About the Climax
The most important part of a story should be the climax (I use the word climax in its modern sense, meaning the terminal point where all is brought to a conclusion, the dénouement, the final catastrophe). The climax must be in the author's mind from the very first sentence, and everything he writes should be with this in view—i.e., his own view, not that of the reader; it must be his aim throughout the story to conceal the climax from the reader till the last moment. Nothing with an obvious solution will hold the reader's interest.
Every piece of writing should have some sort of a conclusive ending—a satisfactory one if possible. Writers sometimes make their fiction terminate in an abrupt, unsatisfactory manner, which is no real finish, and leaves the reader wishing it had not all ended like that, and wondering if there is more to come.
When such defects are pointed out, the amateur invariably replies, "But it must end like that, because that is what actually happened." They forget that the fact a circumstance actually happened is no guarantee that it was worth recording; nor is the circumstance necessarily the symmetrical finish to the story,—and a piece of writing should be symmetrical, and in well-balanced design. You cannot always detach an incident from contingent happenings, and then say it is complete. The larger proportion of our actions are linked with, and interdependent upon, other actions.
Therefore see to it that your story terminates in a satisfactory manner. That which apparently ends in failure to-day, may take a new lease of life to-morrow and prove to be merely a stepping-stone to new developments.
It is not bound to be a happy ending (though if there be a choice, happy endings are by far the best, in a world that has enough of sorrow in its work-a-day life); but it must be an ending leaving a sense of right completion with the reader—the conviction that this is the logical conclusion of the whole.
All great works of art leave behind them a sense of fulfilment, the "something attempted, something done," that is always the desirable finale to the human heart and mind. We hate to be left in a state of never-to-be-satisfied suspension; and we invariably reject and condemn to oblivion the work that deliberately leaves us thus.
Some people have an idea that it is "artistic" to leave a story in a half-finished condition, or with a disappointing ending, or a general feeling of blankness. A few years ago there was a mania for this type of story among small writers: those who were not clever enough to produce originality of idea, and at the same time get their work logical, symmetrical and conclusive, would seize on some miserable, or at any rate uncomfortable, ending—drown one of the lovers the day before the wedding; part husband and wife irrevocably, and possibly kill their only child in a railway accident in the last chapter—anything in fact that would produce what one might call a "never-more" finale. And then a certain section of the public (who really did not like it at all, but feared to say so lest they should appear to be behind the times!) would exclaim, "So artistic!"
Yet it was anything but artistic; three-quarters of the time it was logically and morally bad; logically bad because it was seldom the true and natural conclusion that one would have seen in real life; morally bad because it is actually wrong to manufacture and circulate gloom unnecessarily.
I repeat again I would not imply that all endings must be happy; great tragedies need tragic conclusions; suffering is as much a part of real life as joy; a certain course of action must inevitably lead to a sorrowful ending, and there is no getting away from the unalterable truth, "The wages of sin is death." But the type of story to which I am alluding is seldom great or tragic: it is not even painful; it is more often weak and washy, and ends with unsatisfactory incompletion because the author fancied it was brilliantly original!
Always work steadily towards the climax, speeding up the movement as you near the end. Make big events come closer and closer together, with less detail between, the nearer you are to the conclusion.
Do not anticipate your climax, and get there too soon, and then try to make up the book to the required length by adding on an after-piece.
The climax should be such that it leaves in the reader's mind a sense of absolute fitness, a certainty that it was after all the one right ending—even though it came as a great surprise.
The Use of "Curtains"
When a story is presented in sections, as in a serial or a play, it is advisable to make each section end—so far as possible—in such a manner that the reader is set longing for the next part. Thus, while the climax is generally the solution of a problem, a "curtain" is usually a problem needing solution (literally, a good place for ringing down the curtain, since the audience will be on tenterhooks to know what happens next).
This arrangement is sound business as well as a good mental policy. It is wise to make an instalment leave some final, incisive mark on the mind of the readers, if there is to be an interval before the story is resumed, otherwise it may be difficult for the public to recollect what went before, and the thread of continuity will be lost.
More than this, an editor, despite the usual backwardness of his intelligence, realises the desirability of securing readers for subsequent issues of his periodical, no less than for the current number. If each instalment of the serial terminate with some mystery unsolved, or some hopeless entanglement needing to be straightened out, or some problem that baffles everybody (most of all the readers), it is much more likely that people will rush to secure the next number to see how things turn out, than if the instalment merely ends with the hero indulging in a tame, lengthy soliloquy on artichokes, and leaves nothing more exciting to be settled than whether these same artichokes shall, or shall not, be cooked for the heroine's lunch.
On more than one occasion I have had readers write protestingly because an instalment of a serial has left off cruelly "just when one was frightfully anxious to know what would happen next!" But that is the very place for an instalment to end: good "curtains" are worth as much to a serial as a good plot; and if a story lack good "curtains," an editor thinks twice before purchasing it for serial publication, even though it has undoubted literary merit and will make a good volume.
Inexperienced writers overlook this necessity for holding the reader's attention from section to section, and sometimes offer an editor serial stories without sufficient backbone or dramatic interest to hold the readers' attention from the first instalment to the second, much less for twelve or more detachments.
Or they crowd several excitements into a couple of chapters, and then run on uneventfully for a dozen or so.
This does not mean that problems must crop up mechanically at stated intervals, and the serial be produced on a mathematical basis of one murder, or mystery to so many words! But it does mean that the author must see to it that his important incidents are fairly distributed throughout the work as a whole, and that each chapter ends at the psychological moment. This gives an editor a chance to break the story at places where the excitement runs highest.
Careful attention to balance will help the writer to get the action fairly distributed. If the MS. be examined as a whole, with this question of balance in mind, the writer will be able to detect if too much movement has been concentrated in one part, with undue expanses of uneventfulness stretching between.
Dickens was an Adept at "Curtains"
No one knew better than Charles Dickens how to keep the reader on the qui vive for the next chapter. Joseph H. Choate says in his Memoirs: "As Dickens' books came out they were eagerly devoured in America. Dombey and Son came out in numbers long before the laying of the first Atlantic cable, and several numbers went over in fort-nightly steamers, the most frequent communication of that day. In an early part of the story little Paul was brought to the verge of the grave, the last number to hand leaving him hovering between life and death, and all America was anxious to know his fate. When the next steamer arrived bringing decisive news, the dock was crowded with people. The passengers imagined some great national or international event had happened. But it was only the eager reading public who had hurried down to meet the steamer, and get the first news as to whether little Paul was alive or dead."
The late Dr. S. G. Green has told how, at the day school he attended as a boy, "work was suspended once a month on the publication of the instalment of Pickwick Papers, which the head master read aloud to the assembled and eager boys. When Mr. Pickwick was released from the Fleet Prison, a whole holiday was given, to celebrate the event!"
This is the type of serial story an editor yearns for: one that will end with so dramatic a "curtain" each month, that the public suspend all employment in order to secure copies of the following issue, and learn what happened next!
Even the final sentences of an instalment with a good "curtain" can be made to do wonders in whetting the reader's appetite for more. But it is advisable to see how they read in connection with the words that inevitably follow. For instance, there was a lurid serial in a daily paper which ended one day with the words:
"'Cat,' she cried, 'vile, odious, contemptible cat.' To be continued to-morrow."
"But," commented Punch, "could she do any better than that even after she had slept on it?"
On Making Verse
Most of us break out into verse at one period of our life. Youth starting out to explore a world that seems teeming with new discoveries, generally tries to voice his emotions in poetry—not because youth has any special aptitude for this form of literature, but because the poet has expressed, as no other writer has done, the hopes and ideals, the craving for romance and the thirst for beauty, that are among the characteristics of our golden years. And youth, wishing to voice his own emotions, naturally selects the literary form in which such emotions have already been enshrined.
Verse-writing is a very useful exercise for the student—as I have already stated in a previous chapter; but until we are fairly advanced, it is well to avoid regarding our efforts too seriously.
To string together certain sets of syllables with rhymes in couples, is an exceedingly simple matter; but to write poetry is the highest and the most difficult form of literary art.
It is hard to convince the beginner that the verses he has put together are not poetry—even though they may be technically correct as to make-up, which is by no means always the case. He is inclined to argue that he has dreamed dreams, and seen visions, and travelled far from the prose of life; what he writes, therefore, must be scintillating with star dust, if with nothing more heavenly.
For the making of poetry, the dreams of youth are valuable; take care of them, they are among the precious things of life, and they vanish with neglect or rough handling; but something more than dreams is needful.
Study the Laws governing Metrical Composition
If you feel you can best express yourself in verse, make a comprehensive study of the laws governing metrical composition. Such knowledge not only enables you to write in a shapely, orderly, pleasing form, but it may also help you to ascertain what is wrong, when something you have written seems jarring, or halting, or lacking at any point.
To many amateurs, laws and rules suggest a cramping influence; they feel sure they could do far better work if unhampered by any restrictions. In reality, however, the limitations such laws impose are a gain to the poet, since they compel him to sort out his ideas, to differentiate between essentials and non-essentials, to condense his thoughts and measure his words. And if properly carried out, all this should result in the reduction of verbosity to the minimum, and a moderately clear presentation of a subject—it does not always, I know, but it ought to do so.
I am neither enumerating nor discussing these laws in this volume, since excellent books on the subject have been published. I merely wish to point out to the student the necessity for giving the matter attention.
Some people think the fact that the idea embodied in their verse is good and ennobling, should condone weak or faulty workmanship. But, alas! in this callous world it doesn't, as a rule.
The ideal verse is that which presents beautifully a great thought in a small compass.
Ideas are more Important than Rhapsodies
A poem should centralise on some special thought or idea. Rhapsodies, no matter how intense, do not constitute poetry; every poem, be it ever so short, should suggest some definite train of thought. Haphazard statements or description are no more permissible in a poem than in a novel.
All nonsense verse, even, must have an underlying semblance of a sensible idea, though when you come to analyse it, it may turn out to be the height of absurdity.
Moreover the Ideas should be Poetic
Not only must a poem contain a definite idea, it must be a poetic idea, something that will lift the reader above the prose of life. Try to make him see beauty if you can; and to hear beauty in the music of your words. Poetry should be beautiful and suggest loveliness, whenever possible.
