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Elements for a great novel (1 Viewer)

allGenreGamer

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Harry Potter seems to be extremely popular, to an extent that people compare it with Shakespeare's work. I wonder, what makes you people determine that a novel is good? This is what I think:

- Storyline that makes you can't stop reading.
- Novels that draws upon the imagination.
- Characters that you grow to like.

Everyone please give me your opinions, to be truthful I wish to become a writer in th future.But its still only a dream right now...so please reply to this thread.
 

glitter burns

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Clever language, I think, as well. The descriptions should be interesting and unique, and the language of each character should reflect their personality. I hate reading books that have the potential to be good because of a good storyline and characters, but fall flat due to weakness in language and dialogue.
 

Loz#1

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Harry Potter and Shakespeare? I think not.

It's got to be original. No point doing something that's already been done a gazillion times.
 

allGenreGamer

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Harry Potter and Shakespeare? I think not.
I see... so which one do u think is better Loz#1? Just interesting to know :)
Original... yes that's true. Do u people think an 'unrealistic" novel has the potiential to become extremely popular? Like, a book about other planets (just an example).

the language of each character should reflect their personality
True. And I think Shakespeare does this frighteningly well ;)
 

Bolkonski

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i think a really screwed up main character... a flawed character. like Mr Verloc in Secret Agent by Conrad...
 

Gregor Samsa

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Some elements that in my opinion are indications of 'quality' in a given novel.

-Characters that are truly 'human', not merely in appearence. Unless the book is explicitly fantasy, idealised characters take away from the feel of the novel, losing the element of 'reality' that allows empathy. It is often this empathy that allows us to feel for each text's respective characters, and lead us to ponder how we would react in a similar situation, and therefore examine ourselves..

-Inventive use of structure.. As fictional texts, novels do not have to follow a linear plot-line. Indeed, when properly employed, manipulating traditional structures captivates, creates extra meaning and originality. (Such as the use of 'Stream of Consciousness' in Rushdie's 'Midnight's Children', where it is used to reflect Saleem's becoming a 'human radio', hearing the thoughts of others. This is made even more effective by changing throughout the novel, to reflect plot developments.) Ulysses [James Joyce] and The Sleepwalkers [Hermann Broch] are excellent examples.

-Thought/Commentary. This is often a key demarciation between 'great' and mediocre literature, moving beyond the 'arrangement of incidents' [Aristotle] to invite the responder to think. As Albert Camus wrote, All novels are philosophical texts. The extent to which this is demonstrated however, ranges from the simplistic to the meaningful. This can also produce valuable insights into the human condition.

-Use of language. A clever, sophisticated grasp of language is obviously needed in a great novel, so that the composer may retain control over the language in which their thoughts are expressed. This may range from short terse sentences to lengthy poetic paragraphs, depending on the author's style, nevertheless supporting their overall vision, and creating imagery..

-Continued relevance. Many texts hailed on release as 'great' rapidly descend into obscurity. Endurance itself is an indication of 'quality', even allowing for differing conceptions of it.
This notion was commented upon by Orwell, who wrote that
Ultimately, there is no test of literary merit except survival ['Lear, Tolstoy And The Fool'.]. I believe that continued relevance often occurs as a result of the abformentioned factors, especially the 'Use Of Language' and 'Human' characters.

Shakespeare is perhaps the best example of this, particularly tragedies such as King Lear and Hamlet. This is due to the universal relevance of Shakespeare's themes and characters, and the often-brilliant language. (As for originality, while his plays are adaptions, Shakespeare made them his own through fleshing out characters, language, and emphasising central, universally relevant thematics.)

