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Douglas Bement is the first American teacher who has made the right approach in a textbook designed to assist short story writers. Not only has he made the right approach, but it must be frankly admitted that he has written the only permanently valuable book on his subject.

It is highly important to all teachers of the short story in America that they should realize precisely what he has set out to do and what he has accomplished. Hitherto students in American universities and schools, who have enrolled themselves in courses on short story writing, have, no doubt innocently, put themselves in a curious position. Those who have taught them, less innocently perhaps, have also put themselves into a curious position.

Teacher and student alike might be said to have been studying and criticising a text of “Macbeth” in which Lady Macbeth was absent. They have concentrated their attention on one side of short story writing, while totally ignoring the other and more important aspect upon which that side was wholly dependent. It was as if they belonged to some academy in Laputa which busied itself in drawing elevations of the upper storeys of a building which had no foundation and floated in two dimensions on a cloud.

The foundations of the structure were missing, and the otherwise admirable façade was not only totally devoid of substance in itself, but had no three-dimensional reality behind it. The fundamental substance of a true short story was always ignored, and often not even realized, or faintly perceived. Teacher and student were alike busy calculating strain, mapping engineering charts out of abstract apologies for material, and were utterly unmindful in any constructive way of those natural forces in man which are the very stuff of story-telling and distinguish him from a statue.

Like all pioneers, Mr. Bement’s contribution to the subject is as simple as the collar button. Because it is obvious, it seems never to have occurred to any other teacher who has written a textbook of short story writing. Substance lies behind all form. All other teachers have assumed that a story is made out of words. That is not so. Words are merely a more or less adequate means of communication. The substance of a story is life, and we can only approach life through experience and psychological knowledge. It is not to be approached by studying engineering and rhetoric. Life is not a sentimental machine.

The fruitfulness of Mr. Bement’s method is entirely due to his clear apprehension of this truth, and to his surprisingly human, natural, and sensitive approach to the psychological significance of his material. He realizes that it is far more important for the apprentice short story writer to discover how his own mind and imagination work than how a story works. You can always make a model of a machine for workmen to copy, but a story is not a machine which starts to work when you switch on an electric current. It is the expression of a human mind and, if it is not too old-fashioned to say so, of a human soul. Mr. Bement teaches the student to look inward. He knows that every good short story is a little miracle of imagination, patience, and integrity, and that it is unique. He knows that it is something which cannot be copied, and which it is not well to copy. You cannot turn out short stories by mass production like Ford cars.

Therefore, he encourages his students to find their material first in experience. He helps them to distinguish what may be artistically significant in their experience from what is insignificant; he gives them valuable hints as to how they may best elucidate that potential experience and give it artistic meaning; he tells them what to avoid; and he encourages them to use their own imagination rather than to reflect the supposed tendencies of the day, which are so fluctuating as to be entirely misleading and irrelevant.

I would not have you suppose that he ignores the more mechanical and necessary aspects of technique. On the contrary, he deals with them with more adequacy and even subtlety than most writers. You may not perceive this at first. We have become so much accustomed to the air of professional mystery of the average short story teacher that Mr. Bement’s lucid simplicity may at first disappoint us. He cuts all the Gordian knots which the other teachers have solemnly tied.

First of all, he performs a most valuable service which is likely to make him an outlaw among teachers, because it violates the most important rule of their trade union. He makes it abundantly plain at once to every honest student that short story writers are born, not made. He sends three-fourths of his class home, because they will never learn anything. Only his promising pupils are permitted to stay in the classroom, and he gives them individual instruction. He is more interested in eliciting what they have to say, and then in showing them how they can probably say it much better, than in pretending to teach them something which they can never learn. He knows better than to codify in one least common denominator of rules the unique triumphs of the great short story writers. He would rather have his students realize that every artistic triumph is unique, and show them the imaginative process by which such triumphs have been achieved.

I have a final comment to make. It is too often supposed that a textbook of short story writing is only of value to those who are writing short stories. The chief value of the ideal textbook, such as I conceive Mr. Bement’s book to be, is to heighten the appreciation of the average reader, to reveal new pleasures to him, and to imbue him with that sense of discovery and delighted wonder which is the chief reward of reading. A reader who had fully apprehended the principles embodied in Mr. Bement’s book should approach the short stories of Mérimée and Flaubert, of Hardy and Coppard with a new sense of appreciation which will discover constant new pleasures in them.

Edward J. O’Brien.

Oxford.

December 19, 1930.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

The “twentieth century writing hysteria,” as it may come to be known among the scholars of the twenty-first century, would make an interesting study for a critic, scientifically minded, who possessed the gift of perspective, a sense of values, a knowledge of human and crowd behavior, and a sense of humor.

Here is one side of the picture: the news-stands are flooded with hundreds of magazines ranging from intimate boudoir confessions to profound psychological studies; at least three of these periodicals which specialize in short stories have a combined circulation of over six million copies a week, a fact which makes them, in the opinion of astute publicists, the best media in the world for selling tooth-brushes, automobiles, and canned soup.

The total mileage of the average month’s grist of fiction, how far the words would stretch if placed end to end, no bored statistician, in an off-season, has yet bothered to compute. Nor do we yet know the total time expended monthly in the reading of this same fiction, for the consumers range in type from go-getting drummers to bored society matrons, scattered all the way from New York to Shanghai.

There is another interesting question: where does all this fiction come from? We have heard of the genius who springs into the limelight from the obscurity of a Dakota farm; we have read, at least, of the indigent authors of the “Village”; and we know that there are polite “author’s circles” in every town large enough to boast a Rotary Club. At a conservative estimate there are five hundred stories rejected by the magazines for every one that is accepted. Where do they all come from?

We have heard writing referred to as a “game.” But it does not resemble any game that we have ever seen played by the sport-loving American public. We have, to be sure, Mr. McFee’s cheer-leaders in literature, but where are the bands, the grand-stand plays, the colorful crowds, and the holiday spirit? Instead, our minds conjure up other pictures: we have seen daintily-frocked young things in spiked heels who have been told by “Professor” Buncombe (in return for ten dollars) that they have a “real talent” for writing, and that all that they need is a good grounding (for a consideration) in some of the fundamentals; we have seen little old gray-haired ladies, who have an “urge to write,” hopefully leading their ewe-lambs to the slaughter of the editor’s sanctum; we have seen frowsy clerks with washed-out blue eyes sending a part of each week’s pay check as an installment on a correspondence course in short story writing. All these things we have seen. No—fiction-writing is not a “game.”

Some writers refer to it as a business. They speak of the literary market in the same breath with the stock market, and read periodicals and texts on selling manuscripts as faithfully as the investor reads his financial sheet. Writers, as well as manufacturers, have their agents who (also for a consideration) will face the lion in his den and deliver a manuscript across the editor’s desk rather than entrust the envelope, through the mail, to a subordinate. And then there are the school and college courses in “Short Story Writing,” which meet for an hour at the conclusion of a course marked in the catalogue as “Commerce 33.” And we have the ubiquitous text-books by editors, college professors, and writers; to these books rush those who are still hoping that someone, some day, will find the secret Abracadabra which will turn them into successful authors.

There are a few, a very few, who say that writing is an art. Those who have found the formula which opens the doors to the syndicates loudly pooh-pooh this idea. One can learn, they say, to write saleable stories just as one can learn to sell bonds or soap. That is true. With reasonable intelligence and diligence the average person can write a saleable story. That is why there are so many average people who are doing it, and why so many average stories are being printed.

If Homer ever sang his songs in the flesh, he was rewarded by nothing more than a meal and a crude bed for his pains. He sang because he couldn’t help singing; it was more than meat or drink to him. But in spite of his need for food and lodging, he preserved his status as an amateur. We may presume that he didn’t trouble himself too much as to whether or not the public liked what he had to offer. He may have been normally pleased when his audience applauded, but he didn’t lower his standards to suit the taste of the plebeians—unless the general plane of criticism in those days stood on a much higher level than it does to-day. He probably ate when he pleased and slept when he pleased, and he probably led a reasonably happy life, in spite of his blindness. When a contemporary critic told him that he wasn’t giving the public what they wanted, he probably picked up his few belongings and moved on.

But to-day we are living in an age of machines, not of wandering minstrels. The problem of bed and board is more complex than it was when “Homer smote his bloomin’ lyre.” We moderns talk in terms of efficiency, and when we want something done we consult a specialist. We become specialists ourselves—perhaps in the field of the short story. We want to write bigger and better (or shorter) stories than our neighbor. And we think, as Professor Fagin has pointed out,^[1] “that a published story is a masterpiece, a rejected one worthless. If a story brings five dollars it is a poor one; if it brings fifty it is a good one; if it brings five hundred it is a work of art.”

But there are still teachers, editors, and writers who believe that fiction is not a game, nor yet a business, but an art. They attribute to it a certain dignity because it is, at heart, a means of self-expression, and self-expression is the greatest joy in life. These teachers do not care how many of their students sell stories to the current magazines; these editors are willing to “take a chance” on a really excellent story, even if it departs from the stereotyped formula; and these writers express themselves because they have something which they feel that they must say and, regardless of rejection slips, they are interested in saying it in a way that seems to them appropriate and right. None of these men are primarily concerned with “what the public wants.” Call them idealists if you will, but they have hopes that the public may some day be educated up to enjoying fiction of a higher order than the type it is getting in the average magazine of to-day.

This book is not a text, at least in the sense that one who has mastered its contents is supposed to know all there is to be known about the writing of stories. It has been written with the idea that born writers are scarcer than magazine advertisements would lead us to believe; that comparatively few people possess the qualifications necessary for good writers; but that even a bad writer can be a good reader and, as such, do his share in the age-long process of elevating public taste. If more bad writers would content themselves with being good readers, we could, without blushing, speak of the writing of fiction as an art instead of as a game or a business.

It need scarcely be added that this book has been written as a possible aid only to the writer who has something to say, who has the impulse and the necessary talents to say it, and who is interested in saying it in the most effective and artistic way possible. Such a person will, perhaps, find the ensuing advice too general to fit his needs. The fault, if fault it is, has been committed with premeditation. Rather than turn out a wardrobe of tailor-made ideas, the author of this book has aimed only to fit out the closet of the reader’s mind with a series of pegs on which the reader can hang his own ideas as they formulate themselves. Each one will take what seems good to him, mold it to suit his own purposes, and reject the rest. This is as it should be; this is constructive thinking. There is all the difference in the world between learning and being taught.

The entire book has been constructed upon a theory of writing rather than upon a series of rules. The specific advice contained in the last chapter is offered because it has been helpful to some students in the solving of some of their technical problems.

Washington, D.C.

D. B.

CHAPTER I
THE SHORT STORY FORM

[1] Substance and Form

To every piece of literature there are two possible methods of approach. Every author who has even taken pen in hand to record his thoughts and feelings has, consciously or unconsciously, asked himself two questions: first, What have I to say? and second, How shall I say it? Translated into the language of the critic, and looking at the questions from the critic’s point of view, these two queries become two tests, the test of substance and the test of form.^[2]

Roughly elaborated, these two tests mean this for the writer: he must have something to say that is worth the saying, and he must say it in the most effective way possible. The most perfect form and the most perfect style are nothing if they do not cloak thoughts that are worth revealing. On the other hand, ideas or emotions, no matter how original they may be, lose much of their distinction if they are not cast in a form which is appropriate to their substance.

When we look back over the world’s masterpieces in any form of artistic expression, we feel that the artist has so blended form and substance that the two together form a perfect entity. Whether we take a painting of Leonardo, a symphony of Beethoven, or a play of Shakespeare, we feel that the form bears a perfect relation to the feeling. The fact that we seldom think of either form or substance as existing separately and that, unless we are artists ourselves, we seldom criticize either by itself, is but a further tribute to the genius who has made his mode of expression fit so aptly the thought which he desired to convey.

[2] The Danger of Dogmatism

The short story is a literary form which has gradually evolved to fit a need. The history of this evolution is so complex, and is so disputed at every turn by scholars, that it does not seem appropriate in a volume of this kind to attempt to venture into the field.^[3] For our purposes it will be sufficient if, after a hasty survey of the past, we can come to some general conclusions regarding the present status and usefulness of the short story form.

There is a tendency among students of literature and teachers of writing to make distinctions between the various short forms of literature. Many of these distinctions are useful and have an historical justification. The gradual evolution of the short form is a field in itself, which the student may well pursue with interest and profit. But such a study demands a clear eye and a balanced mind, especially when the study is undertaken by one who has a tendency to be dogmatic about formulistic rules or useless distinctions. If there is any one thing that the modern short story is suffering from, it is the splitting of hairs by pedants, who cramp the form of young writers trying to express themselves in an original way. These teachers are wont to quibble over questions of form. While it is true that every piece of literature demands form of some sort, it is worse than folly to state didactically that any such thing exists to-day as the short story form. The statement would be true if interpreted broadly to mean a short literary form, capable of infinite variations and subtle and complex changes. But the difficulty comes when the teachers attempt to lay down rules and formulas for the construction of the short story, and sometimes go so far as to dignify the specific brand by a capital “S” or a hyphen. This mode of tagging the short form arose in the latter half of the nineteenth century, when Professor Brander Matthews, perceiving that the short form was in the process of changing its skin like a snake, attempted to differentiate between the “tale” of Irving and the story of Poe by classifying the latter as a “Short story.”

While, as we have said, this method of classification is useful to the scholar, just as differentiating the periods of prehistoric time is valuable for the geologist, it is extremely doubtful whether such minute classification can do very much for the person whose chief interest lies in self-expression. This statement is not meant by any means to deter the curious from either a superficial or intensive study of the evolution of the form, nor is it meant to belittle the valuable research which has been done. Everyone interested in the short story should be interested in its past, just as everyone who is interested in current events should have a liberal background of history. It can even be said that a study of the short story could prove as valuable in interpreting the present and future of the form, as a knowledge of the past history of the world is valuable in interpreting the trend of the times and prophesying the future of human relations. The point which we wish to make, however, is that such a study of the short story should not be used in any way to hamper the freedom of form to which any artist is entitled. Probably every rule for writing that teachers have ever laid down has been broken, and successfully broken, by a writer who had the courage to say what he had to say in the way in which he wanted to say it. Some of the best contemporary writers have proved conclusively that there is no formula for the writing of the short form; to mention but a few we need cite only Katherine Mansfield, Sherwood Anderson, and Ernest Hemingway. A large share of the bitterness which many writers, such as Anderson and William McFee, hold toward the so-called “teachers of writing” is that these teachers have any unhappy tendency to be dogmatic. This dogmatism is rightly deplorable, and there is a grave danger to the short form when we see springing up, all over the country, schools and courses of “successful writing,” the sole aim of which is to teach Jones and Brown to write exactly like all the other Joneses and Browns who have been clever enough to find their way into contemporary magazines. And it is significant to note that the writers who are more than “successful”—those who have made outstanding contributions to literature of recent years—have been those who have been unhampered by rules and formulas, who have expressed themselves in a form of their own devising, which fits their substance as neatly as a glove fits the hand.

[3] The Early “Form”

With this idea in mind, then, let us undertake our examination of the short story form, at the same time holding constantly in mind that it is by no means an isolated genre which sprang suddenly into being at some time during the nineteenth century, but that it is a broad means of literary self-expression which has been developing slowly, through various related forms, since the beginning of the time when men first began to tell tales for their amusement.

The story-telling instinct was strong in primitive man. We find examples of stories on ancient Egyptian papyrus dating back several thousand years before the Christian era. The tales, to be sure, lack what we have come to speak of as “form,” but they evidently satisfied the simple minds of those who told them and those who listened. Since it seems that song was one of the first means of self-expression, even as it is in childhood to-day, it is safe to say that many of the old tales were sung, probably by wandering musicians, such as the blind Homer was supposed to be. The Odyssey and the Iliad were probably passed down by word of mouth from generation to generation before they were finally set down in manuscript.

It is this story-telling instinct, innate and spontaneous, which gave rise to our earliest literature. Broadly speaking, it lies behind all story-telling, whether the form be prose or poetry. It has always been strong in man in every stage of his culture, but at periods when civilization has taken on, from time to time, a tinge of sophistication, we find writers paying more attention to form, as did Petronius, for example, in his Satyricon, written during the first century of the Christian era. The literature of the Middle Ages, both prose and verse, was largely unsophisticated, whether its flavor was religious or romantic.^[4] It is only in a few forms, such as the French fabliau, that the reader detects the more sophisticated satiric touch. When this medieval continental literature was taken over into England, it eventually came into the hands of a genius whose sense of humor and sense of form recreated some of the old material into works of art. Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, as Professor Canby has pointed out, contain “the best of the short story kinds of the Middle Ages, with all that their centuries had given them, plus the additions of a great genius.”^[5]

The story of the Renaissance contributed nothing of lasting importance, chiefly because the English, working ostensibly in imitation of the Italian novella, freighted their stories so heavily with learning and rhetoric that the story itself was often lost sight of.

The English fiction of the seventeenth century dealt much with extravagant romance and amorous intrigue. The literature of this period, because of its substance, did not lend itself to compression into anything resembling a short form. In the eighteenth century the story fared only a little better, for while we can find stories which in form we can call “short,” they were commonly subordinated to an ulterior purpose, usually didactic. Addison, Steele, Johnson, and Goldsmith invariably, when they had a story to tell, used it to point a moral. The only outstanding exception is found in Defoe’s The Apparition of Mrs. Veal (1706), which combines short story substance with a show of form in a bit of convincing realism.

With the coming of the Romantic Movement in England the story began to come into its own, but the end which it set out to accomplish was the creation of exaggerated effects of horror and pathos. The combination of sophisticated subject-matter with unsophisticated form was disastrous. The early writers of this period, with the exception of Scott in England and Irving in America, failed because they were following outworn models to create new effects. Scott and Irving succeeded in their stories because they were able to be natural rather than stilted and exaggerated. Whereas neither of them achieved what we have come to know as the “short story form,” they did succeed in telling a charming story in an easy and natural way.^[6]

From France and America were to come, almost simultaneously, the two greatest influences on form. Mérimée and his contemporaries, on one side of the Atlantic, and Poe and Hawthorne on the other, began to achieve, with apparent deliberation, “effects” which heretofore had seemed to be the result of an occasional and accidental genius who left behind him no lasting influence.

[4] Edgar Allan Poe

All might have been well with both the French and American schools, and their influence on one another, had it not been for the fact that Poe wrote, in addition to his stories, two pieces of criticism—his review of Hawthorne’s Twice-Told Tales and his own Philosophy of Composition.

In the former he laid down two dicta which have hung upon the short story like an incubus, even down to the present time:

1. A short story (or “tale” as Poe referred to it, since elaborate classification had not yet been invented) must be short enough to be read at a single sitting. (Though how long a “single sitting” might be he did not have the temerity to dictate.) It is difficult to trace how much damage this dictum has perpetrated, but it is certain that since the time of Poe, more especially in the present generation, there is an unhealthy tendency to limit arbitrarily the length of a piece of fiction before it can enter the “short story” class. More recently the followers of the Poe dictum have been caught in a snare of their own making with the advent of the short short story, which many now refuse to classify as a “short story” because it is too short!

2. He laid down the law of the “unique and single effect.”

There are few text-books on the short story which do not contain this quotation, laying down this rule of Poe’s for the guidance of those who would learn to write. But there are a few teachers who have seen keenly enough into the character of Poe to realize that he was the type of man who preached one thing and practised another. It is always interesting to hear a genius talk about his art, but there are few who are wary enough to take such pronouncements with a large grain of salt. One of the characteristics of genius is that it works spontaneously; there are very few, if any, authors who can tell us precisely how any of their works have been produced. Withdrawn from their work, they may be able to give some sound and polite advice to those who wish to write, but the advice is quite naturally liable to be abstract and of little value. It is inevitably so. Even if a genius were able to lay down rules for the guidance of those who are not geniuses, there is still the fact that no two people, geniuses or not, ever work in the same way. The human factor is something which can be neither predicted nor controlled. There is every probability that Shakespeare did not work like Voltaire, or Wordsworth like Byron. For any one of them to dictate to the other would be no less foolish than for Poe to dictate to Jones.

In the next place, we have to deal with Poe’s Philosophy of Composition. Here he not only reiterates his “single sitting” qualification for the short story, but also pretends to give us an insight into his own methods of work. He says:

For any other author to have written so amazing an analysis of method would have been preposterous enough, but for one with a genius and temperament like Poe’s, it is incredible. Mr. Henry Goodman has commented succinctly on what was going on behind the scenes of Poe’s mind when he wrote The Philosophy of Composition:

“It had been Poe’s delight to solve cryptograms; to perpetrate hoaxes, pseudo-scientific and literary, and to decode word-puzzles; to investigate mechanical chess-players, and to present his findings with a solemnity of a scientist before a congress. It was in keeping with his singular genius to assert that he conceived of writing in the terms of mathematical problems which he set himself. Was it anything more than the feeling that he had to bolster up this assertion which led to that fabrication, the ‘Philosophy of Composition’? . . .

“Poe, for reasons not altogether clear, wanted to prove that he was practical-minded. To a generation that was beginning to venerate efficiency, he wanted to show himself, in his own domain, a miracle of efficiency. . . . Poe, as we shall see, made much of his economy of effort and the directness with which he could compose. He laughed at poetic frenzy—shades of William Blake! He derided as ‘authorial vanity’ the reluctance of authors to discuss the processes by which their work came to completion. He charged predecessors and contemporaries with fear of ‘letting the public take a peep behind the scenes at the elaborate and vacillating crudities of thought, at the true purposes seized only at the last moment, at the innumerable glimpses of idea that arrived not at the maturity of full view, at the fully matured fancies discarded in despair as unmanageable, at the cautious selections and rejections, at the painful erasures and interpolations,’ which marked their literary activity.

“Those last words reveal Poe, the artist; Poe who has recaptured in his work the tragic rhythms of his imagination, and who has wrested a tragic beauty even from the commonplace externals of an uneventful life. This is the artist who has labored and lain in wait for the song of Israfel, and not the mental prodigy who has challenged the audience to set him a puzzle he could not unravel. . . .

“Of an entirely different complexion, as the late Professor Newcomer pointed out, were Poe’s own words appearing in the 1845 edition of his poems: ‘With me poetry has been not a purpose, but a passion, and the passions should be held in reverence.’ ”^[7]

In these last words of Poe we seem at last to hear the artist speaking. And though he may have laid down the law in his review of Hawthorne, and though, for some reason, he may have attempted a specious self-defense or perpetrated a hoax in his Philosophy of Composition, we must inevitably come to the conclusion that neither his rules nor his methods of work deserve to be canonized into principles by which writers are to be guided to the creation of stories of any enduring merit. It is high time for us to begin to evaluate Poe in his proper setting, to realize that for the type of story which he was writing his preconceived effect (even granted that his effects were preconceived) might serve very well. His tales were all saturated with an atmosphere of either horror, mystery or beauty; they were in keeping with the spirit and taste of his times.^[8] But the short story of to-day has widened its scope of both substance and form so materially since the mid-nineteenth century, that it is sheer folly for the writer of to-day to attempt to model his stories in a mold which has long ago been outworn.

Further, there is danger in creating any mold whatever for the construction of the short story. Granted at once that the essence of the short story is its form, it does not stand to reason that there is only one form. In the writing of every story there are two unknown quantities, algebraically speaking, which must be taken into consideration: the x is the material with which the author has to deal, the substance or warp of his story; the y is the personality and temperament of the author himself. Each story demands a different method of treatment, a different form; and even if twenty authors were to set to work upon identically the same story, the results would be twenty different stories, not one, solely because of the y factor in the problem. Each will take the material as he sees it, and mold it into a form which will suit his own particular purpose.

It seems obvious, then, that unless the teachers of slot-machine fiction can standardize and find the value of both x and y, there is little hope of producing a story from a formula in which both quantity x and quantity y must figure. The writer of this book, for his own satisfaction, once set a class of twenty-five to work upon the same story idea, and the results—both in plot, tone, and theme—were even more surprisingly variant than one would at first suppose. Twenty-five stories, some good, some bad, resulted, each widely different from the other, and all bearing but little relation to the original idea which had been given them for the story. Those who had succeeded in getting the “feel” of their own idea had produced something which was solely their own, and each had instinctively found the form which would best express his own emotional reaction to his story.

To return for a moment to Poe, it would be as unwise wholly to discard his dicta as it would be foolish entirely to accept them. When he formulated his doctrine of the “unique and single effect,” he had something in mind which was of value. He amplified his idea:

Poe is here speaking of the unification which of necessity must be an attribute of any brief form of literature. The novel, because of its length, can afford to diffuse its fire somewhat, but even a novel, whatever its length, must aim at some target. The shorter form, because it is short, must concentrate its fire. But here again the quantities x and y make their appearance; the temperament and subject-matter of one writer may allow him more latitude than in the case of another author with a different subject. Both, if wise, will aim at unity of a sort.

[5] The Necessity for Freedom of Form

For a serious artist who is writing not for the sake of stringing pot-hooks together but solely because he has something to say, the question of unity should resolve itself with comparative simplicity. The foundation of every good story, the warp of the fabric, is an emotional impression (or call it idea, theme, effect, what you will), a quality of feeling which the author possesses with reference to some real or imaginary situation. To portray this feeling, to build it up in order to produce a similar impression upon his reader, is his aim. The means by which he may do this are for him to discover and decide, and there are no rules or formulas of writing which will teach either an empty-headed person to think or a dumb person to speak.

There are a great many people who are trying to write who should not be writing at all; there are others who have just enough natural aptitude to learn to be good imitators. Let them imitate if they will; they will do no especial good, nor will they do any especial harm unless they try to persuade other people to adopt the same methods. This book is not written for either of the above classes of writers, unless it may help them to discover in the works of other writers better than themselves certain qualities which spell freedom from formula rather than enslavement to it. If there is anything left to-day to teach about the writing of the short story it is freedom—and especially freedom of form.

Writers need to realize that, while form of some sort is essential to the short story, an insistence upon a particular form is going to result in decadence rather than growth. Writing by models is not the way to learn to write. There are probably some few teachers of writing who wish, along with the author of this book, that O. Henry had never been born. Granted the charm of his stories, their very charm, evanescent though it often is, has resulted in the fallacy that he created a type of story which should be the type to be followed. The “trick-ending bogey” is one which is as hard to detach as any leech which has ever fastened itself upon the writing world. The folly of imitating anyone, either as to form or substance, is the one thing which is the most difficult to teach. If writers could learn more self-confidence there would be better stories written; if they could learn to say to themselves, “I am I, and not Poe or O. Henry or Sherwood Anderson,” they would be surer of learning to say what they have to say in the way which is peculiar to themselves.

[6] Some Characteristics of Modern Forms

In the face of what has just been said, it would be contradictory, even if it were possible, to make any very definite evaluation of the hypothetical short story form. But it might not be out of place to note some of the characteristics which seem common to the prevailing forms of contemporary short stories.

In the first place, “form” has been variously defined. One of the most satisfactory definitions has been given by Mary Austin: “Form is the shape which a story acquires in its passage from the mind of the author to his audience.” And she goes on to say, “The American short story form developed out of our national method of attack on the immediate issue, with attention undivided by any concern for the sequence of events. It was, in fact, the lack of sequence in our experience which made the short story for a long time our most expressive literary vehicle.”^[9]

Mrs. Edith Wharton says, “Form might perhaps . . . be defined as the order, in time and importance, in which the incidents of the narrative are grouped.”^[10]

It will be noted that both Mrs. Austin and Mrs. Wharton have laid stress on the lack of any necessary chronological sequence of events in a story, and that Mrs. Wharton has at least impliedly noted the relation of this matter of chronology to the proportions of the story. The older tales seldom departed from a rigid sequence of events; they began at the beginning and concluded when they had told the reader what happened in the end. Perhaps one of the chief reasons for this particular form (or lack of form) was the fact that most of the stories concerned themselves with a series of events, rather than with the emotional content or “delicate nuances” of a given situation. Very little except action was extracted from the situation except that some event took place there which was (if the tale was well constructed) the logical climax of the rest of the action of the story. There was very little probing beneath the surface of the story, and it never occurred to the older writers to find the entire story beneath the surface, as Henry James did.

But when the minds and interests of both authors and readers began to shift from fiction which necessarily concerned itself solely with action for action’s sake, the more subtle aspects of outward situations gave a new importance to the often hidden significance of commonplace events. With this shift in emphasis came the need for a new sense of proportion, and with the change in proportion came the inevitable lack of insistence upon a definite chronology of events in the story. The more that character becomes important, and the meanings of the actions which the character performs, the less important does it become for the author to tell the whole story in the order in which it occurred.

