Novels with a certain structure are more likely to be classics
The lasting popularity of books can depend more than their history
Tetra Images, LLC / Alamy
Why do some novels captivate generation after generation, while others affect best-sellers lists during the publication, then fades? A study suggests that the answer can be partly in the structure of their words and sentences.
Previous research has explored the content that makes some books become bestsellers, an affectionate male character is often a winning factor, but we know little about what contributes to a novel still popular a century later.
To find out more, Leyao Wang at York University in Toronto, Canada, and his colleagues analyzed 300 novels in English published between 1909 and 1923. Half of them have list the 10 bestsellers of the top 10 Publishers Weeklya commercial magazine which started in 1872, in the year following its publication, as Lucky youth by William John Locke and Black beef by Gertrude Atherton.
But these novels do not appear in the top 10 lists of past, current or future readings of users on the Goodreads site, which provides data on this subject according to the year of publication of a novel. The other half, as The mysterious styles affair by Agatha Christie and Anne d’Avonlea By Lucy Maud Montgomery, stay popular on GooDudreads today, whether they are best-sellers in their time or not.
The team formed an AI model to differentiate these two categories, based on 70% of all selected novels. When the model scanned their integral texts, in search of models of use of words, it revealed that those who were best-sellers were initially tend to be overall, but also used more conversational words, such as “yeah”, “oh” and “ok”. These books were also heavier on punctuation.
These features can make novels relatively easy to read quickly, increasing their immediate appeal, according to the researchers, even if their content is not strong enough to excite readers today.
The books that are still popular with modern readers were shorter, but contained longer sentences and more complex words. The researchers wondered if it means that they demand our attention more, which can make them more memorable, which may have encouraged people to reread them or recommend them.
When the AI model was tested on the remaining 30% of the books, it separated them into two categories with an accuracy of around 70%.
“Although many other factors also contribute to timelessness – such as themes, marketing choices, the reputation of the authors – we demonstrate that timelessness can be predicted without taking into account these more obvious non -textual influences”, according to researchers. Understanding the different factors that give a new lasting attraction “would be extremely powerful for publishers and authors”.
But Dorothy Hale at the University of California in Berkeley, says that the impact of a novel must be studied over a period of more than 100 years before it can really be deemed timeless, and that even the popularity of long -standing classics changes over time. “Many could consider Shakespeare the ultimate author of timeless English, but the current trend in American colleges and universities is to eliminate Shakespeare’s requirement from the English major,” she said.
Explore the world of science fiction and learn to create your own captivating science fiction tales during this immersive weekend break. Subjects:
Science-fiction creation: an immersive writing course, England
