What a good novel is

William Somerset Maugham (1874–1965) was an English novelist and dramatist.

What a good novel is

I would like to venture to talk about what characteristics a good novel should have in my opinion. Its subject matter should be of wide interest, i.e., not only of a group of people— whether critics, professors, highly cultured people, bus conductors or bartenders — but also of a more general human nature, appealing to both men and women. A novelist who chooses a subject with only a momentary interest is a shallow novelist, because once people lose interest in such a subject, his novel is as worthless as last week's newspaper. The story told by the author should be reasonable and organized, the story should have a beginning, an intermediate, and an ending, and the end must be the natural ending of the beginning. The plot should have possibilities, not only to facilitate the development of the theme, but also to be naturally generated by the story. The characters in the novel must have personalities, their behavior should be based on their personalities, and the reader must not be allowed to argue: "So-and-so would never do that kind of thing." On the contrary, the reader has to admit: "It is entirely reasonable for so-and-so to do that." "I think it would be better if the characters were interesting again. Although Flaubert's "Emotional Education" was highly praised by many famous critics, the protagonist he chose was a person without personality, without vitality, without any characteristics, so that what he did and what happened to him could not arouse interest. As a result, although there are many outstanding features in the novel, the whole novel is still difficult to read. I felt that I had to explain why I thought the characters had to have personalities. Because it is difficult for novelists to create completely new characters, it is difficult for strong people, the materials used by novelists are human nature, although in various environments human nature is ever-changing, but it is not infinite, people have created novels, stories, plays, epics for thousands of years, a novelist can create a new type of character The opportunity is very small, looking back at the entire history of novels, the only original task I can think of is Don Quixote. Yet even for him, I was not surprised to hear that a knowledgeable critic had found an ancient ancestor for him. Therefore, as long as a novelist can observe his characters through personality, as long as his characters are distinct and distinct enough to make people think that he is an original character, then the novelist is already very successful.

Since behavior should derive from character, so should language. An upper-class woman should talk like an upper-class woman. A prostitute's language has to be like a prostitute. A person who solicits customers at the racetrack or a lawyer also has to speak in accordance with their respective identities (I have to say that the work of Mérieggens or Henry James has the disadvantage that their characters speak in the same tone as Mériegnes or Henry James). The dialogue in a novel should not be disorganized, nor should it be used to express the author's opinion. It must be subordinated to the shaping of the typical characters and the development of the storyline, and the narrative part should be written directly, vividly and clearly, just convincingly explaining the motivations of the characters and the environment in which they are located, and not too lengthy. The writing should be concise, so that the general culturally cultivated reader does not feel difficult when reading, and the style should be consistent with the content, just like the exquisite shoes of the style should match the well-sized feet. Finally, good fiction should be compelling. Although I will put this point in the end, it is the most basic point, without which everything else would be lost. The more thought-provoking a novel is while providing entertainment, the better. The word entertainment has many meanings, and providing fun or pastime is just one of them. The mistake people make is to think that entertainment is the only thing that matters in its sense. In fact, Wuthering Heights or The Brothers Karamazov and Trisrandy Or Sister Condy are equally entertaining. Although the degree of infection varies, it is equally real. Of course, novelists have the right to deal with important themes that are closely related to each person, such as the existence of God, the immortality of the soul, the meaning and value of life, and so on. But in doing so, it is best to remember Dr. Johnson's wise words: "No one can give new true insights, or true new insights, on such subjects as God, the soul, or life." Even if these themes are an integral part of the story the novelist is going to tell, and the typicalization of the character is necessary, affecting the behavior of the character—that is, if not, they would not behave that way—the novelist can only expect the reader to be interested in the subjects he is dealing with.

Even if a novel has all the advantages I have proposed (which is quite demanding), it will have one kind of flaw in form or another, like a white flaw, and it is difficult to be perfect. Thus, no novel is perfect, a short story may be perfect, depending on its length, can be read in about 10 minutes to an hour, and its subject matter is single, clear, and complete description of a spiritual or material event, or a series of closely related events. It can be non-additive. I believe that a state of perfection like this is achievable for short stories, and I don't think it's hard to find a batch of such short stories. However, the novel is an unrestricted narrative literature, which can look like War and Peace, showing a series of interrelated events at the same time, while showing many characters at the same time. It could also be as short as Garman. In order to tell the story to the truth, the author always has to drop to other things related to the story, and these things are not always interesting. Events often need to be spaced in time, and in order to balance the work, the author has to try to insert some content to fill the gap left by the interval. Such passages are called "bridges". Although most novelists are born with a talent for "bridges", in the process, boredom is inevitable. Novelists are also human beings, and inevitably they will be affected by the customs of the times, not to mention that novelists are more emotional than ordinary people, so he often involuntarily writes something that follows the world's style and is short-lived. For example, before the 19th century, novelists paid little attention to the description of scenes, and wrote about something at most one or two sentences. But when Romantic writers, such as Chateaubriand, became popular with the public, it became fashionable to describe for the sake of description, and when a character went out on the street to buy a toothbrush at the stove, the author would tell you what the house he was passing by looked like, what goods were sold in the shop, and so on. Dawn and sunset, starry nights, cloudless sunny skies, snow-capped mountains, gloomy trees — all of this leads to endless lengthy descriptions. Many of the depictions are beautiful, but off-topic. It is only much later that writers understand that no matter how poetic and realistic the description of the scene, unless it helps to advance the story or helps the reader to understand certain situations of the characters, it is superfluous nonsense. This is still the occasional shortcoming of the novel, and the other shortcoming is intrinsic and inevitable. It takes time, at least a few weeks, months, and sometimes years to complete a rambling novel. Writers' creativity tends to decline, and that's a natural thing to do. In this way, he can only insist on writing, and what is written in this situation is simply amazing if it is still attractive to the reader.

In the past, readers always wanted novels to be as long as possible, because they spent money on novel books, and of course they wanted to read them. So the writers took the trouble to add a lot of material to the stories they told, and they found a shortcut to insert novels into the novel, sometimes the inserted parts look like a novella, and have nothing to do with the theme of the whole novel, and even if there is, it is far-fetched. Cervantes, the author of Don Quixote, did just that, and the boldness was unparalleled. The inserted text, which has since been seen as a stain on this monumental masterpiece, is no longer patient enough to read. Because of this, Cervantes has been attacked by modern critics. However, we know that he avoided this bad tendency in the second half, and therefore did much better than the first half, writing chapters that were considered to be incredible. Sadly, his successors (who certainly don't read critical articles) didn't stop using this approach, and they continued to provide booksellers with tons of cheap stories that were enough to satisfy the needs of their readers. By the 19th century, new forms of publishing faced novelists with new temptations. The monthly magazine was very successful for publishing pastime literature at great length, and although some people scoffed at it, it provided a good opportunity for fiction writers, that is, to serialize novels in monthly magazines for a good remuneration. Almost at the same time, publishers also found it profitable to serialize the novels of well-known writers in monthly magazines. Writers are contractually required to provide publishers with a certain number of novels on a regular basis, or to write a certain number of pages. In this way, they are forced to tell stories slowly, and when they write, they are full of words. We know from their own words that the authors of these serial novels, even the most prominent of them, such as Dickens, Thackeray and Trollope, do not feel that it is an unbearable and heavy burden to hand over again and again the part of the novel waiting for the serial. No wonder they had to stretch the novel! No wonder they had to drag the story to the ground with irrelevant content! So, if you consider that the novelists of the time had so many obstacles and pitfalls, then you won't be surprised when you find that the best novels of the time also have flaws. In fact, to my surprise, they don't have as many flaws as I thought.

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