Definition of Plot—Character and Plot—Dramatic Value of Plot—Complication—Interest—Plot as Problem—Three Basic Themes—Conflict Between Man and Nature—Conflict Between Man and Man—Conflict Within the Same Man—Arrangement of Elements of Plot—Climax—Major Situations—Situation and Plot.
The plot of a story is its heart and essence. This is obviously true in the case of the strict story of plot, and it is very curiously true in the case of the story of character or of atmosphere. For in the story which lays emphasis on personality, the evolution or degeneration of the particular trait which has been selected for presentation is the real story-element of the fiction. The fact is the root of the necessity that the action develop in concert with the trait of character, giving it opportunity for expression. And in the story which lays emphasis on atmosphere, the climactic progression of the particular atmosphere to the point of highest intensity is the real story-element, which is the root of the necessity that the action develop in strict keeping with the atmosphere, that the effect may not be spoiled.
What is a plot? Many attempts at definition have been made, and the results have not been illuminating.Everyone has an idea of what a plot is, but those who have attempted to state their conception briefly have encountered difficulties. Perhaps an indirect approach to the problem will yield results.
A tale is not a story, for a tale is a relation of events which happened to happen to the characters. It is episodal, and the interest of the thing inheres in each episode separately, not in the whole. There is no essential connection between the incidents, except that they all happened to the same group of characters. The contrary is true of a story, interest in which is in the whole, as a progression, and, since the difference between tale and story is made by the presence or absence of plot, it appears that a distinguishing mark of a plot is that its events function together as a unit. There is some connection between them other than chance, and that connection lies in the intimate relation between the events of a story and its characters. Event and personality each influence or even determine each other simultaneously. Incidentally, realization of the fact will free the writer from any misconception that the action and the characters are separable elements of a story. For instance, jealousy, a trait of character, may cause a murder, an event, and a husband's chance opening of a letter addressed to his wife, an event, may give rise to Jealousy, the trait of character. Or the husband's loyalty will be strengthened in the fiction if he refuses to credit appearances.
Interaction, then, between incidents and characters, arising from the unity of the whole conception, is the first essential element of a plot. The second essential element—and there are but two—is that the several incidents of the story possess climactic value, not necessarily climactic value in the sense of ascending tensity—though that is most desirable—but climactic value in that each event should have influence inforwarding the story to a definite end, that state of quiescence which is not attainable in real life short of the grave, but which fiction must postulate. In other words, since a plot is made up of incidents which influence and are influenced by the characters, and since the story must move to an end, a plot presents a problem. What will the persons do? if the emphasis is on personality; and what will happen? if the emphasis is on the event.
To state it in the form of a definition, a plot is a series of events which influence and are influenced by traits of personality, and which are climactic in that they move to a definite conclusion, so that the series embodies some problem of life brought to solution.
I state this merely for what it may be worth, which possibly is no great matter to the writer of fiction. Plots are not to be found by vivifying a definition, but a definition may prove useful in testing a story idea when it is found, and the object of the whole discussion is merely to give the writer some aid in appraising the essential fictional value of his conceptions.
The fact that a plot is a problem gives the several events their climactic value. They are steps and approaches to the solution. And a plot is a problem simply because fiction concerns man, while man is a free agent, in possibility at least. Given certain characters and an event bearing upon them, and the problem of what they will do instantly arises, and the problem of the ultimate result of their actions. Given certain events, to reverse the emphasis, and characters on whom they bear, and the same problems arise. A plot is question and solution in one, and the solution must inevitably follow from the characters and events.
It will be perceived that the distinguishing quality of a plot is its dramatic value. A plot is a problem of life, and a problem is a conflict between opposing forces.Event and character wrestle with one another, and the outcome is doubtful, wherein lies the interest of the story. It is accurate to state that the conflict is between event and character, for though character may struggle with character, nevertheless the struggle is operative only in action, and the opposed persons struggle with the doings, not the naked souls, of each other.
It will be perceived also that the element of complication is not essential to a plot, as Poe has pointed out. Of course, in the story of incident, where the reader's interest centers chiefly in the events, not in the characters or atmosphere, complication is most useful, and in fact supplies much of the problem- or plot-element of the fiction. But complication is not a sine qua non, and should not be so regarded. Complication of incident, indeed, in the story which is fundamentally of character or atmosphere, may prove a positive handicap, adding to the difficulties of execution and spoiling the unity of effect, if the fiction is a short story. As has been stated, the novel is a broader canvas, without a single emphasis if the writer wills, and here, within the limits of naturalness, complication of plot is thoroughly desirable. Any bid for a reader's interest is of use, only in the short story the writer must necessarily limit himself to one sort of bid.
At that last of it, pretty nearly all of the technique of fiction writing has root in the necessity first to gain the reader's interest and then to hold it. That is the real object of perfection of form, even, and the device of plot has root in the same object. In simpler and more unsophisticated ages the stage presented not drama but mere spectacles, as the tale did in the spoken word or printed page; the plot, lending to the play its dramatic character and to the fiction its story character, developed only when audience and readers lost the child's vivid interest in whatever he sees, and began toyawn at the episodal. Pageantry and the unrelated event became stale, in comparison with the spectacle of life itself, and then plot was found, a method of isolating a single one of life's strands, and, by showing it in high relief, lending it an added dignity and appeal.
The basis of the more intense appeal of the plot over that of the episode is psychological. The hardest thing in the world to do is to make a reader think, but the reader who does think is interested. That is why he is thinking. Since a plot is a problem, the reader of a story of plot is made to think, and the matter impinges upon him with some force. To repeat former phraseology, if the emphasis is on the events, he tries to figure out what will happen, at least wonders about it; if the emphasis is on the characters, he tries to foresee what they will do. Incidentally, the reader of to-day is habituated to the story of plot. If nothing happens he will chalk a black mark against author and magazine, as the editor knows.
As has been said—and emphasis is not out of place—a plot is a problem. Problem, in this connection, means conflict between opposing forces, which gives the various events and situations of a story any dramatic value they may possess. It follows that there are three basic plot-themes, conflict between man and his environment or Nature, conflict between man and man, and conflict between opposed traits in the same man. It will be profitable for the writer to bear this in mind when combing the world for his story.
