Problematic Silence and Sense in Modern Narrative Fiction

Research Paper (undergraduate) from the year 2009 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, , language: English, abstract: From the start, as the writer of fiction puts pen to paper, s/he is met with the dumbness of the blank space of the page and challenged by a welter of questions: How to begin? What to say? How to inform silence? How to make sense and coherence out of inchoate amorphousness? How to account for the lived experience? The novel¿s primary aim is to tell a story, according to E. M. Forster in his not-so-antiquated "Aspects of the Novel".

The narrated story, more often than not, voices silent characters whose histories and frames of mind are revealed by an external agent/consciousness (the narrator/the author/another character/a godlike or limited viewpoint). Occasionally, the story tells itself in the form of first-hand dramatised dialogues when the characters assume some distinct voice of their own, different from, and / or blending with, that of a third-person narrator/godlike author.