Novels often use perspective as a narrative device

Modernist novels used unconventional narrative approaches

Modernist writers in the early 20th century sought to capture the complexities of the human mind in their fiction. Novelists like Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, Jean Rhys, and William Faulkner experimented with the form by using unconventional approaches to narrative, time, and structure. This lecture from Dr. Madeleine Davies from the University of Reading explains how modernists revolutionized fiction, using Woolf’s “Mrs. Dalloway” as a primary example.

Novels sometimes use unreliable narrators

When we read a book, we’re effectively forced to take the narrator’s word for what’s unfolding. But what if that narrator has a biased take on those events? What if, in a general sense, that narrator can’t be trusted? Enter the unreliable narrator, a strategic way of shaping a story that adds an additional layer to the narrative.

Jane Austen revolutionized a form of narration in the novel

Austen's books are narrated by a third-person omniscient narrator, which was not new for her time. Austen, however, helped popularize a little-used technique called "free indirect discourse," in which the narrator took on the style and voice of the character being described without drifting into the first-person perspective. It's a technique still often used by novelists today.

Ghosts can work as powerful literary devices

Noteworthy American novels like Toni Morrison’s "Beloved" tell us how spirits help deliver information and greater truths unknown to the characters. Wondering about our souls is common in literature, and the phantoms in these tales offer a unique way of contemplating the complicated experience of being human.

Shakespeare’s storytelling uses intricate, intertwining narratives

According to one professor, readers return to Shakespeare’s plays, not for his storylines, but to learn how things unfold. In the process, they often use his plays to understand why humans act the way they do.

Studies show that reading fiction enhances empathy

It might sound like a cliché, but fiction really can make you a better person, objectively speaking. Numerous studies have proven that reading fiction, especially novels, can enhance empathy by exposing people to multiple perspectives and experiences.

Kurt Vonnegut sought to invert the 'shapes of stories'

Kurt Vonnegut is among the most popular postmodernists, renowned for his humor and willingness to move between genres. This clip from a lecture on narrative is a perfect example of those tendencies, with Vonnegut diagramming typical story structures only to mock their predictability. It's not only an enlightening look at the way stories are told—it's also just good comedy.

Twain read (and lampooned) classic literature

Ever the ironist, Twain claimed to have “ no liking for novels or stories.” Obviously, that was untrue: He read widely, devouring books by Charles Dickens, slave narratives, and texts on astronomy. He also loved John Milton’s “Paradise Lost,” which he called “something everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.”

'Everybody else is working to change, persuade, tempt and control them. The best readers come to fiction to be free of all that noise.'

- Author Philip Roth (1933-2018)

Gonzo Journalism places the author at the center of the events

Some may describe Gonzo as a more daring style of subjective reporting than New Journalism, as it prioritizes the personal experience and opinions of the writer. Gonzo pieces also tend to feature hyperbole, comedy and taboo subjects.

Dickens' childhood job influenced his novels

After his father was imprisoned, Dickens took up work in a shoe-blacking factory. His novels often featured hardscrabble protagonists, many of them children, forced to navigate the grim realities of the Industrial Revolution. Today, stories that follow in that model are described as "Dickensian."

The Beats autobiographical impulse is still influential

The Beats autobiographical approach to literature is seen in contemporary autofiction. While autofiction emerged as a literary term in the 1970s, its philosophy has several antecedents, including Colette’s Claudine novels, Marcel Proust’s "In Search of Lost Time" and Beat writer Jack Kerouac’s "On the Road."

The opening chapters of bestselling novels are thousands of words shorter than they were in the 1950s

Novels like "The Catcher in the Rye" and "Lord of the Flies" averaged opening chapters with about 4,500 words. Titles from the 2020s, on the other hand, including "Fourth Wing" and "Lessons in Chemistry," are closer to 2,500 words.

Is streaming the new novel?

Ever since the rise of “prestige television” in the early 2000s, critics and viewers alike have argued that TV has replaced the novel by becoming the most significant storytelling medium, citing the cultural importance of shows like “The Sopranos,” “The Wire,” and “Succession.” This essay notes that streaming has strengthened that argument, turning episodes into chapters, and explains why this has been bad for storytelling in both forms.

A scientific analysis of famous time travel stories

This 8-minute video explores how time travel influences the narrative arc of several movies, books and video games, from Harry Potter to A Christmas Carol. (Warning: it contains spoilers!) J.K. Rowling and Charles Dickens set myriad parameters as they’re worldbuilding to avoid paradoxes and create quasi-logical timelines. By drawing diagrams as he’s speaking, the video breaks down how time works in some of popular culture’s most beloved fictional universes.

Dystopian literature is a form of speculative fiction

The classification includes any fiction that "speculates" about how society might operate in the future or in contexts different from the present reality. The genre is an umbrella term for science fiction, fantasy, alternative historical fiction, dystopian and utopian fiction, and apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction.

