Generally, therefore, the writer must consider the necessities of his story in determining the mode of narration, and must also consider his own attitude toward its people and their doings. Its appeal to him may lie in his sympathy for some person or persons, and unless that sympathy be given expression in some way the story may not have an equal appeal to a reader. The perfect fiction is a congruous expression of a phase of life, and in it the more subtle matters of life, sympathy and predilection have their place.
The term style has been so exclusively used to denote an author's style in general, rather than the style of some particular work, unlike the styles of others by the same hand, that it is apt to suggest something different from what is meant by its use here. To show the distinction I cannot do better than to quote from Stevenson's "A Note on Realism."
"Usually in all works of art that have been conceived from within outwards, and generously nourished from the author's mind, the moment in which he begins to execute is one of extreme perplexity and strain. Artists of indifferent energy and an imperfect devotion to their own ideal make this ungrateful effort once for all; and, having formed a style, adhere to itthrough life. But those of a higher order cannot rest content with a process which, as they continue to employ it, must infallibly degenerate towards the academic and the cut-and-dried. Every fresh war in which they embark is the signal for a fresh engagement of the whole forces of their mind; and the changing views which accompany the growth of their experience are marked by still more sweeping alterations in the manner of their art. So that criticism loves to dwell upon and distinguish the varying periods of a Raphael, a Shakespeare, or a Beethoven."
In the case of Stevenson himself this process is especially manifest. With a unique earnestness he sought from the first to adapt his manner to his matter, and, since he grew with the years, each new tale concerns itself with matter a little more humanly significant than its predecessor, and is told in keeping therewith. The result is that such stories as "The New Arabian Nights" series, fantastically conceived, fantastically told, give place to "The Master of Ballentrae," "The Ebb Tide," and "Weir of Hermiston," fictions worthy in every sense, the last, indeed, an unfinished masterpiece. And with each new story the author's style gains in dignity and restraint, in the process of adaptation to the work. I mention Stevenson in this connection not because he is greater than many others, nor his work finer, but because its range was so wide that it called for many manners or styles. All will prove a profitable study, for they are all Stevenson's and yet all different. Writers who have been somewhat more narrow in choice of matter have not been under so pressing a necessity to vary their manner with each new work.
Possibly it is unwise to emphasize the matter of style at all when writing for the apprentice author. Telling the story is usually task enough, and style ingeneral is a product rather than an item of technique, therefore best sought indirectly. But even if the more delicate tones and shadings possible in writing are beyond the reach of all save the most skilled, preservation of the broader congruities of manner is possible by the beginner, and must be achieved if his work is to be even passable. Such a story as "The Scarlet Letter" could not have been told in Dickens' usual manner, nor could "The Pickwick Papers" have been written in the style of Meredith. The manner of telling any story must be reasonably adapted to its content, or the whole will be a shabby burlesque, destined never to achieve the laurel of print. The writer need not fret about his individual style, but he should ponder seriously the manner for which each story calls.
The story chiefly of action is best told without great verbal elaboration, which is unnecessary and tends only to hinder the march of events. The whole thing is an objective presentation, and the open character of its elements renders unnecessary laborious and involved explanation. The bare facts carry their own warrant openly displayed, and when they are shown the task is done. Sentences will tend to be a trifle shorter than in other work, and paragraphs likewise. The writer's chief aim will be to write not only clearly but vividly, for the story of action must depend chiefly upon vividness for its verisimilitude. The simpler figures will be profitable to employ, provided they are not too good and do not call attention to themselves rather than the image they are used to precipitate. The writer's general endeavor will be to follow stylistically the rapid movement of events. A reading of Dumas will show this method in use.
If there is a touch of fantasy about the tale, greater elaboration in sentence structure and some freakishness in the choice of words will be permissibleand even desirable, for true verisimilitude lies in the accordance of manner and matter. The story with a thread of unreality in its essential composition will not gain in power by matter of fact telling; the measure of verisimilitude which it can attain is strictly limited by its very nature, and can be gained to the full only by frankly and avowedly making it what it is.[H]An instance is afforded by Stevenson's "New Arabian Nights" series or Hawthorne's "Tanglewood Tales."
The story placing emphasis on character, or the story of atmosphere, unless the atmosphere itself be the onrush of events, will normally demand more leisurely treatment than the story of action. The movement of the story will be slower, and the style will be correspondingly affected. Dealing with motives directly will force the writer to qualify and distinguish, adding to length of sentences, while to precipitate an atmosphere in words is a matter of such delicacy that the writer will be forced to employ every resource of language, with a consequent complication in structure. The necessity is to hold the tale in mind before writing until its totality of character is realized, then to strive to commit no gaucheries in execution. The right word for the right place must be sought, indefinite advice which will prove of little aid in writing a single story, but which will yield ample returns if followed through careful and intelligent writing of many stories. In dealing with this matter of manner or style, and the necessity that it be in keeping with the particular story in hand, it is impossible to give examples on account of lack of space. I can only refer the reader to almost any fiction that has resisted the tooth of time. To leave prose for a moment and turn to poetry, a reading of Milton's "L'Allegro" and "Il Penseroso" will demonstrate the possibility and display the result of adapting the manner to the matter. The style of both is unmistakably Milton's alone, marked by his dignity and elevation of tone, yet one is as sweet and light as a summer breeze, the other as grave and sombre as a minor chord.
A reading of Jane Austen will prove profitable in this connection. Her books are all of a piece in manner and matter. Perhaps the writer who must please the somewhat hectic modern market will find little profit in imitating her choice of matter, but the skill with which she weaves her pattern will be instructive. Emily Bronte's "Wuthering Heights" perfectly fits the garment to the body. The story is wild and its style is wild. George Douglas's "The House With the Green Shutters," a more recent book and one of singular power, is well done in this respect. It is essentially rugged and bitter, and the author, though without particular distinction of individual style, strikes no note not in keeping with the general conception.
Narration Method—Story of the Commonplace—Story of the Bizarre—Vividness—Suspense—Emphasis and Suppression—Matter of Weight—Expansion and Vividness—Primary and Secondary Events—Transition—General Narration—Blending of Elements.
The writer who has discovered a good plot, so that his interest will not flag in writing, and who has fully developed the conception, so that he can have a single eye to execution, will meet few obstacles in setting down the whole story. Difficulties there will be in plenty, but they will be self-imposed. That is to say, it will be very easy to give the justly elaborated conception expression approximately adequate, but it will be very hard to give the conception verbally faultless expression. If the writer strives merely to tell the story, the labor of writing will be slight; if he strives to write with artistry and power, it will be infinitely great.
