Novels
The difficulty with a novel is not understanding it. It is remembering it, and finding the right ten lines out of three hundred pages.
How to make a long text manageable
Read it once without stopping
Do not take notes on a first reading. Get the whole shape into your head. Notes taken before you know how a novel ends are usually notes about the wrong things.
Make a one-line chapter list
One line per chapter, no more. Six words each. This single page will be worth more in the last week of revision than fifty pages of notes.
Track each main character across the book
Three columns: where they start, what changes them, where they end. A character who does not change is also worth noting, and why.
Collect ten quotations, no more
Short ones. Choose each because it is useful for more than one question. Ten well-chosen quotations beat fifty half-remembered ones.
Write the themes down as sentences, not words
Poverty is not a theme; it is a topic. The novel shows how poverty narrows the choices available to people who are otherwise capable is a theme, and it can be argued.
Choosing evidence in a long text
The commonest weakness in novel answers is evidence that is vague: at one point in the story, later on, in the end. Vague evidence suggests you cannot find the place, and examiners read it that way.
Precise evidence does not require a long quotation. When she refuses the money at the railway station is precise, and it is only eight words. Two or three short, exact references are stronger than one long quotation.
For each theme you prepare, fix three moments in the novel that show it — early, middle and late. Three moments across the book let you show development, which is what higher marks are given for.
Structure and narration
- How is the novel divided? Parts, chapters, sections, time jumps. Divisions usually mark stages in the argument of the book, not only in its plot.
- Is the story told in order? If not, ask what is gained by telling it out of order. Usually it is either suspense or irony.
- Who narrates, and how much do they know? The same questions as for a short story, but with more room for the narrator's attitude to show itself.
- Where does the novel begin and end? The first page and the last page of a novel are rarely accidental. Compare them; the comparison often answers a whole essay question by itself.
The commonest novel mistake
Answering a question about a theme by telling the story from the beginning. The examiner is not checking whether you read the book; they are checking whether you can argue about it.
A simple discipline: every paragraph of your essay should begin with a point, not with an event. If a paragraph opens with Then he goes to…, rewrite the opening sentence.