The Elements of Fiction

Don't criticize imaginative writing until you fully appreciate what the author has tried to make you experience. Aristotle said that plot is the soul of a story, it is its life. You have an obligation to know a story well when you come to end,. befriend the characters and to become at home in the world  and try and let the whole unreality of it work upon you as though it were reality. We do not agree or disagree with fiction, we either like it or we do not; our critical judgment in the case of expository books concerns their truth.