This book is on the technique of fiction writing, not on the technique of writing; my aim is to discuss only the matters of technique peculiar to the art of fiction. Thus, in this chapter I shall have occasion to state that the important event should be emphasized, and that vividness in narration is a means to that end, but how to narrate vividly is a question of rhetoric generally, and it is not my purpose to discuss it. Moreover, it is emphatically true that the capacity to narratevividly cannot be attained by the mere study of examples, the only way in which the matter can be studied. The writer can only strive constantly in his work to write with definition and force. It is all a matter of practice, whether or not the capacity must be inborn. But the principle of fiction technique, that the important event should be emphasized in some way, whether by vividness or expansion, is subject to direct statement and to assimulation from the direct statement. Therefore statement of the principle is all that a work on fiction technique need attempt. The rest lies with the writer himself.[I]
The first chapter on the executive technique of narration took up the two preliminary problems of the mode of narration and of manner or style; this second chapter has to do with certain other matters that must be considered in writing a story, viewed as a chain of events. Character, atmosphere, and dialogue will receive separate treatment, and for discussion of the strict technique of expression the reader is referred to works on rhetoric, except that in discussing the technique of description in the next chapter I shall have occasion to touch upon nicety of expression.
The method of narration is necessarily influenced somewhat by the style the writer of a story strives first to find and then to maintain, but the style does not entirely determine the method, or the method the style. The matters are distinct, though mutually influential.
There are two kinds of lives, or at least two kinds of incidents, the humdrum and the bizarre. Likewise and consequently there are two kinds of stories to be told, the humdrum and the bizarre. Each may be fashioned into something worth while. Whether the matter of a story is worth while depends on the significance of the phase of life involved; whether the story itself is worth while depends on its plausibility or verisimilitude, which depends on the way it is constructed and told.
The humdrum story, that deals with the more common actualities of life, the little details that are significant only in combination or in relation to certain characters, can be told as simply as the writer desires. He has only to set down the succession of details that constitutes the story. Each new incident will not only advance the narrative progress of the story, but the commonplace nature of each incident in itself will tend to give the fiction its necessary plausibility. Simply because each incident is common and of universal occurrence the reader will accept it and the story compounded of such elements. Matter of fact phrasing, not phrasing too "literary" in spots, is most suitable.[J]Such a story does not require high lights of expression, and they should not be interpolated.
The story dealing with the strange and wonderful is another matter. In writing it the author's aim is the same as in writing the commonplace story, to give it plausibility and verisimilitude, but the task is infinitely more difficult. Proper construction will aid greatly, and in execution the writer has two resources.
The first is the method of Defoe, and consists in showing the reader the strange course of events through a lattice of familiar thoughts and things. It is an attempt to give the essentially bizarre story something of the plausibility and power of the story of the commonplace by interpolating universally familiar matters of detail. They are unnecessary to the bare story, but they are useful to give the reader a thread of connection between his own experience and the strange fiction. The method is persuasive, and requires a high degree of craftsmanship to employ well. Familiar and unfamiliar must be woven together with a careful and skilful hand. And obviously it requires space. Examples are Defoe's work—often cited—such as "Robinson Crusoe" or "A Journal of the Plague Year," or Balzac's "Peau de Chagrin."
The second method to give to the strange and wonderful verisimilitude and plausibility is not persuasive, but consists in writing with such vividness, definition, and force that the verbal picture will be accepted without question as visual evidence. Seeing is believing. In fact, the more strange or wild any chain of events, the deeper their impression on a reader, provided always that he be made to see them. Obviously, to the use of this method the highest powers are necessary, the power to select the salient and distinctive points of the thing to be drawn, excising all superfluous matters, the power to choose the exact and vivid word, and, finally, the power—more, seemingly, than that of mere word-selection—to precipitate reality in words, one sometimes manifested by works the diction of which is not particularly dynamic. It is the method of Stevenson and Kipling, among others, and to the author who can employ it no degree of novelty in the physical conditions of a story is a deterrent. He can show the thing like a painting or a stage scene, and his reader runs breathlessly with him, caught up in the race of events. The method demands the highest imaginative powers in the author, that he may actually see the matter he is depicting, in detail and in the mass, and the highest executive powers, that he may fix its living image with his pen.
This method to present the bizarre event with all the color and body of reality—of course it may be employed in depicting the commonplace as well, though expression of the commonplace should not be too heightened—is the method of the severe literary artist, because it is compatible with the most perfect unity and the greatest brevity. To arouse emotion in a reader the writer must have something more than mere color in his work, but to make a reader see anything it is only necessary always to search for the right word, which is the word both exact and dynamic. Yet if this is the sole condition, it is a doubly hard one. The perfectly exact word is so elusive, and, when discovered, it is so often lacking in the requisite force. Exactness is not enough; the needful word is the one that not only will fit the author's vision, but give it life;and it is here that figurative language finds its office. "I saw a fleet," is exact. "I saw a hundred sail," is equally exact, and much more vivid.
Vivid, direct writing, which does not depend on connection with his own experience to hold the reader, is the most practicable narrative method for use in the short story or novel of incident, that is, in the typical fiction, where interest centers in the course of events. In other words, it is the typical narrative method; the method of coaxing the reader into believing the strange by showing it in juxtaposition with the familiar is a variation from type. Narration consists in stating what happened. If what happened was commonplace, the reader need only be told it; if what happened was strange, the reader must be coaxed or forced to believe it, and the writer must either coax him or narrate with such vividness and power that the word will have the body and reality of the fact.
The term suspense is often misused to characterize a quality of narration supposed to result from the employment of some technical device. What is meant, of course, is that a good story, involving real people, justly related, will hold its reader's interest until the denouement is reached. Suspense means continued interest, and can result only from sound conception, careful elaboration, and adequate narration of a story. The reader who is shown real people in an interesting situation will be in a state of suspense through his curiosity and desire to learn what happened next. There is no technical device to create suspense, for suspense can result only from the worth of the whole story. I mention the matter thus briefly on account of the misuse of the term. If there is any technique to createsuspense, it is the technique to order a story's events in a climactic ascension, and is not an executive device.
A story is made up of a succession of happenings, some of major and many of minor importance, and in telling it the writer must emphasize the most important events to impress their significance upon a reader. It will not do to relate the whole, indiscriminately, with as much vividness as the writer can command, for the fictional value of the whole necessarily resides in the relation between its chief events, and that relation can be made apparent only by showing them in high relief. The most important events of a story must be emphasized; events of some but not of controlling importance must not be stressed too much; and the very trivial events, which are usually matter of transition, necessary only to the mechanical progress of the story, should be suppressed by narrating without detail and in general terms.
