story elements essay

The 8 Elements of a Story – Explained for Students!

The 8 elements of a story are: character, setting, plot, conflict, theme, point-of-view, tone and style.

These story elements form the backbone of any good novel or short story. If you know the 8 elements, you can write and analyze stories more effectively.

Teacher Resource: Elements of a Story Worksheet for Students: ‘Planning your Short Story’ (Google Doc)

The 8 Elements of a Story

The first of the story elements is the story setting. All stories have a setting. The setting includes the time and place in which the story will be taking place. 

There may be just one story setting, such as in a short story that only takes place in a single room of a house. Or, there may be many different settings spanning many locations and times, such as stories that span generations or that have characters who travel the globe.

Common setting considerations are:

• Alternative reality

In regards to time, stories can be set in the past, present, future, or even a mix of the three. For example, Back to the Future uses all three settings. Marty McFly travels back and forward in time, capturing the audience’s imagination as settings and time zones change from scene to scene.

Authors also need to create compelling place-based settings in their stories. Things to consider when looking at the sense of place in a novel or short story include:

Some stories may also choose to have alternative realities . Alternative reality books followed the true history of the world to a point. Then, they diverge after a fictional event occurs such as a war or natural disaster.

Lastly, some authors want to make the setting of a story ambiguous. This works well in sci-fi and fantasy stories which want to detach themselves from our current world. With such an ambiguous setting, the author could create their own technologies, religions and planets without the need to refer to any contexts of the ‘real’ world here on earth.

2. Characters

The next of the elements of a story is the characters. Of course, characters are one of the most important elements of a novel or short story.

The characters are the people (or sometimes animals!) who are featured in a story. The different characters in a story that you need to know about are: the protagonist, antagonist, static character, dynamic character, and confidante character.

The protagonist is the hero of the story and central character. We’ll also usually call them the ‘main character’. They will get most of the attention of the author. Every narrative – whether it’s a novel or short story – will have a protagonist.

The antagonist is the opponent of the main character. This person stirs trouble and is often the main cause of tension in the plot line. The hero’s role is often to prevent the antagonist from doing harm to people.

There can also be peripheral and dynamic characters . Peripheral characters who don’t change much throughout a story but set the context are often called ‘static characters’. Parents are often seen as static characters in books and movies. They are reliable, always there, but don’t do much to compel the plot forward. By contrast, a dynamic character might start out as an unassuming peripheral person in the story. As the story progresses, they move toward the center of the storyline, become closer to the main character, and increase in importance. 

Lastly, the confidante is the sidekick for the main character. It often takes the role of a wise or philosophical character, although not always. In The Lion King , Timon and Pumba act as confidantes to Simba during his exile years. Other confidantes in that story include Rafiki and Nala.

Also Consider Character Conflicts and Fatal Flaws

Often times a character will have their own inner conflicts, challenges or struggles to overcome. By giving characters inner conflicts they are made more realistic. Flaws in personality traits also humanizes them. A good book will have a range of realistic and flawed characters. For example:

• Edmund from the Narnia series m ust overcome jealousy to help save Narnia and protect his family;
• Professor Snape from Harry Potter suffers from an inability to get past his grudges from the past.

3. Conflict

Nobody wants to read a novel or short story without conflict – so you’ll find every story will have some sort of conflict.

What would be the point? The conflict in a story is the main challenge to overcome. It compels the plot forward and is usually resolved during the plot’s climax.

The main types of conflict you will come across in a story are:

• Protagonist vs Antagonist
• Protagonist vs Nature
• Protagonist vs Self
• Protagonist vs Society

In the protagonist vs antagonist conflict , t he protagonist (hero) must challenge the antagonist in order to prevent the antagonist from doing something harmful. For example, this occurs in Harry Potter. Harry (protagonist) must defeat Voldermort (antagonist). Harry is the only person who can save the world from Voldermort and represents the child savior .

In the protagonist vs nature conflict , the protagonist goes up against a challenge that occurs in nature. This may involve a main character taking on a natural challenge like escaping the jungle, or a natural disaster like a tsunami or asteroid coming at earth.

In the protagonist vs self conflict , the protagonist may have inner struggles to overcome in order to succeed. The protagonist may need to get over a lost love, learn courage, or achieve a personal goal that they set out for themselves in the beginning. For example, this happens in The Wizard of Oz.  Dorothy and her companions each has to learn that the characteristics they most desire are within them. The Cowardly Lion seeks courage, the Tin Man seeks the ability to love, and the Scarecrow seeks intellect.

In the protagonist vs society conflict , the protagonist may identify an enemy or problem in society that they must overcome, often single-handedly. In children’s books, this model is often recast as Child (protagonist) vs. Adults (Society) where the child must save adults from themselves. We see this in the ‘child savior’ complex such as in The Hunger Games .

The next of the story elements is theme. The theme is the author’s central argument or big idea they want to convey.

Themes are often associated with a ‘moral of a story’ or an analogy (a hidden meaning in the text). They attempt to convey a piece of wisdom or fundamental truth about human nature for us to think about. Even in a short story there will be a key theme.

Common types of themes, also known as central ideas , include:

• Good vs. evil
• The absurdity of life
• The pain of war
• Seeking freedom
• Political corruption
• The power of redemption
• The importance of faith

Most contemporary American movies tell stories of good vs. evil , with good usually triumphing thanks to a heroic protagonist. For example, in Spiderman.

Similarly, love has been a theme throughout millennia in stories. What is true love, how can it be found, and how can we keep it? Perhaps the most famous example is in Romeo and Juliet.

Existentialist literature attempts to expose the absurdity of life , e.g. how life is futile, pointless and meaningless. Two great examples are Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead and   Catch 22 .

Many stories throughout history have been cautionary tales about the pain of war and its devastating effects on life. A compelling example is The Diary of Anne Frank.

The desire for freedom is another common motif in stories and movies. This often involves the struggles in escaping oppression, war or nature. One example of this theme that I love is The Truman Show’s theme .

Stories of political corruption usually highlight how fascism, communism or other political systems lead to concentration of power and corruption. A famous example is Animal Farm by George Orwell.

Often based on Christian beliefs, redemption stories show how characters can come back from sin and shame to redeem themselves through good deeds and repentance. A great example of this is A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.

Many tales have morals about religion and faith and the importance of penance to a god as their central theme. A famous example is the short story sets of Sinbad the Sailor’s Seven Voyages.

The next of the story elements is the plot line. The plot is the sequence of events that tell the story.

Sometimes we call it the ‘narrative structure’. Another way to use the term ‘plot’ is to make a plan. For example, “There is a plot to rob a bank.”

Plots usually follow a familiar structure. We tell children that plots have a ‘Beginning’, ‘Middle’ and ‘End’ – and that might be true for a short story:

• Beginning: Introduce the characters and set the scene;
• Middle: Introduce a complication and tell the story of how it is overcome
• Ending: Resolve each character’s individual story and provide a sense of closure.

As students get older, we go into a bit more depth and use more formal terms:

• Exposition: The exposition begins the story. It provides the necessary background information like the setting and character details. It may also outline the relationships between characters and any other important information. This section should set the scene but also entertain the reader from page one.
• Rising Action: The rising action part is the part of the story where “the plot thickens”. Challenges, conflicts and complications are introduced during the rising action segment. This is often the longest part of the story. Authors aim to create and build tension as long as possible to entertain the reader and create a true ‘page turner’ of a story.
• Climax: After rising action comes climax. This is the turning point of the story where the tensions in the plotline come to a head. A good climax may involve a twist or a big reveal. Other examples of a climax might be a big battle, police chase or exposure of a love affair.
• Falling Action: After the climax comes falling action. I often find the falling action segment is brief but may be necessary to conclude the key scenes that occurred in the climax. During the falling action, tension starts to dissolve
• Resolution (denoument): The resolution gives a sense of closure to the reader. It may tie up loose ends in character plotlines and explain what becomes of the key characters after the story. To use The Lord of the Rings example, the resolution shows Frodo sailing to the Grey Havens and Sam marrying Rosie Cotton.

6. Point of View

The next of the story elements is point of view. The point of view of a story has a big impact on how the story will be told.

Point of view also influences how the audience will respond to it. There are three common points of view: first person, second person and third person.

First person stories are told by the protagonist. You can tell a first person story from the use of first person phrases like ‘I’ and ‘We’. A benefit of first person point of view is that you can get inside the head of the main character. They can talk about what they’re thinking and what their opinion is of all the other characters throughout the piece.

Second person stories are narrated by an outsider (not a character in the story), but talk directly to the reader. It is like we are in a conversation with the author. This is called ‘breaking the fourth wall’.  An example of second person is when the author directly says ‘you’ to the reader.

Third person stories do not talk directly to the reader and do not insert themselves into the story either. This is the most common type of point of view.  Most third person books have an omniscient narrator. This means the narrator is an all-knowing person who can get into characters’ heads and explain their thoughts. The author tells the story as if looking through a looking glass. They refer to the characters (including the protagonist) using terms like ‘he’, ‘she’ and ‘they’.

Authors choose a tone to act as the backdrop to a story. The tone often overlaps with the protagonist’s mood or circumstance.

Tones include moods like:

• Intellectual

Some examples of tones in books include:

• Brave New World: Dystopian
• The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: Funny
• Tuesdays with Morrie: Heartwarming

Tone can be conveyed through elements like weather conditions, time of day, and a soliloquy. 

Tone is often conveyed through the weather conditions . Some stories are set in long, endless summers. Others are anticipating an endless winter to come (e.g. Game of Thrones ).  Rain is a good idea for when a character is sad or moody.  By contrast, sunshine will signify happy times.

Similarly, you might want to define the time of day , particularly for one scene or a simple short story Night time might show that the tone is eerie and full of mystery and magic. A warm Evening might set a tone of drowsiness. A morning setting might convey a tone signifying starting afresh and heading out excited for a day’s adventures.

Tone is often also set through the soliloquy of the narrator of a first-person text. A soliloquy is a piece of writing (or speaking) where the author reflects on their moods and thoughts.

Writing style is one of the most important elements of a story, but very personal to each author.

We also tend to find authors whose styles we like and continue to read their works whenever they publish something new. A style is simply a way of speaking about our subjects.

Below are a range of styles to consider:

• Short sentences: I first came across very short sentences in Hemmingway ’s For Whom the Bell Tolls . Hemminway’s curt writing style comes across as masculine, but is often very easy to read.
• Highly Descriptive:  When reading The Lord of the Rings , I was bemused at just how long it took JRR Tolkein to describe a fireplace. While I personally prefer a short story, many of the classics have this descriptive style.
• Fast-Paced: If you like entertaining books, ensure your writing is always compelling the plot forward and not getting into the weeds.

Final Thoughts on Story Elements

Every story should contain the above 8 elements of a story. The eight elements of a story are: character, setting, plot, conflict, theme, point-of-view, tone and style. Make sure you include all 8 elements of a story in the next story you write . For every short story I write, I will start with character, setting and plot then go on from there. Similarly, you can use the 8 story elements as a framework to critique a film or book of your choice. 

Chris Drew (PhD)

Dr. Chris Drew is the founder of the Helpful Professor. He holds a PhD in education and has published over 20 articles in scholarly journals. He is the former editor of the Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education. [Image Descriptor: Photo of Chris]

• Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd/ 5 Top Tips for Succeeding at University
• Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd/ 50 Durable Goods Examples
• Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd/ 100 Consumer Goods Examples
• Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd/ 30 Globalization Pros and Cons

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The Ultimate Narrative Essay Guide for Beginners

A narrative essay tells a story in chronological order, with an introduction that introduces the characters and sets the scene. Then a series of events leads to a climax or turning point, and finally a resolution or reflection on the experience.

Speaking of which, are you in sixes and sevens about narrative essays? Don’t worry this ultimate expert guide will wipe out all your doubts. So let’s get started.

Table of Contents

Everything You Need to Know About Narrative Essay

What is a narrative essay.

When you go through a narrative essay definition, you would know that a narrative essay purpose is to tell a story. It’s all about sharing an experience or event and is different from other types of essays because it’s more focused on how the event made you feel or what you learned from it, rather than just presenting facts or an argument. Let’s explore more details on this interesting write-up and get to know how to write a narrative essay.

Elements of a Narrative Essay

Here’s a breakdown of the key elements of a narrative essay:

A narrative essay has a beginning, middle, and end. It builds up tension and excitement and then wraps things up in a neat package.

Real people, including the writer, often feature in personal narratives. Details of the characters and their thoughts, feelings, and actions can help readers to relate to the tale.

It’s really important to know when and where something happened so we can get a good idea of the context. Going into detail about what it looks like helps the reader to really feel like they’re part of the story.

Conflict or Challenge 

A story in a narrative essay usually involves some kind of conflict or challenge that moves the plot along. It could be something inside the character, like a personal battle, or something from outside, like an issue they have to face in the world.

Theme or Message

A narrative essay isn’t just about recounting an event – it’s about showing the impact it had on you and what you took away from it. It’s an opportunity to share your thoughts and feelings about the experience, and how it changed your outlook.

Emotional Impact

The author is trying to make the story they’re telling relatable, engaging, and memorable by using language and storytelling to evoke feelings in whoever’s reading it.

Narrative essays let writers have a blast telling stories about their own lives. It’s an opportunity to share insights and impart wisdom, or just have some fun with the reader. Descriptive language, sensory details, dialogue, and a great narrative voice are all essentials for making the story come alive.

The Purpose of a Narrative Essay

A narrative essay is more than just a story – it’s a way to share a meaningful, engaging, and relatable experience with the reader. Includes:

Sharing Personal Experience

Narrative essays are a great way for writers to share their personal experiences, feelings, thoughts, and reflections. It’s an opportunity to connect with readers and make them feel something.

Entertainment and Engagement

The essay attempts to keep the reader interested by using descriptive language, storytelling elements, and a powerful voice. It attempts to pull them in and make them feel involved by creating suspense, mystery, or an emotional connection.

Conveying a Message or Insight

Narrative essays are more than just a story – they aim to teach you something. They usually have a moral lesson, a new understanding, or a realization about life that the author gained from the experience.

Building Empathy and Understanding

By telling their stories, people can give others insight into different perspectives, feelings, and situations. Sharing these tales can create compassion in the reader and help broaden their knowledge of different life experiences.

Inspiration and Motivation

Stories about personal struggles, successes, and transformations can be really encouraging to people who are going through similar situations. It can provide them with hope and guidance, and let them know that they’re not alone.

Reflecting on Life’s Significance

These essays usually make you think about the importance of certain moments in life or the impact of certain experiences. They make you look deep within yourself and ponder on the things you learned or how you changed because of those events.

Demonstrating Writing Skills

Coming up with a gripping narrative essay takes serious writing chops, like vivid descriptions, powerful language, timing, and organization. It’s an opportunity for writers to show off their story-telling abilities.

Preserving Personal History

Sometimes narrative essays are used to record experiences and special moments that have an emotional resonance. They can be used to preserve individual memories or for future generations to look back on.

Cultural and Societal Exploration

Personal stories can look at cultural or social aspects, giving us an insight into customs, opinions, or social interactions seen through someone’s own experience.

Format of a Narrative Essay

Narrative essays are quite flexible in terms of format, which allows the writer to tell a story in a creative and compelling way. Here’s a quick breakdown of the narrative essay format, along with some examples:

Introduction

Set the scene and introduce the story.

Engage the reader and establish the tone of the narrative.

Hook: Start with a captivating opening line to grab the reader’s attention. For instance:

Example:  “The scorching sun beat down on us as we trekked through the desert, our water supply dwindling.”

Background Information: Provide necessary context or background without giving away the entire story.

Example:  “It was the summer of 2015 when I embarked on a life-changing journey to…”

Thesis Statement or Narrative Purpose

Present the main idea or the central message of the essay.

Offer a glimpse of what the reader can expect from the narrative.

Thesis Statement: This isn’t as rigid as in other essays but can be a sentence summarizing the essence of the story.

Example:  “Little did I know, that seemingly ordinary hike would teach me invaluable lessons about resilience and friendship.”

Body Paragraphs

Present the sequence of events in chronological order.

Develop characters, setting, conflict, and resolution.

Story Progression: Describe events in the order they occurred, focusing on details that evoke emotions and create vivid imagery.

Example: Detail the trek through the desert, the challenges faced, interactions with fellow hikers, and the pivotal moments.

Character Development: Introduce characters and their roles in the story. Show their emotions, thoughts, and actions.

Example: Describe how each character reacted to the dwindling water supply and supported each other through adversity.

Dialogue and Interactions: Use dialogue to bring the story to life and reveal character personalities.

Example: “Sarah handed me her last bottle of water, saying, ‘We’re in this together.'”

Reach the peak of the story, the moment of highest tension or significance.

Turning Point: Highlight the most crucial moment or realization in the narrative.

Example:  “As the sun dipped below the horizon and hope seemed lost, a distant sound caught our attention—the rescue team’s helicopters.”

Provide closure to the story.

Reflect on the significance of the experience and its impact.

Reflection: Summarize the key lessons learned or insights gained from the experience.

Example: “That hike taught me the true meaning of resilience and the invaluable support of friendship in challenging times.”

Closing Thought: End with a memorable line that reinforces the narrative’s message or leaves a lasting impression.

Example: “As we boarded the helicopters, I knew this adventure would forever be etched in my heart.”

Example Summary:

Imagine a narrative about surviving a challenging hike through the desert, emphasizing the bonds formed and lessons learned. The narrative essay structure might look like starting with an engaging scene, narrating the hardships faced, showcasing the characters’ resilience, and culminating in a powerful realization about friendship and endurance.

Different Types of Narrative Essays

There are a bunch of different types of narrative essays – each one focuses on different elements of storytelling and has its own purpose. Here’s a breakdown of the narrative essay types and what they mean.

Personal Narrative

Description: Tells a personal story or experience from the writer’s life.

Purpose: Reflects on personal growth, lessons learned, or significant moments.

Example of Narrative Essay Types:

Topic: “The Day I Conquered My Fear of Public Speaking”

Focus: Details the experience, emotions, and eventual triumph over a fear of public speaking during a pivotal event.

Descriptive Narrative

Description: Emphasizes vivid details and sensory imagery.

Purpose: Creates a sensory experience, painting a vivid picture for the reader.

Topic: “A Walk Through the Enchanted Forest”

Focus: Paints a detailed picture of the sights, sounds, smells, and feelings experienced during a walk through a mystical forest.

Autobiographical Narrative

Description: Chronicles significant events or moments from the writer’s life.

Purpose: Provides insights into the writer’s life, experiences, and growth.

Topic: “Lessons from My Childhood: How My Grandmother Shaped Who I Am”

Focus: Explores pivotal moments and lessons learned from interactions with a significant family member.

Experiential Narrative

Description: Relays experiences beyond the writer’s personal life.

Purpose: Shares experiences, travels, or events from a broader perspective.

Topic: “Volunteering in a Remote Village: A Journey of Empathy”

Focus: Chronicles the writer’s volunteering experience, highlighting interactions with a community and personal growth.

Literary Narrative

Description: Incorporates literary elements like symbolism, allegory, or thematic explorations.

Purpose: Uses storytelling for deeper explorations of themes or concepts.

Topic: “The Symbolism of the Red Door: A Journey Through Change”

Focus: Uses a red door as a symbol, exploring its significance in the narrator’s life and the theme of transition.

Historical Narrative

Description: Recounts historical events or periods through a personal lens.

Purpose: Presents history through personal experiences or perspectives.