Why both the left and the right use 'Animal Farm' as an allegory

Figures from both ends of the political spectrum have claimed Orwell's novella as their own, sometimes ignoring inconvenient aspects of the plot or details of Orwell's biography. This analysis of those political reactions explores why the text is so malleable.

Friedrich's perspective draws in viewers

Friedrich produced several works, including "Wanderer," portraying figures with their back to the viewer. The effect—called Rückenfigur, or ”figure from the back”—can create complex emotions of longing, immersion, or awe.

Explore a list of the 100 best novels of all time, compiled by some of the world's best living writers, including Salman Rushdie, Stephen King, and Jennifer Egan.

Explore a list of the best novels of all time

A number of Hitchcock's most celebrated films are based on novels

Hitchcock’s films are often cited as being literary, and with good reason—many of them are based on works of literature. This list from the Los Angeles Public Library not only names the many novels that were adapted for the screen by Hitchcock, like "Rebecca (1940)," but also provides excellent context for how and why Hitchcock came to make his adaptations.

In the 'block universe' model, the past, present, and future exist simultaneously

According to special relativity, observers do not experience the same events in the same order, but all perspectives are valid. This means what is considered one person's as yet unexperienced future may have already taken place in someone else's past.

O’Connor’s stories feature Southern outcasts thrust into bizarre situations

The Deep South is presented as a shadowy place, filled with scheming figures posing as upstanding citizens, like the conniving door-to-door Bible salesman of “Good Country People,” and smug intellectuals receiving their comeuppances, like the condescending college graduate of “Everything That Rises Must Converge.”

John Steinbeck's philosophical ideas, which he often explored in his novels, wrestled with the role of the individual and the power of community.

How famous writers chose their pen names

From Joseph Conrad to JK Rowling, writers employ pseudonyms for all kinds of reasons. How they find those pseudonyms, however, depends on the individual.

A guide to the romance genre's major tropes

This guide breaks down romance's most prominent tropes, or narrative patterns, used by romance writers and adored by their fans. After you learn about "friends to lovers," "marriage of convenience," and "forced proximity," you'll start to see your favorite romance reads in an entirely new light.

Browse a detailed visual analysis of over 200,000 similes—comparisons that often use 'like' or 'as'—from popular fiction to see how frequently writers the same idiomatic expressions.

Famed poet TS Eliot rejected the manuscript for George Orwell's political fable 'Animal Farm,' writing that its criticism of authoritarianism was not 'the right point of view.'

American short story writer Flannery O'Connor raised 40 peacocks, which became potent symbols for her fiction's elegant violence

Netflix profits when you're not watching, and its movies are designed that way—read a detail-rich critical essay exposing lesser-known Netflix takes

Existentialist writer Jean-Paul Sartre coined the famous phrase 'Hell is—other people' in his play 'No Exit'

The Brothers Grimm were lawyers before they were storytellers, and became interested in fairy tales as they began investigating how rules and customs had been passed down through cultures.

The Dracula character, now seen as the vampire archetype, was inspired by a seafood-induced nightmare its creator experienced.

A Yale student wrote a profound essay about the consulting industry's influence on elite college students that was published in a book of her writing after she died in a post-graduation car accident.

See the most iconic photos from four decades of LIFE magazine

The 19th-century painters of the Hudson River School were among the first American romantics, with portraits that displayed the natural beauty of the young country.

Play the role of a student in a game where you try to navigate college and remain debt-free, selecting different income levels, high school experience, race, ethnicity, and more.

The first robot in literature may have been a 'mechanical man' in 1907's 'Ozma of Oz,' a book in L Frank Baum's 'Wizard of Oz' series.

Warren Buffett's former professor Benjamin Graham is known as the 'father of value investing,' a strategy in which investors seek to buy stocks trading below their intrinsic worth.

How the most famous Ebola book, The Hot Zone, which sold 3.5 million copies and was translated into 30 languages, got aspects of the disease so wrong.

American dance legend Martha Graham, sometimes called 'the Picasso of dance,' refused to perform at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin and conceived the piece 'Chronicle' in response to the experience.

Gerrymandering works through two techniques: cracking opposing voters across districts to dilute their power, and packing them into a few to waste their votes in lopsided majorities.

Art theft is the third-largest source of criminal revenues worldwide, thanks in part to the subjective nature of valuing a work of art.

Chaos theory—informally known as the butterfly effect—is the reason why weather forecasts are presented with probabilities rather than certainties.

Quincy Jones' 'Big Band Bossa Nova' helped introduce bossa nova—a jazz-influenced Brazilian genre—to the US

Objects can be 3D printed with light by projecting 2D computerized tomography (CT) scans onto rotating cylinders of resin, which solidify upon exposure.

While atoms are normally made of protons, neutrons, and electrons, exotic ones have been built with antimatter—alternate versions of normal matter that live for fractions of a second and are about a billion times as rare.

After the Boston Tea Party, colonists switched to coffee, which became the main morning drink for revolutionaries.

'Silent' fireworks have gained more interest in recent years as a quieter celebratory option.