Library
The Writing of Fiction · 4 of 12
The Writing of Fiction
writing HIGH

Constructing a Novel: Time, Length & the Crowded Stage

The Writing of Fiction Edith Wharton
novel passage-of-time length dialogue crowded-stage

Key Principle

The novel's two central difficulties are the point of view (treated separately) and the rendering of the passage of time — and around them cluster the discipline of length, dialogue, and the size of the cast. All are governed by one idea: scale and inclusion are deduced from the argument, never added for effect.

Why This Matters

A novel is long enough to let the writer's errors compound. Misjudge the passage of time and character change reads as "an arbitrary sleight-of-hand"; misjudge length and the book sags; crowd the stage and the central figures lose definition. Each failure is a failure of selection at large scale, where it is hardest to see and most damaging.

Good Examples

  • The passage of time — the "central mystery." Make character change "seem not an arbitrary sleight-of-hand but the natural result of growth." The means is restraint: change is carried "in the inconspicuous transitional pages ... that lead from climax to climax," "not fearing to go slowly ... to be as colourless and quiet as life often is in the intervals between its high moments" — while "keeping so firm a hold on the main lines of one's characters that they emerge modified and yet themselves." It rests finally on "the novelist's own deep belief in his characters." Tolstoy is supreme here.
  • Length deduced from argument. "One should always be able to say of a novel: 'It might have been longer,' never: 'It need not have been so long.'" Length "is not so much a matter of pages as of the mass and quality of what they contain." Know whether you hold "a Salathiel Pavy theme or a 'Paradise Lost' one."
  • Dialogue as the spray, not the wave. Dialogue "should be reserved for the culminating moments, and regarded as the spray into which the great wave of narrative breaks." Sparing use both "emphasize[s] the crises" and produces "a greater effect of continuous development."
  • The uncrowded stage. "It is the unnecessary characters who do the crowding." Depict a society by "choosing as principal characters figures so typical that each connotes a whole section of the social background." The Théâtre Français rule: "the chairs must all be sat in."

Counterpoints

  • The merely-long novel. Rolland's "Jean-Christophe" lacks "that subtler kind of composition which ... deduc[es] the length of a book from the importance of its argument."
  • The all-dialogue novel. Real talk omits "all that is understood between" people, so an all-dialogue book forces characters to "tell each other many things that each already knows the other knows" — padding "by-talk" that destroys economy. (Even James's "The Awkward Age" "lost more than it gained by being powdered into dialogue.")
  • The portrait gallery. Dostoievsky's "Karamazoff" opening fails as "a gallery of portraits against a blank wall" — characters described but "not allowed to surprise them in action."
  • The unfollowed character. "Neither novelist nor playwright should ever venture on creating a character without first following it out to the end"; unemployed characters are "embarrassing problems."

Key Quotes

"One should always be able to say of a novel: 'It might have been longer,' never: 'It need not have been so long.'" — Edith Wharton, Chapter III: Constructing a Novel

"Dialogue ... should be reserved for the culminating moments, and regarded as the spray into which the great wave of narrative breaks." — Edith Wharton, Chapter III: Constructing a Novel

Rules of Thumb

  • Carry the passage of time in the quiet transitional pages, slowly; trust your belief in the characters to make change feel grown, not engineered.
  • Reserve dialogue for crises; let narrative carry the development between them.
  • Cut every character who is not necessary — a few deeply drawn figures beat many half-drawn ones.
  • Never launch a character you have not followed to its end.

Related References