If you're writing a book, screenplay, or short story, you want to captivate your audience with your characters and settings, build suspense, and deliver strong emotional payoffs. Literary devices are tools that can help. Though plenty of literary devices exist, these 10 are particularly useful in fiction and narrative non-fiction. Check out these examples and tips for using them to tell an awesome story.

A literary device is a technique writers can use to make stories more engaging. These tactics can create suspense, evoke emotion, set up a plot twist, and more. Alliteration, symbolism, and foreshadowing are examples of literary devices.

Below are definitions of 10 powerful literary devices for your book, screenplay, or short story. Click the "Learn More" links to see examples of each literary device and tips for applying it to your story.  

​Symbolism is when an element of your story - like a character, setting, or object - represents an idea. The represented idea tends to play a significant role in the story's character development, plot, or theme. For instance, in a prison story, grass might be a symbol for freedom.

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​Tone is the attitude a writer takes toward the events in a story. Though characters may have distinct attitudes, the literary device tone just refers to the attitude of the writer. Some examples of tone are optimistic, comedic, and regretful.

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​Mood is the overall feeling of a scene. Chaotic, warm, and sad are examples of moods. One story can have many moods, since different scenes can create different emotional responses from an audience.

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​Imagery is a literary device writers use to connect with any of the audience's five senses: sight, sound, smell, touch, and taste. Imagery is often used in the descriptions of characters, settings, and plot events.

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​A metaphor falsely asserts that one thing is another while creating a true, symbolic comparison. "The office is an igloo" is an example of a metaphor.

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​Personification is the granting of human qualities to non-human elements in a story, like vehicles, houses, and even concepts, such as hope or doubt.

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​Foreshadowing is a literary device writers use to allude to future events in a story. Two kinds exist: (1) Direct foreshadowing states a story event is to come (2) Indirect foreshadowing gives evidence of an event the audience does not anticipate.

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​Dramatic irony is a literary device in which a writer gives information to the audience that a character, or multiple characters, is unaware of. The tactic can build suspense.

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A motif is a repeating element in a story that plays a strong role in the story's theme. Motifs can be abstract ideas, like triumph or deceit. They can also be parts of your story's physical world, such as buildings, objects, colors, and noises.

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​Alliteration is the repetition of a consonant sound at the start of two or more close-together words, as in "warm weather," with "w" the repeating sound.

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Here are just some storytelling components literary devices can help you with:

• Characterization
• Settings
• Reveals
• Conflict
• Action
• Twists
• Suspense
• Tension
• Mystery
• Anticipation
• Exposition
• Thematic development
• Dialogue
  
• Narration
• Emotional impact

Literary devices are used across fiction and narrative non-fiction. Some examples of genres that use literary devices:

• Thriller
• Mystery
• Crime
• ​Horror
• Action
• Adventure
• Romance
• Science fiction
• Memoir
• ​Comedy
• ​Fantasy

​Literary devices should serve the story you're telling. Once you have an idea of your characters and your plot, and you begin writing your first draft, you'll need to accomplish various tasks to make any scene work.

For instance, let's say your main character in a thriller is running from three gunmen in a scene. For this scene to work, a task of yours could be making the audience fear for your protagonist's life. A combination of literary devices can be applied to accomplish that task.

​You can use dramatic irony to make your protagonist unaware of the danger lurking around the corner. Once the protagonist sees the gunmen, you can leverage mood to create a feeling of desperation. You can also apply imagery to show the physical effects of panic, like sweat and an accelerating heartbeat.

Think of literary devices like specialized tools. Let your story tasks dictate when and how you apply these tools.

As stated, the writing tasks you need to accomplish to make a scene work should determine what literary devices you use - avoid the opposite approach, ie, deciding you want to use a certain literary device and then bending the purpose of a scene just so the device can fit. 

You also want to avoid literary devices drawing attention to themselves. They should help your scenes flow, not cause the audience to focus on the device.

Certain devices, like alliteration, can draw attention to themselves if used too often. Other devices, like tone, can draw attention to themselves if shifted through a story.

Once you gain a deeper understanding of the 10 literary devices outlined above (with the "Learn More" links), you should have a good idea of how to apply them to your story in a natural way.

