The Literary Single Take: Narrative Techniques for Cinematic Immersion

A Study in Functional Analogy

In cinema, the continuous or “single-take” shot is a powerful narrative device. For film theorist André Bazin, the long take’s value lay in its preservation of spatial and temporal integrity, forcing a “deeper realism” upon the viewer by respecting the ambiguity of the unfolding moment (Bazin 35–37). The technique encloses the viewer within a temporally sealed continuum—from true, feature-length takes like Russian Ark to the digitally stitched illusions of continuity common in modern cinema like Birdman (Bordwell 144)—generating what Laura Mulvey calls the “contingency of the profilmic moment” where every action feels immediate and consequential (Mulvey 112). While a novel cannot literally replicate a camera’s unblinking eye, it possesses a sophisticated toolkit of techniques designed to achieve analogous effects.

This article adopts a methodology of comparative narratology to explore this phenomenon. Its central research question is: To what extent, and by what formal means, can literary duration produce the phenomenological intensity of cinematic continuity? I propose a framework of functional analogy, where equivalence is established not at the level of material form (film vs. text) but at the level of performative function and experiential effect. The criteria for this analogy include: 1) temporal continuity, an unbroken or minimally elided narrative flow; 2) psychological immediacy, the sense of unfiltered access to a consciousness or situation; and 3) phenomenological pressure, the feeling of being trapped within an irreversible, real-time progression. While cinematic immersion is primarily perceptual, I argue that literary immersion, though imaginative, can simulate this perceptual intensity through these formal strategies, creating what Marie-Laure Ryan calls a “virtual reality” for the reader to inhabit (Ryan 48).

Technique 1: Stream of Consciousness — The Camera of the Mind

The most direct literary parallel to the single take’s psychological immediacy is stream of consciousness. It uses free indirect discourse to blur the line between the third-person narrative voice and the character’s own consciousness (Fludernik 199). The prose can leap from a present observation to a past trauma without transition, mimicking the unbroken nature of a mind under pressure.

• Key Example: Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf: Woolf’s novel, which unfolds over a single day, is a canonical example. The narrative slips seamlessly from the mind of Clarissa Dalloway to the veteran Septimus Smith. When Clarissa observes a car, the narration slides from external description into her internal thought: “The motor car with its blinds drawn and an air of inscrutable reserve proceeded towards Piccadilly” (Woolf 14). The effect is a continuous, unbroken immersion in her inner life, as relentless as any long camera shot.

Technique 2: The Continuous Outline — The Camera as Witness

A more contemporary technique achieves continuity not through the density of internal thought but through a sustained, observational voice that effaces its own interiority, creating an unbroken surface of reported speech and events.

• Key Example: Outline by Rachel Cusk: In Cusk’s novel, the narrator functions almost as a camera, recording the lengthy monologues of the people she meets. Her own consciousness is a near-void, defined only by what she registers. The effect is a continuous present tense of listening, as seen in this passage where she relays another’s story: “He had been married before, he said, to his childhood sweetheart…” (Cusk 7). The reader is trapped not in the narrator’s mind, but in her unblinking perceptive field, experiencing the world through a continuous, unfiltered act of witnessing that is strikingly analogous to a long take.

Technique 3: Second-Person Narrative — The Camera as You

Though uncommon, the novel written entirely in the second person is a potent tool for achieving the single-take effect by demolishing the safe distance between reader and character and directly implicating the reader in the story’s “here and now” (Herman 345).

• Key Example: Bright Lights, Big City by Jay McInerney: The novel’s opening, “You are not the kind of guy who would be at a place like this at this time of the morning,” immediately casts the reader as the protagonist (McInerney 3). The present-tense, second-person perspective forces the reader to inhabit this unraveling reality without escape; you are locked into his perspective for the duration.

Technique 4: Real-Time Narrative — The Clock as Camera

This structural approach deliberately confines the plot’s duration to a short and continuous period, where story duration closely matches discourse duration (Genette 87–88). This creates a claustrophobic environment that mirrors the feeling of being trapped in one unedited shot.

• Key Example: Ulysses by James Joyce: This novel famously chronicles the events of a single day: June 16, 1904. While its stylistic fragmentation and deep interiority complicate a simple one-to-one equivalence with real time, its foundational commitment to the unity of time acts as an inescapable container, making the reader feel the epic weight and relentless passage of every ordinary hour (Joyce).

Technique 5: The One-Sentence Novel — The Text as Unbroken Take

The most literal literary attempt at a single take is the experimental novel constructed as one continuous sentence. While some argue that such radical artificiality produces alienation rather than immersion, I contend this form simulates a consciousness that cannot stop, making the reader’s sustained cognitive effort part of the claustrophobic effect.

• Key Example: Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellmann: This novel is composed almost entirely of a single sentence representing the internal monologue of an Ohio mother: “…the fact that I just want to be a good person, a good mother, a good wife, that’s all, a good neighbour, so what’s wrong with that…” (Ellmann 8). Its unbroken form immerses the reader completely in the torrent of her anxieties, as critical reviews have widely noted (Wood).

Conclusion: The Stakes of Analogy

This analysis reveals that while the material substrates of film and literature are distinct, they have developed functionally analogous strategies to solve the shared aesthetic problem of representing continuous lived experience. This analogy has theoretical stakes. First, it challenges medium-specific accounts of narrativity, suggesting that phenomenological effects like immersion are not exclusive to visual media but are products of formal structures that can be translated across platforms. Second, it reframes the act of reading as a temporal and phenomenological practice, one where narrative syntax can manipulate the reader’s own sense of time and presence. If the long take binds the spectator’s gaze, the literary single take binds the reader’s breath—each demanding an unbroken attention that transforms duration into event. This framework can be extended to future research on interactive fiction and virtual reality narratives, which are likewise pioneering new techniques to create the ultimate unblinking eye.

This article was developed through an iterative collaboration between our Editor-in-Chief and multiple AI language models. Various LLMs contributed at different stages—from initial ideation and drafting to refinement and technical review. Each AI served as a creative and analytical partner, while human editors maintained final oversight, ensuring accuracy, quality, and alignment with AuthZ's editorial standards.