Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Novels

Character lists and the use of bold

See discussion Talk Great Expectations and Project Novels. I suggest modifying the guideline for characters to read as follows:

3.3 Characters

If appropriate, a character section would consist of brief character outlines, as opposed to a simple list. Characters' names should only be indented (though subsections may be used for lengthy descriptions); bold should not be used. Most articles do not need this section. Instead, a finely crafted plot summary is used to introduce the characters to the reader.

Length of plot summary in proportion to book

For years, this page said Size of the plot summary should be roughly proportional to the size of the plot. This is not always equivalent to the length of the work, since some plots are complex and dense while others are simple and straightforward. In August, that turned into Regardless of the length of the novel, a complex and dense plot will need a longer summary than a simple and straightforward one. But with the recent rewrite, that has now been removed entirely. I suppose the reason for saying A summary for a full-length novel should be between 400 and 700 words is that a summary for a shorter work could be under 400 words. But "full-length" is a bit ambiguous. The current wording could be seen as suggesting that a novella's summary should be much less than 700 words. Maybe I'm splitting hairs here, but the point about plot summary length depending more on complexity than on story length was present from 2007 until just weeks ago. So I think it should be reintegrated somehow. That no one objected to this removal doesn't mean much, since the focus was mainly on discouraging plot summaries over 700 words. 183.89.250.246 (talk) 22:32, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

I hadn't noticed that we lost that detail. I definitely agree that plot complexity should be the driving factor for length. I'd support adding back in Regardless of the length of the novel, a complex and dense plot will need a longer summary than a simple and straightforward one. or something similar. Over at WP:FILMPLOT they say The summary should not exceed this range unless the film's structure is unconventional, such as with non-linear storylines, or unless the plot is too complicated to summarize in this range. I like that the film version gives an example, though I don't think non-linear storylines exactly apply here. ~ L 🌸 (talk) 22:54, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

This was my attempt, which was reverted. An alternative would be to not specify any minimum length, in which case this whole idea would flow better. I still think it might be better not to specify any minimum length, especially considering that this page is not just about novels per se. 183.89.250.246 (talk) 13:18, 6 November 2024 (UTC)

"An alternative would be to not specify any minimum length". No, that was rejected immediately above. MichaelMaggs (talk) 13:32, 6 November 2024 (UTC)

That was why I tried to add something that would fit with the wording that was there, rather than doing a larger rewrite. 183.89.250.246 (talk) 14:08, 6 November 2024 (UTC)

I don't agree, but I wouldn't strongly oppose adding Regardless of the length of the novel, a complex and dense plot will need a longer summary than a simple and straightforward one if somebody wants to seek a new widely-supported consensus. More important is the issue of process. The whole paragraph was the subject of recent detailed discussion, and the consensus wording (deliberately leaving out that sentence which is, in my view, little more than a self-evident platitude) was agreed only two weeks ago. It's bad practice and highly wasteful of editors' time to attempt to overturn carefully-constructed agreed wordings on the basis that 'the focus was really' on something else. If anyone thinks it's important enought to seek a new consensus, please ping all those who contributed to the current consensus wording and ask if they'd like it changed. Otherwise, this simply comes across as an attempt to re-insert wording that the community has already agreed should no longer be there. MichaelMaggs (talk) 13:30, 6 November 2024 (UTC)

I think I solved part of the problem by editing the intro, so that we're not saying that this applies "equally" to novellas and short stories. As for the Plot section, I would suggest adding The length of a plot summary should correlate more to the complexity of the plot than to the length of the book. I don't feel strongly enough about that to ping all the editors from the previous discussion, but I will note that a user just above said they hadn't noticed that that detail had been lost, so again, I don't really think the previous discussion should be seen as a rejection of that point. 183.89.250.246 (talk) 15:40, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

When a new text is agreed by consensus, there must by definition be changes. The new consensus replaces the old. Without a new full discussion – which given the shortness of time that has elapsed must in my view include pings to all who previously contributed – there's no basis to select a random element from the superseded wording and put it into the new text. I have no problem with the proposed amendment to the introduction. MichaelMaggs (talk) 20:25, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

I do. The page contains many principles and some explicit instructions (i.e. the numerical boundaries for the plot section). The introduction was clear and accurate as was, the principles apply equally. The plot length numbers apply to an full length novel, there's no benefit in creating and maintaining text here to cover every eventuality. If you encounter a novella that's too long, and you really need to refer to this guidelines to fix it, simply say that it should be concise and cover the important events in the narrative.Scribolt (talk) 16:31, 9 November 2024 (UTC)

