Practice question · Estimate
In a classic detective novel, roughly what proportion of the story's central events, the crime itself, is narrated in the first half of the discourse?
Estimate on a scale from 0% (nothing) (0) to 100% (all of it) (100).
Hints
- The genre works by withholding.
- The crime is delivered at the end, in the solution.
Show the answer
10 (answers within ±12 count)
Why
Close to nothing: perhaps a tenth, in fragments the reader cannot yet assemble. The genre is the extreme case of the story/discourse split: story order is crime then investigation, discourse order is investigation then crime, and the inversion is not a stylistic choice but the definition of the form.
Practise Narratology I. Story, Discourse and Order
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