Book Review: The art of fiction by David Lodge (Penguin) - Part 3

Here are my notes and favourite quotes. I also added useful or fun videos and/or links.

6 - Point of view

The choice of the point(s) of view from which the story is told is arguably the most important single decision that the novelist has to make, for it fundamentally affects the way readers will respond, emotionally and morally, to the fictional characters and their actions.
There is no rule or regulation that says that a novel may not shift its point of view whenever the writer chooses; but if it's not done according to some aesthetic plan or principle, the reader's involvement, the reader's "production" of the meaning of the text, will be disturbed.

Examples.

7 - Mystery

An effect of suspense: What will happen?
An effect of enigma or mystery: How dis she/he do it?
These two questions are the mainsprings of narrative interest and as old as storytelling itself.
One of the staple ingredients of traditional romance, for example, was mystery concerning the origins and parentage of characters, invariably resolved to the advantage of the hero and/or heroine, a plot motif that persists deep into nineteenth-century fiction and is still common in popular fiction today [...].
Victorian novelists like Dickens and Wilkie Collins exploited mystery in connection with crimes and misdemeanours, leading eventually to the evolution of a separate subgenre, the classic detective story of Conan Doyle and his successors.
The effect of mystery is [...] maintained by a steady stream of hints, clues and puzzling data.

For fun

8 – Names

In a novel names are never neutral. They always signify, if it is only ordinariness. Comic, satiric or didactic writers can afford to be exuberantly inventive, or obviously allegorical, in their naming (Thwackum, Pumblechook, Pilgrim). Realistic novelits favour mundane names with appropriate connotations (Emma Woodhouse, Adam Bede). 

Creative writing workshop

Question 

Which is your favourite character's name? Why?