The result of the condition upon the general technique of characterization as applied in the short story must now be stated.
I have said already that the whole process must be swifter, but that is not very definite. Expanded, the statement amounts to saying that the short story writer cannot develop personality with the fullness and diversity of the novelist; he must concentrate his verbal resources upon the trait developed by the few events of the story and upon a few striking peculiarities of appearance and speech. As to the strict trait of character, the story itself will point the way. It will have one main situation, and probably that one will be of such a nature as to involve relatively simple attributes of soul in the persons concerned. As to the more superficial matter of making the persons seem real and lifelike, the writer must describe sharply, rather than at length—as Stevenson did in "A Lodgingfor the Night"—and must make his people talk as individually as possible. The general aim, of course, is the same as in the longer story, to present real characters of unique appearance and speech. And thewriter'sresources—again of course—are the same, but the brevity of the short story forces him to concentrate upon one matter of soul, one matter—or at most a few—of appearance, and one matter of speech. The whole art of fiction is selective; even the novel cannot present justly the complete man; and the short story, simply because it is short, is the most highly selective fiction of all. It cannot present the whole man, but it must seem to. A reader will not feel the absence of traits not involved in the events, and by vivid and brief descriptive touches, reinforced by unique speech, any character can be invested with what will be accepted as a complete physical presence.
As stated, the story itself, if a true story and not a tale, will show its writer that his expository matter or direct statement as to character must bear only upon the traits involved in the plot-situation of the story. The necessity is not peculiar to the short story, but it is more insistent than in the case of the novel. The other points of the technique of characterizing in the short story are purely verbal, and the writer's success depends upon his faculty in pungent description and in handling speech.
The remainder of the technique of the short story, apart from the matter of creating real men and women, is not verbal, but constructive, and is implied in—as it results from—the brevity of the fiction. Unlike the novelist, the writer of the short story has space for nothing but the story. He cannot drag in by the heels episodes unessential to the story solely for the sake of their intrinsic interest; he cannot waste words upon unessential persons. He is faced by two facts—thathis story must be interesting, so that it will probably have to involve considerable complication as to persons, events, and setting, and that it must be told with enough verbal fullness and elaboration to give it the body and seeming of life. Trimming between the necessity to interest and the necessity to invest his story with reality, the writer first must find an interesting story, and then, in writing, or in developing and writing, must be vigilant to transcribe nothing unessential to the story, or he will be forced to exceed his space-limit.
The process comprehends most of the technique of the short story. The whole difference between it and the novel is that the novel is more discursive. Much of the novel's interest, quite permissibly, may inhere in persons, episodes, and matter generally without relation to the main thread of the story. But a short story's interest may not inhere in matter foreign to the thread of the story. That is the case not because of any arbitrary requirement that it be a "unity," but simply because a short story cannot be told adequately as to the story without exceeding the word-limit if unessential matter be incorporated with it.
The fallacy, whether on the part of commentator on technique or writer of fiction, in approaching the short story as some sort of artificial fictional unity lies in the implicit disregard of the necessity to interest. The first necessity is that a story interest, and to meet it the writer must devise some complication of persons, motives, and events, and usually that will involve some diversity of setting, or change of place. The second necessity is that the story be told so as to create the illusion of reality, and to meet it the writer will be forced to exhaust his few thousand words. The necessity that the story interest can bemet only rarely without violating the unities of the drama; therefore they are not a convention of the art of the short story. Apart from the matter of unity of tone and style, the short story is a unity only in that it is one single story, nothing more, nothing less. That is, each word is essential to the fiction as such. But that does not mean that the story or plot is a unity in itself. It may involve much diversity in the three fictional elements of personality, event, and setting, the last of which includes time.
I emphasize the matter because the beginning writer is apt to devise stories too simple to present a real problem to awaken a reader's interest. There is also the converse fault, of course, that of devising a story too complicated to be given adequate expression in few words, but this fault will tend to correct itself through the difficulties the writer will meet in execution. The other will not tend to correct itself. The more simple the story, the easier it will be to write with some approach to adequacy. The writer who fancies that a short story must involve as little as possible diversity of people, events, and places may very well continue to devise stories too simple to awaken interest, however effectively they may be told. He will have no trouble in writing each one within his space, but he will have trouble in getting them published, for each will be lacking in essential fictional value, the capacity to interest. Here I can make only general statement, and it is impracticable to dwell on the fact that real and highly individualized characters will invest a simple story with all the interest of a more complicated fiction. The general truth, however, is that the interest of a tale lies in the problem it presents and solves, that a problem involves complication and diversity, and that a writer may go astray who seeks only the dramatically unified and simple plot. Hiswork will interest a reader if he creates real people, but the capacity to do so is a rare faculty. At the bottom of it, a story, long or short, is a sequence of events; they should not be too simple, for, apart from the human element, simplicity presents no problem to awaken a reader's interest.
The sole limitation upon the complexity and diversity of the short story as a whole is the difficulty to develop in few words a plot complicated as to personality, event, place, or time. Accordingly, the plot suitable for a short story will tend to be simple, but it need not be so simple that the events, apart from the people, will not awaken interest. Moreover, the unskilled writer who has experienced the difficulty to develop an interesting plot in few words will be astonished by the results of a little forethought and careful planning before writing. Elimination and suppression of inessential and relatively unimportant matters will enable him to set forth adequately, though in a few words, a story of real body and interest.
The whole discussion should awaken realization of the fact that the short story is the most difficult form of prose fiction. To the general difficulty of all fiction it adds the difficulty that whatever is done must be done in a few words. The writer of novel or romance has only to interest, and his space is practically unlimited. The short story writer must interest, and he must interest in few words and pages. He must depend solely on his story; he has space for nothing else. He should remember that each item of unessential matter given place by him will lessen by just so much the number of words available to give the real story verisimilitude and consequent interest and appeal. To take the conceptive aspect of it, in devising a short story he should remember that inclusion of any accidental and unessential matter must lessen by just so much hispower to awaken interest by some diversity and complication in the real story.
When a story idea is found, the writer should determine precisely what matters must be brought out if the fiction is to have full effect on a reader, who will have only the writer's words to go on. The writer should realize precisely what elements of personality are significant in relation to the main situation, which is the story in little, and should prepare to develop the motives and traits involved. He should determine precisely what will be the most effective physical movement for the story, the nature and order of events, also the setting or environment. He should consider the essential nature of the main situation, or climax, and, if he cannot manage that preceding events shall prepare a reader for it, he should prepare from the beginning of the story to hint what is to come, as Stevenson does in "Markheim." Finally, he should grasp the developed story as a whole, and be vigilant to transcribe nothing unessential, for if the story is real fictional knot or problem, and worth while, he cannot do so without sacrificing essential matter or exceeding his limits.