This shift in emphasis, then, has had another result on the form of the modern story. If the reader’s interest shifted to the meanings of things rather than the things themselves, and if the writer therefore need not adhere to the narration of events in sequence, it became necessary for the writer, in order to preserve the correct proportion and values, to sketch in enough background to maintain the relation between the acts of the characters and the significance of these acts. As a result, the modern story resorts more and more frequently to the use of suggestion.^[11]

The use of suggestion is an art which the writer of the modern story must cultivate. For every story that suggestion would not improve, there are half a dozen which would suffer seriously because of the lack of it. While there is no doubt that some authors make use of it excessively, there are more who do not use it enough. The use of suggestion will be treated more at length in Chapter XI; at this point it will be sufficient if the reader appreciate the fact that it has definitely made its place in the modern story of the better type. Its use is not confined to filling in the gaps of the story on which the author does not wish to take the time to dwell. More often it is used to suggest the most important parts of the story, even the climax, where the reader’s mind is projected into space to fill in for itself the outcome and the significance of the story.

Finally, to return to Poe, the modern story has a unity and compactness which the old “tale” lacked. But the “unique and single effect” has broadened and expanded its meaning. A story is still the recording of an emotional impression which the author has felt and is trying to pass on to the reader. Poe said, “A skilful literary artist has constructed a tale. If wise, he has not fashioned his thoughts to accommodate his incidents . . .” But we know now that “skilful literary artists” have successfully worked both ways, from incident to thought or from thought to incident, and that there is no prophesying or charting which way the mind will work on any given material. And we know that the “effect” need not necessarily be plotted in advance, but only that the emotional reactions to the writer’s material must have so crystallized in his mind that he can transcribe on paper what he has felt about what he has seen or imagined. That this quality of feeling is “single” cannot be categorically denied, but whether it is single, double, or triple, it will have unified itself in the author’s mind, else it would not be worth the writing. This unity reflects itself not only in “hewing to the line” of the story, but in a prevailing unity of tone which, if all be well with the author, saturates the story with the quality of feeling which he has for his material.

Such, in the rough, is the form of the modern story. It has discarded insistence on rigid chronology; instead it has resorted to the rich use of suggestion, often at the critical points of the story, projecting the reader’s mind into space in order to fix the impression; but whatever the method, the story, because of its short form, has unity enough, in proportion to its length and purpose, to focus itself on the emotional impression which is to be made on the mind of the reader.

CHAPTER II
THE WEAVING OF THE STORY

[1] An Analogy

Throughout this book we shall trace the analogy between the writing of the story and the weaving of a piece of fabric. Like most analogies ours cannot be safely carried too far, but in their essentials the two processes have so many points of similarity that the figure will, in general, hold good.^[12]

Many of us are familiar with the old-fashioned hand loom, which can still be seen in operation in some parts of the country. It consists of two upright pillars, held together and supported by a horizontal brace or cross-piece. Upon a frame, which projects horizontal to the floor, the weaver strings a series of threads, known as the warp threads, closely spaced together. These warp threads form the foundation upon which the fabric is afterward woven.

In and out between these warp threads the woof threads are woven by means of a shuttle, a cigar-shaped implement on which the woof thread is wound. If the finished fabric is to contain a design of any kind, it is the woof threads which furnish the color and configuration. By alternating the color and length of these threads it is possible to weave very intricate and colorful designs.

[2] The Loom

Every story is woven just as truly as a piece of fabric is fashioned on the loom. The loom is the writer himself—a mechanism a thousand times more complex than the simple loom on which our great-grandmothers wove the fabric to clothe their families. This very complexity of the writer’s make-up affords the chief reason why rules of writing cannot be laid down with the same simplicity as rules of weaving. Whereas a person who has woven cloth on one loom can soon accustom himself to the idiosyncrasies of another, it is impossible for a writer to lay down rules for the guidance of his fellows. Were it not for the fact that there are some principles common to all types of short story writing, any attempt to aid writers would fail before it could be begun. The material of this book has been limited, so far as possible, to these basic principles, in full acknowledgment of the fact that any advice that can be given to the possessor of one kind of loom may not be applicable to him who possesses another type. Each person must know the peculiarities of his own instrument; each will, in the long run, have to learn his art after much patient experiment and a long series of valuable mistakes.

[3] The Warp

The “idea” for a story, like an idea for a design, may be born in a number of ways. To some it comes suddenly, like an inspiration; in others it evolves slowly as they proceed with the task. No two people work in the same way. But out of this idea, whatever its source, are spun the threads which become the warp of the fabric. This warp is the substance of the story—sometimes referred to as “theme,” a term which is suitable enough if it is given a meaning sufficiently broad. The word “theme” need not imply a moral (which few good stories possess), but must embrace the logical elements which make the story assume a significance, ring true to experience, and embody a concrete element of feeling which enables it, by virtue of its saying something true about life, to justify its existence.

This warp, this significant commentary on life, is what so many stories lack. Writers are slow to discover that the whole design which the weaver fashions with his woof threads will fall into a hopeless tangle if the warp does not lie at the foundation of the fabric to hold it together.

A person who has no technical knowledge of the weaving process is not conscious of the distinction between warp and woof. As he sees a fabric he is conscious only of the “pattern” of the cloth. He does not realize that underneath the design run the warp threads, which, by holding together the woof, enable the design to exist.

[4] The Woof

The woof is the showy part of the fabric. It is the standard by which the layman judges the whole piece. So the uncritical reader sees in a story only a group of characters in action against a certain setting. After he lays down his book he is conscious, perhaps, of being pleased or displeased by what he has read, but he cannot tell why. He may like the story because it deals with people who “seem real,” or he may say that the whole story is “true to life.” But he is unable to distinguish the warp from the woof; he cannot see that action, character, and setting are only the colored woof threads which the skilful artist has woven upon a foundation strong enough to support them.

Theme (or substance), then, we may liken to the warp of the cloth, and action, character, and setting to the woof. Having stretched the warp threads, the weaver is ready to commence his weaving. He begins, we shall assume, with a definite plan in mind; he knows how he is going to dispose of his materials—the various color combinations by which he is going to put his characters in action against the setting. This plan may be compared to the writer’s plot.

[5] The Plan

Here we meet a fallacy entertained by most inexperienced writers and not a few of the seasoned veterans. By these people plot is commonly supposed to be the story itself—a series of events in which the actors play their parts. Beginners who announce that they have a “plot” for a story commence at once to talk about what is going to happen in their story. But should some wiser person interrupt them to ask, “But what does it mean? What are you trying to say?” these plot-artists would open their eyes and mouths in amazement and gasp, “Why, I’ve just told you!” But they haven’t. They have only recited a series of events, leading perhaps to a very well-constructed climax, but, when all is said and done, the story is nothing more than a flimsily woven tangle of warp threads—words, words, words. The warp is rotten, or has stretched. They have neglected to inject a fundamental meaning or significance into what they have said.

A good judge of textiles will demonstrate the durability of a piece of goods. He will rub folds of it vigorously together, he will stretch it; he will separate the warp and woof threads to show how well the cloth is woven; he may even touch a match to it to prove that the material is genuine. Similarly, a story must stand up under vigorous tests. The most searching of all these is the question, “What of it?” The blasting simplicity and force of the query has caused many a writer with a “good plot” to drop his eyes in confusion and turn sadly away in search not of a plot, but of an idea.

For example, Rain, by W. Somerset Maugham, has a very simple “plot.” Two missionaries, Dr. Davidson and Dr. Macphail, with their wives, are marooned by rain on the island of Pago-Pago. Quartered with them perforce in the same “hotel” is another fellow-passenger from their boat, Sadie Thompson, obviously a “fallen” woman, of whose past nothing is known at first. Dr. Davidson, an uncompromising and fanatical evangelist, angered at first by Sadie’s questionable conduct with her visitors (sailors from the ship), and by her flippant attitude toward himself, comes to the conclusion that he must save Sadie’s soul. But he has discovered part of her past and has concluded that she is a fugitive from justice. Accordingly he arranges with the governor of the island to have her deported to San Francisco. Sadie’s deathly fear causes her to become cringing instead of defiant; she accepts Davidson’s religion and even the idea that she must return to San Francisco to purge her soul by serving her prison sentence. Her spirit is completely broken. But when Davidson visits her one night to solace her and administer the comfort of religion, he himself becomes a victim of his own repressed passions. Overcome with remorse, he commits suicide. The change in Sadie is instantaneous: she reverts to type, her loathing for men further intensified by the spectacle of Davidson’s fall from grace.

Here, then, on the surface are characters in action against a colorful setting—the familiar woof threads of a story. But any characters in different action against perhaps the same setting would not have produced the emotional effect which Maugham has achieved in his story. The inter-relation of these three elements, we may safely assume, was decided by the moving force of an idea which the author conceived. The idea may have sprung, in its germinal beginning, from either action, character, or setting. But while this idea may have been derived from any of these elements, it was not identical with any of them; it was an essence distilled by a mind which, imbued with the significance of the idea, subordinated these elements to the expression of this idea. They became the means to an end rather than ends in themselves. They became the part of a larger plan to which the “plot” itself was subservient.

The regeneration of the impulsive and unfortunate Sadie at the hands of the dominating evangelist, the tragedy of her betrayal at the hands of her saviour, and her ensuing lapse to her former level of philosophy and morality permeate the fabric of the story, leaving the reader with a thought, overlaid with emotion, which is nowhere definitely expressed unless it be in Sadie’s final words to the astonished Dr. Macphail: “You men! You filthy, dirty pigs! You’re all the same, all of you. Pigs! Pigs!” And then, with Dr. Macphail, the reader impliedly understands how little a certain type of religion can offer, how fallible human nature, when pressed into artificial molds, can be, and how “faith without works” is more than dead—it becomes, rather, a destructive force which can undermine faith not only in God but also in human nature.

Beginning with this idea, which the story of Rain induces, the reader can work back to see how Sadie and Davidson had to be what they were, and how they both had to act as they did, and how the setting contributed—all to enable the author to impregnate his story with a significance and to answer the question “What of it?”

[6] The Pattern

Let us assume that a writer possess a good idea for a story, and that he has in mind a general outline of it. He is like the weaver who has a good motif for his design but has not yet worked out the details. He is now faced with the problem of planning his pattern.

Fiction, as well as fabrics, has its patterns. Patterns are known to the other arts as well—music, painting, sculpture, and poetry. Each art has its own terminology, and we do not always realize that all of them have some of their principles in common. Can we not trace an analogy between the motif of a symphony, the “lines” of a painting or a statue, the refrain of a poem, and the pattern of a design? The motif of the symphony and the refrain of the poem are similar in that each is the repetition of a phrase to achieve an effect. The repetition, in spite of innumerable variations, always preserves its relation to the original. And so in painting and sculpture the critic sees a major “line,” to which the movement of all the other lines is related.

To carry this analogy into the field of fiction is a more difficult task, and we have arbitrarily chosen the term pattern to express what is meant in the other fields by motif, refrain, and “line.” The principle of repetition lies behind them all—repetition, with variation, in order to achieve an effect.

The essence of successful repetition is that we should not be too conscious of it, or bored by it. The artist uses it like a club to beat his impression into our consciousness—and yet we must not be conscious of being beaten! Obviously the process requires no small amount of delicacy.

If pattern is repetition, what is it that fiction repeats? The answer is, fiction repeats whatever the author desires the reader to remember most. It may be the character of one of the actors of the story. It may be a scene which he desires us to remember; again it may be the theme itself. All of these things are capable of infinite and varied repetition at the hands of an artist who is able to impress them on our consciousness without making us aware that these elements are being unduly or monotonously emphasized.^[13]

The weaving of these woof threads into a pattern is a task which requires both study and practice. An analysis of every good story will reveal a pattern of some sort, sometimes so cleverly woven that the critic must tear the fabric to shreds before he can discover the secret of the impression that has been made upon him. This analytical process is never easy, and seldom enjoyable until the reader gradually comes to the realization that analysis and synthesis—the taking apart of a story and the putting it together again—will reveal some things about the writing of fiction that he did not dream of before. And then, while he may never learn the most hidden secrets of the art, he will at least comprehend some of the fine points of its technique, and learn to appreciate those who, through a long period of apprenticeship, have become its masters.

CHAPTER III
THE LOOM

[1] “Know Thyself”

An element of mystery, to the lay mind, has always enveloped the work of the creative artist. The painter, the sculptor, the poet, the musician have always stood apart from the crowd, regarded with reverent awe by the masses, who heretofore have always had a more or less pronounced tendency to deify the man of genius. Time was when the poet was priest. Not different in kind, but only in degree, was the subsequent belief that the poet was kindled by a divine spark. Even to-day we do not all of us laugh at Milton’s faith in his supposedly Heaven-sent inspiration.

Within the last fifty years psychology has come to the aid of science, and in later years has taken some pains to attempt to explain the genius process. And at the present day increasing interest is being manifested in the laboratory measurement of rhythm in poetry and prose,^[14] in scientific experiments in the mensuration of emotional effect, and in the psychology of human behavior in its relation to the writing of fiction.^[15] It is too early at the present time to make a fair estimate of the value of such work, and more difficult still to prophesy its effect on the literature of the future. But it is fairly safe to assume that such methods will have but little vogue among men of established literary reputation in this generation. The chief reason for this belief is that writers are inclined (and with some justice) to share the popular belief in their own inspiration—an inspiration which, if no longer considered divine, at least partakes of some of the mystery which will always envelop the unknown. Much of the ridicule which has lately been heaped upon school and college courses in “the art of writing” has come from the authors themselves, any one of whom will be quick to assert that writing cannot be taught. And it is a very sanguine teacher who will not agree with him.

For it is a wise teacher and a wise pupil who will realize at the outset that writers are born; they may be trained but they cannot be made. Even psychologists, college professors, and a few writers who have attempted to penetrate the mystery of the genius process, have all ultimately reached, in their pursuit, the impassable barrier, the unknown quantity y, the indefinable something which separates the man of genius from his fellows. “So far shalt thou go and no farther.” Those who have studied the problem have never succeeded in isolating that unknown quantity in order to subject it to a scientific examination. They have been compelled to postulate its existence without explaining it, just as have the biologists in the case of the phenomenon called “life.”

But while we shall have to be content to deal with genius as an unknown quantity, it does not follow that we cannot deal with it at all. Reference will be later made^[16] to two noteworthy attempts to analyze its behavior. One of these attempts, Mary Austin’s Everyman’s Genius,^[17] has made a sincere effort to develop, from a prolonged study of the genius process, a method whereby men in general, and writers in particular, may be able to discover their individual talents, appraise them, train them, and put them to work. Yet even the reader who has thoroughly mastered the contents of Mrs. Austin’s book must lay it aside with the realization that while the author has effectively outlined and stated the problem, she has made no attempt to solve it. And the only possible first step toward a solution is for each individual to know himself. He is his own best laboratory, and if he will devote much time to the study of his own temperament, talents, and methods of work, he will be richly rewarded. Before he can deal with himself as an instrument, he must know his own capabilities and limitations. This thorough self-searching and stock-taking should be one of the first steps which a writer should take. The inventory is never finished, but when he has once begun it, the writer will realize the full effect of the advice which Socrates gave his followers—“Know thyself.”

[2] The Intricate Loom

In the last chapter the process of creative writing was compared to the weaving of cloth. The loom is the author himself. And just as the weaver must understand not only the mechanism of weaving but also the idiosyncrasies of his own particular loom, so must the writer have knowledge of himself as the instrument with which he is to work. A consideration of the loom is the object of this chapter, which will endeavor to impress upon the writer the necessity of a searching self-analysis.

Yet here we must pause. It is plainly untrue that all the geniuses of the world have been compelled to make this intensive study of themselves. The born genius of the highest order, the Leonardo or the Shakespeare, seems to have taken his genius and his self-knowledge as complacently and unconsciously as the average person accepts his digestion. This type of genius, however, is outside the scope of our discussion. We are here concerned only with the person who, by a process of self-searching, may first be able to discover within himself some talents and capabilities which will justify him in his attempt to write, and then may be able to train and cultivate such abilities as he may find.

The loom—there it stands in all its intricacy, seemingly so simple a device to one who has not tried to weave! Every literate person has written—personal letters, business letters, perhaps a diary. Writing, considered as a process of joining pot-hooks together to express an idea, is so common with us that we do it automatically. And all of us read, even if it is only the daily paper, and seldom lend a thought to consider the elements of journalism or the writing of a successful news story, any more than we stop to ponder the magic of the machine which weaves the cloth that we wear upon our backs.

But to him who has had even the most trifling experience with attempting to produce fiction, writing is indeed an “art,” the process of weaving always something of a mystery, and the loom something which he yearns to understand, but cannot. Discouragement comes readily; the beginner is often tempted to “chuck the whole business”; he comes, perhaps, to the conclusion that he is not cut out to be a writer. Perhaps it is just as well that the profession loses men and women of this ilk; most of them are correct in their appraisal of themselves.

[3] The Creative Impulse

Most of the writers who have succeeded have had a different attitude; their love of writing has amounted, in spite of discouragements, to such a passion that they could not be deterred by any worldly limitations. We can readily believe that nothing on earth, let alone his blindness, could have prevented Milton from writing Paradise Lost. To him who is endowed with the creative spirit, the driving impulse of the “creative urge” brings such a desire for self-expression that it is as unthinkable to frustrate it as it would be to plot the stoppage of the Mississippi River without first drying up all its tributaries.

The potential writer, then, must have something more than a passive “urge to write.” He must have a feeling for his art, an insuperable ambition to make himself proficient in it, and, above all, something to contribute. Finally, he must appreciate the magnitude of his problem and have some conception of the delicacy and intricacy of the loom on which he is to weave; he must realize the necessity for him to understand and cultivate, to the utmost of his ability, the minute and sensitive parts of that loom—which is himself.

[4] The First Pillar

There are two upright pillars which support the framework of the loom. The first is what we may call sensitiveness of observation.

Sensitiveness of observation is not merely the ability to observe. There are a great many people who possess an exact visual memory, but there are only a few who, as Mark Antony said of Cassius, can look “quite through the deeds of men.” Almost anyone can be taught to click the shutter of a camera and make an exact reproduction of a scene, but it takes a peculiarly sensitized eye to paint shadows purple instead of black, or to see, as a portrait painter might, that his model’s nose is blue and his cheeks green. Pictorial art, like writing, does not consist of the faithful and indiscriminate reproduction of details; it is the rendering of only such details as have awakened an emotional response in the artist.

The sensitiveness of the artist, then, demands something more than a visual memory; it postulates a capacity for emotion—emotion which is evoked at every point where the five senses, aided by the imagination, form a contact with life. Whether the writer is drawing his material from his own experience or from his imagination, there goes on within him a wholly unconscious process of selection, wherein the emotion which has been engendered in him by any sensuous contact seems to flow out and crystallize itself around the object or circumstance which has touched him, so that “for ever after the circumstance has the power of summoning up and recreating the emotion by which it was once touched.”^[18] All that is superfluous has been instinctively discarded. The author’s sensitive nature has seized upon the specific detail which has produced an emotion in him, and this he uses to call forth that same emotion in his reader. This process has been termed “crystallization” by John Middleton Murry, who describes it thus:^[19]

And so we see that the sensitiveness of observation which is demanded of the writer is more than a keenness of eyesight, more than a photographic memory or the ability to reproduce an infinite amount of detail. It is a sensitiveness of soul as well as of sight, and belongs to a nature which is capable of being emotionally aroused by sensuous contacts and which can convey to paper the quality of feeling which has been aroused by the crystallization of the emotions about the objects and situations of everyday life.

But the writer must face the fact that, as a matter of experience, details which have awakened an emotional response in him will not necessarily touch off a train of similar associations in the mind of the reader. Sincere emotion, no matter how crystallized it may be around significant details, does not inevitably have the power to move two people in the same way, or even, perhaps, to move them at all. This is one of the most baffling and discouraging problems that a writer faces: there is no guarantee that his sincere emotion will be automatically induced in his reader. The question is too subtle, perhaps, ever to be solved in a satisfactory way. But this much can be safely said: insincere writing, in which the author’s emotion is falsely induced and fails to crystallize about significant detail, has every chance of failure; but writing in which true crystallization takes place as a result of sensitiveness of observation and sincerity of feeling achieves the first prime requisite for arousing the reader.

[5] The Second Pillar

The second pillar of the loom is the ability to divine the significance of what one sees. This gift is not always a concomitant of sensitiveness of observation. A person endowed with the latter quality, but not with the former, might be able to feel deeply about certain persons, objects, or situations, but would not be able to translate them into fiction unless he possessed the ability to relate these things to life—to impregnate them with a significance.

For fiction of the best type must mean something. It must not only reproduce the people and events of life, but also must relate them to the life of which they are but a part. It need not expound a philosophy or point a moral—this is not its province—but it must have something to say; it must answer the question, What of it? In the following chapter we shall see that beneath the story, just as the warp underlies the surface of the woven fabric, is the meaning or significance of the story.

This significance we may think of as being contributed by the “thought element” of the story. The term is perhaps a misnomer, because the warp or theme of a story is seldom interwoven by any conscious process of ratiocination. The writer does not think his story out; he feels it out. What he has with emotion observed becomes the means of expressing also what he feels about it, and what he feels about it will unconsciously take on the color of what he feels about life. This subtle interweaving of thought and emotion—the abstract and the concrete—is what gives to literature a firmness of texture which makes it enduring.

John Middleton Murry has put it thus:^[21]

If it is correct that pure thought lends itself to complete expression by “symbols which have a constant and invariable value,” the symbols with which the writer of fiction deals are men and women, real and imaginary, as the writer has observed their relations in life. The writer who employs the truest symbols and puts them in their truest relations earns the appellation of “universal,” which is often applied to Shakespeare. No matter what may be the temperament or disposition of the writer, his experience in life has endowed with a peculiar meaning all that he has observed and thought. A “primrose by the river’s brim” means more than it did to Wordsworth’s Peter Bell. A feeling for life and about life is engendered by the mystical and individual contact between the outer world of men and the inner world of the thoughts and emotions—a contact which refines the raw material of life into a symbolic expression of the author’s feeling for it. And at length this feeling is given back again to the world in the form of the conventional symbols of literature, around which have crystallized both the writer’s thoughts and emotions.

[6] The Cross-Piece

But the two pillars of the loom must be held together and braced; else they will fall to the ground.

This support, or cross-piece, is the ability to experience life. There are many people who are endowed with an acute observation, and there are others who can divine the significance of what they see, but unless a person possessed of both these qualities is capable of experiencing, he cannot hope to convey his thoughts or emotions to others. It is this “experiencing temperament” which lends strength and support to the two pillars of the loom.

Experience, as we shall see later,^[22] has been variously misinterpreted. There are some, for example, who believe that a writer must find all his material only in the field of events and people which he has actually witnessed; these forget that Stephen Crane wrote his war story, The Red Badge of Courage, without ever having witnessed a battle. There are others who believe that a writer is justified in deliberately seeking out all kinds of “experience,” pleasant or unpleasant, in order to find material for fiction. Still others believe that having had an “interesting experience” is the only prerequisite necessary for being able to write about it.

All these misapprehensions can be traced to a failure to comprehend the meaning of the word “experience.” To experience means more than to have seen; it means more than to have divined the significance of what one has seen. It means that one is possessed of a talent which enables him to throw himself out of gear, as it were, to cease being himself, and to enter in spirit into the very core of an emotional experience, whether it be his own or another’s. The experience becomes subjective rather than objective. One lives a scene instead of observing it. One is one’s characters instead of being only a reporter of their words and actions. And because one is a participant instead of a spectator, he feels his story as he could not feel it otherwise. His is no trumped-up synthetic emotion; rather it is a true sympathy, an instinctive at-one-ness with his characters. The characters cease to be puppets dancing on tenuous strings; they become infused with life blood communicated by the spirit of their creator, who through them speaks and acts and feels as his own experience whispers to him that these imaginary creatures have spoken and acted and felt in the life with which he has endowed them.

CHAPTER IV
THE MATERIALS OF WEAVING

[1] The Spinning of the Thread

The material from which stories are woven must be first refined and spun from raw material. Just as cotton must first be planted, then grown, picked, ginned, and then finally spun into thread before the weaving process can begin, so the story “idea” must often germinate beneath the ground and evolve slowly through many processes (many of them only half-known to the author) before the writer may hope to give form and shape to his idea on paper. And just as the sun, rain, and other natural phenomena play their important rôles in the germination of the cotton plant, so also, in the evolution of short story ideas, many elements enter which are seemingly beyond all human control. The peculiar genius and talents of each individual writer affect his stories as surely as climatic conditions influence the growth of the cotton. The vagaries of genius and talent are as unpredictable as the state of the weather; we may prophesy, but never foretell with certainty. And where story ideas come from and how they may be nurtured and fostered in their growth will probably always remain as much of a mystery as the thunder, the lightning, the rain, and the sun, all of which man may reproduce in the laboratory, but which, when reproduced, are in effect but poor imitations of the original phenomena. It is well that this is so. We do not all of us want to think of our April showers as meteorological experiments, nor of our great stories, novels, paintings, and symphonies as the result of feeding material into a formula. Genius and talent to the end will always remain elusive, capable of being studied, sometimes nurtured or even controlled, but never automatically reproduced.

Any study of finding short story material must of necessity deal largely in generalities. What is material for one may not be material for another. In the last analysis each person in the world is so different from every other that, even if it were possible to focus the visions of millions of people through one pair of eyes, it would spell disaster to do so. The fascination of the world lies in the fact that it is made up of individuals who are different from ourselves, and the lure of fiction is largely attributable to the fact that the writer, while perhaps seeing the identical things which we have seen all our lives, has presented them to us through the focus of his own vision, not ours. He speaks our language, but he says things which we have not said, or could not say, for ourselves.

[2] Fiction Is Not Life

To say that the materials of fiction are found in life is, in one sense, to state a paradox. The words fiction and feign both have a common origin in the Latin fingere, which means to invent. In the minds of most of us, inventing carries the connotation of creating something which did not previously exist. But a moment’s reflection will convince us that, strictly speaking, nothing in the world is ever invented; it is discovered. In the field of science practically all so-called “inventions” are merely the result of a re-combination and re-grouping of things already known, and the use of materials which have been in existence, in some form, since the beginning of time.

And so it is with fiction. The materials of fiction are ready at hand, have always been ready at hand, waiting only for the “inventor” to discover them, combine them, and interpret them. And whether the characters, situations, themes, and settings are already in existence in life, or whether they are figments of the writer’s imagination, thus reduces itself to an academic question. The main point is that, through the medium of these characters, situations, themes, and settings, the writer of fiction has re-discovered life for us. And in the last analysis we do not care whether or not Hamlet ever lived in the flesh, as long as he seems to breathe the breath of life in the pages of Shakespeare’s play. There is a Greek adage, “To be, rather than to seem,” which will serve very well as a maxim of conduct, but when applied to fiction it must be reversed—“To seem, rather than to be.” To say that a story must be true to life is only to say that it must seem true to life. It is the semblance of reality rather than the reality itself in which the reader is interested, and it is by this criterion that we chiefly judge the writer of fiction.

This is a question which always troubles the young writer. He is constantly sailing a precarious course between the Scylla of Reality and the Charybdis of Imagination. No sooner does he succeed in evading one than his craft is dashed to pieces on the other. Constantly troubled by the problem of finding material and shaping it to his purposes, he is seldom able at the outset to distinguish between things as they seem and things as they are, between the semblance of reality and reality itself. And even those who find material ready to hand are seldom adept enough to mold and shape it to their purposes. They are too often obsessed with a passion for literalness which prevents them from adapting what they have seen and heard to an ulterior and controlling purpose in their writing. The Jones of real life must be faithfully portrayed, they say, even down to the color of his necktie, when he is set down on the written page. And Jones’ situation or complication in the life of reality must be exactly reproduced in fiction, whether or not it suits the purposes of the story. This is not realism in any sense of the word, but rather a perverted literal fidelity which atrophies the imaginative faculty. And the possession of imagination is indispensable to the writer of fiction.

[3] Imagination in Fiction

On the other hand, opposed to the pseudo-realists, as we may call them, are the pseudo-imaginationists—those who, endowed with imaginations, persist in clinging to the idea that since fiction is opposed to fact, anything will “go” on paper. The primary trouble with this type of person is not the possession of an over-vivid imagination, but rather the inability to control it. He has not yet learned that the imagination is not always an end in itself; that in art of all kinds, imagination is but a means to an end. In fiction that end is the saying of something, no matter what, as long as it is worth the saying. Even the most fantastic stories, spun seemingly from the gossamer of pure imagination, have behind them a substance, often unseen it is true, which supports them as surely as do twigs or blades of grass anchor the spider’s web.

This support, this substance, is the warp of the fabric which the story-teller weaves, as we shall see later.^[23] The function of the imagination is to weave the woof threads of action, character, and setting. The more vivid the imagination, the more brightly variegated the design of the story will be; but always beneath, often unperceived by the casual eye, lies the woof, the substance of the story.

Lucky is the man or woman possessed of an imagination, but unlucky is he who has not learned to subordinate it to his purpose, who does not know that back of every reader’s mind is the perpetual question, “What am I being told this story for?” It is a gigantic step from the fantasy of a fairy tale to the bleak reality of a Dreiser story, yet in both types of fiction the imaginative element is definitely present, and as definitely controlled to suit an ulterior purpose. There is always the necessity for consistency, even if the consistency lies in a consistent inconsistency. Fairies must be consistently fairies just as surely as human beings in life run true to their characters. When imagination betrays the writer into falsehood to his ideals and ideas of life, he runs amuck in melodrama and maudlin sentimentality.

