Because we cannot “see” novelistic form in the way we see the forms of, say, paintings or buildings, descriptions of form in the novel are necessarily figural. This chapter examines the range of approaches adopted by commentators and critics to describe the formal features of novels. Spatial models of fictional form are in tension with models that privilege the temporal dimensions of narrative. Novelists themselves often self‐reflexively meditate on novelistic forms within novels themselves. Such endeavors cut against a long tradition of seeing the novel as the one literary form that resists form; the novel's task, it is often said, is to present life in unmediated ways.