September 19: Aspects of the Novel

[kinetic_elaboration]

I finished Forster’s Aspects of the Novel a few days ago and though I’m generally ready to let it go and only think about it if some bit of it decides to float up into my brain at a useful time—not hypothetical, as this has happened since I started reading—I thought I’d write down a few of the overall lessons or interesting concepts or whatever that I got from it.

In no particular order:

The story is the most basic thing that a novel has to contain, defined as ‘events in their time sequence’ and scratching only the most basic human itch: curiosity. The story leads the reader to ask ‘and then what happened next?’ and pretty much only that. This was a very illuminating idea for me because there are plenty of pieces of media out there (I was thinking of TV more than novels tbh) that are really just story, and you know what, that’s okay. Sometimes it’s not that deep and you will be much happier if you recognize that all that matters is following along from one even to the next. Sometimes you want to be a caveman entertained by tales told by the fire and that’s it.

The plot is distinct from the story because it requires not just curiosity, but intelligence and memory. In the plot, all new facts matter, or should matter. The reader collects them, remembers them, and asks questions about them and how they fit together, under the assumption that the author has placed them there on purpose and they will, in fact, fit together at the end. Versus in a story, where facts and narratives and twists and whatever can be dropped at any time, because their only job is to get you to the next fact, to keep you going.

Characters are the most important aspect of the novel and what distinguishes it from other art forms. A character is ‘real’ for purposes of a novel if the novelist knows everything about them, regardless of whether all of that is in the novel or not; if they can be relied upon to act in different ways in different scenarios, regardless of what the scenarios they actually encounter are. These are round characters, as opposed to flat ones. Flat ones still have purpose and are not ‘bad’ characters; they are just characters that have a singular trait/motivation, which can be summarized in roughly a sentence, and which describes and explains everything they do.

The first sentence of this isn’t said directly but it’s fairly clear it’s what Forster thinks and not just because he spent two separate lectures on characters. He talks often about characters having minds of their own, of characters taking over the plot, of the plot only awkwardly disciplining the characters. He says that the ends of novels tend to be the worst because they must tie up the plot (make all those facts previously mentioned mean something, come together) and that means shoving the characters down and forcing them to behave in a way that aids the plot. Hence why marriage and death are so often the ends of novels: they provide a neat way of tying everything together into something that ‘feels’ like a conclusion.

The pattern and rhythm of the novel, in particular the pattern as the novel’s shape, were very interesting concepts to me. I think the ‘shape’ or pattern of a story (novel, movie, etc.) is what I am seeing, appreciating, and enjoying when I say I’m into the ‘structure’ of a work. It’s the beauty that comes from zooming out, seeing it as a whole, and perceiving how all the parts were carefully arranged to create this perfectly interlocking structure. I mean, of course the pattern can’t be everything, but I get a lot of happiness out of a particularly ornate and well-constructure one as an element of the rest of the work.

The concept of the ‘rhythm,’ the beauty that comes from other aspects other than the overall structure of the plot is also interesting… I think I’d have to re-read that section and think on it some more, though. He made it sound something like a motif, I suppose, but maybe that’s flattening it.

I understand less well when he was going off on, like, the vibes of things, which is why I’m not really going to talk about the Fantasy and Prophecy chapters. I didn’t get nothing out of them, Fantasy in particular was kind of interesting thought not revolutionary for me per se, but… they were tougher. I’m not sure I have the brain space.

Overall, though, I think I got several ideas from it that I will keep with me and apply as necessary, so I’m glad I read it.