Genre A category of literature The main literary

Genre A category of literature. The main literary genres are fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and drama.

Autobiography • An autobiography is a story about a person’s life and is written by the person who lived it. An autobiography can be about the person’s whole life, part of that person’s life, or a single event.

Biography • A biography is a selection about a real person's life that is written by another person.

Case Study • This type of nonfiction explains in detail how investigators find answers to hard questions or solutions to hard problems.

Expository Nonfiction • Expository nonfiction provides information about real-life persons, objects, or ideas. • Expository nonfiction may include graphic sources, such as charts and photos, that show information. • A chart is a sheet of information. • Facts are arranged in an easy-toread form.

Fantasy • A fantasy is a make-believe story that could never happen in the real world. • Some characters and plot situations may be realistic, while others are exaggerated and even silly. • The author uses a realistic classroom setting but then introduces fantastic characters who do impossible things.

Fiction • Fiction stories are stories that the author has made up. • Fiction is an untrue story. Characters and events may be realistic, even though they might be unusual or even unlikely in some way.

Folk Tale • The original author is unknown and that folk tales often have different versions. These stories are passed down through generations over many centuries.

Historical Fiction • Historical fiction is a combination of imagination and fact, with fictional characters and plot placed in a factual historical setting.

Humorous Fiction • Humorous fiction tells the story of imaginary people who seem real. Story events are true-to-life and often funny. • Humorous fiction has characters and actions that can make you laugh and wonder how things will turn out.

Interview • In an interview the interviewer asks questions. The other person, the subject, answers. • Interviews usually appear in magazines or newspapers.

Myth • A myth is a tale that has been passed down through generations and tells about nature and human behavior.

Narrative Nonfiction • A narrative is writing that tells about events. Narrative nonfiction tells about events that really happened.

Play • Like a novel or a short story, a play tells a story but it is written to be acted out for an audience. Plays have many unique literary elements such as acts, scenes, stage directions, and speech tags.

Poetry • Poetry is an arrangement of words in lines having rhythm. Sometimes those lines rhyme, as in this narrative poem.

Realistic Fiction • Fiction tells stories of imaginary people and events, realistic fiction tells a story that is possible. Plausible characters engage in actions that seem truthful and the story has a reasonable outcome.

Science Fiction • Science fiction is a kind of fantasy that uses scientific information to make a story seem more believable to the reader.

Tall Tales • Tall tales are amusing stories told with great exaggeration and bigger-than-life characters.