Monteleone' Guide, Chapter 10: The Other Stuff--Transition, Point of View, Pacing

Monteleone says: "Novels with clunky or absent transitions become irritating..."

I do agree.

He also says: "The same goes for stories that are not being told consistently through the eyes of a single entity--the reader gets confused, or worse, disgusted with the writer's seeming indecision as to who's really telling the story."

It could be. I am sure there are plenty of novels that would prove Monteleone's point, but I can think at least of 3 novels that did not follow his advise, and I consider them great novels: Julio Cortázar's Rayuela, Milan Kundera's The Joke, and Orhan Pamuk's My Name is Red.

Cortázar's novel, Rayuela (translated as Hopscotch in English), is quite uncommon in every way. The first 2 chapters are told by Horacio Oliveira, the main character; then, the following 4 are told by an omniscient narrator; then, back to Oliveira's mind, and so, and so for the rest of the novel. I did not get lost and I loved it, since the beginning. Maybe I was sometimes lost, but I loved the guessing game. Nevertheless, I know people who just did not like the novel at all; they just found it too complicated to follow.

There is another thing about Cortázar's novel that is very appealing: after finishing the first reading you can read it again but with a different order. You start in chapter 73, then chapter 1, then chapter 2, then chapter 116, and so on. I must confess that I could not finish the second reading, but this is something that remains in your mind as something you want to do sometime in your life.

The Joke, Milan Kundera's novel is very different. It has long chapters, which can be taken as separate stories, but then, like in the middle of the novel, the reader finally understands the connection between those stories.

As a reader, I felt thrilled, because it is sometimes interesting to be a little lost, not knowing what is really going on, but making lots of guesses. Also, if you didn't understand Kundera's novel the first time, you can always read it a second time, and you get the pleasure of a good novel two times.

Pamuk's novel, on the contrary, has small chapters, and we know from the very beginning that we are following the same story. Pamuk is "nicer" than Kundera because each chapter is called like the narrator of the chapter. No way you can get lost, unless you are a very inexperienced reader.

I personnaly like to read the same story from different perspectives. This way, you get in the head of different people. They might have been in the same room, might have seen the same action, but their interpretations of the story could be different. Sometimes, these 2 people will tell two stories that are completely apart. This gives a lot of life, color, and shape to the story.

But Monteleone is also right: do not confuse your readers, especially if you are a new writer.