ABSTRACT
The making of the simplest expository text can call for the exercise of complex imaginative powers. There is creativeness in composition; whence it is not unreasonable to assume that there is composition in creativeness, and that the apparently free play of fantasy may be governed by principles as firm as those that guide the construction of mundane expository prose. This chapter provides four aspects of the compositional faculty: repertoire, storage, selection, and prediction. Repertoire can be construed in two complementary senses, as the totality of available knowledge or skill, and the part of such knowledge or skill that has been mastered by the individual. The account of compositional processes suggests a working from the invisible domain of repertoire and storage towards the visible structure manifested in selections and predictive procedures. The fiction is constructed on principles of linkage and development not at all unlike those of non-fictional exposition.