[4] The Thread Is Spun from “Feeling”

Granted that the faults of the pseudo-realists and the pseudo-imaginationists lie in opposite directions, there is some advice which may be given to both alike. Whatever their temperaments or tastes, they are all interested in finding the means of expressing what they feel. The feeling is everything; no good story was ever written without it. This emotional basis is the seed from which the story springs, germinates, and flowers. From the plant are spun the warp threads which eventually support the fabric of the completed story.

No one can be taught to feel. Fortunately, few of us are incapable of feeling. But not all of those who can feel can write. We have already discussed the qualifications of the writer, and have mentioned the ability to experience as being one of the requisites. It is this ability to experience which forms the emotional core around which the story is fashioned.

The sensitive person, which every writer must be, receives his emotional impressions through innumerable doors. The most trivial sights and sounds can produce reactions which need only translation to become stories. But even the sensitive person, if he does not possess this ability to translate, to interpret the meaning, and to sound out the possibilities of what he sees and hears, is incapable of writing. The original emotion can come from the sight of a person who captures the imagination, or it may come from a situation which he has witnessed, a place he has seen, or an idea which has occurred to him.

All this sounds very simple. The chief difficulty with such generalization is that it trips so glibly from the tongue that it is liable to be misleading. It is fairly easy to advise a young writer, say, to look for interesting characters, study them, “experience” them, and then to fashion a story about them. It is not difficult to sense situations which have possibilities for short stories; it is not impossible for the sensitive person to be so struck with the feeling of a certain place or locality that he can imagine the life of a person exposed to the influence of such an environment. Nor is it beyond the range of the average person’s capabilities to take an abstract “idea” or theme and translate it dramatically into action. Every one of us, for example, has probably noticed that certain people seem to have a dual personality, one half good and the other half bad; it was not a feat of genius to imagine that a man might learn the secret of transforming himself from an angel into a devil. Yet who of us could have written Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde?

[5] Finding the Materials of Weaving

Where can one find the materials with which to weave? If there is an answer to the question, it seems to lie in the native ability of a writer so to emotionalize his original impression that it is possible for him to translate it into terms of reality which we can all not only understand but also feel. The author must first be able to feel intensely about any number of things; he must be as sensitive to impressions as a photographic plate. Around this feeling, whatever be the cause of it, he almost subconsciously groups the appropriate scenery, action, and characters. Through it runs his central “idea” or theme, the warp threads on which all else is woven. The impetus of this original emotion vitalizes everything else, impregnates the scenery, action, and characters with the compelling force of the original feeling. Some suggestions for the accomplishment of this will be found in a succeeding chapter.^[24] The main consideration at this point is to evoke the realization that the origin of the story may be so humble and obscure that it may be scarcely recognizable, except to the mind which has trained itself not only to feel but also to translate that feeling into the conventional symbols of fiction—action, character, and setting. The process of translation is not one which can be taught by rote, which is possibly one reason why so many beginners expect so much from their teaching, and are so bitterly disappointed and disillusioned when they find that after a year’s study they are not able to write good short stories. No teacher can train a pupil to feel, though there are a gifted few who can open the eyes of those in whom that talent has lain dormant. Observation can be sharpened, it is true, with practice. A knowledge of life and human nature comes with long experience, but even then it is but fragmentary.

Those who would find stories, then, must key themselves to a zestful experiencing of life, an “experiencing” enjoyment which will enable them to see intimately and feel deeply not only their own experiences, but also the experiences of others. They must become adventurers, especially adventurers in the field of the commonplace. One of the greatest delusions of the would-be writer is that he must travel far afield for his material. There is nothing wrong about travel except that it is seldom necessary, and that those who go out deliberately to “seek experience” are usually not only neglecting the best material in the world—that which is close at hand and with which they are familiar—but also failing, in their travel, to absorb anything but the superficial phases of the new localities. How many stories have failed because the writer has written out of his element, about things which he has but superficially observed! The temptation is always great, especially with the untried writer, to color his stories with a bizarre color-scheme. It is as fruitless as it would be for a person who had never seen the Grand Canyon to try to paint it.

Almost everyone is acquainted with some phase of life with which the average person is unfamiliar. But, strangely enough, each of us tends to make himself the exception to the rule, to say that we have led the ordinary conventional life in the ordinary conventional background, that we have nothing to write about. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred the assumption is false, but even if it were true, it would by no means follow that such a person would have nothing to say about what he knows. For, after all, there are very few new things under the sun; the best fiction has not been the portrayal of new characters in new situations and in new settings, but, on the contrary, the presentation of old things in an individual way. What one feels about is not nearly so important as what one feels. And we are apt to feel most intensely about the things which we know and understand the best.

[6] Venturing Into the Imaginative

Most teachers of writing have discovered that students write best about their own experiences. A student autobiography is nearly always fascinating reading. The reason is not hard to find. He is writing about the situations which he himself has experienced, and the people whom he has known, loved, and hated. Coloring all these persons, pictures, and events is an emotional background—his own feeling regarding these things. It has been said that everyone has within himself the making of at least one novel—about himself.

The next step is to learn to write about things which one has witnessed but not necessarily taken part in. The emotion then is not personal but impersonal: while the feeling is there, it has been divorced from the self and projected into the experiences and emotions of others. This type of writing is harder for the beginner, but is a necessary step to a mastery of the third type—purely imaginative writing.

This last type of fiction forms a much smaller class of writing than is generally supposed. As a matter of fact, comparatively few writers deal with purely imaginative characters in purely imaginative situations. Even though the writer may suppose that his characters and actions and settings are the creatures of his own fancy, a thorough self-searching would in many cases reveal the fact that all these elements have some factual basis. So unconsciously and voraciously do we consume our experiences and assimilate them, that it is often impossible to separate fact from fancy. Memory plays strange tricks with us. If it were possible to separate the real from the unreal, many of us would be surprised to find out how many factual bases there are for our fancies, and how many fanciful bases for our “facts.”^[25]

While, then, these three classifications—personal experience, observed experience, and fancied experience—are scarcely separable in fact, it would be well for the writer who has not had much training to put himself through a graded course, starting with autobiography and ending, after several months or more, in purely imaginative writing. As his writing takes him farther and farther away from personal experience into the field of fancy, he will find that an increasing strain is being put upon his ability to observe and record, his power to interpret the significance of what he sees, and his faculty to imbue all his fancy with that emotional vitality which distinguishes the undirected vaporings of an idle imagination from the purposeful power of a work of art.

[7] The Notebook

The writer early appreciates the value of a notebook. Too much stress cannot be put on the necessity of recording fleeting impressions, many of which flash across the mind with the rapidity of lightning, leaving no trace behind them. While it may be true that we never really forget anything, it is certainly a fact that most of us have not the ability to call up, at will, the things which we wish to remember.

The taking of notes is an art about which little advice can be given. After all, it is purely an individual matter, dependent solely upon the temperament and habits of the particular person concerned. Some take extended notes, others meagre; some attempt to reproduce in literary form the impressions of the moment, while others take only rough jottings, which they can later expand as desired. It is important, however, that each person become well enough acquainted with his habits of mind to know what kind of a system works best for him, and, once having discovered it, to adhere to it as rigidly as possible. The habit of taking notes is hard to form and easy to slough off; it must be constantly practised to be kept at its greatest efficiency.

Some sort of system for filing notes is highly desirable. Some writers use a careful index system, filing their notes under a large number of topics and sub-topics, using, for example, such major classifications as “Story ideas,” “Characters,” “Settings,” “Situations,” etc. There is a real necessity for some system which includes the major topics suggested above, and the individual can best determine how elaborate he wishes his classifications to be. But in cases where a card-catalogue system is adopted, there should be also a supplementary notebook, small enough to be carried about the person at all times during the day and slipped under the pillow at night. The rough notes from this little book can afterward be copied and filed.

A study of the notebooks of well-known writers, such as Hawthorne and Katherine Mansfield, for example, is an excellent practice. It teaches one not so much how to take notes as it does impress upon one the necessity of taking notes in some form. Even more, it is fascinating to see how the rough notes and fragmentary jottings have emerged, in the course of time, into stories which have become classics of form and substance. And, last of all, these notebooks throw a keen and searching light upon the genius and habits of the authors themselves. In the case of Hawthorne, for example, we can see the germs of his stories in random jottings, which more nearly resemble philosophical abstractions than short story “plots” or “ideas.” This habit of mind of Hawthorne’s gave to his stories an abstract, often didactic turn.

[8] “True Stories” from Life

Some writers have found a fertile field for story ideas in the daily newspapers. The newspaper habit is to be recommended, but with reservations. Many newspaper “stories” play to the public’s taste for the bizarre and unusual. Many of these stories are highly improbable; their readability lies solely in the fact that the integrity of the paper has guaranteed that the stories are true. As fiction they would be worthless. The old adage that “Truth is stranger than fiction” is nowhere more applicable than it is in the case of newspaper stories. Written as fiction, they would be incredible, and would, in the course of transition from fact into fiction, lose entirely the prime requisite which we demand of our stories—that they convince. When we read a short story, we do not ask whether it is true or not; when we read a newspaper story, we accept the fact that it is true. But when we read a short story based upon an incredible plot, we instantly reject it, whether or not we have the author’s guarantee that it is a “true story.”

What has been said of true stories taken from newspapers can be said with equal propriety regarding all true stories from life, no matter what their source. “To seem rather than to be” is the watchword which must govern all material of this nature. The reader does not care whether or not it is real; it must only seem real.

[9] In Conclusion

Let the writer, then, go to life for his material—life as he knows it. Let him record his impressions as he goes, learning how to seize upon the element which is significant for him, be it character, action, setting, or theme. Let him learn to experience each sensation as he goes, feeling profoundly all the emotional possibilities that it may contain. Let him learn to lie shamelessly about the things and persons that he has seen, changing and altering them as the occasion of the story demands. Let him remember that it is the emotion, imaginatively colored, which lies at the heart of his story, and that the only unforgivable sin is to lie to himself, in portraying life in a way which does not ring true to his experience. Last of all, it is not the big things, but the little things of which stories are made. Nothing is too small to write about—if one feels it.

CHAPTER V
THE WARP

[1] The Warp

The first process in the weaving of fabric is setting up the warp threads on the loom. The warp threads are the longitudinal threads across which, transversely, the woof threads are woven with the shuttle. And while the woof is the showy part of the fabric, which distinguishes one piece of cloth from another in texture and design, it must be remembered that without the warp, the whole fabric would fall to pieces.

So it is with the weaving of stories. Beneath the showy surface of the design, sometimes so cleverly concealed as to be indistinguishable except to the trained observer, run the warp threads of the story, which are as necessary to sustain it as are the muscles and sinews that run beneath the skin and make the body a thing of power instead of a skeleton covered with flesh.

We can think of stories from two different angles—substance and form. Because of their constant, and sometimes indefinite use, these two terms have often been obscured in their meaning, with resulting confusion. In our attempt to distinguish between them, we can remember the weaver’s loom on which the warp threads, which support the fabric, can be compared to substance; the woof, which carries the design (or the “story proper,” as the layman thinks of it) can be likened to form.

To the casual reader the substance of the story is what the story is “about.” But such loose terminology is liable to be misleading. The story may be “about” a woman who lost a borrowed necklace, yet that is not the substance of the story. The story is “about” her only in the sense in which the circumference of a circle is drawn about its center, restricting our attention to that which is within it. Within the compass of the circle anything may happen; we may tell a good story or a bad one. Whether it be good or bad depends upon a number of things. But we are now considering the substance, the warp. This is the significance of the story, the justification for the author’s setting down on paper something which he has felt about life.

This distinction cannot be made too carefully. Far too many stories fail because their authors have concentrated their attention upon the external trappings. They deify plot, forgetting that the success of the best stories rarely depends upon an artificial complication of incidents (which most people consider plot to be). Their eyes are so intent upon the outward design of their story that they pay too little attention to the careful stretching of the supporting warp threads of the story. They think that because these warp threads are not easily seen they are relatively unimportant. Only when it is pointed out to them that these warp threads are rotten, or loosely stretched, do they begin to realize that “plot” is of but secondary importance.

[2] The Woof

Now let us study our problem more closely, first turning our attention to the woof threads, with which the design is woven. These are, in general, thought of as being four in number: character, action, setting and theme. Out of these the so-called “plot” is constructed, we are told. But this is true only to the extent that the story, as we first see it, is apparently made up out of certain characters in action in a certain setting. What, then, of theme?

[3] The Warp and Woof of “A Piece of String”

Let us take, as an example, a well-known story, Maupassant’s A Piece of String. The story is “about” a cunning Norman peasant, Hauchecorne, a rather unlovely character, who is seen by his enemy to pick up something from the street of the village. In reality old Hauchecorne picked up a piece of string, but when it is proclaimed in the village that a purse has been lost, the enemy tells the authorities that he has seen Hauchecorne picking up the lost purse. Hauchecorne is interrogated, protests his innocence, shows the mayor the piece of string, and is finally released for lack of evidence. He tells his story to the whole village; his acquaintances are incredulous. Even when the purse has been returned, the villagers think that Hauchecorne has himself, in fear, returned it. The old man continues to tell his story to anyone who will listen to him. But he is scoffed at, laughed at, unbelieved. Gradually the old man is borne down by his catastrophe, and eventually dies, still protesting that it was only “a piece of string.”

As Maupassant tells his story he makes a great deal of the elements of character, action, and setting. In fact, as we read, we are conscious of nothing else; the three elements seem to “make” the story. An untrained critic would assert that the whole emotional effect of the story is dependent upon them, and them alone. But he would be looking only at the woof of the fabric, where a trained judge of textiles would look closely at the “weave”—which includes both warp and woof. It is as foolish to judge a story solely by its “plot”—its character, action, and setting—as it is to say that the circumference of a circle is independent of its axis, or that a man is to be judged only by his skin and bones.

What, then, is the warp of Maupassant’s story? What gives it its compelling power? What prevents us from laying it down with a feeling that the whole story is but an impossible imaginative fabrication? Unless we can answer these questions with some satisfaction, we shall have overlooked the very quality of the story which, in the last analysis, makes it great. We remember it not for the character of Hauchecorne, not for the setting in the Norman village, not even for what Hauchecorne and the villagers did; we remember the story because all of these elements have been woven together upon a foundation, have been given direction and purpose, have set out to say something, and have accomplished it. That elusive element, the warp or theme, has been the directive, purposive element of the story, to which each of the three elements of the woof—character, action, and setting—have been, in a sense, subordinated. No matter what may have been the “germ idea” of Maupassant’s story—whether it originated in his mind with the character of Hauchecorne, the incident of the picking up of the string, or the setting of the village—the story, as it eventually took shape in the author’s mind, has very definitely said something. It has said that something in an emotional way, it is true, but that something is the very thing that makes the whole story ring true to experience.

What is that something which constitutes the warp of the story? When Hauchecorne, in picking up the piece of string from the street, saw that he had been observed by his enemy, he was embarrassed; he did not want it to be thought that he was accustomed to grubbing around in the mud, especially for such trivial things as pieces of string. And so, when he had pocketed the string, he pretended that he was looking around for something else, something that he had dropped, perhaps, and could not find. It was a perfectly natural thing for anyone to do under such circumstances; yet on the strength of it his fellow-villagers branded him as a thief. Out of that trivial incident grew all the tragedy which later sent him to his grave. Protest as he might, he could not remove the first suspicion. The more often he told his story, the less he was believed. He died, almost literally, of a broken heart.

Now on the face of things this was a very hard story for even Maupassant to tell convincingly. Nowadays we do not take much stock in dying of a broken heart. Science has made us wary. Most of the Victorian fiction, where the device was frequently employed to kill off heroes and heroines, is read by us, if read at all, with a certain amount of incredulity. Yet Maupassant’s story stands, almost alone. It stands because we believe it. And we believe it because we know instinctively that it is true. We are convinced. And it is the theme, the warp, which convinces us.

Now the theme of A Piece of String is not that people die of a broken heart—that is the one thing that is hard for us to believe. It is the one thing that we do not instinctively know. It is the thing of which we must be convinced. What is it that convinces us? In order to answer this question we must first make a digression.

While it might be denied by men of science, we must admit that when we read fiction there seem to be two parts of us at work, our hearts and our heads. At any given point in our reading it would be hard for us to tell which of these two is harder at work. True, some authors appeal predominantly to the emotions, others to the intellect, but they all, at one time or another, appeal to both. The percentage is not a vital matter. But it is important to remember two things in this connection: first, that the story-teller who appeals solely to our minds fails because he makes no emotional appeal; second, that the writer who appeals solely to our emotions also fails, because he has not taken into account the fact that readers must be convinced, and that convincingness is a quality which makes its appeal not to the heart, but to the head. The whole problem of the plausibility and probability of a story is judged in the open court of the reader’s mind, not his heart. If the reader returns a verdict of “highly improbable,” the story fails, with little reference to any emotional reaction which the author may have previously succeeded in working up. When the mind rejects, the heart follows suit.

Maupassant might have written an expository treatise to prove that when a man is discovered doing something a trifle absurd (such as pocketing a piece of string that he has picked up off the street) he will often try to “cover up” by pretending to do something else. Who has not had such an experience? We would believe Maupassant—with our minds.

He might also have sought to demonstrate that when an innocent person is accused of a crime he is quite likely to act much more guilty than the actual culprit. This thesis we would also accept, for most of us have had such an experience, or at least observed one; we know that it is true to life and human nature. Again, we are skeptical of people who too loudly protest their innocence; such actions are quite as apt to be characteristic of a guilty person as of an innocent one. We weary of these protestations; our boredom might easily change to anger, then eventually to a belief in the guilt of the accused.

And finally, even without scientific training, we know that there are such things as obsessions which often end in insanity, sometimes in death; and we know that an old simple-minded peasant, who has lost everything that he has in the world, even the good opinion of his fellows, might easily become the prey of an increasing obsession, which might end in his death.

All this we know, and of this Maupassant might easily have convinced our minds by his treatise. But Maupassant was an artist who worked through another medium—the emotions. Yet he was artist enough to realize that a story-teller must convince the mind as well as move the heart. He knew that a reader’s intelligence and knowledge of life have an unpleasant habit of criticizing the story as it “comes through,” either before it reaches the heart, or after.

To return from our digression, why does A Piece of String convince us? It is because our minds have accepted what the author has told us. True, what he has told us has been accomplished by stirring our emotions; true, we are probably not conscious of having been told anything at all. Yet if we had rebelled from the truth of the story at any point, we should have been aware, soon enough, that something was being told us which was false. The very absence of such mental criticism on the part of the reader is a guarantee that the substance of the story has been unconsciously tried in the balance and not found wanting. Just as we do not appreciate good health until we fall sick, so we are often not aware of the warp, or substance, of a story until we have found the threads unsubstantial.

And so it is that out of all the strands of the warp, out of all the “ideas” of which A Piece of String is composed, Maupassant has woven a theme thread for his story. Various observations on human behavior have been carefully, if unconsciously, woven together to form a central and controlling idea: An innocent man, falsely accused, might, by his very protestations of innocence, convict himself in the eyes of his fellows and become the victim of an obsession which might end in his death. Of this central truth, all the other observations of human nature mentioned above become subservient, though very necessary, parts.

Let us examine, more briefly, a story of quite a different type—Katherine Mansfield’s The Daughters of the Late Colonel. Here the element of “plot” seems to be entirely absent. But there is, nevertheless, a distinct plan and an idea which, though nowhere definitely expressed, is clearly implied.

The story is really no more than a portrait of two aging spinsters, whose father, the old colonel, has just died. They have spent their lives in fearful anticipation of his next command; their whole beings have been sublimated to their common purpose of keeping him conciliated. Their natures, which, we divine, were once normally healthy, imaginative, and romantic in their girlhood, have been repressed, cramped, and distorted. Now that the old colonel is dead they find themselves free; yet the spirit of the old termagant lives on in the house. They cannot achieve their freedom; they are too old, and habit is too strong within them. The last echoes of the voices of lost romance whisper too faintly to be heard; they no longer understand these echoes, and tragically, when they strain to catch the meaning of stirring emotions long stifled, they turn to each other in surprised consternation and cannot even remember what it was that they were going to say to each other.

Here, as in A Piece of String, an author has set out to say something. Approaching the idea in a more “modern” manner than Maupassant, Katherine Mansfield threw the conventional notion of “plot” to the winds and traced her theme through the trifling actions and seemingly trivial thoughts of her characters, pointing the subservient elements of action, character, and setting to the achievement of an effect which could be rightly described as either emotionalized thought or thoughtful emotion, caused by the reader’s realization of what havoc a selfish and dominating tyrant can play with the lives of his children.

A word of caution, however, is necessary. It is quite imperative to remember that, even granting that the central theme of the story is true to life, the story may yet fail for a multitude of reasons. Though the characters, action, and setting have been but the means of expressing the author’s idea—what he had to say—his is still the supremely difficult task of selecting them, molding them, and adapting them to his purpose. Each element plays its inevitable rôle, and the failure of even one might still irretrievably mar the story. Hauchecorne had to be the kind of person he was, in the kind of a place that he lived in, and had to act as he did, before A Piece of String could make its emotional appeal.

[4] Theme

Although the framing of definitions is a hazardous and a difficult thing to do, especially in the field of fiction, where certain terms are bandied about by the critics and writers alike with a great show of intelligent posturing, the whole question of “substance” and “theme” is so important that the student must not dismiss it with an airy wave of the hand. If substance is the warp of the story—the thought element which makes the characters, action, and setting ring true to experience—then theme is the essence of that substance, the thesis, the proposition “which is to be proved.”

But some will object that most stories never attempt to prove anything. The objection should be sustained. The purpose of a short story is the achievement of an emotional impression, and emotional impressions do not directly prove a thing; furthermore, when they start out deliberately to prove something, they generally cease to be emotional. Thus when we speak of a theme as a thesis, something to be proved, we must understand that the proof is quite as apt to be by implication as by logic. It may be, and usually is, negative in its effect. That is to say, if the writer does not play false to life, he has, by implication, told the truth; thus, what he has had to say about life as he knows it is the theme of his story. The trained writer has learned to express what he knows, with little conscious attention paid to the formulation of the theme in his mind. But the untried writer from the outset must train himself to keep within the bounds of what he knows of life. This means not only that he must confine himself to the phases of life with which he is familiar, but also that he must tell the truth about what he does know. Even further, it means that the truth of what he knows must be the be-all and the end-all of his story, Mrs. Wharton has given two tests for the contemplated subject of a story:

What am I being told this story for? The writer cannot take too many pains to answer this question from his reader. How many stories have we laid down with the query on our lips, “Well, what of it?” That question must be answered, either expressly or by implication. No skilful debater will let himself be side-tracked on to unimportant or irrelevant issues; no good writer will allow the flabbiness of his emotions or the instability of his intellect to betray him from the straight and narrow path of his theme. He has something to say, else he has no business to be writing. Let him say it then, with all the artistry of which he is capable, but let him realize that artistry is not artistry when it has lost its way.

Every writer worth his salt has had this “something to say.” All have agreed upon the necessity of saying something, but there has been no unanimity on the subject of how much they should say. The short story has ranged in theme from Hawthorne to Chekhov; the themes of the former were so outstandingly didactic that they might have been turned into texts for sermons. On the other hand, Chekhov wrote to one of his friends that one cannot make out anything in this world, but that if the artist goes so far as to recognize even this fact, he has taken a great step forward.

But even Chekhov, who at first glance seemed to disclaim the necessity of solving the world’s problems, struggled for “Clarity in the realm of thought.” He reported what he saw, and the fact that he could not answer the questions which life raised in his mind did not obviate the necessity of saying something, even if it were only the admission that he could find no answer to the riddle of life. There is a distinction, he says, between solving a problem and stating a problem correctly. It is enough for the artist if he states the problem correctly.^[27]

Writers, then, as diametrically opposed as Hawthorne and Chekhov, can still agree upon the necessity of theme. One author may be content to state the problem correctly, another may try to find the answer to it; but in either case the theme is there. Whether it be patent or latent, whether it be the text for a sermon on life or only the invisible thread on which the beads of the story are strung, it is as necessary to the fibre of the story as the warp is to the fabric.

[5] Theme Pattern

While the themes of fiction are seldom expressed in so many words, they are apt, like the motif of a symphony or the “line” of a drawing, to permeate the whole work.^[28] This permeation often takes the form of a definite pattern, according to principles laid down in Chapter II. The principle of repetition, with variations, to achieve an effect may be as effectually applied to theme as it can be to character and setting.^[29]

The amount of emphasis placed on theme varies in proportion to the importance of the theme in the story. Many of Hawthorne’s stories are patently symbolic of his own philosophy of life. In The Ambitious Guest, for example, he attempted to express in story form the transitory nature of life and the vanity of wishing for worldly reward or success. To emphasize the theme he used at times the element of natural setting, contrasting the happiness of the family, seated by the fireside, with the howling wind without; again, he put his thoughts into the mouths of those who were seated in the cottage. As the guest remarked, “Old and young, we dream of graves and monuments.”

While Hawthorne marks an extreme in the use of theme pattern, many of our modern stories do as much, except that the trend of thought and fields of interest have shifted in the last hundred years.^[30] But the principle of pattern remains, though the technique by which it is achieved is not always so obvious.

[6] “What of It?”

The student of fiction will do well to become adept in finding the themes of literature. If his interests lie in the fields of the other arts as well, he can find analogies in the novel, the drama, painting, sculpture, poetry, and music. For it is this thematic interpretation, this having something to say or something to express,—whatever the medium—which binds the arts together in their sisterhood. And in his search for theme in the field of the short story, let the student remember that the rather ponderous word “theme” need have no sombre connotation, but that the lightest, funniest, and raciest stories—always providing they are good stories—will have as the warp a theme which will definitely, and without contradiction, answer the searching question, What of it?

CHAPTER VI
THE WOOF—PLOT^[31]

[1] The Relation Between Detailed Design and General Effect

When one looks for the first time upon the design of a piece of woven goods, he is first of all conscious of a certain general effect or impression. He has a feeling of being pleased or displeased. It may be that a single color has produced in him a sensation; it may be that he is caught by the variety of coloring, either the violent contrast or the harmonious blending. The sensation may be either soothing or disquieting.

The first impression seldom takes in details; the effect is general. Not until he stops to examine the configuration of the design will he be able to discriminate closely enough to become conscious of the detail; at first glance it was but a part of the whole, and subtly played its part in producing the first general impression.

Most of us who have not been trained in the artistry of design will be content with the general effect; it is only the specialist, whose appreciation has been sharpened by an intimate study of the art, who will stop to analyze the particulars or to consider how the enunciation and blending of certain details have been able to evoke the general effect which the design has given.

Both the creator of designs and the writer of stories work always with an ultimate general effect in mind—the general impression which is to be produced upon the person who views the work from the usual perspective. The primary aim of each is general in its nature, rather than particular. The details, it is true, must be worked out with the utmost care and precision, but both designer and writer, like the painter, must occasionally step back, squint the eye, and judge with trained faculties the general impression which is being produced.

[2] Design and Plot

What the general effect of the design is to the fabric, the plot is to the short story. A great deal of the prevalent misconception regarding plot, both in the minds of writers and teachers, is due to the fact that plot is too often regarded as an end in itself rather than as a means to an end. Both in the writing and analyses of stories, the student is too often compelled to hold his eyes so near to the printed page that he misses the significance of the whole in viewing too closely the minuteness of the parts. Plot becomes deified. Most readers, and far too many writers, hold to the idea that a story is plot. Yet it is not to be assumed that these same people would make the mistake of saying that the design of a curtain is either the curtain itself or the impression conveyed by the curtain. The same untrained readers and writers, however, will glibly speak of a plot of a story and an idea for a story as being one and the same thing.

[3] Story “Ideas” and Story “Plots”

The failure to appreciate the distinction between plot and idea can be traced, so far as the average reader is concerned, to the influence of that type of story, prevalent in sensational magazines, which emphasizes merely a succession of events, arranged in such a climactic order that the reader’s interest is stimulated only by a desire to see the complicating knot untangled. Will the villain catch the heroine, will the detective solve the mystery, will the poor but deserving hero overcome the employer’s prejudice and marry the daughter?

It cannot be denied that there is sometimes a high entertainment value in such stories, nor is it doubted that they play an important and valuable part in furnishing the “escape literature” so necessary to the modern American, who is so often bent on achieving “success” that he must take his enjoyment of life vicariously. There is a very definite place for this type of fiction. The difficulty lies in the fact that the type depends for its effectiveness very little upon any element except action. Characterization, theme, style all the necessary ingredients of the best fiction—are lost sight of.

Hence it comes about that the reader thinks of plot as action, and that the writer whose only concern is to cater to the taste of the average reader is too liable to confuse short story plots with short story ideas.

