Understand what fiction is, and see the difference between literary fiction and genre fiction. Explore the examples and types of fictional books and writings.
Updated: 11/21/2023
Fiction | Definition, Types & Examples
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Types of Fiction: Your Turn
In this lesson, you learned what fiction is, and about the three main types of fiction: short stories, novellas, and novels. In the following prompts, you'll be able to extend your knowledge.
Quiz Yourself
This lesson taught you the specific elements that are commonly present in each type of fiction. For this exercise, start by writing down the titles of several novellas, short stories, and novels. Ideally, these should be works that either you have read or that you are familiar with. Put all of the titles into a hat and pull them out one by one. For each title, try to remember what type of fiction it is, and then try to remember what elements make up that type of fiction (how many words or pages, how many characters, et cetera). Return to this lesson if you ever need to review!
Breaking Boundaries
This lesson gives you three forms of fiction. What others can you think of that don't fall into these categories? What general rules can you come up with that govern those types of fiction? What makes them different from short stories, novellas, and novels? Write a paragraph detailing your thoughts.
In this lesson, you also learned about the rules that govern each type of story, particularly in terms of how many characters are present and how many plots are focused on. See if you can find any examples of fiction that breaks those rules. Can you find a novel with only one or two characters or plots? Can you find a short story or novella split across two or more settings or subplots? How do these pieces of fiction break the rules that normally govern fiction of that type? Why do you think the authors chose to write their stories differently?
What are the 4 main categories of literary fiction?
Works of literature fall into 4 main categories: fictional prose, nonfictional prose, poetry, and drama.
Fictional prose which features a complex plotline and characters and uses advanced stylistic techniques is known as literary fiction. Works of literary fiction may fall into genres such as fantasy, science fiction, adventure, historical, romance, and mystery. However, literary fiction works differ from genre fiction because of their advanced style and message.
What is a example of fiction?
Some of the most famous works of literary fiction in the English language include:
- Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre (1847)
- F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby (1925)
- Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart (1958)
- Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird (1960)
- Alice Walker's The Color Purple (1982)
Prominent works of genre fiction include:
- The Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling (1997-2007)
- The Da Vinci Code (2003) by Dan Brown
- The Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins (2008-2010)
- The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and the Millennium series by Stieg Larsson (2005-2019)
What does fiction really mean?
Fiction describes something that is imaginary or invented. The term fiction is generally used in reference to creative works written in prose, or ordinary language which does not follow a meter, as in poetry. Fiction can refer to written works, plays, and cinema, but is most strongly associated with written creative works.
Table of Contents
ShowFiction describes something imaginary or invented; the term is generally used regarding creative works written in prose or ordinary language which does not follow a meter, as in poetry. The term nonfiction, on the other hand, describes works that are based on actual events, people, and facts. While fiction can refer to written works, plays, and cinema, this lesson will focus on written works.
The modern fiction meaning stems from various terms throughout history. For instance, Latin's fictionem refers to something devised or feigned, while in the 13th century Old French, ficcion referred to something invented or fabricated. Starting in the 1590s, "fiction" began to be used to describe works of prose created in the writer's imagination, which led to the fiction definition most are familiar with today.
What Is a Fiction Book?
What is fiction writing? Fiction writing is writing that is created in the author's imagination. The author of a fictional work invents the characters, plotline, dialogue, and sometimes the story's setting. So, what is a fiction book? A fiction book, usually called a novel, is just one of the many forms of fiction writing. Works of fiction do not claim that a story is true. Nevertheless, these works can significantly impact their audience and, more broadly, society.
On the individual level, fiction can give readers an escape by inspiring and intriguing and helping them see the world in a new way. These works can whisk readers away to unknown places and introduce them to people, cultures, and societies they would never have encountered otherwise. Reading fiction can be a gratifying pastime and a way of challenging one's beliefs and understandings.
