Writing the Novel |
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| Definitions |
The Novel is a picture of real life and manners, and of the time in which it
was written," declared Clara Reeve in 1785, thus distinguishing the novel
from the romance, which
"describes what never happened nor is likely to happen."
By so specifying that the novel depicts life in the present day,
the critic was probably
observing the derivation of the word novel. Akin to the French
word for "news"
(nouvelles), it comes from the Italian
novella
("something new and small"), a term applied to a newly made story
taking place in recent times, and not a traditional story taking place long
ago.--X. J. Kennedy, An Introduction to Fiction, 4th ed., 226-7
A novel is never anything but a philosophy put into images.-- Albert Camus The novel is a prose narrative of some length that has something wrong with it.--Randall Jarrell Nearly all novels are feeble at the end. This is because the plot requires to be wound up....Incidents and people that occurred at first for their own sake now have to contribute to the dnouement....logic takes over the command from flesh and blood. If it was not for death and marriage I do not know how the average novelist would conclude. Death and marriage are almost his only connection between his characters and his plot....[T]he writer, poor fellow, must be allowed to finish up somehow, he has his living to get like anyone else, so no wonder that nothing is heard but hammering and screwing. This--as far as one can generalize--is the inherent defect of novels: they go off at the end; and there are two explanations of it: firstly, failure of pep, which threatens the novelist like all workers: and secondly, the difficulty which we have been discussing: the characters have been getting out of hand, laying foundations and declining to build on them afterwards, and now the novelist has to labour personally, in order that the job may be done to time. He pretends that the characters are acting for him. He keeps mentioning their names and using inverted commas. But the characters are gone or dead.--E.M. Forster A short story is short, and a novel is long. Because of this, a short story can waste no words. It can deal with only one or a very few consisciousnesses. It may recount only one central action and one major change or effect in the life of the central character or characters. It can afford no digression that does not directly affect the action. A short story strives for a single emotional impact and imparts a single understanding, though both impact and understanding may be complex. The virtue of a short story is its density. If it is tight, sharp, economic, well knit, and charged, then it is a good short story because it has exploited a central attribute of the form--that it is short. A short story is a project. A novel is an obsession. "It is time I started another novel--there is one waiting in the far recesses of my mind, like an octopus beneath a coral reef, occasionally putting out a feeler or two, prodding quite painfully into my conscious mind. I will have to respond, I can see; dive down and haul it out, and up into shallower, brighter waters, where I can get a good look at it....--Fay Weldon |
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