Does Fiction Follow a Pattern or Design?

When reading a story, the beginning fiction readers often consider the entertainment with which the story can provide them and they close the book with the feeling that "Well, it was a nice story". They usually are concerned with what happens and as far as the story presents them with a set of events that they can follow and with which they can identify, they are content, especially if the story is an adventure one. …

…Thus, teachers of literature should teach students how to read with understanding and discrimination to enjoy fully the intellectual, sensuous, and emotional pleasures of the stories. Fiction, like any other art, has form, discipline, and design. The elements of fiction, inseparable and interwoven, make the design; the students thus should know these elements and the way they work out to reveal the total meaning of the story which endows us with both pleasure and understanding.