Topic: “A Grandfather’s Tales: Living Through the Great Depression”

Focus: Shares personal stories from a family member who lived through a historical era, offering insights into that period.

Digital or Multimedia Narrative

Description: Incorporates multimedia elements like images, videos, or audio to tell a story.

Purpose: Explores storytelling through various digital platforms or formats.

Topic: “A Travel Diary: Exploring Europe Through Vlogs”

Focus: Combines video clips, photos, and personal narration to document a travel experience.

How to Choose a Topic for Your Narrative Essay?

Selecting a compelling topic for your narrative essay is crucial as it sets the stage for your storytelling. Choosing a boring topic is one of the narrative essay mistakes to avoid . Here’s a detailed guide on how to choose the right topic:

Reflect on Personal Experiences

• Significant Moments:

Moments that had a profound impact on your life or shaped your perspective.

Example: A moment of triumph, overcoming a fear, a life-changing decision, or an unforgettable experience.

• Emotional Resonance:

Events that evoke strong emotions or feelings.

Example: Joy, fear, sadness, excitement, or moments of realization.

• Lessons Learned:

Experiences that taught you valuable lessons or brought about personal growth.

Example: Challenges that led to personal development, shifts in mindset, or newfound insights.

Explore Unique Perspectives

• Uncommon Experiences:

Unique or unconventional experiences that might captivate the reader’s interest.

Example: Unusual travels, interactions with different cultures, or uncommon hobbies.

• Different Points of View:

Stories from others’ perspectives that impacted you deeply.

Example: A family member’s story, a friend’s experience, or a historical event from a personal lens.

Focus on Specific Themes or Concepts

• Themes or Concepts of Interest:

Themes or ideas you want to explore through storytelling.

Example: Friendship, resilience, identity, cultural diversity, or personal transformation.

• Symbolism or Metaphor:

Using symbols or metaphors as the core of your narrative.

Example: Exploring the symbolism of an object or a place in relation to a broader theme.

Consider Your Audience and Purpose

• Relevance to Your Audience:

Topics that resonate with your audience’s interests or experiences.

Example: Choose a relatable theme or experience that your readers might connect with emotionally.

• Impact or Message:

What message or insight do you want to convey through your story?

Example: Choose a topic that aligns with the message or lesson you aim to impart to your readers.

Brainstorm and Evaluate Ideas

• Free Writing or Mind Mapping:

Process: Write down all potential ideas without filtering. Mind maps or free-writing exercises can help generate diverse ideas.

• Evaluate Feasibility:

The depth of the story, the availability of vivid details, and your personal connection to the topic.

Imagine you’re considering topics for a narrative essay. You reflect on your experiences and decide to explore the topic of “Overcoming Stage Fright: How a School Play Changed My Perspective.” This topic resonates because it involves a significant challenge you faced and the personal growth it brought about.

Narrative Essay Topics

50 easy narrative essay topics.

• Learning to Ride a Bike
• My First Day of School
• A Surprise Birthday Party
• The Day I Got Lost
• Visiting a Haunted House
• An Encounter with a Wild Animal
• My Favorite Childhood Toy
• The Best Vacation I Ever Had
• An Unforgettable Family Gathering
• Conquering a Fear of Heights
• A Special Gift I Received
• Moving to a New City
• The Most Memorable Meal
• Getting Caught in a Rainstorm
• An Act of Kindness I Witnessed
• The First Time I Cooked a Meal
• My Experience with a New Hobby
• The Day I Met My Best Friend
• A Hike in the Mountains
• Learning a New Language
• An Embarrassing Moment
• Dealing with a Bully
• My First Job Interview
• A Sporting Event I Attended
• The Scariest Dream I Had
• Helping a Stranger
• The Joy of Achieving a Goal
• A Road Trip Adventure
• Overcoming a Personal Challenge
• The Significance of a Family Tradition
• An Unusual Pet I Owned
• A Misunderstanding with a Friend
• Exploring an Abandoned Building
• My Favorite Book and Why
• The Impact of a Role Model
• A Cultural Celebration I Participated In
• A Valuable Lesson from a Teacher
• A Trip to the Zoo
• An Unplanned Adventure
• Volunteering Experience
• A Moment of Forgiveness
• A Decision I Regretted
• A Special Talent I Have
• The Importance of Family Traditions
• The Thrill of Performing on Stage
• A Moment of Sudden Inspiration
• The Meaning of Home
• Learning to Play a Musical Instrument
• A Childhood Memory at the Park
• Witnessing a Beautiful Sunset

Narrative Essay Topics for College Students

• Discovering a New Passion
• Overcoming Academic Challenges
• Navigating Cultural Differences
• Embracing Independence: Moving Away from Home
• Exploring Career Aspirations
• Coping with Stress in College
• The Impact of a Mentor in My Life
• Balancing Work and Studies
• Facing a Fear of Public Speaking
• Exploring a Semester Abroad
• The Evolution of My Study Habits
• Volunteering Experience That Changed My Perspective
• The Role of Technology in Education
• Finding Balance: Social Life vs. Academics
• Learning a New Skill Outside the Classroom
• Reflecting on Freshman Year Challenges
• The Joys and Struggles of Group Projects
• My Experience with Internship or Work Placement
• Challenges of Time Management in College
• Redefining Success Beyond Grades
• The Influence of Literature on My Thinking
• The Impact of Social Media on College Life
• Overcoming Procrastination
• Lessons from a Leadership Role
• Exploring Diversity on Campus
• Exploring Passion for Environmental Conservation
• An Eye-Opening Course That Changed My Perspective
• Living with Roommates: Challenges and Lessons
• The Significance of Extracurricular Activities
• The Influence of a Professor on My Academic Journey
• Discussing Mental Health in College
• The Evolution of My Career Goals
• Confronting Personal Biases Through Education
• The Experience of Attending a Conference or Symposium
• Challenges Faced by Non-Native English Speakers in College
• The Impact of Traveling During Breaks
• Exploring Identity: Cultural or Personal
• The Impact of Music or Art on My Life
• Addressing Diversity in the Classroom
• Exploring Entrepreneurial Ambitions
• My Experience with Research Projects
• Overcoming Impostor Syndrome in College
• The Importance of Networking in College
• Finding Resilience During Tough Times
• The Impact of Global Issues on Local Perspectives
• The Influence of Family Expectations on Education
• Lessons from a Part-Time Job
• Exploring the College Sports Culture
• The Role of Technology in Modern Education
• The Journey of Self-Discovery Through Education

Narrative Essay Comparison

Narrative essay vs. descriptive essay.

Here’s our first narrative essay comparison! While both narrative and descriptive essays focus on vividly portraying a subject or an event, they differ in their primary objectives and approaches. Now, let’s delve into the nuances of comparison on narrative essays.

Narrative Essay:

Storytelling: Focuses on narrating a personal experience or event.

Chronological Order: Follows a structured timeline of events to tell a story.

Message or Lesson: Often includes a central message, moral, or lesson learned from the experience.

Engagement: Aims to captivate the reader through a compelling storyline and character development.

First-Person Perspective: Typically narrated from the writer’s point of view, using “I” and expressing personal emotions and thoughts.

Plot Development: Emphasizes a plot with a beginning, middle, climax, and resolution.

Character Development: Focuses on describing characters, their interactions, emotions, and growth.

Conflict or Challenge: Usually involves a central conflict or challenge that drives the narrative forward.

Dialogue: Incorporates conversations to bring characters and their interactions to life.

Reflection: Concludes with reflection or insight gained from the experience.

Descriptive Essay:

Vivid Description: Aims to vividly depict a person, place, object, or event.

Imagery and Details: Focuses on sensory details to create a vivid image in the reader’s mind.

Emotion through Description: Uses descriptive language to evoke emotions and engage the reader’s senses.

Painting a Picture: Creates a sensory-rich description allowing the reader to visualize the subject.

Imagery and Sensory Details: Focuses on providing rich sensory descriptions, using vivid language and adjectives.

Point of Focus: Concentrates on describing a specific subject or scene in detail.

Spatial Organization: Often employs spatial organization to describe from one area or aspect to another.

Objective Observations: Typically avoids the use of personal opinions or emotions; instead, the focus remains on providing a detailed and objective description.

Comparison:

Focus: Narrative essays emphasize storytelling, while descriptive essays focus on vividly describing a subject or scene.

Perspective: Narrative essays are often written from a first-person perspective, while descriptive essays may use a more objective viewpoint.

Purpose: Narrative essays aim to convey a message or lesson through a story, while descriptive essays aim to paint a detailed picture for the reader without necessarily conveying a specific message.

Narrative Essay vs. Argumentative Essay

The narrative essay and the argumentative essay serve distinct purposes and employ different approaches:

Engagement and Emotion: Aims to captivate the reader through a compelling story.

Reflective: Often includes reflection on the significance of the experience or lessons learned.

First-Person Perspective: Typically narrated from the writer’s point of view, sharing personal emotions and thoughts.

Plot Development: Emphasizes a storyline with a beginning, middle, climax, and resolution.

Message or Lesson: Conveys a central message, moral, or insight derived from the experience.

Argumentative Essay:

Persuasion and Argumentation: Aims to persuade the reader to adopt the writer’s viewpoint on a specific topic.

Logical Reasoning: Presents evidence, facts, and reasoning to support a particular argument or stance.

Debate and Counterarguments: Acknowledge opposing views and counter them with evidence and reasoning.

Thesis Statement: Includes a clear thesis statement that outlines the writer’s position on the topic.

Thesis and Evidence: Starts with a strong thesis statement and supports it with factual evidence, statistics, expert opinions, or logical reasoning.

Counterarguments: Addresses opposing viewpoints and provides rebuttals with evidence.

Logical Structure: Follows a logical structure with an introduction, body paragraphs presenting arguments and evidence, and a conclusion reaffirming the thesis.

Formal Language: Uses formal language and avoids personal anecdotes or emotional appeals.

Objective: Argumentative essays focus on presenting a logical argument supported by evidence, while narrative essays prioritize storytelling and personal reflection.

Purpose: Argumentative essays aim to persuade and convince the reader of a particular viewpoint, while narrative essays aim to engage, entertain, and share personal experiences.

Structure: Narrative essays follow a storytelling structure with character development and plot, while argumentative essays follow a more formal, structured approach with logical arguments and evidence.

In essence, while both essays involve writing and presenting information, the narrative essay focuses on sharing a personal experience, whereas the argumentative essay aims to persuade the audience by presenting a well-supported argument.

Narrative Essay vs. Personal Essay

While there can be an overlap between narrative and personal essays, they have distinctive characteristics:

Storytelling: Emphasizes recounting a specific experience or event in a structured narrative form.

Engagement through Story: Aims to engage the reader through a compelling story with characters, plot, and a central theme or message.

Reflective: Often includes reflection on the significance of the experience and the lessons learned.

First-Person Perspective: Typically narrated from the writer’s viewpoint, expressing personal emotions and thoughts.

Plot Development: Focuses on developing a storyline with a clear beginning, middle, climax, and resolution.

Character Development: Includes descriptions of characters, their interactions, emotions, and growth.

Central Message: Conveys a central message, moral, or insight derived from the experience.

Personal Essay:

Exploration of Ideas or Themes: Explores personal ideas, opinions, or reflections on a particular topic or subject.

Expression of Thoughts and Opinions: Expresses the writer’s thoughts, feelings, and perspectives on a specific subject matter.

Reflection and Introspection: Often involves self-reflection and introspection on personal experiences, beliefs, or values.

Varied Structure and Content: Can encompass various forms, including memoirs, personal anecdotes, or reflections on life experiences.

Flexibility in Structure: Allows for diverse structures and forms based on the writer’s intent, which could be narrative-like or more reflective.

Theme-Centric Writing: Focuses on exploring a central theme or idea, with personal anecdotes or experiences supporting and illustrating the theme.

Expressive Language: Utilizes descriptive and expressive language to convey personal perspectives, emotions, and opinions.

Focus: Narrative essays primarily focus on storytelling through a structured narrative, while personal essays encompass a broader range of personal expression, which can include storytelling but isn’t limited to it.

Structure: Narrative essays have a more structured plot development with characters and a clear sequence of events, while personal essays might adopt various structures, focusing more on personal reflection, ideas, or themes.

Intent: While both involve personal experiences, narrative essays emphasize telling a story with a message or lesson learned, while personal essays aim to explore personal thoughts, feelings, or opinions on a broader range of topics or themes.

A narrative essay is more than just telling a story. It’s also meant to engage the reader, get them thinking, and leave a lasting impact. Whether it’s to amuse, motivate, teach, or reflect, these essays are a great way to communicate with your audience. This interesting narrative essay guide was all about letting you understand the narrative essay, its importance, and how can you write one.

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Story Elements: 7 Main Elements of a Story and 5 Elements of Plot

Krystal N. Craiker

Whether it’s a short story, novel, or play, every type of story has the same basic elements.

Today, we’re taking a look at the seven key elements of a story, as well as the five elements of plot. Knowing these essential elements will ensure that your story is well-developed and engaging.

What Are the 7 Literary Elements of a Story?

What are the 5 elements of plot, conclusion: basic story elements.

There are seven basic elements of a story, and they all work together. There’s no particular order of importance because they are all necessary.

When you’re writing a story, you might start with one and develop the others later. For instance, you might create a character before you have a plot or setting.

There’s no correct place to start—as long as you have all seven elements by the end, you’ve got a story.

Every story needs characters. Your protagonist is your main character, and they are the primary character interacting with the plot and the conflict. You might have multiple protagonists or secondary protagonists. An antagonist works against your main character’s goals to create conflict.

There are short stories and even some plays that have only one character, but most stories have several characters. Not every minor character needs to be well-developed and have a story arc, but your major players should.

Your characters don’t have to be human or humanoid, either. Animals or supernatural elements can be characters, too!

Your story must take place somewhere. Setting is where and when the story takes place, the physical location and time period.. Some stories have only one setting, while others have several settings.

A story can have an overarching setting and smaller settings within it. For example, Pride and Prejudice takes place in England. Lizzy travels through several locations in the country. The smaller settings within the story include individual homes and estates, like Longbourn, Netherfield Park, and Pemberley.

Setting also includes time periods. This might be a year or an era. You can be less specific in your time period, like “modern-day” or “near future,” but it is still an important component of your setting.

Our next story element is theme. You can think of theme as the “why” behind the story. What is the big idea? Why did the author write the story, and what message are they trying to convey?

Some common themes in stories include:

• Good versus evil
• Coming of age

Themes can also be warnings, such as the dangers of seeking revenge or the effects of war. Sometimes themes are social criticisms on class, race, gender, or religion.

Tone might be the most complicated of all the story elements. Tone is the overall feeling of your story. A mystery might be foreboding. A women’s literature story might feel nostalgic. A romance might have an optimistic, romantic tone.

Tone should fit both your genre and your individual story. Create tone with writing elements such as word choice, sentence length, and sentence variety. Aspects of the setting, such as the weather, can contribute to tone, as well.

ProWritingAid can help with some of the aspects of tone. In your document settings, change your document type to your genre. The Summary Report will then compare various style aspects to your genre, such as sentence length, emotion tells, and sentence structure. These all play a role in establishing a tone that fits your genre.

Try the Summary Report with a free account.

Point of View

Every story needs a point of view (POV). This determines whether we’re seeing something from the narrator’s perspective or a character’s perspective. There are four main points of view in creative writing and literature.

First person tells the story from a character’s perspective using first person pronouns (I, me, my, mine, we, our, ours). The POV does not have to be from the perspective of the main character. For example, in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby , the narrator, Nick, is mostly an observer and participant in Gatsby and Daisy’s story.

You can also use third person limited to show the story through the eyes of one character. This point of view uses third person pronouns (he, him, his, her, hers, their, theirs). If your story features alternating points-of-view, third person limited only shows one character’s perspective at a time.

First person and third person limited points of view are sometimes referred to as deep POV .

If the story is told from the narrator’s perspective, the POV is typically third person omniscient. Omniscient means all-knowing: the narrator sees all and knows all.

Rarely, stories are written in second person (you, yours). This point of view is more common in short stories than novellas or novels. Fanfiction and choose-your-own-adventure stories use second person more often than traditional creative writing does.

Conflict is the problem that drives a story’s plot forward. The conflict is what is keeping your characters from achieving their goals. There are internal conflicts, in which the character must overcome some internal struggle. There are also external conflicts that the character must face.

There are seven major types of conflict in literature. They are:

• Man vs. man
• Man vs. nature
• Man vs. society
• Man vs. technology
• Man vs. supernatural
• Man vs. fate
• Man vs. self

Typically, a story has several small conflicts and a large, overarching internal or external conflict. While all the elements of a story are crucial, conflict is the one that makes your story interesting and engaging.

Finally, you can’t have a story without a plot. The plot is the series of events that occur in a story. It’s the beginning, middle, and end. It’s easy to confuse conflict and plot.

Plot is what happens, while conflict is the things standing in the way of different characters’ goals. The two are inextricably linked.

Plot is one of the seven elements of a story, but there are also different elements of plot. We’ll cover this in greater detail in the next section.

Everything, from a short story to a novel, requires not only the basic elements of a story but also the same essential elements of a plot. While there are multiple types of plot structure (e.g. three-act structure, five-act structure, hero’s journey ), all plots have the same elements. Together, these form a story arc.

Exposition sets the scene. It’s the beginning of the story where we meet our main character and see what their life is like. It also establishes the setting and tone.

Rising Action

The exposition leads to an event known as the inciting incident . This is the gateway to the rising action. This part of the story contains all of the events that lead to the culmination of all the plot points. We see most of the conflict in this section.

The climax is the height of a story. The character finally faces and usually defeats whatever the major conflict is. Tension builds through the rising action and peaks at the climax.

Sometimes, stories have more than one climax, depending on the plot structure, or if there are two different character arcs.

Falling Action

The falling action is when all the other conflicts or character arcs begin resolving. Anything that isn’t addressed in the climax will be addressed in the falling action. Just because the characters have passed the most difficult part of the plot doesn't mean everything is tied up neatly in a bow. Sometimes the climax causes new conflicts!

Resolution or Denouement

The end of a story is called the resolution or denouement. All major conflicts are resolved or purposely left open for a cliff-hanger or sequel. In many stories, this is where you find the happily ever after, but a resolution doesn’t have to be happy. It’s the ending of a story arc or plot, and all the questions are answered or intentionally unanswered.

The seven elements of a story and the five elements of plot work together to form a cohesive and complete story arc. No one element is more important than the other. If you’re writing your own story, planning each of the basic story elements and plot points is a great place to start your outline.

Are you prepared to write your novel? Download this free book now:

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So you are ready to write your novel. excellent. but are you prepared the last thing you want when you sit down to write your first draft is to lose momentum., this guide helps you work out your narrative arc, plan out your key plot points, flesh out your characters, and begin to build your world..

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Krystal N. Craiker is the Writing Pirate, an indie romance author and blog manager at ProWritingAid. She sails the seven internet seas, breaking tropes and bending genres. She has a background in anthropology and education, which brings fresh perspectives to her romance novels. When she’s not daydreaming about her next book or article, you can find her cooking gourmet gluten-free cuisine, laughing at memes, and playing board games. Krystal lives in Dallas, Texas with her husband, child, and basset hound.

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Last updated on Feb 15, 2022

7 Elements of a Story: How to Create an Awesome Narrative

If you're looking to turn an original idea into a story, you're in luck: thanks to the groundwork laid by storytellers over the years, we now know the secrets of creating an engaging narrative. You can turn the slightest concept into a gripping tale by mastering the seven essential elements of a story — theme, characters, setting, plot, conflict, point of view, and style.

