.

       As narrative represents experience in some way and as it uses cultural codes and
       language to do so, it inevitably must be read for its structure of values, for its
       understanding of the world, or world-view, and for its ideological assumptions, what is
       assumed to be natural and proper. Every narrative communication makes claims, often
       implicitly, about the nature of the world as the narrator and his or her cultural traditions
       understand it to be. The kind of writing we call "literature" tends to use cultural codes
       and to use the structuring devices of narrative with a high degree of intentionality in order
       to offer a complex understanding of the world. The astute reader of fiction will be aware
       of the shape of the world that the fiction projects, the structure of values that underlie the
       fiction (what the fiction explicitly claims and what it implicitly claims through its codes
       and its ideological understandings); will be aware of the distances and similarities
       between the world of the fiction and the world that the reader inhabits; and will be aware
       of the significances of the selections and exclusions of the narrative in representing
       human experience.