The physical brevity of the short story certainly has great influence in the direction of simplicity. But its brevity does not subject the dramatic short story to the conventions of the stage. It must be a unity, so-called, but only in this, that every word must be necessary to develop the story-idea, which, in itself, may be simple or somewhat complex. The short story of atmosphere is another matter.
Coherence is a word much better than unity to express the most significant attribute of the dramatic short story. The form is coherent in that every word, line, and sentence has relation to the story itself. The novel is relatively incoherent in that it often embodieswhole stories without relation to the main story, or matter without relation to any story at all. The most pungent way to put the point of the whole discussion is to state that the short story, viewed merely as a sequence of words, is coherent in that each word serves to forward a single story-idea to its conclusion. That is not to state that the story-idea itself is coherent or a unity. It is a unity in that it is single, one story, but the one story need not manifest unity of time, place, and action. The sooner the short story writer clears his head of any notion that the verbal coherence of the dramatic short story involves some indefinable unity in its matter or story-idea, or some equally indefinable singleness of effect, the better for him, his work and pocketbook.[Q]
There would be no great profit in summarizing here the items of technique treated in other chapters. All are of use in the short story, functioning as in other forms of prose fiction. Apart from the matter of characterization, the peculiar technique of the short story is constructive and supervisory, rather than executive. The writer must make certain that he has one story and nothing else, for only one story can be adequatelydeveloped within brief limits. In writing, he must take care to transcribe only story-matter, for the same reason. But in narrating an event, or in describing a setting, after he has determined that event and setting are essential to his single story, the writer may employ the technique of general narrative or descriptive writing. Whatever the form of fiction, its aim is the same, to show real men and women doing in a real world the things one might expect from their natures and the circumstances of their lives.
In the chapter on story types something was said as to the current insistence upon the verbal compression of the short story. As stated there, the short story, dramatic or atmospheric, is not the result of mere rhetorical compression, rather of the inherent brevity of the conception. The executive technique of long story and short are identical, except as to the single matter of characterization. The short story develops its fewer episodes with as much rhetorical elaboration as the novel develops its many, and the writer who conceives that a short story can be produced by verbal paring and filing is on the highroad to failure.
Novel and Romance—Romanticism and Realism—Techniques of Novel and Romance—Incoherence of Novel Relative to Short Story—Novel as Medium of Self-Expression—Interpolation of Personal Comment—Significant Simplicity—Permissible Inclusiveness of Novel—Full Development of Personality—Variety of Action—Length—Initial Idea—Story—Life—Society—Singleness of Story—Social Emphasis.
I have a small dictionary on my desk which defines the novel as a "fictitious prose narrative or tale presenting a picture of real life," and the romance as "any fictitious and wonderful tale: a fictitious narrative in prose or verse which passes beyond the limits of real life." The definitions state a distinction easier to feel vaguely than to justify. One may say with truth that Jane Austen's "Sense and Sensibility" or Trollope's "The Warden" presents a picture of real life, but can one also say with truth that Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter" or Stevenson's "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" passes essentially beyond the limits of real life simply because each book states a physically impossible thing—the brand of his sin over Arthur Dimmesdale's heart and themetamorphosisof Dr. Jekyll? Either matter is a mere symbol, devised to give concreteness to a spiritual fact. Is it not true than human life, the material for fiction, has its spiritual actualities as well as its physical facts? and does not the romance—as it iscommonly understood—differ from the novel merely in that it narrates a real adventure of the soul rather than a real adventure of the body?
The fact is patent, I think, that the writer of fiction will gain small benefit from conceiving the romance as something separate and apart from the novel; likewise, that a book on technique without confusion may treat the writing of long fiction generally as the writing of novels. It is true, of course, that the essential bent of any particular writer may lead him to deal with the facts of the soul rather than the facts of the body, or that any particular story may be a spiritual rather than a physical adventure; nevertheless the story of the spirit must still develop facts and show their relations, and the technical resources of its writer are precisely the same as those of the writer who deals predominately with the more concrete physical facts of life.
It would be interesting to go at some length into this question of romance, all its connotations and implications. In particular, there is an antithesis in common thought, with romanticism and realism the two opposed members, which it would not be too dull to discuss. But the discussion would not give much light to one who desires to acquire a knowledge of the mechanics of fiction, long or short. It is permissible to call a realist one who transcribes predominately physical details, and it is permissible to call a romanticist one who transcribes predominated [typo for "predominantly"?] spiritual details, but in both cases the basic technique is identical. The realist can confine himself to physical facts because his story deals largely with the everyday actualities of life, and its subordinate spiritual values will be felt by a reader through inference from the facts. The romanticist must state spiritual facts directly because they are the very stuff and essence of his story. He is none the less a realistif there are spiritual actualities—an indisputable proposition—and if he states them as they exist for him.
The critical discussion that treats realism and romanticism as opposed artistic philosophies is so confused that it would serve no useful purpose to go into the matter here. What little I have to say on the subject will be said in the next chapter. But it is not inappropriate to call attention to the fact that every story conceived—in Stevenson's phrase—from within outwards, the only genesis for a work of art, is merely a subjective reality; it never happened. Perhaps it is so essentially commonplace that it probably has happened sometime; perhaps it is so little abnormal that very possibly it has happened. Or perhaps it may be of such a nature that it never could have happened. In any event, whatever the nature of the story, its verity and reality as a fiction depend solely upon its writer's elaborative and executive powers. If his hand falter, tangibility and concreteness in the matter of the story will not save it, will not make it seem real to a reader. The lives of most men are commonplace, but the relatively few lives that are not commonplace are as real and actual as those that follow beaten paths. In the lives of most, the spiritual element is subordinate, perhaps, but in the lives of some few it is enormously influential and supremely real. Realism, the artistic philosophy, asserts that fiction should present only the real. The assertion is nonsense for two reasons. First, the commonplace, or, if you please the inevitable, the only reality which realism admits, is not the only reality. Second, the verity or reality of fiction cannot be ascertained by any objective test, cannot be determined by the physical possibility of its matter, its people and their acts, for a fiction is purely subjective, a conception, and conceivability is the soletest of its verity. The writer of a story transcribes what he sees, not necessarily what is.[R]
As stated, the writer of fiction will derive small benefit from conceiving novel and romance as entirely different types of fiction. The distinction between them used to be insisted upon much more pedantically than is the case to-day, and the present tendency to call any story of book-length a novel is a healthy sign. The technique of the novel, in the narrow sense of a picture of society, and the technique of the romance, in the narrow sense of a story not of "real" life, are broadly the same. And where there is no difference in technique the artist should admit no difference in type. If he does admit any difference in type, and allows it to influence him, his conceptive faculty will be hampered and that is artistic death. It is hard enough to find a story that is worth while, a story that will interest, without subjecting one's self to the added and totally unnecessary difficulty to bring all one's ideas to the measure of some fancied type as a first test. The writer of fiction should be warned that it is supremely difficult to avoid becoming artificial and mechanical, and that he will surely become so if he does his conceptive thinking in terms of analysis. In the first place, the analytical habit of mind is directly opposed to the creative; in the second place, the analysis that divides long stories into novels and romances in the special sense is false. The way to find a story is to look for a story, forgetting all that pedants have written and failures practiced. The silly criticism that classifies fiction by its content is beneath contempt; the writer of fiction who heeds it is supremely foolish.