The serious writer aims primarily to present life as he sees it, rather than to present it as he thinks his reader would like it. And the serious writer, whether he be writing in serious or comic vein, is forever aiming at something other than action for the sake of action. For action, to have more than a transitory and hypodermic interest, must be significant—significant of character, significant of theme, significant as interpreting setting. Action is not something apart from life, but is inextricably bound up with it. It is the only means of self-expression that we have. “Thoughts pass over into action” the proverb goes. “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he”—so he acts. Our daily lives are surrounded by thousands of acts, our own and those of the people who rub elbows with us. All of these acts are in the indicative mood, rather than in the subjunctive. Their significance lies in the fact that they have a meaning. It is this meaning which the writer seizes upon, remakes to suit his own purpose, and translates to us in terms of his own experience.

We see an automobile accident in the street. After the first thrill of horror is over, our own emotions begin to work on the situation. Our secondary reaction may be one of pity for the victims; it may be a violent condemnation of the guilty driver whose carelessness set in motion the train of events which led to the maiming of an innocent person. Each one of us, according to his own temperament, unconsciously sets to work upon the material. If a hundred spectators were each to write up the accident in short story form, we should have a hundred short stories, not merely one. One spectator might emphasize the carelessness of the driver and point out that the guilty do not always suffer; another, still dwelling on the driver, might show how the whole previous life of the driver was a series of careless and unthinking acts which eventually led to a climax in the accident. Still a third might tell his story from the point of view of the innocent victim, again emphasizing the thought that “God sends his rain upon the just and unjust alike.” Or he might show that the victim was not innocent, but that he had been guilty all his life of supreme absent-mindedness which now, culminating in criminal negligence, has led him to months in the hospital and his family to poverty and near-starvation. The possibilities for a story here are legion; some are good and some are bad. The point is that in each case the spectators have adapted the material to their own ends; each has used the action not as an end in itself, but as a means to an end, a climax which in one case might bring out the character of the driver, in another the theme of fatalism, and in still another the character of the victim. The accident has ceased to be just an accident; it has assumed a significance which it never had before. In the hands of a great writer it might assume epic importance; it might become a revelation of human life and character.

Let us not, then, think of a short story idea and a short story plot as synonymous. Let us rather consider the idea as the fundamental framework of our narrative—the warp; and let us think of the plot only as the plan for the design of the woof, carefully worked out in detail to convey the general impression of the story idea. It is the road-guide by which we hope to reach our destination, the plan of attack for our campaign, the blue-print of the building which we have visioned and are about to construct.

[4] Plot Is Plan

Before it is possible to weave a pattern, one must have a mental image of his design. Before the architect can draw his specifications he must have a mental picture of the finished structure. Before the painter, the musician, the writer can busy himself with the mechanics of craftsmanship, he must have some ultimate purpose in mind—the conveying of a mood or impression, or the delineation of a theme, a character, or an atmosphere. Under varying circumstances and with various temperaments the ultimate goal may be either very clear or very elusive. Where specificness may be a virtue in one case it may a fault in another. Whether, however, the effect is to be specific or vague is not a question of chance, but one of predetermination. It is an individual problem in each case. The thing to bear in mind is that this predetermination postulates an objective.

An idea for a story—using the term in its widest and most colloquial sense—is the starting point for most authors. It may come in various forms—an emotional impression engendered by an event, by a situation, by a person, by the atmosphere of some locality, or by some abstract generalization regarding a phase of life. As the writer ponders his idea—and the pondering may be entirely unconscious, as we shall see later^[32]—it takes on various shapes and significances to him. The emotions which it engenders in him may shift with the rapidity of a revolving kaleidoscope, one configuration following fast upon another. Even when the design seems to have come to rest, it often has the unpleasant habit of quickly and unexpectedly readjusting itself. It may be one thing to-day, another to-morrow. And it may be a matter of years before the adjustment has become complete enough so that the story actually becomes his own, an exact representation of what he feels.

Many writers have not the patience, many have not the time, and far too many have not the foresight to let this process of adjustment take care of itself. They have the feeling, common to so many Americans, that persistence will win; that if one works hard enough at a thing he is bound to succeed. The writer worries his idea as a dog worries a bone: he bats it; pounces on it; he mouths it, tosses it in the air. And then, suddenly overcome with the realization that it is only a bone, he leaves it neglected in the corner or buries it in the back yard.

We hear a great deal in this machine age about “plot manipulation.” Many books have been written on the subject of how to remake old plots, how to dress up new ones. A great many ingenious machines have been invented by teachers and textbook writers, telling the budding author how to put meat on bones. The whole matter, it seems, is but a question of a little imagination and ingenuity. There is a formula, and even the grocer’s boy can turn the crank. Plots have been diagnosed like diseases, prescriptions written. And it is amazing to note how the doctoring process has often succeeded with the editors. But it is still more amazing to note how the editors are generally considered as the last court of appeal when the merits of a story are concerned. The writer too easily loses sight of the fact that many editors are concerned only with feeding the public what it likes to eat, regardless of whether the diet induces indigestion.

[5] The Development of the Idea

If common sense can join hands with artistry, let us join them, and, looking at the whole question of plot from the viewpoint of the author who has an “idea,” let us analyze the problem. We must, unfortunately, presuppose the existence of this idea, for no machine has yet been invented which will furnish them to a person who is congenitally incapable of producing them.

The author with an idea must, first of all, seize upon all the implications of that idea, must sense all its possible significance, imbue it with his imagination, and translate it into terms of his own experience. This revolving process has already been called kaleidoscopic. There is a great deal of the trial and error method involved, and it is well that it is so, for the congeniality between the author and his idea, as it ultimately develops, is perhaps the most subtle, and yet the most important, factor in the process. It is seldom that one man can write another man’s story. Therein lies the futility of any teacher’s giving a student an idea, except for the purposes of experimentation or mental exercise. The function of the teacher should rather be to evoke ideas from the student and to guide him, by suggestion, to the point where the student is capable of utilizing his own natural resources. The whole process is stimulated from within; nothing is superimposed from without.

In studying the possible implications which ideas may have, the writer will be aided by analyzing the best short stories that literature has to offer. Such a study should have a definite objective, the objective at this state of the problem being to discover, if possible, what was the “germ idea” which the author had when he began to develop his material. Often the question can end only in another question, but the speculation is always worth while.

[6] The Idea of “The Necklace”

Let us take as an illustration Maupassant’s story, The Necklace. We have no clue as to where the idea for the story originated; it might have sprung from the sight of a paste necklace in a shop window. The keen eye of the story-teller, lighting on it, might have been arrested with the germ of an idea, upon which his imagination set to work. Suppose a person were to buy a necklace at a fabulous price, believing it to be genuine? As the writer played with this idea, some objections must have offered themselves. “What of it?” Maupassant might well have asked himself. “What would it mean? What significance does it have? How is it related to my experience, or to the experience of my fellows? What sort of a person would be apt to buy a paste necklace, thinking it real?”

The last query might well raise the ever-present problem of probability. Would it be probable that an average person would buy a paste necklace for a fabulous sum without making an investigation of its true worth? And even if he were duped after having investigated, should we really feel sorry for him; would he stir our emotions; shouldn’t we feel him to be something of a fool? And if a person could afford to buy such an expensive trinket, should we feel his loss very much?

But suppose he couldn’t afford to buy it? Suppose he were buying it to win the favor of a girl? But neither should we sympathize with a girl who could be so bought, nor with a man who wanted to buy her. Still, he might have his side of the story; that is a possibility.

Eventually, we may suppose, Maupassant hit on the idea of a woman’s borrowing the necklace from another, supposing it to be real. She loses the necklace and replaces it with a valuable one. If the borrower were rich, the whole proceeding would be a joke. If she were poor, it would be tragic. If her poverty were shared by another, an innocent victim, it would be still more tragic. The innocent victim might be her husband.

Here Maupassant might well have stopped to take stock. The idea is unfolding, but what are its implications? By means of the necklace there is personified all the greed, all the shallow love of costly ornaments, all the striving of so many people to impress others by appearance. Such people are the Biblical whited sepulchres, symbolic of the sham and pretense of society. Here is the oft-recurring human trait of seeming to be what one is not, the desire to appear better than one is.

Here, in this philosophic reflection, enters the observation of life which forms part of the warp of the fabric. Here is the theme which translates the imaginary into the real, “which gives to airy nothing a local habitation and a name,” which brings the imaginative out of nowhere, imbues it with the spirit of reality, and translates it into terms of life.

Her husband, then, shall be the innocent victim, for she herself, because of her vanity, may not be innocent in our eyes. We are willing that the guilty should suffer; but our emotion is aroused when we see the innocent pay the penalty.

Then, let us suppose, came the question of the characters of the principals of the story. What sort of woman would want to borrow a necklace? She must be vain, but even behind a mask of vanity are hidden human foibles with which we can sympathize. We pity the woman who would be vain just once, if the whole background of her life, like Cinderella’s, were a succession of gray days filled with endless dreary routine. Perhaps the woman wanted just one fling in the world; she shall not be blameless, but at least we may understand.

Then what of the husband? He must be poor, hard-working; he must love his wife enough to give her things even beyond his means; he must be weak enough to be prevailed upon.

And who is the center of the story? On whom shall the spotlight focus? Who is to arouse our most profound emotions? It must be the husband. They will both suffer, but we must be sorrier for him, the innocent victim, than we are for her. . . .

And so we might speculate endlessly and in much greater detail regarding Maupassant and his story. Even without any guidance from the author himself the speculation would be profitable. We are helped to see ultimately through his eyes, and while, in some cases, we may not care for the author’s point of view, attitude, interpretation, or material, we can at least see genius at work, shaping to its ends the materials that lie about us daily.

But fortunately there are sources available for us to study with some exactness the germination of story ideas. There are the notebooks of Hawthorne, Chekhov, Katherine Mansfield, and others, which tell the struggles which each had with the stories that we have been accustomed to read as finished artistic achievements. And here we are helped to realize that the germination of a story idea is a long and devious process, which calls into play not only the ability to seize upon the idea, but also the faculty for feeling out its significance and its implications.

[7] A Plot Must Be Probable

We have just seen how a story may work itself out from an idea. We may consider the plot of the story as the plan for carrying out that idea, just as the design of a fabric carries out the impression which its creator had in mind. We are now ready to consider some of the fundamental principles of short story design.

The short story, in common with all fiction and the drama, performs the function of taking life in the rough, fashioning it to fit the purpose of the author, and translating experience into imaginative terms. In so far as the story is true to experience it is successful; where it proves false to experience it fails.

While the story reflects life, it is not life. It is not reality, but it gives the appearance of reality. The minute daily record of a man’s life would be intolerably dull reading. But put this record into the hands of a writer possessed of vision, power of interpretation, imagination, and a sense of form, and he will at once set to work. He will conceive, first of all, an objective; he will delete unmercifully all that is not related to his purpose. He will weave together that which remains, his imagination coloring here, shaping there. To vary the figure, he will string all his materials, like the pearls of a necklace, on a substantial but invisible thread, which will hold them together and give them an appearance of unity. The result will be an artistic story which may bear as little actual resemblance to the truth as a photograph will bear to an oil painting. Yet this story, like the painting, will convey the impression, or the interpretation, more truly than will the photograph.

But the writer of fiction, while he goes to life for his materials, does not always take them as he finds them. Stories that are true in life are seldom true to life. Every editor and every teacher has long ago become wearied with the author’s frequent defense, “But this actually happened! How can you say it’s improbable? It’s true!” And the author has gone a long way in his education when he can understand the editor’s reply, “But it doesn’t seem true.” Those strange occurrences of life, such as the unbelievable coincidences of which we read in the papers, or which we hear from the lips of our friends, are believed solely because we have the integrity of the paper or the trustworthiness of our friends to back them up. But put these same characters or incidents into fiction and they become incredible. The very word fiction presupposes that they are fictitious.

First, then, a plot must be probable.

[8] A Plot Must Be Dramatic

But even when our plot is probable, there is no guarantee that the story will be read through to its conclusion, or, if read, that it will excite any emotional reaction in the reader. Emotion—that is the key word. Arousing emotion is the one thing that the story must do; it is the goal of every piece of fiction.

The problem of arousing the reader’s emotion cannot, it is submitted, be solved in terms of psychological stimuli and responses. This solution has been attempted, but its glaring fallacy lies not in its theory, but in its practice. It leaves out of consideration the fact that the emotional impulse which prompts the writer is a delicate thing, which he cannot lay out on the operating table and dissect, bit by bit, in an effort to find out “how it works.” The writer’s emotion would dissolve into thin air under the scrutiny of such an examination. Science and art cannot mingle on such familiar terms. Writers find it difficult to take themselves to pieces for the purpose of laboratory experiments. Few of them can give a coherent account of how their ideas have evolved into stories^[33]. By the same token, it is not advisable to teach beginners to “plot” stories by instructing them to push a series of buttons in order to evoke certain responses in the reader.

This emotion which prompts the writer to write and the reader to read must be approached in another way. And it goes without saying that the problem of analyzing the production of such an emotion defies any very practical solution. Just as it is impossible to teach anyone to feel an emotion, so it is impossible to teach a writer to convey one. The most that can be done is to try to find out in general what types of situations evoke the reader’s emotions, and then to offer some suggestions for the handling of such situations.

The question can best be approached by looking at some of the most familiar stories which have succeeded in winning emotional responses from most readers.

In Sherwood Anderson’s I Want to Know Why an ingenuous boy is led, seemingly by fate, to a farmhouse window, through which he sees a sight which ends his hero-worship and marks the beginning of the end of his charming unsophistication. Balzac, in An Episode of the Reign of Terror, depicts an executioner torn between veneration for the King he guillotines and duty toward the new Republic. Lally, in A. E. Coppard’s Fifty Pounds, finds that she has given her money to a man who has ceased to love her. In The Three Strangers Hardy presents the startling picture of a doomed man calmly smoking his pipe in a chimney-corner next to the hangman who is, all unwittingly, appointed to execute him on the morrow. The Luck of Roaring Camp represents the serio-comic situation of a foundling adopted by a camp of rough western miners. Ethan Brand, after searching the world for the Unpardonable Sin, realizes that he has himself committed it. The Two Friends, of Maupassant, found themselves on the horns of a fearful dilemma: they must betray their country or die like patriots. Mateo Falcone finds that his own son has committed the mortal offense of betraying a guest.^[34]

Instances might be multiplied, but to the same end. In each case, whether the author be depicting the death of a son at the hands of a father or the disillusionment of a young boy, a character has been thrust into a trap from which there is seemingly no escape. He is cornered. In some cases the trap results from misfortune or circumstances over which he has no control; more often he is cornered as the result of his own shortcomings or mistakes. The character may or may not succeed in extricating himself. The tone of the story may be tragic or comic, but the critical situation arouses the reader’s sympathy and his desire to see the character free himself.

It now becomes necessary to make several qualifications to the general principle laid down above.

First, it will be noted that in none of the cases cited above has the character succeeded in escaping from the trap. The reader’s sympathy was aroused by the very fact that the character was unable to escape. But there are countless stories—one type may be found in contemporary magazines which furnish “light reading”—where the character does succeed in freeing himself. Delivering a character convincingly is no easy matter, which may account for the fact that so many of the stories contained in the modern anthologies fail to end happily. It is easier to gain interest through tragedy than through comedy; sympathy is more easily captured when we are called to suffer with an unfortunate than when we know that everything is going to “come out all right in the end.” This consideration, however, should not prompt writers to be constantly on the look-out for tragic story ideas. The sombre tone of modern fiction needs lightening up at the hands of writers who can see life sympathetically in its lighter moments.

It is not essential, then, that the character fail to escape from the trap in which he finds himself; the only requisite is that the outcome be logical.

In the second place, the illustrations show us that in some instances action, and in other instances a failure to act, is responsible for the character’s failure or success in escaping. In Mateo Falcone, the father atones for the son’s treachery by shooting him; but in The Two Friends the patriots are shot because they refuse to extricate themselves from the trap into which they have fallen. As we shall see in the next chapter, either non-action or action can form the basis of what we broadly term “dramatic action.”

In the third place, while it may be necessary that the reader’s sympathy be enlisted, it is not always necessary for him to sympathize with the chief character. In The Necklace we feel that Mme. Loisel is suffering the consequences of her own vanity, and our sympathies are more enlisted on behalf of the innocent husband, though he plays a secondary rôle in the story. In Ring Lardner’s story, Champion, we are made to dislike the champion cordially, though he is the chief character. Our emotion is one of hate, and the sympathy which we feel is for his mother and wife, who have been made to suffer from the chief character’s selfishness and brutality. While we are given no intimation that the champion got his just deserts in the end, the story is rather unusual in this respect. It is more common in a story of this kind for the author to afford what has been called “the novel reader’s satisfaction”—the portrayal of the triumph of virtue and the downfall of vice. And, finally, there is another type of story, where the reader is called upon neither to admire nor hate the principal character; here the interest of the story is apt to center in action or situation rather than in character. The author may find his primary interest in depicting a situation, with only a minor regard for creating sympathy or distaste for the characters involved in it. Wilbur Daniel Steele, Katherine Fullerton Gerould, and Henry James, among others, have written stories of this type.

We may summarize our conclusions by saying that the reader’s emotion is aroused by a “trapped” character. A character in a trap is said to be in a dramatic situation; he is on the horns of a dilemma. This dilemma may be occasioned either by the character himself, or some other character, or by some outside event or circumstance. Deliverance may come or not, depending on the idea of the story. In either case the outcome can be accomplished by either the performance or non-performance of some action on the part of a character.

So far as dramatic action is concerned, story ideas fail for two main reasons: first, the idea in itself is not dramatic; second, though the idea may be dramatic, and though the writer may have developed a situation in which a character has become effectively trapped, the deliverance is accomplished by some outside force which bears no direct causal connection with the action or characters of the story. The deliverance is liable to be accomplished by some deus ex machina; the actors are not allowed to work out their own destinies in strict conformance to their characters; the theme of the story is confused; or the action is not allowed to come to a logical conclusion—these are some of the pitfalls into which the unwary writer is prone to fall.

Second, then, a plot must be dramatic.

[9] A Plot Must Contain Suspense

There is, however, still another principle to be laid down. A story which may be probable and which may involve the most dramatic internal or external conflict, may still fail because it lacks suspense.

Now suspense is another illusory, much-abused word. It is often thought of as an independent element which is injected into the story. In the course of its usage, as it has been bandied about by writers, teachers, and critics, it has acquired rather a vulgar connotation. One is liable to associate it unconsciously with melodrama—which is seldom drama at all, but rather false drama speaking in italics. We associate suspense, as we often do drama, with gun-play, tearful partings, or Eliza pursued by bloodhounds. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

Suspense is uncertainty of outcome. As has been said, the outcome may be either positive or negative; it may involve either action or non-action. The suspense of the final scene of The Two Friends is maintained by the reader’s uncertainty as to what the two friends will do to extricate themselves from their dilemma, and the effect of the story hangs solely on the fact that they do nothing to extricate themselves. The reflex from the negative implication is, in this case, far more moving than any positive action could be.

This element of suspense is not an extraneous element which is injected into the story from without. It is inherent in the story itself. It is not to be confused with another technical term, foreshadowing, which, while it is a corollary of suspense, is an injected element. As will be seen in a subsequent chapter,^[35] foreshadowing is purely mechanical, whereas suspense goes to the heart of the story.

Like the element of drama, suspense is inherent in the story itself. Unlike drama, which is substantive, suspense is adjective. It intensifies the drama by intensifying the element of uncertainty.

[10] Suspense Is Inherent in Drama

Now all drama, or conflict, implies some uncertainty of outcome. Few people perform any but the most instinctive actions without arriving at decisions. Instantaneous or predictable as those actions may be, there is always the chance that they may not be performed. Even strong characters are subject to whimsical changes of mind. Nothing is accomplished until it is done. The French phrase fait accompli gives some of the flavor of the distinction between a deed and an accomplished deed. In a life which is more or less transitory, nothing is certain. One may predict, but no more. Science, for example, can predict certain results with the greatest degree of assurance. We know that the sun will rise to-morrow, and when the astronomers inform us that there is to be an eclipse of the moon, we afterward accept the fait accompli without surprise. The weather-man is less reliable. As we enter the domain of human character and action, predictions become more and more untrustworthy. We still work by a more or less scientific method, but the results are less certain. We can, for example, predict that a miser will hoard his gold, but suspense is involved when Silas Marner’s love of gold comes into conflict with his love for Eppie.

[11] Methods of Increasing Suspense

The uncertainty implied by, and inherent in, any dramatic conflict may be intensified by the skilful use of suspense. It is possible to intensify the suspense by making the uncertainty still more uncertain. This can be accomplished, generally speaking, in two different ways.

But before considering these two methods it would be well to remember that the short story, even more than the novel, depends for its effect upon crescendo, or rising action. We follow the thread of a good story as we do the course of a snowball rolling down hill. In its progress it gains both weight and speed, and the more we are impressed by each of these elements the greater is our emotional reaction. The greater its size and momentum, the greater become our wonder and fear for what may happen if it should hit someone at the bottom of the hill.

The first means of increasing suspense is by the intensification of the suspense which is already inherent in every dramatic situation. The trapping of a character implies uncertainty as to whether or not he will be able to escape. This uncertainty can be made still more uncertain. To use figurative language, this can be done by increasing the tension of the spring of the trap, intensifying the danger which attends the character of his dilemma; or the suspense may be increased by making more alluring the possibility of escape. Translated into terms of plot, the statement would mean this: the ensnaring situation into which the character is led may be made more vital to the person concerned; it may become more important for him to escape. The more there is at stake, the more bitter will be the struggle, the greater his desire to free himself, and the more tragic the consequences in case he fails. While all this uncertainty may be inherent in the situation, yet the author may fail to make good use of it; he may fail to see just how much the situation could be made to mean to his character.

For example, there is suspense inherent in the idea that a person has lost a valuable necklace. The owner is on pins and needles until it is found. If the owner were a person of moderate means the loss would be greater, and the suspense more gripping, than if the owner were a wealthy society matron. If the necklace were a borrowed one, and the loser a poor woman, the situation would be still more tragic. Further, if the necklace were lost for a year or two the loser’s agony would be great, but how much more suspense is involved when the poverty-stricken loser and her husband are compelled to live in squalor for ten years in order to save enough to replace the lost trinket! Maupassant, in The Necklace, extracted the last ounce of drama from his situation, and by putting his characters into the worst possible trap, intensified the suspense to the utmost.

It must not be supposed that the only way to increase suspense is by “complicating” the plot—mechanically adding circumstances and italicizing others. One of the most effective keys to suspense is often found in the character of one of the actors. Edna Ferber’s story, The Gay Old Dog, would not be as moving if Jo Hertz had not been the kind of a man that he was. Another man might have borne the situation more easily, or have devised a way out of it; but Jo, before he became a gay dog, was a faithful dog, and an affectionate one. He was kind-hearted, easy-going, scrupulously honest. Along with these traits he had an innate love for the little luxuries of life. But above all he wanted a wife and a home of his own. The keen tragedy of the story lies in the fact that, because he was faithful to his mother’s dying wish that he take care of his sisters, Jo lost his opportunity to have all the things which he desired so much. The drama and suspense of Jo’s career are found in the fact that Jo was the kind of a man he was. For him the trap had jagged teeth; for him the confinement was the most irksome that one could imagine; for him the joy of release would have been supreme.

The second means of increasing suspense is more mechanical; it goes less to the heart of the story than does the method just discussed. For this reason it is more easy to manipulate; but the very facility with which it can be used is a temptation to substitute it for the more difficult, but more satisfactory method just described. These two ways of increasing suspense are not mutually exclusive, but a careless artist is often tempted to patch up his story by superficial means rather than by delving into the heart of the difficulty.

This second method of increasing suspense is by re-arrangement of the chronology of the story. It has already been pointed out^[36] that the older stories adhered to a rigid sequence of events, whereas the modern story is less inclined to relate events in the order in which they take place. There are several reasons which might prompt an author to rearrange the normal sequence of action—a desire to plunge into the middle of the story at once, for the sake of gaining attention; a nice sense of proportion, which might lead him to lay emphasis on certain features of the story which might not necessarily come in the desired place if a rigid chronology were followed; or, last of all, a desire to increase suspense.

Two examples will serve. Harvey O’Higgins, in Big Dan Reilly,^[37] the account of the rise and fall of a New York politician during the last century, opens his story with a vivid snap-shot taken at the climax of Dan’s career, when, appearing dramatically on the balcony at the political headquarters, he imperiously summons to him some of the city’s most influential men and dismisses the others with a curt, “The rest o’ you can go home.” The story then cuts back to the time of Dan’s birth, traces his gradual rise to power, and lays the background for the scene with which the story opens.

The second example is Wilbur Daniel Steele’s story, The Woman at Seven Brothers,^[38] which opens as follows:

Thus the reader is acquainted at the outset with the fact that the narrator has committed a crime for which he has been put in an insane asylum. The curiosity is piqued, suspense is created at once, and the reader is tempted to read on to discover the facts which took place before the story opened.^[39]

To summarize, we have seen that in the third place a plot must make as much use as possible of the suspense which is inherent in it.

[12] In Conclusion

We have seen that the story is woven upon the warp threads, which comprise the idea, or central theme, of the story. This “idea” is in no sense synonymous with plot. Plot, on the contrary, is merely the plan by which the author, using the conventional symbols of character, action, and setting, works out the general design of the story, the emotional impression which he desires to convey. And we have seen that the plot must be both probable and dramatic, and that it must make the most of the element of suspense.

Not until we come to analyze the use of character, action, and setting do we realize that they are but the details of the general plan for carrying out the story idea. In the general impression which is conveyed by the design of the story, sometimes one or more of these three details stand out predominantly in making the general impression, but in the last analysis they remain subordinated to the central theme of the story, which it is the business of the plot to direct.

CHAPTER VII
THE WOOF—ACTION

[1] Orientation

The mistake is often made of considering fiction as comprising five coordinate elements: theme, plot, action, character, and setting. These elements are reduced to four by those who make the further mistake of considering plot the equivalent of action.

We have already seen that, while these five elements are all present in every story, it is a fallacy to think of them all as existing on the same plane, performing the same quality of functions. We have likened theme to the warp of a fabric, and have shown that every story is given substance by being woven upon such a foundation. We have realized that it is inaccurate to speak of plot as synonymous with action; we have likened plot to the plan, or mental image, which the weaver has in mind when he begins to work out his design.

And now we come to deal, in the following three chapters, with the elements of action, character, and setting, the three colored threads with which the woof of the fabric, with its design, is woven.

[2] Action Is Not an End in Itself

The tendency of older fiction was to consider action as an end in itself. Both character and setting were neglected, or at best subordinated to the end of “telling a good story,” by which the writers themselves meant a narrative, or sequence of events. Even a cursory study of the older tales, from the time of early Egypt down to the nineteenth century in England, will reveal that for the most part writers failed to see the value of character and setting. The author of the Decameron, for instance, bent his energies solely toward the telling of a good tale; the settings are negligible and the characters in only a few instances are more than puppets acting. In England, where the novelists preceded the experimenters in the shorter form, the writers of fiction were slow in perceiving that action, in the true sense of the word, means characteristic action. Defoe, in Moll Flanders, drew a real character, though not a very clear one; Richardson in Pamela drew another. But even in his best known “short story,” The Apparition of Mrs. Veal, Defoe concerned himself very little with character and bent his energies toward making the events seem probable.

Without attempting to trace the history of the rôles played by action, character, and setting, we may consider the importance of the part which action plays in the modern short story. In certain restricted types, such as the detective, mystery, and adventure stories and the romance, action is as important as it was in the days of the Decameron. In these types of story, plot is almost synonymous with action.

The case is different, however, when it comes to the highest types of stories which are being written to-day. The undue emphasis seems to have been taken away from action for action’s sake, and placed elsewhere. Just where this emphasis is laid depends upon the individual author and what he is trying to do. In relatively few stories do we see the chief burden shifted to setting, and even in such cases character seems to share the stage equally. In most of the contemporary stories the burden is carried by character, usually a character placed in a compelling situation. If it be objected that this situation is essentially action, or the result of action, it can be answered that the action is used primarily to develop the meaning or significance of the situation or to interpret the character; it is not used as an end in itself. Action in itself means nothing; it is only as it is indicative of something that it becomes valuable. Meaningless action has caused the failure of many a story; the author has failed to see that every story must have an end in view, must have a point and purpose, and that any action which does not help to serve that purpose is worse than useless—it is positively misleading and harmful.

It will be helpful to divide action into two broad classifications, characterizing action and dramatic action. Before he accepts these classifications, however, the writer must bear in mind that these two types of action frequently dove-tail—in fact the business of the author is to see that they do dove-tail as far as possible. The reason is found in the principle already enunciated: that action, to be of any value to the story, must be significant. Because the short story demands compression and unity, action must serve as many purposes as possible at the same time.

[3] Characterizing Action

This opening scene serves admirably to introduce the two leading characters of the story. It not only hints at a situation, but delineates vividly the characters and temperaments of the people who are involved in it.

Theodore Dreiser, in The Lost Phoebe,^[41] thus describes the home life of old Henry Reifsnyder and his wife:

Here again two short scenes have been interpolated which serve not to advance the action of the story, but to characterize the two old people and their life together. And one should note that this characterization is necessary to make the reader understand how Henry, after his wife’s death, could be so utterly lost and alone that, half demented, he searched the countryside looking for her.