In his essay on Victor Hugo's romances, Stevenson has touched upon the emergence in fiction of the conflict between man and Nature. Briefly, his argument is that in the works of such a one as Scott the world and natural forces serve but as stage and stage devices for man and his doings, while Hugo, particularly in "The Toilers of the Sea," draws storm, cold, and heat asman's active enemies, almost endowing Nature with a vindictive personality. Whatever the fact as to Hugo, it is certain that to those who meet her face to face on sea and land Nature is a somewhat stony-hearted mother, yielding food and shelter only at the pistol-point of toil and struggle. To those of us who live in cities, and whose concerns are mainly social, the constant struggle of mankind against drought and flood, storm and cold, fire and famine is obscured, but it is a living reality, nevertheless, and a rich source of fiction that will get under the skin of the most pampered apartment-dweller. The roots of our lives stretch far into the dim past, when the unending struggle with natural forces was a bitter reality to all, and adequate fictional presentment of the struggle with Nature often proves to have an incisive appeal wanting in less fundamental themes. Particularly, the writer may rely upon such a story's appealing to the cultured and the uncultured mind alike, for the intrinsic human importance of its theme is felt by all. The elements of the dramatic problem presented are so simple that previous familiarity with them in personal experience is not essential to their understanding.
A fine example of this theme given short story treatment is Bret Harte's "The Outcasts of Poker Flat," while the portions of Stevenson's "Kidnapped" dealing with David's experience on the Isle of Earraid and his flight through the heather with Alan Breck find their dramatic quality largely in the same theme. It is interesting to note that Harte, however, does not emphasize the conflict between man and Nature to the utmost of possibility, for in his story there is much emphasis on character and the struggle of man with man. Whether the story gains or loses in total effect thereby is immaterial; it will prove an interestingexperience for the writer to recast the tale so as to bring out more exclusively the theme of conflict with Nature. In connection with the general discussion as to plot, I will state that if Harte had entirely excised the theft of the party's horses by the treacherous member, and had not brought out the contrast between the gambler, the prostitutes, and the innocents, the story still would have been adequately plotted. The bare situation of men and women snowbound in a mountain cabin is a plot germ, for it suggests the problem whether they will survive or perish.
The plot which presents conflict between man and man isdistinctlysocial in nature. The possibilities for the writer of fiction in the general scramble for the almighty dollar, the rivalry of love, the desire for revenge, and a thousand other passions and ambitions that bring man into conflict with his fellows, are practically infinite. Three minutes spent in running over this field for plots will demonstrate the folly of bewailing the lack of something fresh to write about. Perhaps some ingenious mathematician, given the data that there are a hundred million men and women in the United States, and that each one has some small number of desires and passions active or dormant, will calculate the potential conflicts resulting. Each conflict is the seed of a plot, and each plot may be written a hundred times, each story being made different from the last by varying the manner of treatment. There is not too little to write about; there is so very much that keen selection is essential.
Any magazine offers examples of the exploitation, by short story writers, of the conflict between man and man, while to portray the conflict is peculiarly the field of the novel, with its social emphasis. BalzacandThackeray are supreme masters in presenting a slice of the social spectacle; "Vanity Fair" and "CousinPons" depict struggle between their people, and but little else. At the top of the social ladder the struggle is carried on by intrigue and sugared words, at the bottom with the knife and naked fist, but the struggle is the same in essence, and of enthralling interest to a reader. All the world loves a winner, and all the world wants to find out whom it is to love. The mere mechanical details wherein the struggle finds expression and operation are the least of the plot, which is indebted for its dramatic quality to the bare fact of struggle. Doubtless the girl who runs daily to the public library for a novel would be shocked to be told that she is impelled by the same human quality that makes street-loafers and passersby gather about two fighting boys, but she is, nevertheless. The writer who would please her—and her father, mother, and brothers—will do well to remember the fact.
The story which seeks to present conflict between two opposed traits in the same man or woman is most difficult to write so as to create any fictional illusion. It deals almost exclusively with psychological data, of the facts of the soul, and requires knowledge and imaginative insight as well as verbal dexterity. It is supremely easy to conceive a plot involving struggle of the man with himself, but it is supremely hard to give such a struggle objectivity, to expand it into a fiction operative in action and yet developing the internal conflict. I cannot think of a finer example than Stevenson's "Markheim." A close and critical study of this story by one who is qualified to taste its full flavor will reveal at once the great difficulties that face the writer who chooses such a theme, and the high pitch of achievement attainable through proper handling of material.
The greatest practical drawback to the giving of much time to mastering the technique of soul-analysislies in the narrow appeal of such a story even when perfectly conceived and written. To recur to the always apposite Stevenson, it is safe to say that his "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" is a thousand times more interesting to the average reader than "Markheim," simply because the soul-struggle is so much more completely made objective and given expression in action in the first fiction than in the second. This is done so very emphatically that nine readers out of ten entirely miss the point of "Jekyll and Hyde," and fail to realize that the struggle is between two tendencies in the same man, who is split into his good and bad selves merely for the sake of concreteness. Most fiction readers have little love for abstractions and fine spun analysis—witness the common repute of Henry James, to an extent undeserved, it may be said in passing. Exclusive emphasis upon the struggle of the man with himself will tend to confine the writer's appeal to the intellectuals, in the special modern sense, a matter inimical to the pocketbook, at the least of it. Psychological analysis is most useful in developing almost any type of story, but as the sole theme for a fiction it has its disadvantages.
When the writer has his hands on a plot, of whatever type and however found, his conceptive labors are by no means over. It remains to recast and rearrange the elements of the idea, that the most effective arrangement may be discovered. A first invention is very rarely incapable of improvement, and in the interests of artistry the author should exhaust all the possibilities of his idea before writing, that he may not chance upon unsuspected potentialities in his story only when it is half written, or not discover them at all. Within limits, of course, any story will tend to shape itself; in particular, there is much testimony as to the intractability of characters; but one cannot consciously strive to do any particular thing or to produce any particulareffect without first knowing just what the thing or effect is to be.
Possibly the most important matter is to arrange the incidents, the separate elements of the problem or conflict which the plot presents, in such manner as to give the progression a climactic character. Not only should each major event be a definite step toward the conclusion, solution, or denouement, but each succeeding event should be more striking, significant, and tense than its predecessor. This sort of climactic movement is not essential to a plot, but it is an essential element of a good plot, particularly a good plot for a short story. The short story is a much more strict and artificial type of fiction than the novel; in other words, its writer has fewer resources to impress a reader, and he must utilize to the full whatever is open to him. Among his resources is the device of sensible movement to a crisis or climax. Like the rest of fiction technique, the device is useful because it tends to keep alive and stimulate a reader's interest. This it does because ascending tensity suggests further struggle. Any flat incident, on the contrary, less tense or striking than its predecessor, infallibly suggests that the story is already falling to its end, and the end seems dull because the problem is not fully worked out or even stated. Psychologically, the point is delicate; it is a queer paradox that a reader at once hates to think and yet wants to be made to think. But that is a reader's condition. With equal readiness he will welcome climactic movement and continue to read, or welcome any premature fall in tensity and throw the story aside.
