This post will not give answers or definitions but it will examine what happens when you read a novel. In one sense you enter a contract with the author: s/he has produced a text which you will attempt to enjoy and believe in. Your role can also include filling in, with your imagination, some details which the writer has omitted but care must be taken here. Although in real life there is a possibility of knowing a fact which is not apparent immediately, such as whether or not a neighbour has a mole on his shoulder, we will never find that out about Sherlock Holmes.
The issue is one of implication and inference: the author implies and the reader infers according to the clues given. The text is therefore an object to which the reader contributes and, in that way, it is not static. (We often paint in our minds a picture of a character's appearance and are then irritated if an actor in a TV adaptation does not fit that portrait.)
The text will create a world which the characters inhabit but all we have is the words on the page. From those words we recreate this world so that the text is a link between the author's imagination and our own. Caution is needed when we respond to a character as it is easy to criticise a writer for inconsistency or making a personage do something we feel s/he would not do but this may be the fault of our over-active participation rather than a flaw in the novel.
It is possible to read on different levels: merely enjoying the narrative or examining the techniques used to achieve the result. Some writers draw attention to their own methods and remind us that we are reading fiction by metanarrative, a distancing device which can, paradoxically, make the work seem more real by insinuating that the characters are out of control since they lead their own lives.
Reading is a complex activity and your analysis will be deeper if you contemplate the process.
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