A novel and a drama are two different genres of literature with distinctly different features. The first is a narrative art that has story and one or more story tellers. It is written in prose. But drama is an action, not a narrative. It is written in dialogue and the characters act out these dialogues on the stge. It is a performing art. A drama is not a drama unless it is acted out on the stage. Drama has an audience, but novel is meant for reading. The narrator introduces and describes the characters in a novel, but in a drama the characters are revealed through the action. Briefly these are some of the major differences between a novel and a drama.