In the following discussion the term "novel" will be used simply to denote a plotted fiction of book-length.
Contrasting the short story and the novel, and dwelling on the relative coherence of the briefer form, I had occasion to state that the novel is relatively incoherent in that much of its interest for a reader quite permissibly may inhere in matter with little or no relation to the main thread of the story. Of course, incoherence is not a point of the technique of the novel. Incoherence is not a point of the technique of anything, except of some of the ultra modern schools in music, painting, and verse. The statement as to the incoherence of the novel was made incidentally in developing the argument that the short story cannot be incoherent because its brevity forbids that it present even its single story-idea adequately and also set forth irrelevant matter. On the other hand, the novel may set forth irrelevant matter because its length is not only a greater but a more elastic quantity than that of the short story; if the interruptions of the story are not too frequent and sustained, the power of the story over a reader will not be lessened to any appreciable extent. That is not to say that the novelist should seek to interrupt himself.
A good many serious writers—so-called—choose to write the novel simply because it does offer an opportunity for direct self-expression greater than any afforded by briefer fiction. They are confined to fiction—may they pardon the remark—because they have met, or feel that they will meet, difficulty in finding a publisher for their various theories stated as such; so they blithely write a novel, with insertions of politics, religion, sociology, what not, and palm it off on the unhappy public for a story. Of course such direct expression of one's opinions is not self-expression through the medium of a work of art. It is only choosing deliberately to do poor work for the sake of money or notorietyor vanity. Writing the "problem novel" is not quite the same thing. If a social problem, as the friction between capital and labor, is utilized as the fundamental plot—or conflict-theme of a novel, a good deal of personal opinion may be introduced by the author without injury to the artistic coherence of the story. But it is well to remember that the primary aim of fiction is to interest, an aim that can be achieved most easily and most completely by telling a good story. Propaganda is apt to be supremely dull anyway, and it is bound to seem dull to one who is looking for a story and nothing else. The practical implications of a work of art must be mere implications, resting in inference, or the work will be feeble and misshapen.
The novelist can indulge in personal comment and yet present the whole of his story, for his space is practically unlimited. The writer of the short story must sacrifice either the comment or the story. The result is that the typical novel is more incoherent than the typical short story. The finer the book as a whole, the easier it is to forgive or overlook the defect, for defect it is. One can forgive Thackeray his rambling asides and his diffidence in approaching his story, for in all of his books the story is present and in each it is a fine thing. But "Vanity Fair," for instance, is too significant a fiction to suffer constant interruption without causing a reader to become impatient. If a story is essentially weak, interpolating personal comment and unrelated matter generally will make it weaker; if it is essentially fine and significant, passages without bearing on the story will irritate the reader.
Whatever the art, whoever the artist, his task is to hold pen or chisel or brush true to the outlines of his conception. If his hand leave its proper course, whether of set purpose or through inaptitude, his work must suffer. The art of fiction is so infinitely difficultthat the practitioner should welcome rather than bewail his obligation to hew to the line, for by concentrating upon the story and nothing else he will be led to leave no gaps in his presentment. A work of art is a thing of significant simplicity. Just because the novelist works in words, just because his materials have some significance for a reader in themselves—unlike the clay and marble of the sculptor, the stone of the architect, and the pigments of the painter, which, unwrought upon, have no message for an observer—the novelist is not at liberty to throw words together without some set purpose. The inherent significance of each word must have just relation to the whole, if the whole is to have the direction and significant simplicity of a work of art. The real condition is that the novelist, unlike the writer of the short story, may tell his story adequately and do something else, but the artistic quality of his work will suffer, that is, its power over a reader will be diminished, if he interpolates foreign matter. Artistry is simply the faculty to realize to the utmost the inherent power of one's conceptions, and the artistry of any fiction lessens as the appeal of the story for a reader diminishes. And the appeal of a story as such must diminish with every interruption, unless its power over a reader be very great, and in that case any break in its movement will irritate and offend.
I have cited Stevenson's "The Ebb-Tide" a number of times already, and the book may be instanced here. It is a tremendously powerful bit of work, considering the nature of its matter, and its power over a reader in large part results from its author's having confined himself strictly to the story. The conception is significant, and the story as written is significant because the conception is set forth whole and unmarred. The reader's attention is not distracted by matter irrelevant tothe story. Its theme, the impossibility that a weak man should be other than weak, however he may be circumstanced, is developed adequately, and nothing else is developed. No book could be more wisely recommended to the writer of fiction for study of the essential technical processes of fiction. It shows adequate treatment of personality, adequate treatment of events, and adequate treatment of setting, shows fictionally real people doing fictionally real things in a fictionally real environment. Above all, it is a story, nothing else, and is pointed to bring out its value as a whole; that is it has the significant simplicity of a true work of art. It is coherent as to the story it embodies, and in its coherence lies its power. The bare conception is somewhat weak in that it tends to arouse an intellectual rather than an emotional interest in a reader; moreover, the conception is positively unpleasant and depressing, in the conventional sense; but the book as written is a powerful thing because it realizes to the full the inherent capacity of its matter to interest and impress by telling the story adequately and by bringing out nothing but the story.[S]
The novel, then, should be coherent as to the story it embodies, but that is not the whole of its peculiar technique. The story itself may be widely inclusive, may, in a way, involve a number of stories. The novelist should not seek deliberately to combine the unrelated, but he need not follow a single thread. He can turn aside into bypaths of action that will bring out the natures of his people with more fullness than the straight course of the story itself, and he can involve his minor characters in sub-plots, relatively unimportant stories of their own. Generally, the novelist will seek to develop personality with greater fullness and detail than the writer of the short story, and, as a result, the action of the novel will be more diffused and looser, less pointed, than the action of the short story. Or, conversely, the long story necessarily involves more varied action than the briefer form, and therefore develops more varied traits in the actors. Relative to the short story, the novel is a natural type of fiction in that it can make some approach to presenting the whole man, with all his contradictory and inconsistent traits and impulses; relative to the novel, the short story is an artificial type of fiction in that the comparatively direct and pointed character of its action forbids that it develop more than one or a few significant traits of personality. The writer of the short story cannot qualify and distinguish as to his people's natures, and that is why the fine short story is less humanly significant than the fine novel, for no man is pure saint or pure villain, pure this or pure that. We are all bewilderingly inconsistent, wherein lies most of the interest of life. The novel can show its people blown here and there by the winds of desire, as in life, and that is what the short story cannot do.