To help you better understand how stories come together, here are seven elements you'll find in almost any story:

Story Element #1: Theme

Story element #2: characters, story element #3: setting, story element #4: plot, story element #5: conflict, story element #6: point of view, story element #7: style.

Before you can work out what’s driving your characters or your plot, it helps to know what’s driving you to write this story in the first place. Is there an overarching lesson or message you want to get across? Are you looking to evoke a certain feeling?

A clear, artfully deployed theme will elevate your story beyond the sum of its parts and help it stick in the minds of your readers. Make sure you give those readers some credit, though: instead of spelling it out, weave aspects of your theme into other elements of your story and let them discover it on their own.  

Learn more:

• What is the Theme of a Story? (Guide)

Your characters give your story the depth it needs to keep readers wanting more — they are, quite literally, the life force of your story. Their personalities and interactions with one another will naturally create conflict and drive your story forward.

Well-crafted characters will also make your story more relatable. If your readers can imagine themselves in your characters’ shoes — or recognize aspects of characters’ personalities in people they know — they’ll develop a stronger connection with your story as a whole.

• Character Development 101: Writing Characters Readers Won’t Forget
• 12 Types of Characters Every Writer Should Know

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A story is only as strong as its characters. Fill this out to develop yours.

The setting is the world in which your story will take place — this includes the broader locations and time, as well as more specific details like your characters’ school or workplace. You’ll often see writers transplant well-known plots into a new setting ( Romeo & Juliet in Space! Cinderella in 1960s Brooklyn!). Whenever this happens, the new environment always finds a way to influence and adapt the story into something new.

While rich setting descriptions will captivate your readers, it’s important not to bore them with paragraphs upon paragraphs of pure description. As with the theme, weaving exposition into your story little by little will allow the reader to gradually create a mental image of your fictional world as the story unfolds, making for a much more immersive experience.

• Setting of a Story: What Is It? And How to Write It
• Worldbuilding: the Master Guide (with Template)

Now we’re getting to the main event — the plot, aka the things that actually happen in your story. In almost all genres (the exception being literary fiction), as your story progresses, the stakes for your protagonist escalate and lead to an inevitable climax.

If your plot comes across as a sequence of random events, your readers will tend to get bored or confused

This happened, then this happened, and then THIS also happened.

Instead, each point of your plot must happen as a result of a character's actions. 

This happened, therefore that happened, which then caused THIS to happen.

This pattern of "cause and effect" induces a sense of intrigue and suspense , making the audience want to find out what happens next.

Get our Book Development Template

Use this template to go from a vague idea to a solid plan for a first draft.

• What is Plot? An Author's Guide to Storytelling
• Story Structure: 7 Narrative Structures All Writers Should Know
• Rising Action: Where the Story Really Happens (With Examples)

We mentioned rising stakes just now — the reason underlying this tension is your story’s conflict. Whether the source of this conflict is external, like an unyielding antagonist , or internal, like a moral struggle for your main character, it’ll be one of the most important elements of your story. Conflict creates tension by giving your protagonist some sense of purpose. It gets readers invested in the story, encouraging them to keep turning the page. 

If you're still not convinced, remember that every story always asks the same question:

Will the protagonist overcome their obstacles to get what they want?

In other words, conflict is story.

• Internal vs External Conflict: How Conflict Drives a Story
• How to Create Conflict in a Story (with 6 Simple Questions)

Your book’s point of view is the perspective from which the story is told. You’ve got a few options here, all of which have different impacts on the overall tone of your story. A close viewpoint like first person or third person limited will feel more intimate while ones that hold the protagonist at arm’s length (such as third person omniscient or second person ) may feel more objective and formal. 

FREE COURSE

Understanding Point of View

Learn to master different POVs and choose the best for your story.

The character you choose for your book’s POV can also determine the arc of the entire narrative. Take a murder mystery novel : telling the story through the viewpoint of the murderer (possibly an unreliable narrator ) will be drastically different than if it had been seen through the detective's eyes.

By choosing an unusual viewpoint character, you can completely upend how your plot unfolds, the central conflict, and how your audience sympathizes with certain characters.

• Point of View: The Ultimate POV Guide — with Examples
• Understanding Point of View (Free Course)  

Which POV is right for your book?

Take our quiz to find out! Takes only 1 minute.

Your writing style is the culmination of all the features that make your storytelling so unique — that’s everything from your pacing and tone to the specific words or phrases you use. While reflection and deliberation can help you refine your style, there really aren’t any particular criteria to determine what “good” prose means.

Take Ernest Hemmingway and Toni Morrison, two of America’s most celebrated authors — their writing styles couldn’t be more different. Hemmingway is known for his concise and straightforward prose, invoking scenes with a few sparse sentences. On the other hand, Morrison leans more towards rich and vivid imagery that relishes in the language. This goes to show that no style is better than another — as long as you’re being true to yourself, your personality will shine through and make your story one to be remembered.

• 45+ Literary Devices and Terms Everybody Should Know
• How to Find Your Author Voice (video)

So there you have it, seven essential story elements that any narrative can’t live without. Bear these in mind as you work on your book, and you’ll be a master storyteller in no time!

If you’re ready to take your story to the next level, check out our guide to professional editing to help you work out your next steps.

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Sat / act prep online guides and tips, the 9 literary elements you'll find in every story.

General Education

The AP Literature exam is designed to test your ability to analyze literature. That means you'll have to know how to use analytical tools, like literary elements, to uncover the meaning of a text.

Because literary elements are present in every piece of literature (really!), they're a good place to start when it comes to developing your analytical toolbox. In this article, we'll give you the literary element definition, explain how a literary element is different from a literary device, and look at the top nine literary elements you need to know before taking the AP Literature exam.

So let's get started!

What Are Literary Elements?

Take a minute and imagine building a house. (Stick with us, here.) What are some of the things that you would absolutely have to include in order to make a house? Some of those non-negotiable elements are a roof, walls, a kitchen, and a bathroom. If you didn't have these elements, you wouldn't have a house. Heck, you might not even have a building!

A literary element's definition is pretty similar. Literary elements are the things that all literature—whether it's a news article, a book, or a poem— absolutely have to have. Just like a house, the elements might be arranged slightly differently...but at the end of the day, they're usually all present and accounted for. Literary elements are the fundamental building blocks of writing, and they play an important role in helping us write, read, and understand literature.

You might even say that literary elements are the DNA of literature.

How Is a Literary Element Different From a Literary Device?

But wait! You've also learned about literary device (sometimes called literary techniques), which writers use to create literature!

So what makes a literary element different from a literary device?

Let's go back to our house metaphor for a second. If literary elements are the must-have, cannot-do-without parts of a house, then literary devices are the optional decor. Maybe you like a classic style (a trope !), or perhaps you're more of an eclectic kind of person (a conceit )! Just because you decorate your house like a crazy person doesn't make it any less of a house. It just means you have a...unique personal style.

Literary devices are optional techniques that writers pick and choose from to shape the style, genre, tone, meaning, and theme of their works . For example, literary devices are what make Cormac McCarthy's western novel, Blood Meridian , so different from Matt McCarthy's medical memoir, The Real Doctor Will See You Shortly . Conversely, literary elements—especially the elements that qualify both works as "books"—are what keep them shelved next to each other at Barnes & Noble. They're the non-negotiable things that make both works "literature."

Top 9 Literary Elements List (With Examples!)

Now let's take a more in-depth look at the most common elements in literature. Each term in the literary elements list below gives you the literary element definition and an example of how the elements work.

#1: Language

The most important literary element is language. Language is defined as a system of communicating ideas and feelings through signs, sounds, gestures, and/or marks. Language is the way we share ideas with one another, whether it's through speech, text, or even performance!

All literature is written in a recognizable language, since one of literature's main goals is sharing ideas, concepts, and stories with a larger audience. And since there are over 6,900 distinct languages in the world , that means literature exists in tons of different linguistic forms, too. (How cool is that?!)

Obviously, in order to read a book, you need to understand the language it's written in. But language can also be an important tool in understanding the meaning of a book, too. For instance, writers can combine languages to help readers better understand the characters, setting, or even tone. Here's an example of how Cherrie Moraga combines English and Spanish in her play, Heroes and Saints :

Look into your children's faces. They tell you the truth. They are our future. Pero no tendremos ningún futuro si seguimos siendo víctimas.

Moraga's play is about the plight of Hispanic migrant workers in the United States. By combining English and Spanish throughout the play, Moraga helps readers understand her characters and their culture better.

The plot of a work is defined as the sequence of events that occurs from the first line to the last. In other words, the plot is what happens in a story.

All literature has a plot of some kind. Most long-form literature, like a novel or a play, follows a pretty typical plot structure, also known as a plot arc. This type of plot has six elements:

• Beginning/Exposition: This is the very beginning of a story. During the exposition, authors usually introduce the major characters and settings to the reader.
• Conflict: Just like in real life, the conflict of a story is the problem that the main characters have to tackle. There are two types of conflict that you'll see in a plot. The major conflict is the overarching problem that characters face. Minor conflicts, on the other hands, are the smaller obstacles characters have to overcome to resolve the major conflict.
• Rising Action: Rising action is literally everything that happens in a story that leads up to the climax of the plot. Usually this involves facing and conquering minor conflicts, which is what keeps the plot moving forward. More importantly, writers use rising action to build tension that comes to a head during the plot's climax.
• Climax: The climax of the plot is the part of the story where the characters finally have to face and solve the major conflict. This is the "peak" of the plot where all the tension of the rising action finally comes to a head. You can usually identify the climax by figuring out which part of the story is the moment where the hero will either succeed or totally fail.
• Falling Action: Falling action is everything that happens after the book's climax but before the resolution. This is where writers tie up any loose ends and start bringing the book's action to a close.
• Resolution/Denouement: This is the conclusion of a story. But just because it's called a "resolution" doesn't mean every single issue is resolved happily—or even satisfactorily. For example, the resolution in Romeo and Juliet involves (spoiler alert!) the death of both main characters. This might not be the kind of ending you want, but it is an ending, which is why it's called the resolution!

If you've ever read a Shakespearean play, then you've seen the plot we outlined above at work. But even more contemporary novels, like The Hunger Games , also use this structure. Actually, you can think of a plot arc like a story's skeleton!

But what about poems, you ask? Do they have plots? Yes! They tend to be a little less dense, but even poems have things that happen in them.

Take a look at "Do not go gentle into that good night" by Dylan Thomas . There's definitely stuff happening in this poem: specifically, the narrator is telling readers not to accept death without a fight. While this is more simple than what happens in something like The Lord of the Rings , it's still a plot!

The mood of a piece of literature is defined as the emotion or feeling that readers get from reading the words on a page. So if you've ever read something that's made you feel tense, scared, or even happy...you've experienced mood firsthand!

While a story can have an overarching mood, it's more likely that the mood changes from scene to scene depending on what the writer is trying to convey. For example, the overall mood of a play like Romeo and Juliet may be tragic, but that doesn't mean there aren't funny, lighthearted moments in certain scenes.

Thinking about mood when you read literature is a great way to figure out how an author wants readers to feel about certain ideas, messages, and themes . These lines from "Still I Rise" by Maya Angelou are a good example of how mood impacts an idea:

You may cut me with your eyes, You may kill me with your hatefulness, But still, like air, I'll rise.

What are the emotions present in this passage? The first three lines are full of anger, bitterness, and violence, which helps readers understand that the speaker of the poem has been terribly mistreated. But despite that, the last line is full of hope. This helps Angelou show readers how she won't let others' actions—even terrible ones—hold her back.

#4: Setting

Have you ever pictured yourself in living in the Gryffindor dormitories at Hogwarts? Or maybe you've wished you could attend the Mad Hatter's tea party in Wonderland. These are examples of how settings—especially vivid ones—capture readers' imaginations and help a literary world come to life.

Setting is defined simply as the time and location in which the story takes place. The setting is also the background against which the action happens. For example, Hogwarts becomes the location, or setting, where Harry, Hermione, and Ron have many of their adventures.

Keep in mind that longer works often have multiple settings. The Harry Potter series, for example, has tons of memorable locations, like Hogsmeade, Diagon Alley, and Gringotts. Each of these settings plays an important role in bringing the Wizarding World to life.

The setting of a work is important because it helps convey important information about the world that impact other literary elements, like plot and theme. For example, a historical book set in America in the 1940s will likely have a much different atmosphere and plot than a science fiction book set three hundred years in the future. Additionally, some settings even become characters in the stories themselves! For example, the house in Edgar Allen Poe's short story, "The Fall of the House of Usher," becomes the story's antagonist . So keep an eye out for settings that serve multiple functions in a work, too.

All literary works have themes, or central messages, that authors are trying to convey. Sometimes theme is described as the main idea of a work...but more accurately, themes are any ideas that appear repeatedly throughout a text. That means that most works have multiple themes!

All literature has themes because a major purpose of literature is to share, explore, and advocate for ideas. Even the shortest poems have themes. Check out this two line poem, "My life has been the poem I would have writ," from Henry David Thoreau :

But I could not both live and utter it.

When looking for a theme, ask yourself what an author is trying to teach us or show us through their writing. In this case, Thoreau is saying we have to live in the moment, and living is what provides the material for writing.

#6: Point of View

Point of view is the position of the narrator in relationship to the plot of a piece of literature . In other words, point of view is the perspective from which the story is told.

We actually have a super in-depth guide to point of view that you can find here . But here's the short version: literature can be written from one of four points of view.

• First person: This is told by one of the characters of the story from their perspective. You can easily identify first-person points of view by looking for first-person pronouns, like "I," "you," and "my."
• Second person: second-person point of view happens when the audience is made a character in the story. In this instance, the narrator uses second person pronouns, like "you" and "your." If you ever get confused, just remember that "Choose Your Own Adventure" books use second person.
• Third person limited: this is when the narrator is removed from the story and tells it from an outside perspective. To do this, the narrator uses pronouns like "he," "she," and "they" to refer to the characters in the story. In a third person limited point of view, this narrator focuses on the story as it surrounds one character. It's almost like there's a camera crew following the protagonist that reports on everything that happens to them.
• Third person omniscient : in this point of view, the narrator still uses third-person pronouns...but instead of being limited to one character, the narrator can tell readers what's happening with all characters at all times. It's almost like the narrator is God: they can see all, hear all, and explain all!

Point of view is an important literary element for two reasons. First, it helps us better understand the characters in a story. For example, a first person point of view lets readers get to know the main character in detail, since they experience the main character's thoughts, feelings, and actions.

Second, point of view establishes a narrator, or a character whose job it is to tell the story, which we'll talk about in the next section!

#7: Narrator

Like we just mentioned, the narrator is the person who's telling the story. All literature has a narrator, even if that narrator isn't named or an active part of the plot.

Here's what we mean: when you read a newspaper article, it's the reporter's job to tell you all the details of a particular event. That makes the reporter the narrator. They're taking a combination of interviews, research, and their own eyewitness account to help you better understand a topic.

The same is true for the narrator of a book or poem, too. T he narrator helps make sense of the plot for the reader . It's their job to explain, describe, and even dramatically reveal plot points to the audience. Here's an example of how one of the most famous narrators in literature, John Watson, explains Sherlock Holmes' character to readers in A Study in Scarlet:

He was not studying medicine. He had himself, in reply to a question, confirmed Stamford's opinion upon that point. Neither did he appear to have pursued any course of reading which might fit him for a degree in science or any other recognized portal which would give him an entrance into the learned world. Yet his zeal for certain studies was remarkable, and within eccentric limits his knowledge was so extraordinarily ample and minute that his observations have fairly astounded me. Surely no man would work so hard or attain such precise information unless he had some definite end in view. Desultory readers are seldom remarkable for the exactness of their learning. No man burdens his mind with small matters unless he has some very good reason for doing so.

John Watson tells the story from a first person perspective (though that's not evident in this quote). That means he's giving readers his own perspective on the world around him, which includes Sherlock Holmes. In this passage, readers learn about Holmes' peculiar learning habits, which is just another part of his extraordinary nature.

#8: Conflict

Because conflict is a part of plot—and as we've already established, all literature has some sort of plot—that means conflict is a literary element, too. A conflict is the central struggle that motivates the characters and leads to a work's climax. Generally, conflict occurs between the protagonist , or hero, and the antagonist , or villain...but it can also exist between secondary characters, man and nature, social structures, or even between the hero and his own mind.

More importantly, conflict gives a story purpose and motivates a story's plot . Put another way, conflict causes the protagonist to act. Sometimes these conflicts are large in scale, like a war...but they can also be small, like conflict in a relationship between the hero and their parents.

One of the most important things to understand about conflict is it can be both explicit and implicit. Explicit conflict is explained within the text; it's an obvious moment where something goes wrong and characters have to fix it. Bram Stoker's Dracula uses explicit conflict to fuel its plot: a vampire has come to England, and the heroes in the story have to kill him as soon as possible.

Implicit conflict is more common in poetry, where there isn't a specific occurrence that obviously screams, "this is a problem." Instead, you have to read between the lines to find the conflict that's motivating the narrator. Take a look at Elizabeth Barrett Browning's "How Do I Love Thee?" for an example of implicit conflict in action:

I love thee to the depth and breadth and height My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight For the ends of being and ideal grace. I love thee to the level of every day's Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light. I love thee freely, as men strive for right. I love thee purely, as they turn from praise. I love thee with the passion put to use In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith. I love thee with a love I seemed to lose With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath, Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose, I shall but love thee better after death.

The conflict here is actually a happy one: the narrator is so in love that she's struggling with expressing the depth of her emotion!

#9: Characters

A piece of literature has to have at least one character, which can be a person, an object, or an animal.

While there are many different character types (and archetypes!), we're going to talk about the two you absolutely need to know: the protagonist and the antagonist.

The protagonist of a work is its main character. The plot circles around this person or object, and they are central to solving the conflict of the story. Protagonists are often heroic, but they don't have to be: many stories focus on the struggles of average people, too. For the most part, protagonists are the characters that you remember long after the book is over, like Katniss Everdeen, David Copperfield, Sherlock Holmes, and Hester Prynne.

Antagonists, on the other hand, are the characters that oppose the protagonist in some way. (This opposition is what causes the conflict of the story!) There can be multiple antagonists in a story, though usually there's one major character, animal, or object that continues to impede the protagonist's progress. If you ever forget what an antagonist is, just think of your favorite Disney villains. They're some of the best bad guys out there!

What's Next?

If you're not taking AP practice tests, there's no way to know how you'll do when you're taking the exam for real. Here's a list of practice tests for every AP exam, including the AP literature exam . It might seem like extra work, but we promise—practice tests are one of the best ways to help you improve your score!

Listen: we know you're busy, so it can be hard to schedule time to study for an AP test on top of your extracurriculars and normal class work. Check out this article on when you need to start studying for your AP tests to make sure you're staying on track.

What does a good AP score look like, anyway? Here's a list of the average AP scores for every single AP test. This is great for seeing how your practice scores stack up against the national average.

These recommendations are based solely on our knowledge and experience. If you purchase an item through one of our links, PrepScholar may receive a commission.

Ashley Sufflé Robinson has a Ph.D. in 19th Century English Literature. As a content writer for PrepScholar, Ashley is passionate about giving college-bound students the in-depth information they need to get into the school of their dreams.

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What are the Elements of a Story? 12 Central Elements of Storytelling

by Fija Callaghan

Stories are gloriously, beautifully unique; there are as many of them in our world as there have been storytellers. Although many stories follow classic story archetypes , each one is its own distinctive act of creation.