However simple and ordinary the subject of your verse, try to carry the reader beyond superficialities, to the wonderful and the unordinary that so often give glory to life's commonplaces.
Take a well-worn subject like the incoming tide; how many people have been moved to write on this topic!
I could not possibly reckon up the number of times I have seen "ocean's roar" rhyming with "rocky shore." The writer who is nothing more than a versifier is content with a description of the sights and sounds of the beach; but the poet looks further than this. Read Mrs. Meynell's "Song," and you will better understand my meaning when I say that the poet must endeavour to show us, through the substance of things material, the shadow of things spiritual.
SONG
By Alice Meynell
As the unhastening tide doth roll,
Dear and desired, upon the whole
Long shining strand, and floods the caves,
Your love comes filling with happy waves
The open sea-shore of my soul.
But inland from the seaward spaces,
None knows, not even you, the places
Brimmed at your coming, out of sight
—The little solitudes of delight
This tide constrains in dim embraces.
You see the happy shore, wave-rimmed,
But know not of the quiet dimmed
Rivers your coming floods and fills,
The little pools, 'mid happier hills,
My silent rivulets, over-brimmed.
What, I have secrets from you? Yes.
But, O my Sea, your love doth press
And reach in further than you know,
And fill all these; and when you go,
There's loneliness in loneliness.
By Courtesy of
The Walter Scott Publishing Co., Ltd.
Amateur Verse usually falls under these Headings
Putting on one side religious verse (which one does not wish to dissect too brutally, since one recognises and respects the spirit underlying it, despite its sometimes poor technique), amateur verse usually falls under one of four headings:
1. Lovers' outpourings.
2. Baby prattle.
3. Nature dissertations.
4. Stuff worth reading.
The first of these explains itself, and includes perennial poems entitled "Blue Eyes"; "Parted"; "To Daphne" (or Muriel, or Gladys, or some other equally nice person); "Absence"; "My Lady"; "Twin Souls," etc. In these the following are generally regarded as original and delightful rhymes: Love and dove; mourn and forlorn; girl and curl; moon and June; eyes and skies.
Without wishing to hurt any sensitive feelings, truth compels me to state that it is rare for such productions to have any literary value.
The verses coming under the second heading are frequently written by young girls, unmarried aunts, and very new fathers; occasionally mothers give vent to their maternal affection in this way, but more often they find their time fully occupied in attending to the little ones' material needs.
Such poems (often entitled "Lullaby") are usually characterised by an entire lack of anything that could possibly be called an idea. They will apostrophise the infant, and tell it how lovely it is, begging it to go to sleep, and assuring it that mother will keep watch the while—which no up-to-date mother would dream of doing in these busy, servantless days! But as to any concrete reason why the verses were penned, one looks for it in vain.
I do not think such effusions serve any useful purpose. They are not even desirable as an outlet for the feelings, since there are better ways in which one can work out one's affection for a child—woolly boots, pinafores, personal attention, and the like. Nevertheless every woman's paper is deluged with MSS. of this type.
The Nature dissertation is a trifle better than the preceding, because it does offer a little scope for looking around and noting things. But the weakness here is this: the writers do not always look around; they as often sit at a comfortable writing-table indoors and amalgamate other people's observations; and the outcome is a recital of the obvious, with oft-repeated platitudes.
The following are well-worn titles: "A Spring Song"; "Bluebells"; "Twilight Calm"; "Sunset"; "Autumn Leaves"; occasionally they take a Wordsworthian turn, "Lines written on the shore at Atlantic City" or "Thoughts on seeing Stratford-on-Avon for the first time" (such a poem naturally beginning "Immortal Bard, who—" etc.).
At best, the majority of nature poems, as written by the untrained, contain little beyond descriptive passages. This again results in a pointless production that seldom embodies any idea worth the space devoted to it.
You may record the fact that the sun is setting in a blaze of colour; but there is nothing sufficiently remarkable about this to warrant its publication: most people know that the sun occasionally sets in this fashion. If the beauty of the sunset affected you strongly, lifting you above earthly things, and giving you a vision—dim perhaps, but nevertheless a vision—of the Glory that shall be revealed, then it is for you so to describe the beauty of the sunset that you convey to your readers the same feelings, the same uplifted sense, the same vision of the yet greater Glory that is to be. When you can do this, the chances are that you will be writing poetry. But until you can do this, you may be writing nothing better than fragments of a rhyming guide-book.
You may argue that not only did you feel an uplift when you gazed on the sunset, but you re-experience it as you read the poem you wrote upon it.
You see the Scene you are describing: the Reader does not
Possibly so; because to you the lines conjure up the whole scene; i.e. they serve to remind you of much that is not written down. One word may be enough to recall to your mind the overwhelming grandeur of the sundown in every detail; but it will not be sufficient to spread it out before the eyes of those who did not see the actual occurrence; neither will it reveal to them the uplift of the moment.
The novice so often forgets that his own mind fills in the details of what he has seen, and makes a perfect picture out of an imperfect description. But the reader cannot do this; he has nothing to help him beyond the written words. Therefore the writer must take care to omit nothing that is essential, nothing that will enforce the mental and spiritual conception of a scene. And in order to do this, he must analyse the scene, and ascertain (if he can) what it was that aroused such deep emotion within him. If he can tabulate these items (sometimes it is possible to do so, sometimes it is not), then he must give them special emphasis in his description, no matter what else is omitted.
Whether you are writing descriptive matter in verse or prose, it is well to bear in mind that memory helps you to visualise the whole scene, whereas the reader will have no such additional aid.
Poetry should Voice Worldwide, rather than Individual, Need
The primary object of the beginner, in writing verse, is often to voice his own heart's longing; whereas, if his verse is to be of interest to others besides himself, it must voice the longings of other people, Poetry of the "longing" kind should touch on world-wide human need, not merely on an individual want, if it is to waken response in the reader. Of course the individual want may be a world-wide human need: it very often is; but it is not wise to trust to chance in this particular.
Look about you, and see if your experiences are likely to be those of your fellow-creatures. If so, there is more probability that your work will appeal to others than if you take no count of their requirements and centre on your own.
The poet, among other qualifications, has the ability to recognise what humanity wants to say but cannot, and is able to set it down in black and white, so that when the world reads it, it exclaims: "Why, that is just what I think and feel! Only I could never put it into words!"
When Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote the "Sonnets from the Portuguese," she was writing of her own love for one particular man. So far she was dealing with her own experiences; and if that had been all, the matter might have ended there. But because uncountable women in every land have loved in that same way, have thought those thoughts, and experienced those identical emotions, though they were not able to write of them as Mrs. Browning did, her "Sonnets" found an echo in hearts the world over: they voiced a great human experience, a universal human longing.
The So-called "New Poetry"
One modern phase of verse-making has had a very demoralising effect on the amateur. I refer to the outbreak of shapeless productions—devoid of music, beauty, rhythm, and balance, and often lacking the rudiments of sense—that developed before the war, and has been with us ever since.
The followers of this cult advocate the abolition of all law and order: each goes gaily on his own way, writing whatsoever he pleases, no matter how crude, or banal, or incoherent, or loathsome; lines any and every length; unlimited full stops, or none at all; just what is in his brain—and what a state of brain it reveals! This so-called "new poetry" resembles nothing in the world so much as the MSS. an editor occasionally receives from inmates of lunatic asylums!
Literary effusions of this type are on a par with the cubist and futurist monstrosities that have tried to imagine themselves a new form of pictorial art.
Unfortunately, the desire to kick over all laws and rules, and everything that betokens restraint and discipline, is no new one. Periodically the world has seemed to be attacked with wholesale madness, as history shows; and a pronounced feature of each upheaval has been the attempt of certain deranged imaginations to abolish that order which is Heaven's first law (and which cannot be abolished without wide-spread ruin), and in its place to exalt the deification of self. The years preceding every outbreak have invariably been marked by excesses, licence and extravagance of all kinds; while real art, wholesome living, serious thinking, and steady, well-regulated work, have been at a discount.
Do not be misled by high-sounding statements, that all the incoherency and carelessness and indifferent workmanship exhibited in recent travesties of Art was a groping after better things, the breaking of shackles that chained the free heaven-born spirit of man to miserable mundane convention.
It was nothing of the sort.
Rather, it was a form of hysteria that was the outcome of the "soft" living, the feverish quest of pleasure, the craving for notoriety at the least expenditure of effort, the longing to be perpetually in the limelight, and the absence of self-discipline that was all too noticeable in the earlier years of this century.
THE LIMITATIONS OF YOUTH
By Eugene Field
I'd like to be a cowboy an' ride a fiery hoss
Way out into the big and boundless West;
I'd kill the bears an' catamounts an' wolves I come across,
An' I'd pluck the bal-head eagle from his nest!
With my pistols at my side,
I would roam the prarers wide,
An' to scalp the savage Injun in his wigwam would I ride—
If I darst; but I darsen't!
I'd like to go to Afriky an' hunt the lions there,
An' the biggest ollyfunts you ever saw!
I would track the fierce gorilla to his equatorial lair,
An' beard the cannybull that eats folks raw!
I'd chase the pizen snakes,
An' the 'pottimus that makes
His nest down at the bottom of unfathomable lakes—
If I darst; but I darsen't!
The "new" poetry was a manifestation of the decadence undermining pre-war Art.
Do not be deluded into thinking that the aberrations of ill-trained minds that sometimes flaunt themselves before your bewildered eyes, in some very "thin" volume of verse, or in some freakish periodical, are art, or even worth the paper they are printed on. They are not. Very probably they would never have got into print at all, but for the fact that those who affect the cult are, for the most part, people with more money than discrimination, who can afford to pay for publicity.
Just as a certain type of eccentricity of action may be the precursor of mental disease, so a certain type of eccentricity of thought may be the forerunner of moral and spiritual disease.
Avoid unnecessary abbreviations: th' for the, o' for of, and similar curtailments. These are often mere mannerisms, and introduced with the idea that they are distinctive: but they are not.
Some General Hints worth Noting
Long lines are better for descriptive verse than short ones.