It is a comparatively easy matter to imagine characterizing situations, but it is supremely difficult to fit them into stories. Once invented, these scenes are liable to accomplish too little in comparison to the space which they consume; or else the writer will find that they are too irrelevant—that while they do succeed in characterizing one of the actors, they are not sufficiently integrated with the story to justify their inclusion; they do not pull their own weight in the boat.

There are some precautionary measures which the inexperienced writer can take. For one thing, he can see to it that his purely characterizing situations are as short as possible; again, he can practise interweaving characterizations with dramatic action to such an extent that the action performs two functions at once: it delineates character and at the same time furthers the progress of the story.

[4] Dramatic Action

Dramatic action has already been defined^[42] as action which forms a part of the chain of events of which the story may be composed; it tells “what happened.” It is inseparably connected with the “plot” of the story, in contrast to characterizing action, which stands in only an indirect causal relation to the main action.

We call this second type of action “dramatic” because it has to do with the drama of the story; it is used either to entrap a character or to extricate him, as the case may be. Furthermore, this “action” may consist of non-action, a failure of the character to act at a critical moment.

The writer should here be cautioned again not to associate a vulgar connotation with the word “drama.” In its best sense drama has nothing to do with pyrotechnics; it is inherent in every commonplace situation, if the writer possesses the ability to extract the meaning and significance from ordinary events.

[5] Action Which Is Both Characterizing and Dramatic

An analysis of the action of some of the best stories will disclose the fact that most action is double-barrelled. It is made to serve two purposes at once: to characterize one or more of the actors, and to depict an event which is necessary to the main action of the story.

Let us take three random examples:

This brief scene, dramatically depicting the climax of the action (though appearing on the second page of the story) not only gives an insight into the character of the chief actor, but also describes a scene which was the turning point in his career.

Let us look again at two characters to whom we were introduced above.^[44] Gertrude, the widow of Harry’s best friend, is subtly trying to wean him away from his fiancée, May. The following scene is taken from near the climax of the story. The reader will note how both Gertrude and Harry are acting true to the characteristics which the author traced out in the opening paragraphs of the story.

Toward the close of Thomas Boyd’s story, Responsibility,^[46] we find this passage, which not only reiterates the character of Andrus, which has been previously delineated, but also sets him forth on the rescue of Hannan, which forms the climax of the story:

The interweaving of characterizing action with dramatic action is a difficult, but necessary, lesson to learn. Mastery of the technique will come both with practice and with the analysis of the works of writers who have succeeded in delineating character by the most economical means.

CHAPTER VIII
THE WOOF—CHARACTER

Much has already been implied in previous pages concerning the importance of character in the short story. It is the purpose of this chapter to draw the loose strands more closely together, to investigate more minutely some important questions. Why is character so important? How is character most effectively delineated? What are some of the dangers attendant upon character drawing?

[1] The Importance of Character

To one who has the interest and patience to make a chronological survey of fiction, from its earliest beginnings down to the present time, it at once becomes apparent that the gradual change in form bears some relation to a change in public taste. In the days when civilization was simpler than it is now, the uncritical listener or reader was a simple soul, whose material wants were few and whose only desire, so far as “fiction” was concerned, was to be told a good story. And while it may truthfully be said that the purpose of the modern short story is still to tell a good tale, it must be admitted that the type has changed. The older narratives were largely stories of adventure or fairy tales. The characters were as simple as the readers, and hence it was not necessary for the writer to delineate them in detail. Interest was concentrated on the action—what the actors did and how the story all came out in the end. And while a great many stories of this type are still being written to-day, the majority of the best stories, those written for critical readers, have changed their emphasis from action to character.

The modern discriminating reader is a very difficult person to please. He is no longer the product of a simple civilization, content to take his story on faith. He has the most annoying habit of asking “Why?” at disconcerting moments. Action for the sake of action seldom contents him; if the action does not ring true to the character, or vice versa, this modern reader is quite liable to throw the story aside with a gesture of disgust and to brand it as “improbable” or “unconvincing”—unless, of course, the story, on the face of it, be sheer fantasy.^[47]

It is, perhaps, too much to say that the majority of the best modern stories are “psychological.” The statement has been made, but the term “psychological” has an unhappy trick of slipping away from whatever original meaning it may have had when applied to literature. George Eliot has been called “our first psychological novelist,” by which critics probably mean that she was one of the first to deal with the whys of human behavior. She recognized the fundamental complexity of character, that we act from a variety of motives, not always consistently. Hetty, in Adam Bede, and Richardson’s Pamela, when compared, show how far the novel had advanced by 1859 in the delineation of complexity of character.

Fiction, since the middle of the nineteenth century, has been steadily advancing along the line laid down by George Eliot. The fact that we ask “Why?” is the best possible proof that we are keenly aware to-day that human beings act from motives. It is the motives that we are interested in. And to understand motives we must understand character.

The whole question of “motivation” (a term often used too loosely to have much biting significance) finally reduces itself to the simple question: Why has this character acted (or failed to act) in a particular way? In order for us to understand his behavior, we must first know what sort of person he is.

Now in order to depict a character in his entirety, a novel of ten volumes might not suffice. Perhaps it is never possible to understand a person completely. For that reason fiction must always limit itself by some form, be that form long or short. Even a three-volume novel does not profess to tell us everything about its leading characters; we are told only so much as is necessary for us to understand that portion of life which the author has deliberately chosen to portray. But a novel, the action of which is but loosely defined, can permit itself much greater latitude than can a short story. Since all fiction, generally speaking, concerns itself with characters in action, we can lay down the broad proposition that the author must give us at least enough characterization to enable us to understand the action and its underlying meaning, or theme.

In the novel both action and character are therefore more complex than in the short story. In the shorter form the character tends to become simplified. Compare, for example, a human character to a prism. We are all of us prisms; none of us is one solid color. But almost all of us, at least those who stay safely within the dim borderland of sanity, have most of the colors which are common to our neighbors. Jones has more red and Smith more blue, but the chances are that both of them have traces of all the colors of the spectrum. Few of us are untainted by a suspicion of secret vices of all sorts; and there are even fewer of us who could not boast the germs of most of the positive virtues.

The task of the writer of fiction, then, is to analyze this spectrum of character and to find the dominating traits, both positive and negative. But even the novelist seldom deals with the entire spectrum. The short story writer perforce must limit his field still further. While he can see more than one side of the character, he is limited in his delineation. To understand a character means to understand all of him; to delineate him in a short story means to delineate him only in part. The whole spectrum can be analyzed, but only a part of it can be reproduced. It was undoubtedly with this idea in mind that Turgeniev went to the length of often writing voluminous biographies of his characters, even the characters of his short stories. He may have used, on paper, only a tenth of his material, but he felt the necessity of understanding what that character might have said and done in a hundred hypothetical situations.

It is because of this selectivity in the short story that the author must set himself rigid limitations in the drawing of his characters. He must ask himself, “What sort of person is my character, for the purposes of this story?” At another time, in another place, under slightly different circumstances, he might appear to be a different kind of person. Not that his character would change, not that he would be, basically, one whit different in fact. But here and now, in the story at hand, he is a person who is acting from motives which, when compared with the complex spectrum of his entire character, are relatively simple. Certain forces, here and now, are impelling him to act or to refrain from acting. These are the important things to consider. The roots of these motives may be laid deep; it may be necessary to dig deeply to uncover them. But the only invariable rule for the writer of stories is to delineate only as much as is necessary, and never any more. There will always be complexities and profundities which, no matter how interesting, have nothing to do with the story in hand. They may make another story some day.

The wise short story writer will reduce his character to lowest terms. The lowest terms may consist of one trait, or two, but seldom more. The fundamental traits may have several collateral descendants, brothers and cousins on the family tree. A character who is greedy is also liable to be selfish. Conversely, a generous person is not only unselfish, but also sympathetic, understanding, free from pettiness. The list might be multiplied indefinitely. The thing to remember, however, is that the more the character is narrowed down to his basic elements, the more convincing he is likely to be, and that any inconsistencies in character, representing directly conflicting forces within the individual, must be delineated not only clearly, but also with malice aforethought. The conflict must be germane to the story.

[2] The Delineation of Character

There are six main ways of portraying character:

I. Exposition. The first method of characterization which naturally suggests itself to an author is to talk about his characters. Whether he speaks in propria persona, as author (as Thackeray, for example, was fond of doing), or whether he adopts the rather transparent disguise of an omniscient, depends usually upon the angle from which the story is told.^[48] Exposition is by far the easiest, and consequently the most common method. Unfortunately it is often the weakest. It is frequently adopted as the simplest way out, the line of least resistance. Authors, especially the inexperienced, hold tenaciously to the mistaken theory that the more work the writer does for his reader, the more readily will the reader be affected by the story. If, for example, the author explains carefully that his hero is such-and-such a kind of person, it should follow that the reader will understand the character more readily than if it were necessary to put two and two together. But this is not true. Allowing room for the plenteous exceptions which hound every rule of literature, it can be safely laid down as one of the maxims of character delineation that the more work the reader is compelled to do for himself, the more clearly does he grasp and retain the result of his efforts. The reader, to be sure, “works” unconsciously; if the story is a good story he is not conscious of working at all. He is absorbing it, sometimes against his will. But he is absorbing it. And in fiction, as in life, we are much more apt to retain and value the things which we gain by our own efforts. The reader who forms his own opinions of the characters of a story is much more likely to retain the impression than the reader who has had the characters carefully explained to him by an indulgent but short-sighted author.^[49]

But it does not stand to reason that the expository method is always wrong, always less effective than the other more graphic methods of presentation. There are times when it is necessary. But even when exposition seems advisable, the writer should remember that this method of characterization is to be indulged in sparingly, and never for long at a time. It inevitably withdraws the reader, even if for only a moment, from the imaginative world which the author has built up. And if the break be too long, the illusion will be dispelled. Authors who use exposition to delineate character are generally careful to insert the exposition at the beginning of the story, before the illusion has been built up, rather than to run the risk of “taking time out” later on, after the story has got under way. But exposition at the beginning of the story, unless very cleverly done, invites the danger of an excessively slow beginning—another thing to be avoided.

II. Description of the character. The name of this method speaks for itself, but many writers overlook its possibilities. Included within it are descriptions of the features and clothing, where these are distinctive; of mannerisms, especially when speaking; of tones and inflections of the voice. All of these the judicious use of similes and metaphors will make more striking. The list will elaborate itself in the mind of a writer who has cultivated his powers of observation and is possessed of imagination.

Stevenson has drawn a brief but graphic picture of the vagabond poet, Francois Villon, in A Lodging for the Night:

III. Description of surroundings. This method is possible only in two cases: where the character has had any influence on his surroundings (such as his house or his room), or where the surroundings have influenced the character. An example of the influence of character on surroundings is seen in the following extract:

Having read this description at the opening of the story, not only are we anxious to meet the occupant of the room, but also we are better able to understand his character.

The converse of this method of delineation, the description of surroundings which have influenced character, is met with less often. But when such description is made possible by the circumstances of the story, it can be made most effective. Stevenson opens his story, The Merry Men, with a description of the Island of Aros before he introduces his main character, Gordon Darnaway, who has spent the most of his life in that desolate spot. Having read the description of Aros, one is prepared to meet Darnaway:

IV. Action. Since most short stories find their climaxes in action of some sort, it is needless to remind the writer that where character is involved—as it usually is—there is the greatest need that the action be in keeping with the character of the actor. The whole question of the convincingness of a story is likely to be dependent upon motivation, which, after all, is largely a problem of characterization. Putting the matter another way, the question involved in every story is: Have I drawn the kind of character who would be apt to act in this way? Or, conversely, looking at the problem from the standpoint of the action of the story: Would this sort of thing be done by the kind of character that I have drawn?

The truth of this principle is so obvious that it is often overlooked by writers who cannot get to the bottom of their difficulties. The surprising thing is that uncharacteristic action should be the stumbling block of so many authors.

At this point in the discussion, however, we are not so much concerned with the action of the climax of the story as with the less conspicuous, but equally important, minor actions of the characters in the early part of the story. As we have seen in the preceding chapter, action may be either dramatic, characterizing, or both. The first furthers the plot of the story; the second is inserted for the purpose of delineating character.

It is an old aphorism that “actions speak louder than words.” In fiction both actions and words speak loudly of character. From what a person does and says, we judge what he is. From the time the story opens, the reader’s eye is upon the characters of the story, watching every move they make. The careful reader does not miss a single detail, and every reader, as he progresses through the story, is unconsciously forming judgments concerning the characters. As in life, we are apt to be affected by little things.

The difficulty attendant upon characterizing action is the danger of falling between two stools. The author is apt to use either too little or too much. Unfortunately, the problem of how much to use is largely a question of judgment, and one acquires judgment, does not learn it from a book. But it may be said that those who use too little characterizing action should have greater regard for the compactness of their story; they should remember that this type of action must be germane not only to the character but to the story. There is no virtue, and often a great deal of harm, in taking the reader all around Robin Hood’s barn on a journey which might be accomplished directly with a few deft touches.

V. Dialogue. The subject of dialogue will be treated more at length in a subsequent chapter.^[53] For the present it is sufficient to point out that dialogue, in addition to giving sprightliness to the narrative, adding vividness to a scene, and advancing the plot of the story, may also serve as one of the most effective means of portraying character.

The writing of dialogue is one of the hardest tasks that the author has to face. The chief difficulty seems to lie in making it serve a definite purpose. Even when a writer has learned to write natural and realistic conversation, it seems to be quite another matter to learn how to put this conversation to good use. The fact is that good dialogue seldom serves one purpose only; more often it kills two birds with one stone: it is advancing the story, and at the same time delineating character. It may, of course, serve other purposes as well.

Dialogue, as a characterizing agent, goes deeper than the mere reproduction of tricks and mannerisms of speech. It carries with it suggestions that give the reader insight both into the mind and character of the speaker. Some of us are convicted by our looks, others by our actions, but almost all of us, at one time or another, are condemned by our own words, sometimes against our wills. Our speech shows our habits of mind, whether we are direct, aggressive, forceful, precise; or whether, on the contrary, we are sloppy and indirect in our thinking. Our conversation is also a key to our moral natures. Especially when we are not given an opportunity to plan our speech or our answers, we are often unconsciously betrayed.

The following dialogue is heavily freighted with characterization:

Here again, as in the other modes of characterization, the writer must bear in mind the particular side of the character that he is attempting to portray. His dialogue must bring out some trait which is relevant to the story. No matter how realistic his dialogue may be, the author is losing ground and blurring his impression if he allows himself to become so engrossed in dialogue that he forgets his objective.

He should bear in mind, too, that the vividness of the dialogue, with the mannerisms of speech and tricks of gesture which are common to so many characters, will go far toward adding to the sprightliness of the narrative, provided the author retains a sufficient sense of proportion to see every element of his story in the proper perspective.

VI. Cross-sectioning the character’s mind. Another mode of characterization which is closely allied to dialogue is to reveal the workings of the character’s mind.

This may be accomplished in three ways, or a combination of them.

First, the author may, in his position of omniscience, himself reveal what is going on inside the character. This method is somewhat expository in nature. The following is an illustration:

Second, the author may become less of a summarizer and throw the character’s thoughts into such a form that the character himself seems to be thinking aloud. This method may be likened to the soliloquy or “aside” of the drama. This “subjective mood,” as it might be called, has become increasingly popular with writers since the time when they became interested in the so-called psychological side of character. The method consists of taking a hypothetical cross-section of the character’s mind, either a still or moving picture of what is going on within. For example:

Third, the author may reveal his character’s mind by literally noting down the thought progression in the mind of the character, making a literal transcription of thoughts or emotions, often disjointed and but half-formed. This method is often called the reverie, or “stream of consciousness,” and when properly handled is often extremely effective, particularly when the character is in a state of emotional stress, as in the following passage:

As a matter of practice the three methods are so closely allied that they are often indistinguishable. And there seems to be little advantage in emphasizing the distinction, once having pointed it out. An author would rarely, if ever, ask himself which method he was using; and only rarely would it be necessary for him to weigh the two in the balance before deciding between them. They blend into each other so easily that in some cases it is difficult to tell whether the author is using his own diction or that of his character. The stories of Katherine Mansfield well illustrate this mingled point of view. The method, however, is extremely hard to handle, but it insinuates an impression in a way which is often impossible to achieve by means of either the straight objective or subjective methods of treatment.

VII. Opinions and reactions of other characters. While a man’s reputation is by no means an infallible index of his character, we are always interested in, and sometimes influenced by, what other people have to say about our friends. In fiction the reader is often aided in forming an opinion of a character if he is allowed to hear what other people say about him. It is, furthermore, enlightening to see how other characters behave in his presence, whether they are obsequious, afraid, genial, confidential, or reticent.

It is often possible for a writer, without going out of his way, to characterize by this method. The following extract is taken from the story of a young instructor who returns to his alma mater to teach. He has been seriously embarrassed by having an undergraduate, Prescott, a member of his college club, enroll in one of his courses. Prescott has slighted his work and Thorn, the instructor, rather than flunk him, has given him a grade of “C” without looking at his examination paper.

Nothing could have revealed Thorn’s character, or the general attitude of the undergraduate’s toward him, in a more striking way than did this episode in which the well-bred Prescott, caught off his guard by surprise, acted toward Thorn as he really felt.

VIII. The tastes of a character. In life, we are apt to form our estimates of people by observing their likes and dislikes. We pick our friends because, in general, their tastes are similar or congenial to our own. We instinctively avoid people who like the things that we dislike, or who dislike the things that we like. We sometimes base our judgments on facts which, though seemingly trivial, are in fact significant.

An advertisement for a breakfast food reads: “Tell me what you eat and I’ll tell you what you are.” Joseph Hergesheimer may have taken this advice literally when he wrote his story Bread.^[59] His hero, August Turnbull, reveling in a meal that would grace the table of an emperor, secretly despises his invalid wife, who is condemned by her doctor to a diet of milk thinned with lime water and “an elaborate platter holding three small pieces of zweiback.”

Similarly, a man is known by the company he keeps; by the books he reads; by the way in which he chooses to spend his leisure time; by his philosophy of life or lack of it; by the clothes he selects; in short, by a hundred and one preferences and tastes which he is constantly exhibiting whenever he is free to make choices for himself.

In Ring Lardner’s story, to be found in the appendix of this book, the reader will see this method of characterization admirably illustrated.

[3] Character Pattern

Pattern, in the sense in which we have used the word, has been defined as “Repetition, with variation, in order to achieve an effect.”^[60] There are many ways in which patterns of various sorts can be used in fiction. But we are here concerned only with character pattern.

If we assume that the development of character is important to the story in hand, we may attempt to delineate our chief character, Jim, by saying that he was a “selfish man.” Now characterization would be the simplest thing in the world if we could make our point by that one simple statement, and let it go at that. We ought to be able to trust an intelligent reader with such a simple fact, and thereby obviate the necessity of impressing him further with Jim’s selfishness. The statement is there in black and white—“Jim was a selfish man”—and if the reader is forgetful he can turn to the statement to confirm his opinion of Jim.

But it is obvious to every reader and every writer that such a statement would not, by itself, be convincing. So far as the action of the story is concerned, Jim must act selfish. If, then, we should write a story of a selfish man who acted selfishly, a critic could not find fault with us on the ground that our character did not act his part. But this delineation is not a guarantee that we have drawn a Jim whom the reader will remember. If we would leave a memory of our character behind us in our story, we must do something more.

It is invariably the “something more” which troubles the inexperienced writer, whose stories fail so many times because he has not drawn vivid or convincing characters. How can one paint a character to be remembered?

If we grant, as a premise, that the writer has in mind an idea for a story and a definite impression of the characters in it, the question arises: How can I convey this impression? The answer is, by repetition, or pattern.

We have already seen that there are at hand at least eight definite ways of portraying character. Taking Jim as a problem, we might delineate him by telling the reader about him (exposition), by describing his personal appearance, by describing his surroundings, by showing what kinds of actions are habitual to him, by hearing him converse with others or commune with himself, by observing what others say of him and how they act in his presence, or by indicating his preferences or tastes. All these means are open to us. It is seldom possible to use them all. It may be possible to use only two or three. In any case, we must always have an eye to our story and resist the temptation to wander far afield, even when characterization is at stake. Of course the type of story which we are writing and the way in which we are handling it will influence us largely in determining to what lengths we can go. If the story is rambling and leisurely in tone, and if Jim’s character is the crux of the story, we may be permitted a great deal more latitude than if we are writing a very short story in a more compact and solid form. The whole matter must be left to the innate discretion of the writer; a sense of proportion is in-born and cannot be taught.

Once the fundamental principle of pattern—repetition—has been thoroughly assimilated, the problem is to weave the pattern so that the repetition shall not be obvious. An obtrusive character pattern in a story has the same monotonous effect as a too obtrusive design in a piece of cloth. The latter wearies the eye, the former the mind. And a story must never weary the reader.

The writer who begins his first experiments with character pattern will find himself beset with many difficulties. His first efforts will be very discouraging. He will probably have attained his objective—the delineation of a clean-cut character—but he will also have succeeded in being obvious and dull. His pattern, upon which he has worked so hard, will read like a catalogue of incidents and events and descriptions, many of them having no relation to the story; they will all be so clumsily joined together that the joints will creakingly announce the obvious mechanism which underlies the story.

Here again there is no rule for his guidance. A formulation of principles for the construction of a character pattern would be more of a hindrance than a help. The only hope which can be held out to the writer who reaches this stage of initiation is that his ultimate success, presupposing that he has the necessary qualifications to make him a writer in the first place, will depend upon two things: reading and practice. Desultory and casual reading is not meant; he should study and analyze the character patterns of stories which have made definite impressions upon him. A successful method of study is to take a story which contains an outstanding well-drawn character, and to underline every reference that is made to the character of that actor.^[61] In the best stories it is surprising to find out how many clues the author has given to the reader. Let the student scrutinize these clues, and especially the transitions which keep the machinery from creaking. The net results of his observation and study will be the discovery of two things:

1. That the character has been endowed by the author with a minimum number of outstanding traits, all of which have a direct bearing on the story.

2. That the impression of these traits has been made by a repetition—or pattern—in such a skilful way that the author has made his point without the reader’s being conscious of it.^[62]

CHAPTER IX
THE WOOF—SETTING

[1] Setting in Fiction vs. Scene in Drama

In most of our minds the word “setting,” when applied to fiction, is analogous to “scene” in the drama. But there are many points at which the two will not stand comparison. In the case of the drama, the interest of the spectator centers primarily on action which is taking place before his very eyes. The characters actually move and speak, and the eyes and ears of the audience are called into active play. The scenery helps the illusion of reality which the dramatist tries to create. In fiction, however, the writer must create all his effects through the power of the written word. The most gifted writer can do no more than write so vividly that the reader’s imagination is put to work. Thus indirectly the reader may almost hear the characters speak, see them move, and visualize the background against which the story is being acted. But this effect of reality is always superinduced by the effect of words; the five senses are at work only in imagination.

This seeming drawback with which the writer of fiction is faced can also be turned to advantage. A stage set has its handicaps. There is always a limit, for instance, to the number of scenes which can be produced; there is always a wait between scenes, during which the lights go up and the illusion is partially destroyed; there is always the fatal objection that the scenic artist, once having created his effect, can do nothing more about it—the playwright can scarcely ever go far in portraying the effect of the scene upon the characters. The characters, to be sure, can be influenced by the setting, and can even succeed, in some cases, in explaining to the audience the effect which the scene has upon them. O’Neill, for example, has been successful in depicting the influence of setting upon the actors in his dramas.

But when one stops to compare the use of setting in fiction and drama, one is almost forced to the conclusion that fiction has a considerable advantage over its sister art. The real reason seems to be that in fiction the writer has more means at hand for conveying mood; the pervading spirit of his setting can saturate every line that he writes. He is not forced to resort only to word pictures, but he is also privileged to reflect the mood of his characters in a number of ways. He has recourse to all the five senses; unlike the dramatist, he can appeal to the senses of smell and taste and touch, in addition to sight and sound. He can throw himself into his characters and describe their moods, without recourse to such a soliloquy as Shakespeare was compelled to use in Macbeth:

The fiction writer, in such an instance, would not have been so confined in method.

If one be tempted to doubt the superiority of fiction to drama as a means of conveying the effect of setting, one need only imagine how much the works of such a writer as Conrad would suffer if they were to be acted upon the stage. The compensation of the dramatist can be seen in his ability to reproduce upon the stage certain mechanical effects which heighten the illusion—for example, the beating of the tom-tom almost throughout the whole of O’Neill’s play, The Emperor Jones, or the effect of the ceaseless beating of the rain in Somerset Maugham’s Rain. In the case of the latter it is interesting to note that Maugham’s idea appeared originally in short story form; it was later dramatized, and still later reproduced on the screen. Of the three versions, the stage play was perhaps the greatest popular success, partially, it is submitted, because the effect of the drumming rain could be produced alone upon the stage. At that time sound pictures had not been perfected, an unfortunate fact, for there is no doubt that the screen version, excellent as it was, could have been improved by the appeal to the auditory sense.

This superficial comparison of the relative advantages of drama and fiction is important in that it brings to the writer of fiction a realization of his opportunities to create his effects. Once having realized this, he may proceed to analyze more closely the functions of setting in fiction. But first of all it may be of interest to trace briefly the part which setting has played in narrative.

[2] Setting in Narrative, Past and Present

The development of the use of setting has rather closely paralleled the use of character—a significant fact. In the older stories, down to the time of Elizabeth, both setting and character were subordinated to action. One has but to read the medieval tales of the Gesta Romanorum or Boccaccio’s Decameron to see where the interest of both writer and reader lay. But with the Renaissance there came a change, chiefly occasioned by the desire to imitate and embellish the pastoral narratives of the classics. To confine our attention solely to England, we can see, as Professor Clayton Hamilton has pointed out, this influence at work in Spenser’s Faerie Queene and Sidney’s Arcadia. One of the best tales of the period, Nash’s Rosalynde, is an elaborate attempt to create the illusion of the Forest of Arden.

The integration of setting with action and character (though we see the influence at work in Defoe and Fielding) did not arrive until the nineteenth century in England. After literature had finally freed itself from the grip of the Gothic Romance, in which setting played a major rôle in producing effects of mystery and horror, both the novel and the short story began to perceive the true function of setting in narrative. After the form of the short story had been set, for a long time to come, by Hawthorne and Poe, other experimenters, chiefly in America, began to elaborate upon the use of setting. Bret Harte, George W. Cable, Sarah Orne Jewett, Mrs. Wilkins-Freeman, James Lane Allen, Margaret Deland, and others wrote their “local color” stories, each selecting a section of the country to exploit. The stories were valuable to the reader in helping him to understand the setting and characters of various parts of the country which were then unfamiliar to the majority of Americans. These writers also succeeded, without their knowledge, in pointing a warning to writers who were obsessed by the notion that all they had to do to succeed in fiction was to pick an unfamiliar quarter of the country and write about it.

The local color story is still being written to-day, in many cases successfully, but the value of setting in the short story has assumed more normal proportions. While it is still true that a writer will succeed best in writing about the characters and settings with which he is most familiar, it is also true that in order to succeed he need not confine himself to one section, color, or creed.

Except in the case of the local color writers of the old school, setting has passed into another stage. In the short story of to-day it is helpful but not essential. And where it is used, it is employed in the most cases sparingly, with a minimum of “wordage” and a maximum of effect. Gone are the elaborate descriptions of Scott. In their place we find the same effects achieved by a condensation which, in the hands of an effective writer, can produce an equally powerful impression.

[3] The Function of Setting

At the outset it will be seen that the function of setting in a story will vary with the circumstances—the personality of the writer and the kind of story that he has to tell. In the case of Conrad, setting will at times be all-important; with Hemingway it will usually assume a minor rôle. And yet, when occasion demands, either of these writers is capable of giving to setting the proportionate part which it rightfully plays in his story.

This sensing of proportion is one of the most difficult problems which an author has to face. A sense of proportion is in-born; it can be developed, but it cannot be created. The writer can best solve his problem by always going to the heart of his story and sensing what he has to tell, and delicately perceiving the uses to which he can put the tools which are at his command. And he can learn a great deal from reading the stories of those who have honed their tools to a fine cutting edge.