Fiction can have a broader impact on society by communicating a social message or amplifying the voice of a community not as prominent in mainstream society. These types of works can draw attention to issues like poverty, racism, women's rights, and human rights by giving a human voice to those affected by these issues. Some of the most impactful novels of this type in 20th century America include:
- Uncle Tom's Cabin, an anti-slavery book by Harriet Beecher Stowe
- The Jungle, a novel by Upton Sinclair, uncovering the inhumane conditions of factory workers
More contemporary examples include:
- Toni Morrison's Beloved (1987)
- Jeffrey Eugenides' Middlesex (2002)
- Khaled Hosseini's A Thousand Splendid Suns (2007)
Literary Fiction or Genre Fiction
Fictional works are generally considered to fall into the category of literary fiction or genre fiction. Despite the differences between these two categories, some literary critics and theorists have observed a great deal of overlap and that many works might be considered belonging to both categories.
Genre fiction is characterized by its tendency to captivate a wider, generally mainstream audience. This category tends to be driven by the plot, be formulaic in nature, and follow a conventional storyline. Usually, genre fiction works are entertaining and utilize mainstream, contemporary language. As such, genre fiction is often referred to as commercial fiction or popular fiction. Genres include the following:
- Fantasy
- Science fiction
- Suspense
- Horror
- Adventure
- Historical
- Romance
- Mystery
These genres can be further divided into sub-genres according to factors such as their subject, such as crime fiction, historical period (e.g., medieval literature), mode (e.g., satire), and form (e.g., the novella). Prominent genre fiction authors include James Patterson, J.K. Rowling, Stephen King, George R.R. Martin, Agatha Christie, and Dan Brown.
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Literary fiction focuses more heavily on the characters and is less formulaic in nature. Literary fiction authors may also devise more creative and complex storylines. Style and language are essential components of literary fiction; authors generally use advanced vocabulary and techniques such as figurative language, symbolism, and allegory to convey deeper meanings.
The literary canon, or body of written work considered the most influential in and representative of a given place or period, includes works of literary fiction and not genre fiction. These books are often considered classics and are featured in core English and language curriculums. Some well-known works of literary fiction in the literary canon are
- Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre (1847)
- William Golding's Lord of the Flies (1954)
- Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird (1960)
Historically, white male authors from Great Britain and the United States have dominated the literary canon. Over the years, more recognition and value has been rightly given to works written by women authors, authors of color, writers from the British commonwealth, and, more broadly, outside the global north. Nevertheless, the classics and the canon continues to be overwhelmingly associated with famous white male English or American authors of the 19th and 20th centuries.
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There are three main types of fiction, also known as forms: short story, novella, and novel. The form of a fictional work is determined primarily by the work's length.
Short Story
A short story is a fictional work containing 1,000 to 20,000 words and measures no longer than 25 to 30 pages in length. Edgar Allan Poe, one of the most well-known short story writers in the English literary tradition, famously claimed that a short story should be read in a single sitting of under two hours. Short stories tend to include few characters and concentrate on a single plotline because of their brevity. Some of the most famous short story authors in the English literary tradition are:
- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930)
- Kate Chopin (1850-1904)
- Langston Hughes (1967)
Many well-known novelists also dabbled in short story writing, such as Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper" (1892), James Joyce's "Araby" (1914), and F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" (1922). Short stories are often published in collections, such as James Joyce's Dubliners (1914), Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's That Thing Around Your Neck (2009), and Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies (2000).
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Novella
The novella is longer than the short story. Novellas typically have 20,000-50,000 words and measure from 60 to 120 pages in length. The plotline of a novella is generally more complex and includes more characters in comparison to a short story. Some major novellas include:
- The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886) by Robert Louis Stevenson
- The Awakening (1899) by Kate Chopin
- The Call of the Wild (1903) by Jack London
- Of Mice and Men (1937) by John Steinbeck
- Lucy (1990) by Jamaica Kincaid
Novel
The novel is the most extended form of fiction writing. Novels have more than 50,000 words and measure over 120 pages in length. Thanks to their increased word count and page length, writers can create more well-developed characters, a significantly more complex storyline, or multiple interweaving storylines thanks to their increased word count and page length. Most, but not all, novels are divided up into different chapters or parts. Some novels have multiple narrators, such as William Faulkner's Southern Gothic novel As I Lay Dying (1930), featuring seven different narrators. Some of the most famous novels in the English language are:
- Mark Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876)
- Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway (1925)
- Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937)
- George Orwell's 1984 (1949)
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Thousands of works of fiction have been produced throughout time, including the examples named in the sections above. A brief review of some of the most notable works of the English literary canon over the last two centuries follows.