If you're writing a book, screenplay, or short story, you want to create an immersive experience for your reader. You want to pull the audience into your scenes and deliver strong emotional payoffs. Mood is a powerful literary device than can help you do that. In this article, I tell you what a mood in storytelling is, provide examples, and offer tips.

Mood in writing is the overall feeling of a scene. Exciting, lighthearted, and somber are examples of moods. A story can have multiple moods, as different scenes can evoke different emotional responses from the audience.

​The four key elements of a story are character, plot, theme, and emotional impact. Since mood is based on feeling, it's a great tool for enhancing the emotional impact of your story.

​Each scene should have a distinct mood that's tied into its central conflict. Is your main character running from a serial killer? Fear would be a natural mood for that scene. If you can play up the feeling of fear, you can evoke a strong emotional reaction from your audience. Pulses will go up as they turn the pages.

On the other hand, if the mood you're creating doesn't fit with the central conflict of your scene, you can ruin what might be an otherwise great scene.

For example, let's say you're writing a scene where the main character just finds out his sister is missing. A mood of anxiety would be a natural fit. However, if you instead gave the scene a detached feel, where the main character doesn't care much, the audience wouldn't care much either. It would feel flat.

Tone is another literary tactic. It refers to the attitude a writer takes toward the events in a story. Unlike mood, which can show up in a different form in various scenes, a story should have just one tone. Examples of tone would be sarcastic, serious, or nostalgic.

The tone you choose for your story narrows the moods you can pull off in it. For example, if your story has a sarcastic tone, a somber scene may be difficult to make workable. If, instead, your story had a serious tone, a somber scene would be a natural fit.

The genre you write in shouldn't necessarily limit the mood of any scene, however, in totality, the moods of your scenes should align with audience expectations for your genre.

For example, if you're writing a horror story, you absolutely can have a scene with a funny mood. Possibly, toward the beginning of the story, before the killer is loose, you can characterize your protagonist by showing her joking around with her friends.

However, if your story goes to have 50 scenes total, and 40 of them wind up having a funny mood, your story won't feel like a horror one. Horror readers expect moods like fear, worry, and excitement in the majority of their scenes.

Thus, be mindful of mood expectations in your genre. Feel free to go in different directions, but only in small doses.

The characters in your scene are the conduits for creating a mood for your audience. What the characters feel directly impacts what your audience feels. Thus, to create a mood, you want to capture the emotional state of your characters. Here are three tips:

​Dialogue is what your characters say to each other. How the characters feel should be reflected in how they talk (even if they're lying, ie subtext).
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For instance, let's say one character in a scene is training another for a boxing match. While the trainer yells at the boxer, the dialogue would create a mood of intensity.

Or maybe you have a scene where one character is warning others about a terrible storm blowing into town. As the characters worry about the storm, an overall mood of worry will emerge.

With an effective setting, you can create a mood without your characters even speaking. Let's say you're writing a sci-fi story. Your protagonist, who's from Earth, winds up traveling to a different planet.

This planet is technologically about 10,000 years ahead of Earth. When your character first arrives and marvels at all the high-tech infrastructure, a mood of awe will be produced. Your character doesn't need to say she's in awe. The setting alone will get the point across. 

Plot events should unfold in a cause-and-effect way, with scenes building off one another. Thus, if your main character appears in scene C, the audience may already have a good idea of what's at stake because of previous scenes A and B.

​For instance, let's say your protagonist, from Nebraska, has been practicing for a singing competition in Los Angeles. If a scene opens with a plane landing in Los Angeles, a feeling of anticipation would be created. Based on past events, the audience knows the high stakes of the LA trip.

Though scenes should follow a cause-and-effect flow, they absolutely can be filled with surprises. A surprise is an abrupt plot event that characters did not see coming. Surprise has the ability to create a strong mood in an instant.

For instance, let's say you're writing a scene where two couples are enjoying a beach vacation. The scene has a lighthearted mood. Then, a woman discovers a dead body behind a bush.

The mood of the next scene immediately becomes panic. The simple reveal of a dead body is all that was needed to produce this strong mood.