Setting has three general uses:

I. To add vividness to the story. Used in this way, setting accomplishes for the story what a scenic background adds to a stage play. It cannot be said categorically that every story needs a certain amount of setting, any more than it can be said that every play must have scenery. But it can be safely asserted that in a great many instances a certain amount of setting will add to the vividness of a story, and thus to the reality of the effect produced on the reader. We remember countless stories because of the effect of the background against which the characters have acted. It is not that the stories would have failed without the background, but that the background heightened the effect of the story. A great many stories, which cannot be arbitrarily classified as “local color” stories, have still succeeded in giving the reader an unforgettable background which has tended to make the characters stand out in relief. The reason for this heightened effect is that in life we always see action against a certain setting; although the writer of fiction, in attempting to tell a story of life, cannot hope to reproduce the entire background, he can emphasize the visual element by picturing his events against a realistic setting. And while probably no story deficient in character or action has ever been saved by setting alone, it still holds true that many a good story has been made even better by a setting skilfully handled.^[63]

The danger which besets most writers is that they have not developed a sufficient sense of proportion to enable them to use the right amount of setting. The amateur tends to put on his colors with too full a brush or else to be too conservative in the use of the visual element. In the former instance, his trouble is generally a lack of emotional balance; he has become so absorbed in literally transferring a scene to paper that he has lost the relation between his scene and the rest of his story. He has been led into a quagmire, where he becomes swallowed up in his own transient, and often inflated emotions. The end of the story has been lost sight of because of the writer’s own lack of balance and sense of proportion. On the other hand, the writers who tend to the other extreme are so intent on giving the reader the “story” that they lose sight of the fact that action in itself seldom means anything; that the reader must draw on his own imagination, supplemented by aids from the writer. He forgets that the reader must see and hear and touch and taste and smell. He forgets that the best type of narrative is a moving picture, supplemented by the use of the other four senses.

Between these two extremes lies the golden mean, which varies for each type of author and for each story. There is no rule to guide the writer. He must rely on his sense of proportion and be faithful to the purpose of his story.

II. To influence character. The use of setting as an aid in delineating character has been dealt with in the preceding chapter. The stories of the writers of the local color school are outstanding examples of the influence of environment on character. All of us have, to some extent, been affected by our surroundings, and the influence continues throughout our lives. The southerner differs from the northerner, the easterner from the westerner. The difference is due, in part at least, to the effect of the climate, the character of the land, and the type of people with whom one associates. In so far as these factors influence character they are important to an understanding of the story. Just what this effect is, and its importance, are again questions which vary with each author and each story. An understanding of character is essential, coupled once more with a fine sense of proportion, which will enable the writer to cling to essentials, to give enough but not too much.^[64]

Setting in this connection must be interpreted to mean not only natural setting, but also the influence of friends, associates, home and family life, and the like. In countless stories authors have gone back to the story and out of the way to give us scenes and incidents from the past lives of their characters, in order to make us understand the characters as they are to-day. Theodore Dreiser, Willa Cather, Sherwood Anderson, Katherine Fullerton Gerould, and many others frequently employ this method of characterization. In Sherwood Anderson’s story, I Want to Know Why, the author, in a cut-back, consumes almost a half of his story in giving us a background for his chief character, in order that the reader, at the crisis, may understand just how the boy’s love of horses may cause him a feeling of horrible revulsion when he sees his hero, a horse fancier, look at a woman with the same expression in his eyes as that with which he had regarded his horse earlier in the day. Examples might be multiplied to the same end. Many times we have to see behind a character in order to understand him, and the author who is keen enough to perceive when this is necessary, and then can furnish enough, but not too much background, is the writer who knows how to combine character and setting with telling effect.

III. To play a rôle in the story. Properly speaking, there are very few “atmosphere stories” in existence. A great many local color stories have wrongly been called “atmosphere stories.” Although a classification of stories by subject-matter is seldom helpful, one may still profitably keep in mind the true meaning of an “atmosphere story.” As Mr. Uzzell has pointed out,^[65] “the main character in an atmosphere story is the atmosphere itself.”

If this distinction be held in mind, it is easy to detect the difference between the “local color” and the “atmosphere” story. In the former the setting is a background against which the action of the story takes place. In the latter the setting has usurped the function of an actor in the story; it has in itself become dramatized. Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher and Stevenson’s The Merry Men are at heart true atmosphere stories in that the setting has become so important to the story that it can be said to be as much of an actor in the drama as are any of the other characters.

The atmosphere story is one of the hardest types to write. In most instances it requires a unique and stirring atmosphere, one compelling enough to usurp the rôle of a character; it also requires that the writer be so thoroughly familiar with it (either in fact or in imagination) that he, too, is under its subtle influence. And, last of all, it requires a singularly compelling pen to transfer the feeling of that atmosphere to paper. Beginners would do well to avoid this type of story until they have learned a great deal more about story writing than the average writer knows.

[4] The Use of Pattern

Whether or not setting usurps the rôle of a character in the story, it may become of more than average importance. In such a case it is possible to emphasize it in the same way in which one can italicize a character trait, namely, by the use of pattern, or repetition.

For the sake of clarity let us take what is perhaps too obvious an example—Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher. In this story Poe attempted to create an effort of gloom and horror largely by means of emphasis on the dreary and ominous natural setting. In the following extracts from the story, we have arbitrarily quoted only the first few initial sentences of several consecutive paragraphs. Much that contributes to the “atmosphere” of the story has been necessarily omitted in the interests of condensation; the full effect of the pattern can be appreciated only by a minute analysis of the story.

It is to be noted that in the passages above the author has made use of only one means of creating atmosphere—description. There are, however, numerous other ways of creating such effects—the woof threads of action and character can also be called upon to play their parts. No catalogue of methods would be useful; the writer’s own ingenuity and feeling will stand him in better stead. He should be cautioned, however, that the modern reader soon tires of lengthy description. Whatever descriptive matter he uses should be condensed and interspersed throughout the narrative.

In learning how to convey the impression of a setting, the writer will profit by a careful analysis of stories where atmosphere has been used effectively. A great many of Poe’s stories are valuable, although the effects are artificial and the pattern in many cases is too obvious. Conrad, Edith Wharton, Ruth Suckow, Theodore Dreiser—to mention only a few—have been pre-ëminently successful in weaving into their stories the feeling of atmosphere so that, when occasion demands, it pervades the entire story.

[5] Some Suggestions

In conclusion it may not be amiss to formulate some general advice for the writer who is learning to master the difficult problem of setting:

I. He must cultivate his observation both of people and their environment, and the subtle inter-relation between setting and character.

II. He must have, as John Middleton Murry has said, an “unlimited capacity for sensuous experience.”^[66] He must be susceptible to both beauty and ugliness, must cultivate a broad sympathy which embraces people of all kinds and types, in order that he may not only perceive but also feel the influence which environment has on the character and emotions.

III. He must be able to express himself compactly, to condense much in a little, to pick out the significant detail which will perform a great deal in a very little space.

IV. He must cultivate a sense of proportion, which will keep his story properly balanced.

V. He should have a thorough knowledge of the setting about which he is writing. The absence of such a background is the reason why many amateur stories have failed. The writers are out of their depth; they do not know either the settings or the people about which they are writing. As a result, the story does not ring true. Far too many writers go cruising here and there for “background” and “atmosphere,” whereas, if they only knew it, background is something which cannot be bought over the counter or even acquired in a few months’ sojourn in a foreign land. Their story will probably be sitting on the back steps, waiting for them, when they come home.

CHAPTER X
THE WEAVER’S ART

[1] Writing from Experience

Henry James once wrote:

When James and other writers of fiction speak of “writing from experience” they speak the truth, but at the risk of being misunderstood. In the passage quoted above, James tried to save himself from such a misunderstanding by the qualification, “Try to be one of those people on whom nothing is lost.” But we feel that a lengthier explanation is in order, especially since at this point we strike at the very heart of the art of writing.

Let it be said in advance, however, that neither this chapter nor any chapter, nor even any book, could treat the subject adequately. After all of the writers have given us intimate glimpses into the sources of their material and their methods of work,^[68] and after all of the psychologists have written their books, there will always be the human factor entering in, the fact that each of us is different in both temperament and equipment from all other people in the world, and the fact that a bit of advice which is the salvation of one may prove the confusion of another.

It is with a great deal of trepidation that one approaches a non-scientific discussion of the subject of experience and its relation to writing. The only justification for such temerity is that it may stimulate some reader to enter upon a study of the question for himself, and to attempt to build up for himself a workable theory. So little is known about the whole field, and so little may ever be known, that there is no real danger yet of the subject’s falling into the hands of the “formulists.” Such advice as is given here must always be taken with the qualification that what is good for one may not always be good for another. That some students have found some of the following suggestions helpful is the only excuse for entering upon this discussion.

[2] What Experience Is Not

In attempting to understand what experience is, it may be helpful to state some of the things which experience is not. There seem to be two fallacies regarding experience. First, those who catch at the superficial meaning of the word would interpret Henry James as saying, “Cram your life as full of experiences as you can. Steep yourself in sensations, sensuous and sensual, travel for atmosphere, have as many experiences as you can, for these will some day furnish a plot for a story.”

The gravity of this fallacy lies in the fact that it is a half-truth, which makes it more dangerous than if it were a lie. A man might have as many “experiences” as Trader Horn without being able to utilize one of them in fiction, without writing one good story. This is why teachers are at a loss when it comes to dealing with a prospective student who comes to them and says, “I have been abroad several times, and have lived an interesting life. I know that if I could only learn to write stories, I should never have any trouble in looking for material.” The whole trouble here is that the teacher has no guarantee that these “experiences” have been more than events which have taken place in the student’s life. And experiences, in the sense of events, are not the material out of which stories are made.

The second fallacy is illustrated by those who, when told to write from experience, interpret it to mean that they should confine themselves to autobiography. This is another dangerous half-truth. A very small percentage of fiction is pure autobiography, and the author who feels that he must confine himself to the true facts, to everything that he has literally seen or heard, is bound from the start to circumscribe his writing unduly. Events from our lives form the germs of many a story; we people our narratives with characters, and seed them with events from our own “experience,” but it is a rare story indeed which is nothing more than a literal transcription of events from life. It has already been said that a good writer of fiction must of necessity be a good liar, enough of a liar to be able to mold what he has seen and heard in life to fit the exigencies of what he thinks and feels. While a searching autobiography is one of the best limbering-up exercises that a writer can take, it is also true that he will surely fail if he attempts to make all his fiction nothing more than a literal transcription of actions, people, and places which he has observed.

Having seen that experience can be interpreted to mean neither bare events nor autobiography, let us now look more deeply into its true meaning. In order to do this, we shall have to make certain hypotheses regarding our psychological and physiological make-up, hypotheses which, while not necessarily approved of in full by scientists, are still helpful in aiding us to understand facts regarding ourselves which we all know to be true, at least to some degree.^[69]

[3] The Three Levels of Consciousness

There seem to be within each one of us what may be termed as three levels of consciousness. The first, which may be called the intuitive-self, is so deeply hidden within us that we are not conscious of its presence. It is concerned with such organic processes as the digestion of food, circulation of the blood, respiration, reproduction, and the like. The second, or deep-self, is the repository of all racial and hereditary experience. The third is the immediate-self, which is the store-house of all the personal experience which each one of us gained, bit by bit, throughout his life. Genius, as Mrs. Austin has defined it, is “simply the capacity of the immediate-self to make free and unpremeditated use of the racial material stored up in the deep-self, as well as of material acquired in the course of individual experience.” In other words, the genius is the man who, at will, can dip into the lowest levels of his consciousness, extract what is therein, and make use of this material for his immediate-self to work upon.

To accept the hypotheses laid down above, it is not necessary for one to believe that these three levels of consciousness actually exist in our minds. They may be interpreted figuratively or symbolically, and are used as being illustrative of certain phenomena which we know exist, without our being able to explain them in physiological or psychological terms.^[70] Most of us have had some acquaintance, either personal or observed, with all of these levels of consciousness. We have, for instance, noted the various characteristics of certain races—the African negro for rhythm and harmony, the American Indian for rhythm without harmony, the ancient Greek for sense of form, the Jew for a native ability to adjust himself to his environment—all of which are preserved in the deep-self. More immediate in our own lives is the ability, for the asking, to call upon ourselves to remember names, faces, and events seemingly long forgotten; the ability which most of us can cultivate to wake ourselves at a given hour in the morning; the power which a great many people possess to “sleep upon a problem” and find the solution upon awakening. These are but a few of the phenomena of the mind working below the level of immediate consciousness. These activities can be referred to the immediate-self, while the deep-self is constantly at work storing these increments for the benefit of our racial successors.

As far as the immediate-self is concerned, we must here make a distinction between two of its attributes, intelligence and talent. The two are quite separable, surprising though the statement may seem at first. Talent may exist without intelligence, and intelligence without talent. Granted that talent, latent or acknowledged, exists, the most that intelligence can do is to play its part in the training of that talent.

[4] Talent and Its Relation to Intelligence

Talents, being attributes of the immediate-self, seem to be in-born, closely allied to our physical make-up. There are a great many more of them than is commonly acknowledged; we have, as Mrs. Austin forcibly points out, an unfortunate way of speaking of a “talent for music” or a “talent for painting.” “For a high degree of success in either of these careers,” she says, “a number of distinct and well coordinated aptitudes are required. For music, a talent for tone-discrimination, for pitch, for intensity, for melody, for time, for tone color, a musical memory, and definite qualities of emotional response to musical stimuli. . . . Every general talent should thus be resolved to its components, for on the relative development of these, and their play upon one another, will depend the choice of medium and the particular field of expression.”^[71] A talent, as she further points out, seldom appears singly, but in groups of twos or threes, some closely, others not always so closely, related. Some gifted men, such as Michael Angelo, Hardy, Rosetti, attained success in more than one field as the result of the possession of two or three groups of inter-related talents.

Perhaps one of the commonest talents in the artistic field is the talent for imitation, which is so often confused with genius. Talented imitators have their place in all the arts, but when a talent for imitation becomes confused with a talent for original creative work, the results are often tragic for the person in question. Stevenson admits to “playing the sedulous ape” when he first began to be interested in writing, but Stevenson fortunately had enough genius to do creative work of his own. His advice should not be too closely followed by those who hope some day to use their talents in accomplishing something that is off the stereotyped pattern.

Talent, being in-born, can only be trained by the intelligence. We all of us know a great many intelligent people who have no talent for creating anything of their own. And there have been many instances of talent existing without the faintest spark of real intelligence. As Mrs. Austin says, “In every case genius appears to be strictly conditioned by the kind of intelligence through which it reaches us, as the spray of the fountain is conditioned by the nozzle.”^[72]

[5] “Interest” Does Not Postulate Talent

Having laid this sketchy background of the three levels of consciousness, and having seen that talent and intelligence, both attributes of the immediate-self, exist quite independently of one another, we can now take up our inquiry into the real meaning of the word “experience.”

But now it becomes necessary to form a new conception of the word. There is such a thing as a “talent for experiencing,” a talent as definite as a talent for rhythm, or for pitch, or for weaving. It is, like other talents, in-born, but may exist in a person sometimes without his knowledge, in which case, like other talents, it may be trained by the intelligence. A writer without this talent for experience is no writer at all; he cannot hope to be even a good imitator. A great many things about the writing of fiction may be successfully imitated, as for example the form of a story; but the substance, never. There must always be substance to a story just as surely as there must be the warp of a piece of cloth, which holds the threads together. A story with substance but no form may sometimes succeed, but a story with only form is foredoomed to inevitable failure.

Writers, especially those who have little or no experience, are fond of talking about their “interest.” They think that they can write stories because they are “interested” in people, in psychology, in “life.” But even granting the sincerity of this interest, its existence is by no means a guarantee that any talent for writing exists. Most people will not believe this; they will not admit it even to themselves, and this refusal to take stock of themselves, without rationalizing, is the source of much bitter disappointment in after years. After the reading of this chapter, and after a thorough self-analysis, if the reader is reasonably convinced that he possesses to some degree this talent for experiencing, then, and then only, should he allow himself to continue his writing. He will save himself many heart-aches if he heeds this advice.

According to Mrs. Austin, interest is “an innate capacity for experiencing in a given field.” “An interest in music,” she says, “is the natural index of a capacity to experience music, as an interest in literature is an index of a capacity to experience the personal life of others. The question of whether you experience it for the purpose of reproducing what you learn in your own life, or in art, has nothing to do with the primary capacity. If you have no other talents than this one of experiencing music, you become a music lover, enriching your private life thereby. If you have specific musical talents, you become a musician, enriching the life of the group.”^[73]

The application of this general principle to the writer is self-evident. The existence of even a real interest in writing does not postulate the existence of the talents which every good writer must possess. It is the interest which furnishes the “drive”; but if the possessor of the “drive” has no capacity for driving anywhere, it is better for him not to delude himself with the belief that he is endowed with the necessary talents.

The possessor of an interest in writing, however, may safely take this as an indication that he may possess some of the necessary talents for creating in this field. In the preliminary stock-taking, he should first see whether he has this capacity for experiencing, without which no writer can hope to succeed.

[6] Two Negative Definitions of Experience

Before we make a positive exposition of this capacity for experiencing, we must make two more negative definitions. In the first place, a mere dissatisfaction with existing environment is not sufficient, as Mrs. Austin well points out, to warrant one in discarding it as not experienceable, since phases of dislike, of positive antagonism, are part of the rhythm of acquaintance. “Where love is blind, hate often sees clearly, and pain is an excellent educator. . . . The true test of experienceability is not liking or disliking, but the ability to do things to and with the environment.”^[74]

Again, a distinction must be made between experiencing a phase of life and being merely informed about it. There is a distinction between sympathy and understanding. “To be sympathetic is merely to react emotionally in the same direction, and to something of the degree, in which people around you act toward their experience.”^[75]

[7] What Experience Is

But the understanding which lies at the bottom of the real talent for experiencing is different in both degree and kind. It is a feeling of at-one-ness with the phase of life with which you, as a writer, are dealing. You have more than a visual mental picture of your setting, a clear idea of your “plot,” and information concerning the nature of your characters. The setting is more than “real”; you yourself are in the midst of it in your experience, and note details, pregnant with significance and meaning, which you would never have seen if you were but a detached observer.^[76] The plot is more than a series of events leading to a climax; it is a group of acts, or perhaps a situation or a character, which has so deeply impressed itself upon your consciousness that the impression has become part and parcel of your own life, endowed with a quality of intense feeling which, moreover, makes that situation or character relate itself to life as you know or believe life to be. The characters are more than people acting; rather than standing aside and observing what they say and do, you are within them, experiencing with them; you are those characters themselves.

All this is very good theory, but very hard to practice. There are some who are not endowed with this talent for experiencing and can never learn what it means to “get inside” a story. By such people fiction material is always regarded more lightly than it is by those who actually live through, in experience, their stories. The author once heard a pseudo-fiction writer boast that he had at last “caught on to this fiction-writing game,” and that he was at last able to turn out two or three stories a month which the magazines accepted. What the magazines were he did not mention, but it is safe to say that no writer, no matter how great his talent for experience, could turn off more than tripe at such rate.

[8] The Experience Must Germinate

Perhaps the greatest reason why fiction cannot be turned off at such a rate is that experiencing, in itself, is not enough for the writer. Some few stories have undoubtedly been written shortly after the germination of the idea which has prompted them, but in a large majority of cases the idea must germinate over a comparatively long period of time before it can be used by the writer.

The explanation of this phenomenon is not clear, but the fact itself is sufficiently established to serve as a warning to every writer not to use his material before the first heat of the “inspiration” has cooled. Perhaps this is one of the hardest lessons that the writer has to learn, and, curiously enough, he must in most cases learn the lesson for himself. Advice does little good. One of the purposes of the writing of this chapter is to put the advice once more in printed form, in the hope that some few may profit from it. To reinforce the advice, some little explanation of the phenomenon may serve.

The term “subconscious” is frequently used to describe the level of our minds at which stories should brew before they are finally set down.

Dr. Nixon has pointed out^[77] William James’ seemingly paradoxical statement that we learn to skate in summer and to swim in winter. The principle to which James refers is familiar to almost anyone who has ever attempted to acquire skill in a new activity. In learning to play golf or tennis, for example, the novice frequently notes an increase in proficiency after a period of rest. When we resume practice after such a period of inactivity, we seem actually to have acquired skill, subconsciously, in the meanwhile. This phenomenon has been variously explained, but the true reason seems to be that during the interim of rest certain bad habits of attention, inhibiting associations and the like have fallen away, leaving the “good” habits more free to act.

When we compare this phenomenon to the act of creative thinking, the two seem to have much in common. The writer, after a period of rest during which he has ceased to think consciously of his story, often returns to it with a store of new ideas and fresh “inspirations.” There is every reason to believe that writers could well profit by not driving themselves too hard; frequently, when one becomes stuck, the best thing to do is to leave the story for a while, to make a conscious effort to forget it, and then to return to it at a later time.

And he draws a comparison between this phenomenon and “the sudden acquisition of a new swing by the golfer, or the sudden ‘seeing into it’ of the puzzle-worker.”

Whatever the explanations which the psychologists may offer for this puzzling aspect of behavior, there is no doubt that the writer may make unlimited use of the general principle. And this principle applies in an extraordinary way to the treatment of emotional impressions and experiences. In trying to understand Mrs. Austin’s explanations, the reader should bear in mind her arbitrary classification of the mind into three levels of consciousness—the intuitive-self, the deep-self, and the immediate-self. All of our experiences impinge upon a spotlight of immediate consciousness, which may be compared to the budding stalk of a plant whose stem is the deep-self, and whose roots, the intuitive-self, stretch out of sight underground. All of the experiences and impressions which focus upon this bud of the immediate-self are stored away, and many of them are seemingly forgotten. But, as Mrs. Austin has well pointed out, nothing that impinges upon this circle of awareness is ever lost. We may think that we have forgotten names, places, events, emotions, but in a moment of surprise we may suddenly some day find ourselves face to face with these very memories which we thought long dead.

The most interesting exposition of this theory in recent years is contained in a discussion of Coleridge by Professor John Livingston Lowes.^[78] Proceeding on this same theory which Mrs. Austin has expounded in her book, Professor Lowes varies the figure, comparing our subconsciousness to a “deep well,” into which our impressions are dropped. From out of this well, from time to time, these impressions and memories arise, sometimes so subtly veiled that we cannot identify their source. In undertaking his study of Coleridge, Professor Lowes confined himself to two poems, The Ancient Mariner and Kubla Khan. As a background, Professor Lowes read Coleridge’s diaries and every book that he knew Coleridge had ever read. With this knowledge as his background, he proceeds to show, in a convincing and scholarly way, that a large share of Coleridge’s impressions and mental pictures, as reflected in these two poems, are direct mirrors of impressions and pictures which Coleridge gained during his own personal experience and wide reading. There is no suggestion that Coleridge was guilty of plagiarism; but the fact stands out that his vivid imagination, operating on all this material which he had unconsciously stored away in his “deep well,” reproduced (with infinite variations, of course) much that he already knew, although he was probably not conscious of knowing it. And perhaps one of the most fascinating reactions to the reading of Professor Lowes’ book is the reflection as to what would be the effect upon Coleridge himself if he could read the book to-day. He would probably be amazed, angry, incredulous by turns, but Professor Lowes is too convincing to be entirely denied.

Such a book might be written about every author who ever wrote, although the proof of the theory might be harder than in the case of Coleridge. Furthermore, such a book might be written about each one of us.

The theory of the “deep well,” the figure of which has been varied by Mrs. Austin, is nothing new. Professor Lowes makes reference to its use by such men as Dryden, Goethe, Henry James, and Poincaré. Henry James speaks of it in an interesting way, in connection with the plot of his novel, The American:

And Olive Schreiner, writing of her novel, From Man to Man, tells of how the idea for the Prelude of that book burst upon her suddenly one day with such intensity that she sat down at once to write, only to discover, when she had finished, that she had unconsciously written of the experiences of her girlhood. Examples might be multiplied.

[9] How Time Affects Experience

There are two lessons here for the writer to learn: first, that nothing which is dropped into the “deep well” is ever lost; second, (which is more important) that these impressions must be stored there for periods of months or even years before they can be of use. Most laymen have the idea that artists’ “inspirations” arise, flashing and full-armed, from the creator’s soul. Such is seldom the case. Whatever “inspiration” may actually be, it is certain that it works in a much more devious way. It is seldom, if ever, the bursting of a new idea, but rather the emergence of an old one, disguised perhaps in such a way that it is scarcely recognizable. And this is well. New experiences can seldom be used at once, for two reasons.

First, there is the fact that a new experience, no matter how vivid and powerful it may be, cannot take on a significance at once. And significance is the one thing it must have. In the case of Olive Schreiner, the old material had gained weight and significance over a period of years before it burst upon her with all the originality of a fresh inspiration. All of us have seen time play queer tricks with our emotions and experiences. The grown man looks back on his first girl and wonders what he could have seen in her. Even the loss of a loved one, when viewed through the perspective of years, takes on a different quality and intensity of feeling; the emotion has become deeper without losing any of its true emotional quality. In later periods we see things with different eyes, and if we should attempt to write about them then, we should find that our stories would be much better than if we had attempted our writing when under the overpowering influence of the original emotion.

This brings us to the second reason why we cannot use experiences when they are fresh. They are too vivid. They have not acquired the proportion which only time and the working of the “subconscious” can bring. Furthermore, they influence us so deeply at the time, that we are unable to transcribe our feelings to paper. We cannot see the woods for the trees. This fact is difficult for the beginner to grasp, for he is a victim of the common fallacy that the strength of the story will bear a direct proportion to the intensity of the original emotion.

[10] “Emotion Remembered in Tranquility”

As a matter of fact, this belief is true only in part. The success of the story is apt to bear a direct proportion not to the force of the original emotion, but to the force of the recalled or re-experienced emotion. It is this recalled emotion which is the valuable part of experience. It is such a type of feeling that Conrad referred to when he characterized his story, Youth, as a “piece of autobiography (‘emotion remembered in tranquility’).”^[80] It was under the influence of such a re-experienced emotion that Olive Schreiner wrote her Prelude. Almost any writer can tell of similar adventures in experiencing, and many of the wiser ones have made definite use of this phenomenon, and trained themselves, along lines which each has adapted to his own temperament, to develop a technique of handling the “subconscious.”

Nothing except general advice can be given for the acquirement of a technique of experiencing. Mrs. Austin has some valuable things to say, but in the long run the whole problem is one with which each person must acquaint himself and which he must then solve to his own satisfaction. One passage from Mrs. Austin, however, should be quoted:

The last lines above have been italicized because they contain a lesson which, if every author would learn it, would eliminate from literature much of the mawkish sentimentality which pervades fiction. Sentimentality, as distinguished from true sentiment, arises from overcharged emotions which have no proper means of outlet. The “emotion remembered in tranquility” will naturally adapt itself to a proper expression; it will have all the power of the original emotion, and will in addition have acquired a proportion and a meaning which are capable of finite expression. But the emotion which is set down on paper as soon as it is generated, while it may have the same intensity, will lack that same proportion and meaning which only time can give, and the expression of that original emotion will give the writer the feeling of a great wall of water beating fruitlessly upon an impregnable dike; the only water which will reach the reader on the other side will come in the form of a finely diffused spray.

An experience which John Galsworthy records is worth setting down here:

We might add that Galsworthy’s remedy for sentimentality was far simpler than most writers would be able to utilize. Chopping out over-expression is always effective, but more often it happens that events and characters change color with time, alter their proportions and meanings, with the result that the new story may bear but a slight resemblance to the old.

It is here that literature touches upon truth. Fiction should not be the truth, except in so far as it reflects the true sentiments and ideas of the writer. When the writer, however, plays false with any element of his story, he betrays not only himself, but also his art. For this betrayal he will pay with a tawdry imitation of success at best; but, worst of all, he will lose his own self-respect.

[11] The Necessity of Stock-Taking

To learn the true value and use of experience, to acquire the technique of re-experience, the writer must not only subject himself to a stock-taking of his own talents and temperament, and gain some first-hand knowledge of the use of the “subconscious,” but also develop, out of the fund of his information and experience, a technique for the handling of himself. No two of us are constituted in the same way, and a method which will succeed with one will fail with another. Omitting all generalizations, the writer must follow the advice of Socrates, “Know thyself.” His stock-taking may reveal, buried in the deeper levels of his mind, intuitive and racial resources which he has not realized before. From a consciousness of the existence of the “deep well” and a knowledge of its workings, he will learn to make use of his powers of experiencing and re-experiencing, and make an intelligent effort to perfect the mechanism which will call forth from his own past, when he wants them, experiences which he wishes to transform into fiction.

[12] Some Further Advice

While this discussion has barely scratched the surface of the whole question of experience, it is hoped that the information will serve as an incentive to further research. But before we leave the subject, it might not be inadvisable to formulate several further pieces of advice which might be of help:

I. Let the writer remember that each individual has his own rhythm of work, cycles of intake and output. Reading must be judiciously interspersed with writing. And one may give over months to extensive and intensive experiencing without being able to either read or write a single word. But all this intake will bear fruit later on, provided the writer does not try to force himself.

II. Let the writer guard against writing too soon—before the experiences of the past have become sufficiently “set” to be of use. An idea may not be able to be used for years after it has come to him, perhaps never. When the experience is ripe, there will come a moment of what Mrs. Austin has vividly described as “polarization,” when “the various elements are arranged in their right relation to one another, as molecules are arranged in a magnet to sustain an electrical charge.”^[83] This moment of polarization comes to every writer when he feels that his heart, his head, and his hand are coordinated. The moments are rare, but they can, with skill, be controlled, at least to some extent. But one cannot force this time of polarization; it will take care of itself in its own good time.

III. Let the writer remember that it is advisable to keep the incompleted portions of his work below the plane of consciousness, so that they may be fresh when he is ready to use them.