To show by example the results that may be achieved by use of the device of movement to a climax is impracticable; these matters that cannot be displayed by pungent quotation the student must dig out for himself by intelligent reading. Almost any successfulstory will display climactic arrangement of its major events. I cannot forbear to mention the ascension whereby Thackeray leads a reader of "Vanity Fair" up to Rawdon Crawley's confrontation of Becky and Lord Steyne. Hawthorne's "The House of the Seven Gables," a book in most respects so totally dissimilar, shows a like process in leading up to the death of Judge Pyncheon. George Douglas's "The House With the Green Shutters," less widely known, is strongly climactic in its latter part. But examples, in short story and novel, are infinite in number and sort.
To recapitulate, a plot is a problem of human life brought to a fitting and convincing solution, and consists of a series of events which displays the fact and result of a conflict between opposing forces, spiritual and material, actuating and affecting men and women. Therefore the chief characteristic of a plot is its dramatic value. The definition may be turned to use not so much in the discovery of plots as in appraising their fictional value, their power to arouse and hold a reader's interest, after they have been found or invented.
Since a plot is a conflict between opposing forces, and since fiction deals with man, the three fundamental plot-themes are conflict between man and his environment, conflict between man and man, and conflict in the soul of the same man. Realization of the fact will serve to give point and definition to the writer's search for the idea.
Finally, a just regard for his readers will lead the writer to cast his incidents into some climactic arrangement. The first, last, and only proper aim of a story is to interest, and break in the expected movement to a climax is fatal to interest.
It would be interesting to go into the matter of plot-analysis at some length—I have in mind particularlythe deficiencies of Poe's definition that a plot is a series of incidents contrived to produce a single effect—but this book is for the writer. I shall try throughout to keep to the writer's viewpoint and to develop nothing not of practical utility in the work of conception, elaboration, and execution.
Thus far the discussion has been concerned with plot as a whole; it remains to consider the events, incidents, or situations which compose a plot. The situations of the plot or story are what its writer must cast into a climactic consequence, and he must have some standard to measure each before he can determine its proper place.
The fictionally significant aspect of a plot is that it embodies a conflict between opposing forces, that is, it is dramatic. Likewise, the fictionally significant aspect of a situation is that it displays opposed persons—or at least opposed forces—in conflict. The writer manipulates his material—preferably before writing—so that two or more persons, actuated by incompatible motives, are brought into conflict; there is a moment of indecision; then some person bends the other or others to his will; and the situation determines. Or the writer brings a character or group of characters into conflict with Nature, as did Harte in "The Outcasts of Poker Flat." Here, also, there is a period of indecision, and then either the human force or the natural force triumphs.
The dramatic quality of any situation inheres in the struggle between opposing forces which each presents, and rises or falls with the essential strength of such forces. Take two instances of conflict between opposed motives in the same person. In some humorous story a character may be unable to decide which of two women he wants to marry. One can cook, let us say, and he is a gourmand; the other is pretty, andhe has leanings that way, too. The dramatic quality in such a story will be slight, because the motives involved are relatively weak, yet it will be present. But take the story of a French girl who is outraged by a German soldier and gives birth to a child by him. Her quality of patriotism can be built up to great intensity, if the writer wills, even to the point where the reader will accept an impulse on her part to kill her child. Her quality as a mother can be built up likewise. It would be a most effective touch to have her hate the unborn child furiously, then to arrange matters so that she should be unable to carry out her first impulse to kill it and be forced to care for it, giving it opportunity to awaken her dormant maternal instinct. Finally, love for France and hatred for Germany can be stimulated again, so that she is shown veering between the impulse to kill and the impulse to cherish. Such a situation is intensely dramatic, for it involves conflict between two of the most intense human qualities, love of one's country and love of one's child. The more terrific the opposed forces in any situation, the higher its dramatic value.
At first glance it may seem that the relative position in a story of each of its various major situations is determined by the plot itself, but that is not the case. It appears to be the case because it is usual to regard the plot of a story as the entire mechanical arrangement of the fiction, including the nature and order of the situations, which is a false view of plot. As the previous discussion has attempted to demonstrate, plot is merely the conflict between opposed forces of personality and environment, at least one of the forces being of personality. Any two stories which display conflict between the same forces have the same plot, though one may vary widely from the other inthe means employed to give the struggle objectivity and expression in action.
The writer of fiction should realize the point. The imagination produces concrete pictures and conceptions, and, when a story is imagined, it will come to life in terms of concrete people and events, more or less definitely ordered and determined. But the writer should not stop there. He should ascertain just what opposed forces of personality or environment give the story and its situations plot and dramatic value, and then should seek to find whether he cannot give the basic conflict involved more effective presentment than will be given by the persons and situations which he has already conceived. An essentially weak conception may offer a clue to a dramatic conflict that will have fictional power if properly developed by persons and situations different from those first conceived.
It will be perceived how far it is within the writer's power to manipulate situation in the interests of art, which, in this connection, means climax. Starting with some basic conflict, which will be his plot, the writer can devise situation after situation in which the struggle will become more and more acute, until, finally, it will become so serious as to involve all the elements of the story. And with the determination of the dramatic situation which involves all the elements of the story, the story itself will terminate, for the struggle which it embodies will have been settled one way or the other. This final situation will be the climax of the story, and its outcome or result will be the denouement. The story will be ended because the struggle or conflict it serves to embody will have ended. One force or the other will have triumphed.