I still think this was a worthwhile point, but I guess it wouldn't fit very well with the current wording, and a larger rewrite of that paragraph seems to be out of the question. The edit reverted here was unrelated to that, other than being in the same paragraph. I didn't quite expect such a reaction to the addition of one word which was basically accurate, but whatever. 183.89.250.246 (talk) 01:54, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

Navigation boxes

Should this page include anything about navigation boxes? For instance, the ones that appear at the bottom of The Hound of the Baskervilles. Or would that be too complicated for this page? 183.89.250.246 (talk) 21:40, 10 December 2024 (UTC)

I'd say don't mention. Most novel articles won't have any. Schazjmd (talk) 22:09, 10 December 2024 (UTC)

RfC on book review aggregators

Should book review aggregator websites be included in articles? Οἶδα (talk) 09:23, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

Survey

• No. These book aggregator websites have no encyclopedic value because they are not widely known or understood, and including them in articles constitutes undue weight to their assessment of critical consensus, which violates WP:NPOV, a fundamental site-wide policy. Οἶδα (talk) 09:31, 5 April 2025 (UTC)
• No. The discussion below is so obviously right that it's easy to respond to this RFA with a one-word reply. Having just spent the last hour reading the extensive discussions about this that are spread widely over this topic area, perhaps I'll just add: absolutely not. MichaelMaggs (talk) 10:03, 5 April 2025 (UTC)
• No, I believe that music and book reviews differ in that music reviewers frequently assign a grade, either through a numerical or star based system while book reviewers do not frequently do so. Any sort of review aggregation requires some form of interpretation by the aggregation platform from text to a category. Added with the criticism from the sources below, I don't think they should be included. Justiyaya 16:28, 5 April 2025 (UTC)
• Mixed feelings, but leaning no. The best use of a review aggregator is as a kickstart to the actual research; if someone doesn’t wish to do that research, constructive gnoming could include adding a bland sentence like “The book was reviewed in X, Y, and Z” (mining the aggregator for links) or adding a Talk page link to point out how many reviews are available. ~ L 🌸 (talk) 18:43, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

Discussion

For context, this RfC exists only due to the edits of a user named Themashup (talk · contribs) who has been campaigning for replicating the standard Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic aggregates from film articles onto book articles. It is impossible to discuss this without discussing their extensive contributions that have overwhelmed the topic area.

I fundamentally disagree with the proposal that there is a similar value of review aggregates for literary works, both in theory and through the examples in practice. Film reviews are far greater in number and better aggregated, and thus more informative and perhaps better suited to those articles. The aggregator sites themself are also far more prominent in their respective community, with film critics and audiences widely recognising and participating in their existence. Ratings and scores are naturally not even a fixture of literary criticism. As a result, a literary aggregator that rises to the level of RT does not and likely will not ever exist. Thus, top-lining every reception section with a mass of substandard aggregate websites imparts a level of legitimacy I do not believe any of these websites have established. That would seem to transgress WP:NPOV, a site-wide policy. It is also false to assume that because there is no literary Rotten Tomatoes that we are always incapable of reflecting critical assessment. Journalistic sources occasionally assess the critical and public consensus of literary works. But in the absence of such a source, scouring the internet for obscure aggregate websites does not improve the readers' understanding of the subject in my estimation.

The addition of these aggregators seems to be particularly uninformative to readers. They have very little encyclopedic value as they communicate nothing to the substance of the reviewers' critiques. When you read the section at The Marriage Plot, you are confronted by a paragraph of trivial aggregation positioned above substantive analysis. And when you look at We Need to Talk About Kevin, for which there was previously no reception section, you come away with zero knowledge of the substance of critics' reviews.

Attempting to determine some illusory "overall reception" in the style of ratings/scores which are the norm in the world of film, music and video games but not in literature is a task that is both unfounded and counterproductive. Particularly when compared to the task of discovering and summarising reviews from major publications/critics (aka "professional reviewers or influential opinion-makers" MOS:NOVELS), which, by the way, are not enormous in number given the fact that the literary community is miniscule. The employment of these aggregators is a cheap solution to the mindset that discovering and summarising book reviews feels too much like hard work. Certainly, those tasks are fundamental to the work of editing Wikipedia. Themashup’s stated mission of having these aggregates save us from doing work to illustrate a book’s reception is antithetical to building an encyclopedia. We should encourage editors to create and contribute full-fledged book articles which encompass their subjects, not surrender their duty of probing reliable sources to a slew of unrecognised aggregator websites.

