TLC Forum

Hi there,

My colleague and I are conducting a research study on the effectiveness of C.S. Lewis' storytelling techniques. Would you please take this 10-minute survey and share it. All answers are anonymous and will be used for academic purposes. Thank you!

http://bit.ly/1LEkVlI

Heather Stilwell
Regent University
heatsti@mail.regent.edu

I've taken the survey and the link seems fine. I'll approve it.

Did the survey, but was first disappointed that the thread wasn't a discussion about some actual storytelling techniques (like making chapters roughly readable aloud in 30 minutes, for Narnia books, like making chapter numbers range around 15/16, like "always saying exactly what you mean and be sure it can mean nothing else" and so on).

We can always do that, hansgeorg.

We can start with some stats, if you don't mind. Won't link to the post I'm quoting, but I included 3 childrens books by JRRT along with the seven chronicles. The Hobbit, Smith of Wootton Major, Farmer Giles.

Here are chapters per book, high to low: 19, 17, 16, 16, 16, 15, 15, 15, "9", ?

19 = The Hobbit, the last two also JRRT.

Now I took out ten chapters:

Two each from end of Horse and His Boy and beginning of Prince Caspian.

One from Voyage of the Dawn Treader, two from Silver Chair.

Three from The Hobbit (6, 7, 8)

This gives us per chapter studied:

Verse lines: 24, 21, 18 (none in other seven chapters)

Speech paragraphs: 109, 96, 72, 68, 66, 62, 47, 46, 45, 40

Other paragraphs: 103, 67, 51, 41, 30, 30, 30, 28, 24, 24

I think highest number of paragraps are from JRRT's Hobbit. Conclusion : CSL gives us pretty short chapters, which however have more dialogue than action paragraphs. I e, he shows some influence by drama.

I'm lost in the numbers (me and numbers don't commune well), but another thing I'm picking: I think the influence by drama is there, because there definitely is some Shakespearean influence. E.g. the political situation in Prince Caspian has echoes of both Hamlet and Richard III. So I see no reason why he would not be influenced by it in other aspects as well. Or it's just a style that suited him and also led him to like drama.

Also, in the survey, I'm running into the problem of different editions of books, and me having read most of them in translation - I'm not sure I'm checking the boxes correctly, because I'm not always sure which of the collections of essays which book was translated from. And the Oxford History of Literature is not included, and I've actually read that one! *sigh*

Let's get to the summing up in medians, then.

For all ten books, the median chapter number is 15/16 (as ten is even, the median can be between two different values).
For all ten chapters, the median number of paragraphs except dialogue is 30.
For all ten chapters, the median number of dialogue lines is 62/66.
Median and anything lower exclude persence of verses (median number of verses = none).

Books and chapters vary above and below that.

And CSL does neither make dialogue lines, nor non-dialogue paragraphs, very long. You don't find them taking half a page. Range from higher to lower quartiles is:

Chapter number the ten books: 16 down to 15.
Narrative paragraphs per chapter : 51 down to 28.
Dialogue lines per chapter: 72 down to 46.

There is another question : how many scenes do these paragraph numbers and line numbers break down to? Is there just one scene per chapter or more?

I think there are usually more than one scene per chapter.

How does CSL handle transition between scenes (this is not a mathematical question in any way)?

If I remember correctly, in Narnia he tends to preface the change of scene with the narrative voice explaining there will be a change of scene.

A pretty correct remark and it makes for the shortness.

I was watching the PC commentary the other day and at one point either Barnes or Adamson commented on the fact that in the books, Lewis' narrative tends to jump around a bit and have multiple conclusions, which poses a challenge when converting book to film.