If you're able to create a distinct mood for a scene, you're off to a good start. Next, you want to build on this mood, ratcheting up its emotional force.

Let's go back to the example of a character running from a serial killer. We've established a mood of fear. How can we escalate the feeling of fear? Here's a possible sequence of events that could accomplish this:

• The protagonist first notices the serial killer in the upstairs hallway of a house and begins running

• The protagonist trips down the stairs, increasing the likelihood the killer will catch up to her (and increasing the fear)

• The killer slashes at her with his knife, missing her face by just an inch (he's close...the feeling of fear is elevated even more)

Mood is used across fiction and narrative non-fiction. Some examples of genres that use mood:

• Thriller
• Mystery
• Crime
• ​Horror
• Action
• Adventure
• Romance
• Science fiction
• Memoir
• ​Comedy
• ​Fantasy

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You might also like my posts on symbolism, metaphor, and imagery.

​If you're writing a book, screenplay, or short story, you want to keep your audience glued to your story and deliver satisfying surprises. Foreshadowing is a tool that can help. In this post, I give you the definition of foreshadowing, examples of foreshadowing, and tips for applying this powerful literary device to your story.

Foreshadowing is a literary device that alludes to future story events. Two types exist: (1) Direct foreshadowing announces a story event to come (2) Indirect foreshadowing provides evidence of an event the audience does not see coming.

Below are examples and tips for direct foreshadowing...

​​In these examples, major plot event to come are foreshadowed in a clear way to the audience:
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• Foreshadowing: While Hank is driving his car on a sunny day, the radio host warns of a hurricane expected within a few hours. Connected plot event: Hank is caught in a bad storm.

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• Foreshadowing: While walking through the mall with her friends, Jenny notices an advertisement for a competition to be a pop star. Connected plot event: Jenny enters the singing competition.

 

• Foreshadowing: When Marcus enters his home, he notices that the lock to the front door has been tampered with. Connected plot event: Marcus's expensive watch is missing.

 

• Foreshadowing: Shortly after Allison arrives at a resort, the groundskeeper tells her to stay away from room 702. Connected plot event: Allison is forced to enter room 702 to save her child.

 

• Foreshadowing: Dave receives a mysterious email at work, filled with what appears to be a code. Connected plot event: Dave uses the code to hack into a database with sensitive files.

Create Suspense

​​Direct foreshadowing is a great way to build anticipation. Once you announce an event is going to occur in your story, your audience will start thinking about the implications of that event, most notably, how it will affect the lives of characters.

If you've done a good job creating a connection between your audience and characters, your readers will be emotionally invested in the impact these story events have on characters. A feeling of suspense is created while the audience waits to see how the events will shape the lives of the characters.
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​Keep the Stakes High

The higher the stakes of an event, the more emotionally invested the reader will become in the outcome, and the stronger the feeling of suspense.

For instance, in the example with Hank, a hurricane is a high-stakes event. A hurricane can devastate homes, even end lives. If the reader has a connection with Hank - and others in the town - the reader will start worrying about the hurricane the moment it's mentioned.

If, on the other hand, Hank heard about a mild rain that was nearing, the drama would be flat.

In the example with Jenny, if the audience has a connection with her, and knows her dream, readers will eagerly await the outcome of a singing competition that has the potential to make her dream a reality.

If, on the other hand, Jenny heard about a talent show at a local rec center, yes, the audience may root for her to win, however, the stakes - and drama - would not be nearly as high as her competing in a national contest on TV.


Make Them Wait

Once you've established a high-stakes story event is coming, the next tip is to wait a while before you take the reader to the event. The wait sustains the feeling of suspense. That's where the "edge of your seat" effect comes from.

After Hank hears about the hurricane, before it strikes, you might show him analyzing an in-depth weather report online. You can even have him convinced the warning is a false alarm, and he avoids taking precautions like boarding up his windows. The audience's worry will grow as it waits to see how bad the storm will be.

Though people don't like worrying about things in real life, they do in stories. Keep them in this worried state for as long as doable.

After Jenny hears about the singing competition, you might show her practicing. Possibly she practices so much, her sleeping suffers. As the contest approaches, she gets sick and loses her voice. The audience's worry will be heightened. Keep the audience worrying until the end of the competition.


