Knowing I am a Freelance Writer by trade, a college English Professor acquaintance of mine invited me to address his class at Belmont University here in Nashville. The subject he asked me to consider was "prose and fiction are the exact same thing." In turn, that led me to conduct a survey of the FanStory universe on the aforementioned topic. Who claims this site is not interactive? Poppycock!

I received several interesting responses from FanStorians regarding the statement I presented. Some of my favorites were:

"Prose is written in complete sentences rather than poetry."

"Fiction represents only a very small part of the millions of words of prose spewed out daily."

and

"Prose and fiction CAN be the same if the characters and/or the story being told is made up."

I would like to thank all those who responded to my survey. Your reviews are always very much appreciated.

However, if somebody told me that prose and fiction are the exact same thing, I would politely look them squarely in the eye, smile broadly, and elaborate by saying, "You are wrong as rain on a Springtime picnic, Scooter!" There is a significant dissimilarity between the two of them.

Here is what I told that class of matriculators:

Originating from the Latin idiom of "prosa oratio," which interpretes into "direct speech," prose maintains a natural flow of speech. In other words, prose is a display of language that illustrates a grammatical structure. There are at least four different variances of prose. These consists of:

nonfictional prose - characteristically appearing in essays, autobiographies, and biographies, nonfictional prose is literature mostly based on fact, although it may also contain rudiments of fiction. Other forms of nonfictional prose include writing intended to instruct, as well as religious, political, philosophical, and moral inscriptions. An inordinate degree of the author's presence is another key component of nonfictional prose.

prose poem - considered a separate genre from prose and poetry, the prose poem is a hybrid that is written as prose, not verse, and reads as poetry. Prose poems do not contain line breaks, but incorporate prose's narrative and objective presentation of truth. Prose poems also use poetry's compression, repetition, fragmentation, rhyme, metaphor, symbols, and figures of speech. A good example of prose poetry is the Japanese Haibun. This form of poetry combines prose and haiku together to construct the poem.
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polyphonic prose - rhythmically free, polyphonic prose keys on assonance, the juxtaposition of similar vowel sounds in nearby words without the repetition of consonants. Polyphonic prose also exploits a heavy dose of alliteration, the repeated sound of the first letter of multiple words. The stressed syllables in a phrase, alliteration manipulates a rhythm to make the reader feel a certain mood or emotion. Alliteration is commonly applied in music, advertisements, comic strips, and television programs.

prose fiction - adapts everyday cultural conversational language, as well as narration, metaphors, and expositions to tell the tale and trigger emotional responses from readers. Prose fiction focuses on how people talk in regular, and often, regional dialects, and on how they act in various situations. Prose fiction may incorporate real facts and people into the storyline, but it relies mainly on the writer's vivid imagination, rather than known reality, to tell the story. Futuristic fiction is a good example of prose fiction.

Usually word count determines what category prose fiction fits into. For example, flash fiction comprises 1,000 words or less, short stories enclose no more than 7,000 words, novellas accommodate between 10,000 and 60,000 words, and novels embody more than 60,000 words. Prose fiction may also be categorized by style, such as historical, social, or romance. Subcategories of prose fiction include thriller, mystery, fantasy, comedy, and drama.

Dialog heavy, a prose fiction story can be told in first, second, or third-person narration. Universal themes that readers can relate to are another major element of prose fiction. These may involve the main character learning from their mistakes or their need for friendship. Universal themes make the character much more believable.

On the other hand, possessing creative invention, and some degree of believability, fiction is literature that uses prose forms to tell imaginative stories about people and events that are not real. Except as a literary narrative, fiction does not refer to a specific genre. Open to the reader's interpretation of what is presented, novels, plays, fables, myths, short stories, novellas, and narrative poetry may all be classified as common works of fictional literature.

Realism is another special form of fiction. This is fiction that involves a real world time and location, and whose events depicted in the story could feasibly happen in a real life environment.

Now you know the significant dissimilarities between prose and fiction, and that they are definitely not the exact same thing.

Until the next time.

This has been another chapter in My Extremely B-O-R-I-N-G Life!