In reality, we can easily use the reviews themself instead of telling readers how some obscure websites graded them. When The Complete Review was added to the article The Years (Ernaux book), for example, it had only one rating for any of the reviews and had no review consensus. So all I can tell from this information is that some website known as The Complete Review graded a review by The Guardian with an “A”. I am unconvinced as to how this informs readers of anything. There is nothing about how The Guardian's review was by writer Lauren Elkin and how she commended Ernaux for her ability to write "personally and collectively" and how she assessed Alison Strayer's translation as capturing "all the shadings of Ernaux’s prose, all its stops and starts, its changes in pace and in tone, its chatterings, its silences." Is that considered hard work?

Themashup's edits often include websites which aggregate very few reviews, so they are not exactly reliably representative of anything. They also add several websites and URLs which are now defunct, as well as non-WP:RS aggregate websites. There was an earlier discussion in March 2024 at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject_Novels/Archive 18#IDreamBooks concerning a defunct aggregate website which Themashup was introducing into many literary articles. These additions accelerated incredibly, and have included the creation of several stub articles of books (Changing My Mind: Occasional Essays, The Wife of Willesden, The Embassy of Cambodia, Companion Piece (Smith novel), All Our Worldly Goods, Fire in the Blood (Némirovsky novel), Lying Under the Apple Tree, The Hill Bachelors, Cheating at Canasta, Last Stories (Trevor short story collection), Giving Up the Ghost (Mantel novel), The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher, Some Trick: Thirteen Stories, Long Island (novel), The Magician (Tóibín novel), The Source of Self-Regard: Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditations, The Origin of Others, Summer (Smith novel), Wandering Stars (Orange novel), The God of the Woods (novel)) in which the only content are these aggregates and with them expanding the articles no further. No sections on plot, characters, style, themes, background, publication history etc. This is a rather inappropriate interpretation of WP:NBOOK. And the tolerance of these lowly aggregates supports their continued existence. A stub consisting of sources that quote other sources and grade them with Facebook-tier commentary of "Love It", "Pretty Good", "Ok", and "Rubbish", "Rave", “Positive", “Mixed” “Pan” “”, “B-”, “83 percent” etc seems to me as hardly adequate context and not what was intended by both WP:NBOOK and WP:IDEALSTUB.

In an earlier discussion in June 2023 at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Film/Archive_82#Review_aggregator_CherryPicks? about an obscure film review aggregator which Themashup was introducing into many film articles, Betty Logan explained:

“The reason we use RT and Metacritic scores in reception for films is not because RT or Metacritic are inherently notable (that is what their articles are for) but because the mainstream media regularly use them for quantifying the immediate reception of a film i.e. they have become a kind of industry standard.”

Even in the case of book aggregates that provide a more original worded consensus, none of them are used by mainstream media to quantify the reception of a book as they are all obscure and not even well-understood by the target audience. Contrast this to Rotten Tomatoes, which is used every single week in articles by The Hollywood Reporter, Variety, Deadline. Including these book review aggregators in articles therefore gives WP:UNDUE weight to their consensuses. Οἶδα (talk) 09:43, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

Book Marks

While there has been some agreement that several of these aggregates have issues, some users have deferred to Lit Hub’s Book Marks website as being uniquely more legitimate. However, I do not believe anyone has made a convincing case for the legitimacy of Book Marks.

As previously mentioned, Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic are prominent in the film community, with film critics and audiences widely recognising and participating in their existence. Can anyone demonstrate that such a reputation exists for Book Marks in even the slightest amount? Reliance on Book Mark’s coverage or aggregate scores directly would need to be backed by WP:USEBYOTHERS. From what I can find, the site has never once been mentioned by major papers such as The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and The Guardian. All these papers are involved in the world of literary criticism. Comparing the traffic and reputation of Book Marks to Rotten Tomatoes or Metacritic, Book Marks is virtually unknown. There isn't even a Wikipedia article for this website. It exists as miniscule subsection containing only brief description. The section has also gone unchanged since its addition in 2019, which mirrors its lack of usage in reliable sources. Except for two trivial mentions in Forbes and Kirkus Reviews, and a single article in Publishers Weekly regarding a widget, the only reliable sources I can find which even mention the site are from 2016 and are for announcing the site's creation. That's it. However, contained within these few articles is a plethora of criticism and repudiation:

• The New Republic echoed my criticism in their article, in which they described the site as being "somewhat useless as a recommendation resource" and stated that a "'Rotten Tomatoes for books' doesn’t make much sense" due to the very nature of literary criticism. They also reported the reception of Book Marks as being "mixed at best".