Fundamentally, emphasis and suppression are matters of weight, while proportion is a matter of space. There is a real relation between preserving proportion and laying emphasis, but it is accidental. When an important event is somewhat complicated, as a love scene, proportion requires that it be narrated in detail, for it would take some time to happen in reality; and due emphasis will be secured by detailed narration. But when an important event is inherently simple in character and brief in the time it would take to happen, proportion requires that it be given not too much space, while emphasis requires that it be stressed. To stress such an event, the writer's sole recourse is vividness in narration. The physical details are few, but they must be made strikingly impressive. Where an event is essentiallycomplicated, a knot of many details, emphasis may be laid by detailed narration, by expansion, and proportion will not be violated. In the case of the important but inherently simple event there are no great number of details to be marshalled on the page, and the writer can only strive to invest his few words with power.
The writer should consider the matter of proportion inallottingthe space of a story before writing, as has been stated. In writing, the mere fact that he follows events in detail with his pen will lead him to emphasize by expansion, where the subject matter naturally calls for that mode of securing emphasis. Where expansion is impossible on account of the absence of details to be narrated, the writer's realization of the importance of the event will lead him to cast about for the vivid word. That is to say, in dealing with the important events of a story the way to write is to visualize the procession of happenings and to follow them with the pen in detail, seeking the vivid and emphatic word where the event is vivid and emphatic. When the event is a bundle of many details, setting them down will emphasize the episode by expansion; and where the event is simple, and a mere detail in itself, as a blow, vividness in narration will counterfeit the force of the episode.
Normally, the succession of chief events will take up the greater part of the space available for a story, and, if the work of construction has been done properly before writing, the writer will have his attention free to visualize each successive happening and to picture it. The difficulty will be to express perfectly. The process is natural. It cannot be too strongly insisted that the way to write the strict story part of a story is to strive to see the thing in imagination and to get it on paper with the breath of life in it. Byfollowing his vision with his pen the writer will take care of the matters of proportion and emphasis without detached calculation looking to that end.
But that is not quite true in narrating secondary events and writing general matter of transition, the part of a story that gives the main events a natural sequence and proper spacing, or that develops character. The main events exist only for the story; they are the story. The secondary events and matter of transition exist largely for the sake of the reader. Such events prepare the characters, for instance, that the main situations may have true and full dramatic value to the reader, while the general matter of transition serves to give the main events spacing and the story plausibility. And in narrating secondary events, and writing matter of transition, the writer cannot have an eye solely to imagining the procession of little happenings and to reproducing them in detail. If he wrote so they would bulk as large as the main events, and the short story would fill a novel and the novel an encyclopaedia. Instead, the writer must realize the reasons that led him to choose or devise each secondary event while constructing the story, and must narrate each minor event so that it will just perform its designed function and no more. The major events of a story are primarily significant, and it is sufficient to narrate them so as to counterfeit them as they would be in reality. The minor events of a story are not significant in themselves, but only in relation to something else, and in narrating them the writer should develop only their significant phases. They must be given reality and verisimilitude, but their aspects and implications unimportant to the story should not be detailed and thereby stressed. All aspects of the main events are to be detailed simply because all aspects of the main events are important to the story. They are the story.
The discussion is somewhat abstract and involved, but necessarily so. The technique will be easier to practice than it sounds, much easier, for instance, than to narrate the simple but important event with due emphasis through vividness. That necessity is supremely easy to state or realize, but supremely hard to meet in writing a story. The technique of handling secondary events and matter of transition is hard to state abstractly and to grasp from mere discussion, but when it is grasped it is comparatively easy to apply in writing, for it calls for no executive power, merely the negative power to leave out the insignificant.
It will be seen that the process of narrating the minor events of a story is not natural, but highly artificial. The process of narrating the main events is natural; it consists merely in imagining and reproducing them with as much body and color as possible. Where undivided attention to phrasing is most essential, the writer can give it; where it is least essential, in setting out a minor event, the writer must give much attention to what aspects of the episode he should emphasize. He cannot reproduce it in full detail simply for what it is in itself. Just narration of secondary episodes and transitional passages is a matter of calculation; just narration of the more important events of a story is a matter of warm creation and verbal power.
In a sense, all events of a story may be said to have a primary value, for an event is at least a happening and has some interest for a reader. But the people of a story must be carried on from event to event, major or minor, and the story with them. The necessity causes the insertion of transitional matter in any story that has more than a single episode.
Transitional matter has no capacity to evoke interest in itself, unless it be so detailed as to form a succession of petty happenings, in which case it ceases to be strictly transitional. Therefore it should be gotten over with as quickly as possible. The writer should narrate in general terms, as has been stated in discussing proportion, the only end being to forward the mechanical progress of the story. No emphasis need be laid on such matter. A frequent fault in beginning writers is lack of capacity to pass from one event to another smoothly and swiftly. Many seem unable to step from detailed to general narration where the story demands it, and as a result their stories lose interest. The details of important events are the breath of life to a story, but details without fictional purpose only clog the action and discourage the reader's interest. Matter of transition should be handled as swiftly as can be done without rendering the whole story jerky and unbalanced. It may be noted that transitional matter on the lips of a narrating character can be given piquancy and made interesting in itself, like introductory matter.
Often transitional matter may be entirely omitted. Thus Maupassant, in "The Necklace," does not attempt to make the story an unbroken chronological progression. The nature of each particular story determines its content, of course, and where matter of transition is necessary or desirable the writer should realize its nature and handle it accordingly.
Each story has two primary fictional elements, the people and the events, but it has three mechanical elements, the action, the speech of the characters, and the matter descriptive of persons or places. And whileeach tale is unique, and any one of these mechanical elements may largely preponderate over the others, nevertheless the normal fiction will devote a substantial amount of space to each. If the story permits—a proviso implied in discussing any matter of technique—it will be well for the writer to strive to distribute and intermingle its action, dialogue, and descriptive matter in a texture pleasing because varied. The whole should not be built of unwieldy chunks of description, speech, and action succeeding one another with monotonous regularity, but descriptive touches should be intermingled with the dialogue, and narrative matter with word-painting and the speech of characters. Obviously this is no absolute rule, and is perhaps not ever a matter of strict art, but it is true that a reader quickly wearies of much of the same thing, and a story is for its reader. Moreover, a story as a whole will gain in verisimilitude by judicious distribution of its mechanical elements. The matter is merely another phase of the necessity to give a fiction the seeming of life, and should not be neglected, the more so because it is easy and a mechanical matter. The beginner can afford to neglect no chance for success.