Be Sure to Deliver

Direct foreshadowing is a sort of promise you make to your reader. You're suggesting that a very interesting plot event will happen. If you make the suggestion, and then do not eventually put the event in your story, your audience will feel ripped off.

This does not mean the event needs to play out exactly as it's initially suggested. This simply means the event needs to show up in the story in some form.

For example, in a horror story, Leah receives a note from the villain saying "I'm going to kill you." This does not mean the villain has to eventually kill her. However, the audience will be expecting the villain to at least try. Even if Leah gets away unscathed, the killer should attack her at some point in a dramatic scene. 

​Below are examples and tips for indirect foreshadowing...

​​In these examples, major plot event to come are foreshadowed, yet the audience would not be able to necessarily anticipate them:
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• ​Foreshadowing: Greg is seen carrying his saxophone into school. Connected plot event: When a villain breaks into Greg's house, Greg grabs the nearby saxophone and whacks the intruder over the head. 

 

• Foreshadowing: When Sally arrives home with stains on her white shoes, she tells her husband she stepped in a puddle. Connected plot event: The day Sally's husband saw her in the dirty shoes matches the day a murder victim was buried in the woods.

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• Foreshadowing: Leonard enjoys playing paintball. Connected plot event: While under attack from criminals, Leonard uses a real gun for the first time, relying on his paintball experience.

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• Foreshadowing: Dianne mentions she used to be a waitress in Michigan. Connected plot event: Diane is mistakenly arrested for an organized-crime scheme run out of Detroit. 

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• Foreshadowing: Terrence casually plays poker with his friends on Thursday nights. Connected plot event: In need of $100,000 fast, Terrence enters a poker tournament in Atlantic City.

Plant and Payoff

Planting and payoff is a writing technique that involves "planting" story elements in the minds of your audience that eventually go on to have a "payoff."

In the example with Gary, the saxophone story element was planted in the minds of readers. The payoff from this element comes when he hits the criminal during a dramatic break-in scene.

As a general rule, if a major plot event features a certain story element, you should show that story element to the audience considerably earlier, even if briefly. These story elements may be physical objects, like a saxophone, however, can be any variety of things (ex, maybe a song or a dream).

Showing the audience the element establishes it as part of the story's world. When the element is later used in a dramatic plot event, that scene would feel more authentic than it would if the element first popped up during the dramatic moment.

For instance, if Gary was being attacked by the villain, and grabbed a big metal instrument the audience never saw before, the scene would feel inauthentic. The saxophone would seem like a too convenient, unrealistic fix to Gary's problem, versus an organic extension of his world.


Create Awesome Twists     

Audiences love twists. However, if you don't follow certain steps, your twists may be guessable or non-believable.

An effective twist needs to strike a fine balance. For believability, you need to give the audience clues about the information eventually revealed in the twist. However, if these clues are too obvious, your audience will be able to guess the twist before it happens, wiping out the crucial shock factor.

In the example with Sally, the twist in her story is that she is a murderer. To make that twist shocking, Sally should not come off like a murderer beforehand. For instance, maybe she's a friendly mother of three who volunteers at a hospital.

Sally arriving home with dirty shoes is a clue that she was burying a body in the woods. However, it's not an obvious clue, whereas her showing up with blood on her shoes would be.

​Sally is able to dismiss any suspicion by saying she stepped in a puddle. However, before she gives the answer, she should hesitate. Only for a second, but long enough to hint at a potential lie.
  
After the audience finds out she is the murderer, the conversation about the shoes will add credence to the revelation.

On the other hand, if Sally is shown to be a pleasant woman through the story, then is revealed as a killer without any clues the audience can reference, the twist will feel inorganic. The audience may be surprised, yet not satisfied.

Readers prefer when evidence of a twist is shown to them, yet in subtle ways they can't understand until after the reveal. 

The foreshadowing storytelling technique - both the direct and indirect varieties - can be used in any genre of fiction or narrative non-fiction, such as:

• Thriller
• Mystery
• Crime
• ​Horror
• Action
• Adventure
• Romance
• Science fiction
• Memoir
• ​Comedy
• ​Fantasy

You might also like my posts on symbols, metaphors, and motifs.

