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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/27562
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/27562
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

There are examples of separate stories connected thematically. I think the question is, when is such a work a collection of independent stories on the same theme and when is it a single novel.

One example that springs to mind is Alan Garner's _Red Shift_, in which the same story plays out three times, at three different times in history, all involving the same artefact. But in that case the telling of the three tales is intertwined, and the whole telling of the novel hangs on that intertwining. I don't think anyone would question whether _Red Shift_ is one novel.

Having the three stories in succession will certainly suggest linked stories rather than one novel, unless there is something stronger than theme connecting them. I think there is also the question of whether and how the theme develops from one story to the next. Does the first story feel incomplete in itself, and do the second and third stories seem to complete it. Or is each one complete in itself. With intertwined stories, you don't face questions like this, or at least not to the same degree. But intertwined stories also work differently, the three stories don't so much build on one another as reinforce and/or counterpoint each other.

A reader's investment in a story does not have to rest on emotional investment in a single character. Novels are fundamentally about experience, but they can work either by involvement or by standing back and observing. A more detached approach might make it easier to have the reader follow the theme rather than the character.

Original score: 9