Notable fictional works of the 19th century include:
- The Scarlett Letter (1850) by Nathaniel Hawthorne,
- Wuthering Heights (1847) by Emily Brontë
- Little Women (1869) by Louisa May Alcott
- Heart of Darkness (1899) by Joseph Conrad
The first half of the 20th century saw works such as:
- A Passage to India (1924) by E.M. Forster
- The Great Gatsby (1925) by F. Scott Fitzgerald
- The Sun Also Rises (1926) by Ernest Hemingway
- The Sound and the Fury (1929) by William Faulkner
The latter half of the 20th century ushered in works such as:
- Things Fall Apart (1958) by Chinua Achebe
- The Bell Jar (1963) by Sylvia Plath
- The Outsiders (1967) by S.E. Hinton
- The Color Purple (1982) by Alice Walker
- The Things They Carried (1990) by Tim O'Brien
Notably, this period saw an increase in publishing by writers who had formerly been excluded from the literary scene, such as women and people of color. The English translations of many great works of fiction written in other languages have become commonplace on English bookshelves, libraries, and curriculums. These include the French novels "Madame Bovary" (1856) by Gustave Flaubert and "Les Misérables" (1862) by Victor Hugo; the Russian novels "Anna Karenina" (1877) by Leo Tolstoy and "Crime and Punishment "(1866) by Fyodor Dostoyevsky; the German novel "All Quiet on the Western Front" (1929) by Erich Maria Remarque; and the Spanish-language novel "Love in the Time of Cholera" (1985) by Gabriel García Marquez.
Top literary fiction novels of the 21st century include:
- "Atonement "(2002) by Ian McEwan
- "The Kite Runner" (2003) by Khaled Hosseini
- "The Road" (2006) by Cormac McCarthy
- "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao "(2009) by Juno Díaz
- "Americanah "(2013) by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.
Some of the most famous works of genre fiction of the 21st century include:
- The Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling (1997-2007)
- "The Da Vinci Code" (2003) by Dan Brown
- The Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins (2008-2010)
- "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" and the Millennium series by Stieg Larsson (2005-2019)
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Fiction refers to works written in prose whose characters, plotlines, and, sometimes, settings are conceived in the author's imagination. On the other hand, Nonfiction describes works that convey real-life events and facts. Fiction writing can be broadly organized into two categories. Genre fiction, also known as commercial fiction and popular fiction, is generally plot-driven and appeals to a broader audience. Literary fiction, on the other hand, tends to be more complex in terms of plotline and style and to communicate a deeper meaning to the reader. Works of literary fiction make up the literary canon, that is, the body of written work considered to be most influential in and representative of a given place or period.
There are three types, or forms, of fiction writing, which are determined primarily according to the length of the work: the short story measures under 30 pages; the novella ranges between 60 and 120 pages; and the novel has a minimum of 120 pages and can be unlimited in length. Thousands of works of fiction have been produced throughout time, with some of the most notable works being within the last two centuries.
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Video Transcript
What Is Fiction?
It's late in the evening, and you're ready to snuggle in with a good book. As you make yourself comfortable in your favorite chair, you consider the books stacked on the nearby end table. Let's see, you think. Algebra? Definitely not! How about a biography of George Washington? Well, maybe; that could be interesting. Then you notice the latest mystery novel from one of your favorite authors. Perfect! You are definitely in the mood for a good story. You'll read the fiction book.
A work of fiction is created in the imagination of its author. The author invents the story and makes up the characters, the plot or storyline, the dialogue and sometimes even the setting. A fictional work does not claim to tell a true story. Instead, it immerses us in experiences that we may never have in real life, introduces us to types of people we may never otherwise meet and takes us to places we may never visit in any other way. Fiction can inspire us, intrigue us, scare us and engage us in new ideas. It can help us see ourselves and our world in new and interesting ways. What's more, it's often just plain fun!
Types of Fiction
There are three main types of fiction: the short story, the novella and the novel. Let's explore each of these.