In considering the question of situation, the writer of fiction is considering a more specific aspect of the question of plot. Usually he desires to find a plot ofreal dramatic value, and likewise he usually desires to find a situation or situations of real dramatic value. The dramatic value of plot and of situation resides in the struggle between the opposed forces which it presents. The more powerful the forces involved in either case, the greater the dramatic value of the conception. Each major situation of a story derives its dramatic quality from the opposition of incompatible motives or forces that endows the story's plot with its dramatic quality. In fact, it is not too loose to say that the situation of a story is its plot, provided the main situation or climax is meant.[B]
The purpose of the action or incidents of a story is to give the dramatic struggle it embodies concrete expression. That is to say, the dramatic quality of a story is specific in relation to certain persons and certain events. Two definite men, for instance, will engage in a definite fight over a definite woman. The writer will seek to individualize the persons involved, which is a matter of description and characterization, and he will seek also to picture the physical struggle as definitely as possible, which is a matter of descriptive narration. It is not enough to conceive a plot or dramatic situation; the writer must also expand it into a story, which should be as concrete and specific as its nature permits. Only thus can a reader be made to feel the essential power of the whole conception. It follows that the action or incidents of a story should be devised with a view to express the dynamic elementsof the plot and that no incident should be incorporated in the story unless it will serve to build up some one of the forces involved or else serve to illustrate the conflict of forces that have been built up previously.
Importance—Plot and Situation—Spiritual Values of Story—Order of Events—Introduction—Primary and Secondary Events—Climax—Naturalness—The End—Preparation—Proportion—General Considerations.
A story is the relation of what certain persons did in certain places and under certain conditions of existence, and in its broadest aspect the art of narration includes the description of persons and delineation of character, the depiction of scenes, and the suggestion of atmosphere. But these matters bulk so large in themselves as to call for separate treatment. My purpose here is to discuss constructive technique, how the bare story, a succession and progression of events, should be planned and built up before writing. The problem is constructive, not executive, and should be considered and settled, within limits, before setting pen to paper.
In fact, much of the technique of fiction writingconcerns matters of conception and construction. Giving the story its verbal flesh after it is thoroughly mapped out in mind in accord with the canons of the art is in truth a more or less simple matter to the writer who has any command of language and literary facility. The result may not be a masterpiece—which is a significant idea, justly elaborated, and perfectly told—but it will possess one of the elements of a story worthy to live. The trouble is that so many writers set about the task of expression when all they have in mind is the merest germ of an undeveloped idea or story, and then are forced to wrestle with construction and with language at one and the same time. Each task is great enough for the undivided attention of the ablest artist. I believe that in the end the constructive task is pretty well done, but that the more strictly literary task to give the conception verbally perfect expression is usually somewhat slighted. We have so many well conceived and elaborated stories, and so very few so perfect in expression that they deserve to live, a fact indicating that construction can be learned by nearly all, though literary power seems to be incommunicable. The proper attitude for the beginner, who has not the facile practice of his art at his fingers' ends, is to treat the first draft of his story as merely tentative and an aid to development.
The discussion of plot and situation in the preceding chapter was pointed to emphasize the importance of the constructive phases of technique. A plot is not merely a climactic sequence of events orhappenings; a plot is some human struggle, some conflict between opposed forces, that finds concrete expression in a climactic sequence of events; and an infinite numberof persons and incidents may be devised to give specific expression to a single fundamental plot idea. Having fixed upon a plot, the writer of fiction should realize precisely what is the human problem or struggle involved, and should consider just what sort of characters and just what sort of incidents will give most effective, most interesting expression to the particular story idea. This he should be the more ready to do because a story usually comes to mind ready formed as a series of events, and only infrequently is the first combination the best, that is, the one which will present most forcefully the underlying plot, struggle, problem, or essential story idea. The writer of fiction has for material vast infinity of imaginable characters and imaginable events; he should manipulate that material to a narrowly specific end, the end of giving most effective expression to his particular story idea or plot. In other words, he is an artist, and must devise and re-devise, select and reject, arrange and re-arrange that with which he deals.
Another condition of his art requires the fiction writer to master the technique of construction and always to practice it before approaching his strictly executive task of writing. A story is usually more that a mere physical spectacle, more than a sequence of physical happenings. Each event, each situation is fictionally significant or interesting by virtue of its relation to the natures or spirits of the persons involved. Through the physical tissue of what happens runs the psychical thread of personality, relating part to part and rendering the whole indeed one story. A story is a thing of spiritual values as well as a physical spectacle, and it cannot be written adequately by visualizing its events and following them with the pen. Some part of its spiritual value rests in necessary implication from what happens, but not all. The restmust be brought out deliberately by the writer, and he cannot hope to do so to the full unless before writing he realizes the necessity and shapes his work accordingly. The point is of very great importance. It would be hard to overestimate the number of potentially fine stories that have been ruined through failure to realize that the main situations or happenings of each fiction could not have full effect on a reader unless many subtle matters of personality and spirit were deliberately brought out in advance.
The first concern of the writer who has found his bare story is to determine the order in which to cast both its major and minor events. The necessity that the more important happenings of the story be given some climactic arrangement, to hold and stimulate the reader's initial interest, has been touched upon before, but the general ordering of events is a matter of such importance that it will be discussed at length.
The aim of any story is to interest, and the writer should endeavor to touch his reader's interest as quickly as possible. Long, purposeless, and therefore dull introductions—usually the result of the writer's having set to work with no very definite idea of what he has to do—should be avoided; the writer should consider precisely what his story is, and then how he may best set it in motion without delay. The technique is easy to state but hard to meet. Perhaps it may be possible to set off with a happening sufficiently unique and striking in itself to arouse a reader's interest; descriptive touches as to setting or as to a character may be employed; or—after the fashion of some modern writers—one may indulge in a littlephilosophicaloverture forecasting the nature of the tale. A classification of the several ways to open a story might be made, but it would not be useful. In the first place, each good story is perfectly unique; in the secondplace, independent reading of fiction will show the ways much more completely than mere statement. One slight matter is perhaps worth noting. Often inherently dull introductory matter can be given piquancy on the lips of a narrating character.
The writer should not distort his story merely to begin it interestingly. The aim of fiction is to interest, but the person to be interested is the cultured reader, not the mere sensation-sop. If a particular story is forbidden by its content to begin with a rush, it should not be wrenched and distorted to that end. The writer who seeks merely to cater to current tastes with each tale will do well to devise fictions that will subserve his purpose naturally. Thereby he will achieve his aim the more easily, and may spare the reading public much inferior work. But it is always well to make quite sure that any story cannot be begun swiftly before adopting the more leisurely approach. Kipling's "Without Benefit of Clergy" might have been begun so much less invitingly by one less skilled.