Each story is a rule to itself, so far as the question of scope and variety of action is concerned, but thenovelist will derive small benefit from introducing unnecessary people and unnecessary events merely to lend a greater illusion of movement or bustle to the whole. Action, in fiction, is action which plays a necessary part in the story, and the novelist should not interpolate insignificant events any more than he should interpolate his own opinions on life and morals. His task is to tell some particular story, no more, no less.
It is difficult to state the relative inclusiveness of the novel without laying a false emphasis on itspermissiblescope and variety of content, for the novel should be exclusive as well as inclusive. That is, it should not be a mere welter of people and what they do, but should possess some single human significance, some primary reason for being, by which its writer can test the availability of matter that suggests itself to him. Between the conciseness and singleness of "The Ebb-Tide" and the unnecessary length and complexity of some of the Victorians lies a golden mean easier to recognize in specific books than to state abstractedly. "The Ebb-Tide," though not a short story in point of length, is somewhat brief, and it is a short story in structure, in point of the singleness of its story-idea, the small number of its characters, and the comparative simplicity of its action. Of course, it is none the less a fine novel, a fine long story; the point is that there are thousands of other stories, equally fine, perhaps more humanly significant, which cannot be written so concisely, but which need not run to the length of "David Copperfield," "The Virginians," or "The Cloister and the Hearth." To attempt to set mechanical limits of length for the novel would be mere silliness, but it is true that the average idea for a long story can be given complete and adequate expression in one or two hundred thousand words. Usually there is no need to write at much greater or inordinatelength, unless irrelevant matter is introduced for its own sake. And the introduction of such matter for its own sake can only hinder the effect of the story itself on a reader. It may render the book, the mere sequence of words, more interesting, but irrelevant matter cannot render the story itself more interesting. The distinction should be noted and realized, for the novelist's aim is to interest through his story, not merely to interest.
There is another way to approach the matter of the novel's relative inclusiveness and length, perhaps a better way. Where the novelist first conceives his story definitely as such, as a course of events, he should bring all matter which suggests itself for writing to the test of relation to the story. He has only to write the story, duly elaborated, and thereby he will take care of the matters of length and complexity and inclusiveness without detached calculation to that end. But if the novelist finds his initial idea in terms of a life or of a phase of society, the idea does not plot or diagram the whole story for him. He has yet to evolve the story as such, and he may devise as short and simple a thing as "The Ebb-Tide" or as long and complicated a thing as Tolstoi's "War and Peace." Usually it will be found, I think, that the very long novel—"Tom Jones," "Jean Christophe," "David Copperfield," "Anna Karenina," "Les Miserables," "The Virginians"—was first conceived in terms of a life or a society, rather than in terms of a definite story. It is certainly true that only the life of an individual or the life of a society can serve to bind together the motley elements of a very long novel, giving it some artistic coherence. "David Copperfield" can be called one story in that it consists of Copperfield's life and related matters, but "Our Mutual Friend" is in no sense a single story. It is merely a number of stories devised to be told together and therefore dovetailing to some extent.
It all comes down to this: if the novelist conceives a definite story, he has only to tell it, but if he conceives a life or a society he has yet to devise his story. And the matters which can have some relation to a life or a society are much more varied than those which can have some relation to a course of events. In other words, the conception of a story as such limits the writer's choice of matter. If one starts with a story, one can tell only the story. If one starts with a life or a society, one can write pretty much at large.
In discussing the short story, it was possible to state that it must embody one story-idea, for the physical brevity of the form prohibits adequate development of more than a single story. But if I stated that the novel must embody one story-idea, no more, no less, the statement would be false, for the length of the form is practically unlimited. As Dickens did in "Our Mutual Friend" and other books, the novelist can tell together three or four unrelated stories if he so desires. He has the space. The question is not whether he can but whether he should tell more than one. The answer is that he should confine himself to one. Perhaps a little supporting argument is called for.
The most obvious criticism of this limitation upon the novelist is that it savors strongly of artificiality, rather than of art. The reader may think of Dickens himself, his marvelous people, the world of delight in his books. But Dickens, it may be said with all reverence, was no story-teller. His is a fictional world turned upside down. His stories are less than nothing; his major characters are less than nothing; but his little people are gods. All his books are mere cardboard beside the works of such a one as Dostoievsky, but in each book—with a few exceptions—there is some stupendous Weller or Micawber, not a man, but a god. One goes to Dickens almost as to vaudeville, and "Pickwick"is his best book because it is no story. In it Weller and the others run wild unrestrained by the necessities of any predetermined course of events. But a story is a predetermined course of events, actually or in effect, and the mere fact that Dickens could write poor stories and yet interest by his wonderful people does not falsify the technique of fiction.
Again, the fact that the novelist should confine himself to one story at a time does not debar him from following side-issues, provided they have relation to the main course of events, or from creating minor people like Dickens', if he has the power. Dickens could have placed his people in real stories instead of in the weak fictions they serve to ennoble.
Finally, I will state abstractly the conditions from which result the artistic, not the physical necessity that the novelist confine himself in each book to a single story-idea.
The aim to interest is the aim of fiction, long and short, and the body of a writer's resources to accomplish the aim make up the body of fiction technique. But the aim of the writer of plotted fiction is not simply to interest; it is to interest through a story, a course of events functioning together in that they embody some sort of problem. Leaving aside the matter of executive artistry, and premising that the writer will realize to the full the possibilities of his story, it is accurate to state that the interest a story will arouse will be in accordance with the human significance of the problem it embodies. Adequate fictional treatment of the problem to win love or to make a living will be more interesting than adequate fictional treatment of the problem to escape payment of an income tax. And the possibilities of any problem of life to arouse a reader's interest can be realized to the full only by setting out that problemand nothing else. Only by showing the thing in isolation and high relief can the writer reveal to, and force home upon a reader its ultimate significance. If anything unrelated to the story or problem is brought out, something of the power of the story as such will be lost. Likewise, if two or more stories or problems are each completely developed in one book, neither will have that singleness of appeal to a reader which is essential if each is to have maximum effect.
