“It gives you an opportunity to use the skills you have learned and apply them to real-world experiences.”
Alison Good, Business Administration
In the beginning, the author introduces you to a whole new world: new place, new names, new objects, and new issues. The reader's mind gets busy here becoming accustomed to the new world the author lays out. By twenty or thirty pages or so you will be well on your way.
It's crucial to get the characters straight at this point. Most novelists will introduce you to the main characters early on. Figure out who they are, learn their names and their relation to each other. Learn their biological, their social and their personal relation to each other. If the names are foreign, it is especially important that you get them straight in your mind or your reading will become confused and stay that way. Sometimes I make notes or a quick family tree on the last blank pages of the book. This helps me keep it all clear in my mind.
As you read the beginning, you will begin to get a sense of a gathering storm, then something will happen and you might think, “Uh oh, this is going to lead to trouble.” As they say, the plot thickens. When this happens, you are reading what is called “the complicating action.”
Novels are very good at situating characters into a larger setting. Pay attention to the relationship between an individual and the various identities that they inhabit: familial, social, national. Do these identities create coherence for the characters and do they create disharmony?
Look out for the time scheme. Some novels proceed steadily through from the past to the present. Novelists though are apt to makes jumps through time. They might jump from the present into the past or from the far past to the more recent past. They might skip years: they might spend a great deal of time writing about one short moment. The time scheme of the novel is often a meaningful part.
As you get more deeply into the novel, you might notice that certain words, images and emotions are repeating. What are those repetitions? What do they signal to the reader? These repetitions suggest the themes that the novel will explore. Beware of looking for a “moral to the story.” Novels often focus on and investigate complex issues.
If you want to read like a pro, here is how to do it. Whenever reading stimulates a thought or a feeling in you, underline the passage or write a note in the margin. Then your precious ideas won't vanish as soon as you have them: in fact, they will lead to other ideas. When you pick up the book later and see your notes, your reading will come vividly back to mind.
The plot of a novel is a series of actions that span from the beginning to the end. How are the actions related to each other? Are the characters responsible for them? Do they inhabit a world where action and intention are clearly related? Or are the main events of the novel more random, suggesting a chaotic world?
As you finish, think about how the novel has extended you understanding of human life. It might give you insight into a particular time and place that you did not know about before. It might take you to new parts of the world or give you knowledge about experiences that are beyond the range of your life. It might extend our knowledge about basic human issues even though it is about types of people that seem different from us.
Finally, the conclusion of course is crucial. Novels often put the characters through a grueling experience and then leave them with some degree of hope. Why did the novelist choose to end novel at that particular place? Is it convincing? Does it work well with the tensions that the novelist explores throughout the novel?