But even though every tale is one of a kind, we can still see patterns in what makes our favorite stories engaging and memorable. These patterns are where we find our essential story elements.

What are the elements of a story?

The elements of a story are the core building blocks that almost any narrative will have, whether it’s a short story or a series of novels, a literary coming-of-age saga or a science fiction epic. These include: a protagonist, an antagonist, setting, perspective, an objective, stakes, rising action, falling action, symbolism, language, theme, and verisimilitude.

It’s these key elements that make us care deeply for the characters, their journey, and the lessons they learn along the way. They’re what make us take the journey and learn those lessons right beside them.

Let’s take a look at the basic story elements you’ll see again and again in the stories we love, and how to use all these elements when writing your own original tales.

The 12 essential elements of every great story

All great stories can be broken down into twelve basic elements. Here’s a closer look at each one and at why they’re so integral to crafting a good story.

1. A protagonist

A protagonist is the central character within a work of literature. A book is always told from this character’s perspective (we’ll look more at perspective down below).

They’re the beating heart to which all roads lead, the one whose choices carry the plot to its conclusion. All other literary elements and devices including the antagonist (which we’ll look at next), environment, and conflicts will in some way support the protagonist’s journey.

These things might help them along their way, become an obstacle that the protagonist needs to overcome, shape who the protagonist is and their relationship with the world around them, or challenge that relationship and teach the protagonist something new. No matter what, everything in your plot structure should in some way be connected to your central guiding character.

A great protagonist is particularly important because they’re the lens through while your reader will see the world of your story. It’s through their triumphs, losses, joys, passions, and agonies that we live within your world and come away from it slightly changed—with a new perspective or a new understanding about what it is to be human.

For tips on how to write a great protagonist, check out our lesson on character !

2. An antagonist

In order for your protagonist to go on a journey—which maybe a physical journey, or an emotional or spiritual one—they need someone or something to challenge them into action. An antagonist is a story element whose goals stand in direct opposition with the goals of the protagonist. They want something, and the protagonist wants something, and those desires cannot exist within the world at the same time.

Most classic villains are antagonists, but an antagonist can also be an otherwise good person whose circumstances have put them in conflict with the central character. They might even be a friend or loved one who has made different choices or has a contrasting view of the world—for example, a parent who can’t agree with their child’s plans for the future, even though the choices they make come from a place of love.

An antagonist can also be more than one person—for instance, a collective group, society, government, or culture. The protagonist’s major conflict may also be something impersonal, such as a force of nature, or it might come from within, like a mental illness or a weakness such as addiction.

Conflict can come in many forms . What matters is that the trajectory of the antagonist or conflicting force forces the protagonist into action and carries the story’s plot forward.

You can find out more about antagonists in literature, and how to craft a dynamic, compelling villain, here .

Setting is the time and place where your story happens. It refers to both the physical location of your narrative and the way your characters are affected by their time and place: their cultural environment, their relationship with the natural world, the way they speak, what sort of social and political events are happening around them.

All of these things are a part of how your characters formed as people.

This can play a major role in the action of the plot. If, for example, your novel is a horror story that takes place in a haunted house, the setting becomes the crux of every choice that your protagonist makes. If your book takes place during the Jazz Age of the American 1920s, the time period and its predominant cultural values will play a huge part in how your characters react to the world around them, what their limitations are, and the way in which they challenge those limitations.

Choosing the right setting and bringing it to life gives your writing a whole new dynamic. It’s where character, choice, and action all begin.

Want to learn more about writing engaging, vivid settings? Check out our lesson on setting .

4. Perspective

Closely tied to setting is perspective, or the way your characters see the world. Every one of us brings our own unique filter to the relationship we have with the world around us, built out of our cultural biases, class, social interactions, level of education, upbringing, belief system, and experiences.

If you’re writing a work of medieval historical fiction, for instance, one character’s perspective can vary enormously from another’s. You could show your reader a single scene from the point of view of a queen, a servant, a young child, a landowner, and a knight and produce a very different story within every single one. Even in modern-day fiction, things such as race and social class still have an impact on how we build the world in our mind.

Perspective can also refer to point of view, or the specific narrative lens you choose for your work. The most common points of view in fiction are third person and first person, but there’s also second person and fourth person point of view to choose from! You can learn more about each of these types of point of view in our writing academy .

When used correctly, perspective is a marvelous literary device for bringing depth and suspense into your writing. It’s through clever use of this story element that we get things like the unreliable narrator, in which the writer deliberately misleads the reader’s expectations by writing from a skewed or uninformed point of view.

5. Something to fight for

When we looked at protagonists and antagonists we saw how these two central characters always have opposing goals. When forming your idea out of these basic elements, it’s essential that your hero has something to work towards. Your characters’ goals are the things that will power your story from beginning to end.

This might be a tangible objective, such as the quest for the holy grail; or it might be something more internal, like repairing a damaged relationship. In a good narrative, every single character should want something or be striving for something all the time—however, it’s the goal of your protagonist that’s going to drive the story forward.

Their choices, the consequences of those choices, and their subsequent reaction to those consequences will all be connected to their primary objective: the thing they have been fighting to reach all along.

6. Something to lose

Here’s where your story begins to develop its layers. Your protagonist needs something to fight for, but they also need something that’s at risk. Something they stand to lose if they fail in reaching their goal.

Let’s say your main character really, really wants a new car. That’s an objective—something to fight for. But what happens if he doesn’t get it? Probably not much. He’ll have to keep taking the bus to work, and he might swoon longingly as he passes by the auto dealer on his way home, but life will more or less go on the way it always has. That’s not enough to create a compelling story.

Unless… unless he lives in a rural area where there’s no public transportation, and he’s looking to buy a new car because his has broken down. If he can’t replace his car quickly he won’t be able to keep his job. If he loses his job, he probably won’t be able to keep supporting his family and he might even lose his home. Suddenly wanting a new car is a much more urgent and complex issue.

Your protagonist needs a reason to want the things they do, and to be aware of consequences (real or imagined) if they aren’t able to get them in time.

7. Rising action

When we get into the structure of our plot, the rising action is the escalating cause and effect that comes from the characters’ choices. Every time your protagonist does something in pursuit of their goal, their action will trigger effects in the world around them—some anticipated, some not. At the same time, your antagonist or antagonists will also be pursuing their own, conflicting goals, making their own choices, and sending even more effects out into the world. It’s this interplay of choices, consequences, and reactions, growing greater in urgency and intensity, that builds the narrative arc as the plot unfolds.

To learn more about how to structure your plot from inciting incident to epic conclusion, check out our detailed lesson on plot .

8. Falling action

Once your plot has reached its climax, and your protagonist has finally obtained their goal (or not), and the antagonist has been defeated (or not), and the world as it was has crumbled and then been rebuilt into something new, it’s time for your falling action. Many writers make the mistake of ending their story too quickly, but your readers need time to see the new landscape as it comes together and to say goodbye to your characters after the story’s resolution.

This section won’t take up a huge amount of real estate—usually about ten percent of the book at most. This is where you take a little bit of time to explore what it means to your protagonist to have reached this place in their journey, how those around them are affected by it, and—this is important—where they’re heading next. This gives your reader time to absorb the messages in your story and the lessons they have learned.

9. Symbolism

Symbolism is using an object, place, person, or element to represent something other than its literal meaning. Even a small thing can represent a big idea. In a story, symbolism can be a recognizable universal symbol or it can be a symbol that’s developed within the context of your world.

Symbolism gives depth to your story and helps support the theme (we’ll talk about theme a little farther below). Contextual symbols, in particular, help convey the message that you’re trying to send through your writing. For instance, if you’re exploring the idea of enduring love through times of great hardship, you could work symbolism into your story by using a fragile object such as a teacup, a vase, or a figurine which manages to stay intact despite being dropped or knocked around. This then becomes a symbol of a relationship that is more durable than it would appear in spite of the dangers it might face.

Very often readers will absorb symbolism in your writing without consciously realizing it. They may not see that the object was a cleverly placed literary device, but they’ll feel the tension and tone it creates in parallel with the plot.

We’ve got lots more detail on how to incorporate rich symbolism into your story here !

10. Language

In writing, language is the tone, mood, word choices, sentence structure, and unique author’s voice that pulls the story together. Some authors, like Ernest Hemingway, are famous for short, clean lines with simple words and no ornamentation. Others, like Joanne Harris, favour more languid sentences full of delicate flowering words and sensual imagery. Edgar Allen Poe is famous for his dark, velvety vocabulary that brings to mind gothic castles and stormy nights, while writers like Jane Austen use light, approachable sentences peppered with sardonic undertones that go on for half a page.

While many writers will grow to develop a distinctive voice of their own, they may also adjust their rhythm and tone to fit the mood of the type of book they’re writing. In general, shorter, more monosyllabic sentences will speed up the pacing while longer sentences slow it down. Beach reads and thrillers tend to rely more on the former, while historical and literary fiction often use more long sentences. A mix of both is best—too much of either one gets difficult to read for very long.

When exploring language, think about the mood and images you want to convey with each scene. Then see if you can choose the lengths of your sentences and the types of words to match.

To learn more about using unique, beautiful language in your writing, have a look at our lesson on developing your writer’s voice .

Theme is the point of your story. It’s the central idea or message that you’re trying to send your readers through the filter of a fictional world. This can be something like the unbreakable bonds of family, the ravaging landscape of social media, or the seductive destruction of avarice. You may think of a message that you want to explore and build a plot around it, or you may begin writing a story and uncover its true meaning as you go along.

Once you know what the theme of your story is, you can emphasize it further using a range of literary devices including symbolism, metaphors, and allegory as well as your cast of characters and the types of conflicts that they face. Each element of your story should support this central message in some way. By showing the power of this message and the effect it has on the characters and the world, you can make the reader understand its importance and inspire a very real change. That’s the power of storytelling.

You can find out more about how to develop your own themes in our lesson here .

12. Verisimilitude

Verisimilitude comes from a word that means “truth,” and it means the truth within a fictional context. All powerful stories come from a true place—from real human needs, strengths, weaknesses, and experiences. This is equally true, if not more so, in fantastical work. If you’re writing about a man who gets exposed to gamma radiation and becomes a big green smashing machine, you’re then asking your reader to accept that this is the truth of your story: stay away from gamma radiation. It’ll Jekyll-and-Hyde you up. Even when you and your reader both know, deep down, that this isn’t actually what gamma radiation is in the slightest, they accept it as the basis of this particular reality.

This comes down to verisimilitude. Even though you’re showing the character in a fantastical and frankly ridiculous context, what stays with us as readers are the deep, sometimes uncomfortable truths: don’t we all have polarities inside of us that make us question who we are? Does Bruce Banner secretly want to be a stronger, braver, more unfeeling version of himself? Wouldn’t you? It’s these intimately resonant connections, more than an iconic pair of tattered purple shorts, that form the heart of this narrative.

When telling a story, no matter how absurdist or unrealistic or removed from our world it may be— especially then—figure out how to offer it to your readers from a place of honesty and truth.

Elements of a story in literature: examples from 5 enduring stories

All the tools we’ve looked at are present in every great story that has been handed down to us through the years, as well as inspiring new works of art that are still being produced today. The ones that stay with us most are the ones that use these elements in surprising new ways. Let’s look at how these patterns function in our best-loved works of classic literature.

1. To Kill a Mockingbird , by Harper Lee

Harper Lee’s renowned novel is set in a fictional American town in the 1930s, though it could easily be in any of a hundred very real places in just about any time period—even today. In this story a black man is falsely accused of rape, and the consequences of that accusation radiate outwards to affect the lives of the people in the story. The novel’s powerful conflict—which was very much influenced by its setting, and its innate prejudices and limitations—communicated a theme which encouraged readers to look at their own history, their ideas, and their future in a new way.

The novel both makes use of and challenges the perspectives of the time. The first-person narrator of this novel is a young child who struggles with her own prejudices and expectations of cultural norms. Through the narrative we see her perspective change as she grows to understand the battles faced by other people and the need to look at every human being as an individual. This juxtaposition of a young central character with a very grownup central conflict creates a powerful theme that has stayed with us for decades.

2. The Maltese Falcon , by Dashiell Hammett

Like many noir thrillers of its time, this classic novel by Dashiell Hammett is heavily driven by the surprising twists and turns that make up its rising action. It’s told through a third-person narration that follows an array of people, many with questionable moralities, who are fighting for their claim to a mythical lost statue. The Maltese Falcon also gives us some of the thriller’s signature character archetypes: the protagonist Sam Spade, the jaded, smooth-talking private eye that would go on to influence the staple hero of the genre. We also have the femme Brigid O’Shaughnessy, one of the novel’s central antagonists, who gave birth to an archetype of seductive, deceitful fatales .

The plot is propelled forward by one mounting conflict after another, set against the backdrop of its distinctive setting: a dark, gritty San Francisco in the late 1920s, in the decade’s height of roaring decadence just before its fall into the great depression. The iconic characters combined with the vivid backdrop have given us a formula that has engaged readers for generations, and will continue to do so for generations more.

3. Breakfast at Tiffany’s , by Truman Capote

Now inextricably associated with Audrey Hepburn’s trademark black dress, Truman Capote’s 1958 novel is built strongly out of setting and character. The central character, Holly Golightly, comes from a modest and scattered upbringing to explode onto the social season of New York’s glittering upper east side. Holly is at odds with her time and place, a city and a decade in which women were expected to conform to patriarchal expectation. Nearly everyone she interacts with attempts to curtail her freedom and independence, which causes that freedom to become something of a contrarian obsession.

It’s this series of small, mounting interpersonal conflicts that support the real conflict of the plot: the main character’s fight for independence to the point of self destruction, and her need to express herself in a larger society that represses expression of the self. This is a perfect example of the power of verisimilitude in a novel: every one of us has fought a similar internal battle at some point during our lives, and we can identify with her struggles to unite her opposing needs and desires.

4. The Lord of the Rings , by J.R.R. Tolkien

J. R. R. Tolkien’s magnum opus has all the elements of a story sprawled across an epic, magnificent canvas: a varied and expressive cast of large and small heroes; an entirely new, unique world; terrifying antagonists; a rich tapestry of symbolism and themes; and an ambitious use of multilayered language that hasn’t been matched since.

While every one of these story elements plays an important part in this saga, the one that probably stays with readers the most is its setting—a multifaceted landscape of Tolkien’s creation with its own histories, languages, cultures, traditions, and races of people. The author accomplished the extraordinary feat of creating an environment that felt like home for generations of readers. It also went on to inspire a myriad of other stories in the modern fairy tale genre.

It’s worth mentioning how well this series utilizes its falling action, the events following the enormous conflict that has powered the events of the plot. Tolkien takes time to show us who these characters are outside of the battles they’ve faced, and where their path is going to lead them next. It’s arguable that seeing how these characters return home, changed by their experiences and embracing a new beginning, has endeared them to their readers most of all.

5. A Christmas Carol , by Charles Dickens

One of the most famous character-driven novels of all time, this story centers on an irascible protagonist who faces the most complex antagonist of all: his own mistakes. Set in Dickensian London, this novel takes the protagonist through several powerful settings, each with a strong personal connection. Through these settings we get to see the supporting characters, people in the protagonist’s life who show him his comfortably embraced weaknesses and his uneasily discarded strengths.

Although the main character, Ebeneezer Scrooge, is a personality so powerful he borders on caricature, he shows us what we could become if we allowed fear and avarice to devour us. The novel shows us what the protagonist is fighting for—a second chance to be a better man—and what he has to lose if he fails: his immortal soul. This story uses symbolism and strong thematic elements as the story unfolds to send a powerful message of redemption and free will to the reader. This is a good example of how the conflict your protagonist faces directly supports the theme that you’re trying to convey.

Using the elements of a story to strengthen your writing

Your own work in progress might have some of these important elements already, and you can emphasize them even further to connect more deeply with your reader. Consider your main characters, location, and the conflict or conflicts that drive the plot forward. Explore your story’s perspective by looking at the way the setting have informed your protagonist’s view of the world. What sort of prejudices, theologies, and values have they absorbed as they grew into the person they are today?

Once you uncover these you’ll start to see glimmers of your theme hiding underneath the surface.

When you begin to understand the theme of your story, you can then begin forming more layers with symbolism, unique settings, and relationships between characters to heighten this theme. Remember that what your characters have to fight for and what they stand to lose will be directly tied to the message you’re sending your readers. This will make the reader re-examine the things they’re fighting for in their own lives, in their society, and in the larger world around them.

Lastly, always write from a place of verisimilitude—from a place of true feelings, real questions, and human values, no matter how far-fetched the context of your world might be. When your readers are able to see themselves and their hopes reflected in your writing, that’s when it will stay with them forever.

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What is a Narrative Essay — Examples, Format & Techniques

I was in the Amazon jungle the first time I wrote a narrative essay, enlightened and enraptured by the influence of ayahuasca. That’s not true. I’ve never been to South America nor have I ever taken ayahuasca. The purpose of that opening is to show how to craft a narrative essay intro — hook, line, and sinker. Narrative essays rely on hooking the reader, and enticing them to read on. But what is a narrative essay? We’re going to break down everything you need to know about these essays — definition, examples, tips and tricks included. By the end, you’ll be ready to craft your own narrative essay for school or for publication.

What’s a Narrative Essay?

First, let’s define narrative essay.

Narrative essays share a lot of similarities with personal essays, but whereas the former can be fictional or non-fictional, the latter are strictly non-fictional. The goal of the narrative essay is to use established storytelling techniques, like theme , conflict , and irony , in a uniquely personal way.

The responsibility of the narrative essayist is to make the reader feel connected to their story, regardless of the topic. This next video explores how writers can use structural elements and techniques to better engage their readers. 

Personal Narrative Essay Examples With Essay Pro

Narrative essays rely on tried and true structure components, including:

• First-person POV
• Personal inspiration
• Focus on a central theme

By keeping these major tenets in mind, you’ll be better prepared to recognize weaknesses and strengths in your own works.

NARRATIVE ESSAY DEFINITION

What is a narrative essay.

A narrative essay is a prose-written story that’s focused on the commentary of a central theme. Narrative essays are generally written in the first-person POV, and are usually about a topic that’s personal to the writer. Everything in these essays should take place in an established timeline, with a clear beginning, middle, and end. 

Famous Narrative Essay Examples

• Ticker to the Fair by David Foster Wallace
• After Life by Joan Didion
• Here is a Lesson in Creative Writing by Kurt Vonnegut

Narrative Writing Explained

How to start a narrative essay.

When you go to sleep at night, what do you think of? Flying squirrels? Lost loved ones? That time you called your teacher ‘mom’? Whatever it is, that’s what you need to write about. There’s a reason those ideas and moments have stuck with you over time. Your job is to figure out why.

Once you realize what makes a moment important to you, it’s your job to make it important to the reader too. In this next video, Academy Award-nominated filmmaker J. Christian Jensen explains the power of the personal narrative. 

Narrative Writing and the Personal Narrative Essay  •  Video by TEDx Talks

Anything and everything can be the topic of your essay. It could be as benign as a walk to school or as grandiose as a trip to the moon — so long as that narrative exists within reality. Give your thoughts and opinions on the matter too — don’t be afraid to say “this is what I think” so long as it’s supported by storytelling techniques. Remember, never limit yourself as a writer, just keep in mind that certain topics will be harder to make engaging than others.

Narrative Essay Outline

How to write a narrative essay.

First step, game plan. You’re going to want to map out the story from beginning to end, then mark major story beats in your document.