In other words, a novel does not function as a mere physical spectacle; being a story, it must have a motive, an artistic purpose; and if it has more than one it will be at cross purposes as a work of art. That is not a mere "artistic" defect. It is a practical defect in that motive, purpose, and story will not have extreme effect. Nor is it to say that the novel may not be very complicated as to any or all of its three elements of people, events, and setting. "Anna Karenina" is complicated enough, in all conscience, but every item of the novel has relation to its one story either in that it serves directly to develop the horrible tragedy of Anna's life or in that it forwards the presentment of the society which she renounced.
The painter cannot put two different pictures side by side on the same canvas without hampering the effect of each; still less can he commingle the two. The architect cannot build on two designs at once. Nor can the novelist—if he would have each story realize to the full its inherent capacity to interest—combine different stories in the same book. He can develop personality in great detail; he can follow by-paths of action; he can involve his minor characters in subplots; but the main course of the story must be single, not duplicate or triplicate, that the whole may have point and significance.
The reader will observe that this book lays absolutelyno restrictions on the conceptive faculty. It preaches that the way to write fiction is to look for a story, and, when it is found, to write it so as to give it full effect. It may be a short story; it may be a novel. It may have its genesis in a dream, in a life, in a situation, in a society. But, whatever its nature, whatever its length, its effect on, its interest for, a reader, can result only from itself. The story as such cannot be fortified by the introduction of foreign matter, although the interest of the writer's text as a mere sequence of words may be heightened thereby. But the aim of the writer of novel or short story is to interest through his story as such, not merely to interest. A newspaper is interesting, yet a newspaper is not a story, however much fiction it may embody.
The novel or long story is apt to have a strong social emphasis simply because the interplay of society and the conflict of its members supply much more material for stories than the more isolated phases of human life. The novelist is under no obligation to reproduce a social spectacle in each book, but more often than not he will find that he must do so to bring out the full value of his conception. It follows that he will do well to go about with an observant eye, for it is the little details of the novel of manners that lend verisimilitude to the whole. And such matters cannot be invented; they must have been observed; for a reader knows them whether or not the writer does too.
Story and Tale—Realism the Method—Realism the Dogma—Philosophy of Fiction—Interest—Power of the Real Problems of Life—Test of Merit—Aim of Executive Artistry—Verisimilitude—Ultimate Artistic Significance of Plot.
The purpose of this book has been to shed a little light on the essential technical processes of the art of fiction; to state a general philosophy of fiction has not been my aim. Accordingly, the text touches only incidentally upon the fundamental types of fiction and a writer's fundamental purposes in adopting any one of them as a medium for expression of himself or his conceptions. Partly to justify some of the text, and partly because it may prove of practical service, I shall state briefly a general theory or philosophy of fiction-not my theory, merely, nor that of anyone else, but simply the theory which is implied in the content and aim of the art itself.
The content of fiction is man and what he may experience, in body, mind, and soul; the aim of fiction is to interest. Certain results follow, but before stating them it will be well to clear the way a little.
I have stated that a story is a fiction with a plot, and have defined a plot as a dramatic problem, that is, a course of events which function together as a whole in that they influence and are influenced by characteror personality. And nine-tenths of the technique of fiction is concerned with the object to develop a plot. To develop a tale, a fiction, long or short, without a plot, only direct narrative and descriptive writing is requisite; it is the plot-element of a fiction, with all its implications as to personality, that forces the writer of a story—a fiction with a plot—to weave together cunningly each strand of his matter, narrative, exposition, dialogue, description, that the whole pattern may show fictionally real people doing in a fictionally real world what one might naturally expect from their natures and the circumstances of their lives. The task is infinitely more difficult and delicate than to take a Sinbad the Sailor or a Cinderella through a course of happenings without essential relation to the nature of either person, who is, in each case, a mere human focal point for the events to be precipitated upon. Accordingly, this book concentrates upon the fiction of plot, or story, rather than the fiction without plot, or tale. The technique of the fiction of plot comprehends and includes the technique of the tale, which could be ignored here without loss.
Whether or not a fiction possess a plot, and is a story, or lacks a plot, and is a tale, it will be concerned with people and what they do, the man and his acts. Long or short, a fiction must deal with man, at least with personality, as do London's "The Call of the Wild" and Kipling's "The Ship That Found Herself." Since fiction deals with man, it deals both with physical and spiritual facts, with the facts of the soul and the more tangible things of the body and the earth. It results that either the spiritual or physical element of any fiction may largely outweigh the other, at least, preponderate over it. That is, the long story may be what is known as a novel or what is known as aromance, and the brief story may reveal the fate of the spirit rather than the fate of the body and mind.[T]
Precisely at this point one encounters a difficulty raised by critical comment on fiction, the whole complex of obscurantism about "realism" and "romanticism." Instead of wasting space in trying to unravel the threads of the tangle as stated by those who have knotted it, it will be much easier and much more profitable to state a few facts that will demonstrate the essential fallacy of such discussion.
In the first place, realism characterizes a method, one that might better be called the method of stating the concrete in detail. If a story is concerned largely with the more common actualities of everyday life, it is possible that its writer may best create his illusion of reality by itemizing the physical facts in some detail.
In the second place, "realism" has been elevated from a mere technical method into an artistic creed or dogma. The assumption is made that only the more tangible matters of life are realities, and that fiction should seek to present only the real.
It is unnecessary to do more than state that the first term of this assumption is false. Not only are there facts of the spirit as well as facts of the body and the phenomenal universe, but the spiritual fact is precisely the fact which is fictionally significant. Fiction deals with man for man, and man is man just and only because he has an intelligence and a soul, enabling him to impose his will upon brute matter and to rise superior to evil fortune.
The second term of the realists' assumption is that fiction should present only the real. And the essentialfallacy of the assumption is this: it ignores the fact that the first aim of fiction is to interest. Philosophy, not fiction, must give us a test of truth and reality. Irrespective of what is real—a question that the confirmed realist answers falsely, because partially and exclusively—one who denies the reality and significance of the spiritual life of man, and therefore refuses to give it fictional treatment, debars himself from presenting much interesting matter.
It might not be too dull, incidentally, to go into the question of how much the world of the spirit shall be allowed to impose its necessities on the world of the flesh, but the matter is subordinate, part of the general question of verisimilitude. Frequently, to give concrete fictional treatment to a fact of the soul, the writer will have to falsify deliberately as to physical facts, as Stevenson did in "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde."
