Open Novel Structure: Narrative Techniques and Features

The Open Novel: Narrative Techniques and Features

The open novel has a flexible structure that can accommodate all kinds of narrative techniques. With its complex composition and calculated ambiguity, it presents a fragmentary and unfinished structure that requires the reader's collaboration and interpretation. It breaks the chronological arrangement of the story and has a complex, even chaotic, structure. Narrative times are mixed with flashbacks, anticipations of the future, and alternate histories. The omniscient narrator is replaced by a plurality of approaches, with the story being told from the viewpoint of two or more narrators.

It mixes pure storytelling, dialogue, and free indirect dialogue in which the narrator assumes the viewpoint of a character. It also uses interior monologue, which makes the subconscious flow in a hasty and chaotic way. Genres and forms of expression are mixed. It uses linguistic devices such as:

• Ironic use of language by the narrator
• A mixture of baroque and direct, pedantic language

It also employs spelling devices like:

• Suppression of punctuation
• Removal of the distinction between paragraphs

And typographical devices such as:

• Different fonts
• Blank pages
• Double-column writing

The disjointed vision of reality and the fragmentary and chaotic narrative approaches are reminiscent of Ortega y Gasset's ideas on the dehumanization of art.

Current Novel Trends

The current novel trend is characterized by a closed account with a logical argument centered on the linear narrative of events. Environments are realistic, serving as the probable scenario for actions. Themes often revolve around individual problems in the intimacy of the characters, who are often problematic and burdened by existential doubts. Techniques like interior monologue and second-person retrospective narrative are not ruled out.

There can be a moralizing plot or one dominated by intrigue, which amuses and distracts the reader. There is a wealth of fictional genres and forms, including:

• Police
• Sentimental
• Historical
• And, above all, fantastic

Objectivism

Objectivism gives a formal vision of reality, with temporal imprecision and a lack of a structured argument. The Spanish novel incorporates these objectivist techniques, almost always with an underlying intention to criticize, moving away from the formalism of the French novel.

Key features of objectivism include:

• Almost cinematic precision in the voice of a neutral and impassive narrator, reflecting what is perceived with the senses
• A panoramic vision of a situation experienced by a series of minimally individualized characters who represent a certain social class
• Fragmentation of the novel's plot into isolated scenes and situations
• Spatio-temporal localization restricted to a limited environment and even a specific time