Textual World Theory (Writing a Novel)

Terms You Need for Writing about the Novel

Textual World Theory

Because the novel is such an open form, it is home to many literary possibilities, experiments, and flights of fancy. Its subject matter is nearly infinite, and because there is no formal limit on its length, a single novel can explore multiple generations, families, locations, and even worlds. This allows novelists an enormous amount of creative freedom, which means that readers benefit from a potential for diversity which keeps expectations changing, allowing surprise to remain no matter how old the novelistic form grows. The flip side of this expansive freedom however, is that writers can create such multilayered and complex works that it becomes difficult for the reader to keep track of the multitude of events that are taking place simultaneously, not to mention the range of characters and even shifting settings which are all novelistic possibilities, even commonplaces. In order to deal with such exponential possibilities, literary theorists have developed something known as textual (or fictional) world theory, which provides a framework of guidelines and a broad terminology for dissecting the tangled web the novel often weaves.

While the theory of textual worlds is a subfield of narratology and novel studies, it is nonetheless very detailed and remarkably large, so attempting to provide a survey here would be impossible. Instead, I will focus on two concepts which I have found most important, and most applicable to the study of the novel regardless of your level of literary competence. The first of these is known as the rule of minimal departure, which, besides sounding about as cool as a literary term can, explains a great deal about the basis of shared assumptions that makes novelistic understanding possible. The second is a hierarchy known as textual (or fictional) world levels, which is an invaluable tool for understanding and talking about texts which would be difficult to explain in more traditional, mono-dimensional terms.

Whenever we open up even the simplest of stories, there is an immediate impasse we must overcome. No matter how elementary it may seem to us, the fact remains that there is a major ontological gap between the world in which we live, and the world that the story creates. However, because the novel is a written, as opposed to an oral, form, there is no one there to ease the transition, to explain to us what is about to happen, nor to tell us about the world we are going to be entering in advance. As a result, we begin reading each novel with a leap of faith, a voluntary cliff-dive into unknown waters. As with all such jumps, the level of terror depends on the height of the cliff, and different novels can raise or lower this distance depending on the way they begin. For example, a novel can begin with the introduction of a historical setting with which we are familiar, followed by the introduction of a character and an explanation about who she is and what she is doing there. In this way, we can orient ourselves relatively quickly, and what follows will be more easily comprehensible.

On the other hand, many novelists prefer to launch us from a great height, and the vertigo we experience in these instances may last for much, much longer. An example of this would be a story that begins in medias res, or in the middle of the action, where we see a character in the midst of doing something (usually something exciting) without the benefit of any introductory explanations. We don't know where this person is, nor why, nor even who it may be, and so getting our bearings takes much longer. Many novels clear this up relatively quickly, using in medias res as a hooking device to gain our attention from the outset, but some make this kind of disorientation the ordering principle of the work, and it becomes our task to figure out what is going on.

However, no matter how complex the situation into which are initially plunged, we are able to figure out (in all but the most experimental novels) what is happening, despite the fact that there are so many possibilities. For example, take the following opening lines:

Having never attempted a deed so daring, Ray found himself more excited and nervous than he had ever been in his long career of pilfering the farmer's chickens. He most often came at night when all was quiet and the watchers slept, but he had grown so confident in his stealth, as well as the farmer's incompetence, that he was about to launch a lightning raid in broad daylight.

Despite the lack of introductory text, it is possible to become captivated by what is going on, and to develop a mental picture of the events as they are unfolding. We imagine a male thief who is no longer young, based on his name and the fact that he has been doing this for a long time; we can see in our minds a chicken coup and perhaps a basic farm; we visualize a farmer who is also not young, and who is perhaps not very intelligent; and we even get a sense for the interpersonal relations between the adversaries. All of this we can deduce from what is presented, but it might surprise you to note what other assumptions have to be in place for any of what was presented above to be possible.

For example, readers assume almost without exception that this passage takes place on earth, despite the fact that novels can occur in any place in the universe, or in an entirely imagined place outside this world. Another assumption readers make nearly unanimously is that Ray is a human being, despite the fact that a character in a novel can be any type of being whatsoever, ranging from what we usually take to be inanimate objects to beings which exist only in the imagination. Now, neither of the two assumptions mentioned are unreasonable, but consider an alternative to them for a moment: suppose I suggested that Ray is not a human being at all, but rather a fox, and that he is not an inhabitant of earth but rather of a mythical realm that existed prior to the world we know today? Again, there is nothing in the text that disproves these suggestions, and thinking of Ray as a fox might even be the more satisfying course to take, given what we are told. However, we do not make these assumptions immediately. Why is this? It all has to do with the rule of minimal departure.

The rule of minimal departure has achieved the level of an unspoken agreement between authors and readers, and is the default position which both assume from the outset. Put most basically, the rule states that we will assume everything in the textual world is just as it is in the real world, unless the text indicates otherwise. So, in the above example, we assume the action takes place on earth since that is the only place we know of that could possibly have farms, thieves, and animals. We also assume the character Ray is a human being, since animals are not known to have conscious thoughts, feelings, and emotions. We assume everything in this world, from the physical laws to the dimensions, technologies, constituent populations and species, and moral values, are the same as the ones we know in our own. Only when the text gives us reason to believe otherwise will we entertain other alternatives.