Realism, the technical method expanded into an artistic dogma, has much to answer for. In the hands of the French, it has been responsible for much that is uselessly unpleasant and brutal; in the hands of English and American writers, it has been responsible for much dullness. The unpleasant facts and petty concerns of life alike are significant only in relation to the persons they affect; in themselves, they are dreary or repellent items. If the ugly fact has no relation to the story as such, it should not be given place; if the commonplace detail has no relation to the course of the story, and will perform no office in lending reality to the fiction in a reader's eyes, it should not be transcribed.
The misconceptions that cluster about realism the dogma affect adversely both the writer of long fiction and the writer of short fiction. But the writer of short fiction, if he has read even a little critical comment in an endeavor to inform himself of the essential natureof his art, will have been confused and misdirected by the eternal quarrel over the short story, what it is, whether it is a distinct literary form, its totality or unity of effect, and so forth. I have said much on this head in discussing the short story, and shall not repeat the argument here. It is enough to say that the short story most certainly is a distinct literary form, in that it is brief enough to be read at one sitting and embodies a plot or dramatic problem, which is not true of the tale. But its distinction from other forms of fiction, plotted and unplotted alike, does not lie in its totality or unity of effect, except in the case of the short story of atmosphere. The dramatic short story, whether it stresses character or the event, differs from the novel or romance not in that it possesses a plot—so do the longer types—but in that it is brief. And it differs from the tale—which also is brief—in that it possesses a plot. The short story of atmosphere is abnormal, and a type in itself.
As was stated in the chapter on the short story, the only sense in which the dramatic short story can be said to possess unity is purely verbal. As a mere sequence of words, it possesses unity in that each word is essential to the story. That is not to say that the matter of the story, its people, situations, and settings, is "unified," whatever the word may mean so applied. The form is verbally coherent, but not necessarily coherent in substance, except that it embodies one plot—or story-idea, no more, no less. The one story-idea may involve great diversity in its three elements of people, events, and setting. It would not be worth while to discuss the general false emphasis upon the unity of the short story were it not for the strong tendency of such discussion to lead the writer to devise stories too simple really to interest, apart from the appeal to their characters.
It seems to me that the question of realism and the question of the dramatic short story's assumed unity of substance are the two pitfalls into which the feet of the writer of fiction who reads the mass of comment on his art are most apt to stray. It is difficult enough to find an interesting story without having one eye blinded by a false artistic philosophy. Generally, in reading critical comment on specific stories and authors and on the art of fiction, the writer of fiction will do well to remember that such matter is written for the general reader, not for the practitioner of the art, and that the poor critic must say something! He cannot discuss technique, for he would be both dull and unintelligible to the general reader. So he says what he does.
It remains to state a true artistic philosophy for the writer of fiction, that philosophy which is implied in the content and aim of the art of fiction itself. The content of fiction is man and what he possibly or conceivably may experience; the aim of fiction is to interest. It would be more accurate to state that the content of fiction is personality and what it may experience—witness any animal story, or Kipling's story of a steamship, cited above—but fiction deals so exclusively with man that the first statement may stand.
Since the content of fiction is man and what he possibly or conceivably may experience, the writer of fiction is at liberty to go to fairyland or South Boston, to heaven, hell, or the stock-exchange, for the material for his story. He is subject to no limitations, for whatever he can conceive is open to his use. If he does choose to leave the homely earth, however, he cannot return until he has finished the story. If his story moves in a fairy world subject only to physical laws of its own, such basic conditions of the story must continue to operate. But that is a matter of achieving theaim to interest rather than a matter of content, of telling the story so that it will seem real even though it is unbelievable.
The reader will note that the content of fiction gives him opportunity to write so terrifically "realistic" a thing as Dostoievsky's "House of the Dead," so nobly "romantic" a thing as Hawthorne's "Scarlet Letter," or so finely fantastic a thing as Carroll's "Alice in Wonderland." The sole limitation upon his work is his own conceptive and executive power, unless he foolishly subjects himself to the bondage of some special school. As time goes on, his own essential bent of mind and heart will gradually reveal to him the sort of matter he can handle best.
The influence upon the fiction writer's philosophy of the aim and necessity to interest may now be discussed.
An important point is that there are degrees of interest. A strongly novel course of events will catch and hold a reader's interest, but the interest aroused by a fiction presenting a novel course of events and nothing else is not quite the same thing as the interest aroused by a story which shows real men and women meeting the real problems of life, material or spiritual. The interest aroused by mere novelty is a matter largely of the intelligence; it tends to be evanescent because it has little or no relation to the emotional nature. On the other hand, the other sort of interest, that aroused by the spectacle of real men and women meeting the real problems of life, is deepened and intensified by the emotional element of sympathy and hate for lovable and hateful people. And the real, though perhaps intrinsically simple problems of life—to make a living, win love, overcome temptation—are precisely the problems which are humanly significant because universally experienced. The story whichshows real people struggling with such a problem will have a keener interest for a reader through his familiarity with its matter in personal experience. Such a story appeals to the emotions both through its people and through its theme.
This matter is well worth dwelling upon, for, apart from merit in point of executive artistry, the only standard whereby a story can be estimated as relatively significant or relatively insignificant is the standard of interest, that is, interest for the ideal reader, the reader of open and able mind and sympathetic heart. The aim of fiction is to interest, and the story which most deeply interests most completely fulfils the ideals of the art. "Les Miserables" is a greater book than any one of Jules Verne's mechanical romances, not because it is better written, and not because it is a terrific indictment of society—as a modern reviewer might put it—but simply because its people and matter generally arouse the most poignant emotional and intellectual interest in a reader qualified to feel its power. The interest aroused by Verne's sort of story—H. G. Wells' earlier work and Conan Doyle's "The Lost World" are more recent examples—is real, but almost exclusively intellectual, therefore relatively weak and evanescent. Books such as "Les Miserables" cannot be forgotten; the details of the story may vanish from the mind with time; but a reader will retain through life the memory of the book's power, the memory of the eagerness with which he followed the fortunes of its people.
Between masterpieces that will incorporate their essence and memory with a reader's very life—books such as "Les Miserables" and "The Scarlet Letter," to name together the utterly dissimilar—and stories that can serve only to while away an idle hour or two, there are fictions of every sort and condition, theproduct of all sorts of aims and philosophies, artistic and moral. Apart from the matter of executive artistry, each must take rank as relatively good or relatively feeble in accordance with its power to evoke interest. Some—as the detective story or any story of ratiocination—have in high degree the power to call forth a reader's intellectual interest; some—as the fictional comedy of manners—may interest slightly the mind through their plot and the heart through their people; but each is significant as a fiction solely by virtue of its power to enthrall a reader of open mind and sympathetic heart.