Interest—Secondary Function of Description—Distribution—Story of Atmosphere—Effectiveness of Distributed Description—Description of Persons—Example—Analysis—Accuracy—Mechanical Limitations of Story—Use of All Senses—Description of Setting—Two Objects—To Clarify Course of Events—To Create Illusion of Reality—Use of All Senses Order of Details—Contrast.
All writing is descriptive, in a sense; narration, for instance, is simply the picturing of shifting physical conditions in a state of fluxation. But description is usually taken to mean the picturing of physical conditions more or less static. The term is used so here, for the technique of describing persons, scenes, and objects generally requires treatment separate from the description or narration of bare events. In describing a happening of his story, and in describing one of the characters, the writer's general object is the same, to show the person or event with the vivacity of life, but the conditions to which the writer is subject are somewhat different in each case. To mention but one difference, normally much more space is available for pure narration than for pure description. The events of a story are the story; its people and its setting are drawn only to give the fiction the highest attainable degree of verisimilitude. And, since the space available for description in the normalstory is somewhat limited, the writer is under stringent necessity to make each word tell. In narrating an event, the matter has an interest of its own for a reader apart from the manner of telling, but in describing a person, scene, or object, the word is all in all. If the picture is not effective, nothing is achieved.
In coming to the writing of a descriptive passage, the writer should realize its secondary function in the story. Except in the case of the story of atmosphere, and perhaps of the story of character, a reader's interest will focus in the progression of happenings as such, and the sole object of strictly descriptive matter is to give maximum concreteness to the events by depicting their setting and individualizing the persons concerned. What happens is the first consideration, not where it happens nor whom it affects. Most stories might be told without a single word of strict description, and no such word should be given place in any story unless it will forward the fiction to a higher degree of verisimilitude.
It follows that descriptive matter should not be written pages at a time. Its function is to lend body and color to the whole course of events, therefore descriptive touches should be inserted throughout the whole course of a story. To give an itemized description of a character at the start, or to picture the whole countryside through which the story is to move, is a poor, because ineffective, way to write. Not only will the reader be repelled by great spaces of description, but he will forget the attempted picture with speed. The thing to do is to insert a vivid word here and there where it will do the most good as the story progresses. Description is for the story, not to give the writer a chance to heap words.
Numerous successful authors have indulged in lengthy descriptions, but the worth of their books doesnot result from the indulgence. Hugo's description of mediaeval Paris in "Notre Dame" is an example so extreme as almost not to be in point, but most of the elder generation of writers hampered the march of their stories by describing at inordinate length. No matter what the eminence of those who have written so, it is a technical fault, for it tends to render the story stiff and mechanical and unnatural. Lengthy description is not only inimical to a reader's interest; it is perfectly useless in a fictional sense. The sole function of description is to give body and reality to the story, and that function cannot be performed unless the descriptive quality runs through the whole, and the descriptive matter is not gathered into stagnant pools of words.
Much of the effect of the story of atmosphere may depend upon its descriptive matter, which may constitute a great part of the whole text. The fact does not invalidate the general proposition. In discussing the various aspects of technique, such as this matter of description, the initial assumption is that only the technique of the normal story will be stated. The normal story is the story of complication of incident, where interest centers in the course of events rather than in the people or the setting. Variants from it, the story emphasizing character and the story stressing atmosphere, by their very difference call for a different handling of elements.
Aside from the fact that a single lengthy description of a person usually will have less effect on a reader than the same amount of descriptive matter deftly interpolated throughout the whole story, or the fact that recurrent descriptive touches as to setting will do more to give body to the fiction than a single lengthy description, the writer should consider the mere rhetorical difficulty of descriptive writing. Hemust stand or fall by the picture he creates. In narrating, he has another resource than perfection in expression, for the bare event, apart from the way it is told, will interest a reader. But a picture will not interest unless it is a picture. Rhetorical skill is the sole determinant between absolute success and flat failure in describing. And it is hard enough to find one or two telling descriptive phrases without contracting with the reader to supply several pages of them. Not only is a long descriptive passage of questionable value in the normal story, even when well done, but very few can write a long descriptive passage well. The matter of emphasis here comes up again for consideration. Vividness is not absolute, but relative. One vivid phrase will seem vivid to a reader, but fifty or a hundred together will not. The reader will become accustomed to the higher level of expression, and the whole will fail of its object.
In the course of a story the writer will have occasion to describe persons and—roughly—things. Descriptive writing is descriptive writing, but the matters for consideration in describing a man or woman and a countryside are somewhat different, and will be taken up separately.
As I have stated in another place, the writer cannot gain much in capacity to express through the objective study of examples. He can only practice the art, seriously and intelligently. But Stevenson's brief story of an episode in the life of Master Francois Villon of Paris, poet, master of arts, and house-breaker, "A Lodging for the Night," so perfectly describes the persons involved that it calls for quotation. The object is not to display perfect use of epithet, rather todemonstrate the entire adequacy of brief and pungent description. Villon, after a short introduction, is discovered in a small house with "some of the thievish crew with whom he consorted."
"A great pile of living embers diffused a strong and ruddy glow from the arched chimney. Before this straddled Dom Nicholas, the Picardy monk, with his skirts tucked up and his fat legs bared to the comfortable warmth. His dilated shadow cut the room in half; and the firelight only escaped on either side of his broad person, and in a little pool between his outspread feet. His face had the beery, bruised appearance of the continual drinker's; it was covered with a network of congested veins, purple in ordinary circumstances, but now pale violet, for even with his back to the fire the cold pinched him on the other side. His cowl had half fallen back, and made a strangeexcrescenceon either side of his bull neck. So he straddled, grumbling, and cut the room in half with the shadow of his portly frame.
"On the right, Villon and Guy Tabary were huddled together over a scrap of parchment; Villon making a ballade which he was to call the 'Ballade of Roast Fish,' and Tabary spluttering admiration at his shoulder. The poet was a rag of a man, dark, little, and lean, with hollow cheeks and thin black locks. He carried his four-and-twenty years with feverish animation. Greed had made folds about his eyes, evil smiles had puckered his mouth. The wolf and pig struggled together in his face. It was an eloquent, sharp, ugly, earthly countenance. His hands were small and prehensile, with fingers knotted like a cord; and they were continually flickering in front of him in violent and excessive pantomime. As for Tabary, a broad, complacent, admiring imbecility breathed from his squash nose and slobbering lips; he had become a thief, justas he might have become the most decent of burgesses, by the imperious chance that rules the lives of human geese and human donkeys.