The more complicated the plot, the more difficult it will be to arrange its elements justly. The events of the structurally simple story usually can be related in chronological order; one gives place to the other without effort or preparation. The story with a complicated plot is not so simple to order justly. In the structurally simple story nearly all events have a primary value; each is a definite step in the climactic ascension of the whole. In the story of complicated plot, on the contrary, there are a comparatively small number of events having this primary value in that they are definite steps in the climactic ascension, and there are also a comparatively large number of minor events having only a secondary value in that they serve to give the primary events naturalness, intelligibility, and effect. Thus, in the story displaying the conflict oftwo characters, the chief events will be those giving the struggle the most intense expression, and the minor events, having only a secondary value, will be those which serve to prepare the various conflicts and to build up and vitalize the two opposed persons. Even if these minor events are only secondary in intrinsic significance, they are essential to the story, and the task of its writer—no easy one—is to order its primary events so that they will form a climactic ascension in point of tensity and interest, and to order its secondary events so that they will function naturally in endowing the primary events with the fullest measure of significance to the reader.
Each story is unique and characteristic, and of course very little specific advice can be given as to the just ordering of events, primary and secondary. There are two main necessities; the story must be told, and it must be told plausibly. The first necessity, that the story be told, requires that the writer take care, not only to set forth its primary events with due elaboration, but also to develop its characters into individualized human beings—an office chiefly performed by the secondary events—and to make due preparation for each successive primary event, that the reader may fully understand its import. The second necessity, that the story be told plausibly, requires that the events be ordered naturally as well as climactically, be told in accordance with the canons of life as well as of art. The difficult task of the writer is to picture his single phase of life so deftly and with so little apparent forcing of his matter that the whole will be endowed with the significant simplicity of art and yet have the naturalness of life. Of course it is hard, and of course it takes long and patient practice to conquer the secret. That is why the writer who has full command of technique is so rare.
The story itself largely determines the order of its primary events, for their succession is the story. But the secondary events are as largely subject to the control of the writer, who may devise, adapt, and order them almost at will, and in just and natural ordering of them lies much of the secret of verisimilitude. They are the mortar that binds the stones of the edifice, and by slighting them many a fine initial conception has been rendered feeble in execution. They need not be elaborately treated; in fact, the technique to be acquired is to relate them in due subordination to events intrinsically more important, though giving them an easy and natural flow and succession. But the minor events must be ordered justly, that the story may march becomingly from major event to major event, and therefore the writer must struggle with their ordering. No rules capable of statement regulate the matter; the writer can only be told its importance and urged not to consider his story fully developed and ready for writing simply because he has determined the order of its main events.
Perhaps the whole philosophy of the ordering of events, major and minor, can be stated broadly to be that in ordering the more important events of a story the writer must regard chiefly the necessities of climax, that is, of art, while in ordering the secondary events he must regard chiefly the necessity to be natural, that is, to achieve verisimilitude. Art is life raised to a higher power, and the struggle of the artist is to present his phase of life as simply and pungently as can be done without entirely severing the relation between his conception and life itself.
One function of the secondary events of a story is to prepare the elements of the main events. In the love story, John meets Joan that he may subsequently make love to her. Another function of the secondaryevents is to develop character. In London's "The Sea Wolf" most of the earlier episodes and many of the later are narrated to build up the impression of Wolf Larsen's ruthlessness.[D]It follows that any minor event will serve a double purpose when devised and placed so that it will forward the mechanical progress of the story and also illustrate character. Tarkington, in "Monsieur Beaucaire," begins the story with a scene over the card table which not only gives the barber-prince his necessary introduction to society but also shows the stuff of which he is made. In constructing his story before writing, the author should select and place each incident with an eye to its serving as many purposes as possible. The story will gain thereby in compactness and uniformity of interest. It is golden advice to urge the writer not to accept the secondary events of a story as they first come to mind, but to re-arrange and re-devise until each happening performs as many functions as the necessities of the story permit.
There is nothing particularly new and striking about the main events and situations of many stories that not only are getting published to-day, but are truly interesting and worth while. Their interest—and therefore their worth—derives from their writers' management of secondary events. By varying the nature and succession of minor events, any fundamental plot theme, such as the "eternal triangle" oftwo men and a woman, may be utilized a thousand times without essential loss of interest. As has been stated, the naturalness and plausibility of a story depend largely upon just selection and ordering of itssecondaryevents, and, curiously enough, in a very real sense the reader's interest depends on the minor happenings. The plot must be a real plot and an interesting one, but, at the last of it, the plot is only the skeleton. The minor events of the story are the comely flesh that gives the conception the attraction and interest of life. The figure may be grewsome, but it is accurate. A thousand skulls look much alike, but no face is precisely the same as another, even to the casual eye. The flesh makes the difference, and the minor events of a story are its flesh.
The chief necessity in beginning a story is to begin it interestingly, if its nature permits; the chief necessity in ending a story is to end it—and there is no proviso as to its nature. A story is a fiction with a plot, and a plot is a chain of events with a definite and significant ending. The writer who has discovered or devised a true plot upon which to hang his fiction will not struggle on aimlessly after narrating the climax, for there will be nothing more to relate. I believe that absence of true plot is most often responsible for the story that stumbles to a lame and inconclusive halt—not an end—rather than executive inaptitude on the writer's part, for the climax of a true plot is a hard thing not to feel and realize. At any rate, when the climax is reached and the story told it must be ended, justly but finally. There is nothing more for the reader, unless the characters are caught in another chain of significant events. "But that is another story."
To recapitulate, a story is a progression of events, major and minor. The story largely determines thecharacter and order of its main events, for they are the story itself; nevertheless the writer should give them climactic arrangement, as far as possible. The minor events are more subject to his control, and he should devise and order them chiefly with an eye to verisimilitude and plausibility, not forgetting that each should serve some definite purpose and will be the more useful if it can be made to serve more than one.
Two sorts of preparation must engage the attention of the writer of a story. The first is purely mechanical, and is the result of the writer's realization of the physical necessities of his story. If at some definite point the hero is to be found in some definite place by other characters, the writer must prepare to place him there. The necessity is obvious, and this sort of preparation requires little discussion, except the warning that in the complicated story it will demand close attention. But the second sort of preparation is a much more delicate matter, and in a sense is a great part of the art of fiction. I have reference to the necessity that the writer individualize and vitalize the people of his story so that the significant situations of the fiction may have maximum effect on a reader. The problem is not so much how to delineate character, which will be taken up later, as to plan the whole story so that it will have body and not be a mere report.