Like all stories, your narrative essay needs a clear beginning, middle, and end. Each section should generally conform to a specifically outlined structure. For reference, check out the outline below.

Narrative Essay Format  •  How to Write a Narrative Essay Step by Step

Make sure to reference back to this outline throughout the writing process to make sure you have all your major beats covered.

Purpose of narrative essay writing

Narrative essays give writers the ability to freely express themselves within the structure of a traditional story. Nearly all universities ask applicants to submit a narrative essay with their formal application. This is done for two reasons: they allow institutions to judge the linguistic and grammar capabilities of its applicants, as well as their raw creative side.

If you’re considering studying creative writing in an undergraduate or graduate program, then you’re going to write A LOT of narrative style essays. This process may seem indomitable; How am I supposed to write hundreds of pages about… me? But by the end, you’ll be a better writer and you’ll have a better understanding of yourself.

One thing that all successful essayists have in common is that they make radical, often defiant statements on the world at large. Think Ralph Waldo Emerson, Virginia Woolf, and Langston Hughes for example.

Being a professional essayist isn’t easy, and it’s near-impossible to be one who makes a lot of money. Many essayists work as professors, editors, and curriculum designers as well. 

This next video features the late, award-winning essayist Brian Doyle. He explains all the things you need to hear when thinking about writing a story.

Narrative Essay Examples “Lecture” via Boston University

We can learn a lot from the way Doyle “opens” his stories. My favorite is how he begins with the statement, “I met the Dalai Lama once.” How can we not be interested in learning more? 

This brings us all the way back to the beginning. Start with a hook, rattle off the line, then reel in the sinker. If you entice the reader, develop a personal plot, and finish with a resolute ending, you’ll have a lot of success in essay writing. 

 Up Next

Narrative essay topics.

We've curated a collection of narrative essay topics that will spark your creativity and bring your experiences to life. Dive into the rich tapestry of your memories, explore the unique threads of your life, and let your narrative unfold.

Up Next: Narrative Essay Topics →

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5 Elements Of a Story Explained With Examples (+ Free Worksheet)

What do all good stories have in common? And no it’s not aliens or big explosions! It’s the five elements of a story: Characters, Setting, Plot, Conflict and Resolution. Story elements are needed to create a well-structured story. It doesn’t matter if you’re writing a short story or a long novel, the core elements are always there. 

What are Story Elements?

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This short video lesson explains the main points relating to the five story elements:

Story elements are the building blocks needed to make a story work. Without these blocks, a story will break down, failing to meet the expectations of readers. Simply put, these elements remind writers what to include in stories, and what needs to be planned. By understanding each element, you increase the chances of writing a better story or novel.

Over the years, writers have adapted these elements to suit their writing process. In fact, there can be as few as 4 elements in literature all the way up to 12 elements. The most universally used story elements contain just five building blocks:

These five elements are a great place to start when you need help planning your story. You may also notice that these story elements are what most book outlining techniques are based on.

5 Elements Of A Story

Below we have explained each of the five elements of a story in detail, along with examples.

Characters are the most familiar element in stories. Every story has at least one main character. Stories can also have multiple secondary characters, such as supporting characters and villain/s. The main character should be introduced at the beginning. While introducing this character it is a good idea to include key information about this character’s personality, past and physical appearance. You should also provide a hint to what this character’s major conflict is in the story (more on conflict later).

The main character also goes through changes throughout the story. All the challenges and obstacles they face in the story allow them to learn, grow and develop. Depending on your plot, they might become a better person, or even a worse one – if this is a villain’s origin story. But be careful here – Growth should not be mistaken for a personality change! The main character must stay true to who they are. Deep inside their personality should stay more or less the same. The only thing that changes is the lessons they learn, and how these impact them.

Check out this post on 20 tips for character development for more guidance.

Settings in stories refer to three things: Location, Time Period and Mood. The easiest element to understand is location . Location is the physical place/s the story takes part in mostly. For example, the tale of Cinderella takes part in two main locations: Cinderella’s Palace and the Ballroom at the Prince’s Palace. It is a good idea to explain each new location in great detail, so the readers feel like they are also right there with the characters. The physical location is also something that can be included at the beginning of the story to set the story’s tone.

Next comes the time period . Every story is set in some time period. Some stories especially about time travel may be set across multiple time periods. You don’t always have to include the exact date or year in your story. But it is a good idea that during the planning phase, you know the year or even dates the story is set in. This can help you include accurate details about location and even key events. For example, you don’t want to be talking about characters using mobile phones in the 18th century – It just wouldn’t make sense (Unless of course, it’s a time travel story)!

The final part of the setting is the mood . The mood is the feeling you want readers to feel when reading your story. Do you want them to be scared, excited or happy? It’s the way you explain and describe a particular location, object or person. For example in horror stories, you may notice dark language being used throughout, such as gore, dismal, damp or vile. While a fairy tale such as Cinderella uses light and warm language like magical, glittering, beautiful or happily ever after. The choice of words sets the mood and adds an extra layer of excitement to a story. 

The plot explains what a story is about from beginning to end. It can contain multiple scenes and events. In its simplest form, a plot has a beginning, middle and end. The beginning introduces the characters and sometimes shows a minor conflict. The middle is where the major conflict occurs. And the ending is where all conflicts are resolved, and the story comes to a close. The story mountain template is a great way to plan out a story’s plot.

A story is not a story without conflict. Conflict is also a key part of a story’s plot (see section above). The purpose of conflict in stories is to challenge your characters and push them to their limits. It is only when they face this conflict, do they really grow and reach their full potential. Conflicts can be internal, external or both. Internal conflicts come from inside your main character, such as not having the confidence in themself or having a fear of something. While external conflicts are created elsewhere, such as natural disasters or evil villains creating havoc. 

The resolution is a solution to the main conflict. Without a resolution, the conflict would be neverending, and this could lead to a disappointing ending to your story. Resolutions could include huge battle scenes or even the discovery of new information which changes everything. Sometimes in stories resolutions don’t always solve the conflict 100%. This normally leads to cliffhanger endings, where a small piece of conflict still exists somewhere. But the important thing to remember is that all conflicts need some kind of resolution in stories to make them satisfying to the reader.

Story Elements Examples

We explained each story element above, and now it’s time to put our teachings into practice. Here are some common story element examples we created.

The fox and the crow is one of Aesop’s most famous fables . It tells the story of a sly fox who tricks a foolish crow into giving her breakfast away. You can read the full fable on the read.gov website . 

Here are the elements of a story applied to the fable of the fox and the crow:

• Characters: A sly fox and a foolish crow.
• Setting: Bright Morning in the woods.
• Plot: A hungry fox is looking for food. The fox notices the crow with cheese in its beak. Using his charming words, the fox tricks the crow into dropping the cheese into the fox’s mouth. The story ends with the fox feeling satisfied, and the crow left with nothing to eat.
• Conflict: The Fox wants the cheese that the Crow has.
• Resolution: Using his charming words, the fox is able to trick the crow into singing. When she starts to sing, the cheese drops into the fox’s mouth. 

Cinderella is one of the most famous fairy tales of all time. It tells the tale of a poor servant girl who is abused by her stepmother and stepsisters. One night with the help of her fairy godmother, she attends the ball. It is at the ball that the prince falls in love with Cinderella. Eventually leading to a happy ending.

Here are the elements of a story applied to the short story of Cinderella:

• Characters: Cinderella, the stepsisters, the stepmother, the fairy godmother, and the prince.
• Setting: Long time ago in a kingdom. Physical locations include Cinderella’s Palace and the ballroom at the Prince’s Palace.
• Plot: Cinderella’s father passes away leaving her with her horrible stepmother and two stepsisters. They abuse her and make her clean the house all day. One day, an invite comes from the Prince’s palace inviting everyone to the ball. Cinderella is forced to stay at home, while her stepmother and sisters attend. Suddenly Cinderella’s fairy godmother appears and helps her get to the ball. But she must return home by midnight. At the ball, Cinderella and the Prince fall in love. The clock nearly strikes twelve and Cinderella runs away leaving a glass slipper behind. The prince then searches the kingdom to find Cinderella. Eventually, he finds her. The two get married and live happily ever after.
• Conflict: Cinderella must find a way to get away from her stepmother and stepsisters.
• Resolution: Cinderella and the prince get married.

Put everything you learned into practice with our free story elements worksheet PDF. This PDF includes a blank story elements anchor chart or graphic organiser, two completed examples and an explanation of each of the story elements. This worksheet pack  is great for planning your own story:

Common Questions About Story Elements

Writing a story is a huge task. Simply just putting pen to paper isn’t really going to cut it, especially if you want to write professionally. Planning is needed. That’s where the story elements come in. Breaking a story down into different components, helps you plan out each area carefully. It also reminds you of the importance of each element and the impact they can have on the final story. 

Some writers have expanded the traditional 5 elements to 7 elements of a story. These 7 elements include:

• Theme: What is the moral or main lesson to learn in your story?
• Characters: Who are your main and supporting characters?
• Setting: Where is your story set? Think about location and time period.
• Plot: What happens in your story?
• Conflict: What is the main conflict? Is this conflict internal or external?
• Point of View: Is this story written in first, second or third person view?
• Style: What kind of language or tone of voice will you use?

The 5 elements of a story include:

• Setting: Where is your story set? Think about location, time period and mood.
• Plot: What are the key events that happen in your story ?
• Resolution: How is the main conflict solved?

The longest version of the story elements includes 12 elements:

• Protagonist: Who is the main character or hero of the story?
• Antagonist : Who is the villain of the story?
• Setting : Where is your story set? Think about location and time period.
• Conflict : What is the main conflict? Is this conflict internal or external?
• Sacrifice : What will the main character lose if they fail?
• Rising Action : What action/s lead up to the main conflict? 
• Falling Action: What happens after the conflict had ended?
• Message: What is the key message of your story?
• Language : What kind of words would you use? Think about the tone of voice and mood of the story.
• Theme: What is the overall moral or main lesson to learn in your story?
• Reality: How does your story relate to the real world?

Some versions of the story elements, completely remove the conflict element. In the 6 elements structure, conflict is included in the plot element:

• Plot: What happens in your story? Think about the main conflict.

We could consider the order of events, in this 9 story elements structure:

• Tension: What is the source of conflict?
• Climax: The moment when the main conflict happens.
• Plot: What happens in your story? 
• Purpose: Why do certain events happen in your story?
• Chronology: What is the order of main events in your story?

The story elements can also be adapted to contain 8 elements:

• Style: What kind of language or words will you use?
• Tone: What is the overall mood of the story? Is it dark, funny or heartfelt?

Got any more questions about the key elements of a story? Share them in the comments below!

Marty the wizard is the master of Imagine Forest. When he's not reading a ton of books or writing some of his own tales, he loves to be surrounded by the magical creatures that live in Imagine Forest. While living in his tree house he has devoted his time to helping children around the world with their writing skills and creativity.

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Narrative Essay | Elements, Tips and Outline of a Narrative Essay

Narrative Essay: A narrative essay is a way to tell a story about your personal experience in a clear and interesting way. In a  narrative essay, you have to imagine where your story begins and ends, and how to describe it with eye-catching language. To write a narrative essay you have to put yourself in that story.

It is a type of essay that has a main point around which the whole narrative revolves. All incidents, happenings, and characters are related to the same point. A narrative essay has characters, incidents, and dialogues which are written in a proper format.

Narrative essays tell a story, usually from one person’s personal point of view. A narrative essay has all the story elements — a beginning, middle and ending, as well as plot, characters, setting and climax all brought together to complete the story.

You can read more  Essay Writing  about articles, events, people, sports, technology many more.

Elements of a Narrative Essay

A narrative essay mainly consists of three required elements: character, theme, and dialogue.

Character: Characters are an important element of a narrative essay. It is the lead role as the story revolves around the character. The person writing the essay is a character itself. It also involves some other characters who act, behave, and do like all other characters presented in stories and novels.

Theme or Motif

A narrative essay is not a type of an attractive story but it has a theme or a motif. Narrative essays teach a lesson to the reader.

It narrates people’s personal experiences to teach lessons to readers. In fact, it is like a story, but revolves around a motif. The main motif of the narrative essay is to make the readers aware of this single theme, central idea, or motif once they go through the essay. The major aim of narrative essays is to provide information about life experiences and lessons learned from those experiences.

Dialogue is used for the conversation between characters. In a narrative essay, dialogue is the third important element, which is used to develop an interest in the story.

Dialogue is very important in narrative essays without which the characters lose their worth and liveliness. Dialogues give life to the character in the essay.

Narrative Essay Outline

To write a good essay, the first thing you need is to create a proper outline. Creating an outline means it is half the way you go and it is an important part of a good essay.

Divide your essay into three parts.

Introduction

Start with something amazing. Add a detailed explanation of your topic and tell about what you are going to discuss in the main body. State a good story but you should have a motif or a good theme.

Follow these points for writing a great introduction.

• Introduce the topic
• Include supporting sentences
• State the thesis statement

Once you have attracted your readers, now you can start your story. If the introduction is good enough then only the readers move towards the body. Now start writing your story chronologically in a proper format.

The main body is the section where your entire essay is created. Add the following points in it:

• Try to keep your story in chronological order so that the reader can understand the storyline easily.
• Narrate the incidents in an order leading to the final conclusion.
• The beginning and the concluding lines must be related to the main part of the events described in the story.
• Write one idea in each paragraph

Make sure that your essay serves the main motif. Conclude your essay with your message. The conclusion must be strong enough to reach the heart of the readers.

• Summarize the key points of your essay
• Repeat your message so that your readers get reminders about the central message
• Try to leave the prints on the minds of the readers.

Easy Tips on Writing a Narrative Essay

When writing a narrative essay, remember that you are sharing personal and emotional details with the reader.

• Before writing a narrative essay it is very important to decide the motive behind it.
• The use of clear and concise language throughout the essay is necessary.
• Your words and sentences need to be attractive and heart-touching to help the reader feel the same feelings that you felt.
• Elements of the story must be used in the proper format..
• You may use flashbacks and flash-forwards to build the climax in the story so that the readers are interested In your story.
• Narrative essays are usually written in the first person, but the third-person view may also be used.

FAQ’s on Narrative Essay

Question 1. How is a Narrative Essay different from a Short Story?

Answer: A narrative essay has a specific motif, specific format and specific aspect to discover. It revolves around that motif or a theme set by the writer prior to writing the essay. Whereas a short story is different from a narrative essay in that it does not revolve around a specific motif, and also it does not have a specific format. Also, a short story always leaves readers in suspense with the desire to discover more. Whereas, a narrative essay ends when the readers are fully satisfied.

Question 2. How to begin a Narrative Essay?

Answer: Start the essay with an attractive statement followed by sensory details. You must use easy and attractive language from the beginning to grab the readers’ attention.

Following are different ways to start the essay:

• Start with a famous quote written by someone to catch your reader’s attention
• Use a mystery in the story.
• Make use of statements so that the reader can feel the same pain as if you..
• Be more precise so that the readers don’t find it messy.
• Your motif should be clearly highlighted.

9 Key Elements of a Short Story: What They Are and How to Apply Them

by Sarah Gribble | 1 comment

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If you're new to short story writing, it can be intimidating to think of fitting everything you need in a story into a small word count. Are there certain elements of a short story you'll need to know in order for your story to be great?

Writers struggle with this all the time.

You might want to develop deep character backgrounds with a huge cast of characters, amazing settings, and at least two subplots. And that's great. But that wouldn't be writing a short story.

You might try to cut some of these things, and then all the sudden you don't have a character arc or a climax or an ending.

Every story has basic elements; a short story's basic elements are just more focused than a novel's. But all those elements must be there, and yes, they need to fit into a short word count.

In this article, you'll learn what you need to make sure your short story is a  complete  story—with three famous short story examples. These story elements are what you should focus on when writing a short piece of fiction.

The Key to Compelling Stories: It's NOT Dun, Dun, DUUN!

When I first started writing, I mainly worked on horror short stories. I wanted to create that dun, dun, DUUUN! moment at the end of all of them. You know the one. In the movies it's where the screen goes to black and you’re left feeling goosebumps.

I remember the first writing contest I entered (right here at The Write Practice!), I submitted a story that I thought was pretty decent, but didn’t really think would win.

I was right; it did not win.

But mainly I wanted the upgrade I’d purchased: feedback from the judge. She was great and told me my writing was good and tight, but there was one major issue with my story.

The dun, dun, DUUN!

I’d tried to cultivate actually meant my story just . . . cut off. There was no ending. There wasn’t even a complete climax. I got it ramped up and then just . . . stopped.

That feedback changed me as a short story writer. It made me really pay attention to what needed to be in a story versus what was unnecessary.

I studied short stories. I made note of what an author did and where. I basically taught myself story structure.

This may seem obvious, but a short story, even though it’s short, still needs to be a story.

So let’s start with the basics.

P.S. If you want to learn more about the five major steps you need to complete to write a short story, read this article .

What Is a Story?

I know a man who consistently tells stories during parties. (Sort of like this guy !)

He starts out well but then goes off on tangent after tangent, ultimately not really getting to any sort of point.

New people (re: characters ) are introduced, then dropped. New events are mentioned, but not resolved. By the time he gets to the end of his “stories,” eyes have glazed over and the “punchline,” as it were, falls flat.

What this man is telling is a short story, and he’s doing it terribly.

A story, no matter the length, can be boiled down to a character wanting something, having a hard time getting it, and finally either getting it or not.

Stories are actually simple when you look at the basics. This is why writing short stories will make you a better writer.

Short stories force a writer to practice nailing structure and pace. If you nail those things, you’ll be able to write stories of any length (and not bore people at parties).

And like novel-length stories, short stories contain certain elements in order to hold up the structure and pace.

For each story element below, I'll use three classic stories as examples:

• Shirley Jackson's “The Lottery”
• Edgar Allen Poe's “The Cask of Amontillado”
• O. Henry's “The Gift of the Magi”

Take a few minutes to refresh your memory by clicking on the links of each, if you wish.

9 Key Elements of a Short Story

When it comes down to the elements of a short story, focus on nine key elements that determine if the short story is a complete  story or a half-baked one.

1. Character

Characters in books are well-drawn. There's a lot of time spent on character development and backstory. That's not needed for short stories.

Short stories need one central character and one or two other major characters. That’s about it. There isn't enough room to have a ton of characters and a story will veer away from the central plotline if a large cast is present.

The reader doesn't need to know everything about this character . They don't even need to know their physical appearance if it's not vital to the story. Your character traits in short stories can be so minimal, they don't even need a name.

This doesn't mean the protagonist is a static character who is basically a zombie on a couch. They still have to be a dynamic character, one that changes throughout the story.

When you're thinking of character creation for short stories, you don't need to dive into too much detail. Two to three character details are normally enough.

See how the three short story examples used in this article develop characters:

The Lottery

The main character is Tessie Hutchinson.

We don't know much about Tessie, other than she's unkempt and arrives late with a slew of jokes. You'll no doubt note here that this story has a lot of characters, not just two or three.

But notice only a few of the other characters are fleshed out much at all. The other characters of note here are:

• Mr. Hutchinson
• Mr. Summers
• Old Man Warner.

The Cask of Amontillado

This short story has significantly fewer characters:

• The main character

The Gift of the Magi

There are only two named characters:

• Della, the main character
• Jim, Della's husband

2. Want/Goal

The central character needs to want something—even if it’s a glass of water, as Kurt Vonnegut famously said. (They can also not want something. But they have to have an opinion either way.) The story is their quest to get said something.