"At the monk's other hand, Montigny and Thevenin Pensete played a game of chance. About the first there clung some flavor of good birth and training, as about a fallen angel; something long, lithe, and courtly in the person; something aquiline and darkling in the face. Thevenin, poor soul, was in great feather; he had done a good stroke of knavery that afternoon in the Faubourg St. Jacques, and all night he had been gaining from Montigny. A flat smile illuminated his face; his bald head shone rosily in a garland of red curls; his little protuberant stomach shook with silent chucklings as he swept in his gains."
The first thing to note about this fine descriptive fragment is that the persons are definitely placed in the room. The monk before the fire is the focal point; the others are placed in groups on his right and left hand. Two objects are achieved thereby; not only does the picture gain in definition, but it is given a closer relation to the story, which is partly concerned with what happens in the room. In other words, Stevenson describes his characters in relation to the story, and does not merely describe each one as he has occasion to name him, in isolation, and merely to give a reader a photograph with the name. Each is described in relation to the story and as he comes up in it.
The second thing to note is the extreme brevity and yet the complete adequacy of the description of each person. There is no itemizing of physical details; Stevenson has visualized not so much each man as the most striking characteristic of each man, and has used all resources of language to precipitate that characteristic in words. The result is impressive. A reader gains a clear and definite impression of the individualpersonality of each character, his spiritual nature as well as his physical aspect. The definition of the impression in each case results from the author's having described nothing possessed by any two in common. He has shown the unique quality of each person, which is all that is necessary.
This point of the technique of describing persons is nine-tenths of the whole technique. The fiction writer's proper aim is not so much to build up a physical picture of a character by itemizing the details of hair, complexion, stature, and so forth, as it is to reproduce the person's unique quality as an individual human being. Whether the character is an individual depends on the writer's creative genius, but whether he seems individual depends on his actions and the way he is described. Stevenson states Villon's salient physical characteristics, then remarks that the wolf and pig struggled together in his face, and a reader has the man, soul and body. The same method, though with less emphasis, is employed in picturing the others of the group.
A fundamental philosophical truth is that all knowledge is relative; we know things only in comparison with things previously encountered and classified. It follows that the difference between objects or persons is the ultimate factor that determines the character of each. The single unique quality of any character in a story is what the author must bring out in describing him if he is to have on paper the vivacity and distinction of the author's mental conception. In real life a reader meets many men and women; he does not take trouble to phrase the individual peculiarity of each, but he is acutely conscious of it. Each acquaintance stands for something unique and distinctive in his eyes, though he does not and perhaps could not state the essential difference from all others. And, indescribing a person in his story, the writer must state that person's essential difference from all others, if the person is to have the reality of life for a reader, for the reader's only contact with the person is through the writer's words. In life, a reader will eliminate unconsciously from his mental representation of an acquaintance all qualities which the latter has in common with others, but verbal representation of a human being is shadowy enough at best, and in a story the writer himself must eliminate his characters' undistinctive qualities for the reader, or the persons will lack definition and concreteness.
The third thing to note about this example of the description of persons is a matter which it really does not illustrate, because it is perfect. My statement is at once obscure and paradoxical, but what is meant is that in describing a person it is possible to give so sharp a verbal etching that the reader will believe from the word itself. It is the descriptive aspect of narrating with such vividness that the word will be accepted as visual evidence. As it happens, in describing Villon and his fellows, Stevenson has found a combination of words which not only constitutes a vivid picture but is one that a reader may realize in imagination without loss of definition. Yet take such a touch as Balzac's in stating that a character had a face like a glass of dirty water. It is extremely vivid, but its vividness is somewhat superficial, that is, if a reader dwells on it, and tries to realize the image in thought, it will lose much of its definition. I have first-hand knowledge of the effect on only one reader, of course, myself, but others have confessed when questioned the same inability to realize this particular figure without loss of definition. The important point for the writer of fiction is that a reader will not pause to scrutinize too closely an image verbally definite and striking; such adescriptive touch as to a minor character will perform its office of giving the person vivacity and reality better than a more accurate but less heightened itemization of details. In a sense, Stevenson's passage is an example of this matter. It happens that his description can be realized without loss of definition. That is why it is perfect. But the same method may be employed less justly and yet have more effect than any mere itemization of physical details.
In picturing his chief characters the writer should not rely solely upon mere verbal sharpness. If the story is worth while they will have saliences that should be stated as well as exemplified in action. But the minor characters are shadowy enough at best, and any verbal definition that can be given them will lend concreteness to the story. If an image is not only striking, but also subject to realization without loss, so much the better. If an image is verbally happy, but not intrinsically perfect, it may be better to employ it than to write with just accuracy, but flatly. I believe that accuracy should be sacrificed to verbal felicity in no other place than in describing a minor character. It is an aspect of the general fictional necessity that mere literalness be sacrificed to verisimilitude, and, in describing a minor character, verisimilitude requires that a reader be faced by what will seem to him to be a definite person rather than some particular definite person. Strictly speaking, a minor character need not be individualized, but he must be drawn with the nearest possible approach to the sharp outlines of life. A major character must be drawn definite and unique; a minor character need only be drawn definite, though the more individual he is made the better. It follows that any sharp verbal image applied to a minor character will help the story, though it is within limits meretricious.
The three matters here discussed are the main considerations to be held in mind in describing the persons of a story. They should be described in relation to the story, as they are placed by their actions in the physical setting. In describing the chief characters, the persons whose personalities have significant relation to the course of events, the writer should endeavor to bring out with maximum definition and vividness the single unique quality of each person. In describing minor characters, the chief necessity is to give each person as much as possible of the definition and concreteness of life. Little space is available, and the writer may be driven to the use of somewhat meretricious figures. The perfect figure should always be sought, but, if the writer cannot discover it, the literally inaccurate figure may be better than flat writing. The general aim in describing persons is to give maximum concreteness to the whole story, and seeming definition will sometimes serve as well as actual definition.
The necessity that the persons of a story be described in relation to it, as they are placed in the physical setting, requires the writer to realize and regard the mechanical limitations of the story. If it is told in the first person, and the narrating character perceives another in the distance, a description of such other must confine itself to matters apparent at a distance, until the persons approach one another more nearly. The same necessity obtains where the story is told in the third person, from the viewpoint of a character who perceives another at a distance. Likewise, a character cannot be made to see through a house or a mountain, or into the next room. A good deal has been written on this matter, but from the wrong angle. The writer should not seek to master any abstract rule, rather should he strive to visualize hisstory as he writes it from the viewpoint from which he has chosen to tell it. If he thus gets into his story—so to speak—in describing he will unconsciously respect the mechanical limitations of the tale. Moreover, his attention will be free for the severe task of expression, undistracted by any eye to precepts. The way to write a story is to picture it in imagination and then follow it with the pen. That is why the unpracticed writer of high imaginative powers so often writes with a strict ifunconsciousregard for the laws of technique.
