In the novel I am writing, the story is told present tense and first person. The themes of the story present some unique points to the style, but something I have noticed as a write the first few chapters, it seems to lack the word THE. Which made me wonder, is it even possible to write a novel the completely lacks the most common word?
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You're talking about what is called constrained writing. Here is a Wikipedia Link. Constrained writing is where you purposefully constrain yourselves by not allowing yourself to do certain things. For example, Lauren Ipsum's example in her answer of writing a book without using E is what is called a lipogram. This is where a certain letter of the alphabet (or couple!) are not used during a piece of writing.
These techniques of constrained writing are often used in poetry, though they can slip everywhere. Lauren's answer features a book which I was going to include in my answer, but I wasn't here first. That book is proof that a lipogram can be achieved in a very long piece of work. In fact, I remember that a year ago in my England class we were tasked to rewrite the entire first page of nineteen-eighty-four by George Orwell without using the letter E.
I think it's certainly possible. Omitting 'the' would be a form of constrained writing. If you're trying to do this... well, good luck!
Featherball
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Well, someone wrote a book without using the letter E, so by default the wasn't used. (according to Wiki, it does slip in three times. Very hard to avoid. Plus technically it's on the cover.) Whether the book is any good is an exercise left to the reader.
I suppose it would be fun to do as a challenge, but then the challenge is "avoiding the letter" and not "telling the best story possible using the best words for the job." So it depends on what you want to accomplish.
Lauren-Clear-Monica-Ipsum
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Actually the book "Gadsby" has no E's (except in the title obviously) yet it has over 50,000 words. So yes, it is possible to write a book without the word "the". Not saying it's easy
EDL
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No. It is entirely impossible to write a novel without using the word 'the'. I cannot even write that previous sentence without using that word, so I can say unequivocally that it is completely 100% impossible.
I'm attempting to balance the answers here since so many (incorrectly) believe it is possible.
Little-known fact:
Ernest Hemingway attempted to do this very thing when he wrote, The Old Man & The Sea -- amazon link (originally titled : Old Man & Sea) and he failed. He used the word 'the' only 17 times in the entire book. Read it and see. Astonishing!
Very Difficult, But I Just Completed It
Discombobulated
Also, I recently finished an entire novel without using the word discombobulated and I'm quite proud. 98.3% of all novels include the word discombobulated, just as this very post does. It was difficult to write this post without using the word so I went ahead and did so.
