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odd_buttonsThe following is an excerpt from Part III of the book Making Shapely Fiction, by Jerome Stern. The first two parts are very much worth reading as well. The book is available in paperback.
Novel
The novel seems to be just about anything written in prose that claims to be fictional and is long enough to be considered a book.
Exceptions test even that definition. Chaucer's long narrative poem Troilus and Criseyde is often discussed as a novel. Max Ernest subtitled Une Semaine de Bonté (A Week of Kindness), a wordless series of approximately two hundred engraved picture, "a novel." Julian Barne's critical essay Flaubert's Parrot is a brilliant novel.
Novels vary drastically in length, in structure, in scope, and in content. They have been written in the form of letters, diaries, dreams, visions, memoirs, monologues, confessions, collages, poems, and commentaries on poems. They have been written entirely in dialogue and entirely without dialogue. They have ranged from fragmented little observations of tiny moments to encyclopedic epics embracing entire cultures. They have been written with multiple endings to readers can choose the one that pleases most, and they have been written on loose pages so that readers can continually rearrange the entire narrative.
The novel is an odd form in other ways, too. Most works of art are experienced in a single viewing, or in an evening. But most novels demand days or weeks of time. Reading itself is a demanding activity. So writers of novels have to give their audience urgent reasons to keep on reading.
Whatever form you work in, from the most traditional to the most experimental, all writers must have the same problem: how to get readers to keep turning pages. The longer and the more demanding the book, the more acute the problem becomes. What is going to impel your readers forward? Accuracy can be admired, but it doesn't generate momentum. True wisdom is valuable, but it doesn't create a desperate need to know what happens next. Verbal ingenuity can be appreciated but it can also cause fatigue. A well-written page is a beautiful thing, but it alone is not gasoline.
Hundreds of studies of the novel have been written and this book can't begin to cover all that need be said. Part IV, "Readables," lists some useful works, and those books mention many more books. John Gardner's On Becoming a Novelist is a good place to start.
See Character, Cliff-hanger, Freytag's Pyramid, Narrator, Plot, "Readables," Suspense, Tension.
Novel
The novel seems to be just about anything written in prose that claims to be fictional and is long enough to be considered a book.
Exceptions test even that definition. Chaucer's long narrative poem Troilus and Criseyde is often discussed as a novel. Max Ernest subtitled Une Semaine de Bonté (A Week of Kindness), a wordless series of approximately two hundred engraved picture, "a novel." Julian Barne's critical essay Flaubert's Parrot is a brilliant novel.
Novels vary drastically in length, in structure, in scope, and in content. They have been written in the form of letters, diaries, dreams, visions, memoirs, monologues, confessions, collages, poems, and commentaries on poems. They have been written entirely in dialogue and entirely without dialogue. They have ranged from fragmented little observations of tiny moments to encyclopedic epics embracing entire cultures. They have been written with multiple endings to readers can choose the one that pleases most, and they have been written on loose pages so that readers can continually rearrange the entire narrative.
The novel is an odd form in other ways, too. Most works of art are experienced in a single viewing, or in an evening. But most novels demand days or weeks of time. Reading itself is a demanding activity. So writers of novels have to give their audience urgent reasons to keep on reading.
Whatever form you work in, from the most traditional to the most experimental, all writers must have the same problem: how to get readers to keep turning pages. The longer and the more demanding the book, the more acute the problem becomes. What is going to impel your readers forward? Accuracy can be admired, but it doesn't generate momentum. True wisdom is valuable, but it doesn't create a desperate need to know what happens next. Verbal ingenuity can be appreciated but it can also cause fatigue. A well-written page is a beautiful thing, but it alone is not gasoline.
Hundreds of studies of the novel have been written and this book can't begin to cover all that need be said. Part IV, "Readables," lists some useful works, and those books mention many more books. John Gardner's On Becoming a Novelist is a good place to start.
See Character, Cliff-hanger, Freytag's Pyramid, Narrator, Plot, "Readables," Suspense, Tension.