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Wikipedia is a collaboratively edited, multilingual, free Internet encyclopedia supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation.
In fiction, style is the codified gestures, in which the author tells the story. Along with plot, character, theme, and setting, style is considered one of the fundamental components of fiction.
Industry:Literature
Superhero fiction is a genre originating in and most common to American comic books, though it has expanded into other media through adaptations and original works.
The form is a type of speculative fiction examining the adventures of costumed crime fighters known as superheroes, who often possess superhuman powers and battle similarly powered criminals known as supervillains. Occasionally, this type of fiction is referred to as superhuman or super-powered fiction rather than superhero fiction in order to reflect that broader scope of both heroes and villains, as well as cover those characters with enhanced abilities that fall outside the classic superhero/supervillain dichotomy.
Industry:Literature
In fiction, a subplot is a secondary strand of the plot that is a supporting side story for any story or the main plot. Subplots may connect to main plots, in either time and place or in thematic significance. Subplots often involve supporting characters, those besides the protagonist or antagonist.
Subplots are distinguished from the main plot by taking up less of the action, having less significant events occur, with less impact on the 'world' of the work, and occurring to less important characters.
In screenwriting, a subplot is referred to as a "B story" or a "C story," etc.
In William Shakespeare's play Henry IV, Part II, the main plot concerns Henry's growth from "Hal" the prince to "Henry" the king and the reconquest of French territory. A subplot, however, concerns Falstaff's participation in the battles. Falstaff and Henry meet at several points, and Falstaff is a familiar of Henry's, but otherwise his plot and Henry's do not mix. Even though the plots may be thematically connected, they are not connected in action.
In William Shakespeare's play King Lear, the main plot describes how Lear disowns his faithful daughter Cordelia and divides his Kingdom between his treacherous older daughters Goneril and Regan. However, there is a subplot involving the Earl of Gloucester and his two sons, Edgar and the illegitimate Edmund. Edmund tricks Gloucester into thinking the faithful Edgar is plotting against him, causing Edgar to flee. This subplot reflects the main events of the plot, i.e. Fathers mistaking their good and bad children. However the events mingle, Goneril and Regan fall in love with Edmund after he becomes Earl, and in the rewrite of the Play by Nahum Tate, Edgar marries Cordelia at the end.
When no single story dominates a narrative, as in Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's novel Cancer Ward, the plots will not be distinguished into the main plot and subplots. Because of their brevity, short stories and to a large extent, novellas, usually contain no subplot.
The video game Xenogears is famous for having fourteen different plotlines. Which ones are main plots and which are subplots can only be distinguished by the influence that the characters involved have over the game's setting and the other characters.
Industry:Literature
A supporting character is a character in a narrative that is not focused on by the primary storyline. Sometimes supporting characters may develop a complex back-story of their own, but this is usually in relation to the main character, rather than entirely independently. In television, supporting characters may appear in more than half of the episodes per season.
In some cases, especially in ongoing material such as comic books and television series, supporting characters themselves may become main characters in a spin-off if they are sufficiently popular with fans.
Industry:Literature
Suspense is a feeling of pleasurable fascination and excitement mixed with apprehension, tension, and anxiety developed from an unpredictable, mysterious, and rousing source of entertainment. The term most often refers to an audience's perceptions in a dramatic work. Suspense is not exclusive to fiction. It may operate whenever there is a perceived suspended drama or a chain of cause is left in doubt, with tension being a primary emotion felt as part of the situation. In the kind of suspense described by film director Alfred Hitchcock, an audience experiences suspense when they expect something bad to happen and have (or believe they have) a superior perspective on events in the drama's hierarchy of knowledge, yet they are powerless to intervene to prevent it from happening. Films having a lot of suspense belong in the thriller genre.
In broader definition of suspense, this emotion arises when someone is aware of his lack of knowledge about the development of a meaningful event; thus, suspense is a combination of anticipation and uncertainty dealing with the obscurity of the future. In terms of narrative expectations, it may be contrasted with mystery or curiosity and surprise.
Suspense could however be some small event in a person's life, such as a child anticipating an answer to a request they've made, e.g., "May I get the kitty?". Therefore, suspense may be experienced to different degrees.
Industry:Literature
Suspension of disbelief or willing suspension of disbelief is a term coined in 1817 by the poet and aesthetic philosopher Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who suggested that if a writer could infuse a "human interest and a semblance of truth" into a fantastic tale, the reader would suspend judgment concerning the implausibility of the narrative. Suspension of disbelief often applies to fictional works of the action, comedy, fantasy, and horror genres. Cognitive estrangement in fiction involves using a person's ignorance or lack of knowledge to promote suspension of disbelief.