If the power to interest the ideal reader is the sole test of a story's merit as a fiction—and no other test can withstand examination even for a moment—it inevitably follows that to be a masterpiece a story, long or short, must show fictionally real men and women coping with the material and spiritual problems of our common human destiny. No other matter can arouse the deepest and most abiding interest in a reader. However perfect a writer's technique, if he chooses to write of physical or spiritual matters that are relatively trivial and insignificant, he cannot hope to do the finest work. Of course, it is unnecessary to say that the writer of fiction rests under no moral or artistic obligation to attempt a masterpiece in each story he undertakes. He is under obligation to attempt to interest in some degree.
Thus far, in discussing the influence upon the fiction writer's philosophy of the aim and necessity that fiction interest, emphasis has been laid upon the question of matter. But from the aim and necessity results the whole executive technique.
The general proposition is that significant matter cannot arouse a reader's deepest interest unless it is presented to him effectively, nor can relatively insignificantmatter arouse whatever interest is attainable by it unless it also is presented effectively. The writer of a story must seek to invest it with reality in the eyes of a reader, and his resources to perform this difficult task make up the body of the technique of fiction.
It follows that the best story in point of executive artistry is the story which realizes most fully the inherent capacity of its matter to interest. However significant the content of a story, if the writer's hand falter in execution, something of the fiction's appeal for a reader will be lost.
The general aim of executive artistry or technique is to invest the story with such reality that a reader will himself see so much of the thing as is physical and feel so much of it as is emotional or spiritual, for only thus can be evoked the full measure of interest inherent in the matter. Unless the writer's words constitute in themselves a primary spectacle and experience for a reader, instead of a mere secondary relation, the story cannot have full effect. A reader will not accept the mere say-so of the writer, who must spread upon his page the very stuff of life itself, rather than mere words.
How difficult the task, it is unnecessary to dwell upon, but one thing should be noted. This necessary power to precipitate reality, this literary power, only infrequently involves writing in a "literary" manner or style. The essence of literary power is to present the particular matter fittingly, not artificially. If the particular story concerns simple, everyday people and simple, everyday events, it should be told in simple, everyday language, for such language will serve best to precipitate the matter for a reader. Literary power is the power to adapt the word to the matter, not the power of "fine" writing. Some stories call for littleverbal elaboration, while such a thing as "The Fall of the House of Usher" exhausts the capacities of language, but whatever the nature of any story, its writer's artistry and technical capacity are measurable by the degree in which he succeeds in endowing it with reality and verisimilitude, not by the verbal noise and agility he makes and displays.
Verisimilitude, of course, is a relative term. The matter of the story of everyday life is essentially tangible and concrete, and its writer can invest it with tangibility and concreteness in a degree higher than is attainable by the writer who deals with fantasies and dreams. The measure of verisimilitude attainable by any story is limited by its content. If it deals with fine-spun fancies, it cannot attain the hearty solidity of the story that deals with the matter of fact. No writer can do more than precipitate his conception in his words; if the conception itself is essentially airy and impalpable, so must the story be airy and impalpable. In fact, the perfect fictional illusion is that which most nearly produces on a reader the exact impression the matter would produce if actually experienced. If a story is strictly unbelievable—of course any story is conceivable, or it would not have been written—the writer can do no more than create an illusion of fictional verity, not of literal verity. That is, a reader will accept the author's basic assumptions and the whole story as well, if it is developed logically from the assumptions. Any fairy tale is an instance of what is meant.
I will mention briefly one other consequence of the aim and necessity that fiction interest. Usually the story, or fiction embodying a plot, will interest more deeply than the mere tale. Therefore the writer of fiction usually will choose to write stories rather than tales. The bare fact is that the highest type of fiction,the fiction of greatest power over a reader through its human significance, is adequately plotted simply because it does show real people meeting a real problem of life.
At this point becomes apparent how much that grossly abused word "plot" stands for. Broadly, a plot is a dramatic problem, and a dramatic problem results from the opposition of man and man, the opposition of man and nature, or conflict within a single man. The element of mere complication is not essential to a plot, not being essential to a dramatic problem. "Dramatic situation" is perhaps a better term than "plot," for it has none of the associations of complication that cling to the latter. Even "dramatic situation" is objectionable, because it has connotations of the stage, and suggests an acuteness and tensity, a general brevity and pitch of struggle that is not essential to fiction. "Robinson Crusoe," for instance, though not very tense, is adequately plotted; it shows man's struggle for bread, shelter, and raiment. "Don Quixote" is adequately plotted; it shows man in the grip of a dream, and so at odds with all the world.[U]As stated, all great fiction is adequately plotted simply because it shows real people faced by the real problems of life. The plot of a story of worth stands for its author's effort to isolate one of life's significant elements or problems, and, by showing it in high relief, to invest it with that certain dignity and momentousness, as of life raised to a high power, whereby a reader may be laid under a spell more absolute than any to which the confused and shifting spectacle of life itself can subject him. In the last analysis, great fiction does more than to interest; it whispers to a reader of the significance and worth of human life, and heartens him to live his own.
It is surely obvious that the only way to learn how to write is—to write. The only way to learn how to do anything is to try until the secret is conquered, and the more difficult the feat or art the longer must be the apprenticeship.
Stepping from abstract study of technique to the actual writing of a story is a violent transition. The student has only a very general knowledge, and now he must give it narrowly specific application. He has read a brief discussion of the mechanics of the art of describing a person, for instance, has read Stevenson's description of Villon and his fellows; now he himself must write a description of Napoleon or Lizzie Smith or John Arthur McAllister; and he desires to write as well as Stevenson.
The only thing to do is to go at the task patiently and with courage. Put the best of you at the moment into each thing you undertake, but do not expect each single item of your work to show an appreciable advance, and do not be discouraged if each thing you do seems as poor or no better than what has gone before.Your first, second, tenth, or fifteenth story may be patent trash, in point of execution, but never mind. After a year or so of intelligent and directed writing the results of your study and application of technique will begin to appear. It is impossible that they shouldshow themselves at once, for technical study will cramp and constrain you until you have gained some real facility in writing in accordance with the canons of art. That is true of all arts, of course. No tool can be used properly without practice.