A stately metre, with well-marked cadence, is best suited to a lofty theme. This is illustrated in "The Valley Song," by the late Mable Earle, which we reprint by courtesy of the American Sunday School Times.
A VALLEY SONG
By Mable Earle
"Because the Syrians have said, The Lord is God of
the hills, but He is not God of the valleys."
God of the heights where men walk free,
Above life's lure, beyond death's sting;
Lord of all souls that rise to Thee,
White with supreme self-offering;
Thou who hast crowned the hearts that dare,
Thou who hast nerved the hands to do,
God of the heights! give us to share
Thy kingdom in the valleys too.
Our eyes look up to those who stand
Vicegerents of Thy stainless sway,
Heroes and saints at Thy right hand,
Thy priests and kings of glory they.
Not ours to tread the path they trod,
Splendid and sharp, still reaching higher;
Not ours to lay before our God
The crowns they snatched from flood and fire.
Yet through the daily, dazing toil,
The crowding tasks of hand and brain,
Keep pure our lips, Lord Christ, from soil,
Keep pure our lives from sordid gain.
Come to the level of our days,
The lowly hours of dust and din,
And in the valley-lands upraise
Thy kingdom over self and sin.
Not ours the dawn-lit heights; and yet
Up to the hills where men walk free
We lift our eyes, lest faith forget
The Light which lighted them to Thee.
God of all heroes, ours and Thine,
God of all toilers! keep us true,
Till Love's eternal glory shine
In sunrise on the valleys too.
Short lines, irregular metre and unusual construction, are best for light or whimsical subjects. "The Limitations of Youth," by Eugene Field, is an example.
To put it another way: when the subject is dignified, the lines should roll along; when the subject is light and airy, the lines should ripple past.
The more peaceful the subject, the more need for mellifluent treatment.
Stern or tragic subjects can stand rugged wording and shape.
Verses written for children, or on childish themes, should be simple in construction, with rhymes near together, and lines of not more than eight syllables as a rule. 8.6's, rhyming alternately, are the easiest to memorise, and therefore the most popular with children.
Examine the poems in Stevenson's A Child's Garden of Verses, and note the simplicity of their construction, the music of their rhymes, and their clear, direct method of statement—the latter an essential if children are to be interested.
One of the reasons for the appeal that "Hiawatha" makes invariably to children is its direct form of statement, with few involved sentences; and its eight-syllable lines.
Eugene Field's poems on childhood themes, and some of the passages in "The Forest of Wild Thyme," by Alfred Noyes, are delightful examples of the possibilities of 8.6 lines with alternate rhymes.
Merely to break up prose into lines of irregular length, is not to produce poetry.
There must not only be beauty in individual lines and phrases, but there must be beauty of idea and form in the verses as a whole.
At the same time, never sacrifice sense to sound.
Young writers sometimes say to me, "I see so much, and feel so much, yet I cannot put it into words: the thoughts are beautiful while they are inside my brain, but there seem no words adequate to express them; I am baffled directly I try to put them down on paper."
Don't despair. Every poet has felt the same: but let it encourage you to recollect that many have got the better of the feeling, by hard work and sheer determination. After all you have all the words there are, and the most famous of poets had no more than this to work with. We sometimes forget that in the end, the greatest writer that ever lived had to reduce everything to the same words you and I are free to use.
You may remember that Mark Twain once went to a well-known preacher, who had delivered a magnificent sermon, and, after extolling it and thanking him for it, the humourist added, "But I have seen every word of it before, in print!"
The astonished preacher asked, indignantly, "Where?"
"In the dictionary," replied Mark Twain.
The Function of the Blue Pencil
Just as we all know that a king would be no king without a crown, and the Lord Mayor of London would be but a mere mortal man without his mace and his gorgeous gilt coach, so no self-respecting editor is supposed to exist apart from a blue pencil. And I admit it is a serviceable article, but, personally, I prefer that it should be used by the contributor. I do not want to have to spend time in revising a MS., to get it into publishable shape; neither does any other editor.
The blue pencil stands for deletion. Practically every writer needs to cut down the first draft of a story or article. Some prune more severely than others, but all experienced workers reduce and condense before they finally pass a MS. for publication.
It is not until a MS. is completed—roughly—that one can actually tell where it is balanced, and where it is light-weight or top-heavy. Things expand in unexpected directions as we go along; developments suggest themselves temptingly when we are halfway through, and then throw the earlier chapters quite out of proportion to the story as a whole; matters that seemed of great moment when we were in Chapter 2 have toned down to the very ordinary by the time we have piled on ten more chapters of stress and thrills and emotion.
One cannot stop to adjust it as one goes along, because no one can say whether the re-adjustment itself may not be out of gear by the time the finale is reached.
Consequently, the best way is to go right on, letting everything fall as it happens (but keeping as near as you can to your original plan, unless there is just cause for a departure therefrom). When you have written "Finis," overhaul the MS. from beginning to end, sparing neither your blue pencil nor your feelings, if common sense, and knowledge of your craft, tell you that certain portions or sentences would be better omitted.
It is neither an easy nor a pleasing task—especially to the novice. The early children of our brain seem of such priceless worth, that we regard them with a certain sense of awe. "Did I write that beautiful passage about the moon silvering the tree-tops? Then it must belong just where I put it. Cut it out? Certainly not! I consider it the most exquisite paragraph in the whole story."
This is the way we look at our work when we have not many published items to our name. Later, experience and the training that comes from practice, teach us to arm ourselves as a matter of course with a blue pencil, ignore personal sentiment, and look at our MSS. with a coldly critical eye. Then we may discover that a sentence or paragraph, though of undoubted merit and beauty—(we need not deny it that much!)—does not quite fit in where we originally placed it. Possibly it is superfluous, in view of what follows later; or redundant, in view of what went before; or it may have lost life and colour with the passage of time; or it may seem hackneyed, or weak, (though we do not use such insulting words to our own writings till we are fairly advanced). But whatever the reason, if on examining a sentence, it does not appear to serve any vital purpose, take it out. If you think there is worth in it, save it for a possible use at a later date in some other MS., though, personally, I do not believe in any sort of réchauffé of old matter, simply because as time goes on we change in our style of writing as we do in our tastes and preferences in neckties. And what you write this year, will not necessarily dovetail in with what you write in a few years' time. Still, if you feel it would be wasting flashes of genius to destroy it, and it would be any comfort to you to hoard it—do so; the main thing is to delete it from the MS. you are revising, if there be any doubt about its value.
A beginner's MS. usually needs to be cut down to about half its original length. Hard luck, for the beginner, I know, considering the way he will have laboured lovingly over every sentence.
MSS. need to be "Pulled Together"
Nevertheless, it pulls the work together if the blue pencil be applied generously. Some articles and stories appear to sprawl all over the place (sprawl is not a pretty word, but it is expressive). The writer does not seem able to follow up any idea to a logical conclusion, without interpolating so much irrelevant matter that the main theme is nearly smothered by the extraneous items, and the reader gets only a confused impression of what it is all about.
Such work needs "pulling together," i.e. the essential portions that should follow each other in natural sequence need to be brought closer together; and this can only be done by clearing away the non-essentials that separate them.
The way Phil May made his Sketches
The late Phil May once showed me how he drew his inimitable sketches, that always looked so simple, oh so simple! to the uninitiated. First he made a sketch full of detail, with everything included, much as other people make sketches. When this was finished to his satisfaction, he started to take out every line that was not actually necessary to the understanding of the picture. Finally he had left nothing but a few strokes—yet, such was his genius for seeing what to delete and what to leave, the picture had gained rather than lost in character, force, and comprehensiveness.
The secret of the matter is this. By removing everything that is not of vital importance to the whole, (whether in painting or in writing), there is less confusion of vision, less to distract the mind, or switch it off to side issues.
This does not mean that everything is better for being given in bare outline. Undoubtedly certain additions and decorations and descriptions can be made to emphasise the author's meaning, to impress a scene more vividly on the mind. We do not want all our pictures to be modelled on the lines of Phil May, clever as his work was. There is room for endless variety. The author should remember, however, that it is better to err on the side of drastic deletion, rather than leave in matter that is no actual gain to the picture, and only serves to distract and confuse and overload the reader's mind.
Beware the Plausible Imp
There is a Plausible Imp who perches on the top of every beginner's inkstand, and passes his wicked little time assuring them all that they are too clever to need hedging about by rules, that their work cannot be improved upon, and would only be spoilt if it were altered in any way.
Don't heed him! The beginner's work is never spoilt by condensation; rather it is invariably improved by cutting down. In the main, every writer's work needs pruning, until he has had sufficient practice to know what is not worth while to put down in the first place—and one needs to be exceptionally gifted to know this.
If, on reading your MS. after its completion, you feel your work is so good that it needs no blue pencil—beware! You have not got there yet!
PART FIVE
AUTHOR, PUBLISHER, AND PUBLIC
Everything resolves itself down, in the publisher's mind, to the one simple question: "Is this MS. what the public wants?"
When Offering Goods for Sale
Supposing—that when you go into the fishmonger's, he offers you a cod that is slightly "off"; and, while apologising for its feebleness, begs you to take it, as he has an invalid daughter suffering from spinal complaint, who needs a change at the seaside.
Or—that the assistant in the men's hosiery shop begs you to take half a dozen extra neckties, as he is anxious to buy the baby a much-needed pram, and his salary depends primarily on his commissions.
Or—that the sewing-machine agent, when sending around circulars, adds a devout hope, as a P.S., that you will purchase a machine, since he is anxious to increase his subscription to foreign missions.
Or—that the incompetent dressmaker beseeches you to take a garment that would fit nobody and suit nobody, because she has a widowed mother to support.
"Preposterous!" you say. "Such things would never occur."
And yet this is precisely what is happening every day of the year in the literary business!
Here are some sentences from letters accompanying MSS. sent to my office the week I am writing this.
"I should esteem it a great kindness if you could stretch a point in favour of my story, even though it may not be quite up to your standard (and I can see, on re-reading, that it has defects); but I am anxious to make some money in order to take a friend in whom I am deeply interested to the seaside for a much-needed change. She is an invalid, and——" here follow copious details about the friend.
Another writes: "I must ask you to give this every consideration, as I devote all the money I make by my writings to charity."