Another matter as to the description of persons is worth noting. The normal human being has more than the sense of sight; he can also hear, feel, and smell; and verbal appeals to these other senses may be effective. The timbre of a character's voice or sound of his step, the feel of his hand when shaken, an odor about him or her, as of liquor, tobacco, or perfume, may be stated in describing the person. Such a descriptive touch will often prove most useful, the more so because it gives another dimension to the person, so to speak. A very characteristic and impressive thing about Uriah Heep is his handshake, as Copperfield felt it. The matter will be taken up again in discussing the technique of describing setting, where it necessarily bulks larger.[K]
The fiction writer is a dramatist in a very real sense, but he cannot depend for verisimilitude on flesh-and-blood actors, painted scenery, and actual properties. He must describe all these to give his narrative verisimilitude and concreteness. The technique of describing persons has been discussed, and the technique of describing mere objects, the properties of the piece, as the dagger in the hand of an assassin, is not so much a part of the technique of fiction writing as of the technique of writing generally. It is a question of rhetoric. But the technique of describing setting is fictional as well as rhetorical, that is, the writer of a story must consider what he should describe as well as how he should describe it. His task is more highly selective than the task of describing the persons or properties of a story. They, with the events involving them, are the story itself; the setting or environment of a story is not, but merely a background or stage. Yet sometimes, as in the story of atmosphere, the setting is an integral and necessary part of the fiction. One can only say that it all depends.
The fact that the setting is sometimes an integral part of the story and sometimes not requires the writer to set to work differently in each case. In writing the story of atmosphere, he must regard the setting as matter for reproduction for its own sake; in writing the normal story, he must regard the setting as only incidental, and should not reproduce it unless it will clarify the course of events for a reader or serve to give the story its necessary body and verisimilitude. The story of atmosphere requires separate treatment; here only the technique of describing the setting or settings of the normal story will be discussed.
As stated, in writing the normal story, the story where interest centers in the course of events, the writer should not describe setting unless it will clarify the course of events or lend body to the fiction in the eyes of a reader. General descriptive writing has no other function to perform. Realization of the truth will lead the writer to avoid writing great wastes of description. If a particular story requires that the physical conformation of a neighborhood be brought out, a few words will serve better than many, which will be apt to confuse a reader, at least to distract his attention. And when the writer describes setting to give body to the story, scattered descriptive touches will have more effect than a single isolated block of description. It is another aspect of the matter touched upon in relation to the description of persons. If a story is to have the concreteness, definition, and vivacity of life, the descriptive quality must permeate the whole, both as to the persons and their environment. The descriptive task cannot be performed once and for all, either as to the persons or the setting, any more than can the narrative task. Narration continues throughout the whole story, for it is the story; and likewise description must accompany each item of narration, for description is a part or quality of the whole story. Where the course of events is rapid, their quick succession itself will counterfeit a like phase of life, for an observer would note the events as such rather than the setting. But where the course ofevents is more leisurely, descriptive touches as to setting will be necessary to counterfeit such a phase of life, for an observer would note not only the happenings but the environment. A story is a reproduction of a phase of life; a reader is its observer; and the whole must be made to stand forth for him as a like spectacle would show in actuality.
The other necessity, to describe setting to give the story verisimilitude and concreteness, is not so easy to state or to meet. This sort of descriptive quality must permeate the whole story, as has been stated, and its introduction or creation is a matter of difficulty. The natural and best way to conquer the secret is to imagine the course of events while standing in the shoes of the person from whose viewpoint the story is told, then to follow them with the pen. Where the character would see, feel, hear, or smell something, state the impression upon him. Thus Kipling, in "Without Benefit of Clergy": "... Old Pir Khan squatted at the head of Holden's horse, his police sabre across his knees, pulling drowsily at a big water-pipe that croaked like a bull-frog in a pond. Ameera's mother sat spinning in the lower veranda, and the wooden gate was shut and barred. The music of a marriage procession came to the roof above the gentle hum of the city, and a string of flying-foxes crossed the face of the low moon." Kipling has imagined his story as Holden would have lived it; not only has he seen through Holden's eyes—he has heard with Holden's ears. In this short passage there are three appeals to the sense of sight, and two to the sense of hearing, and the fragment gains by stating more than visual impressions.
The point has been noted in discussing the description of persons, but is worth enlarging upon. The task to give body to a story is difficult enough atbest, and the writer can afford to neglect no resource. Of the five senses whereby man grasps his surroundings, that of taste is probably of the least use to the writer of fiction, but the senses of sight, hearing, smell, and touch can all be utilized on occasion. A character at sea can be stated to have seen the waves of a storm, felt the force of the gale and the sting of driven raindrops, and tasted the salt spray, also to have smelt the musty fo'c'sle when he went below. Each touch will give the whole picture added reality for a reader. The beginning writer is too apt to rely solely upon what a character might have seen. A deserted house has a smell as characteristic as its look, and the fragrance of violets is as impressive as their visual beauty. Night can be told from day by its odor, and the rattle of typewriter keys in an office is as suggestive of modern industry as a serenade is of other days and other loves. A hero can feel his sweetheart's soft or toil-roughened fingers as well as see her expensive silks and furs or cheap and much worn dress. Life is a complex of many sense-perceptions, and the more numerous and varied the fleeting impressions a character is stated to have caught, the more concrete and real the story will be for a reader.
Description is the usual but not the happiest term to denote the general process of giving a story a setting and environment of its own. It is—or should be—more than a process of picturing scenes. All pertinent and striking sense-impressions received by the characters should be stated, for only thus can the nearest approach to a just representation of life be made. The writer's sole object is to give the fiction the concreteness of life; it cannot be achieved by painting verbal pictures for a reader, but it can be achieved by stating justly the ways in which the totality of the environment affected the characters. Just description of thecharacters will make them real men and women for a reader, and just statement of the effects of their environment upon them will make them real people in a real world.