There are three fundamental types of story, it is true, in that a story may emphasize any one of its elements of character, of complication of incident, or of atmosphere. But the story which depends for its appeal on the novelty or intrinsic significance of the bare succession of its events is somewhat rare; at least itis true that fiction concerns man primarily, and in the normal story, or, better, in the story which the necessities of plot-structure most frequently produce,[E]the man is as important as the event. Since the person is as important as the event, the persons involved in any significant situation of a story must be developed as well as the situation itself. The aim is to give the situation maximum effect, and the concern of the writer is not so much to develop character, strictly, as to give the body of reality to the whole story. It is about human beings, and, however novel and interesting the plot, unless they are given some of the vivacity and concreteness of real men and women the fiction will be devoid of the breath of life. The first sort of preparation builds up the physical situations of a story; the preparation now under discussion builds up its people.
Nothing is more common than for the beginning writer to devise or discover an eminently worthy plot idea, and nothing is more uncommon than for him to utilize it to the full and develop it adequately. The reason for the failure is simple. The better the plot, the more humanly significant its situations. They are so very significant, in the case of the fine plot, that the beginning writer is led to think that his only task is to outline them. But merely to outline a significant situation or event will not give it the emotional force that fiction must possess, otherwise the newspaper would be read in tears. The event must involve real people, if the emotion of a reader is to be aroused. A newspaper item may state that Mary Smith has committed suicide because deserted by her lover, but though the casual reader will realize intellectually and abstractly the pathos of the situation, his emotion will not be stirred unless he is a more sensitive human precipitate than most readers. To move his heart, rather than his mind, some particular Mary Smith, like no one else in the world, must walk a living presence through the story built about such a theme. The difference is between merely reporting events and picturing life.
Like most other matters of technique, this of giving individuality and life to the people of a story is based on the necessity to achieve verisimilitude and interest. Human life is a great complex of millions of men and women doing certain things, and in a story, which is a picture of a phase of life, the people must be drawn with as much definition and detail as the events, or the reader will not accept the fiction as fictional truth.
In great part, the matter of developing the human elements of a story is a problem of construction, as is the matter of preparing a natural succession of events. The writer first must order his main events as interestingly and plausibly as possible. He then must devise and order his secondary events as to give the requisite spacing and naturalness to the whole, and he also must take care to provide for such action on the part of the characters that when they come to the main events they will be something more than named abstractions. Of course, the writer has means at command to vitalize his people other than to draw them in actions illustrating their peculiarities, but it is difficult enough at best to vivify a character, and the writer who depends solely on his powers of direct description will achieve very meager results. I have already referred to the part the secondary events of a story play in developing character, and have cited London's "The Sea Wolf" as an instance. A great partof the book is devoted to a succession of episodes which develop Larsen's striking personality. It is very skillfully done in this respect, and the result is as memorable a figure as exists in recent fiction. The beginning writer and even the more practiced hand will do well to note the great part that just construction must have played in producing the impression of the Wolf's virility and ruthlessness.
It all may be termed a matter of drawing character, but the necessity is to realize that in constructing his story before writing an author must prepare for the development of its people as well as for the development of its events. The work will have to be done sometime, if the story is to be more than a report, and it should be done before writing, so far as it is a matter of construction. The writer who has conceived a plot of real merit has done much, but he has not done all. The striking events of a plot are significant only in relation to the people of the story, and a reader must be made to feel the reality of the characters as well as the reality of the events. The single concern of the writer of fiction is to lay on his page a picture of a phase of life that is effective because it is plausible, and he must give equal attention to the persons of the story and to what they do, both in construction and execution.[F]
In planning his story with an eye to giving it thegreatest semblance of reality, the writer has one means ready to his hand which is the more useful because somewhat mechanical. I have reference to the preservation of proportion.
Fundamentally, proportion is a mere matter of space or length. In real life events vary in point of the time they take to happen, and in the story proportion may be preserved by dividing the available space justly between the several events. Normally a love scene will take longer to happen than a murder, which is an affair of one high-pitched moment, and in planning and writing a story which contains both a love scene and a murder a proper amount of space should be assigned to each. In the story the reader passes through days in an hour and through hours in a minute; he must not be made to pass through minutes in an hour, and through hours of events as important to the story in a minute. A murder may be more important in the story than a love scene, and so require emphasis, but it cannot be stressed by great expansion without violating proportion. Emphasis must be laid by narrating vividly, a matter to be taken up in its proper place when discussing executive technique.
The mere fact that the writer must narrate the main events of his story in some detail usually will lead him unconsciously to preserve proportion so far as they are concerned. The space necessary to develop a murder will have roughly the same relation to the space necessary to develop a love scene as the duration of a real murder has to the duration of a real love scene. But the minor events of a story function on a different plane from its major happenings, and so cannot be proportioned similarly. If a murderer must sail from London to New York to reach his victim—either on account of the place necessities of the story, or to fasten an impression of his animosity on the reader—theminutes of the days of the voyage cannot be related with as much detail as the minutes of the actual killing. In planning a story, the writer should make provision for the secondary events and the strict matter of transition, as well as for the main events, but he should not plan to narrate in detail until a main event is reached. The beginning writer seems very often to be afraid to narrate in general terms, even where the story demands no detail, and the fault probably arises from a vague feeling that the reader will not accept the author's say-so, but must be "shown." To an extent, that is true. However, where the matter is of transition, merely to forward the mechanical progress of the story, detailed narration is distortion. It will inevitably cause loss of suspense and interest.
Realization of the relative importance to the story of each of its parts will give the writer the standard whereby to distribute its space. In writing the short story the preservation of proportion is most essential; there is so little space at hand that two words cannot be wasted in detailed narration where more general narration will suffice, and it all comes under the reader's eye so nearly at one moment that any disproportion in the treatment of events of equal importance will be detected. In the novel, lack of proportion may be a more secret fault, but it will have its effect.
In casting about for a story the writer should regard chiefly the intrinsic merits of each idea that comes to him. But when he has pitched upon his theme or plot, and approaches the task of construction and elaboration, he should change his viewpoint and strive to view his conception with the cold eye of a reader. A reader has nothing to go upon except what the writersets down, and realization of the fact will lead the writer in construction to provide for every matter essential to give the story full appeal. Unless it is developed completely, it will fail to impress one who has no knowledge of the conception except that imparted by the writer's words. Nothing essential can be omitted or slighted without risking failure. On the other hand, nothing unessential can be brought out without obscuring the real story. Careful construction and elaboration of the initial idea is necessary before writing, that the author may have his hands free for the difficult task of execution, and in construction the writer should occupy the detached position of a reader when estimating what should be developed and what suppressed.