A third says frankly, "you really must accept this story, as I need money badly."
And for a truly nauseating letter, I think the following is as objectionable as any I have received in this connection:
"My dear wife has recently passed away, after years of acute and protracted suffering. My heart was rent with sympathy for her while she lived, and now the blank caused by her death is almost intolerable. How I shall face life without her I do not know; for she was indeed a help-meet in every sense of the word, In order to divert my mind from this well-nigh insurmountable sorrow, I have written a story 'The Forged Cheque,' which I feel is just the thing for your magazine. I ask you to regard it leniently, remembering that it is written with a breaking heart," etc.
The Problem of Youth
Then there are other reasons advanced why the editor should accept a MS., the youthfulness or the inexperience of the author being frequently mentioned.
While it is no crime to be young, it is no particular advantage when one is seeking to place a story. Inexperience, on the other hand, might be regarded as a distinct drawback.
But in any case, the editor does not purchase MSS. merely because they are the writers' first attempts. However good they may be for first attempts, or however promising they may be considering the age of the writer, all that has practically nothing to do with the editor's decision, unless he is running any pages in his periodical for the exploitation of immature work or juvenile effort. And in these days of high-priced paper and expensive production, very few papers do this.
The way Phil May made his Sketches
It is hard to make the amateur understand that a magazine is first and foremost a business proposition, as much as a shop or a factory. The editor must make it pay; and in order to do this, he must publish the type of matter that his readers are willing to purchase. Each magazine appeals to a definite section of the public (or it should do so, if it is to be a success). No one magazine appeals to every human being. Some want sensation, some want art, some want fashions, and so on. And as it is impossible to include everything in any one publication, each editor aims to please a certain class of tastes—good, bad or indifferent, according to the policy of his paper. And he knows to a fraction almost, what will suit his public, and what they will not care about.
How does he know?
It is part of his mental and business equipment: the knowledge often costs him years of study and observation; and it is one of the qualifications for which he is paid his salary.
And because he knows what his public will buy, and what they do not want, he purchases MSS. accordingly. It is immaterial to him whether the writer needs money for charity, or to support an aged relative, or merely to soothe a bereaved soul: the only question he considers is whether the public will want a certain MS. or not. He is not engaged by the proprietors to aid charity, or to minister to the necessitous; his work is to provide goods that the public will buy—just like any other business man. And he is unmoved, therefore, by irrelevant appeals.
Of course he has other matters to look to as well as the providing of goods the public will buy; he helps to shape public opinion, for instance, and raises, or lowers, the public taste. But so far as the amateur is concerned, the point to remember is the fact that an editor is in no way influenced by the writer's need for pecuniary assistance. If he were, his post-bag would be a hundred times heavier than it is already, and it is quite heavy enough as it is!
A Publisher is not an Agent for Philanthropy
In the same way, only more so, a publisher is concerned with the selling qualities of a MS. rather than with the writer's private affairs. He is running a business concern with a view to some margin of profit. Presumably he has a wife and family to support, rent, rates and taxes to meet (in addition to helping to pay for the war)—like any other man. And he spends his days in the dim, fusty airlessness of a publisher's office for the purpose of making a living out of the books he publishes. Therefore, he is not likely to be inclined to bring out a book, which his business experience tells him the public will never buy, merely because (as one sender of a MS. recently put it) "the moral of my essays is really beautiful, and it will do people good to read them, if even they do not bring in profit. Read them yourself and you will see that I am not exaggerating."
Possibly the moral of a MS. is quite good: but it may not be the particular brand of goodness that the public is willing to purchase at the moment; and the publisher knows it is hopeless to put it on the market in that case.
Equally it is useless to expect him to be influenced favourably simply because your earnings are ear-marked for charity. At the end of the year, should he see that the money he paid for a certain item was a dead loss, it would be no consolation to him to remember that the author had devoted the cash to a "Seaside Holiday Home for Men on Strike" in which she was interested.
Therefore spare him all such data. The less you add to what he has to read daily, the better. An accompanying letter is really unnecessary—only it is useful to affix the stamps to, for the return of the MS. if rejected.
Profuse explanations are all beside the mark, and give an amateurish, unbusiness-like look to a communication. Whatever you may write about yourself on your MS., in praise thereof, or in extenuation, everything resolves itself down—in the publisher's mind—to the one simple question: Is this what the public wants?
We think we can Judge the Value of our Work better than a Publisher can
Many a beginner is convinced his MS. would sell, if only it were printed. It is natural that we have a certain amount of belief in our own work, more especially if we have given much time and thought to it. Moreover, we possibly see points in it that no one else can; we see what a we meant to put down, without in any way realising how far our actual writing falls short of the ideas that were in our brain. The outcome of this partiality for our own writing, is a certainty that people are not able to do us justice if they do not think as highly of it as we do.
But the publisher is better able to judge of the selling possibilities of a work than the author; it is his business; he is at it all day long. He has no personal feelings involved, his main concern being to make a book a profitable concern; and his experience teaches him pretty accurately what the public will buy and what it will leave on his hands. He may occasionally make a mistake (though it is surprising how seldom an expert publisher does make a wrong estimate, considering how various are the MSS. that pass through his office); but when he does, he more often errs on the side of being over-sanguine, and giving the author the benefit of the doubt, than in the direction of turning down anything that might have made his, and the author's, fortune.
A Consoling Thought—no doubt
Some writers are convinced that the style of their MS. was too good for the editor who rejected it, and altogether above his intelligence. This is a consoling thought, no doubt; but unfortunately it does not take one any further.
I know that instances are occasionally quoted (always the same instances, by the way), where books that ultimately achieved some success were declined by several publishers before they were finally landed. But in some of these cases the books in question were so very much off the beaten track as to be verging on freakishness—and no one living can guarantee a forecast of how the public will receive a freak! Here and there one finds a publisher who enjoys a gamble, and will risk a little on such uncertainties; (sometimes he gets his reward, more often he doesn't); but the majority prefer a safer, even though less exciting, course!
One other matter may have contributed to the refusals these MSS. met with—possibly they were offered to publishers who did not handle that particular type of work. Publishers usually specialise in fixed directions, just as magazine editors do. No one attempts to cover the whole range of reading; a glance at any publisher's catalogue will show this. A MS. turned down by one, as being useless to the section of the public in which he is interested, may be taken by another, who reaches a totally different class of reader.
Therefore do not despair, if your story does not get accepted the first time of asking. There may be a variety of reasons why that particular publisher or editor did not want that particular MS.
But in any case, don't sit down at the first rebuff and say, "What's the good of anything? A genius has no chance nowadays any more than poor Chatterton had!" (By the way, I have heard several desperate, would-be authors mention Chatterton and liken their own predicament to his, but not one has ever chanced to be able to quote me a line of his work!) There is no need to feel that the bottom has dropped out of the universe, because your MS. has been returned. Try elsewhere.
If it is declined by five or six different publishers, then you may safely conclude that it is not the kind of work the public will buy at the moment; or it may be that your writing is not sufficiently mature. In that case, put that MS. aside, and tackle another, something quite fresh. I never think it is worth while to try and re-write or re-construct the rejected MS.—at any rate, not till you are tolerably advanced. It really takes no more time to write something entirely new.
"If only I could get an introduction to an editor, I am sure I could get my work taken." One often hears this said. Yet there never was a greater delusion than this idea that introductions work the oracle. It would be a different matter if an editor, or publisher, had a surfeit of good work, and really did not know what to discard: in such circumstances (which won't occur this side of the millennium!) an introduction might help to secure attention for an individual writer.
But as it is, the editor is only too anxious to purchase good work when it comes his way; he does not wait for any introduction. If a MS. strays into his office that possesses the qualities he is looking for, he writes the author forthwith, his one desire being to purchase the MS.
Still, if you really feel you must be armed with some such document, it is as well to be quite sure that the introduction is a desirable one. Here are two letters that reached me by the same post.
The first was from Miss Blank, a stranger, who said—
"My friend Mr. Dash, who thinks very highly of my work, has urged me to let you see some of it, as he thinks it is just the sort of thing you will be glad to have for your magazine. He is writing a letter of introduction. I shall be glad if you will name a time for a personal interview, as I can better explain"—etc.
The second was from Mr. Dash, an acquaintance of long standing, who said—
"There is a certain Miss Blank who is anxious I should write her a letter of introduction to yourself—which I do herewith. I know nothing whatever about her, save that she seems to be a first-class nuisance. I have never seen her, haven't a ghost of a notion if she can write: probably she can't. But she happens to be the sister of the fiancé of the daughter of my mother-in-law's dearest and oldest friend; and any man who values the peace and happiness of his home endeavours to propitiate his mother-in-law, especially when she has mentioned the matter six times already. Therefore I trust this introduction is in order."
Personal Interviews are seldom desirable as a Preliminary
The desirability of a personal interview with an editor is another delusion to which the amateur clings. As a rule nothing is gained (but a good deal of time is lost) by talking a contribution over before the preliminary MS. is read. After all, the MS. is the item by which the author stands or falls. If it is good, and what the editor wants, he will take it—and take it only too gladly; if it is not good, or not what he wants, no amount of preliminary conversation will secure its acceptance; for no matter how delightful the conversation may have been, he does not print that; it is the MS. itself that decides the crucial question of publication or no publication.
In some cases a preliminary letter is desirable: it may be advisable to ascertain beforehand whether an editor is open to consider an article on a doubtful subject. But if you wish to avoid inducing a sense of irritation in his soul, do not ask for a personal interview, since in all probability, if he is as rushed as most editors are nowadays, he will turn down the matter forthwith, rather than spend time on talk that may lead nowhere.
It must always be borne in mind that these are overworked, understaffed, hustling times in a very complex age; and the newspaper and magazine office feels this more keenly than any other branch of the business world, simply because periodicals must reflect the spirit of their day and generation, and keep the readers in touch with all that is going on,—and "all" is a large, and constantly changing, order at present. This means that the editorial offices are always more or less in a state of tension; there is no time to spare for interviews that may prove fruitless; the day is seldom long enough to get in all that is certain to be profitable to the paper.
Therefore, say what you have to say by letter—and say it clearly and briefly. The editor forms his judgment by what you say, and if he wants to talk the matter over with you, he will soon let you know.