The strictly executive technique of descriptive writing is not hard to grasp, however hard it may be to find the desired word. The impression that the character involved would receive first should be stated first, and the less striking details should follow in the order of their impressiveness. Thus, in describing a skating scene, the observant character should be made to see the interweaving skaters and to hear the peculiar whinnying ring of the skates before he sees individuals. It is all a matter of visualizing, or, better, visualizing and living the story in the shoes of the character from whose viewpoint it is told. The writer who will live each story thus in imagination, and will state the successive impressions the character would naturally receive while moving through such a chain of events in real life, will do far better work than one who strives to carry in his head a body of rules and precepts and to write with observance of them. Technique cannot be discussed without directly stating principles, but the business of actual writing is natural, not mechanical and artificial. The writer becomes artificial precisely when he forgets he is writing a story and begins to daub in descriptive matter without relation to the characters or the events. The thing to do is to get inside the skin of the character from whose viewpoint the particular story or particular part of the story is told, to see with his eyes, hear with his ears, smell, taste, and feel with his nerves, and to state no impression as received by him that the course of events would not allow him to receive. A horse-thief fleeing from a posse will have no eye for the beauties of a landscape. If the writer desires to show the scene for the sake ofits contrast with such an event, he must do so lightly and quickly. A reader will be mounted with the pursued man, and his eyes will be ahead.
As to the matter of contrast between event and setting, no rules can be stated. All that can be said is that sometimes it is a useful device. But the main purpose of descriptive matter in the normal story is to give it concreteness, and generally the purpose will be realized best by stating the sense-impressions which would be received in actuality by the characters. A story will gain much in naturalness and plausibility thereby, for the same reason that narration in the first person or from the viewpoint of a single character is the most natural and plausible way to write, if the particular story permits.
One other thing may be useful to note. In describing a person, the writer should strive to state his unique quality as an individual; in describing a scene, also, the writer should seek to bring out its unique quality. That quality should be sifted out and realized in imagination, and then the writer should search diligently for the few telling words that will precipitate it. As the story moves on, men, women, and children, houses, ships, and electric cars, streets, deserts, and smiling fields, will come beneath the writer's pen. And they must all be given reality, not for their own sakes, but for the sake of the story.
Potency of Dialogue—Mechanical Distribution—Naturalness—Directness—Dialect—Situation—Three Resources to Meet Demands of Situation—Physical Effect—Ellipsis—Elements of Language—Style—Verbs of Utterance—Transcription of Speech for it Own Sake—Creative Process.
When the writer of a story is not using narrative or description, he will be transcribing the speech of his characters. And in the matter of transcribing speech the writer of fiction has a chance comparable with that of the dramatist and the practitioner in the graphic arts. The effect of narrative or description upon a reader is secondary and derivative; the effect upon him of written speech or dialogue is very nearly primary. The fiction writer has not the actor's studied tones to give dialogue complete life and body, but the appeal of written speech is infinitely more direct and compelling than that of any other sort of writing. A word is a word, whether spoken or written, and cannot be read without setting up some echo in the ear. When the writer of a story describes its hero, a reader may or may not see an image, faint or distinct, behind the words. But when the writer sets down his hero's words, a reader cannot choose but hear. Even if the words be unnatural and stilted, they will be heard. That is why badly managed dialogue is so potent to ruin a story.The speech of the characters in a story is strongly impressive, whether for good or ill. The more powerful a tool, the more damage it will do if mismanaged.
Thus the essential force of dialogue or written speech may be a handicap or an assistance. If a character's words jar upon a reader, they will do so strongly, if they are natural and in keeping with the whole conception of the person, they will do much to give him the breath of life. It follows that the writer of fiction should give due attention to the transcription of speech, the more so because superficially the task is easy.
Perhaps the first consideration is the mere mechanical distribution of dialogue. In real life only the after-dinner speaker talks at inordinate length. Conversation, except that of the bore, is essentially fragmentary. Not only is each person's part fragmentary, but the whole conversation is usually somewhat brief. People caught in a more or less rapid sequence of events have no time to talk at length, and a story is a more or less rapid sequence of events. The writer must counterfeit a like phase of life with his story, and to do so he must mingle the mechanical elements of the story in a texture pleasing because varied. The mechanical elements of a story are its narrative, its description, and its dialogue or speech of the characters; these must blend and intermingle, varying the appeal to a reader and simulating the pattern of life. An unfailing sign of the amateur, at least of the amateur with no innate sense of fictional values, is a story made up of hard and angular blocks of narration, description, and dialogue. The skilled writer—if the particular story permits, a proviso always to be understood—will intermingle speech with action and description with both. Dialogue should no more be written pages at atime than should description, and if a great deal of speech must be transcribed en bloc, it should be broken up to some extent by descriptive touches and even by narration more detailed than that part of the story naturally calls for.
The next consideration is to make the people of a story talk naturally. The necessity has affiliations with the necessity that the speech of any person be made characteristic, for dialogue is an efficient aid in the portrayal of character. The writer must make each person talk like a human being, even if not like some particular human being. Good, nervous dialogue will be full of elisions, mere exclamations, unfinished sentences, gaps that a reader will bridge readily for himself. He will be skilled in the business, for that is the kind of talk addressed to him every day. In more sedate and leisurely ages, if we may judge from the tales then written, people could frame a sentence on the lips, but it is a lost art now. To be "literary" in transcribing speech is to invoke almost certain failure. "Literary" dialogue usually is ruinous. A reader's interest may survive stilted and affected narrative or descriptive writing, for most readers have read so much of such writing that it is almost expected, but stilted and affected dialogue will kill interest once and for all. In narrative there is something behind the word for the reader, even in description there is a faint something, but in dialogue there is nothing at all. The word is the word; if it fails, the failure is total.
Yet it will not do to be quite literal in transcribing speech. If the speech of real life is broken and fragmentary, it is also impossibly wordy and purposeless. The lawyer who has spent weary hours in reading transcripts of testimony knows the fact to his cost. The writer of fiction has not space to set down with minute accuracy just what his people probably wouldhave said during the progress of the story; he must counterfeit the auditory impression of real speech by eliding and leaving sentences unfinished; but this mechanically broken and abrupt speech must have the purpose and direction which is wanting in real speech. The characters must not only talk naturally; they must say certain definite things and convey definite and necessary information, directly or by implication. There is little need to emphasize here the necessity that the writer have some fictional purpose in making a character say something, except to warn against transcribing speech solely for the sake of its suppositious intrinsic wit or vivacity, for each story will assert its own claims over the talk of the characters.