IV. Let him remember that many times the mind works unconsciously, at least without his immediate knowledge. Let him learn, with William James, to swim in winter and skate in summer. It is often possible to meditate on a story just before going to sleep, concluding with a wish that the material may become polarized on the morrow. There have been many instances where the mind has laid hold on this suggestion, just as it does when we wish at night to awake at a certain hour the next morning.

V. Let the writer remember that when an idea or experience rises to the level of consciousness, it is not always advisable to use it at once. More often it is better merely to look at it and then push it down again into the lower levels of consciousness, where it can have further time to germinate and grow.

VI. Last of all, let him bear in mind what was said at the beginning of the chapter: that all this nebulous advice will not avail the person who has not been naturally endowed with the talents which go to make up a writer, the chief among them being a talent for experience.

CHAPTER XI
SOME PROBLEMS OF TECHNIQUE^[84]

[1] PLOT

There are listed below seven of the commonest types of plot fallacy. The reader must bear in mind, however, that the failure of many stories is not due, in whole or even in part, to the lack of a good “plot.” As has already been pointed out,^[85] plot, in the best sense of the word, is only the plan by which the writer charts out the impression, idea, or theme of his story. We have not thought it wise to bow to the custom, so much in vogue among text-writers, of giving recipes for the construction of plots. The whole matter of “plot manipulation” is a dreary machine-like process at best, and has a tendency toward the creation of and adherence to “the formula.”

Experience has taught that the person who really has something to say can say it best in his own way (always providing, of course, that he is endowed with enough talent and intelligence). The following suggestions on plot are not recipes or rules of construction, but rather warning signals which may enable the person “with a story” to check up on his material, as he is formulating a plan for the expression of his story idea.

[a] Lack of Direction

It often happens that the person with a story idea is confused at the very outset by a seeming lack of coordination in his material. This confusion may have several aspects. The writer may feel that he has a great deal of material, which he cannot seem to correlate. The events and characters which he has in mind do not seem sufficiently related; they will not fit together. His thoughts seem to be like so many electrons in a piece of steel before it is magnetized; each electron seems drawn in a different direction.

Two suggestions may be given for the possible solution of such a difficulty. In the first place, the writer may have too much material. It is a common saying with editors that a writer has failed because he has tried to write two stories in one. The writer, after a critical examination of his material, may find that he will have to discard a great deal of it before he can mold his idea into any sort of workable shape. To change the figure, there may be some electrons which cannot be magnetized by the force of the idea. The remedy in this case is obviously to throw out the irrelevant material. It may make another story some day.

In the second place, while the material may be relevant and useful, the writer may not have correlated the material that he has. In this case the electrons are not too numerous; they simply have not been sufficiently magnetized. This magnetizing takes place when the author shapes his characters and events to a certain definite purpose. The purpose may be the attaining of an effect or an impression, the delineation of a certain character in a certain situation, or the exposition of a theme. Whatever this purpose may be, it acts on the material like a magnet on steel, causing the electrons all to turn about and face in the same direction. Once this magnetizing has taken place, it may be found that the events and characters take on a significance that they did not have before. They have come to mean something in the story. This meaning, which is synonymous with “theme” in the broadest sense of the word, is the one thing that is essential to the well-written story.

There may be still another aspect to this lack of coordination of material. The writer may not have too much material, and he may have thought that he has shaped it to a certain purpose, but the story is still unconvincing. In such a case he will do well to look further to see that the story is consistent in its meaning. It often happens that a writer begins a story with a well-defined idea, but during the writing of the story something happens: he may be unconsciously carried away with a new idea; the significance of the characters or events may have subtly shifted weight or balance in his mind; or he may have changed his plan. While this swapping of horses in mid-stream is often the saving of a story, especially in the hands of certain writers who find it impossible to begin a story with a preconceived idea in mind, the writer should guard against the hidden danger of losing his way in the midst of his story. As in the case of a man lost in the woods, the safest thing to do is to go back to the starting point and re-commence the journey, armed with a compass with a well-magnetized needle to point him the way.

[b] Lack of Focus

Closely allied to the problem which we have just discussed is the difficulty of focusing a story. In the last analysis, lack of direction and lack of focus arise from the same contributing cause. But it is often helpful to look at the same problem from different angles.

The short story, because of its compact form, has to rely on compression, the elimination of extraneous characters, events, and ideas. There is no arbitrary limit to the number of characters or situations in a single story; the only requisite is that they be unified, and subordinated to a controlling purpose or meaning.

Because, then, of its form, the short story is likely to focus its attention on one or two outstanding characters in one main situation. There may be, of course, subordinate characters and minor situations, but the purpose of the story demands that these be kept well in the background. The problem of keeping the main characters to the fore, and the minor ones in their proper place, involves a sense of proportion and a sense of proper values.

In a previous chapter^[86] we have seen how an automobile accident may give rise to several short story ideas; how one spectator might write the story of the driver, another the story of the innocent victim. But should an author attempt to write both these stories in one, he would run into serious difficulties. While it would be possible to make the reader identify himself with both driver and victim separately, it would be very difficult to make him feel equally concerned for both. Since the interests of the driver and victim are in no way identical, the sympathy which the reader gives to one will inevitably be partially withdrawn from the other. The writer here must elect the character on whom he wishes to focus the spotlight of his story.

The writer may well ask himself, “What am I telling this story for?” A searching answer to this question may perhaps set him on the right track. It will bring him, if anything can, down to earth with the realization that he has something to say, and that he had better be getting down to the business of saying it. He will, perhaps, find that, whereas he set out originally with the idea of conveying the impression of how X reacted to a certain situation, he has become, during the writing of the story, absorbed in the character of Y, whom he now finds more interesting than X. The spotlight has shifted; it is becoming Y’s story instead of X’s. That is all very well if he wants to write Y’s story, but that is another story. He may drop X in favor of Y, but he had better not try to drive the two tandem.

It sometimes happens that two or more characters will share the spotlight equally. The story may depict, for example, the relationship between two people; in this case we can imagine that the relationship is in the spotlight, not primarily the individuals who comprise the relationship. Such a story is Katherine Fullerton Gerould’s The Bird in the Bush,^[87] wherein a mother and father have to make a decision to give up their lifelong ambition because one of their children would otherwise suffer. So also, in The Daughters of the Late Colonel,^[88] Katherine Mansfield has successfully depicted the individual and collective life of the maiden sisters.

One of the most frequent questions which the writer of this book has had to ask his students is, “Whose story is it?” It is often a very embarrassing question for the student to answer, but the query often serves to set the student back on the track again—or else compel him to choose another track for his story to run on.

The lesson of focus is difficult to learn, but it is well worth the learning. If one will remember the figure of the magnet and the electrons, or the figure of the spotlight, it may help him to solve some of his troubles.

[c] False Suspense

Suspense, as we shall see in Section 6 of this chapter,^[89] is an important element in the story. Whatever arouses the interest of the reader and causes him to continue with the story is a desirable thing, provided, however, that the interest is created in a legitimate way.

A story is a partnership between author and reader, and, in a sense, a confidential relation exists as in the case of physician and patient, or lawyer and client. This confidence is not to be abused.

This statement is not meant to imply, of course, that the reader must be taken into strict confidence at every turn of the story. Otherwise the detective and mystery story, together with many other types, would have to go out of existence, and O. Henry and his followers would be outlawed. But there are certain ethics to be observed.

Most false suspense arises from three causes:

1. The writer has adopted the wrong angle of narration for his story. Let us suppose that we are writing the story of a soldier who returns from the war. We have put the story into the mouth of N, the soldier’s best friend, who has been with him constantly in France. X recounts how the soldier’s wife is a passionate lover of all that is beautiful, and of how she has made a career for herself while her husband has been away. She loves her new life, and the freedom that it gives her. X tells how, at the end of the war, she looks forward to the return of her handsome husband with mingled feelings, joy that he is coming home and hope that he will allow her to continue her career. The husband lands; his wife meets him and discovers that he is blind!

There is no especial reason why this would not make a good story, but there is every reason why the writer should not put it into the mouth of X. X is assumed to know all the facts, and we have assumed, from the way in which he spoke frankly to us, that he has told us all there is to know about both the husband and his wife. He has, however, while purporting to tell us the whole truth, deliberately withheld the most important piece of information about the story—the fact that the husband was blind, and had been for months.

The author who used X as the medium of telling the story has been guilty of creating false suspense. And the mistake has come through adopting the wrong angle of narration.^[90]

2. The second possible cause of false suspense is found in the introduction of extraneous or irrelevant material. This fault is most often committed by the writers of mystery and detective stories, though the sin has been committed by writers of other types of stories as well. The fault consists in the introduction of material, quite often sensational in nature, which seems at the time to have a definite bearing on the story, but which does not. The injection of false “clues” stands on a different footing, provided the writer eventually proves them to have been false. But clues which are abandoned to their fate without further explanation are wrongfully misleading. To give a somewhat far-fetched example: if Poe, in his Murders in the Rue Morgue, had introduced at the beginning of his story the figure of a mysterious old man with whiskers and black spectacles, and had then abandoned him as the story progressed, he would have been guilty of creating false suspense.

3. The third possible cause of false suspense is the creation of a false impression of character. The author is guilty of this mistake who, again adopting the angle of narration from which he purports to tell us everything that is germane to the story, wilfully withholds from us a certain phase or aspect of a person’s character, for the deliberate purpose of misleading us.

While it is true that many people are not what they seem to be, and while such people are legitimate characters for a story, it is wrong for the writer to presume to tell us all about them and then, at the last minute, to reveal the fact that they are villains instead of saints. It would be legitimate, however, for the author, from an angle of narration which does not postulate a confidential relation with the reader, to give us the outward indications which would point to the fact that X was a saint, and then afterward, by X’s actions, prove to us that he is quite the reverse. Stevenson followed this method in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

[d] False Change of Character

Sometimes a very useful distinction is made between a static and a dynamic character. The basis of the distinction lies in the treatment of the character. A static character is one which does not change his nature throughout the story. The dynamic character, on the other hand, is portrayed as going through a change of nature in the course of the story. The latter type is much less common in short stories than the former, for the reason that the short form lends itself less readily to the depiction of the various stages of character change which every author must record if he is to make the change convincing.

To take an obvious case, it would never do for an author to depict X in the beginning of a story as being an avaricious, miserly man, and then to shift the scene suddenly and show X in later years, a changed man—unselfish, open-hearted, and generous. Dickens, it is true, accomplished this end in his A Christmas Carol, but the story is a long one, almost a novelette in length and form, and the change in Scrooge’s character takes place gradually through a chain of incidents. Dickens took minute care in these scenes that the change of character should take place slowly, step by step. Otherwise the fantastic story would not be as convincing as it is. There have been other stories, much shorter in length, which have depicted a similar character change, but in each case the author has taken the same pains to make his story probable by showing the development taking place in gradual steps.

Beginners should confine their first attempts to the drawing of static characters. Yet it is remarkable how impelling is the temptation for them to choose the harder road. That reason probably is that a great many of the plots which suggest themselves to amateurs can be classified as what Uzzell calls the “Come to Realize Plot.”^[91] For example, the bum stumbles into a church, hears the music and the exhortations of the preacher, thinks over his past life (described in glowing scenes) and “comes to realize” that he must mend his ways. Again, the farm girl, wearied by the monotony of her existence, decides to run away to the city, but suddenly, just as she is about to leave the house, she “comes to realize” that it would break her old mother’s heart; and so she decides to stick it out.

Flimsy plots such as these have been worn threadbare; more than that, they required, in the beginning of their existence, the hand of a master to make them convincing. But probably every editor and teacher in the country has had experience with stories of this kind. Other plots which are not quite so stereotyped will be found, on closer examination to belong to this type of “Come to Realize Plot.”

The reason for the failure of this kind of story—and most of them do fail—is that they are not probable. While such situations have existed in life, it is extremely hard to make them convincing on paper. The problem is fundamentally one of character delineation. The reader, in matters of character, is never willing to take the author’s word for the fact that a change of character has taken place. The reader must be mentally and emotionally persuaded of that fact; he must see it and feel it for himself. All this requires not only a high degree of art, but also more space than the short story is generally able to afford. The authors who have succeeded with plots of this type have been masters of economy, who have known the use of suggestion^[92] and have carried their story along by the use of details which have tremendous significance.

[e] The Use of Coincidence

The use of coincidence is another error to which young writers are especially prone. On the face of things there is no particular reason why a good story involving coincidence, taken from life, should not also make a good short story in fiction. But if one will consider for only a moment why stories succeed, he will see why stories of coincidence almost invariably fail.

In general, a story succeeds if it has something to say, and if it says it convincingly. Let us take a typical coincidence story, which might be clipped from a current newspaper. Two brothers have been separated since early childhood. The elder has gone to the city and become rich, but the younger, who has led an aimless and wandering life, now finds himself, an old man, forced to beg on the streets. As he is begging one day a luxurious automobile draws up to the curb and the owner descends. The beggar, not recognizing the man who confronts him, solicits alms, is recognized, etc. etc.—the reader can fill in the rest for himself.

We all know this story, and most of us would laugh at the “plot.” But it is surprising to note how many stories of this kind are being written by people who cannot understand the reason for their failure. The reason is three-fold. First, the story really has nothing to say. True, one might write a very emotional scene about the meeting between the two brothers, but what of it? There’s the rub. The story means nothing except that one man has succeeded where the other has failed, and the two men happen to be brothers.^[93] A story of the success of the one or the failure of the other might be very much to the point, but the two men, so far as the aforementioned plot is concerned, have no place in a story the climax of which depends for its effect upon the meeting. Second, the story is not convincing for the same reason that a “Come to Realize” plot is not convincing. Whereas we know that such coincidences have actually happened in life, they are outside the experience of the average person except as he reads of them in the papers or hears them from the lips of a friend. They appear in the paper because they are outside the domain of average experience. We should regard them as incredible if we did not trust the integrity of the paper which printed the story. We know that they are true. But in story form there would be no such voucher for their reliability. Fiction is not the truth; it is seldom that an author pretends that the events of his story have taken place in the exact way in which he has written them down. Even when he tells us that his story is true, we are skeptical. We are not looking for true stories in fiction, unless we read the “confession magazines.” And so, in the case of the story of the two brothers, it would be very difficult to persuade a reader that the story was true to life. And third, there is a final and insuperable objection to the plot. It lacks what is sometimes referred to as “integration.” The two brothers have lived their lives independently of one another; neither has exerted any influence on the other. The fact that one is rich has no connection with the fact that the other is poor. Their fates converge suddenly, like the sides of an isosceles triangle, neither side influenced in direction by the other. If it could be shown that the rich brother was in some way responsible for the fate of the poor one, or vice versa, the story would be bolstered up so far as the third, and perhaps even the first objection is concerned; but there would still remain the second—the fact that such an accidental meeting savors too much of coincidence to convince the reader.

While coincidence has been used in fiction, it seldom plays a major part in the best stories.^[94] Its use by good writers has been mainly confined to stories which do not depend upon the coincidence for their effect. There are innumerable instances, for example, of where a character, reading a paper, has glimpsed some item which starts the story on its way. In Edna Ferber’s The Gay Old Dog, the chance meeting between Jo Hertz and his old sweetheart, Emily, bears no direct casual connection to the plot itself, except as it serves to bring Joe to the realization of what he has lost and also prepares him mentally for the scene in which he denounces his selfish sisters, who have ruined his life. The story does not hang on the coincidence; the coincidence serves only to impel the story to its inevitable conclusion.

[f] Lack of Integration

Integration, which was briefly referred to in the preceding section, is the quality possessed by a story which is closely knit into a compact and unified whole. The word itself is derived from the Latin integer, an adjective which means whole.

The lack of integration in a story is as difficult to define as it is to diagnose. It does not generally manifest itself by any such unmistakable symptoms as do the “Come to Realize” plot, the coincidence plot, and other similar fallacies To the untrained reader’s eye there is generally nothing tangibly wrong with the story; it seemingly has no glaring faults, but for some inexplicable reason it “misses fire.”

While it is not to be assumed that all undiagnosed ailments can be attributed to this elusive fault, a searching examination of a story will often reveal that it lacks this necessary unification. The varieties of ailments which come under the heading of “lack of integration” are so varied and numerous that it is impossible to classify them or attempt to find a remedy for each one. But an example, taken from actual experience, may serve to illustrate the problem.

A student once handed in the following idea for a story: A wife and mother, Irish by birth and of the imaginative type who believes in fairies, is happily married to a bluff and hearty man, who loves her without understanding her. They have a son, whom the husband passionately desired to grow up to be a “regular boy.” But the son took after his mother; he was, like her, imaginative, aesthetic by nature, almost feminine in his instincts and intuitions. When his father wanted him to be out playing ball, he was painting or practicing on his violin. His father gradually conceived for him a dislike which, as the boy grew up, developed into a positive hatred. The boy was compelled to leave home, and was in a fair way of making a name for himself as a violinist when the war came along. He enlisted, served with distinction in France, and, after the Armistice, desired to come home to see his mother, with whom he had kept up a constant correspondence. His mother was in a fever of excitement, torn between hope and fear as to what her husband’s reactions might be. She sincerely loved both her husband and her son. She did not dare mention to her husband the fact that the son was coming home.

So far, the idea for the story was not impossible. Granted that the story would require careful handling up to this point, it had a fair chance of success. But the student could find no ending for the story. She assured me, as students will, that the story was taken from life. But what to do next? She finally decided to stick to the facts of the case and end her story as it had been ended in life: the son was accidentally killed on his way home.

This was obviously an unsatisfactory ending for the story; among other things, it well illustrated the principle that fiction is not the truth. But the real difficulty was that the proposed ending destroyed the integration of the plot. The story was intended to be the mother’s story; it was in her that the student was interested. A resolution of the plot from her standpoint was necessary. This fact was pointed out to the student, who, without further consultation, wrote up the story with a different ending: the son came home and met his mother. After a long pause the father’s footfalls were heard on the stairs. He entered the room and looked long and earnestly at the erect and manly figure of his son. Then he came slowly forward and offered his hand.

In avoiding Scylla the student had fallen into Charybdis. In her final version she had fallen victim to the “Come to Realize” plot! The father underwent a sudden reversal of feeling without any apparent reason.

The need of integration in the story was thus side-stepped, and the student fell between two stools, the “true to life” fallacy on the one hand, and the “Come to Realize” plot on the other. If the problem had been squarely faced, it would have been evident that the frayed ends of the story had to be knit together to form one compact and unified whole. The story had to mean something. One of the aspects of the story which remained unexplained and unconvincing in both versions was how the wife could love a husband who was so totally different from herself and emotionally so far removed from an understanding of her nature, and who furthermore treated with such cruelty the son she worshipped. This defect might have been remedied by making the mother the type of woman to whom marriage was so sacred that she could not quite make up her mind to leave her husband until she had exhausted every resource to bring him and his son together. She loved him as the same man she had married years before, until this strange barrier had come between them. And now, at the end of the war, she was about to play her trump card in confronting the father with his son, whom she hoped the war had hardened enough to make him acceptable to his father, without destroying the qualities of the boy which she loved and admired most.

Admitted that this character analysis is too sketchy to be completely satisfactory, it still outlines a possible way of escape from the difficulty caused in the first instance by the insufficient or faulty characterization. But the story still remains unintegrated; it needs to be knitted together and given a significance.

The reader may be able to hit upon a dozen better solutions than the one about to be offered, which is submitted with the idea of illustrating a point rather than of furnishing a first rate idea for a story. If we take the story as it stands up to the time of the son’s homecoming, and take the characters as we have roughly outlined them in the preceding paragraph, how is it possible to gather up the loose ends?

The son opens the door and confronts his mother, who sees with horror that his face has been disfigured by an ugly bayonet scar. She draws back with instinctive revulsion; the son has been prepared for this, but winces under her gaze. Both of their aesthetic natures are outraged by his physical repulsiveness, but his suffering over a period of months has hardened him so that he is better able to face the situation than she, unprepared for the shock as she is. Just at this moment the father enters the room. He sees his son, and the sight of the scar has an opposite effect upon him; he sees a man whose whole bearing denotes that he has suffered a man’s hardships in a manly way, but the disfiguring scar, which obscures to some extent the aesthetic face of the boy, is what catches the father’s attention most. He stares, and the boy hardens himself to meet his father’s gaze. Before the mother has recovered from her first horrified reaction, the father advances and, with an effort, grasps his son’s hand.

While this ending differs but slightly from the ending as the student finally wrote the story, it will be seen that a new element, the scar, has been introduced, which, in a way, serves to tie the three people together. It shocks the mother, but the reader knows that a few moments after the conclusion of the story she will recover her poise and love her son more devotedly than ever. The scar has toughened the boy without seemingly having altered his nature. Furthermore, the scar represents to the father, symbolically, that his son has changed, at least that the boy has proved himself a man. And finally, the disfigurement, and all that it implies, has given a meaning and direction to the story, in that it shows how the boy’s suffering has, like a flame, purified the air and knit the family together for the first time.^[95]

Integration may be accomplished in numberless ways. Among them may be mentioned the introduction of a symbol which typifies and incorporates the emotional element of the story (e.g. the scar in the story just discussed); the introduction of an event to accomplish the same harmonizing and unifying end; the change or amplification of character (which was partially done above in the case of the mother’s character); or the introduction or intensifying of a theme for the story. This catalogue is by no means complete, nor need it be. For seldom will the solution come by such mechanical means. The best possible way to integrate a story does not involve any such short cut, but rather demands that the author live for a long time with his idea, utilizing to the full the function which the subconscious mind plays when it silently works upon the material given to it. The moment of “polarization” may finally come, when the solution of the story will burst like a rocket upon the writer, perhaps at a time when he least expects it. In the meantime, the less mechanical “manipulating” he does, the better. For the mind does not stand much intensive battering for ideas, but prefers to work in its own way and to take its own time. And the writer must school himself to wait.

[g] The “True to Life” Fallacy

Once more we borrow Mr. Uzzell’s terminology because it so aptly fits the case. The fallacy has already been mentioned above in several connections.^[96] It is given separate treatment here because it arises so often that it deserves to stand out clearly as a caution to the writer.

When writers insist on sticking to a poor plot on the ground that “it really happened that way,” it most often happens that they have, by sticking to the truth, committed one or more of the blunders which have been enumerated in the preceding sections of this chapter. They have committed the sin of solving a plot by coincidence; they may, like the student whose plot was criticized in the preceding section, have failed to integrate their story; they may be guilty of lack of direction in their story (What does the story mean?); or they may have failed to focus their story (Whose story is it?). Isolated facts in life often lack both integration, direction, and focus. Coincidences do happen, but seldom do they have any significance for the purposes of fiction.

The writer will do well to look to life for ideas, situations, characters, and settings, but he will often run amuck if he attempts to combine in his story all these elements in the same order, proportion, and groupings in which he finds them in everyday life.

[2] POINT OF VIEW AND ANGLE OF NARRATION

One hears the terms “objective” and “subjective” applied to writing. The objective method confines itself solely to the observation and reporting of external things, leaving the reader to gather the implications of what he reads. The subjective method allows the writer to cut into the minds of his characters and expose cross-sections of what he sees. He may even give us a cross-section of his own mind.

It is sometimes helpful, however, to make a more minute classification. But before this can be done, it is advisable to adopt a clear terminology. We shall speak, for one thing, of point of view, which must be carefully distinguished from angle of narration.

Point of view is the slant from which the author sees his story. For example, he may be struck by a situation which involves several characters. In life each character sees the situation differently, each from his own point of view. But usually the author, when the idea for his story comes, sees the story as it affects, impresses, and concerns only one character (though sometimes it may be two, or even three). We shall assume that he decides to make it X’s story; he accordingly focuses the spotlight of the story on X. Thus, in effect, he has adopted X’s point of view. This preliminary focus is highly important, for, as we have seen in the preceding section, a careless or sloppy shifting of the focus of a story is liable to result in either lack of focus or lack of direction in the story.

Angle of narration is more technical. It can be defined as the method which the author adopts to get his focus, or, in other words, to enforce his point of view.

There are, in general, three main angles of narration, which may be classified as follows: 1. The author-observant; 2. The author-participant; 3. The author-omniscient.^[97]

1. The author-observant angle of narration is purely objective, and the story must be told in the third person. The author stands outside the circle of his story and tells only what he observes. The method will be seen to be analogous to that of the dramatist, who, unless he makes use of the soliloquy or “aside,” has no means of taking the audience into the minds of his characters except as he allows the characters to reveal themselves and each other by their words and actions.

It is possible, of course, to vary this strict method of telling the story. The author may obtrude himself, as author, into the story and attempt to interpret the meaning of the actions and speeches, without, however, assuming an omniscience which would actually enable him to take a cross-section of the minds of his characters.

This purely objective method has both its advantages and its limitations. It is deficient for some purposes in that it leaves a great deal to the reader, sometimes too much. The method requires a great deal of subtle handling, but, when well done, is immensely effective. Among modern writers, Ernest Hemingway handles this angle of narration with great artistry.

2. The author-participant angle postulates, as its name implies, the use of the first person, but its treatment may involve the use of either the subjective or objective types of writing. When only the objective method is used, it will be seen that this angle overlaps the author-observant angle.

The story may be told in the first person by either the main character or by one of the minor characters. Rarely the author may shift and tell the story from the angle of both, as Stevenson did in Treasure Island. But such a shift is awkward, and is seldom adapted to the short story form.

The author-participant angle has the advantage of adding realism to the story, as it does in Conrad’s Youth. It tends to make the narrator seem a real person, and makes his experiences both more vivid and more credible. It may have the disadvantage, however, of limiting the point of view to the person who is speaking, except when a minor character tells the story by assuming the point of view of the main character. Furthermore, it sometimes causes inconvenience, as, for example, in stories involving a great deal of action, where it is difficult for the narrator to be in each scene to report all the events as they take place. And finally, the frequent use of “I,” coupled with the fact that the narrator often has to make himself a hero, lends a touch of egotism which is sometimes distasteful.

It has been said that this angle can be either subjective or objective, or both. The narrator is necessarily within the circle of the story, to a greater or less degree. Once there, he may confine himself to mere objective reporting of what he sees; or he may stop to give his own interpretation of the story to the reader; or he may, especially if he is a chief actor in the story, look within himself and give subjectively his own emotions, as Conrad did in Youth, a story in which the narrator, while not the chief character, reflects the entire mood of the story. But in every instance it will be observed that the narrator can be subjective only as to himself; he cannot, as an omniscient, take a cross-section of any mind but his own.

3. The author-omniscient angle, as its name implies, endows the author with an all-seeing omniscience which enables him, like a god endowed with super-normal faculties, to see all things at all times, and allows him to penetrate into the hearts and minds of any or all of his characters. The third person is used exclusively, though the author may shift at will from subjective to objective treatment. The method is capable of infinite variation; the author may be omniscient as to only one character and merely observant as to the rest; or he may be omniscient toward all, as occasion demands; or he may, as Katherine Mansfield frequently did, so intermingle his own impressions with those of his characters that it is difficult at times for the reader to know whether his impressions are being received through the medium of the author or of one of the characters.

There is only an occasional, and generally minor, advantage in classifying angle of narration even as generally as has been done above. But there is great necessity for the author to predetermine, before writing the story, what point of view he is going to adopt, and to distinguish this point of view from angle of narration. The problem of point of view raises the question, Whose story is it? The query asked by angle of narration is, Who is going to tell the story?

A failure to distinguish between these two questions, and to answer them correctly, has often resulted in a story’s lacking both focus and direction.

As far as angle of narration is concerned, the question deserves long consideration before a story is written. Each story has its own problem. It is advisable to try to see each story from every point of view and from every angle, in order that the author may determine which is the most effective. It often happens, for instance, that a story which is to be told from X’s point of view can be narrated best from Y’s angle. Conrad was especially fond of telling the story of one character from the angle of another, or even of several others. In fact, he often shifted his angle so frequently that the reader is left in some confusion.

The possibilities of combining angles of narration and points of view are so innumerable that it is best not to give any too specific advice on the subject. But two cautions can be given: first, do not adopt too limited an angle for the story, but choose one which admits of as much freedom as the story demands; second, having adopted an angle of narration, guard against committing any inconsistencies.

[3] BEGINNINGS AND ENDINGS

[a] Beginnings

Regarding the beginnings of stories, Mrs. Edith Wharton has the following to say:

Mrs. Wharton’s advice—that the writer first have something to say, and then go about it in the shortest and most vivid way possible—is, so far as generalizations go, about all one can say for the beginning of a story. Whether or not the first page should contain the germ of the whole is a question which many writers might dispute. On the whole, the statement is too arbitrary to stand as a rule of short story writing. But it is true that the beginning of the story should strike the key-note, the tone of what is to follow. While no sensible writer would begin a farce with a lugubrious introduction (except for the sake of comic effect), and vice versa, many stories in effect do the same thing, to a minor degree. As the opening bars of a symphony set the tone color of the whole, so do the opening paragraphs of a story adjust the reader to the tempo and shade of feeling of that which is to follow.