"But I always feel I can explain myself so much better in a conversation—no matter how brief—than in a letter." This is a frequent plea.
The public, however, will judge you by what you write, not by what you say; if you cannot express yourself well in writing, you may speak with the tongues of men and of angels yet it will avail you nothing where the publication of your MS. is concerned. If you cannot write about it so that the editor can understand, the public are not likely to be able to comprehend it any better.
Women are particularly prone to ask for an interview, and this because they instinctively rely to some extent on the appeal of their personality in most of their business transactions. By far the wiser course, however, is for a woman to express herself so well in her writing that the office simply tumbles over itself in its anxiety to make her personal acquaintance. And I have known this to happen on more than one occasion.
The Irrepressible Caller
Nevertheless, men can also distinguish themselves when making calls. The card of a stranger, bearing a Nebraska address, was brought to me one afternoon. He urged that his business was of great importance. Finally I saw him. He was a most intelligent-looking American, and, like the majority of his countrymen, was not long in coming to the point. He said he had written some poems, and promptly placed before me a sheaf of MS. I told him I would look at them if he would leave them.
"Just you run your eye down these," he said. I protested that I could not possibly do his work justice if I skimmed it in any such manner. Then he explained that these were not poems—the masterpieces would come later—these were press notices of some poems he had had printed in a Nebraska paper. I read a few; I had never even heard of the majority of the papers that reviewed his work; but he seemed to take himself very seriously, one had not the heart to shatter his illusions.
Then he produced the bales of poems. He watched me so eagerly I was obliged to read some. I besought him to leave the rest with me, as I could not decide so important a matter hurriedly.
"Oh, but just read this one," he persisted. "Mr. Blank of our city—never heard of him? You do surprise me!—he says he considers it as fine as anything your Percy B. Shelley ever wrote." In a moment of abject weakness I said the poem was fair. Then the heart of that man warmed towards me; he told me of his hopes, his plans and his aspirations, and I tried to sympathise with them. I could not do less, since I owe America much for kindness and hospitality it has shown me on many occasions.
When at last he rose, reluctantly (he had stayed an hour and a quarter), I offered him my hand. He took it with a hearty grip.
"Well, I'm real glad to have known you," he said. "It's been a genuine pleasure to have this talk with you, for you are, without exception, the most informed and intellectual person I've met since I've been in your country." I felt immediately remorseful that I had grudged him the little chat; he was evidently a discerning young man.
"The pleasure has been mine," I assured him, and inquired how long he had been in England? "I landed at Southampton at ten o'clock this morning," was the response. I smilingly tried to disguise the sudden lapse of my enthusiasm. I must have succeeded, for he next said:
"And now I guess I'll go down and fetch up my wife. She's been waiting in the street outside while I came up to see what you were like. I size it she'll just enjoy making a little visit with you."
MSS. cannot always be Read as Soon as they are Received
It is only natural that an author should be keen to know the verdict on his work, once he has sent it out to try its fortune. But it is useless to get impatient because no news of it is forthcoming next day. Sometimes weeks elapse, sometimes months, before a MS. can be read. But since the publisher makes no charge for reading a MS. (and the reading costs money: some one's time has to be paid for, and it is some one who draws a fair salary, too), he must be allowed to do it at his own convenience. If he has not asked you to send a MS., you cannot exactly dictate how soon it should be read.
Naturally, it is read as quickly as possible; this is to every one's interest; but this does not mean that it can be read the next day, or even the next week. Other authors may have preceded you.
The amateur who sends letters of inquiry before one has scarcely had time to open the envelope, is doomed to have his work rejected. No office has time to write and explain that "the matter will be considered in due course," etc., so the MS. is merely returned.
It seems impossible to make the average beginner understand that his is not the only story offered, and that things have to take their turn.
Moreover, it is as difficult to please everybody as it was for the old man with the donkey in the fable. If MSS. are not returned immediately, the editor is bombarded with complaints from one set of aggrieved authors; if he is able to read them at once, and he returns them quickly, he is the recipient of uncharitable letters accusing him of having discarded the MSS. unread.
There is an interesting story of a suspicious lady who prided herself on laying traps for the negligent editor—pages put in the wrong order, others upside down, and suchlike devices with which every magazine office is familiar. At last she succeeded in proving that the monster who sat at the receipt of MSS. in one particular publishing house was a consummate rascal.
"Sir," she wrote, "I have long suspected that you basely deceive the public into believing that you read their works, while in reality you return them unread. But at last I have caught you hot-handed in the very act. It will doubtless interest you to know that I purposely gummed together pages 96 and 97, very slightly, in the top right-hand corner. Had you fulfilled your duty and done the work for which your employer pays you a salary, you would have discovered this and detached the pages in question."
The editor replied:
"Dear Madam,—If you will take a sharp pen-knife, and remove the fragment of gum between pages 96 and 97, in the top right-hand corner, it may interest you to discover my initials underneath."
"Should all MSS. be typed?" is a question often asked.
If you wish your MS. to be Read: make the Reading Easy
It is advisable to have them typed if possible, as this enables them to be read more quickly than if sent untyped. Remember that your object in sending a MS. to a publisher, or editor, is to get it read: therefore it is policy to do all in your power to facilitate the reading.
Owing to the widespread interest in literature, and the universal desire to see oneself in print, the number of MSS. that reach the office of any general periodical of good standing, is immense; and the eye-strain entailed in reading is very great. It has therefore become necessary to ask for MSS. to be typed when possible; though anything that was clearly written, in a bold readable hand, would never be turned down because it was not typed. What is desired is that a MS. shall be legible, so that it can be read with the least amount of detriment to the eyesight. Whereas some of the untyped work that is sent is a positive insult. I have seen tiny, niggling writing, crossed out and re-crossed out, till even the compositor (who is a perfect genius for reading the utterly illegible) could scarcely have made it out. And in all probability, such a MS. would be not over-clean, and would be rolled to go through the post.
Why Editors do not Criticise
"If you are unable to make use of my MS., I shall be glad if you will kindly criticise it, and tell me exactly what you think of it."
This request is frequently made by senders of MS. And when they receive back their work without any comment they will write and say, "At least you might have sent one word by way of criticism. If you had only written 'good' or 'bad,' I should have some idea why you declined it."
I sympathise heartily with those who want advice; I know how very difficult it is to get any guidance or criticism that can be relied upon to be disinterested. Nevertheless, I wish the student could see the number of queries, and the amount of work, and the heap of MSS. that arrive at the office of any prosperous periodical; he would then begin to realise how utterly impossible it would be for MSS. to be criticised in writing. It would entail an extra staff, and an expensive staff at that, since such criticism is not work, like card indexing, that can be relegated to a junior clerk. Indeed, the sender of the MS. would probably be highly indignant if any one but the editor did this work!
When I explain to beginners that we have no time to write criticisms on rejected work they say, "But it wouldn't take a minute to write down a few words, seeing that the MS. has already been read."
Unfortunately, it would take a great many minutes. In any case it takes some time (if only a little) to sum up concisely the merits and defects of anything. More than that, experience has proved again and again that one little word of criticism will lead to more letters from the writer. And one has not time to read them! The children of our brain are very dear to us; and so sure as any one passes an adverse criticism on them, our feathers stand on end, and we prepare to defend our one little chick like the most devoted hen that ever lived.
Neither is it wise, I have found, to suggest a little alteration with a promise of publication attached. Two years ago I wrote to some one who had only had one short story published, indicating a new ending that would have improved her MS. immensely, and made it possible for me to take it.
"My temperament requires that it shall end as I have written it. Kindly return my MS. if you cannot use it," replied the lady loftily.
I did so.
Last week the same MS. came back to me—much aged and the worse for wear—with a note that the author did not mind if I altered the ending as I had suggested. But two years is two years. And in the interval, while the MS. was travelling round to every other office, the subject-matter had got out of date.
It is never politic to be touchy if by chance some misguided editor does offer a word of criticism!
If you want your work published, and there is no loss of principle involved, conform to the publisher's requirements as gracefully as you can, even though, in your heart of hearts, you consider him woefully lacking in discernment.
And you can comfort yourself, meanwhile, with the thought that when you are safely ensconced upon Olympian heights, you will even things up a little, and get back all of your own. I know one proprietress of several rejected MSS. who vows that whenever she "gets there," she will sit on the topmost pinnacle, and make all publishers and editors (including myself) walk up to her on their knees, dropping curtsies all the way!
A Popular Delusion
I was making for my office one day when a sportive-looking girl stopped me on the stairs. "Just give this story to the editor will you, please?" she began. "Give it right into her hands, won't you; don't let any underling get hold of it."
I agreed.
"And—I say—just tell her from me that she's to read it herself, every word of it; I won't be put off with some assistant tossing it aside half read. I know their tricks."
One very popular delusion is that there is a conspiracy among the assistants in an office to keep MSS., and especially good MSS., from the eye of the chief! People will resort to all sorts of devices with the idea of ensuring MSS. reaching the editor's own hands. They are marked "personal," and "strictly private," or "please forward, if away"; and I had one endorsed, "Not to be opened by any one but the Editor."
Yet what is gained by all this, save a definite amount of delay? In any well-organised office, work has to follow a certain routine; MSS. have to be entered up by clerks as received, the stamps sent for return postage have to be checked and duly noted by the proper department, etc. Why delay the handling of the MS. for a few weeks by having it so addressed that it may follow the editor to the North Pole, and back, before it is opened, if the endorsements were obeyed?—which of course they are not.
Let a MS. take its proper course. No one in the office desires to suppress genius; on the contrary, great indeed is the elation of any member of the staff who discovers something worth publishing. It is one great object of our business lives.
A Little Tact and how much it is!
If you feel you must call at an office in person, remember that the display of a little tact is a desirable accomplishment. When seeking a post on his paper do not start by telling the editor that his magazine is poor stuff, and will soon be on the rocks,—as I once heard a lady tell the editor of one of the most famous monthlies in existence. When he inquired as to her experience, it transpired that she had had one story—and one only—printed, and it had appeared in a child's magazine.
