Fiction essay, The Difference between an Essay and Fiction

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And because Barth uses examples of well-known writers, he certainly couldn't omit Ernest Hemingway, whose short stories were very tight and yet very expressive with fewer, well-chosen… Fiction essay

2022 Fiction Essay Contest

Fiction is a powerful tool for testing hypotheticals and imagining other worlds as a means of examining our own. Once again, CIMSEC and the U.S. Naval Institute have partnered to invite authors to ask "What if?" as a means of exploring different visions of the future of maritime security.

Authors might consider how conflicts might play out in the near or distant future. Or they might use historical fiction or alternate history as a means of illuminating something important about today's international environment. All that is required is a compelling tale, a convincing narrative, and a chance to learn something about today through the author's exploration of yesterday, today, or tomorrow.

Submission Guidelines

Open to all contributors.

Essay must be no more than 3,000 words maximum (excludes endnotes/sources).

Include word count on title page of essay but do not include author name(s) on title page or within the text.

Submit essay as a Microsoft Word document online at www.usni.org/fictionessay by 15 September 2022.

Essay must be original and not previously published (online or in print) or being considered for publication elsewhere.

Only one entry per contributor.

Selection Process

The Naval Institute and CIMSEC staffs will evaluate all entries and provide the top essays to a select panel of military novelists for judging. All essays will be judged in the blind--i.e., the staffs and judging panel will not know the authors of the essays.

First Prize: $500 and a 1-year membership in the Naval Institute and CIMSEC

Second Prize: $300 and a 1-year membership in the Naval Institute and CIMSEC

Third Prize: $200 and a 1-year membership in the Naval Institute and CIMSEC

Publication

The winning essays will be published in Proceedings magazine or on the Naval Institute and CIMSEC websites. Non-winning essays also may be selected for publication.

The Difference between an Essay and Fiction

Unless you're taking a creative writing course, you probably won't be asked to write many fictional essays, although they do exist. Fiction is all about being creative, descriptive, and imaginative, so the most important part of writing fiction is to flex those storytelling muscles.

The difference between an essay and fiction is in the definition and what counts as an essay versus what counts as fiction.

Truth-Tellers and Where to Find Them

A fictional piece of writing is, by definition, a made-up story. Good fiction takes imagination and creativity, which can be used to write essays or any other type of fictional writing. If you pick up a book, essay, paper, or read a novel online and it falls under the category of "fiction," what you're reading is not a true account.

What Counts as an Essay?

An essay is a short, informative piece of writing that consists of an introductory paragraph, three or more body paragraphs, and a conclusion. Essays can be descriptive, expository, persuasive, or narrative. A writer only has the option to write fiction under the category of a narrative essay. Many narrative essays are true accounts from a writer's lived experience, but some are fictional accounts.

For an essay, certain requirements apply for each type that separate it from other fictional writings. While a fictional poem can be nearly any length and structured in any way that the writer feels is best used to express themselves, an essay should be short (around five to seven paragraphs including the introduction and conclusion) and include a thesis statement that lays out the point of the essay.

What Counts as Fiction?

Nearly any kind of writing can be written as fiction, although doing so with some forms can get you into trouble. You don't want your thesis in college or the personal statement you submit to potential employers along with your resume to be anything but true, for instance.

However, fiction is a popular genre that includes many mediums. Novels, magazine articles, children's books, movie and television scripts, and short stories can all be fiction. Any story, even ones based on a true story that add details for dramatic effect, fall under the category of fiction.

Whether you're writing a fictional essay or any other type of fiction, have fun with and get creative. After all, that's what good fiction is all about.

Modern Fiction (essay)

"Modern Fiction" is an essay by Virginia Woolf. The essay was published in The Times Literary Supplement on April 10, 1919 as "Modern Novels" then revised and published as "Modern Fiction" in The Common Reader (1925). The essay is a criticism of writers and literature from the previous generation. It also acts as a guide for writers of modern fiction to write what they feel, not what society or publishers want them to write.

Contents

Synopsis [ edit ]

In "Modern Fiction", Woolf elucidates upon what she understands modern fiction to be. Woolf states that a writer should write what inspires them and not follow any special method. She believed writers are constrained by the publishing business, by what society believes literature should look like and what society has dictated how literature should be written. Woolf believes it is a writer's job to write the complexities in life, the unknowns, not the unimportant things. [1] [2]

She criticizes H.G. Wells, Arnold Bennett, John Galsworthy of writing about unimportant things and called them materialists. She suggests that it would be better for literature to turn their backs on them so it can move forward, for better or worse. While Woolf criticizes the aforementioned three authors, she praises several other authors for their innovation. This group of writers she names spiritualists, and includes James Joyce who Woolf says writes what interests and moves him. [1]

Woolf wanted writers to focus on the awkwardness of life and craved originality in their work. Woolf's overall hope was to inspire modern fiction writers to write what interested them, wherever it may lead. [1]

Themes [ edit ]

Virginia Woolf as critic [ edit ]