These five qualities usually serve (in varying amounts) as a good indication of a great novel. Although readability is of course important, this is often seen in best-seller novels such as Tom Clancy, which are of not particularly high quality. (By my inherently subjective value-judgement. :D)
 
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Gregor Samsa

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Peter Brook's thought concerning King Lear [From 'King Lear;A Director's View'. serves as a nice encapsulation of some the qualities of a great text, in this case, King Lear;

I think if you approach a very great work, you have to see that there is one danger that is there in front of every director, which is to try to bring to this work your point of view, because unless you're very stupid, you're bound to see that your point of view can't be very broad. Each person's point of view is very limited and it shrinks the more you say that's what I believe, that's what I think, this is my conception, until really that becomes something so narrow. Most of the play is destroyed by you making your own idea into a sort of sledgehammer that breaks into the play. If you approach a play like King Lear saying, I have a feeling, I have a point of view that draws me towards this play, I am now, with the help of all the actors, trying to discover what this play is about for us today, that happens automatically because you're not suddenly going back into the past and working with a group of actors who died several hundred years ago.


In the case of Lear, the starting point is that Lear is not the story of one man, it is called King Lear because he has a central role, but King Lear is a very rich, complicated, dense, complex myth. It is a myth in the sense that like any great legend the start is not something that you have to justify psychologically. A king calls together his three daughters and says, "I am going to divide my kingdom". This is the beginning of a irresistibly strong story which touches anybody because it's about real things, about fathers and children, property, power and possession. Those all come out of something which you know you can take anywhere in the world - assemble a group of children; go into Africa and assemble a group of grown-ups; go into Tibet and assemble a group of Lamas and you say "I am going to tell you a story". You don't justify it, you don't have to explain it, because it's an old story so it happened some time long ago. "A king called together his three daughters" and already you know that everyone is listening and wants you to go on. "The king said 'I am going to divide my kingdom into three'". At that moment you have a hundred per cent attention of your audience. It is riveting - why? Because it's a myth. What does a myth mean? A myth means that something profound in human experience is capsulated in a little situation that needs no justification, it is there and you're with it. Now what is very special about Shakespeare is that in Lear and in several others plays - Hamlet is another obvious case - Shakespeare took an old story which came from far, far back and which could be told and was still being told, in the very simple way that I started telling you about the king and his daughters. Shakespeare, without tampering with this, brought something that belonged to his time, to the Renaissance, to a new way of looking at the world-which-was, he gave the characters a humanity, a contradictory humanity, that isn't there in any old myth. When the myth says they're three daughters, that's one, two, and three, and they're very simple characters.
In the original story of Hamlet, there is a young man who hears that his father has been murdered. A young man - it's enough for a storyteller. Shakespeare, with this whole richness of Renaissance interest in what human beings are, took this mythic basis and then extended it. He took Goneril and instead of making her just the evil daughter, which she would be in a folk tale, in a fairy story, he makes her into a unique human being. As the play develops you find all the contradictions, including the qualities, of this daughter, who still behaves from our point of view in an unforgivable way, but you see that she is a human being who has for herself her own deep justification, which makes the tragedy all the closer to us because we see how easily we can justify to ourselves and to others everything that we do. The more that you enter into the play, the more you're forced to respect that there are all the time two levels in the play, one level is the development of the characters and that already prevents you having a point of view, because if you say for instance - I've often quoted this - if you say King Lear was a silly old idiot otherwise we wouldn't have done something so stupid as to divide his kingdom - you're finished, you can't do the play any longer, because if you look honestly and attentively and in a sensitive way at what's written, you see he isn't a silly old fool. [...] Beside him you see all the other characters and it's only by rehearsing and playing that you find this more and more intricate criss-crossing of relationships which slowly opens until you see that the play is not just King Lear, it is a whole in which Edmund doesn't exist without Edgar, and Edgar doesn't exist without Kent, and Kent doesn't exist without Regan, and so on and so forth. Then you even see that the two husbands - at first sight they just seem two dull parts for small actors - and then you see they exist in their own right and the difference between Albany and Cornwall is extraordinarily dense, as the nature of their marriages is dense.

