Chapter Thirty-Seven

Understanding the Elements of Literary Fiction

How to Incorporate Style, Symbolism, and Characterization

Jack Smith

For a fictional work to be classified as “literary,” it must have the capacity to resonate with readers on several different levels. To put it another way, it must be layered and multifaceted in meaning: There is much more at hand than the story you’re “seeing” and following on the page—it contains levels that go fathoms beyond plot and characterization.

So, how do you pull that off? Well, it’s not just about artful language, as many think—but that’s a great place to start.

STYLE AND RESTRAINT

While prose style alone doesn’t definitively separate literary fiction from other forms of writing, it is true that literary fiction has an element of stylistic restraint that at least some other fiction does not possess. Instead of the occasional bathos, or overly sentimental prose, the reader discovers pathos—emotion with an intellectual component. Instead of over-the-top writing, the reader finds finely controlled language.

When it comes to the literary genre, remember these characteristic traits:

The language in literary fiction is not sentimental. Consider this passage:

Let’s assume the sentimentality in this passage is authorial exuberance rather than an attempt to capture the nature of the narrator’s character. To achieve a more literary style, you would tone down such a passage, strip it of its excess, avoid overtelling, and let your prose breathe on its own and speak for itself in a more formal style:

The phrases “natural alacrity for living,” “ready openness to experience,” and “undoubtedly, she would be missed” lend a more reserved tone to this passage while maintaining the sentiment the author wanted to convey. It’s not that emotion isn’t important in literary fiction—certainly readers want to connect with characters on an emotional level. But you don’t need sentimental prose to convey sentiment. In literary fiction, less is typically more.

Descriptive literary language doesn’t have to be florid. Rather, it escapes purple prose with the use of apt similes, metaphors, and analogies for states of being, actions, thoughts, and emotions. Consider this simile:

Would you agree that it seems overblown to describe one’s life prospects as a launchpad to the great wonders of celestial achievement? That line might work as satire or burlesque of innocence, grandiose imagining or gross naïveté, but otherwise, a reader would consider this simply florid writing on the part of a gushy writer.

For contrast, note the originality of this description from Elizabeth Strout’s Pulitzer Prize–winning literary novel-in-stories, Olive Kitteridge:

Olive Kitteridge is a heavyset woman; she willingly acknowledges it. Given her character, then, the imagery—“like a fat, dozing seal wrapped in some kind of gauze bandage”—is apt. It’s not overdone, but it does take risks and provoke thought. Note the further similes and imagery as Strout continues:

Olive’s weight and sense of ineptitude are brought to life through this prose, making the passage provocative, energetic, and believable.

Finely tuned figurative prose rich with similes, metaphors, and analogies is a great element of polished literary fiction—but it goes beyond the aesthetic level. Such language can suggest abstract and universal ideas, which can contribute greatly to thematic development and levels of meaning in a work.

SYMBOLISM

Now we move to the real core-dividing line between literary and genre fiction: the fact that literary works transcend the surface levels of plot, character, and setting. Literary fiction must allow for, or lend itself to, interpretation of human experience, establishing a vision (if not a particular worldview) of what it means to be human. Themes and ideas may include insights into topics such as these:

• what makes people tick (psychology)
• the nature of humans in groups, society, and culture (history and sociology)
• the meaning of human life (philosophy, religion)
• the nature of fair play and moral action (ethics)

Think of the historical and cultural frameworks in Amy Tan’s writing, the philosophical ideas in Thomas Mann’s, or the moral choices in Tim O’Brien’s. Literary works can also include such themes as the nature of personal identity, art versus life, appearance versus reality, and mercy versus justice.

So, how do you develop such themes?

Brainstorm symbolism on the macro scale. Plot is the literal level of a work, but it can go beyond the action of the story to a more abstract level—the thematic level. In Melville’s Moby-Dick, Ahab’s monomaniacal pursuit of the white whale symbolizes an attempt to destroy the very essence of metaphysical evil. Other literary works could have quite different plots but share this same basic theme.

Characters can also be symbolic. Madame Bovary stands in for women seduced and corrupted by romantic literature. But again, different characters in novels with quite different plots could suggest this same theme. A setting can serve as a symbol as well. The Mississippi River becomes a symbol of freedom in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and the psychiatric facility in Ken Kesey’s One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest becomes symbolic of an oppressive world that crushes those who are perceived as different.

To summarize, a plot can suggest ideas that transcend the particulars of the basic story itself, a character can come to stand for an entire type of individual, and a setting can take on meanings far beyond the items in the room. So think about your story in a big-picture sense. Brainstorm symbolism in your work, and then begin to flesh out how your story might bring that to life.

Use symbolism on the minor scale. What do particular actions mean in light of other actions occurring in the work? When Jay Gatsby flings his beautiful new shirts about, what does this mean? Does this action echo other actions as well as themes or ideas suggested before—or perhaps foreshadow actions or ideas to follow? Yes to both: It echoes, in a small way, the conspicuous display of wealth we’ve seen so far in Gatsby’s huge mansion and in the lavish parties he throws. It foreshadows the sterility of such wealth by novel’s end. As a scene, then, it’s richly symbolic of the value placed on material things in this culture of privilege and money.

