Novel
Dr. Tilyard defines the novel rather loosely and says, "a novel is a not too unorganised, fictitious narrative in prose of at least, say 20,000 words." He does not think that the novel is a closely definable affair. He further points out that, "novel is not a literary kind but as vague term denoting at most a prose medium, some pretence of action, a minimum of length, and a minimum of organisation."
It is a wide generic kind which includes within itself such widely differing forms of prose narrative, as the tragic, the satiric, the picaresque, the idyllic or the epic. For our purposes, the novel may be roughly defined as a long story in prose, meant primarily for entertainment and presenting a realistic picture of life. But all such attempts at defining the novel are futile, or none does full justice to it. It would, therefore, be better to consider its chief characteristics.
The Chief Elements of a Novel are:
1. It deals with events and actions which constitute its plot.
2. It has characters i.e. men and women which carry on its action and to whom things happen.
3. This conversation of these characters constitutes the element of dialogue.
4. It has a scene and time of action ie. place and time where different things happen to different characters. It may be some limited regions or its action may range over large number of places, cities, even countries.
5. Its treatment of life and its problems are realistic. Thus, it is realism which distinguishes it from the earlier prose romances. The novel does not provide escape from life and its problems, but rather a better understanding of them. It also reflects the very spirit of the age in which it is written.
6. It exhibits the author's views of life and of some of the problems of life. It thus gives the author's criticism of life or his philosophy of life.
The Essentials of a Good Plot
1. A novel is primarily a tale and as such it must be strong in the story interest. It must provide amusement for the leisure hour and a welcome relief from the strain of practical affairs. It must be gripping in its interest.
Any novel which provides wholesome and tonic refreshment is fully justified, but to be really great it must deal not with mere trivialities which lie upon the surface of life, but with passions, and conflicts, and problems which constitute the very texture of life.
It must have greatness of subject, it must have universality of appeal. It does not mean that the subjects chosen must be from high life, for the simplest story of the humblest people may be as appealing as the story of kings or princes.
2. It must have authenticity.
The novelist must be thoroughly familiar with his subject, what he is not familiar with, he should leave out. The novelist must accept limitations of his range, otherwise the novel would lack fidelity.
However, personal knowledge is not necessary. A really creative genius may derive his knowledge second hand i.e. from books or from conversation with others, and may even then attain substantial fidelity.
This is what a historical novelist does, this is what Defoe has done in Robinson Crusoe. What is necessary is that the novelist must have a sound and thorough knowledge of life and men, and this would enable him to humanise and vitalise his material.
3. The plot may be defined as a systematic organisation and arrangement of incidents. A good plot is skillfully constructed i.e.
(a) there should be no gaps and inconsistencies,
(b) there should be balance and proportion of the different parts in relation to the whole,
(c) the events should proceed logically and spontaneously out of each other,
(d) being the commonplace things should be made interesting and significant by the novelist's method of narration.
(e) the march of events should appear natural under the circumstances.
(f) the denouncement should appear to us as the logical summing up of all that has gone before. There should be nothing forced, artificial or unconvincing. Even the greatest novelists have failed in this respect. For example, conclusions of Scott are generally unsatisfactory, there is much huddling up.
4. The plot of a novel may be of two types:
(a) It may be loose and incoherent. The story is composed of detached incidents or episodes, having little logical connection with each other, some unity being provided by the personality of the hero, who binds the otherwise scattered elements together. Thackeray's Vanity Fair is an example of such a loose plot.
(b) In the novel with an organic plot, the plot is compact and closely knit, every incident being a part of general design which has been carefully thought out in advance. However even in a novel with an organic plot there might be much that is purely episodical. Thus in Fielding's Tom Jones, which has a closely knit, compact, plot, there are many incidents and character, that are not an integral part of the plot-pattern
It should be noted, however, that a highly organised plot is likely to suffer from two faults, faults from which even Tom Jones is not free: (a) Its movement may be unnatural and may strike the readers as forced, mechanical and artificial, (b) Too much reliance may be placed on the use of co-incidence.
In Tom Jones, for example, all sorts of things are perpetually happening in the very nick of time, while people turn up again and again at the right moment, and in the place where they are wanted, only because they have a chance to be wanted then and there. Our sense of probability is thus strained.
5. The plot is a novel may be simple or compound i.e. it may be composed of one story or of more than one story running together. In the latter case the different stories must be wrought together, into a single whole. In Vanity Fair, for example, the stories of Beckey Sharp and Amelia Sedley have not been properly amalgamated. Often a novelist makes the different independent elements in a novel to weigh and balance or illustrate each other. Thus the element of melodrama may be offset by broad comedy, farce, etc. Thus in Vanity Fair, while no attempt has been made to fuse the two stories together, the moral and dramatic contrast between the two is constantly stressed.
6. The method of narration :
There are three ways of telling a tale: (a) the direct or epic (b) the autobiographical and (c) the documentary. In the first case, which is the most usual.
The novelist is a historian narrating from the outside, in the second case he writes in the first person identifying himself with one of the characters, generally the hero or the heroine and thus producing an imaginary autobiography.
In the third case the story is narrated by means of letters or diaries as is the case with the novels of Richardson and Wilkie Collins The first method is usually preferred, for it gives greatest scope and freedom of movement to the novelist. The other two methods, at least in the hands of an unskillful novelist, are likely to be clumsy and unconvincing.