Obviously, in real life people want multiple things, often at once and often in contrast to each other. But in a short story, the goal needs to be focused and relatively simple.

This want/goal is important to the story plot. This is what drives the character's decisions as they move throughout the space of your story. The goals in the short story examples are:

Tessie, as with every other person who shows up at the lottery, doesn't want to get chosen.

Montresor wants revenge for an insult Fortunato threw his way while drunk.

Della wants to give her husband a Christmas gift.

3. Conflict

Obstacles and complications need to make the protagonist's journey hard, and these types of conflicts should raise the stakes as the protagonist tries to achieve their want/goal.

In books, multiple things need to get in the way of the character completing the goal, but in short stories, there can be as little as one central conflict .

Conflict stems from the antagonist, whether that’s an external baddie (character conflicts with each other), an internal issue, forces of nature, or society being against them. Here's how conflict works in our three examples:

The Lottery 

Tessie conflicts with the other townsfolk, her husband (who is more rule-abiding than she is), and the overall way of life the lottery is forcing.

The main conflict is this supposed insult Fortunato made to Montresor. Interestingly, even though this story is a rather brutal revenge story, there isn't much surface conflict happening.

Fortunato essentially walks to his own death without much protest. Montresor also goes through an internal conflict toward the end when he hesitates, only for a moment, over what he is doing.

The Gift of the Magic

Della has a more straightforward conflict with poverty: she's only got a dollar or two and wants to buy a nice gift for her husband.

4. Decisions

If characters sit around watching the world go by, there's no story plot. A character needs to make decisions at every turn to drive the story forward.

Your want/goal is the reason behind these decisions, but the conflict is what's driving the need to even make them.

Let's go back to Vonnegut's idea of a character wanting a glass of water (goal).

Say that character was lost in the desert (conflict). They'd do anything to get a glass of water, wouldn't they? That glass of water is the primary source of them living right at that moment, and everything revolves around that.

They're not going to make a move without it being in service of that ultimate goal.

In short stories, the protagonist's main goal is the driving force behind their decisions for the few thousand words we spend with them.

Among the decisions made in the three example stories are these:

Tessie decides to protest the results of the lottery in the hopes of not getting stoned to death.

Montresor decides to keep walling up Fortunato after his slight hesitation over whether this was really a good idea to get his revenge.

TheGift of the Magic

Della decides to cut her hair off and sell it in order to afford a gift.

This is the element of most stories that’s missing when someone tells a boring story at a party. This is the exciting part, the punchline, the ultimate point of the entire story.

This is where the character goes up against the baddie in a final showdown and either wins or loses. This is the ultimate answer to the What If Question we talked about before.

The climax for each of our examples is:

Tessie “wins” the lottery and fights the results (to no avail).

Montresor chains Fortunato in the wall and he realizes what's happening to him.

Della and Jim give each other the gifts and realize those gifts are currently “pointless” because each of them sold what they would use the gift for.

The ending is short, often only a couple of sentences in a short story. This is where everything is wrapped up.

It follows the climactic fight and winds down the remaining character and plot points, letting readers breathe and showing them what comes next for the character. (This is not the time to dun, dun, DUUN !)

This is often missing in short stories.

Ambiguous endings are fine, but the writer  must  give a glimpse of what happens to the main character.

Tessie is stoned to death so the townsfolk can go back to their normal lives.

Montresor decides to keep on sealing Fortunato behind the wall, despite the feeble protests from the man.

Della and Jim realize they really gave each other the gift of love and go about their Christmas.

When you encounter conflict in real life, you make decisions, which lead to change . It’s the same for the characters.

They change throughout this little adventure they’re on, and so do their circumstances.

If they’re in the same place at the end of the story they were at the beginning, did anything even happen?

Tessie's change is pretty obvious: she's dead. Before that, though, she changes from joking and disregarding this weird tradition to getting very scared and angry very quickly.

Montresor is freed from his irksome frenemy, and also knows a little bit more about himself and what he's capable of.

Della and Jim realize the true gift wasn't anything that could be bought and are happy with the love they've shared rather than worrying about material things.

8. Point of view (POV)

Choose one point of view and stick to it.

This is essential in a short story. You do not have enough room to go head-hopping or switching points of view with each paragraph.

You want your reader to be with your character the whole time, otherwise they will lose interest.

If you need a point of view refresher, read this article .

Here's the point of view in each of the short story examples:

Third-person omniscient

First person

Third-person limited

Even short stories should have a decently drawn setting .

This is tricky because, again, you don’t have room to be describing every little thing.

You’ll need to weave in the setting as you tell the story and stick to the essentials.

Notice the three example stories have something in common: a rather ambiguous setting.

We know Tessie lives in what seems to be an agrarian small town. We don't know where, what time period, or why the lottery exists.

Our wine lovers in “The Cask of Amontillado” are mostly in the family crypt.

We know Della and Jim live in a small, run-down apartment. We don't know where or when.

The reader doesn't know much about the setting in any of these stories, but they don't need  to know much. The plot hums along just fine without all those details.

What a Short Story is Not

It's often the case that the writer lets the muse take over when story writing.

In this case, what ends up on the page is often flowy sentences that sound profound and a “story” that sounds more like the ramblings of poor Fortunato.

It's fine to let a story writing get loose and to play with language. Innovation is experiementation.

But when a writer does this, it's often not truly a short story, or a story at all. It might be profound. It might be quote-worthy.

But it also might not be a story.

A short story is not:

• Short stories are not poems . Poetry doesn’t have the burden of having to tell a story (though it can, I know that, so don’t come at me). Short stories are stories with story structure. You can write them with poetic language, but there must be a story in there.
• Short stories are not plotless . Stream of consciousness is a great way to write morning pages, to get in the mood to write, to journal, etc. It’s not a great way to write a short story. Again, short stories are stories. They have to have a plot.
• Short stories do not have subplots . Remember that guy I talked about at the beginning of this article? When he went off on tangents, he was getting into subplot territory. There is no room in a short story for subplots.

Stick with one major event that’s happening to one main character.

A Note on “Rules”

I’ve been working with writers long enough to know that some of you reading this article are telling me off, especially with the last section.

I get it. You want to be creative. You want to follow your muse.

You want to do what I’ve just told you not to do.

Here’s the thing: rules are meant to be broken. I will give you that.

If you want to experiment and find a way to insert a new subplot and resolve it in every paragraph, do it. But in order to break the rules, you need to master them first.

Start by including each of these story elements in your  short story.

When you can ensure you have each story element consistently, then you can get crazy.

Which element do you need the most practice on? Tell us in the comments .

Revisit a short story you've written. Take fifteen minutes to analyze the story.

Look for each of these nine elements. Choose one missing element and add it. (If one isn't missing, then choose one element to beef up.)

When you’re finished, share your work in the Pro Practice Workshop .  Not a member yet? Join us here !

Sarah Gribble

Sarah Gribble is the author of dozens of short stories that explore uncomfortable situations, basic fears, and the general awe and fascination of the unknown. She just released Surviving Death , her first novel, and is currently working on her next book.

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Elements of Literature

WHAT DO WE MEAN BY THE PHRASE ‘ELEMENTS OF LITERATURE?

The phrase ‘elements of literature’ refers to the constituent parts of a work of literature in whatever form it takes: poetry, prose, or drama.

Why are they important?

Students must understand these common elements if they are to competently read or write a piece of literature.

Understanding the various elements is particularly useful when studying longer works. It enables students to examine specific aspects of the work in isolation before piecing these separate aspects back together to display an understanding of the work as a whole.

Having a firm grasp on how the different elements work can also be very useful when comparing and contrasting two or more texts. 

Not only does understanding the various elements of literature help us to answer literature analysis questions in exam situations, but it also helps us develop a deeper appreciation of literature in general.

what are the elements of literature ?

This article will examine the following elements: plot , setting, character, point-of-view, theme, and tone. Each of these broad elements has many possible subcategories, and there is some crossover between some elements – this isn’t Math , after all!

Hundreds of terms are associated with literature as a whole, and I recommend viewing this glossary for a complete breakdown of these.

WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN AN ELEMENT OF LITERATURE AND A LITERARY DEVICE?

Elements of literature are present in every literary text. They are the essential ingredients required to create any piece of literature, including poems, plays, novels, short stories, feature articles, nonfiction books, etc.

 Literary devices , on the other hand, are tools and techniques that are used to create specific effects within a work. Think metaphor, simile, hyperbole, foreshadowing, etc. We examine literary devices in detail in other articles on this site.

 While the elements of literature will appear in every literary text, not every literary device will.

 Now, let’s look at each of these oh-so-crucial elements of literature.

A COMPLETE UNIT ON TEACHING STORY ELEMENTS

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Plot refers to all related things that happen in the sequence of a story. The shape of the plot comes from the order of these events and consists of several distinct aspects that we’ll look at in turn.

The plot comprises a series of cause-and-effect events that lead the reader from the story’s beginning, through the middle, to the story’s ending (though sometimes the chronological order is played with for dramatic effect).

Exposition: This is the introduction of the story. Usually, it will be where the reader acquires the necessary background information they’ll need to follow the various plot threads through to the end. This is also where the story’s setting is established, the main characters are introduced to the reader, and the central conflict emerges.

Conflict: The conflict of the story serves as the focus and driving force of most of the story’s actions. Essentially, conflict consists of a central (and sometimes secondary) problem. Without a problem or conflict, there is no story. Conflict usually takes the form of two opposing forces. These can be external forces or, sometimes, these opposing forces can take the form of an internal struggle within the protagonist or main character.

Rising Action: The rising action of the narrative begins at the end of the exposition. It usually forms most of the plot and begins with an inciting incident that kick-starts a series of cause-and-effect events. The rising action builds on tension and culminates in the climax.

Climax: After introducing the problem or central conflict of the story, the action rises as the drama unfolds in a series of causes and effects . These events culminate in the story’s dramatic high point, known as the climax. This is when the tension finally reaches its breaking point

Falling Action: This part of the narrative comprises the events that happen after the climax. Things begin to slow down and work their way towards the story’s end, tying up loose ends on the way. We can think of the falling action as a de-escalation of the story’s drama.

Resolution: This is the final part of the plot arc and represents the closing of the conflict and the return of normality – or new normality – in the wake of the story’s events. Often, this takes the form of a significant change within the main character. A resolution restores balance and order to the world or brings about a new balance and order.

PRACTICE ACTIVITY: PLOT

Discuss a well-known story in class. Fairytales are an excellent resource for this activity. Students must name a scene from each story that corresponds to each of the sections of the plot as listed above: exposition, conflict, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution.

Setting consists of two key elements: space and time. Space refers to the where of the story, most often the geographical location where the action of the story takes place. Time refers to the when of the story. This could be a historical period, the present, or the future.

The setting has other aspects for the reader or writer to consider. For example, drilling down from the broader time and place, elements such as the weather, cultural context, physical surroundings, etc., can be important.

The setting is a crucial part of a story’s exposition and is often used to establish the mood of the story. A carefully crafted setting can be used to skillfully hint at the story’s theme and reveal some aspects of the various characters.

PRACTICE ACTIVITY: SETTING

Gather up a variety of fiction and nonfiction texts. Students should go through the selected texts and write two sentences about each that identify the settings of each. The sentences should make clear where and when the stories take place.

3. CHARACTER

A story’s characters are the doers of the actions. Characters most often take human form, but, on occasion, a story can employ animals, fantastical creatures, and even inanimate objects as characters. 

Some characters are dynamic and change over the course of a story, while others are static and do not grow or change due to the story’s action.

There are many different types of characters to be found in works of literature, and each serves a different function.

Now, let’s look at some of the most important of these.

Protagonist

The protagonist is the story’s main character. The story’s plot centers around these characters, who are usually sympathetic and likable to the reader; that is, they are most often the ‘hero’ of the story.

The antagonist is the bad guy or girl of the piece. Most of the plot’s action is borne of the conflict between the protagonist and the antagonist. 

Flat Character

Flat characters are one-dimensional characters that are purely functional in the story. They are more a sketch than a detailed portrait, and they help move the action along by serving a simple purpose. We aren’t afforded much insight into the interior lives of such characters.

Rounded Character

Unlike flat characters, rounded characters are more complex and drawn in more detail by the writer. As well as being described in comprehensive physical detail, we will gain an insight into the character’s interior life, their hopes, fears, dreams, desires, etc.

Choose a play that has been studied in class. Students should look at the character list and then categorize each of the characters according to the abovementioned types: protagonist, antagonist, flat character, or rounded character. As an extension, can the students identify whether each character is dynamic or static by the end of the tale?

4: POINT OF VIEW

Point of view in literature refers to the perspective through which you experience the story’s events. 

There are various advantages and disadvantages to the different points of view available for the writer, but they can all be usefully categorized according to whether they’re first-person, second-person, or third-person points of view.

Now, let’s look at some of the most common points of view in each category.

First Person

The key to recognizing this point of view is using pronouns such as I, me, my, we, us, our, etc. There are several variations of the first-person narrative , but they all have a single person narrating the story’s events either as it unfolds or in the past tense.

When considering a first-person narrative, the first question to ask is who is the person telling the story. Let’s look at two main types of the first-person point of view.

First-Person Protagonist : This is when the story’s main character relates the action first-hand as he or she experiences or experienced it. As the narrator is also the main character, the reader is placed right at the center of the action and sees events unfold through the main character’s eyes.

First-Person Periphery: In this case, we see the story unfold, not from the main character’s POV but from the perspective of a secondary character with limited participation in the story itself.

Second Person: This perspective is uncommon. Though it is hard to pull off without sounding corny, you will find it in some books, such as those Choose Your Own Adventure-type books. You can recognize this perspective by using the second person pronoun ‘you’.

Third Person Limited: From this perspective, we see events unfold from the point of view of one person in the story. As the name suggests, we are limited to seeing things from the perspective of the third-person narrator and do not gain insight into the internal life of the other characters other than through their actions as described by the third-person narrator (he, she, they, etc.).

Third Person Omniscient: The great eye in the sky! The 3rd person omniscient narrator, as the name suggests, knows everything about everyone. From this point of view, nothing is off-limits. This allows the reader to peek behind every curtain and into every corner of what is going on as the narrator moves freely through time and space, jumping in and out of the characters’ heads along the way.

Advantages and Disadvantages

As we’ve mentioned, there are specific advantages and disadvantages to each of the different points of view. While the third-person omniscient point of view allows the reader full access to each character, the third-person limited point of view is great for building tension in a story as the writer can control what the reader knows and when they know it.

The main advantage of the first-person perspective is that it puts the reader into the head of the narrator. This brings a sense of intimacy and personal detail to the story.

We have a complete guide to point of view here for further details.

PRACTICE ACTIVITY: POINT OF VIEW

Take a scene from a story or a movie that the student is familiar with (again, fairytales can serve well here). Students must rewrite the scene from each of the different POVs listed above: first-person protagonist, first-person periphery, second-person, third-person limited, and third-person omniscient. Finally, discuss the advantages and disadvantages of writing the scene from each POV. Which works best and why?

THE STORY TELLERS BUNDLE OF TEACHING RESOURCES

A MASSIVE COLLECTION of resources for narratives and story writing in the classroom covering all elements of crafting amazing stories. MONTHS WORTH OF WRITING LESSONS AND RESOURCES, including:

If the plot refers to what happens in a story, then the theme is to do with what these events mean. 

The theme is the big ideas explored in a work of literature. These are often universal ideas that transcend the limits of culture, ethnicity, or language. The theme is the deeper meaning behind the events of the story.

Notably, the theme of a piece of writing is not to be confused with its subject. While the subject of a text is what it is about, the theme is more about how the writer feels about that subject as conveyed in the writing.

It is also important to note that while all works of literature have a theme, they never state that theme explicitly. Although many works of literature deal with more than one theme, it’s usually possible to detect a central theme amid the minor ones.

The most commonly asked question about themes from students is, ‘ How do we work out what the theme is? ’ 

The truth is, how easy or how difficult it will be to detect a work’s theme will vary significantly between different texts. The ease of identification will depend mainly on how straightforward or complex the work is.

Students should look for symbols and motifs within the text to identify the theme. Especially symbols and motifs that repeat. 

Students must understand that symbols are when one thing is used to stand for another. While not all symbols are related to the text’s theme, when symbols are used repeatedly or found in a cluster, they usually relate to a motif. This motif will, in turn, relate to the theme of the work.

Of course, this leads to the question: What exactly is a motif?

A motif is a recurring idea or an element that has symbolic significance. Uncovering this significance will reveal the theme to a careful reader.

We can further understand the themes as concepts and statements. Concepts are the broad categories or issues of the work, while statements are the position the writer takes on those issues as expressed in the text.

Here are some examples of thematic concepts commonly found in literature:

• Forgiveness

When discussing a work’s theme in detail, identifying the thematic concept will not be enough. Students will need to explore what the thematic statements are in the text. That is, they need to identify the opinions the writer expresses on the thematic concepts in the text.

For example, we might identify that a story is about forgiveness, that is, that forgiveness is the primary thematic concept. When we identify what the work says about forgiveness, such as it is necessary for a person to move on with their life, we identify a thematic statement.

PRACTICE ACTIVITY: THEME

Again, choose familiar stories to work with. For each story, identify and write the thematic concept and statement. For more complex stories, multiple themes may need to be identified.

AN EXCELLENT VIDEO TUTORIAL ON STORY ELEMENTS

Tone refers to how the theme is treated in a work. Two works may have the same theme, but each may adopt a different tone in dealing with that theme. For example, the tone of a text can be serious, comical, formal, informal, gloomy, joyful, sarcastic, or sentimental, to name but eight.

The tone that the writer adopts influences how the reader reads that text. It informs how the reader will feel about the characters and events described. 

Tone helps to create the mood of the piece and gives life to the story as a whole.

PRACTICE ACTIVITY: TONE

Find examples of texts that convey each of the eight tones listed above: serious, comical, formal, informal, gloomy, joyful, sarcastic, and sentimental. Give three examples from each text that convey that specific tone. The examples can be drawn from direct quotations of the narrative or dialogue or a commentary on the structure of the text.

Conclusion:

Though the essential elements of literature are few in number, they can take a lifetime to master. The more experience a student gains in creating and analyzing texts regarding these elements, the more adept they will become in their use.

Time invested in this area will reap rich rewards regarding the skill with which a student can craft a text and the level of enjoyment and meaning they can derive from their reading. 

Time well spent, for sure.

TEACHING RESOURCES

Other great articles related to elements of literature.

7 ways to write great Characters and Settings | Story Elements

Teaching The 5 Story Elements: A Complete Guide for Teachers & Students

Short Story Writing for Students and Teachers

Elements of an Essay

Definition of elements of an essay.

An essay is a piece of composition that discusses a thing, a person, a problem, or an issue in a way that the writer demonstrates his knowledge by offering a new perspective , a new opinion, a solution, or new suggestions or recommendations. An essay is not just a haphazard piece of writing. It is a well-organized composition comprising several elements that work to build an argument , describe a situation, narrate an event, or state a problem with a solution. There are several types of essays based on the purpose and the target audience . Structurally, as an essay is an organized composition, it has the following elements:

• Introduction
• Body Paragraphs

Nature of Elements of an Essay

An essay has three basic elements as given above. Each of these elements plays its respective role to persuade the audience, convince the readers, and convey the meanings an author intends to convey. For example, an introduction is intended to introduce the topic of the essay. First it hooks the readers through the ‘ hook ,’ which is an anecdote , a good quote, a verse , or an event relevant to the topic. It intends to attract the attention of readers.