And it was another tactful caller who said, on leaving, after having absorbed five and twenty minutes of a busy assistant's time: "Well, perhaps you'll explain these suggestions of mine to the editor; though it would have been so much more satisfactory if I could have talked to some properly qualified individual."
Occasionally, however, a caller contributes something to the gaiety of nations, as in the case of the lady who came to inquire after the welfare of a MS. she had left with some one in our building only the day before. (And, incidentally, she wanted to alter a word in it, as she had thought of one she liked better).
I was passing through the Inquiry Office as she entered, and she straightway explained to me her mission.
"I will find out who took it," I said, "I do not think you left it with me."
"Oh no! it wasn't you," she replied emphatically. "I left it with quite a nice-looking person!"
The Responsibility
The responsibility attached to the business of writing is greater than in any other department of work. The influence of the printed page is so far reaching, that no writer can gauge to what extent he may be furthering good (or harm), when he puts pen to paper.
You can calculate exactly an author's cash value by his sales: but this does not give an equally accurate estimate of his moral value.
Who would dream of measuring the influence of Punch, for instance, by the figures of its circulation? No one can say how many people will handle one single copy, or how many people will find in that single copy bracing laughter and healthy humour. The numbers printed each week can only represent a fraction of its actual readers.
And the same applies to a good many books: they pass from one to another, are borrowed from libraries, borrowed from friends (often without being returned, alas!), and by varied routes they penetrate to out-of-the-way corners of the world where the authors would least expect to be able to reach the inhabitants.
The most famous preacher living has not the possibilities of power that lie in the hands of a popular writer; and the gravity of this responsibility cannot be over-estimated.
While this does not mean that we must take ourselves too seriously, it does mean that we must take our work seriously, and recognise that it stands for something more than money-making, even though money-making is not to be despised.
To the beginner this may seem a weighty subject and rather outside his orbit. But in reality this point needs to be taken into consideration from the very earliest of our literary experiments. We must induce a certain attitude of mind, and keep definite ideals before us, if our work is to shape in any particular direction.
And the probability is that you will have to choose between good and ill when selecting the theme for your first story. You will naturally look around and study the type of fiction that seems to be selling well, and perhaps you may light on something peculiarly noxious, since there is an assortment of such books being published nowadays. The book in question may have been designated "strong" (the word reviewers often fall back upon, when they cannot find any adjective sufficiently truthful without being libellous, to convey an idea of a book's malodorous qualities!); or you may have heard the book lauded by people who make a boast of being modern, up-to-date, or advanced. And as we none of us aim at being weak, or old-fashioned, or behind the times, it is not surprising if the beginner feels that he, too, had better try his hand at something "strong," if he is to get a reputation for ultra-modernity.
Quite a number of novices choose unpleasant topics because, and only because, they fancy such themes show advanced, untrammelled thought, and "a knowledge of the world." They forget that of far greater importance than the extent of the writer's ability to defy the conventions, is the moral effect of a book on those who read it.
Wider Views are Needed when Characterising Literature
I use the word "moral" in its widest sense. It is unfortunate that we have got into the habit of pigeon-holing literature—and especially fiction—in very narrow compartments. When we speak of a book as "good," or "helpful," or "uplifting," we usually mean that it contains specific religious teaching in one form or another. Yet a book may be very good and helpful and uplifting without a single sermonic sentence, or anything approaching thereunto.
In the same way, when we say that a novel is undesirable or immoral, we generally mean that it deals with one particular form of evil: yet there are books having little or nothing to do with promiscuous sex relationships that are pernicious and unhealthy in the extreme, and possibly all the more dangerous because their immorality is not of the kind that is definitely ticketed for all to see, and beware of, if need be.
Everything tending to lower the tone of the soul is immoral; everything that debases human taste is unhealthy; everything that gloats on unpleasantness, for the mere pleasure of gloating, is as devastating as poison gas; everything that preaches a doctrine of hopelessness, that spreads the black miasma of spiritual doubt over the mind is bad—fiendishly bad.
But do not misunderstand me: I would not seem to imply that only fair things should be chronicled. There are certain facts of life that must be faced: sin cannot be ignored—but it must be recognised as sin, not be touched up with tinsel, and placed in the limelight, to look as attractive as possible.
Poverty, grime, sickness, gloom cannot be banished from every horizon; but they need not be dwelt upon exclusively without any alleviation, to the shutting out of all else. The wave of so-called "realism" that has swept over fiction of recent years has been a very injurious element in modern literature. It is bad from an artistic point of view, since it is one-sided, unbalanced, and not true to life itself, which invariably provides that compensations go hand in hand with drawbacks.
Some people speak of "realism" as though the only realities were sordidness and crime; whereas the earth teems with lovely realities—beauty of spirit, beauty of character, beauty of thought, no less than beauty of form and colour.
The slum at first glance does not look a pre-possessing subject; yet read "Angel Court": the writer who is a real artist can find gold even here!
ANGEL-COURT
By Austin Dobson
In Angel-Court the sunless air
Grows faint and sick; to left and right
The cowering houses shrink from sight
Huddled and hopeless, eyeless, bare.
Misnamed, you say? for surely rare
Must be the angel-shapes that light
In Angel-Court!
Nay! the Eternities are there.
Death at the doorway stands to smite;
Life in its garrets leaps to light;
And Love has climbed that crumbling stair
In Angel-Court.
From "London Lyrics," by permission.
Those who acclaimed these recent books of so-called "realism" as works of exceptional genius, did not see that, far from being any such thing, they were, in most cases, preliminary manifestations of a hideous malady, which has since culminated in all we understand by the word Bolshevism.
To dilate on ugliness, coarseness, harshness, without showing the counteracting forces at work, and to dabble continuously in dirt without showing the way to cleanliness, is not art, no matter how accurately every detail may be portrayed: it is merely systematised brutishness.
Even themes with a rightful motive may be exceedingly harmful under some circumstances. Studies of dipsomaniacs, drug-victims, and the like, may be necessary as matters of psychological or medical research, just as studies of any other diseases are necessary; but they should be issued as such, and not put forward in the guise of fiction intended for all and sundry among the general public.
I have enlarged on this matter, because there has been a great tendency on the part of amateurs lately to revel in descriptions of crudity and repulsiveness, with never a thought as to the effect of such literature on the reader. At no time is it desirable to circulate indiscriminately, much less as fiction, reading matter that can only induce morbidity, neuroticism, depravity, doubt, or depression. But in an age like the present, when most of the civilised world is bowed beneath an overwhelming weight of sorrow, shattered nerves and physical weakness, it is positively criminal to manufacture pessimism, gloom and horrors, and scatter this type of literature broadcast without any sense of the appalling responsibility attaching thereunto.
Qualities which cannot be Dispensed With
There are three qualities which all authors should aim to incorporate in their writings if they are to be a blessing rather than a curse to humanity: these are cleanness, healthiness and righteousness. They may be introduced in many and various forms; and are often to be found in wholesome laughter, spontaneous gaiety, good cheer, breathless adventure, revelations of beauty, as well as in direct appeals to the higher nature. Anything that will arouse sane emotions, and divert the mind from self, is to be welcomed as a benefaction in this world of many sorrows.
The late Charles Heber Clarke—better known to the public as "Max Adeler"—enjoyed great popularity at one time as a humorist. He was a man of strong religious convictions; and there came a day when he ceased to write his humorous pleasantries, seeming inclined to regard them as so much wasted opportunity. On one occasion however, a clergyman whom he met while travelling, on discovering his identity, grasped his hand and said, "You have made me laugh when there seemed nothing left to laugh about; you have helped me to get over some of my darkest days. I owe you more than I owe any other man in the world."
"And when he had finished pouring out his gratitude," said "Max Adeler," (who told me this himself), "I began to wonder whether, after all, one might not be doing as much good in the world by making people smile and forget their troubles, as by preaching at them."
To help humanity God-ward is the greatest privilege we can aspire to; but this can be done by other means besides the writing of hymns and commentaries. Everything that tends to lift humanity from the low-lands of sorrow or sordidness or suffering, and to point them to the great Hope; everything that will aid them to live up to the best that is in them, and to strive to recapture some long-lost Vision of the Highest, will be helping in the great work of human regeneration that was set on foot by the One who came to give beauty for ashes.
While only a few are entrusted with the message of the prophet or the seer, we all can specialise on whatsoever things are lovely and pure and of good report; and we shall be of some use—if only in a quiet way—to our day and generation if we can help others also to think on these things.
Goodness does not excuse Dulness
But one point must not be overlooked—and in saying this I am summing up most that has gone before: If a book is to succeed, it must be well written.
Because a certain number of highly unpleasant books have succeeded, and a certain number of highly moral books have failed, beginners sometimes consider this as an indication of public preference. What they forget, or do not know, is this: The nasty book succeeded, in spite of its nastiness, because it was well and brightly written; while the moral book failed, in spite of its goodness, because it was badly written and superlatively dull. If the moral book that failed had been as well written as the nasty book that succeeded, it would not only have done as well as the nasty book, it would have done a great deal better.
All but a small degenerate section of the public prefer wholesome to vicious literature—but nobody wants a dull book! And the amateur writer of good books often overlooks this latter fact.
Therefore, bear in mind that it is not sufficient that you make a book clean and healthy and good; you must endeavour to make cleanness as attractive as it really is, and healthiness as desirable as it really is, and God-ordained Righteousness the most satisfying of all the things worth seeking.
When you can do this, you will find a fair-sized public waiting, and anxious, to buy your books.
You will not know what good you may be doing—it is never desirable for any of us to hear much on this score, humanity is so sadly liable to swelled head! But occasionally some one in the big outside world may send you a sincere "Thank you." When this comes you will suddenly realise, though you cannot explain why, that there are some things even more worth while than the publisher's cheque.