Basically there are two levels, on one hand there is completely realistic action happening in places - in the film, for instance, it was very important for us to make real walls and real fires so that you could feel the reality of being indoors and the reality of being turned out into an icy landscape. The reality of the characters is what gives them their psychological density and gives their actions a reality. At the same time, under all this, is what inspired Shakespeare in the first place, which is something he didn't invent but that ancient fundamental myth about human life. That is why, in the verse, in the music of a play, something is psychologically true and then goes beyond individual psychology. It is at the same time a metaphysical play in the sense that every myth is metaphysical, in the sense that it talks about something beyond anything that can be analysed and capsulated in normal, everyday terms. The great quality of the play is that the two are balanced. This is a quality that you find in Homer, that you find in Greek tragedy. The plays get lost if you tip them too far into making them so mythic that the everyday reality goes, or making them so everyday that the mythic element goes. Shakespeare, line after line, preserves the two and the difficult, daunting and magnificent task for anyone who tries to work on these plays is all the time to recognise that you're failing your obligation if you betraying either one of those two aspects and that is a terrifying challenge. That doesn't mean that one can meet it, but the more you recognise it, the more you find the interest and the courage to go on exploring.
 

lazybum

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right - go KL ( i thought i had stopped hearing that name forever, well, whaddya know)
 

Grey Council

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o

That has got to be the best two posts i've ever seen in these (or any) forums. Seriously. That was a facinating read. :)

The guys right, you know. If I were to say that a king called his three daughters and said he was dividing his kingdom into three, that WOULD capture the imagination of anyone, be it in a western context or a middle eastern one. Children and Adults alike would be interested.

Goddamn, that is one nice post. How'd you find those notes? Is it availabe online? I am interested in reading the whole thing now. :)
 
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RCMasterAA

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I dunno about the specific stuff but the novels which I've loved leave me reading up to the last page and saying to myself, "what? is that it? I want more! More! MOOOOOORRRREE!" Then I might try to find other novels by the same author and more information about it. If you can get the reaction from me then you've written a good novel :)
Humor, witty twists in a plot, good, lucid descriptions of what's going on...they all help too of course.
 

allGenreGamer

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Thanks for helping everyone. Now the next novel with popularity on the same level as Harry Potter will be written by me!! :p in like 20 years... ;)
 

bubz :D

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Originally posted by allGenreGamer
Thanks for helping everyone. Now the next novel with popularity on the same level as Harry Potter will be written by me!! :p in like 20 years... ;)
lol give us a yell when you're richer than the queen, too :D
 

Grey Council

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originality (which might have been said)
humourous and interesting (no point having a text that a reader will stop reading after first 30 or so pages)

Read catch 22, its a 'high culture' novel, and REALLY enjoyable. No, it isn't trash, and its by Joseph Heller (is that right? having a niggling doubt)
 

ameh

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a common theme that relates to the reader
imagination

yes definately originality

any text that takes you on a enjoyable journey that makes u apathise with the character and doesnt waffle on

whatever holds my interest is whatever relates to human emotion
 

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Catch 22 is brilliant! And yes, it is by Joseph Heller.

I think a novel that makes me want to be there (or wonder about being there) - something about the interaction about the way that it's described, the place that actually exists and the people you'd meet. I adore The Wheel of Time Series by Robert Jordan largely for the reason that I want to know what it would be like being an Aes Sedai in the tower. I love The Discworld Series for the very same reasons - I would love to experience what it would be like to believe in something like the "edge of the world". But that's mostly fantasy I hear you say!

But wait! What about the likes of The Wave by Morton Rhue - a short novel, not well known - makes me want to be at the High School that it's set in. It's based around the idea of a stimulated WW2 in a school that gets out of hand - far from fantasy as everything you read you can see in your own world ... it is our world, our history! And it makes me want to be at that High School. The writing isn't that brilliant - but the idea is what makes you want. I think its about igniting something in the reader a sense to some how wake up in the novel itself, maybe even as a fly on the wall but to have your bones really experience it.