Following the hood, the author gives background information about the topic, which is intended to educate readers about the topic. The final element of the introduction is a thesis statement. This is a concise and compact sentence or two, which introduces evidence to be discussed in the body paragraphs.

Body paragraphs of an essay discuss the evidences and arguments introduced in the thesis statement . If a thesis statement has presented three evidences or arguments about the topic, there will be three body paragraphs. However, if there are more arguments or evidences, there could be more paragraphs.

The structure of each body paragraph is the same. It starts with a topic sentence, followed by further explanation, examples, evidences, and supporting details. If it is a simple non-research essay, then there are mostly examples of what is introduced in the topic sentences. However, if the essay is research-based, there will be supporting details such as statistics, quotes, charts, and explanations.

The conclusion is the last part of an essay. It is also the crucial part that sums up the argument, or concludes the description, narration, or event. It is comprised of three major parts. The first part is a rephrasing of the thesis statement given at the end of the introduction. It reminds the readers what they have read about. The second part is the summary of the major points discussed in the body paragraphs, and the third part is closing remarks, which are suggestions, recommendations, a call to action, or the author’s own opinion of the issue.

Function of Elements of an Essay

Each element of an essay has a specific function. An introduction not only introduces the topic, but also gives background information, in addition to hooking the readers to read the whole essay. Its first sentence, which is also called a hook, literally hooks readers. When readers have gone through the introduction, it is supposed that they have full information about what they are going to read.

In the same way, the function of body paragraphs is to give more information and convince the readers about the topic. It could be persuasion , explanation, or clarification as required. Mostly, writers use ethos , pathos , and logos in this part of an essay. As traditionally, it has three body paragraphs, writers use each of the rhetorical devices in each paragraph, but it is not a hard and fast rule. The number of body paragraphs could be increased, according to the demand of the topic, or demand of the course.

As far as the conclusion is concerned, its major function is to sum up the argument, issue, or explanation. It makes readers feel that now they are going to finish their reading. It provides them sufficient information about the topic. It gives them a new perspective, a new sight, a new vision, or motivates them to take action. The  conclusion needs to also satisfy readers that they have read something about some topic, have got something to tell others, and that they have not merely read it for the sake of reading.

Related posts:

• Important Elements of Poetry
• Narrative Essay
• Definition Essay
• Descriptive Essay
• Types of Essay
• Analytical Essay
• Argumentative Essay
• Cause and Effect Essay
• Critical Essay
• Expository Essay
• Persuasive Essay
• Process Essay
• Explicatory Essay
• An Essay on Man: Epistle I
• Comparison and Contrast Essay

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Drew Barrymore tells VP Kamala Harris 'we need you to be Momala,' draws mixed reactions

Drew Barrymo re's on-screen behavior during her daytime talk show typically has people talking, but her recent comments toward Vice President Kamala Harris are raising eyebrows, too.

During Monday's episode of "The Drew Barrymore Show," the vice president told the actress and TV host about the first time she met first gentleman Doug Emhoff's children, Cole Emhoff and Ella Emhoff .

"We kind of don't use the term 'step' because I just think, Iove Disney, but Disney kind of messed that up for a lot of us over the years, you know the evil stepparent?" Harris said, referring to "the evil stepmother" trope in Disney films. Harris said her children call her "Momala."

Meet Vice President Harris' family: from Doug Emhoff's kids to Phenomenal designer Meena Harris

Later in the conversation about co-parenting, Barrymore pivoted and said "that's a great segue to say that I keep thinking in my head that we all need a mom.

"I've been really thinking we really all need a tremendous hug in the world now, but in our country we need you to be 'Momala' of the country," Barrymore told Harris. She leaned into the vice president, grabbed her hands and delivered a short monologue before telling Harris "we need a great protector."

Drew Barrymore's 'Momala' comments yield mixed reactions

While the audience clapped during the moment, viewers had mixed reactions on social media.

"'Momala' is INSANE. Not it’s up to a black woman to rock us in her bosom and heal our wounds," one commenter added.

"Drew Barrymore really sat 2 inches away from VP Harris' face and asked her to mammy the nation. The look on Harris' face is the look of generational rage, but Kamala sat right there and lapped it up, like the agent of white supremacy she is," another person said.

"I'm gonna leave Drew Barrymore alone. That woman is a survivor. She's quirky, but she's a survivor. She's always been very cool to people. No hate for her at all," one commented said on X, in reference to her traumatic childhood.

"Drew Barrymore is the worst host of any show I've ever seen. She is an embarrassment," one user said on X.

"I usually advocate for Drew’s quirky brand-but this is too far," another user wrote , while another added, "We women are not just automatic maternal figures forever and always."

'Momala is my favorite,' Kamala Harris wrote in 2019 essay

Harris has opened up about being "Momala" before. In a Mother's Day 2019 Instagram post with Cole Emhoff and Ella Emhoff, Harris wrote that " of all the titles I've ever had, Momala is my favorite."

She also shares a close bond with their mother and the first gentleman's ex-wife, film producer Kerstin Emhoff. Harris wrote about their "modern family" and called Kerstin Emhoff "an incredible mother" in a 2019 Elle essay.

"Kerstin and I hit it off ourselves and are dear friends. She and I became a duo of cheerleaders in the bleachers at Ella’s swim meets and basketball games, often to Ella's embarrassment. We sometimes joke that our modern family is almost a little too functional," Harris wrote.

Barrymore has long been open about her traumatic youth as a childhood star.

She was born to actors Jaid and John Drew Barrymore in 1975. The Emmy-nominated actress became emancipated from her parents during her turbulent childhood which included  drug-fueled outings to nightclubs with mother Jaid , a compulsory stint in rehab at age 13 and  a pair of suicide attempts .

Contributing: Edward Segarra

Opinion We have a radical democracy. Will Trump voters destroy it?

For some time, it was possible to believe that many voters could not see the threat Donald Trump poses to America’s liberal democracy, and many still profess not to see it. But now, a little more than six months from Election Day, it’s hard to believe they don’t. The warning signs are clear enough. Trump himself offers a new reason for concern almost every day. People may choose to ignore the warnings or persuade themselves not to worry, but they can see what we all see, and that should be enough.

Adapted from “Rebellion: How Antiliberalism is Tearing America Apart — Again” by Robert Kagan. Copyright © 2024 by Robert Kagan. Reprinted by permission of Penguin Random House. All Rights Reserved.

How to explain their willingness to support Trump despite the risk he poses to our system of government? The answer is not rapidly changing technology, widening inequality, unsuccessful foreign policies or unrest on university campuses but something much deeper and more fundamental. It is what the Founders worried about and Abraham Lincoln warned about: a decline in what they called public virtue. They feared it would be hard to sustain popular support for the revolutionary liberal principles of the Declaration of Independence, and they worried that the virtuous love of liberty and equality would in time give way to narrow, selfish interest. Although James Madison and his colleagues hoped to establish a government on the solid foundation of self-interest, even Madison acknowledged that no government by the people could be sustained if the people themselves did not have sufficient dedication to the liberal ideals of the Declaration. The people had to love liberty, not just for themselves but as an abstract ideal for all humans.

Americans are going down this route today because too many no longer care enough whether the system the Founders created survives and are ceding the ground to those, led by Trump, who actively seek to overthrow what so many of them call “the regime.” This “regime” they are referring to is the unique political system established by the Founders based on the principles of universal equality and natural rights. That, plain and simple, is what this election is about. “A republic if you can keep it,” Benjamin Franklin allegedly said of the government created by the Constitutional Convention in 1787. This is the year we may choose not to keep it.

A healthy republic would not be debating whether Trump and his followers seek the overthrow of the Founders’ system of liberal democracy. What more do people need to see than his well-documented attempt to prevent the peaceful transfer of power with the storming of the U.S. Capitol, the elaborate scheme to create false electoral slates in key states, the clear evidence that he bullied officials in some states to “find” more votes, and to persuade Vice President Mike Pence not to certify the legitimate results? What more do they need to know than that Trump continues to insist he won that election and celebrates as heroes and “patriots” the people who invaded the U.S. Capitol and smashed policemen’s faces with the stated aim of forcing Congress to negate the election results? As one 56-year-old Michigan woman present at the Capitol on Jan. 6 , 2021, explained: “We weren’t there to steal things. We weren’t there to do damage. We were just there to overthrow the government .”

Trump not only acknowledges his goals, past and present; he promises to do it again if he loses this year. For the third straight election, he is claiming that if he loses, then the vote will have been fraudulent. He has warned of uprisings, of “bedlam” and a “bloodbath,” and he has made clear that he will again be the promoter of this violence, just as he was on Jan. 6. Trump explicitly warned in 2020 that he would not accept the election results if he lost, and he didn’t. This year he is saying it again. Were there no other charges against him, no other reason to be concerned about his return to the presidency, this alone would be sufficient to oppose him. He does not respect and has never pledged to abide by the democratic processes established by the Constitution. On the contrary, he has explicitly promised to violate the Constitution when he deems it necessary. That by itself makes him a unique candidate in American history and should be disqualifying.

This kind of open challenge to our democracy was never meant to be addressed by the courts. As the Founders well understood, you don’t serve a subpoena to a would-be tyrant and tell him to lawyer up. Nor was it meant to be addressed by the normal processes of democratic elections. They knew, and feared, that a demagogue could capture the allegiance of enough voters to overthrow the system. That was why they gave Congress, and particularly the Senate, supposedly more immune from popular pressures, the power to impeach and remove presidents and to deny them the opportunity to run again — and not simply because they violated some law but because they posed a clear and present danger to the republic. After Trump’s attempt to overthrow the government in 2020, Congress had a chance to use the method prescribed by the Founders in precisely the circumstances they envisioned. But Senate Republicans, out of a combination of ambition and cowardice, refused to play the vital role the Founders envisioned for them. The result is that the nightmare feared by the Founders is one election away from becoming reality.

The problem with Trump is not that he has some carefully thought-out plan for seizing power, much less an elaborate ideological justification for doing so. (Others do have such plans and such justifications, including many of those who will populate his administration — more on that in a moment.) With Trump, everything is about him and his immediate needs. He will run roughshod over the laws and Constitution simply to get what he wants for himself, his family and his business interests. Americans know that if he is elected, he would abuse the justice system to go after his opponents. They know this because he says so. “I am your retribution!” he declares, and by “your” he means “my.” Americans know he would use his power as president to try to solve his financial problems. He did it as president and is doing it now as a presidential candidate . They know he would not respect the results of fair elections if he loses, which is the very definition of a tyrant.

So, why will so many vote for him anyway? For a significant segment of the Republican electorate, the white-hot core of the Trump movement, it is because they want to see the system overthrown. This should not come as a shock, for it is not a new phenomenon. On the contrary, it is as old as the republic. Historians have written about the “liberal tradition” in America, but there has from the beginning also been an anti-liberal tradition: large numbers of Americans determined to preserve preliberal traditions, hierarchies and beliefs against the secular liberal principles of the Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights. The Founders based the republic on a radical set of principles and assertions about government: that all human beings were created equal in their possession of certain “natural rights” that government was bound to respect and to safeguard. These rights did not derive from religious belief but were “self-evident.” They were not granted by the Christian God, by the crown or even by the Constitution. They were inherent in what it meant to be human.

This is the central tenet of liberalism. Before the American Revolution no government had ever been founded on liberal principles, and the vast majority of human beings had never believed in these natural rights — certainly not the Christian church in either its Protestant or Roman Catholic versions nor Islam nor Judaism nor Hinduism nor Buddhism. People might be equal in the eyes of their god, but no government or religious institution had ever been based on the principle of equal rights. Not even the English system was based on this principle but rather on monarchy, a ruling aristocracy, and a contract between crown and subjects that was modified over the centuries but was not based on the principle of universal “natural” rights.

The Founders knew these ideas were radical, that they were inaugurating, in their own words, a novus ordo seclorum — a new order of the ages — that required a new way of thinking and acting. They knew, as well, that their own practices and those of 18th-century American society did not conform to their new revolutionary doctrines. They knew that slavery was contrary to the Declaration’s principles, though they permitted slavery to continue, hoping it would die a natural death. They knew that established churches were contrary to those principles because they impinged on that most important of rights, “freedom of conscience,” which was vital to the preservation of liberty, yet a number of states in the 18th and 19th centuries retained all kinds of religious tests for office. In short, they knew that a great many Americans did not in fact believe in the liberal principles of the Revolution. As Benjamin Rush, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, put it, “We have changed our forms of government, but it remains yet to effect a revolution in our principles, opinions and manners so as to accommodate them to the forms of government we have adopted.” They did not insist that citizens believe in those principles. One could be an American citizen whether one believed in the Declaration or not.

And a great many did not. Leaders of the slaveholding South called the Declaration “a most pernicious falsehood.” South Carolina’s John C. Calhoun called the very idea of equal rights a “false doctrine.” They believed in democracy, but only if it was an exclusively White democracy. When democracy turned against them in 1860, they rebelled and sought an exit from the system. That rebellion never ended. It has been weakened, suppressed — sometimes by force — and driven underground, but it has never gone away. Although the South was militarily defeated and deprived of its special advantages in the Constitution, its hostility to the Founders’ liberalism did not abate. As Southern writer W.J. Cash observed in 1941, if the war had “smashed the southern world,” it had nevertheless “left the essential southern mind and will … entirely unshaken” and Southerners themselves determined “to hold fast to their own, to maintain their divergences, to remain what they had been and were.” In 1956, almost a century after the Civil War, a fifth of Congress, almost all Democrats — signed the “Southern Manifesto” calling on states to refuse to obey the Supreme Court’s 1954 decision to end segregation in public schools. Nothing had changed. Are we so surprised that for many Americans, nothing has changed even today?

Nor has anti-liberalism only been about race. For more than a century after the Revolution, many if not most White Anglo-Saxon Protestants insisted that America was a Protestant nation. They did not believe Catholics possessed equal rights or should be treated as equals. The influential “second” Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s was anti-Catholic and anti-Jewish as well as anti-Black, which was why, unlike the original Klan, it flourished outside the South. Many regard today’s Christian nationalism as a fringe movement, but it has been a powerful and often dominant force throughout America’s history.

For two centuries, many White Americans have felt under siege by the Founders’ liberalism. They have been defeated in war and suppressed by threats of force, but more than that, they have been continually oppressed by a system designed by the Founders to preserve and strengthen liberalism against competing beliefs and hierarchies. Since World War II, the courts and the political system have pursued the Founders’ liberal goals with greater and greater fidelity, ending official segregation, driving religion from public schools, recognizing and defending the rights of women and minorities hitherto deprived of their “natural rights” because of religious, racial and ethnic discrimination. The hegemony of liberalism has expanded, just as Lincoln hoped it would, “constantly spreading and deepening its influence, and augmenting the happiness and value of life to all people of colors everywhere.” Anti-liberal political scientist Patrick Deneen calls it “liberal totalitarianism,” and, apart from the hyperbole, he is right that liberalism has been steadily deepening and expanding under presidents of both parties since the 1940s.

The fury on the anti-liberal right against what is today called “wokeness” is nothing new. Anti-liberal movements in America, whether in defense of the White race or Christianity, and more often both together, have always claimed to be suffering under the expanding hegemony of liberalism. They have always claimed that a liberal government and society were depriving them of their “freedom” to live a life according to Christian teachings and were favoring various minority groups, especially Black people, at their expense. In the 1970s, influential theologian R.J. Rushdoony complained that the Christian in America had “no right to his identity” but was forced to recognize “all others and their ‘rights.’” And he was correct if a Christian’s “rights” included the right not only to lead a Christian life oneself but to impose that life on the entire society, or if a White person’s “freedom” included the freedom to preserve white primacy in society. In the 19th century, enslavers insisted they were deprived of their “freedom” to hold human beings as property; Southerners in the post-Reconstruction era insisted on their “freedom” to oppress Black citizens in their states.

Today, anti-liberals in American society are indeed deprived of their “freedom” to impose their religious and racial views on society, on public schools, on the public square and on the laws of the nation. What Christian nationalists call “liberal totalitarianism,” the Founders called “freedom of conscience.”

Six decades ago, people like Rushdoony were responding not to “woke” corporations or Black Lives Matter but to civil rights legislation. Today, anti-liberal conservatives complain about school curriculums that acknowledge the racism that has shaped America’s history, but even five decades ago, before the invention of “critical race theory,” anti-liberal White people such as Rushdoony insisted that the “white man” was being “systematically indoctrinated into believing he is guilty of enslaving and abusing the Negro.” Nor is it new that many White people feel that the demands of minority groups for both rights and respect have “gone too far” and it is they, the White people of America, who are suffering the worst discrimination. In the 1960s, surveys taken by the New York Times showed that majorities of White people believed even then that the civil rights movement had “gone too far,” that Blacks were receiving “everything on a silver platter” and the government was practicing “reverse discrimination” against White people. Liberalism is always going too far for many Americans — and certainly for anti-liberals. Anti-liberals these days complain about wokeness, therefore, but it is the liberal system of government bequeathed by the Founders, and the accompanying egalitarian spirit, that they are really objecting to, just as anti-liberals have since the founding of the nation. Many of Trump’s core supporters insist they are patriots, but whether they realize it or not, their allegiance is not to the Founders’ America but to an ethnoreligious definition of the nation that the Founders explicitly rejected.

Some do realize it. The smartest and most honest of them know that if people truly want a “Christian America,” it can only come through “regime change,” by which they mean the “regime” created by the Founders. The Founders’ legacy is a “dead end,” writes Glenn Ellmers, a scholar at the Claremont Institute. The Constitution is a “Potemkin village.” According to Deneen and Harvard Law School’s Adrian Vermeule, the system established by the Founders to protect individual rights needs to be replaced with an alternative form of government. What they have in mind is a Christian commonwealth: a “culture that preserves and encourages order and continuity, and support for religious belief and institutions,” with legislation to “promote public morality, and forbid its intentional corruption,” a “forthright acknowledgment and renewal of the Christian roots of our civilization,” “public opportunities for prayers,” and a “revitalization of our public spaces to reflect a deeper belief that we are called to erect imitations of the beauty that awaits us in another Kingdom.”

These anti-liberal conservatives know that bringing such a commonwealth into being means jettisoning the Founders’ obsession with individual rights. The influential advocate of “conservative nationalism,” Yoram Hazony, wants Americans to abandon the Declaration in favor of a nationhood built on Protestantism and the Bible. America is a “ revolutionary nation ,” Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) insists, not because of the principles of the Declaration and not even because of the American Revolution itself, but “because we are the heirs of the revolution of the Bible” that began with “the founding of the nation of Israel.” There could hardly be a statement more at odds with the American Founders’ liberal, ecumenical vision.

Expressing a belief in God is no threat to the Founders’ system, but reshaping society in accord with Christian teachings is. To build the nation Hawley and Hazony imagine would require jettisoning not only the Declaration but also the Constitution, which was designed to protect the Declaration’s principles. The Christian commonwealth would not and could not be a democracy because the majority of people can’t be trusted to choose correctly. According to the Claremont Institute’s Ellmers, “most people living in the United States today — certainly more than half — are not Americans in any meaningful sense of the term.” They are a “zombie” or “human rodent” who lives “a shadow-life of timid conformity.” Only “the 75 million people who voted in the last election” for Trump are true Americans. Instead of trying to compete with Democrats in elections that don’t reflect the will of the people, Ellmers writes, “Why not just cut to the chase and skip the empty, meaningless process?” The “only road forward” is “overturning the existing post-American order.”