INDEX
A
Abbreviations to be avoided in verse, [247]
Abstract qualities to be gauged, [25]
Alexander, Mrs., Burial of Moses, [75]
Allen, James Lane, and local colour, [176]
Allingham, Wm., poem by, [170]
Allusions, hackneyed, [155]
Amateurs, what they need to cultivate and avoid, [47]
Amateurs, two classes of, [139]
Amateurs copying unawares, [203]
Amateurs and marriage offers in stories, [209]
Amateurs' lack of first-hand knowledge, [198]
Ambiguity, avoid, [157]
American writers and local colour, [174], [175]
Ancient facts undesirable except in text-book, [149]
Angel Court, Austin Dobson, [290]
Anthologies, verse, [75], [76]
Antiquated expressions, [52]
Arnold, Matthew, [75]
Article, settle object in writing it, [147]
Articles that are not wanted, [151];
big subjects to be avoided, [155];
"How to ——," editors overdone with, [154];
which fail, [138];
useful divisions, [136];
ruled by form, [136];
on subjects already dealt with, [153];
study type of, in magazine you are writing for, [152];
must be sent to editors in time, [150];
must be topical, [150];
starting in the middle, [147]
Artist and detail, [100]
Artist's fragments, an, [167]
Artistic atmosphere, [178]
Artistic training and literary first attempts, [4], [98-100]
"Atmosphere," healthy and otherwise, [181];
as a time saver, [180]
Atmospheric purpose of story writer, [89]
Audience, settle on your, [126]
Austen's, Jane, old-world "atmosphere," [184]
Author's aim to help readers God-ward, [293]
Authors must have something in their heads to write down, [11]
Authorship compared with dressmaking, [5], [7]
B
Baby prattle in amateur verse, [239]
Barclay, Mrs., White Ladies of Worcester, [41];
The Rosary, [210]
Barrie, Sir J., and dialect, [195]
Barrie, Sir J., short stories, [91];
Window in Thrums, [224]
Beautiful thoughts do not guarantee beautiful writing, [98]
Begin in the middle, [147]
Be natural, [48], [106]
Benson, Dr. A. C., [65]
Big subjects to be avoided, [154]
Birrell, Augustine, [65]
Blackmore and local colour, [174]
Blue pencil to be used by writer rather than editor, [252]
"Body," needed in writing, [123]
Bolshevism in literature, [291]
Booksellers as readers, [118]
Books that shriek, [38]
Books which survive. Why? [29]
Boothby, Guy, and proof corrections, [223]
Boudoir stories, [206]
Brain misuse, nature's revenge for, [36]
British Weekly, for style, [56]
Broad Highway, The, "atmosphere" of, [184]
Browning, Mrs. and Christina Rossetti, [76]
Browning, Mrs., "Sonnets from the Portuguese," [244]
Browning's Paracelsus, [71];
"rough-hewn" method, [70]
Bryant and Longfellow, [76], [77]
Bullock, Shan F., and local colour, [174]
By-gone models of amateurs, [209]
C
Cable, George, [176]
Cabmen, article on, [113]
Callers on editors, [274]
Canton, William, [42]
Caricature is not characterisation, [142]
Carlyle's "rough-hewn" method, [70]
Cataloguing instead of art, [140]
Causes of actions to be studied, [27]
Central idea, necessary to story, [79]
Character delineation needed in love-stories, [215]
Characterisation is not caricature, [142]
Characters in story, values of, [84];
should not be multiplied unduly, [220];
should explain themselves, [216], [219];
to be introduced early, [219]
Chatterton, [269]
Cheap books, the flood of, [38]
Chesterton, G. K., paradoxes of, [165]
Children, mistakes of writers for, [127]
Chimney-pot, evolution of the, [43]
Chimney-pots, Ruskin's chapter on, [44]
Choate, Joseph H., on Dickens, [231]
Choose topic from your own environment, [200]
Clarity, aim for, [161]
Classics, our purpose on reading them, [111], [112]
Clarke, Charles Heber, [293]
Cleanness should be made attractive, [295]
Cleverness must not be obtrusive, [109]
Climax, do not anticipate, [228]
Climax in article, [147]
Climax, never lose sight of, [89]
Coleridge's Kubla Khan, [75], [170]
Colloquialisms, avoid, [195]
Condensation, need of, [106]
Condensation never spoils beginner's work, [257]
Contrasts, incidents inserted in stories as, [86]
Copy, universal tendency to, [202]
Copying unrecognised by amateurs, [203]
Country of the Pointed Firs, The, [224]
Craddock, Chas. Egbert, and local colour, [176]
Cranford, [184], [201]
Creating an "atmosphere," [185]
Creation and copying, [203]
Criticise your own work, [129]
Criticism, editors have no time for, [9]
Crockett, S. R., and dialect, [195]
Curtailment of sentences may be carried to excess, [50]
"Curtains" are sound business, [229]
"Curtains," Dickens', [231]
"Curtains" necessary for serial publication, [231]
Cut down your MSS., [253]
Cynic really gets nowhere, [30]
D
Dante, why we read, [111], [112]
David and Jonathan, [155]
Defects overlooked by fame, [124]
Delay in editorial decision on MSS., [276]
Delete superfluities in your MS., [254]
Dénouement as a surprise, [213], [225]
Detail, knowledge of, imperative, [21];
study of, [100];
too much, [92], [140]
Devices to reach editors, [283]
Dialect an extra mental strain on reader, [194];
requires exceptional skill, [195]
Diary form of story, [191]
Dickens, Charles, an adept at "curtains," [231]
Dickens, central ideas of, [79]
Diffusiveness, [106]
Divine discontent, [197]
Dobson, Austin, Angel Court, [290]
Does the public want it? The publisher's question, [267]
Dog, the real, [19]
Doll heroines, [26]
Dombey and Son in U. S. A., [231]
Dream Days, Kenneth Graham, [224]
Dreams of youth valuable, [235]
Dressmaking and authorship, [5], [7]
Dull book not wanted by anyone, [295]
Dulness not necessary to goodness, [294]
E
Earle, Mabel, Valley Song, [248]
Eccentricity will not secure permanent interest, [122]
Editorial routine, [283]
Editors do not purchase MS. because first attempt, [263];
have no time to criticise and advise, [280];
only buy what pays to publish, [264];
take time to read MSS., [276];
unmoved by irrelevant appeals, [261]
Emotionalism, [184]
Emotions of author not always interesting, [220]
Ending, a happy one best, [226]
Entertaining, every book should be, [128]
Environment and circumstances to be studied, [19]
Environment, your own, as your subject, [200]
Every generation allows special characteristics of speech, [49]
Exclusive information necessary, [45]
Extracts, lavish use undesirable, [161]
Expressions, antiquated, [52]
F
Facts, ancient, to be omitted, [150]
Facts needed, [21]
Fame overlooking defects, [124]
Farnol, Jeffrey, and old-world "atmosphere," [184]
Feeding the brain with snippets, [37]
Fiction, monotonous character of MSS., [80]
Fiction, "strong," [287]
Field, Eugene, Limitations of Youth, [249]
"Fiona Macleod," [171]
First attempts rarely acceptable, [102]
First attempts in literature compared with art and music, [4]
First-hand knowledge, need of, [198]
First-person limitations, [188]
Forest of Wild Thyme, Alfred Noyes, [250]
Form as applied to articles, [136]
Formless fragments, [167]
Fragments, [166]
Framework of story, [82]
Freak writings cannot be forecasted, [268]
G
Garden of Verses, a Child's, R. L. Stevenson, [250]
Genius, mistaken ideas of, [4]
Genius scarce, [13]
Gloom manufacture is wrong, [227]
Glow-worms as a hat-trimming, [153]
God-ward help in literature, [293]
Golden Age, Kenneth Graham, [224]
Goodness does not excuse dulness, [295]
Gosse, Dr. Edmund, [65]
Graham, Kenneth, Golden Age and Dream Days, [224]
Grandmothers in amateur fiction, [210]
Gray's Elegy, [67]
Green, Dr. S. G., and Pickwick Papers, [232]
"Grip" needed for selling, [117]
"Grit" necessary in a novel, [122]
H
Hackneyed phrases, [155]
Healthiness, authors should aim at, [292]
Healthiness should be made desirable, [295]
Hearn, Lafcadio, and local colour, [174]
Heroine, the rose-petal, [209]
Hiawatha's appeal to children, [250]
"How to ——" articles overdone, [154]
Human characteristics to be studied, [18]
Human heart, pivot of great stories, [28]
Hysterical "atmosphere," [184]
I
Idea, original, lost, [160];
ornate language cannot cover lack of, [160];
starting, forgotten by amateurs, [126];
the central, [79], [81]
Ideas and words, [59];
as varied as human nature, [81];
more important than rhapsodies, [236]
"Imaginative writing," [162]
Immoral fiction, [288]
Improbabilities, [162]
Inaccuracy in detail fatal to success, [23]
Incidents should not be crowded, [220]
Income expected without training, [4]
Indefinite style to be avoided, [150]
Ingelow, Jean, [75]
Inner workings of mind and heart to be studied, [26]
Interest readers, the need to, [116]
Interviews with editors undesirable, [272]
Introductions to editors useless, [270]
Invisible Playmate, [42]
Involved sentences, [159]
Isolation foolish for an author, [31]
J
Jacobs, W. W., and local colour, [173]
James, Henry, long sentences of, [165]
Jewett, Sarah Orne, [176];
Country of Pointed Firs, [224]
Journalists as models for the amateur, [57]
K
Kernahan, Coulson, [65]
Keynote of story, [79]
Kipling, Rudyard, and local colour, [174];
short stories, [91];
"The Recessional," [75]
Kipling's "Cat that walked by itself," [142];
varied styles, [104]
Know your characters, [29]
"Kubla Khan," [75], [170]
L
Lady of the Decoration, [194]
Lady of the Lake, [173]
Landscape painting, [178]
Language, pleasing, [71]
Learning must not be obtrusive, [108]
Leave off when finished, [147]
Length of story must be considered, [134]
Letters, story in the form of, [193]
Life ever offering new discoveries, [29]
Literary student at disadvantage compared with students of arithmetic, [6]
Literature, an elusive business, [7];
good, what constitutes it, [7];
intangible, [8]
Little, Frances, Lady of the Decoration, [194]
Little Women, [201]
Local colour and American authors, [174]
Local colour subordinate to personality, [28]
Locality should be known to story writer, [220]
Longfellow, Bryant and Swinburne, [76], [77]
Lovers' outpourings in amateur verse, [239]
Love-story difficult for amateur, [211], [224]
