A narrator can be a single person, like Nick Carraway in The Great Gatsby, an omniscient entity, or a nonhuman narrator like an insect or animal. The narrator is a central figure through which the story is told. Stories can also have multiple plots, like Celeste Ng’s novel Little Fires Everywhere, which follows the lives of two families in an Ohio suburb. Some stories have a single, central plot, like Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, which revolves around race and a trial in the rural South.

As long as a story has a beginning, middle, and end, it has a plot. A plot does not have to be a complicated weave of actions, although that’s an option. It is what your characters do, what events transpire, and in what order. Literary devices are techniques or flourishes that a writer can apply to their writing- imagery, personification, and allusion are all examples of literary devices. Literary elements are the foundation of a story, like plot, setting, and characters. The difference is that literary elements are essential, while literary devices are optional. Literary elements and literary devices are both useful storytelling components that guide and shape a story. Below we’ll look at eight of the basic literary elements, but first we have a quick note about the difference between literary elements and literary devices. There are endless variations within each element, and deciding on these variations is where the writer’s work takes place.

If the story lacks an answer to one of these questions, it’s an incomplete story. Think of literary elements as answering the who, what, where, when, why, and how of a story. Literary elements are essential components that build a story, such as plot, narrator, point of view, and setting. Grammarly helps you communicate confidently Write with Grammarly What are literary elements?Įvery story can be broken down into its literary elements.

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