Mode of Narration—First Person Narration—Variation—Advantages—Disadvantages—Plausibility—Third Person Narration—Advantages—Avoidance of Artificiality—Consideration of Length—Maintenance and Shifting of Viewpoint—Attitude of Author—Style—Product of Technique—Congruity of Manner—Story of Action—Fantasy—Story of Character.
After conceiving and elaborating his story, the writer must approach the task of expression. The two preliminary matters to be settled are the mode of narration and the manner or style for which the story calls. Though preliminary, they are most properly treated as part of executive technique.
The question of how the story may be told most easily and effectively is much more delicate than merely to choose between narration in the first or third person, for numerous variations in these two basic methods are open to adoption. Each method or viewpoint has its advantages and disadvantages, and that method should be chosen which most nearly suits the particular story.
Variation in first person narration—the typicalform of which is to have a chief character tell his own story—is possible by shifting the story from the lips of a major character to those of a less important personage, who is often little more than an animated mouthpiece. The device is really an attempt to escape from the inherent disadvantages of typical first person narration. A just regard for the reader often requires that more be set forth than any major character could naturally know, but some minor character may be made to pass ubiquitously through the whole tale, viewing the essential acts of all the major characters and relating them to the reader. Or the device may be carried farther, and the story told in the first person by a succession of characters.
The chief advantage in first person narration by an important or the most important character lies in the fact that the reader is accustomed to a more or less one-sided presentation of events. That is the way he sees things himself, as a bare succession of happenings springing from the conflict of human motives of which he can be sure only of his own. Something happens, and he knows within limits why he did his part in bringing it about, but the part of the other man is obscure to him, and he can go only on conjecture and inference. So the story told in the first person has perhaps a slightly greater flavor of plausibility than that told in the third person.
There is another advantage in first person narration. Some stories cannot be launched with a rush; the significant action must be prefaced by a considerable mass of introductory matter that is essential to full understanding of subsequent events; and this introductory matter can often be made less repellent to the reader when it is artfully introduced by a narrating character. The speaking character can be made to tell his story with a smack of personality that appearssomewhat affected and flippant when the writer employs the third person. This flippancy and affectation is apparent is some of Kipling's and O. Henry's work, and probably repels as many as it attracts.
Generally, throughout a story, first person narration makes easier the attainment of uniformity of style, if that be a merit in the case of all stories as it unquestionably is in the case of the short story, with its necessary emphasis on all formal unities. During the vogue of the historical novel some years ago this mode of narration was ridden to death simply because it lessens for the writer the labor of catching what he conceives to be the tone of the particular society he is portraying. As to the general matter of tone, Stevenson refers, in a letter, to "The Ebb Tide," as "a dreadful, grimy business in the third person, where the strain between a vilely realistic dialogue and a narrative style pitched about (in phrase) 'four notes higher' than it should have been has sown my head with grey hairs." Had the story been told by one of the characters there would have been no difficulty of the sort.
"The Ebb Tide" probably could not have been told effectively in the first person, for much of its power derives from the way in which Stevenson limns the lovely South Pacific scenes through which its poor lost derelicts of people move. Theirspeechis "vilely realistic" because they are common men, sea captain and clerk and middle-class Englishman, and the lips of no one of them could have been made to state effectively without distortion what his eyes saw. Any story has certain matters which must be brought out justly if the whole is to have due effect, and if first person narration renders it impossible to treat such matters justly that mode of narration cannot be used. The example of "The Ebb Tide" shows that in estimating the availability of narration in the first person thewriter must consider that the very nature and being of a character may seal his eyes to many matters. Moreover, the reader will not readily accept in a narrating character the literary power that is even expected in the author writing in the third person. A story is a whole, its people existing subject to the limitations of its necessities, and the mode of narration must function naturally with the rest, and not demand impossibilities.
One difficulty of first person narration is not so much fictional as psychological. If the story demands emphasis upon the good qualities of the narrator, his bravery, devotion, love, generosity, or a thousand others, a reader will soon weary of the eternal I. It is safe to say that if a character must be shown in a strongly favorable light, let it be done by the author or some other character, not by himself, unless the moral perfection of the person is a matter solely of inference from his acts.
The very complicated plot can rarely be handled well in the first person, particularly if the events cannot be cast in chronological order. On the other hand, first person narration is often a useful device to keep from the reader's knowledge, unobtrusively and without seeming effort, matters which he must not learn prematurely. Conan Doyle's Watson is an instance. Thus the chief disadvantage in employing the narrating character, that he cannot be made omniscient, may be turned to advantage. The whole question is one to be determined only after careful consideration of the demands of a particular story, and the chief need is not so much to state rules for its solution as to point out the real necessity that the writer know what he is about before pitching on a mode of narration. It is a prevalent habit, and a bad one, to accept a story as it first takes shape in the mind, narrative, point of view, and all.
There is a tendency among writers of fiction, particularly those who are just beginning, to narrate in the first person, perhaps because they feel that the reader will accept the story more readily in such shape. Other things being equal, first person narration is a trifle more natural and plausible than narration in the third person, but its limitations are much more strict. At the last of it, readers are so thoroughly habituated to the impersonal viewpoint that a writer does not gain much in power to convince by adoption of the other. A story is taken up because a story is wanted, and a reader is willing to accept the conventions of the art. So incredible a fiction as Poe's "A Descent into the Maelstrom" was probably best told in the first person, but the average story need not strain so sedulously for verisimilitude so far as the mechanics of narration are concerned.
Typical third person narration is illustrated by the story of action, the wholly objective story, told in the third person. The impersonal relator is omniscient, but his omniscience is not so obtrusive as in the story that touches on the facts of the soul. This omniscience of the relator is the chief advantage of third person narration, but the writer will only infrequently find it advisable to assume omniscience absolute and entire, involving knowledge of all the objective acts and the subjective motives of all the characters. If the story is largely analytical of more than onecharacterthe writer may be forced to "know it all" in order to display his material. But omniscience carried to such a point tends to be over-artificial, the underlying cause of much of the artistic weakness of the story which lays bare the souls of allcharactersinstead of one or two of the most significant. In his own daily life the reader is accustomed to a one-sided presentation of the social spectacle, and complete omniscience on the part of theimpersonal relator of a fiction has the taint of artificiality, or even of bare exposition. And exposition, which implies a mathematically complete presentation, is not fiction, which implies shading and suppression, absolute or temporary.