The question of dialect has been debated often and at length, both for and against. There are many fine stories in dialect in whole or in part, but their merit does not result from the employment of dialect, though the dialect may be a necessary part of some of them. In the larger sense, the question is merely one of naturalness. The pronunciation of no man is in exact accord with the ideal standard of the dictionary; all have mannerisms of speech and accent. In some sections such mannerisms are so common and marked as to form a dialect, almost a patois, and, if a story involves acharacterfrom such a district, fidelity to fact requires the writer to write dialect when the person is speaking. Dialect in a story must be intelligible to one unfamiliar with it, which requires the writer to iron out its greatest divergences from the normal in an endeavor to retain its piquancy while avoiding its obscurity. The question is not one of technique, but one of material. The only insistence of technique as to dialect is that it must be intelligible.
Unquestionably there is prejudice against the story told wholly in strongly marked dialect by a narratingcharacter, both on the part of editors and readers. The type had a vogue some years ago, but its commercial and artistic defect is that it tends to be unintelligible.
Dialect is a useful aid in characterization, as is any slighter mannerism of speech. The matter will be taken up in discussing the portrayal of character. Here I am concerned only with the more general aspects of the management of dialogue.
As stated, the first necessity in writing dialogue is to place the word where it would be spoken in life, during the action, not in isolated masses of speech. The second necessity is to write naturally, and yet to invest the hasty and elided speech of the characters with purpose in the fiction. Dialogue must be not only natural and easy; it also must be significant, significant in relation to life—which is the matter of naturalness re-stated—significant in relation to the characters, and significant in relation to the story. That is to say, the justly written bit of dialogue will be natural, will illustrate character, and will inform a reader, directly or by implication, of something he must know if he is to catch the full savor of the story. These are the most general conditions to be borne in mind in writing dialogue. It remains to discuss the necessity that a writer consider the matter of situation while transcribing speech. The necessity requires discussion. Not only is it stringent, but it is politely ignored by too many books on technique.
The abstract statement is that the same person will talk differently according to his situation at the moment. Jones is Jones, of course, but the Jones who discusses preparedness with Smith is a different Jones from him who telephones to summon the doctor for his dying child, and his speech in each case will not be the same. My lady will not berate her maid for a fault asshe will reprove her lover, and the head bookkeeper talking to a subordinate and to the boss would impress a listener as two different persons. The man and his speech are influenced by the event. The writer of fiction, being under constant necessity to counterfeit life, must keep the speech of his characters in accord with the situation as well as with the general looseness of actual talk.
It may be said that this necessity to write dialogue with an eye to the situation of the persons is merely a more narrow phase of the general necessity to be natural. That is true. The writer will never go astray who lives his story in imagination and sets down the speech of the characters as it would have been phrased in actuality. The only trouble is to determine just how the persons would have spoken, and it is a trouble because it requires more than a vivid imagination. Imagination will embody the course of events for a writer, will touch in the setting with glowing color, but imagination alone will not supply the words spoken. To find them, the writer must employ his intellectual faculties as well as his imaginative powers, and precisely for the same reason that the characters must employ their intellectual faculties in speaking. One who writes a story lives vicariously, lives another's life for the time being, and where that other would be forced to think, as in speaking, the writer must think likewise. Where the other would be forced only to observe, as in witnessing events or observing setting, the writer can rely solely on his imaginative powers.
There will be little difficulty in meeting the demands of the situation that is casual and commonplace. Speech that is merely easy and natural is adequate. If the incident is not particularly significant in a dramatic or emotional sense, the way that the character would talk in such circumstances is not hard to find. Thestory requires that a Southern gentleman of the old school welcome a stranger to his house, let us say; it will not be hard to find the host's words on that occasion. But suppose he must discover a few pages farther on that the stranger is his daughter's seducer. What will he say? The writer must find for him words that will chime with the tensity and dramatic value of the situation. To meet the necessity the writer has three resources.
The first lies apart from the matter of speech. By just portrayal of the physical effect of such a discovery upon a character the writer will accomplish much. To put it flippantly, the character will be made to talk naturally by making him speechless. To put it justly, in such a heightened moment in a story narration should be very detailed, and the writer should show the physical effect of any discovery upon a character before transcribing the words born of the moment.
The second resource of the writer to meet the necessity that a character's words fit the emotional and dramatic qualities of a situation is largely mechanical. Even casual speech is elliptical and exclamatory; speech born of excitement or agony of soul is strongly so. The more broken and fragmentary the character's speech, the greater the suggestion of emotional stress and upheaval.
The third resource of the writer is a matter of diction. English is a language compounded of Anglo-Saxon and Latin and Greek elements. The primary basis of the tongue is Anglo-Saxon; that is why it is English, and not a Romance language. We learn the simpler, less abstract part of our vocabulary, the part that stands for fundamentals, in childhood; the rest is acquired later. Not only is the Anglo-Saxon word the word we know best; it is also the word which will express our deepest loves and dreads and hates. TheLatin element of the language gives it its flexibility and its capacity to express ideas, but its capacity to express emotion resides in its Anglo-Saxon element. Love, hate, birth, death, God, devil, father, mother, sister, brother, sin, lust, greed, filth, hope, care, weep, laugh, smile—all are strictly English words of Teutonic origin, and all are much more forceful and suggestive or connotative than any Anglicised Latin equivalents. The writer of fiction should realize the fact, and should make his people use strictly English words when caught in a pregnant situation. A lawyer, in discussing a case, properly may be made to employ the word deceased, for instance, but when informed that his wife has died suddenly, "Dead?" he should be made to say, "Dead?" That is very obvious, of course, but it will serve for an illustration.[L]
The question of character intrudes here. All speech should be characteristic of the person uttering it, but the necessity that the word should fit the moment is more stringent than the necessity that the word should fit the person, provided that the moment is so tense that its force might be expected to strip any husk of mannerisms from the persons involved. Indeed, the more strikingly individual the casual speech of a character, the greater will be the effect of making him utter in a crisis the broken and disjointed English words that come to the lips of all of us when our loves or our pocketbooks are threatened.
After stating the necessity to make dialogue accord with situation, and after pointing out the three resources of the writer to this end, a word of caution may not be out of place. In all human probability the writer will have for the significant situations of his story a much keener feeling and appreciationthanany reader. There is some danger that the writer's feeling for his own situations will lead him to make his people talk a thought too brokenly for acceptance by a reader without the same keen appreciation of all the emotional and dramatic values of the situations of the story. The danger cannot be overcome by toning down the dialogue; the writer must force a reader to feel the power of all the situations of the story. In other words, dialogue in tense situations must meet the fact of situation, and each situation itself must be built up for a reader by proper development and adequate writing of the whole story. The art of fiction is a whole, as a story is a whole, and perfect handling of one element alone of his story, as the dialogue, will avail the writer nothing.