​Want to create a page-turning story? Check out these 10 tips for writing a suspenseful book, or script, that will keep readers excitedly flipping your pages. 

Suspense is heightened the more the reader wants to know a piece of information. A reader's desire for a certain piece of information increases the more the reader cares about the character involved.

For example, if a reader feels a deep connection to your protagonist, and that character is on trial for a murder he didn't commit, the reader will feel a lot of suspense awaiting the verdict.

​On the other hand, if a minor character that the reader never got a chance to know was on trial for murder, the reader wouldn't care much about the verdict, ie not much suspense.

Since your protagonist drives the plot of your story, and most suspense will be around that character's outcomes, I suggest you learn how to create a protagonist the reader cares about.

That being said, supporting characters can absolutely be the subjects of suspense scenes too. Make sure you've at least developed some empathy between the reader and character if you want these scenes to work well.

Let's stay your reader cares a lot about a character and you decide to create a suspense scene around that character. You're off to a good start. You raise a question the reader wants the answer to. However, for some reason, when you read the chapter's draft, you're not on the edge of your seat. What happened?

Likely, not much is at stake. For instance, if your reader cares a lot about a character named Michelle, who's stuck in traffic on the way to work, the audience may wonder, Will she make it to the office on time?

However, this question isn't that suspenseful without something major at stake. If Michelle happens to show up 15 minutes late, nothing terrible will happen to her. She doesn't have much to lose.

Instead, if Michelle has a potentially career-changing presentation with her company's biggest client, now something is at stake. The busy client only has 30 minutes at the office before having to leave for another appointment.

​If Michelle is late, she won't have enough time for her presentation. And if the presentation doesn't go well, she'll lose out on the promotion to her dream job.  

A story question is a certain type of question the reader wants the answer to. However, unlike other suspense questions, it's rarely answered in the chapter where it was raised, but much later in the story.

​As mentioned, suspense is elevated the longer the reader must wait for a question's answer. Thus, story questions, with their long time horizons, lend themselves to effective suspense.

Here's an example of how story questions can play out...

• In chapter 1 of a book, a supporting character introduces himself as Derek.

 

• In chapter 3, Derek bonds with Natalie, the main character whose husband just died and left her a lot of money. Derek seems like a good guy. She seems to be interested in him.

 

• In chapter 7, a man just released from prison shows up at Derek's apartment and hands him an envelope with "Billy" written on it. Various story questions emerge: (1) How is Derek affiliated with this criminal? (2) Is Derek's name actually Billy? (3) Has he been lying to Natalie? (4) Is he a criminal himself who's after her money?

 

• In chapter 8, Derek and Natalie go on a date. He is very pleasant. Nothing about his behavior signals that he's a criminal.

The reader will have to keep turning the pages for the answers to those four story questions. 

Your protagonist's "want" is the main goal they're after through the story. For instance, in a detective novel, the want may be catching a serial killer. Whether or not your protagonist attains the want shouldn't be revealed until the climax of the story, just before the end.

​This time delay makes for good suspense. However, you also need to make sure a lot is at stake for your protagonist. As mentioned, when characters have a lot to lose if a story outcome turns out negative, readers become more emotionally invested in the result.

In the detective example, if the killer isn't caught, he's almost definitely going to carry out five more murders he's planned. Innocent people will die and the detective will be forced to shoulder the guilt, ie a lot to lose. 

To learn more about creating a great protagonist want, check out my post on story plot tips.   

As discussed, your protagonist should have an overarching want that propels the events of the story until the end. To turn up the suspense along the way, you should structure your story into acts.

The beginning and middle acts would build to answer their own questions, which would serve as sub-questions to whether or not the main character achieves the main goal.

For example, if a detective's main goal is catching a serial killer, the reader would receive a definitive answer in the final act. However, in the two previous acts, the events in the story would build to answer two important related questions:

• Act 1: Will the detective come out of retirement to go after the elusive criminal?
• Act 2: Will the detective find a clue leading to the killer's real name?