The phrase "suspension of disbelief" came to be used more loosely in the later 20th century, often used to imply that the burden was on the reader, rather than the writer, to achieve it. This might be used to refer to the willingness of the audience to overlook the limitations of a medium, so that these do not interfere with the acceptance of those premises. These fictional premises may also lend to the engagement of the mind and perhaps proposition of thoughts, ideas, art and theories.
Suspension of disbelief is often an essential element for a magic act or a circus sideshow act. For example, an audience is not expected to actually believe that a woman is cut in half or transforms into a gorilla in order to enjoy the performance.
Industry:Literature
Sword and Planet is a subgenre of science fiction that features rousing adventure stories set on other planets, and usually featuring Earthmen as protagonists. The name derives from the heroes of the genre engaging their adversaries in hand to hand combat primarily with simple melée weapons such as swords, even in a setting that often has advanced technology. Though there are works that herald the genre such as Percy Greg's Across The Zodiac (1880) and Edwin Lester Arnold's Lieut. Gullivar Jones: His Vacation (1905; published in the US in 1964 as Gulliver of Mars), the prototype for the genre is A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs originally serialized by All-Story in 1912 as "Under the Moons of Mars".
The genre predates the mainstream popularity of science fiction proper, and does not necessarily feature any scientific rigor, being instead romantic tales of high adventure. For example little thought is given to explaining why the environment of the alien planet is compatible with life from Earth, just that it does in order to allow the hero to move about and interact with the natives. Native technology will often break the known laws of physics.
The genre tag "Sword and Planet" is constructed to mimic the terms sword and sorcery and sword and sandal. The phrase appears to have first been coined in the 1960s by Donald A. Wollheim, editor of Ace Books, and later of DAW Books at a time when the genre was undergoing a revival. Both Ace Books and DAW Books were instrumental in bringing much of the earlier pulp Sword and Planet stories back into print, as well as publishing a great deal of new, imitative work by a new generation of authors.
There is a fair amount of overlap between Sword & Planet and planetary romance although some works are considered to belong to one and not the other. In general, planetary romance is considered to be more of a space opera subgenre, influenced by the likes of A Princess of Mars yet more modern and technologically savvy, while Sword & Planet more directly imitates the conventions established by Burroughs in the Mars series. That is to say that the hero is alone as the only human being from Earth, swords are the weapon of choice, and while the alien planet has some advanced technology, it is used only in limited applications to advance the plot or increase the grandeur of the setting. In general the alien planet will seem to be more medieval and primitive than Earth. This leads to anachronistic situations such as flying ships held aloft by anti-gravity technology, while ground travel is done by riding domesticated native animals.
Industry:Literature
Sword and sorcery (S&S), or heroic fantasy, is a sub-genre of fantasy and historical fantasy, generally characterized by sword-wielding heroes engaged in exciting and violent conflicts. An element of romance is often present, as is an element of magic and the supernatural. Unlike works of high fantasy, the tales, though dramatic, focus mainly on personal battles rather than world-endangering matters.
A film genre tangentially related to sword and sorcery, at least in name, is sword-and-sandal, though its subjects are generally oriented to biblical times and early history, instead of fantasy. Not to be confused with cloak and dagger or cloak and sword, which are alternate genres.
Industry:Literature
Symbolism was a late nineteenth-century art movement of French, Russian and Belgian origin in poetry and other arts. In literature, the style had its beginnings with the publication Les Fleurs du mal (The Flowers of Evil, 1857) by Charles Baudelaire. The works of Edgar Allan Poe, which Baudelaire admired greatly and translated into French, were a significant influence and the source of many stock tropes and images. The aesthetic was developed by Stéphane Mallarmé and Paul Verlaine during the 1860s and '70s. In the 1880s, the aesthetic was articulated by a series of manifestos and attracted a generation of writers. The name "symbolist" itself was first applied by the critic Jean Moréas, who invented the term to distinguish the symbolists from the related decadents of literature and of art.
Distinct from, but related to, the style of literature, symbolism of art is related to the gothic component of Romanticism.
Industry:Literature
A tall tale is a story with unbelievable elements, related as if it were true and factual. Some such stories are exaggerations of actual events, for example fish stories ('the fish that got away') such as, "That fish was so big, why I tell ya', it nearly sank the boat when I pulled it in!" Other tall tales are completely fictional tales set in a familiar setting, such as the European countryside, the American frontier, the Canadian Northwest, or the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.
Tall tales are often told so as to make the narrator seem to have been a part of the story. They are usually humorous or good-natured. The line between legends and tall tales is distinguished primarily by age; many legends exaggerate the exploits of their heroes, but in tall tales the exaggeration looms large, to the extent of becoming the whole of the story.
Industry:Literature
