The architecture of a novel

 

This is the longest novel I have in my library: Don Quixote de la Mancha

And this is the shortest: When he woke up the Dinosaur was still there.

All the novels have a common structure, they have at least three dimensions:

1. Spatial dimension: the Storyteller
2. Time dimension
3. Level of reality 

1.   The Storyteller.

¿Who is going to tell the story?

• Omniscient storyteller (kind of a God that knows everything). He speaks as He.
• Character storyteller. He speaks as I.
• Ambiguous storyteller. He speaks as you

For instance, in the story by Monterroso

The storyteller is, apparently, an Omniscient narrator

For instance in Don Quixote

In  In a village of La Mancha, the name of which I have no desire to call to mind, there lived not lo  long since one of those gentlemen ...

It appears it is an Omniscient narrator but, in some occasions, speaks from an I (Character).

For instance In the “Grapes of Wrath” by John Steinbeck:

There are several character storytellers.

For instance in Moby Dick by Herman Melville:

“Call me Ishmael”. It’s a character, but not the main one. Difficult to say who is it: Captain Ahab? The whale? At the end all die in the Pequod. Who is the storyteller? An omniscient one.

For instance in As I lay dying, from John Steinbeck

The storytellers are the members of the Bendron family in succession

 2.   The Time

 There is a chronological time and a psychological time.

Chronological is the time that the timekeeper is kindly counting now.

Psychological time is the time that goes by quickly when we enjoy intense experiences that absorb us, and that seems infinite when we are waiting or suffering.

 Novels create their own time.

For instance in the story by Monterroso

The storyteller is in the future telling us a story that happened in a mediate past.

For instance in An occurrence al Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Bierce

A man is going to be hanged but the rope snaps, he reach the river crawls by the bank, reaches his house and, when he is about to embrace his wife … the knot tightens… He has imagined all that in the seconds that the knot tightens.

The storyteller may place himself

• at the time of the action (in the present)
• in the past and narrate the present or the future
• in the present o future and narrate the past

For example in Rayuela by Julio Cortázar

The last chapters end by referring to one another chaotically. You will never finish the novel if you follow the instructions of the author.

For example in Ulysses by James Joyce

Narrates barely 24 hours in the life of Leopold Bloom

3.   Level of reality

Initially, there are two levels or reality: The real world and the fantastic world. The storyteller and the story may be in different levels of reality

For example, in the short story of Monterrosso

The story is in a fantastic level, no doubt. The storyteller is in a real level opposed to what it narrates.

The word STILL (was there) is a manifestation of surprise: was there, although it shouldn’t be

For example, in The Turn of the Screw by Henry James

There are two storytellers: the first one that transmits what he has heard the governess, and the governess who affirms she has seen the ghosts. But the governess believed to see, so it is a real story narrated from a subjective viewpoint

For instance in “To the search of Lost Time” by Marcel Proust

What is important is not what happens in the real world but the way his memory retains the lived experience.

All those three dimensions should lead to the persuasive power of a novel.