Are certain passages of dialogue also suggestive in some way? When Gatsby says of Daisy, “Her voice is full of money,” what does this mean in light of everything that occurs in the novel? Think of it this way: Money is plenitude in Daisy’s voice—in her soul. In an age when the American Dream equals money and conspicuous consumption, Daisy requires vast riches to meet the requirements of her romantic attention. Gatsby’s few, well-chosen words about Daisy crystallize the rampant materialism of the age. Fitzgerald’s novel, like other works of literary fiction, demonstrates how certain actions and passages of dialogue knit together the larger meanings of the work. Perhaps not all, but many, scenes in a literary novel might require the reader to “put things together” by seeing and understanding the symbolic and suggestive possibilities. This is another hallmark of literary fiction. Passages in the work can be open to multiple readings and be intellectually enriching for the reader.

Consider this example, which employs the power of figurative language as a means to achieve those powerful literary depths, from Ian McEwan’s Atonement:

In this woman’s fertile imagination, the household is more than the mansion with its various members and guests to attend to: It’s a terrestrial landscape—troubled and needful. In this novel, one sees that in spite of the civilized, orderly, aristocratic house setting, human impulses and errors do indeed produce serious trouble. This one simile inspires further reflection on the nature of order versus chaos.

POINT OF VIEW AND CHARACTER

To make larger insights possible, you must choose the point-of-view character that allows for the greatest capacity to introduce several levels of meaning. While your point-of-view character doesn’t need to possess sophisticated intelligence and cultural breeding, you do need to choose a character who will provide the greatest range and depth of ideas to readers. This can be handled in one of several possible ways in a story, including:

1. A protagonist who comes to see life in more complex terms. Your character must be dynamic, able to grow in knowledge of self and world. Consider how Huck Finn decides at the end of his novel to strike out for the territory; he’s had enough civilization to last him a lifetime.
2. A character who comes to possess some specific knowledge—but not as much as the reader does. Expatriate Frederick Winterbourne, of Henry James’s Daisy Miller, realizes at novella’s end that he misjudged Daisy. While he dismissed the American woman before for her wildness and apparent immorality, after her unexpected death he receives a note from her that makes him realize that she was in fact quite innocent. However, Winterbourne, rather than experiencing a true transformation of character, returns quickly to his life in Europe, and James even states that he is having an affair with a “very clever foreign lady” whom we once again believe will reshape his thoughts on European propriety. Readers can assume that Winterbourne has not profoundly changed, and that he will make the same mistake yet again regarding his opinions of American innocence. By novella’s end, we feel we know more about Winterbourne and his tendencies than perhaps he himself does.
3. A character who learns very little—and leaves the matter of learning to the reader. One might imagine that Herman Melville’s Billy Budd learns only a fraction, if anything, in the course of his eponymous novella—but the reader discovers the quintessential nature of evil. Turning to drama, how much does Willy Loman of Death of a Salesman learn? That Biff loves him—but he rejects any knowledge that would liberate him from his destructive dreams.

Ask yourself this: Which character in your novel would give you the greatest potential to explore—dramatically—the complex nature of lived experience, of the possibilities for meaning and value? Which character would provide the lens that would help you mine the deepest depths of human experience?

EXPERIMENTAL APPROACHES

Literary work need not be experimental, but certainly experimental work is usually literary. If it’s done well, that is. Failed experimental writing is just bad writing. Of course, the same can certainly be said of work that attempts to be literary but fails because it comes off as pretentious or affected instead.

Experimental fiction is a risk. The risk is certainly worth it if the experimental techniques accomplish an overall purpose and are not just there for the sake of it. Basically, experimentation is centered on narrative technique, or the manner of telling the story. This may be loosely termed style.

It is clearly experimental to write a novel with, say, a first-person omniscient author, a character who assumes knowledge of any and all characters in the work. And it’s tough to pull off. Yet Vladimir Nabokov does it in Pnin, and Russell Banks does it in Affliction. To succeed at such an endeavor, you must, in some way, make the reader believe that the I-narrator can enter into the consciousness of one or more other characters. Or the I-narrator must at least imaginatively enter into these other characters’ minds and report actions outside the I-narrator’s ken in believable and compelling ways. Certainly both Nabokov and Banks do so.

There are, of course, a host of other experimental techniques at your disposal—too numerous to mention here.

A strong suggestion: Learn the standard narrative techniques first, and then break with them only as needed as a means of developing your literary novel to its fullest potential.

PUTTING IT TOGETHER

In literary fiction we may know everything that has occurred action- and plot-wise, but now we must decide what it all means. How do all the ideas we’ve encountered add up? In the case of so-called popular fiction, once we can state the basic plot and the characters, we often know the story in its entirety. This is not to say that almost any work of fiction might not stand as a microcosm for a larger framework, the macrocosm. A thriller, for instance, might suggest the vulnerability of humans in a world filled with dangerous, perhaps psychopathic, killers. Yet the degree of suggestiveness is much greater in literary fiction. While the literal level of the novel is important, successful literary fiction hinges on whether there is more at hand, meaning-wise, than what appears on the surface.