There are, in the main, three possible ways of opening a story:

1. Exposition or description. The danger attendant upon both these methods is that the beginning of the story will drag, will be uncertain in its “attack.” In stories, however, where mood, setting, or idea predominate, either of these two methods of beginning may be used to advantage, if the introduction is concise and to the point.

2. Action. This mode has the advantage of catching attention at the outset, but has the disadvantage of often requiring a later explanation of the action. The writer must take care in laying his background so that the reader has the proper perspective on the story. Again, the laying of this background, once started, should not be done all in one piece if it is long or involved, for in such a case the tempo of the story lets down and the reader becomes wearied with explanation. The necessary explanation can often be given bit by bit, and the use of suggestion^[99] is often a great aid toward both compression and vividness.

3. Dialogue. This method has the same advantage as action, in that it catches attention. But good dialogue is hard to write, and unless the writer can effectively box the reader’s ears, he should be chary in exposing his weak side first.

Mrs. Wharton, following her own advice given above, thus begins her story, Kerfol^[100]:

This opening paragraph, written in the form of dialogue, catches attention and imparts, indirectly, a great deal of information and background. First, we feel instinctively that we are going to have a romantic and mysterious story; next, we are aware that the narrator is paying a visit; then we learn that he is fond of solitude, a fact which leads us to expect him to be interested in this romantic house in Brittany, perhaps to the extent of buying it.

It is worth noting how many novices begin their stories with dialogue, and how many seasoned writers avoid it. It seems to be a domain on which angels fear to tread.

When all is said and done, the best way to begin is to begin, without fuss or nonsense or inordinate straining for effect. Let the writer box the reader’s ears enough to make him willing to read on, but let him avoid being a smart aleck. One should observe the introductions to the stories which he reads, and notice how many of them begin abruptly, compressing a great deal of necessary background and information into a very small compass. It is excellent practice to form the habit of composing initial paragraphs; many a story has sprung from such a beginning.

We quote another bit of advice which, in some instances, may be helpful. George Randolph Chester admonished writers

This method, if followed, will often require a cut-back, in which the necessary ground-work is laid.

In conclusion, it should be pointed out that foreshadowing, which will be discussed later in this chapter,^[102] can often be inserted into the introduction of a story, for the purpose of exciting interest.

[b] Endings

As the best way in which to begin a story is to begin, so the best way to end is to end. Very little useful advice beside this can be given. When the story is finished, let the writer be content to let well enough alone; let him avoid obvious statements, trite comments, and straining for effect, if the impression of the story has not been made by the time the last paragraph is reached, it will seldom avail the author to put on a burst of speed in order to accomplish what he should have accomplished long before. In his attempt to “finish strong,” in the language of the running track, he will often sprain a tendon and come limping across the tape.

The trouble with many stories is that they do not end soon enough. If the writer will practise clipping paragraphs from his endings, as well as from his introductions, he will find that he will thereby eliminate much of the overstraining for effect which is one of the surest ways of leaving an unpleasant after-taste with the reader.

[4] TONE

We have already drawn the analogy between the tone of a story and the quality of emotional feeling aroused in us by other works of art, such as a piece of music, a painting, or a poem. In each case a certain coloring, like a flavor, seems to pervade the spirit of the whole composition.

Uneven tone in a short story is more serious than in a novel, where the form is less compact, and where there is more room for a variety of tone-coloring.

Lack of tone is usually caused by the failure of the writer to obtain the “feel” of his material. The emotional impression which he wishes to convey has not “set” in his mind; his own emotions are uneven and unstabilized as he writes. For a writer who has this difficulty with his story, the best advice is to lay the story away for a while, pushing the idea back into the “deep well” of the subconscious mind.^[103] Perhaps this process will have to be repeated many times before the moment of “polarization” comes and the idea becomes electrified in the writer’s mind.

Unevenness of tone in a story may sometimes be laid at the same door. But there is often an additional cause: the story has been written piecemeal. We have all had the experience of writing one day in the grip of an inspiration, only to find that on the next day we seem cold. If the old feeling cannot be recovered, often the best way is to retrace one’s steps and begin again at the beginning—get a “running start.”

When a completed story is thus splotchy and uneven in tone, it is seldom possible to patch it up. The most satisfactory way is to begin again, after the writer has recaptured the feel of the story, and then write the story through in as few sittings as possible.

[5] PROPORTION AND THE CENTRAL PROBLEM

The short story, because it is short, attracts attention to its form more than the novel, whose length permits a greater formlessness and diffusion. In life we often meet with the same principle: small things often invite more attention and criticism than large ones.

Whereas we have insisted throughout that the short story has not, and should not have, any set form, it must not be assumed that it need not have any form. For each story there is a form best adapted to it, just as there is a tone which must be set and maintained.

One of the biggest elements of form is a sense of proportion, which postulates in the writer the existence of a sense of values. A sense of form is in-born and cannot be acquired, but if it lies latent in a writer, it can be as intelligently trained as any other talent.

One way in which to develop a sense of form is to study well-constructed stories. The study should not be pursued aimlessly, but with a definite idea and purpose in mind to find out what the author was “driving at.” The difficulty with the way in which most people study is that they set out with preconceived ideas of what they are going to find. Teachers and students who are addicted to the “formula method” sin especially in this respect. They begin their reading with a proposition already framed, and try to make the story prove the proposition. They should, rather, begin with an open mind and, by the use of the inductive method, discover what the author was trying to do and how he accomplished his purpose.

Stories should thus be studied from the inside, from the point of view of the author who, setting to work with a definite idea in mind, has adapted his means to fit his end. The reader should attempt to see what the writer was aiming at, and how he achieved his purpose.

This is the only means of approach to a study of the form and proportion of any story. We must give the writer the benefit of the doubt and assume that he knew what he was trying to do and how to go about it. We can take it for granted that what was uppermost in his mind and heart is going to receive the greatest emphasis,—emphasis of both quantity and position; we must assume that he is going to devote the most of his time and space to the amplification of this idea by one means or another, and that he is going to use the strategic points of his story—the climax and the conclusion—to reinforce this idea.

Whether we look at the story from the viewpoint of reader or writer, there is always what we may term a Central Problem for each story. A chain is only as strong as its weakest link; so also, if one part of a machine ceases to function or functions imperfectly, the whole mechanism is liable to come to a standstill. Just as in many machines there is a part which is subjected to the most strain, so in stories there are critical spots which must be crossed, else the story will fall to the ground. The Central Problem of story writing is to discover the critical point of the story (not to be confused with the crisis). This critical point can be likened also to the keystone of an arch. If the keystone is staunch the arch will hold up; if the Central Problem of a story is correctly solved and the critical point of the story bridged over, the structure will stand.

Let us take as an illustration one of Sherwood Anderson’s best known stories, I Want to Know Why.^[104] The story concerns a young boy whose passion in life was horses. He frequented race tracks, made friends with the grooms and stable-boys, and utilized every means to be around the stables as much as he could. He finally skipped from home, with some other boys, to see the Saratoga Races, where one of his favorite horses, Sunstreak, was going to run. Before the race the boy went over to Sunstreak’s paddock and there experienced, in the truest sense of the word, the horse’s sensations. He knew just how the horse was feeling, and as he stood there, his heart aching, he met the eyes of Jerry Tillford, Sunstreak’s trainer. And at that moment the boy loved Jerry, “because he knew what I knew. Seemed to me there wasn’t anything in the world but that man and the horse and me. I cried and Jerry Tillford had a shine in his eyes.” Then came the race, and Sunstreak broke a world’s record. After the race the boy left his companions so that he could be by himself—and near Jerry, if he could manage it. He felt close to Jerry, for they understood each other, and they both loved the horse. He followed a road which he had seen Jerry, with some friends, take only a short time before. As he sat on a fence, an automobile, containing Jerry and his friends, pulled up at a neighboring farmhouse. The boy went over and looked in at the window There he saw the men, with some “ugly mean-looking women.” And Jerry bragged about the race as the boy knew Sunstreak would never have bragged. And then Jerry looked at one of the women, and “his eyes began to shine just as they did when he looked at me and Sunstreak in the paddocks at the track in the afternoon.” Jerry went over and kissed the woman’s ugly mouth. And then the boy hated Jerry; he wanted to rush into the room and kill him. . . . And now things are different for the boy. “At the tracks the air don’t taste as good or smell as good. It’s because a man like Jerry Tillford, who knows what he does, could see a horse like Sunstreak run, and kiss a woman like that the same day.”

The story makes its emotional impression because of the reader’s instinctive sympathy for the innate cleanness of the boy and a sympathy for his love of horses. The shock of the boy’s disillusionment causes a feeling of revulsion to arise in the reader, just as it arose in the boy.

If we now go back and try to put ourselves in the author’s position as he felt his way through the possibilities of the story, we shall have a faint idea of the problem which faces every author. Assuming that he has already decided that our sympathy with the boy is to be gained by contrasting him with the trainer, how is this end to be brought about? What is the Central Problem? Where is the critical point, which, if it fails, will carry the story down with it like a card house?

The answer in this case is fairly obvious. The Central Problem is to bring out two things about the boy: his innocence and his love of horses. On the building up of these two well-defined impressions the whole story hangs. If the critic will re-read Mr. Anderson’s story, he will see that by far the greater part of it is devoted to developing these two characteristics. The events of the story are so simple that they require but little emphasis, and the author has wasted little time on the description of either action or setting. Even Jerry Tillford is kept well in the background until the last minute, when he steps out of the page to play his part. The whole story is the boy’s, and what little action is interspersed in the story is little more than characterizing action.

So much for the attainment of the emphasis of the story, in so far as the selection of material is concerned and the relative emphasis put upon it. As to emphasis by position—the use of strategic points of the story to reinforce the impression—the author has utilized the title, and has, in addition, interspersed the question, “I Want to Know Why,” in other parts of the story, concluding with these two sentences:

“What did he do it for? I want to know why.”

Considerable practice is necessary, and much sympathetic understanding of the writer’s viewpoint is demanded, before the reader can learn to find the Central Problem of a story which another has written. But such a study, such a throwing oneself “out of gear” in order to appreciate the ideas and emotions of another, is worth the expenditure of much time and patience. It will aid the reader when he turns writer, for it will have developed in him an instinct to go to the heart of a story, and to pick out its salient and critical features; and it will teach him to fashion his story so that its proportions will bring the required emphasis of both quantity and position to bear on the impression which the story is to convey.

The research can be profitably carried even further, to the analysis of stories by scene. Each scene has been inserted for a specific purpose. And just as the story, as a whole, has its Central Problem, so has each scene; there is a purpose which it must accomplish in order to justify its inclusion in the story.

[6] FORESHADOWING AND SUSPENSE

In Chapter VIII we discussed the nature of suspense and its relation to drama. It was pointed out that suspense is uncertainty of outcome, that it is not an element injected into the story from without, but that it is inherent in every dramatic conflict. It is an integral part of the fabric of all dramatic story material, not a design which is mechanically appliqued after the cloth has been woven. And it was further pointed out that there are two ways of increasing the suspense which is inherent in any dramatic conflict; first, an intensification of the suspense which is already inherent in the story; second, a re-arrangement of the chronology of the story.

The term foreshadowing is applied, on the contrary, to a purely mechanical means whereby the writer injects a hypodermic into the reader to create suspense artificially, and to key him up to a state of expectancy. Sherwood Anderson employed this foreshadowing early in the story discussed in the last section. The second paragraph opens as follows

Six paragraphs later we read:

Both these excerpts serve to tide the reader over the laying of the background of the story, and hold out a promise that something is going to happen. The story proper, in this case, has not yet begun; there has been no action to speak of, no facts given which in themselves would create drama or suspense. The reader is only being lured on to the point where the curtain rises on the action of the story, action which, in this instance, consumes but little space in the story.

Wilbur Daniel Steele thus opens his story, A Man’s a Fool^[106]:

If the reader will take the pains to examine instances of foreshadowing which he can find in almost any story, he will find that they fall into two broad classifications:

1. The author makes advance reference to some character, event, or circumstance which piques the reader’s curiosity or arouses excitement.

To quote another example from Wilbur Daniel Steele, the following is the opening sentence of The Woman at Seven Brothers^[107]:

The foreshadowing, of course, need not be used at the beginning of the story only. It can be interspersed throughout the story, often in pattern form, as long as there is any necessity for it. The following examples of foreshadowing are culled from the first thousand words of Katherine Fullerton Gerould’s story, The Wax Doll^[108]:

2. The author makes a more or less explicit promise to tell something of interest.

To take an obvious example, Thomas Burke thus opens his story. The Sign of the Lamp^[109]:

A word of caution is necessary. Foreshadowing, being a purely mechanical and fairly easy method of gaining attention and interest, should not be relied on too much, especially at the expense of the real interest of the story. Being but a device to capture interest, it should not be substituted for the interest itself. It is, at best, a method of “stalling for time,” either for the purpose of carrying the reader over the preliminaries of the story, or else, when interpolated later in the story, to bridge over the less interesting part of the narrative. But it is a poor crutch for the writer to lean on habitually, and it should not be either confused with, or used to replace, the inherent interest, suspense, or drama which every story should possess in its own right.

[7] THE UNITIES

Whereas the drama and the novel have largely discarded the so-called Aristotelian unities of time, place, and action, the writer of short stories can still afford to hold in mind, for occasional use, the principles which lay behind the formulation of the rules.

The Unity of action is the rule which will serve the writer well. We have so repeatedly emphasized the necessity of compression and unity in the short story that it is unnecessary to amplify it further, except to reiterate the principle that the writer should repeatedly attempt to circumscribe the limits of his story. Pare down, cut down, skip over the facts of the story which are merely preliminary and explanatory, and let a sense of proportion govern in placing the emphasis of both quantity and position on the parts of the story which are relevant. It is a healthy tendency which prompts a writer everlastingly to attempt to focus the spotlight of his story on a single culminating situation.

The unity of place is helpful in that it tends to force the writer to eliminate unnecessary scenes, especially those that require a change in location. For, while it is not always either necessary or advisable for the writer to set his stage elaborately for each new scene, such visual aid helps the reader to imagine the scene where the action is to take place. But the writer cannot spend much time in constructing “sets”; the process is too long, unwieldy, and boring. The dramatist is similarly limited by considerations of time and expense, and therefore plans to construct his play with as few scenes as possible. There is an additional reason for such limitation, common to both the dramatist and writer of stories—the fact that with each change of scene the spectator’s or reader’s attention wavers; the tension snaps. While this break is not so noticeable in a story as it is on the stage, the principle still holds.^[110]

It is helpful to notice the relation between the unities of place and action. If the writer has compressed his story and focused it on a single main situation, there is every probability that he has, in doing so, eliminated unnecessary and wasteful scenes which would otherwise tend to spoil proportions of his story.

The unity of time is perhaps the most difficult of the three to handle. The principle dictates that the story should cover as short a period of time as possible. The reasons are three: first, it is difficult, in the short story, to create the illusion of the passage of time; second, it is difficult to keep related a series of scenes where the action takes place over a long period of time; and third, it is difficult to make convincing a series of events which must necessarily be fragmentary unless the story is to run to inordinate lengths.

The chief problem of this unity of time is encountered when the writer wishes to trace the development of a character over a period of years. We have already seen^[111] that a character change is hard to portray, and that in such cases the writer runs the constant danger of perpetrating a “Come to Realize” plot.^[112] The character must be given time to develop, but the story must not be allowed to run to such length that there is undue violation of the unities of action and place. The compromise is difficult to make, and requires the skill of a seasoned writer. Beginners are warned against attempting, at the outset, this type of story, but they are advised to study such stories as Kipling’s Baa, Baa Black Sheep, Maupassant’s The Necklace or A Piece of String, Harvey O’Higgins’ Big Dan O’Reilly, Dreiser’s The Lost Phoebe, Chekhov’s The Bet, The Darling and The Black Monk, Edna Ferber’s The Gay Old Dog, and many other stories where the lapse of time has been skilfully handled.

In general, it can be said that the writer should avoid the most obvious method of making time pass, that is, by specific and repeated reference to the elapse of definite periods, such as “Three months elapsed,” etc. Instead of this obvious and usually unsatisfactory method, the following means can sometimes be used to advantage:

1. Mention of events which have taken place during the interval of time. This reference can often be made in a careless or off-hand manner; the writer may assume that the reader is more or less acquainted with what has happened in the interim.

2. A brief description of incidents which have caused a change in the situation.

3. Changes in the appearance, habits etc. of one of the characters.

4. Reference to a change in the season, perhaps accompanied by a brief description.

[8] CUTTING AND COMPRESSION

The writer who learns to steel himself to cut his manuscript ruthlessly has overcome a great obstacle. There exists a natural antipathy toward deleting whole portions over which the author may have spent hours of toil. But no amount of attachment and sentiment should overcome the judgment of a writer whose sense of proportion tells him that he should sacrifice a part of his story.

The beginnings and endings of stories are the places where cutting is likely to be the most beneficial. It often happens that writers take some little time in getting under way with a story. They succeed in being tedious before they have warmed to their task. The remedy lies often in cutting some portions and compressing others. Again, at the end of the story the writer is liable to labor his point, prompted by the fear that he is not going to make the desired impression. Quite often he succeeds only in annoying the reader who dislikes the obvious and who resents having everything explained to him. The remedy again is often found in cutting and compressing.

Within the middle ranges of the story it is often possible to do a great deal of profitable pruning. The process may consist either of actual cutting, or of the grafting of one part of story upon another, or of telescoping one incident or more within another (or within an expository or descriptive paragraph). Theodore Dreiser, in The Lost Phoebe, has covered a great deal of time in a short but vivid paragraph^[113]:

To a less experienced writer there would have been a great temptation to have described in detail the various scenes which, in the preceding extract, have been generalized and condensed into three sentences. If Dreiser had succumbed to the temptation to amplify his material at this point, he would have marred the proportions of his story.

No writer, no matter how experienced, ever ceases to be confronted by the necessity of cutting and compressing. It is amusing and consoling to read what Henry G. Dwight has said concerning one of his most popular stories, The Leopard of the Sea^[114]:

[9] SUGGESTION AND RESTRAINT

Concerning the short story Barry Pain has said:

This collaboration, it seems, is becoming an increasingly prominent adjunct of the modern short story. The reader to-day must give much, must contribute a fair share toward the enjoyment of what he reads. One of the most prominent factors in this gradual change in the short story is that authors have come to rely more and more upon the use of suggestion for the attainment of their effects. The use of suggestion has been prompted by at least three considerations: first, that in many cases it is more effective to suggest facts than to describe them in detail; second, that the short form, with its ceaseless insistence on brevity, unity, and condensation, has shown writers the economical shortcuts to their effects; and third, that the reaction against sentimentality in literature to-day has prompted writers to go to opposite extremes in registering their emotional impressions.

The relation between suggestion and restraint can be best understood if we make a preliminary survey of the nature and use of suggestion in writing.

The principle actuating suggestion is the same which gives truth to the saying that what we learn we remember, but what we are taught we forget. The things which we obtain by effort we value and appreciate, but we are quite apt to esteem lightly the things which have come to us without any effort on our part.

When applied to writing, this principle means that if the writer refuses to tell all that there is to be told, if he artfully calls the reader into collaboration with him and compels the reader’s mind and imagination to function along with his own, there is a much greater assurance that the impression will be retained, than there would be if the writer had filled in every detail. Once the reader’s imagination has been aroused, the force thus generated will carry him much farther than if he had been circumscribed by the words of the writer. The reader will throw himself into the story and carry his emotional reactions far beyond the confines of the printed page.

Let us take a simple illustration. We might write our impressions on witnessing the scene of an automobile accident:

Now let us try to condense this account, and make use of the principle enunciated above.

The second account, while far from perfect, at least has, first of all, the virtue of brevity which befits a sudden accident; second, it suggests, without the necessity for explanation, enough of the circumstances to put the reader’s imagination to work to piece together cause and effect. In fact, the reader probably sees in his mind’s eye far more convincing and startling details than if we had stopped to supply them minutely.

The writer will do well to exercise himself in the use of suggestion, both as applied to the story as a whole, and also as to its parts. He will perhaps be aided in his practice if it is pointed out to him that there are at least four ways in which suggestion can be used:

I. To suggest some event which has previously taken place.

II. To suggest an event which takes place between two other events.

III. To suggest an event which takes place, or continues on, after another event. (In cases of this sort the suggestion is often found at the end of a story, projecting the reader’s mind beyond the confines of the story for the sake of intensifying the emotional effect.^[120])

IV. To imply the appearance of people and objects, and to describe character.

The use of suggestion is both so common and so various that it would be impossible, even if it were helpful, to classify all the services which it can perform. As a matter of fact, the student will learn more by searching out his own examples than he could by reading extracts which have been culled for him.

The reader who has had the patience to read the excerpts above will already have seen the relation between the use of suggestion and the employment of restraint in writing. The very fact that the reader is compelled to use his own imagination to fill in the blanks, frees the writer from the necessity and danger of having to be over-explicit, at the risk of being tedious, or at the even greater risk of overwriting and attempting to portray too great emotion. For emotion is a thing which must be felt. It cannot be described adequately on paper. Therefore, the writer’s best method of conveying emotion is not to talk about it, but to present the facts in such a way that the reader will be contagiously infected. Talking about an emotion is the surest way to preclude the possibility of communicating it.

The use of suggestion is an excellent means of avoiding presenting all the facts. The very omission of a salient detail or fact may, if judiciously and artfully handled, set the reader’s mind to work and may project his emotions much farther than any explicit words could do.

[10] DIALOGUE

[a] The Functions of Dialogue

Dialogue can, in general, be used in four ways. The classifications listed below are somewhat arbitrary, and the careful reader of the following examples will see that in many instances the dialogue is serving more than one purpose. This is as it should be. For while dialogue is one of the best means of adding vividness to a story, it must itself be vivid and to the point; it must be used with economy and with maximum effect, else the reader will become wearied.

I. Dialogue may characterize the speaker, or another character, or both.

II. Dialogue may portray emotion.

III. Dialogue may convey information to advance the plot. (Used for this purpose, it frequently portrays action.)

IV. Dialogue may aid setting or add “local color.”

[b] The Handling of Dialogue

Learning to write good dialogue is so much a matter of observation that it would be neither useful nor possible to formulate any rules. There are, however, some general suggestions which may aid the writer in his study of this difficult aspect of writing.

I. Study the writers of good dialogue. Some of the best colloquial dialogue to-day is being written by Ring Lardner and Ernest Hemingway.^[139]

2. Study the mannerisms of speech of the people whom you hear conversing around you. Notice that in life people often frame sentences which have faulty syntax and which do not always follow a logical thought progression. Notice also that, in life, dialogue is not always a matter of question and answer.

3. Try to strike the golden mean between the constant repetition of “he said” and the equally annoying invention of such substitutes as “he asserted,” “he asked,” “he replied,” etc. The use of these “labels” is often necessary, but they should not be used to the point of calling attention to themselves. It is often possible to omit them altogether, or else to follow the quotation by the interpolation of a gesture or action that will indicate who is speaking. Furthermore, in many instances, the speech itself, if skilfully handled, will often indicate the identity of the speaker.

4. Avoid the excessive use of adverbs or descriptive phrases after the quotations or “labels,” as, for example:

Assuming that the descriptive matter in the above conversation is necessary, the passage might be thus improved:

5. Keep constantly in mind the fact that dialogue, to be effective, must have a purpose which the writer must not take too long in accomplishing. It is, however, advisable to break a long piece of dialogue with the interpolation of action or description.

6. Remember that dialogue offers a rich field for the use of suggestion. Scraps of conversation heard on street cars or in stores will, to the curious, suggest rich possibilities of background. The following is an example of a snatch of conversation overheard by the attendant in a ladies’ dressing room of a night club:

7. The use of rhythm in dialogue will repay careful study. The rhythm of speech bears a definite relation not only to the quality and intensity of the speaker’s emotion, but also to the nationality and character of the speaker himself. On this subject Professor George Pierce Baker has the following to say:

[11] THE “ELEMENT OF ARTISTIC PIQUANCY”

This cumbersome phrase was invented by Poe, who, when he was calling attention to a phase of story writing which deserves to be stressed more than it commonly is, should have invented a term which could be more easily handled.

By this “element of artistic piquancy” he meant a concrete object, animate or inanimate, which seems to typify, embody, or symbolize the emotional element of the story, or some phase of the story. Poe himself frequently made use of this device, as he did in The Raven, where the raven crystallizes the emotion of the poem, especially when the bird lights upon the white bust of Pallas—a picture which the reader does not easily forget. Poe used the device again in The Black Cat, The Masque of the Red Death (the ebony clock and the figure of the Red Death), The Gold Bug, The Tell-tale Heart, and in countless other of his tales. It was natural for one of Poe’s temperament and imagination to think in terms of such vivid pictures and symbols, whether or not he did so with the idea of creating a “preconceived effect.”

The device has the advantage of being visual and, therefore, vivid. Furthermore, if properly used, this “element of artistic piquancy” carries with it emotional associations which aid in producing the effect of the story. In many cases, as in The Raven, it sums up the entire emotional content of the work.

The reader will at once trace the similarity between this device and the principle which underlies the process of “crystallization,” discussed in a previous chapter.^[143] Emotions, be they the reader’s or the writer’s, tend to find their embodiment in the concrete objects of everyday life.

If the reader will investigate for himself, he will be surprised to notice how many times this device has been used. Hudson employed it in El Ombú; Hawthorne in Ethan Brand; Kipling in The Phantom ’Rickshaw; Katherine Mansfield in The Fly; O. Henry in The Municipal Report; Chekhov in The Black Monk; Conrad in The Secret Sharer; and Komroff in How Does It Feel to Be Free?^[144] Hundreds of instances could be given where such an “element of artistic piquancy” has played either a major or minor rôle in a story, with the result that when we hear the story mentioned, our imaginations at once conjure up the picture of this element, clothed in all the emotional associations which the writer has given to it.

One interesting instance of the finding of such a symbol is recorded by Manuel Komroff, in connection with the writing of his story, How Does It Feel to Be Free?:

The reader need scarcely be cautioned that the finding of such a symbol is not always essential to the success of a story; nor need he be warned that a bad symbol is worse than none. This section has been inserted only with the idea that some writer may some time find it helpful in solving a story problem.

APPENDIX

FOREWORD

The two following stories may be made the subject of an interesting comparison. The two authors may have started to work with the same germinal idea, but here practically all similarity between the stories ends. They correspond neither in their warp nor in their woof.

This wide divergence is due, in all probability, to the fact that both stories are built on character rather than on action (“plot”) or theme; and that Miss Suckow focuses on the mother, Mr. Gardner primarily on the father. But the distinction between Mrs. Willey and Mr. Lardner’s central character is more than one of sex; their difference lies in their surroundings, their training, their tastes, their natures in fact, in every respect. This divergence in fundamental character has resulted in two entirely dissimilar stories. In each case the character has made the story, rather than the story the characters.

There are also two essential differences of method.

First, in most stories the reader’s emotional response is pitched to the emotional capacity of the leading character. In Miss Suckow’s story we feel poignantly the tragedy of the open conflict between Mrs. Willey’s romantic dreamings and the humdrum commonplaces of her everyday life. In the case of Mr. Lardner’s story the reader is caught off his guard by the matter-of-factness of both the author and his leading character. The drama, in the latter case, is inferred only when the reader catches the significance of the underlying conflict.

In the second place, Miss Suckow, by focusing directly on Mrs. Willey, makes the emotion of the story center on her. On the other hand, Mr. Lardner, while seeming to focus almost entirely on the father, subtly and indirectly transfers the reader’s ultimate sympathy to the wife.

There is one point of similarity in the stories. Both Miss Suckow and Mr. Lardner are, to a certain degree, “local color writers.” But while Miss Suckow tends to confine herself to Iowa farms, Mr. Lardner circulates among the bourgeoisie of both the small towns and big cities. Hence their outlooks are different. But since both see their subjects with clear eyes, and since both are realists, they have not seen, in the celebration of a golden wedding anniversary, the traditional posed photographs of a placid wife and complacent husband, but have torn aside the veil of sentimentality which disguises so many newspaper accounts and have shown what it actually means for a man and wife to live together for fifty years.

The following analyses do not purport to tear the stories apart too minutely. The main purpose has been merely to dissect the patterns of character and setting in order to show, first, how an effect can be achieved by “repetition with variations,” and secondly, how differences in character and setting can affect the theme of a story.

ANALYSIS OF
“GOLDEN WEDDING”

A. PATTERNS.

B. FOCUS. On Mrs. Willey.

C. DRAMA. Mrs. Willey’s buoyancy, blind faith, and romantic sentiment, struggle with a sense of frustration and despair caused by her husband’s grumbling, his pessimism, and the terrible intimacy, which threaten to dim the brightness of the inner world which she has created for herself.

D. THEME. (Implied.) How a happy, buoyant, and imaginatively sensitive wife can triumph over the terrible intimacy of fifty years of married life.

E. CENTRAL PROBLEM. To portray Mrs. Willey’s character and problem so that the reader can understand how she can plausibly create her inner world.

GOLDEN WEDDING^[146]

by Ruth Suckow