In addition, the need to think about the novel long after you've put it down. Take a 450 pound Bengal Tiger in the pacific with a skinny Indian boy in Life of Pi - I have no real inclination to be caught in that same situation ... but long after reading it the smallest thought would make me wonder about surviving for so many days on end in the middle of the pacific. A flesh-eating floating island. Blindness and fishing. Fishing and circus training. Things spark a memory and it goes floating back to a novel you read once.

I also think a sense of humour - not always as direct as Pratchett - but sprinkled in, even if it is the absurdity of what is going on. Catch 22 serves to be absolutely hilarious - even though the actual idea and premise of the entire novel can be hear-wrenching.

I've definitely come to appreciate an atypical format or structure to good novels - some complain about them ... particularly if they believe it breaks up the flow of a novel, but I find it brilliant. Green Girls is disjointed yet this is what makes this novel work so well as the story line itself is disjointed and the plot so conflicting that it's mirrored in the actual literary techniques.

I despise Utopia by Thomas Moore (I think?) for the sole reason nothing seems to happen what-so-ever, it's a general spiel on his problems with the world. Nothing progresses. They come they spiel and think and go. And while many people appreciate Catcher in the Rye for the lack of progression in the main character, it frustrates me. It really does. I think that characters need to offer something for the future - for when you think about this book in future and where it could go next, whether it be growth or a sense of insight n the character ... that their future will be determined by their own experiences. Am I making any sense?

I think Shakespeare is a success because yes his plays hold universal and timeless themes that are always valid for any contemporary but also because he was the first. He really was the first that explored so many different ideas and situations. He experimented and broadened his writing he wrote humour as well as he did tragedies and his sonnets seem to drip with something akin to the sweetness found in sugar cane (Not all his sonnets I know, but they hold a different sort of passion!). He wrote out scenes that you wanted to see acted out for you. (Ignoring of course the fact that the people that were first introduced to his works did see it acted out for them :p)

But I love humour at the moment! :D :D Anything that gives me a good reason to crack a grin.

Note: And I know it seems like I havent read Gregor Samsas post in fact I have several times. I just agree with him or her a lot. :D And I also find that making reference to more contemporary texts would also be worth noting - as that just helps to reinstate his or her point/points. Gah repetitive but I cant very well type this all up and not post it!

Does that mean those 5 points are it? Id like to believe that its about the individual responder too. Some days youre in the mood for something sweet and light on the tongue/mind and what you pick up is the exact taste youve been craving. Other days you feel like something that is more pungent in its bitter cynicism and you find something to purge your need for that. If we enjoyed the exact same books all the time wed be boring. So we make a difference in what makes a good book too I believe!

Im done. I hope. Man I can babble a barrel!
 
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Gregor Samsa

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Originally posted by Nupil

I despise Utopia by Thomas Moore (I think?) for the sole reason nothing seems to happen what-so-ever, it's a general spiel on his problems with the world. Nothing progresses. They come they spiel and think and go.
Utopia is by Thomas More.

The lack of a definite plot is the very point of Utopia. The text is written as a social commentary upon 16th century Europe, in the form of an exposition of the fictitious state of 'The Commonwealth Of Utopia'. The virtues as described in the text are possible methods of reforming [contemporary] European society, also apparent in the many comparisons made between real and fictional states throughout.

This can be seen in the text's 'climax', within which Raphel Hythloday calls Utopia Not only the best country in the world, but the only one that has any right to call itself a republic' [p.132.]. As such, the text isn't meant to be read like a conventional novel. It is instead a form of satire, an imperative towards the responder to move society in this ideal direction. Afterall, Utopia is the text the Utopian genre itself is identified with, centred upon the rational discussion of society's improvement. [The obverse is seen in dystopic texts such as Brave New World and 1984, which while having plots, are centred upon warning of the creation of a similar dystopia through certain detrimental means.]

Personally, I think it is still an interesting text, in terms of revealing insights into sixteenth century society; " There are many things in the Commonwealth of Utopia that I rather wish, than hope to see followed in Europe" and subsequently influencing Utopian literature.
 
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