Since these questions are related to the story's main one, if you did a good job crafting the main one, the earlier act questions will immediately become important to the reader. 

To learn more about acts, check out my post on structuring your story into acts. 

The last few tips involved building suspense across many chapters. However, you should also aim to create suspense within chapters.

​The same rules apply: the reader needs to care about an outcome and you should delay the answer. However, within a single chapter, you don't have much time. You might only have five, maybe 10 pages.

A tactic you can use to compensate for the compressed timeline is to rapidly shift reader expectations during it. For instance, let's say you're writing a scene where a woman is running through the woods, away from a man who wants to hurt her.

If you simply describe her running for three pages, yes, your reader will likely feel suspense. However, that suspense would be stronger if you fed in a stream of events that shifted reader expectations as to whether or not the woman gets away. Here's how you could do that:

• As she's running, she finds the gun that she dropped earlier - the reader now expects she'll shoot the unarmed man and win the confrontation

 

• However, when she aims and pulls the trigger, she realizes she's out of bullets - her stopping to shoot allows the man to gain ground on her and now the reader is doubtful she'll get away

 

• She starts running again, but, because she's flustered, she trips - now the reader expects she's going to be attacked

 

• On the ground, she finds a rock and throws it at the man's head, making him delirious - now the reader believes she again has a chance to get away  

As you now know, with good suspense, you want to make your audience wait for answers. However, you'd benefit by doing the opposite for your characters - you want to give them tight timeframes.

In writing, a ticking clock is a deadline a character has to accomplish an important task. These clocks are sometimes literal - in an action story, the hero may have just three hours to find and diffuse a bomb with an actual ticking clock on it.

A physical clock doesn't need to be involved, though - you just need a time crunch, regardless of the source.

​For example, in a romance story, the lead character has been offered a job in a new city. She has until June 1 to accept the offer. From now until then, she needs to decide if she wants to take the job or stay in town and pursue a relationship with a man she's falling for.

A ticking clock builds suspense because it makes a promise to the reader: by a certain point in time, either something good or bad will definitely happen for a character. The definitiveness of the outcome makes the reader care more about it. As the clock ticks down, the feeling of suspense grows.

To elevate the suspense of a ticking clock, you can use dramatic irony to put a character in a dangerous situation he isn't even aware of. For instance, the audience knows a bomb, set to go off in 30 minutes, is inside a building. Unaware, the main character walks inside.

With a cliffhanger, you raise a question the audience cares about in a chapter and then end the chapter before giving the reader the answer.

Though closing on any type of unanswered question technically constitutes a cliffhanger, the more dramatic kinds involve leaving a character in a pressing predicament. The obvious example is someone literally hanging off a cliff.

​If the reader cares about a character, and that character somehow has found his way onto the edge of a cliff, and falling means serious injury or death, end the chapter there and the reader should be very eager to turn the page to see what happens.

Don't be afraid to close a lot of your chapters with a cliffhanger. That being said, if you end many chapters in a life-or-death predicament, your story may feel a bit forced. Vary the stakes and the immediacy of the chapter-ending questions.

With crosscutting, you'd write a chapter from the POV of character A, then write the next chapter from the POV of character B, who is currently not with character A. You're essentially jumping in space.

At the end of a chapter, if the audience is left wondering how certain events will play out for character A, cutting to character B delays the reveal of information about character A, infusing suspense.

​After character B's chapter, if you again cut to character A (or even to C), the audience is left wondering about character B, ie even more suspense.

The crosscutting technique works best in combination with pressing-predicament cliffhangers. The suspense around character A will be elevated when you cut to character B, if character A is left in physical danger or some other state of impending jeopardy.

As your protagonist pursues the want, the story's main villain should throw obstacles at the hero to prevent success. Make your villain a worthy opponent of your hero. Even better, make your villain more imposing than your hero, at least at the beginning of the book.

A skilled, dynamic antagonist is capable of surprise. Thus, even when things seem to be going well for your protagonist, your audience will still feel suspense.

If the reader knows a resilient villain, capable of crafty attacks, is lurking somewhere out there, the protagonist is never quite safe. A devastating surprise can come at any time.

To learn more about antagonists, check out my post on writing great villains. 