Love-story, need for character delineation, [215]
Love-stories outlets for girls' emotions, [221]
M
Magazine is a business proposition, [264]
Main theme should make universal appeal, [27]
Major, Charles, [184]
Mannerisms not tolerated, [164]
"Mark Twain" and preacher, [251]
Marriage offers in amateur stories, [207]
"Max Adder's" humour helpful, [293]
Men and women as they really are, [29]
Mental "atmosphere," conveying our own, [187]
Mental food needed, [12]
Mental indigestion, [37]
Metrical composition, laws to be studied, [235]
Meynell, Alice, "Song," [238]
Minor details in stories, two purposes of, [86]
Mitford, Miss, Our Village, [185]
Modern English seldom used by amateur, [48]
Modern style gained by reading modern stuff, [54]
Modernity of style desirable, [50]
Money-making should not alone be object in writing, [148]
Monotony fatal to success, [120]
Moral books should be as well-written as nasty ones, [295]
Morley, Viscount, and prize poem, [73]
Motif important, [81]
Motives that prompt actions, [26], [27]
MSS., proportion of accepted, [3]
MSS. rejected, reasons why, [10], [148], [197]
MSS. should be typed, [278]
Music and art compared with literature, [4], [5], [6], [132]
N
Nature dissertations in amateur verse, [239]
Nature and mind, effects of nutriment, [11]
Nature's revenge for misuse of brain, [36]
Negatives, double, [159]
New reliable matter will find acceptance, [46]
Newspaper leading articles for style, [54]
Notes of observations, [17], [20], [21]
Novel, "grit" necessary for, [122]
Novel, three-volume, [132]
Novel, wedding need not be chief aim of, [80]
Novelty desirable, [120]
Novice must train himself, [6]
Noyes, Alfred, [75], [250]
O
Object, be sure of your, [127]
Observation saves from pitfalls, [22]
Observation to begin just where you are now, [32]
Obvious not the whole of the story, the, [26]
Old-fashioned style not wanted to-day, [52]
Old-world "atmosphere," [183]
Omar Khayyám, pessimistic "atmosphere" of, [184]
One-sided view of life due to isolation, [31]
Other people's brain-work not acceptable, [46]
Originality necessary, [46]
Originality not peculiarity, [164]
Original work is rare, [202]
Our Admirable Betty, "atmosphere" of, [184]
Our Village, Miss Mitford, [185]
Out-doory "atmosphere," [185]
P
Padding stories, [85]
Painting, three-part basis of, [132]
Peculiarity not originality, [164]
Peculiarity will not secure permanent interest, [122]
Pedantic style, avoid, [161]
People, study of, needed, [30]
"Personal" marking does not carry to editor, [283]
Personal outlook of readers, [119]
Pessimism manufacture is criminal, [292]
Pessimistic "atmosphere," [184]
Pett Ridge and local colour, [173]
Phil May's methods, [255]
Pickwick Papers and school holiday, [232]
Picture palaces versus reading, [39]
Pigeons in war, amateur article on, [146], [149]
Plato, why we read, [111], [112]
Plausible imp, the, [257]
Plots, making, [108]
Plots, well-worn, [204]
Poems for comparison, [76]
Poems should have some definite thought, [236]
Poetic idea in every poem, [237]
Poetry anthologies, [75], [76]
Poetry leads to good prose, [72]
Poetry, reading aloud, [74]
Poetry, the so-called "new," [244]
Point, necessary to a story, [214]
Polish, [222]
Preliminary studies for perfect work, [101]
Press dates are long before publication, [150]
Proposals in fiction and real life, [212]
Psychological bearings to be noted, [24]
Publisher better judge than author, [267];
not a philanthropic agent, [265]
Publisher's requirements must be conformed to, [282]
Publishers specialise in fixed directions, [269]
"Pull together" your MS., [255]
Punch and a "curtain," [233]
Punch, influence of, [286]
Purpose, all writing should have a, [128]
Q
Quiller-Couch, Sir A., [65]
Quotation marks, [161]
R
Reader's choice, rather than yours, for the reader, [151], [152]
Reading, aloud, [55], [74];
helps you to judge the worth of information, [43];
loss of the power of, [39];
and nibbling, [40];
necessary for historical stories, [41]
Read only what you can read thoroughly, [40]
"Realism" in fiction, [290]
Reliability essential, [46]
Return of MSS., [277]
Reviewers, [118]
Rhapsodies do not constitute poetry, [236]
"Rich sonority," [54]
Righteousness, authors should aim at, [293]
Rives, Amélie, and local colour, [176]
Rosary, The, heroine of, [210]
Rossetti, Christina, [75];
and Mrs. Browning, and Tennyson, [76], [77]
"Rough-hewn" method, [70]
Routine in editors' offices, [283]
Rubáiyát, pessimistic "atmosphere" of the, [184]
Rules, established, save our wasting time, [130]
Ruskin's "Chapter on Chimney-Pots," [44];
defects overlooked, [124];
Poetry of Architecture, Queen of the Air, Preterita, [65];
Sesame and Lilies, [65], [183];
tangents, [137]
S
Schools for literature needed, [5]
Scott's Lady of the Lake, [173]
Secondary matter in story, [85]
Seeing yourself in print should not be alone the object in writing, [148]
Selection, instinct for, [139], [146]
Self-expression, craving for, [9]
Selling, the essential of book production, [119]
Sensational, the demand for, [38]
Sentences should be short, [221]
Serial publication necessitates "curtains," [231]
Sesame and Lilies, [183]
Settle your chronological starting point, [145]
Shakespeare language not necessary to amateur, [50]
Shakespeare and spiritual values, [28], [29];
why we read, [111], [112]
Sharp, Wm., [171]
Shaw, Bernard, cynical scintillations of, [165]
Shelley's Cloud, [75]
Short sentences an advantage, [221]
Short stories need same rules as long ones, [90]
Shrieking books, [38]
Skimming, danger of, [36]
Slang indicates ignorance, [62]
Slang, monotony of, [61]
Slangy style, avoid, [161]
Smile, making people, [293]
Snippets of reading, [37]
Sonnets from the Portuguese, Mrs. Browning, [244]
Sound, refined and otherwise, [69]
Spectator articles for style, [55]
Speeding up our sentences, [49]
Spiritual values to be noted, [24]
Spiritual values and Shakespeare, [28], [29]
Stale material, [45]
Start where you are, [224]
Starting-point, chronological, to be settled, [145]
Steel, Mrs. F. A., [91], [174]
Stevenson, R. L., Essays, [64];
Garden of Verses, [250]
Story, "atmospheric" purpose of author, [89];
balance of, [135];
assessing values of characters, [85];
climax never to be lost sight of, [89];
contrasts, examples of, [87];
cut out irrelevant particulars, [136];
dovetailing incidents, [89];
framework of, [82];
get well under way early in, [134];
historical reading necessary for, [41];
keynote of, [79];
length of, [134];
the minor details, [86];
the three-part basis, [132];
incidents, select those that matter, [142];
in form of diary, [192];
in form of letters, [193];
over-crowding with detail, [92];
"slap dash" method of writing, [92];
told in clear manner most popular, [196];
written in first person, limitations of, [188];
written in third person usually best, [188];
secondary matter in, [85]
Stories by masters, nothing merely a "fill-up," [86]
Stories, short, need same rules as long ones, [90]
Strauss' sound monstrosities, [68]
"Strong" fiction, [287]
Style, avoid indefinite, [156]
Style of writing should vary, [104]
Subjects must be of interest to readers, [119];
not repeated by editors, [153];
unable to be studied should be avoided, [19]
Successful books must be well-written, [294]
Swinburne and Longfellow, [76]
Sympathy needed to write convincingly, [29], [30]
T
Tact necessary to contributors, [284]
Taylor, Ann and Jane, [124]
Tennyson and Christina Rossetti, [77]
Tennyson's "Break, break, break," [171];
"Flower in a Crannied Wall," [171]
Tennyson's poems for reading aloud, [74]
Thinking, formless, [171]
Third-person narrative usually best, [188]
Thought transference, [59]
Thought, beware of labouring a, [160]
Thoughts, difficulty of writing them down, [98]
Three-part basis of story, [132]
Timothy's Quest, [224]
Topicality, keep an eye on, [150]
Training for authorship imperative, [5]
Training yourself, [140]
Travellers, publishers', as readers, [118]
Typed MSS. most likely to be read, [278]
U
Ugliness is not art, [291]
Uncle Tom's Cabin, central idea of, [79]
Unpleasant topics, [288]
Unseen that counts, the, [24]
Using two words where one will suffice, [50]
V
Valley Song, by Mabel Earle, [248]
Verse, abbreviations to be avoided in, [247]
Verse, amateur, [239]
Verse anthologies, [75], [76]
Verse-making, laws of, to be studied, [235]
Verse must voice world-wide need, [243]
Verse, worth reading, amateur, [239]
Verse-writing a useful exercise, [234];
leads to good prose, [72]
Vocabulary of average person, [60]
W
Wax-Figure characters, [26]
Wedding need not be chief aim of novel, [80]
Well-worn plots, [204]
When Knighthood was in Flower, "atmosphere" of, [184]
Wholesome literature preferred by public, [295]
Why, every, hath a wherefore, [160]
Why some books survive, [28], [29]
Wiggin, Kate Douglas, [224]
Wilkins, Mary E., and local colour, [175], [176]
Wilson, President, 171-word sentence, [221]
Window in Thrums, A, [224]
Wister, Owen, and local colour, [176]
Woman's Magazine offered unsuitable subjects, [153]
Woman's Magazine at press some weeks before publication, [150]
Wooden-horse heroes, [26]
Word, value of a, [66]
Word-picture, fragmentary, [169]
Word-picture study, [104]
Word-pictures, need to select incidents for, [141]
Words, greatest writers had no more than we, [251]
Words, subject should regulate choice, [158]
Words, use simple, [67]
Words, using two when one will suffice, [50]
Write as you actually speak, [48]
Writing difficult to reduce to set of rules, [8]
Writing is hard work, [204]
Writer's influence greater than preacher's, [287]
Writing a serious responsibility, [287]
Writing that lasts, [25]
Transcriber's Note: Obvious misprints and punctuation errors have been corrected silently.