How to Read a Novel
Posted 5 years 9 months ago by The University of Edinburgh
Get more from your reading
What makes a great novel? How is a novel woven together? How can we best appreciate works of fiction?
Answer these questions and more with this course from The University of Edinburgh.
On the course you’ll discover four of the main building blocks of modern fiction: plot, characterisation, dialogue, and setting using examples from a range of texts including the four novels shortlisted for the 2024 James Tait Black fiction prize. You’ll also explore the formal strategies authors use, how they came to be, and how they affect us as readers.
This course is for anyone who enjoys reading. You don’t need any past experience. You don’t need to have read all four books before you commence the course, but you may find it enhances your learning experience if you have.
Image: John Michael Thomson (2018) CC0
This course is for anyone who enjoys reading. You don’t need any past experience. You don’t need to have read all four books before you commence the course, but you may find it enhances your learning experience if you have.
Image: John Michael Thomson (2018) CC0
- Identify key strategies used by authors to alter the temporal progression of the narrative.
- Reflect on the effects generated by a narrative frame.
- Evaluate novels for signs of narrative unreliability.
- Discuss my reading of contemporary fiction with a large online learning community.
- Explore ways of understanding character, such as behaviour, speech, and motives.
- Explore the impact of various settings on the development of character and plot.
- Evaluate the effect of different ways of presenting dialogue, and the impact of dialect speech.