KnowraNovelNovelA long work of prose fiction that can sustain extended plots, settings, and character development.BriefConnectPlot: The sequence and causal arrangement of events in a story. A novel can braid several conflicts and timelines into an extended plot.Novella: A work of prose fiction shorter than a novel and longer than a short story. Its tighter scale offers a direct contrast to the novel’s potential breadth.Ancient Greek novel: A prose-fiction tradition of the ancient Greek world, including travel and romance narratives. These surviving works show that long prose fiction predates the modern novel.Historical novel: A novel set in a past period and shaped by its historical circumstances. It uses the novel’s length to dramatize lives within a reconstructed past.Literary realism: A literary mode that represents ordinary life and social conditions with particularity. The novel’s scale made detailed depictions of everyday society especially powerful.Narrative perspective: The position and voice through which a narrative presents events and information. A novel’s chosen perspective governs what readers know about its characters and world.Short story: A brief work of prose fiction, usually organized around a limited set of events. Its compression contrasts with the novel’s capacity for extended development.The Tale of Genji: An early eleventh-century Japanese prose narrative by Murasaki Shikibu, centered on court life. Its scale and sustained character development make it a landmark in novel history.Detective fiction: Fiction organized around investigating a crime and identifying its perpetrator. Novel-length mysteries can sustain clues, suspects, and investigation across a large cast.Jane Austen: An English novelist whose works examine courtship, class, and manners through social observation and irony. Austen demonstrated how domestic plots could expose the structures of social life.Show all 25Linked from 41 pagesNarrativeBroader topic: The novel is a form built to develop extended narratives.Episodic narrativeRelated: Many novels favor continuous development rather than relatively independent episodes.Naturalism (literature)Narrower topic: The novel’s scope allowed naturalists to trace how conditions shape lives over time.ScreenwritingCompared with: Novels can narrate private thought directly, while screenplays generally rely on performable action and sound.BookBroader topic: Novels are a major literary form published as books.Television adaptationRelated: Novels are a frequent source because their plots and inner narration require reshaping for television.Psychological realismNarrower topic: The novel’s scope made sustained attention to private motives and emotional change possible.ScreenplayCompared with: A novel can describe private thought directly, while a screenplay prioritizes filmable material.Show all 41