Virginia Woolf was known as a critic by her contemporaries and many scholars have attempted to analyse Woolf as a critic. In her essay, "Modern Fiction", she criticizes H.G. Wells, Arnold Bennett and John Galsworthy and mentions and praises Thomas Hardy, Joseph Conrad, William Henry Hudson, James Joyce and Anton Chekhov. [1]

As a critic, she does not take an analytical point of view and it is believed to be due to the influences of impressionism at the time that she was able to do so. [3] [4] Her writing and criticism was often done by intuition and feelings rather than by a scientific, analytical or systematic method. [3] [5] Virginia Woolf says of criticism:

Life escapes; and perhaps without life nothing else is worth while. It is a confession of vagueness to have to make use of such a figure as this, but we scarcely better the matter by speaking, as critics are prone to do, of reality. Admitting the vagueness which afflicts all criticism of novels, let us hazard the opinion that for us at this moment the form of fiction most in vogue more often misses than secures the thing we seek. Whether we call it life or spirit, truth or reality, this, the essential thing, has moved off, or on, and refuses to be contained any longer in such ill-fitting vestments as we provide. – Modern Fiction

Woolf speaks of criticism as being vague rather than concrete. In her criticism within "Modern Fiction" of H.G. Wells for instance, she is vague in what is wrong with writings but focuses more on the abstract ideals for his fiction rather his work. Woolf's body of essays offer criticism on a variety and diverse collection of literature in her unsystematic method. [5]

Woolf's analysis of Russian versus British literature [ edit ]

In "Modern Fiction", Woolf takes the time to analyse Anton Chekhov's "Gusev" and in general, how Russians write. Woolf spent time polishing translated Russian texts for a British audience with S.S.Kotelianskii [6] which gave her perspectives she used to analyse the differences between British literature and Russian literature. Woolf says of Russian writers:

"In every great Russian writer we seem to discern the features of a saint, if sympathy for the sufferings for others, love towards them, endeavor to reach some goal worthy of the more exacting demands of the spirit constitute saintliness…The conclusions of the Russian mind, thus comprehensive and compassionate, are inevitably, perhaps, of the utmost sadness. More accurately indeed we might speak of the inconclusive-ness of the Russian mind. It is the sense that there is no answer, that if honestly examined life presents question after question which must be left to sound on and on after the story is over in hopeless interrogation that fills us with a deep, and finally it may be with a resentful, despair." [1]

To Woolf, Russian writers see something entirely different in life than the British. In comparison to Russian writers and authors, Woolf says of British literature:

It is the saint in them [Russian writers] which confounds us with a feeling of our own irreligious triviality, and turns so many of our famous novels to tinsel and trickery. They are right perhaps; unquestionably they see further than we do and without our gross impediments of vision…The voice of protest is the voice of another and an ancient civilization which seems to have bred in us the instinct to enjoy and fight rather to suffer and understand. English fiction from Sterne to Meredith bears witness to our natural delight in humor and comedy, in the beauty of earth, in the activities of the intellect, and in the splendor of the body.

Due to Woolf's work in polishing translations, she was able to see the differences between Russian and British authors. Yet she also knew that "from the comparison of two fictions so immeasurably far apart are futile save indeed as they flood us with a view of infinite possibilities of the art". [1] Woolf's main purpose in comparing the two culturally different writers was to show the possibilities that modern fiction would be able to take in the future.

Woolf, writers and fiction [ edit ]

Woolf's "Modern Fiction" essay focuses on how writers should write or what she hopes for them to write. Woolf does not suggest a specific way to write. Instead, she wants writers to simply write what interests them in any way that they choose to write. Woolf suggests, "Any method is right, every method is right, that expresses what we wish to express, if we are writers; that brings us closer to the novelist's intention if we are readers". [1] Woolf wanted writers to express themselves in such a way that it showed life as it should be seen not as "a series of gig lamps symmetrically arranged". [1] She set out to inspire writers of modern fiction by calling for originality, criticizing those who focused on the unimportant things, and comparing the differences of cultural authors, all for the sake of fiction and literature.

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"Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity." "Fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth." "That’s what fiction is for. "Artists use lies to tell the truth.,It’s no wonder that truth is stranger than fiction. A man’s face is his autobiography. It’s never too late – in fiction or in life – to revise. A film is – or should be – more like music than like fiction.

Fiction Books: Dune, All the Light We Cannot See, Nineteen Eighty-Four, Beloved, The Song of Achilles, People We Meet on Vacation, Pride and Prejudice, The Judge’s List, The Handmaid’s Tale: The Graphic Novel, Wolf Hall, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, The Handmaid’s Tale: The Graphic Novel, The Nightingale, One Hundred Years of Solitude, The Road, All the Light We Cannot See, Dune, Beloved,

Fictional stories: The LotteryShirley Jackson, 1948, Heart of darkness ; with, The Congo diary ; and, Up-river bookJoseph Conrad, 1899, Animal FarmGeorge Orwell, 1945, The Tell-Tale HeartEdgar Allan Poe, 1843,

Fiction essay, Fiction essay