Any suggestion of artificiality may be entirely avoided, and the frequently necessary advantages of third person narration retained, by assuming omniscience as to all the physical facts or events of the story while rejecting omniscience as to the souls of the characters, except the souls of one or a few. Thus the writer may escape the inherent limitation of first person narration, that the story is told by a character of definite powers and knowledge, and retain the chief advantage of that mode of narration, the more or less single viewpoint, corresponding with a reader's own outlook on life and its happenings. This hybrid method of narration utilizes the virtues and rejects the vices of the two strict types. By telling his story in the third person, but from the viewpoint of one or two of the chief characters, an author may assume the desirable omniscience as to objective facts and the desirable limitation upon knowledge as to subjective motives. This is not to say that the nature of a particular story may not call for strict first or third person narration; it is merely a suggestion that thevirtueof each type may be utilized at once. Each story makes certain demands, and the writer is not confined to two means of satisfying them.
A reader of any catholicity of taste can recall numerous examples of the various modes of narration, and in future reading it will be directly profitable for the writer to note the narrative device employed, and how it has aided or hampered the development of the fiction.
More extreme devices have been, and may be employed,such as Richardson's of telling a story in a series of letters. They are curious rather than important.
In estimating the availability of a mode of narration the writer should consider the matter of length. The adoption of theomniscientviewpoint may carry the story unnecessarily beyond due limits, for the writer who has taken to himself the privilege to know all facts and motives may be led into depicting events or analyzing character for his own pleasure, rather than because the story demands it. If a story demands space, space it must have, but the essence of literary power and artistry is to write with the utmost brevity and pungency compatible with adequate expression. The story must be told; every essential phase must be brought out; but unsignificant words can only do their bit toward spoiling the desired effect. The adoption of a too inclusive mode of narration may lead the writer astray; conversely, the mode of narration most nearly suited to the necessities of his story will aid in holding his pen to the line. If the story is of action, unconcerned with motives save by implication, and the writer tells it in the first person, or in the third person from the viewpoint of a single character, he will be led to confine himself to the depiction of the panorama of events, which is the work in hand. Yet, if the story requires that the reader be given a direct view of the spiritual workings of large numbers of characters, the writer must tell it in the third person and assume universal knowledge as to event and spirit. A mode of narration must be deliberately selected for each new story with due regard to itsidiosyncrasies, and to make the choice correctly cannot fail to be of great advantage.
It is often stated that having settled upon what is most narrowly termed a mode of narration and mostbroadly a viewpoint the writer should be sedulous not to depart from it. The writer of the short story should not alter the narrative point of view, for obvious reasons. The short story is short; it depends for its power upon dramatic effect; and in writing it there is no occasion or excuse for any shifting of outlook. The short story is artistically the strictest form of prose fiction, that is, it is most strictly subject to the conventions of the art of fiction, of which maintenance of the point of view is one. But the novel is a much looser form, and unless the particular story is uniquely uniform in texture, as the frank tale of adventure, shifting the point of view often will prove necessary.
If the author of a novel has chosen to write with knowledge of the inner workings of more than one of the characters, but not with knowledge of all, so that he relates from the viewpoint of several characters, rather than the viewpoint of some impersonal observer to whom the souls of all are open, numerous shifts of viewpoint will be necessary. They are implied in the mode of narration itself. The world cannot be looked at through the eyes and souls of a succession of characters without a succession of shifts. All this merely amounts to saying that certain modes of narration which cannot be employed in writing the strict short story may be freely employed in writing the novel. In the case of the novel, or of the story that is somewhat brief without being a strict short story, the task is not so much never to shift the viewpoint, rather always to indicate the shift with clearness. Just as the reader's interest should be the first consideration in choosing matter and devising a plot, clarity to the reader must be considered when any shift in the narrative point of view becomes necessary. Let the shift be avowed and obvious; any uncertainty can lead only to confusion.
It follows that writers who have chosen to tell their stories from the viewpoints of several characters will prove the most profitable for study as to how to shift viewpoint without confusing a reader. Chiefly, of course, they are novelists, Eliot, Balzac, Hardy, Scott, and an infinity of lesser lights. Galsworthy, for instance, in each of his chapters succeeds in producing a singular unity of effect, with corresponding clarity for the reader, chiefly by making his shifts of viewpoint coincide with shifts of scene and person.[G]
Inextricably bound up with the mode of narration and the general narrative viewpoint of the story is the matter of the author's own attitude toward the story. The distinction between these matters is fine, but real. It is possible that a given story may be told, adequately so far as the bare story is concerned, in any one of several different ways. Narration in the first person by a major or a minor character may be employed, or the author may write in the third person, assuming knowledge of all events and of the inner workings of one, some, or all of the characters. But there is another consideration. The whole conception may depend for its appeal upon what I am forced to call very roughly sympathy for a character or group of characters, and a mode of narration must be employed which will enable the author to express his sympathy that he may evoke the reader's.
I do not wish to shift the discussion into the field of ethics, but the point is that any chain of events may be colored in the telling favorably or unfavorably to the persons concerned. A coarse instance is afforded by a prosecution for crime. In making their final arguments to the jury, prosecuting attorney and attorney for the defense alike deal with the same facts in evidence, but on the lips of one the defendant willbe aglorified and persecuted saint. A more delicate instance is afforded by Stevenson's "The Ebb Tide," previously mentioned. Robert Herrick commits all the criminal acts committed by Huish, the cockney clerk, except to attempt murder, but the reader pities Herrick while hating Huish. This is so because Stevenson writes of Herrick with a measure of sympathy, and tells the story, though in the third person, almost entirely from his point of view. But of Huish we have only his acts and words. The treatment of him is wholly objective.
The story which develops a chain of events tending to show a character or group of characters in a strongly unfavorable light should not be told too objectively, or the reader will be repelled by its uniformugliness, a matter which must be considered in choosing a mode of narration. It is not a point of morals, but one of contrast. If the writer has no sympathy for one or some of his people, or writes in such manner that he cannot express any predilection, they will appear all of a piece to a reader, with a consequent loss of interest. In this very real sense the story whose characters are uniformly repellent may be said to be bad art.