ABSTRACT
Prose fiction is what literature is and works of prose fiction, especially novels, get reviewed in daily newspapers, occasionally even on television. It consists of many sub-genres. The main categories are the novel and the short story. A fairly good working definition of a novel might be a fictional narrative that is long enough to be published as a book by itself. Most fictional literary narratives used to be written in verse. According to the influential terminology of the early-twentieth-century English novelist and critic E. M. Forster, fictional characters can be divided into two main categories: the round and the flat. One way of describing the plot of Pride and Prejudice would be to say that it presents two main characters each of whom, at first, strikes the other as flat: two-dimensional and incapable of change. Everybody needs some kind of personal narrative structure, or personal plot, to give themselves a sense of identity and purpose.