Without the rule of minimal departure, orienting ourselves in the world of a novel with which we are unfamiliar would be difficult indeed, as the author would have to spell out everything in advance. Instead, the author need only describe elements that are relevant to the story itself, unless there are certain fundamental differences between the textual world and our own. In the above example, if Ray is indeed a fox, that will have to be made apparent in some way, or at least so strongly hinted at that it becomes the more satisfying option. Likewise, if the world is different, it must be shown as such through direct explanation or the existence of elements (like non-existent places and different laws of reality) which mark it off from our own world.

So, in the world of almost infinite possibilities, the rule of minimal departure is one of the few reliable constants. This makes it an ideal target for authors who like to defy our expectations to create novel twists and surprises. Usually, authors have to labor to set up our expectations in order to later defy them, but if they work with expectations we already bring to the novel, they have far less work to do, and can create early surprises very efficiently. Imagine for example a novel that begins with a battle between two knights over a contested horse. After being drawn in to the fray, we are stunned when a booming voice calls the combatants to report to their stations, which causes the holographic simulation to end, and the combatants to return to their normal starship-officer attire. There are far more subtle ways for authors to manipulate us through defying our expectations, but the principle is the same for all.

In the spaceship case above, it becomes obvious from an early point that there are two worlds being presented side-by-side; that of the medieval simulation, and the real world of the futuristic space travelers. It seems odd to refer to such an obviously fantastic situation as the "real world," but for the purposes of that novel, it is the appropriate term to use, since that world is the one in which the other is nested. It is simple to distinguish the two in this case, but there are other situations where the distinctions are far more subtle, and the number of nested worlds much higher. In order to deal with these difficult constructions, knowing the notation of textual world levels is essential.

Imagine for a moment a novel where a woman is telling a story to her children. This story features a young man who is basically a slave to his cruel siblings, who longs for a life outside his subjugation. One day while walking through the forest to get water from a spring, he falls into an unseen hole, and is knocked unconscious. When he awakes, he is no longer in a dark hole, but instead in a very bright sunny field, surrounded by animals who are conversing about him. They befriend him, and he agrees to help them with a problem they have been having with a dark spirit who comes at night from another realm and takes their children. They lead him to a portal in the trunk of a tree which he passes through, into an enchanted world where he is the only substantial, physical being. He confronts the dark spirit, captures him, and takes him back to the world of the animals, along with all of the animal children he had previously captured.

Upon seeing the boy return with their offspring and the spirit rendered harmless, the animals rejoice, but tell him to take the being back to his own world, where it can do no harm. He tells them he does not know how to return, and they assure him that he can merely go to sleep to get back. He does so, and is transported back, still possessed of the spirit, which actually helps him to overcome the poor treatment his siblings give him. At this point, the mother reading this story closes the book, noticing her children are asleep, and goes to bed herself, ending the novel.

Now, this was relatively easy to keep track of because it was presented in such a condensed manner, and because we get a clear progression from one world, into a world nested in that one, into a world contained by the previous, and so on, until we reach the final world, at which point we reverse our steps till we return to the first world. Textual world theorists call this arrangement of worlds stacking, and use the LIFO (last in, first out) principle popular in computer programming to handle the various levels. This is an effective way to deal with such complex world-within-world scenarios, and can be modified to deal with even more difficult situations, like that presented by a novel which moves between events in the various levels with are presented.

Obviously, this shifting between levels would make the whole novel far more tangled, and it would be difficult to discuss efficiently. This is where the terminology for textual levels comes in. Scholars have various effective naming systems, but I prefer using one which refers to the base world, the world upon which the rest of the worlds are stacked, as textual world 0, or T0. In the above example, the world of the mother telling the story would be T0. The next level, T1, would be the world of the boy with his domineering siblings. T2 would be used to indicate the animal kingdom, and T3 would denote the world of the dark spirit. Using this kind of logical shorthand makes the novel as a whole much easier to comprehend, and allows us to more easily see how the various levels are related. Further, it also permits us to discuss happenings at various levels far more efficiently, without having to resort constantly to awkward circumlocutions like "the world of the mother and her children," which could becomes highly confusing, especially since different levels could contain the same descriptive elements.

It is important to note that defining the world levels of a given novel is difficult, and sometimes impossible to do, until you have read it in its entirety. After all, how can you know how many levels there will be, since another level can be introduced at any time? Also, what might seem like a single level at one point may actually be several, and what looks like two levels might end up being one. Remember, a textual world level must be separate from those existing at all other levels. These worlds must not be traversable in normal circumstances, and must possess different properties of existence, or at least different constituent elements, in order to be considered separate. So, if a story features a sailor who gets drunk in an American bar and awakens in China after having been abducted, this is only one textual world level, since the two locations are traversable by anyone, and are related as part of a single world. If he awakened in the distant past, in an alternate present, or the distant future, however, we would consider this another textual world level.