• Salon's article by Scott Timberg similarly reported poor reception and wrote: "A critic who spends most of a week reading a book, and a day or more writing and polishing a review has every reason to feel a bit dissed when the piece is then reduced go a single letter grade. (As wonderful as some film critics are, the relative brevity of a movie makes it seem somehow less offensive when a film review is distilled that way."

• Walter Kirn penned an an essay published in Harper's rebuking the very nature of the site as "utter nonsense": "The notion that language can be converted into math and math into meaning is pure hermetic madness, the alchemical essence of delusion. But at Lit Hub, it’s policy. It’s principle. The site has many worthy features, from author interviews to essays, but the grading business undermines it all. Works of literature are among the most intricate and elusive of human artifacts, the crudest of which requires more creativity than twenty trillion acts of aggregation. A site created to celebrate them now aimed to reduce them to an alphabetic omega point."

• Cassandra Nearce, in her article on Book Riot, similarly criticised the site’s relevance and methodology, and reported a poor reception by the literary community. As quoted in her article, The Washington Post's book critic Ron Charles reacted to the announcement of the site on Twitter:

  Ick. https://twitter.com/lithub/status/740168008363085824

  @thelithub You know I love you, but this sounds like one more mash-up of voices to create some phony wisdom-of-crowds “score” for art.

  @thelithub It’s the reduction of critical evaluation to a number that troubles me: the faux precision, the unearned authority of stats.

• John Warner’s article for the Chicago Tribune similarly criticised the site’s methodology and the analogy of film reviews to book reviews. He concluded, “I worry about the way grades, in general, reduce experiences to a metric. Reading, like life, is a process, where each moment matters. The impulse to put a score on those experiences seems like a denial of much of what makes us human.”

Excluding this early coverage, the site is virtually nowhere to be found in reliable sources. Its supposed legitimacy appears to extend no further than its status as a subsidiary of Lit Hub, and thus its connection to the publishing industry via Grove Atlantic. Οἶδα (talk) 09:50, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

• To expand on my comment above — I had some mixed feelings, but I don’t disagree with anything Οἶδα says here. I don’t think it’s in keeping with the norms of literary criticism to give a multi-sentence breakdown of the aggregator’s whole schema.

I think the absolute best argument for (limited) use of aggregators in articles would be as follows: sometimes in a reception section one may wish to write a topic sentence like “The book received positive/mixed/negative reviews” but without a source that discusses reviews in aggregate, that summary would be OR. (I’m thinking of the advice at WP:RECEPTION for my focus on topic sentences.) For these sentences, one could cite a review aggregator with all the blow-by-blow details in a footnote. But even that limited carve-out may not be necessary, since really (as Οἶδα notes) book reviews aren’t about saying a book is “good” or “bad”. So, much better topic sentences would be more specific to the concerns of book criticism and the details of the book itself, ie, “Reviewers found the book emotionally moving, but questioned its conclusions” (which can covered by a multi-citation to the reviews making those specific observations).

Really, the value of these aggregators is that they can save time on tracking down the individual reviews from which the article can be built. If someone wanted to add the aggregated info without writing a real reception section, a better placeholder would be something like “The book was reviewed in X, Y, and Z” with references to the individual reviews (mined from the aggregator). That would give readers marginally more information than “The book got X positive reviews” (since one can infer a lot about a book reviewed in LARB versus Strange Horizons) and it would surface where to find more information. Similarly, a Talk page comment along the lines of “Future editors will find X reviews noted at aggregator Y” might be useful. Because these aggregators (as Οἶδα notes!) do not ordinarily play any role in literary criticism, editors are unlikely to think of checking them in their research.

Overall, I think a citation to a review aggregator is technically better than literally nothing, because it surfaces a link to actual information. However, a detailed recounting of their content serves to degrade the overall quality of book articles, and feels like mis-applied effort; I am receptive to the idea of banning or restricting aggregators in order to push effort toward content additions that would actually belong in a complete, high-quality article. ~ L 🌸 (talk) 18:43, 5 April 2025 (UTC)