BLENDING OF ELEMENTS
Each story has two primary fictional elements, the people and the events, but it has three mechanical elements, the action, the speech of the characters, and the matter descriptive of persons or places. And while each tale is unique, and any one of these mechanical elements may largely preponderate over the others, nevertheless the normal fiction will devote a substantial amount of space to each. If the story permits—a proviso implied in discussing any matter of technique—it will be well for the writer to strive to distribute and intermingle its action, dialogue, and descriptive matter in a texture pleasing because varied. The whole should not be built of unwieldy chunks of description, speech, and action succeeding one another with monotonous regularity, but descriptive touches should be intermingled with the dialogue, and narrative matter with word-painting and the speech of characters. Obviously this is no absolute rule, and is perhaps not ever a matter of strict art, but it is true that a reader quickly wearies of much of the same thing, and a story is for its reader. Moreover, a story as a whole will gain in verisimilitude by judicious distribution of its mechanical elements. The matter is merely another phase of the necessity to give a fiction the seeming of life, and should not be neglected, the more so because it is easy and a mechanical matter. The beginner can afford to neglect no chance for success.
CHAPTER VIII
DESCRIPTION
Interest—Secondary Function of Description—Distribution—Story of Atmosphere—Effectiveness of Distributed Description—Description of Persons—Example—Analysis—Accuracy—Mechanical Limitations of Story—Use of All Senses—Description of Setting—Two Objects—To Clarify Course of Events—To Create Illusion of Reality—Use of All Senses Order of Details—Contrast.
All writing is descriptive, in a sense; narration, for instance, is simply the picturing of shifting physical conditions in a state of fluxation. But description is usually taken to mean the picturing of physical conditions more or less static. The term is used so here, for the technique of describing persons, scenes, and objects generally requires treatment separate from the description or narration of bare events. In describing a happening of his story, and in describing one of the characters, the writer's general object is the same, to show the person or event with the vivacity of life, but the conditions to which the writer is subject are somewhat different in each case. To mention but one difference, normally much more space is available for pure narration than for pure description. The events of a story are the story; its people and its setting are drawn only to give the fiction the highest attainable degree of verisimilitude. And, since the space available for description in the normal story is somewhat limited, the writer is under stringent necessity to make each word tell. In narrating an event, the matter has an interest of its own for a reader apart from the manner of telling, but in describing a person, scene, or object, the word is all in all. If the picture is not effective, nothing is achieved.
In coming to the writing of a descriptive passage, the writer should realize its secondary function in the story. Except in the case of the story of atmosphere, and perhaps of the story of character, a reader's interest will focus in the progression of happenings as such, and the sole object of strictly descriptive matter is to give maximum concreteness to the events by depicting their setting and individualizing the persons concerned. What happens is the first consideration, not where it happens nor whom it affects. Most stories might be told without a single word of strict description, and no such word should be given place in any story unless it will forward the fiction to a higher degree of verisimilitude.
It follows that descriptive matter should not be written pages at a time. Its function is to lend body and color to the whole course of events, therefore descriptive touches should be inserted throughout the whole course of a story. To give an itemized description of a character at the start, or to picture the whole countryside through which the story is to move, is a poor, because ineffective, way to write. Not only will the reader be repelled by great spaces of description, but he will forget the attempted picture with speed. The thing to do is to insert a vivid word here and there where it will do the most good as the story progresses. Description is for the story, not to give the writer a chance to heap words.
Numerous successful authors have indulged in lengthy descriptions, but the worth of their books does not result from the indulgence. Hugo's description of mediaeval Paris in "Notre Dame" is an example so extreme as almost not to be in point, but most of the elder generation of writers hampered the march of their stories by describing at inordinate length. No matter what the eminence of those who have written so, it is a technical fault, for it tends to render the story stiff and mechanical and unnatural. Lengthy description is not only inimical to a reader's interest; it is perfectly useless in a fictional sense. The sole function of description is to give body and reality to the story, and that function cannot be performed unless the descriptive quality runs through the whole, and the descriptive matter is not gathered into stagnant pools of words.
Much of the effect of the story of atmosphere may depend upon its descriptive matter, which may constitute a great part of the whole text. The fact does not invalidate the general proposition. In discussing the various aspects of technique, such as this matter of description, the initial assumption is that only the technique of the normal story will be stated. The normal story is the story of complication of incident, where interest centers in the course of events rather than in the people or the setting. Variants from it, the story emphasizing character and the story stressing atmosphere, by their very difference call for a different handling of elements.
Aside from the fact that a single lengthy description of a person usually will have less effect on a reader than the same amount of descriptive matter deftly interpolated throughout the whole story, or the fact that recurrent descriptive touches as to setting will do more to give body to the fiction than a single lengthy description, the writer should consider the mere rhetorical difficulty of descriptive writing. He must stand or fall by the picture he creates. In narrating, he has another resource than perfection in expression, for the bare event, apart from the way it is told, will interest a reader. But a picture will not interest unless it is a picture. Rhetorical skill is the sole determinant between absolute success and flat failure in describing. And it is hard enough to find one or two telling descriptive phrases without contracting with the reader to supply several pages of them. Not only is a long descriptive passage of questionable value in the normal story, even when well done, but very few can write a long descriptive passage well. The matter of emphasis here comes up again for consideration. Vividness is not absolute, but relative. One vivid phrase will seem vivid to a reader, but fifty or a hundred together will not. The reader will become accustomed to the higher level of expression, and the whole will fail of its object.
In the course of a story the writer will have occasion to describe persons and—roughly—things. Descriptive writing is descriptive writing, but the matters for consideration in describing a man or woman and a countryside are somewhat different, and will be taken up separately.