What Is a Novel's Purpose?

What is a novel for? What is the point of them? Why do we even bother to read them? Yes, I know these sound like stupid questions, but the answers really will help you with the job of writing novels - both genre and literary novels.

• First, I'll deal with the What Is A Novel's Purpose? question (and I'll do that by explaining why we read fiction).



• Then I'll move on to explain how all this helps when it comes to writing novels.

1. Why Do We Read Novels?

For Entertainment and Escape

This is perhaps the biggest motivation behind us picking up a good book. Novels fill time that might otherwise be filled with boredom, and they offer a temporary escape from our workaday worlds.

And incidentally, entertainment and escape don't just explain what is a novel's purpose, but also what is the point of going to the theatre, riding a rollercoaster, listening to some music, or just about any of those things we do to take us away from our everyday lives and concerns.

For Understanding

From the day we are born to the day we die, we are all on a quest to improve ourselves. We might not always know it, but all of us are struggling to understand this world we call home and what it takes to get by in it.

Much of our understanding, of course, comes from our first-hand experiences. But it also comes from hearing about the experiences of others - and what is a novel if not one of the best ways there is to tap into what our fellow humans think and feel about this world and our place in it.

All good novels have something to say about one aspect or another of the human condition - about how to find true love, about the horrors of war, about a million things.

• Sometimes when we read these thoughts and insights, we will have arrived at similar conclusions ourselves, and we will take comfort from knowing that we are not alone.

• More often, an author will shed fresh, unexpected light on an issue, and our understanding of that issue is deepened or even changed, making us grow as a person.