First, we have the short story. According to the famous short story writer Edgar Allan Poe, a short story is a piece of fiction that can be read in one sitting of about a half hour to about two hours. Short stories contain between 1,000 and 20,000 words and typically run no more than 25 or 30 pages. Because of their limited length, short stories generally focus on one major plot or storyline and a few characters.
Do you remember all those assignments you read in your elementary and high school readers? The ones that were imaginary were probably short stories. You may even have read and enjoyed stories by Washington Irving ('The Legend of Sleepy Hollow'), James Baldwin ('The Rockpile'), or by Edgar Allan Poe himself (if you've never read Poe's 'A Tell-Tale Heart,' give it a try; you're in for a scary, shivery treat).
Next up, we have the novella. Novellas are longer than short stories and tend to run about 20,000 to 50,000 words, usually between 60 and 120 pages. Because novellas have more room to work with, they typically have a more complex plot or storyline and more characters than short stories. Famous novellas include Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Jack London's The Call of the Wild.
Finally, a novel is a work of fiction that contains over 50,000 words or 120 pages. Novels are even more complex than novellas, and they usually have more than one plot or storyline and many well-developed characters. Novels can be as long as their authors want them to be. There is no outer limit to their length. In fact, the longest novel ever written is a 17th century work that contains over two million words and more than 13,000 pages. Believe it or not, the book was very popular with the readers of its day.
The fiction sections in bookstores and libraries are full of novels, long and short. The books in J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series and Suzanne Collins's Hunger Games series, for instance, are novels, as are the many works of Mark Twain (The Adventures of Tom Sawyer), Charles Dickens (Oliver Twist), Richard Wright (Native Son), and Amy Tan (The Joy Luck Club).
Literary Fiction and Genre Fiction
We can classify works of fiction in another way, too, by dividing them into literary fiction or genre fiction.
Literary fiction is labeled as 'serious fiction' and focuses on literary merit. Authors of this kind of fiction concentrate especially on their writing styles, the complexity of their storylines, the depth of their characters and the high level of their language choices. You've probably read works of literary fiction in English classes. Edgar Allan Poe's stories fall into this category as do the novels of Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, the works of fantasy writer J.R.R. Tolkien and books by modern authors like Toni Morrison and Philip Roth.
Genre fiction, on the other hand, is often labeled as 'popular fiction' or 'commercial fiction.' While many works of genre fiction still feature excellent writing and well-developed characters, they are ordinarily driven by their plots or storylines and use contemporary, mainstream language. This kind of short story, novella or novel usually falls into the various genres or categories that we see in different sections of libraries or bookstores: mystery, Western, romance, science fiction, fantasy, horror, suspense, adventure and historical. Many works, however, contain elements of several genres. Authors of genre fiction include Sue Grafton, Terry Brooks, Danielle Steel, Stephen King, Agatha Christie and Michael Crichton.
Lesson Summary
A work of fiction is created in the imagination of its author, who invents the story and makes up the characters, the plot or storyline, the dialogue and sometimes even the setting.
There are three main types of fiction: the short story, the novella and the novel. A short story contains between 1,000 and 20,000 words and typically runs no more than 25 or 30 pages. It generally focuses on one major plot or storyline and a few characters. A novella tends to run about 20,000 to 50,000 words, usually between 60 and 120 pages, and to have a more complex plot or storyline and more characters than short stories. A novel is a work of fiction that contains over 50,000 words or 120 pages and typically has more than one plot or storyline and many well-developed characters.
Works of fiction can also be classified as literary fiction or genre fiction. Literary fiction is labeled as 'serious fiction' and focuses on literary merit. Authors of this kind of fiction concentrate especially on their writing styles, the complexity of their storylines, the depth of their characters and the high level of their language choices. Genre fiction, on the other hand, is often labeled 'popular fiction' or 'commercial fiction.' Works of genre fiction tend to be driven by their plots or storylines and use contemporary, mainstream language; they fall into genres or categories like mystery, Western or romance.
Now that you've learned so much about fiction, give yourself a break and go enjoy your favorite short story, novella or novel!
Learning Outcomes
The outcome at the end of the video should be to:
- Describe what a work of fiction is
- List the three main types of fiction
- Differentiate between literary and genre fiction
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Fiction | Definition, Types & Examples
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