​Suspense in storytelling is delaying the reveal of information the reader wants to know. The more the audience wants to know something, and the longer it waits, the greater the suspense.

Though suspense is often associated with the action and thriller genres, it can be woven into stories of any genre. Yes, suspense is part of any quality gunfight or car-chase scene, but it's also what makes many subtler scenes work well.

For example, in a domestic story, let's say a husband and wife are simply sitting at a table eating dinner. The reader knows the husband just told his wife a lie about where he was last night. When she asks him questions about the night, suspense is created. Will he will be exposed as a liar?

​Whatever type of story you're writing, it can benefit from an infusion of suspense.

Find out what narrative writing is and learn how to make yours excellent with these 10 tips.
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Narrative writing is the process of telling a story via written words. Two major categories of narrative writing exist: fiction and narrative non-fiction. Fiction is the telling of stories that didn't actually happen in real life, while narrative non-fiction is the telling of stories that did. 

At a basic level, a story is a communicated group of events that centers around at least one subject character and builds to a conclusion about those events.

​The subject character is typically a person, but can be an animal, mythological figure, or any other type of entity with the capacity to think (whether real or not). You can't write a story about a rock in the dirt. At least one character needs to be conscious.

Technically, for a story to meet the definition of narrative writing, it should be written down. However, spoken stories follow a similar flow.

When you were a kid, did something wild ever happen to you and a couple friends, then you told a bunch of your classmates at school the next day? If so, you've already done something that's almost identical to narrative writing - all that was missing was writing the story on paper, typing it on a computer, etc.

​Fiction writing mainly covers novels, short stories, comic books, plays, screenplays (the written basis of a movie), and teleplays (the written basis of a television show), though does span other formats. As long as the events in the story aren't a direct retelling of actual ones, the story is considered fictional.

Often, fictional stories are inspired by real incidents, though aren't a direct account of them. For example, in real life, a screenwriter may have witnessed a person rescuing somebody from a burning car.

​After the writer got home, he was motivated to write a story that opens with someone pulling somebody else out of a vehicle in flames. However, since the writer invents the characters in the story, and places them into various invented situations after the rescue, this story would be considered fictional.

As mentioned, non-fiction writing involves stories that directly chronicle real events. However, not all non-fiction writing is considered narrative.

For writing to be considered narrative non-fiction, it needs to unfold like a story. Again, that means it unfolds as a communicated group of events that centers around at least one subject character and build to a conclusion about the events.

For instance, chronicling the rise of a real musician from unknown performer to world-famous singer would be considered narrative non-fiction. It centers around a subject character (the singer) and events that build to a conclusion (the gaining of notoriety as a musician).

Books like biographies and memoirs are considered narrative non-fiction, as are journalism articles that tell real stories about real people. A news article about the weather, for example, would not be considered narrative non-fiction - though the article is covering a real topic, it lacks a subject character.

On the other hand, a magazine or newspaper article on a real person wouldn't be considered narrative if it only listed highlights from the person's career (ex, a profile) or briefly reported on some event the person was involved in (ex, mentioning the person won a local pie-eating contest).

However, if an article went into depth about challenges a person went through and how those challenges shaped the person's life, the article would be considered narrative.    

​Fiction writers have more flexibility than non-fiction writers when implementing these tips. Since fiction writers are making up a story, they're not confined by the limits of real-life events.

Non-fiction writers, on the other hand, need to stay true - at least to some degree - to the real-life material their writing project is based on.

Non-fiction writers should look for angles in the material that lend themselves to the storytelling techniques described above.

For example, if you're writing a story about a historical figure, you can cover the person's childhood, adolescence, or adulthood. Further, you can write about specific eras within each of those periods, or even narrower, specific years, weeks, or days.

My advice is to first seek out a worthy antagonist in the person's life.

Possibly, as a child, the historical figure had some struggles, but they weren't in relation to another person in particular. However, while an adult, the historical figure had a strong political rival. You can build a dramatic story around this clash.

Sure, your story can cover all aspects of the subject character's life, however, I'd spend much more page space on the dramatic conflict between hero and villain during this particular stage of adulthood.

You might also like my post on how to market a book online.
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