- The Willing Suspension of Disbelief: all fiction is, by definition, untrue; yet part of the pleasure of good fiction is that it invites us to temporarily imagine that it is true, to temporarily allow ourselves to believe that what is happening is true. Special effects and realist detail help to create the suspension of disbelief. It's important to remember when discussing fiction that you're not talking about real people; you're talking about words on a page or pictures on a screen.
- Plot: the basic sequence of events of a story. (For example, Dr. Frankenstein makes monster, rejects monster, monster seeks revenge).
- Narration: the way a story is presented to the reader. (For example, explorer meets Dr. Frankenstein on the ice, who then recounts his history.)
- Character: the key persons described in a story and the personality traits revealed by their words and actions.
- Point of view: the place from which the reader (or viewer) learns what happens; in film the camera automatically provides a point of view. Often there is a narrator who tells the story. If the narrator is not a character in the story and is able to know more than one person in the story could know, the narrator is an omniscient narrator. Sometimes there is a focal character around whom events happen, like Chase in Neuromancer.
- Style: the general word for the tone, figures of speech, and other techniques through which a story is narrated. Style can be formal, for example, like Shelley's Frankenstein, or informal, like Gibson's Neuromancer.
Terms specifically about science fiction:
- Speculative fiction is a fiction genre speculating about worlds that are unlike the real world in various important ways. Science fiction is a subcategory of speculative fiction. Fantasy fiction, horror fiction, supernatural fiction, superhero fiction, utopian and dystopian fiction, apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction, and alternate history are other genres of speculative fiction.
• Hard science fiction, or "hard SF", is characterized by rigorous attention to scientifically accurate or plausible detail, or on accurately depicting worlds that more advanced technology may make possible.
• Social science fiction is a term used to describe a subgenre of science fiction concerned less with technology and space opera and more with sociological speculation about human society. In other words, it "absorbs and discusses anthropology", and speculates about human behavior and interactions.
• Space opera is a subgenre of speculative fiction or science fiction that emphasizes romantic, often melodramatic adventure, set mainly or entirely in space, generally involving conflict between opponents possessing powerful (and sometimes quite fanciful) technologies and abilities. Star Wars is a classic example.