Novels attempt to render human experience; that's really all they are. They are meant to convey empathy for the character.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Good fiction creates empathy. A novel takes you somewhere and asks you to look through the eyes of another person, to live another life.
I think that novels are tools of thought. They are moral philosophy with the theory left out, with just the examples of the moral situations left standing.
Fiction allows you to embody certain ideas and give them an emotional reality. The characters allow you to get close viscerally to an idea.
I like reading novels because it provides insight into human behavior. I am really interested in feelings and think they are what define us as a species. When you really get it right in acting, it's an act of empathy. You feel less distant from others, and that is really exciting.
To me, novels are a trip of discovery, and you discover things that you don't know and you assume that many of your readers don't know, and you try to bring them to life on the page.
Novels are a kind of experiment in selfhood, for the reader as well as for the author.
Novels give you the opportunity to create a whole world. Because you create people, you make them talk... You decide who they are, whether they live or die. It's the closest thing to feeling like a god that you can come to.
Novels demand a certain complexity of narrative and scope, so it's necessary for the characters to change.
I know when I go and see a writer, the first thing I think to myself is, 'Are they the character in the book?' You just can't help it; it's the way people are.
But novels are never about what they are about; that is, there is always deeper, or more general, significance. The author may not be aware of this till she is pretty far along with it.