Perhaps you may desire to submit your practice work to magazines and publishers as you go along, and if you mean to have a serious try at the game it is advisable that you do so. The fact that you are writing for submission will serve as a stimulus; you will receive helpful incidental criticisms from editors, if your work shows promise; and, above all, you will gradually acquire the necessary knowledge of the market, its needs, tendencies, and desires. However, I do not believe it advisable for one who is trying to learn to write to ape deliberately the tone of particular magazines, with an eye to possible sales. That is a trick of the trade—and permissible enough—but it is no way to learn to write fiction. The skilled hand can direct his efforts so, but the apprentice had better center his efforts upon finding some good story and upon writing it to the best he knows how.
A few specific bits of advice as to how to go about practicing the art of fiction may not be useless. Technique is conceptive, constructive, and executive, and the beginner should exercise his latent powers in each department.
The technique of conception is practiced unconsciously by anyone who seeks to find a story for writing, but exercise of the conceptive faculty should not be limited to the times when you desire actually to write. You should form a habit of thinking creatively, of mentally shaping into stories the material offered by observation, thought, and reading. If this is done, and notes kept of your promising ideas, you will have on hand constantly considerable amount of material,and you will not be forced to waste time in casting about for an idea when the spirit moves you to write. Moreover, I think most essentially feeble stories are stories conceived and thrown together on the spur of the moment as the writer sits and looks at a sheet of white paper, and if you have five, ten, or a hundred stories more or less completely blocked out in your files or in your mind, you can choose for writing one fitted to your mood and also worth the writing. It is almost impossible to judge the worth of an idea immediately after it is conceived; by separating the conceptive and executive processes you will be led to avoid much waste labor in developing what is essentially weak.
A more mechanical exercise of the conceptive faculty, but a very valuable one, is to shape and re-shape what I will term abstract stories. As stated, a story or plot is a dramatic conflict, showing the opposition of man and nature, man and man, or opposed traits in the same man. The process of developing an abstract story is to select from a list of human traits and motives two or more which present an essential opposition, such as avarice and generosity, then to seek to give the basic abstract opposition most effective concrete fictional expression by devising persons to be invested with the traits and by devising a course of action to show the persons in conflict under the influence of the traits. Thus, taking the traits of avarice and generosity, husband and wife, for instance, may each be endowed with one, and a course of events devised to give the necessary conflict between them expression in action. The writer of fiction who will perform this exercise now and then, as opportunity offers, not only will chance upon much valuable material; he also will acquire a firm grasp on plot, the story-essence of a story, and will be led to realize that mere complicationor ingenuity is the least of a plot. The exercise is valuable because it is the only possible way to exercise the conceptive faculty in detail. A story-idea gained from observation usually is seized as a whole, but a story-idea gained by manipulating human traits and motives is built up from nothing by combining its elements. The story built up in this way probably will involve a social conflict, a conflict between man and man, rather than between man and nature or opposed traits in the same man, because the opportunity for combination is greatest in the first case.
The next point is how to exercise the constructive faculty, how to practice constructive technique, and here you have many resources, only a few of which need be mentioned.
In the first place, you can study the ways the masters have put together their stories; this, though not quite practice, is almost as valuable, if conscientiously and properly done, and is a necessary basis for practice. For obvious reasons your laboratoryanalysisof fiction must confine itself largely to the short story, though you can go through the process mentally and less thoroughly in reading longer work.
Provide yourself with a collection of short stories in one volume and a few from current magazines that you think good, also with a number of different colored inks or crayons. Read a story through a couple of times, that you may know definitely what it is, and then read it again critically, underlining every word, except those which serve only to forward the progress of the story as a mere course of events, and striking out every word or passage which seems to you inessential to the whole. Use a single color to mark a single process, and neglect the superficial character of the words, whether they be narrative, descriptive, or serve to embody dialogue. Thus, dialogue may serve to forwardthe progress of the story as a course of events, in which case it should not be underlined, may serve to characterize, in which case it should be underlined with the color taken to mark characterization, or may serve to touch in setting, in which case it should be underlined with the color taken to mark any passage where the author strives to touch in the environment. It will not be profitable to be too minute, to employ too many colors; the matters you will require to make visually distinctive are not many. Straight narration, including the whole physical progress of the story, whether detailed or general, requires no color; characterization, including the process of individualizing a person as to his nature, as to his appearance, and as to his speech, requires one; the process of touching in setting requires another; the process of preparing a reader emotionally for succeeding events requires a third; the process of intensifying atmosphere—if the story is of atmosphere—requires a fourth. And mark each passage in accordance with its main purpose or function, for many passages will subserve more than one end.
A number of stories treated in this way will be most profitable to study. In particular, each one will display graphically and yet in detail wherein lies its value as a fiction, whether in its people, in its events, or in its setting, and will show plainly the cunning blending of elements which is at once the fact and the result of the technique of construction.
In the second place, you can exercise your faculty of construction by closing the decorated book or magazine and trying to reproduce two or three of the stories you have studied. In doing this no effort should be made to transcribe from memory; realize, rather, the basic theme of each story, the general character of its people, and the main course of its events, and strive to produce as effective a thing from such materialsas did the author. The very great value of this sort of practice work lies in the fact that you have a positive standard of comparison ready for your story when it is written. Place yours and the original side by side, and you can see precisely where you have failed, if you feel that you have. In examining your own work, look to the matter of expression less than to the matter of construction; see if you have realized the necessity to build character here, to touch in setting there, even if your attempt to do so has failed in a degree through lack of executive deftness.
In the third place, the faculty of construction can be exercised in original work, and to do so does not necessarily involve writing a complete story. Ten stories can be blocked out and roughly shaped in the time it would take to write one, and the more rapid process is preferable for the beginner because it will teach him that the first conception is not usually the best conception. Write thousand-word outlines of ten stories as you have opportunity, put them aside for a while, and then see if you cannot re-shape their people, re-devise and re-order their events, to make them more effective, more interesting fictions. In blocking out a story do not state happenings merely; indicate your people's natures, their looks, their speech, and indicate where you would touch in setting, depict character by action, speech, or description, or hint to a reader the emotional quality of what is to come.
It will take a very real degree of courage and perseverance to carry out a course of practice in conceptive and constructive technique long enough to accomplish its end. But if you will lay out for yourself along the lines indicated here such a course of study and practice, and then will perform the necessary work, you will certainly gain more insight into the essential processes of fiction than you can acquire merely byaccepting at face value such story-ideas as may come to you and by writing them out one after the other. In particular, you will acquire the faculty to re-mould and re-shape your material, instead of seizing each idea too uncritically. And that is half the battle, for it is precisely the attitude and habit of the professional as contrasted with the attitude and habit of the amateur.