For these intellectuals, Trump is an imperfect if essential vehicle for the counterrevolution. A “deeply flawed narcissist” suffering from a “bombastic vanity,” as Deneen and Ellmers note, he has “lacked the discipline to target his creative/destructive tendencies effectively.” But this can be remedied. If Trump failed to accomplish the desired overthrow in his first term, Deneen argues, it was because he lacked “a capable leadership class.” Things will be different in his next term. What is needed, according to Deneen, is a “self-conscious aristoi,” a class of thinkers who understand “both the disease afflicting the nation, and the revolutionary medicine required for the cure,” who know how to turn populist “resentments into sustained policy.” Members of Deneen’s would-be new elite will, like Vladimir Lenin, place themselves at the vanguard of a populist revolution, acting “on behalf of the broad working class” while raising the consciousness of the “untutored” masses. Indeed, according to Harvard’s Vermeule, it will be necessary to impose the common good even against the people’s “own perceptions of what is best for them” — a most Leninist concept indeed.

The Christian commonwealth, then, would require a powerful executive freed from the Constitution’s liberal and democratic constraints. The new state, Vermeule wrote, with its “robust executive,” would “sear the liberal faith with hot irons,” wielding the “authority to curb the social and economic pretensions of the urban-gentry liberals.” The whiff of violence and oppression in such statements is intentional. The anti-liberal intellectuals understand that changing the liberal system will require far more than an election and a few legislative reforms.

Deneen and Vermeule are often dismissed as mere intellectual provocateurs, but their writings stand out because they have the courage to acknowledge that what they seek is incompatible with the Founders’ liberal system. While others conceal their views under a phony fidelity to American liberal principles or claim that what they want accords with the Founders’ true intent, Deneen, Vermeule and other anti-liberals acknowledge that the country they want, a country subservient to the Christian God, a country whose laws are based on the Bible, cannot be created absent the overthrow of the Founders’ liberal and defiantly secular system. Even a justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, Neil M. Gorsuch, speaks of the “so-called separation of church and state.” Anti-liberalism at the Supreme Court is nothing new, either.

And the anti-liberals know as well that this year may be their last chance to effect their counterrevolution. The percentage of the population made up of White people (let alone White Protestants) is steadily shrinking. Just as the anti-liberal conservatives of the pre-World War II years closed the immigration gates too late and were overwhelmed by a tide of non-Nordic peoples from Southern and Eastern Europe, so the immigration wave of largely non-White people since 1965 has brought the nation to the cusp of a non-White majority. The anti-liberals thus face the task of engineering the revolution with only a minority of the electorate committed to “regime change.”

Trump’s takeover of the Republican Party makes this possible. Trump is not a unique figure in American history. In each generation, anti-liberal forces have turned to the same breed of demagogue, the flouter of norms, the boorish trampler of liberal nostrums. William Buckley noted that the very “uncouthness” of George Wallace seemed to “account for his general popularity.” James Burnham marveled at how Joseph McCarthy’s “inept acts and ignorant words” had a “charismatic” quality that well expressed the fears and angers of his devoted followers.

What their critics saw as boorishness and malevolence, however, their followers saw as strength and defiance against a liberal system stacked against them. They were rebellious opponents of the system, “wreckers,” unabashedly anti-liberal in both thought and manner, and that is precisely what made them popular among a broad swath of White Americans who felt themselves losing ground in the culture and society — to Black people, Catholics, Jews and immigrants from non-Nordic countries. Today, exactly a century after the most overtly racist immigration restriction in American history, Trump once again calls for more immigrants from “nice” European countries, such as Denmark, Switzerland and Norway.

Trump did not just stumble into leadership of this movement of White rebellion. He summoned it. He made his debut as presidential aspirant on an unabashed white supremacist platform, championing the birther conspiracy that America’s first Black president was not in fact an American. Riding that issue alone, he catapulted to the front of the Republican pack, according to polls in 2011, before bowing out to continue his hit show, “The Apprentice.” Whether his debut as a white supremacist was opportunism or sprang from conviction hardly matters — it certainly has not mattered to his followers. The fact is, white supremacy has been his calling card, and millions have responded to it to the point where white nationalists have become the core of his movement. Many Christian nationalists already see him as a suffering Christ, and in this bizarre sense it is true that the prosecutions have “helped” him: The more adversity he faces, the more court battles he must wage, the more allegations that are slung at him, the more devoted they are to him.

No other group can be counted on for such absolute loyalty. While some Republicans wobble when asked if they would support Trump if convicted of a crime, White Christian Evangelicals overwhelmingly say they will support him no matter what. Trump needs that unshakable loyalty because he is fighting for his life. The thought that he might end up in jail has given him every reason to hew as closely as possible to the people who will stick with him even if he is convicted. These are also the people he will need to back him unconditionally in challenging the results of the election should he lose. If he wins, he will need them in what are sure to be titanic fights with Democrats and the legal system and to keep the Republican Party in line.

This is one reason Trump has so far shown no inclination to reach out beyond his base, to Nikki Haley voters, to more moderate suburban Republicans, to those who are made uncomfortable by his statements and actions. He may show flexibility on the important issue of abortion to secure his own election, but since clinching the nomination, he has only hardened his Christian nationalist message. His “poisoning the blood” campaign, his “dictator-for-a-day” comments, his release of the Trump Bible, his claim that, upon taking office, he will create “a new federal task force” to fight “anti-Christian bias to be led by a fully reformed Department of Justice,” are all aimed directly at his white Christian nationalist base without much concern for how millions of other Republican voters feel about it. Christians are “under siege,” he claims in hawking his Bible. “We must make America pray again.”

Besides, his hard tack toward white supremacy and Christian nationalism has cost him little among the broader Republican electorate.

Why not? Why is there so little resistance to Trump even as he commits ever more deeply to a Christian nationalist program for undoing the Founders’ liberal project?

For many, the answer is simply narrow self-interest, either a positive interest in supporting him or a negative interest in not opposing him or being seen to oppose him. This seems to be the answer for corporate America. Having first followed marketing data to appeal to the broadest cross-section of Americans by embracing communities only recently enjoying more of the full panoply of rights, businesses learned the hard way that Trump and his movement will not tolerate this and have mostly retreated to silence and neutrality. But they have also gone further, making clear as much as possible that they will not be a problem for him — either before he is elected or after.

This was the message JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon sent, from Davos, Switzerland, of all places, early this year when he declared that Trump was “kind of right about NATO, kind of right about immigration,” that he “grew the economy quite well.” There is no reason to doubt that he spoke for many of the richest Americans and for other corporate leaders. There was no outcry among them that anyone could hear. The truth is, they have no financial reason to oppose Trump. They know that Trump’s White working-class followers don’t have to be paid off economically because most care chiefly about the culture wars. Trump can still cut taxes and reduce federal regulations and other obstacles to corporate profit. The rich and powerful will always have some purchase in a Trump administration if only because he needs and respects money and will want to make deals for himself and his family, as he did in a first term. Whatever moral or political qualms business leaders may have about Trump, the bottom line dictates that they get along with him, and if that means turning a blind eye to his unconstitutional actions — Dimon’s favorable recounting of Trump’s first term notably ignored his attempt to overthrow the government — then so be it.

We already know that little or no opposition will come from the Republican Party ecosystem. Among elected officials, the few willing to stand up to Trump have either been driven out of the party or are retiring so fast that they cannot even bear to finish out their terms. Those who remain have accepted Trump’s iron rule and therefore now have an interest in his success.

But what about the average Republican voter, the “normal” Republicans who happily voted for George W. Bush, John McCain and Mitt Romney? Do they not see the difference between those Republicans and Trump — or do they not care? They, too, may feel their narrow interests are served by a Trump victory, and although they may not be Christian nationalists themselves, their views as White Americans make them sympathetic to the complaints of the anti-liberals. They, too, may feel they — or their children — are at a disadvantage in a system dedicated to diversity and wokeness. Their annoyance with a liberalism that has “gone too far” makes them susceptible to Trump’s appeal, and, more importantly, unconcerned about the threat he poses. Left to their own devices, they would not be interested in overthrowing the regime. But neither are they inclined to stand in the way of those who are.

Are these voters and GOP power players right to believe that they, like Dimon, will be just fine in a system no longer faithful to the Founders’ liberal ideals? Perhaps so. They will not be the first to suffer from a shift back toward a 1920s America. White Americans tolerated the systematic oppression of Black people for a century after the Civil War. They tolerated violence in the South, injustice in the courtrooms, a Supreme Court that refused to recognize the equal rights of Black people, women and various minorities. Will they rise up against a second Trump term infused by Christian and white nationalism, or will they acquiesce in the gradual dismantling of the liberal gains of the past eight decades?

The shame is that many White people today seem to have conveniently forgotten how much they and their forebears have depended on the Founders’ liberalism to gain their present status as fully equal members of American society and to enjoy the freedoms that they take for granted.

Most White Republicans, after all, do not have the “legacy European” lineage that Tucker Carlson praises. They do not have ancestors who stepped off the Mayflower or fought in the Revolution. The ancestors of the great majority of “White” Americans today were not considered “White” when they first set foot on American shores. Irish Americans may no longer remember that the Thomas Nast cartoons of the late 19th century depicted the Irish as apelike creatures. Many Italian Americans may not recall that a riot made up of “New Orleans’ finest” lynched and murdered 11 Sicilian immigrants and were never charged.

Many Catholics seem to have forgotten that they were once the most despised group in America, such that one of the Founders, John Jay, wanted them excluded from citizenship altogether. Most White Americans were at one time members of despised immigrant groups. They were the victims of the very anti-liberalism they are now voting back into power. They climbed to equality using liberalism as their ladder, and now that they have reached their destination they would pull away the ladder and abandon liberalism. Having obtained their equality using the laws and institutions of liberalism, their passion for liberalism has faded.

The Founders understood, and feared, that the fervor for rights and liberalism that animated the Revolution might not last. Writing in 1781, two years before the end of the war, Thomas Jefferson predicted that once the war ended, “we shall be going down hill.” The people would return to their quotidian lives, forgetting their passionate concern for rights, intent only on “making money.” They might never again come together “to effect a due respect for their rights,” and so their government would stop being solicitous of their rights. Over a half-century later, Lincoln, in his famous Lyceum address, lamented that the original spirit of the Revolution had dissipated with time, leaving Americans with only the normal selfishness of human beings. The original “pillars of the temple of liberty” had “crumbled away.” A little over two decades later, the nation fell into civil war.

If the American system of government fails this year, it will not be because the institutions established by the Founders failed. It will not be because of new technologies or flaws in the Constitution. No system of government can protect against a determined tyrant. Only the people can. This year we will learn if they will.

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Guest Essay

Can Nonprofit News Save the South From Itself?

By Margaret Renkl

Ms. Renkl is a contributing Opinion writer who covers flora, fauna, politics and culture in the American South from Nashville.

When I moved here in 1987, Nashville had two daily newspapers: a morning paper, The Tennessean, whose editorial page leaned left; and an evening paper, The Nashville Banner, whose editorial page leaned right. I still subscribe to The Tennessean, but The Banner is long gone. In 1998, The Tennessean bought its longtime competitor and shut it down.

I recall with fondness that venerable newspaper , no matter that its editorial page did not align with my own politics. Some of the local journalists I most admire got their start at The Banner. And a city with competing newsrooms, each determined to get the news first and to get it right, is protected by a powerful bulwark against extremism and governmental mischief. In a democracy, the only way to be sure there isn’t a fox watching the henhouse is to set a whole bunch of reporters the task of watching the foxes.

Today less than a dozen U.S. cities have two competing daily newspapers, and many communities have no local news source at all . Nashville, like many other midsize cities, still has television news channels, an alternative newsweekly (The Nashville Scene ) and various online publications to do some of that henhouse-watching. Nevertheless, the combined ranks of reporters covering crucial beats like state and local politics, education, criminal justice and the like, are dramatically smaller than they were in the days when The Tennessean and The Banner, each fully staffed and fully funded, were scrapping for scoops.

It’s hard to conceive of a local newspaper, in print or online, that’s fully staffed and fully funded anymore. Gannett, the largest newspaper chain in the country, owns the daily newspaper in three of the four largest Tennessee cities, including The Tennessean in Nashville. In 2019 it fought off a hostile takeover by a predatory hedge fund but later in the same year was forced to merge with another fund-backed company .

The fallout has been catastrophic: dozens of newspapers shuttered , more than half the staff jettisoned , journalists in revolt — the list goes on and on. “The scale of local news destruction in Gannett’s markets is astonishing,” reads the headline on an analysis by Joshua Benton for Harvard’s Nieman Lab last year. And Gannett’s plundering of its own newspapers’ resources is far from the only trouble facing the news industry.

Into this media landscape, the veteran Nashville journalist Steve Cavendish has launched a 21st-century Nashville Banner as a daily online source of local news. The new Banner shares nothing with the old Banner but the name and a commitment to local journalism. Like The Tennessee Lookout , a daily digital publication that began operations in 2020 , and WPLN News , Nashville’s NPR affiliate, the new Banner is not locked behind a paywall. Also like The Lookout and WPLN — as well as outlets like The Daily Memphian and MLK50 in Memphis — the new Banner is a nonprofit newsroom. Mr. Cavendish believes that difference represents the future of viable local journalism: “The only successful startups at the local level in the last 20 years have been on the nonprofit side,” he told me in a phone interview.

I first met Mr. Cavendish when he was editor of The Nashville City Paper, an alternative newsweekly, and I was editor of Chapter 16 , a nonprofit source of Tennessee-related literary coverage. Chapter 16 provides book reviews and author interviews, without charge, to newspaper partners across the state. The City Paper, once one of its partners, no longer exists. Chapter 16 is doing fine.

Another difference between the new Banner and newspapers of old is that Demetria Kalodimos, a renowned Nashville broadcast journalist, serves as the organization’s executive producer. She also heads up its video division and is the host of its weekly podcast .

Already Ms. Kalodimos and her team have created a number of mini documentaries, including one based on vintage footage of civil rights demonstrations in Nashville. In 1960, a Fisk University student, Diane Nash, confronted Mayor Ben West outside the Nashville courthouse. In their exchange he admitted that he recognized the injustice of segregation. Shortly thereafter, Nashville became the first major city in the South to desegregate its lunch counters. The Banner video provides historical context to a news report about Ms. Nash’s return to Nashville on April 20 to speak at a ceremony marking the renaming of the historic courthouse plaza in her honor.

Black history has once again become a contentious issue in the South, with revisionist politicians passing legislation that limits how race can be taught, or even discussed, in schools. In The Banner’s package on Diane Nash, video and news reports work together to provide a straightforward account of historical facts and their ramifications today. There is nothing that could possibly be called partisan about either piece.

That’s by design. Hoping to avoid partisan rancor, Mr. Cavendish and Ms. Kalodimos have positioned the new Banner as a strictly news publication, without editorials, op-eds, or candidate endorsements. “All the money that we have, we’re putting into news reporting,” Mr. Cavendish said. “Because we want so much in terms of news.”

Even so, avoiding partisan accusations will be a challenge in this Republican-supermajority state. Donald Trump spent his presidency calling journalists the enemy of the people , and hostility toward the press is a hallmark of the MAGA movement . A label like nonpartisan is unlikely to change that attitude.

But Nashville — progressive, vibrant, growing — may be the best place to break through hyperpartisan fury. If old school public-service journalism can make it anywhere, it can make it here. In that sense, the new Banner is not in competition with other equally necessary news organizations in the city. It’s another much needed element in a journalistic network working to repair the atomized landscape of local news.

There is still, of course, the constant question of money. Even with the financial support of institutions like the MacArthur Foundation , the Knight Foundation , the Institute for Nonprofit News and the American Journalism Project , among others, nonprofit newsrooms survive only when they have the financial support of their readers and listeners. And in this era of proliferating websites and podcasts and videos and newsletters, not even to mention the unceasing social media updates from journalists and “citizen journalists,” engaging an audience long enough to count on its loyalty, much less its dollars, may be the greatest challenge of all.

It can sometimes feel like a job, keeping up with all this news.

Perhaps it feels like a job because it is a job. The work of democracy, the responsibility of democracy, is to be an informed citizen, a person whose news sources are wide and varied and committed to getting at the truth, no matter how assiduously our elected officials work to obscure it. The worst thing that could happen to democracy — especially in red states like Tennessee, where government is not remotely working on behalf of its own people, and often can’t even be bothered to respond to them — is for local journalism to fall apart.

In Nashville as in nearly everywhere else where it survives at all, local news has already come perilously close to falling apart. But The Nashville Banner, a long-dead local newspaper, has formally rejoined the world as a nonpartisan, nonprofit digital newsroom, and that’s the best news for local democracy that I’ve heard in a long, long time.

The Banner is dead. Long live The Banner.

Margaret Renkl , a contributing Opinion writer, is the author of the books “ The Comfort of Crows: A Backyard Year, ” “ Graceland, at Last ” and “ Late Migrations .”

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips . And here’s our email: [email protected] .

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An earlier version of this article misstated Demetria Kalodimos’s duties at The Nashville Banner. In addition to being executive producer and head of its video division, she is the host of its weekly podcast. She is not also the head of its audio division.

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Sophia Bush comes out as queer, confirms relationship with Ashlyn Harris

Actor Sophia Bush came out as queer in an emotional essay in Glamour and confirmed she’s in a relationship with retired U.S. Women’s National Team soccer player Ashlyn Harris. 

“I sort of hate the notion of having to come out in 2024,” Bush wrote in a cover story for the fashion magazine published Thursday. “But I’m deeply aware that we are having this conversation in a year when we’re seeing the most aggressive attacks on the LGBTQIA+ community in modern history.” 

Bush noted that there were more than 500 anti-LGBTQ bills proposed in state legislatures last year and said this motivated her to “give the act of coming out the respect and honor it deserves.” 

“I’ve experienced so much safety, respect, and love in the queer community, as an ally all of my life, that, as I came into myself, I already felt it was my home,” she wrote. “I think I’ve always known that my sexuality exists on a spectrum. Right now I think the word that best defines it is queer . I can’t say it without smiling, actually. And that feels pretty great.”

The “One Tree Hill” star filed for divorce from entrepreneur Grant Hughes in August. People magazine first reported in October that Bush and Harris were dating, but neither confirmed nor commented on the report. The pair later attended an Oscar’s viewing party together in March . 

In the essay, Bush addressed online rumors that her relationship with Harris began before Harris had officially divorced from fellow soccer star Ali Krieger, in September. 

“Everyone that matters to me knows what’s true and what isn’t,” Bush wrote. “But even still there’s a part of me that’s a ferocious defender, who wants to correct the record piece by piece. But my better self, with her earned patience, has to sit back and ask, What’s the f------- point? For who? For internet trolls? No, thank you. I’ll spend my precious time doing things I love instead.”

Bush said that after news about her and Harris became public, her mom told her that a friend called and said, “Well, this can’t be true. I mean, your daughter isn’t gay .” 

“My mom felt that it was obvious, from the way her friend emphasized the word, that she meant it judgmentally,” Bush wrote. “And you know what my mom said? ‘Oh honey, I think she’s pretty gay. And she’s happy .’”

Bush wrote that she felt like she was wearing a weighted vest that she could finally put down. 

“I finally feel like I can breathe,” Bush wrote. “I turned 41 last summer, amid all of this, and I heard the words I was saying to my best friend as they came out of my mouth. ‘I feel like this is my first birthday,’ I told her. This year was my very first birthday.”

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Jo Yurcaba is a reporter for NBC Out.