13 Ways of Looking at the Novel: Parts Seven and Eight

7.  As what’s left out
8.  As what’s put in

I’ve decided to smash these together, because in the workshop I used the same short story to illustrate both sides of the whole question of detail.

The seventh way of looking at a novel (or work of art) is by what’s left out, omitted, understated or compressed.

Read Lydia Davis’s story “The Caterpillar” from her Collected Stories.  Or listen to this guy read it.

What is left out?

The essential why it matters so to the narrator.

How is that left out?

What’s left understated?

What’s been compressed.

Now for the eight way of looking at the novel, turn the question around.

If the eighth way of looking at the novel is as what’s put in, selection, detail, and expansion, take the same piece and see what details are included, how they are expanded into significance. Davis has a wonderful detail about the caterpillar “quite speedily walking around the slopes of my hand.”  But more importantly, there’s a kind of accumulation of small signs that this narrator is obsessing because she cannot bear the consequences of her feelings.  “You get somewhat attached to any living thing once you try to help it.”

Omission and understatement are there so as to not pound a message into the reader’s head.  The reader will get it.  The reader will bring experience to bear.
Selection and expansion foreground critical details that add to the intent of the piece.

So, how do we know what to leave out and what to put in?  Watch for your own patterns of thinking as you write.  What are the “invisibles” telling you?