The Technique of Fiction Writing

by Robert Saunders Dowst

CHARACTERIZATION BY ACTION

The value of action as a means to give a reader realization of the physical appearance of a character is somewhat slight. To show the person as performing a feat of strength will suggest that he is a powerful man, but physical prowess is not a visually definite quality. Powerful men are not always even large men. Action is greatly useful to reveal the soul, but not very useful to reveal appearance.

However, between narrative and strict descriptive writing a borderland exists. A person may be described as having a sneaking look. That is strict description. But the writer also may relate how the person slunk down an alley to avoid meeting someone he dared not face. The descriptive value of the word "slunk" as to the person will be as great as the narrative value of the word to the event. It is merely the matter of vivid and effective narration approached from a new angle. Narration consists in stating what happened to certain persons and what they did, and a descriptive quality, both as to the persons and the events, should permeate it. Visualization of the story in imagination will show the way.

If action is the least effective way to hint of the characters' appearance, it is by far the most effective way to display their natures. The whole purpose of the story of character is to display the fact and demonstrate the consequences of the possession of certain traits by a group of persons or even by one person. And in any real story, that is, in any fiction built about a plot, the traits of a character and the events will be mutually influential. Either the characters will be devised to develop the events, or the events will be devised to develop the characters. The moral quality of an act is a sure index to the moral quality of the person who commits it. A story must reveal character simply because it consists of a series of events involving and produced by men and women. The writer's endeavor is not merely to narrate the events for their own sake, but also to realize just what sort of people must inevitably have acted so under the given conditions, and to employ his subsidiary means of characterization so as to bring out no trait unnecessary to the events.

There is one exception to the rule that the writer should endeavor to bring out only the traits of character strictly material to the events. Of course, the primary necessity in fiction writing is to develop the whole story naturally. But a story is for its readers. To give some stories full effect upon a reader it is necessary to invest one or more of the characters with a trait or traits not strictly necessary to the development of the story. Usually the aim will be to awaken the reader's sympathy that he may follow the fortunes of the person or persons with greater interest than the bare content of the story would evoke. For instance, if a story shows a character whose unlovely traits lead him into difficulties, investing him also with some pleasing attribute will deepen a reader's interest in his fate by arousing active pity for him. I have touched upon this matter before and from another angle in discussing the necessity that the writer select a mode of narration which will permit him to express his sympathy for a character that he may evoke a reader's. Stevenson's treatment of Herrick in "The Ebb-Tide" was instanced, and one who has read the book will recall that its author gave Herrick attributes of mind and soul more pleasing than inefficiency and weakness, though weakness was the single quality demanded in Herrick to render inevitable the course of events.[O]

No specific technique of characterization by action can be stated; it is a matter of conceiving and elaborating the whole story justly. The fact for the writer is that a person's acts reveal his inner nature, and the necessity that the writer must meet is to devise events and characters having a natural and plausible relation. If this is done, the essential substance of the story will be sound, at least, so far as character is concerned. Then the writer must meet the other necessity to make his people appear to be real men and women apart from any distinction of their inner natures. If both necessities are met, a reader will be faced by real people doing things for real and adequate reasons, which is a great part of the art of fiction.

All the acts of a person's life, great and small, would reveal his whole nature. But a story usually does not take a person from birth to death, and, if it does, it is concerned with a phase of the life rather than with the whole life. The art of fiction is highly selective, and necessarily so. Not only must the writer of fiction produce his effects within a limited space, but he must consciously eliminate here and suppress there in order to make apparent the real significance of his picture of life. The significance of one man's life may lie in his constant loyalty to and sacrifice for his family; the significance of another's in his complete disregard of his obligations as a husband and father. In either case, the writer who sees material for a short story or novel in such a life must select for reproduction chiefly those acts of the character which are significant as to the trait sought to be brought out, otherwise the story will be without point and meaning. Viewed superficially, a story is a mere string of events that happened to happen, a thing easy to write without forethought and calculation. But the truth is that a story is a chain of events at least influenced and sometimes even determined by character. If the influence of character in the fiction is predominant, it cannot be written justly without careful weighing and selection of the incidents that suggest themselves to the writer.

Having conceived a plot and devised characters to enact it, or having conceived characters and devised a plot to develop them, the writer should outline the main course of the story, mentally or on paper. He then should realize definitely and precisely what traits of character are primarily significant in the story, and should prepare to develop them so as to reinforce the effect of his people's acts upon a reader by characteristic dialogue and description and direct statement. The writer should consider next whether a due regard for a reader's interest requires that he invest his people with attributes not strictly necessary to the main events of the story, and therefore not to be revealed by each person's part in such events. Finally, the writer should realize that he must give each person a definite physical presence and illusion of actuality, and should prepare to do so by visualizing them in imagination. If all this is done at all, it is certain that the story will be a better piece of work than if the writer set to work with only a vague prevision of the course of events as his material. And if it is done justly, and the writer has adequate executive powers, the story will be worth while, at least in relation to character.

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CHAPTER XI
ATMOSPHERE

Definition—General Atmospheric Value of Fiction—Tone of Story—Preparation of Reader for Climax—Examples—The Story of Atmosphere—Short Story—Setting—Slight Dramatic Value of Type.

Atmosphere—as the term is used by the writer of fiction—is a most indefinite word; it may be well to preface discussion of what it stands for by a definition. And in defining it is often conducive to clearness to state what a thing is not before stating what it is.

In the first place, atmosphere is not setting, although the setting of a story may aid in producing its atmosphere. The frozen wastes of a sub-arctic region or the man-made squalor of a slum may operate powerfully to produce on a reader of a story placed therein an impression of desolation or of misery, but that impression will derive from something other than the setting, and will merely be reinforced thereby. If a slum story is essentially cheerful and light-hearted in content, its reader will not be oppressed by the setting, however truthfully touched in, unless the writer deliberately makes his people seem miraculous in point of their capacity to avoid the contagion of their surroundings. The young girl in "The Dawn of a To-Morrow" is an instance of what is meant by the qualification.

Atmosphere is not setting, nor is it anything at all that is in a story. It is not the quality of the environment; it is not the general quality of the people or their acts; it is not the quality of the theme or plot. What is it? It is the general emotional impression made on a reader by the whole story. It is nothing that is in a story; it is the emotional effect produced by the story on a reader. Just as a scene, an event, or a person, unless very commonplace, will have some emotional effect on an observer, any story that is told so as to create the illusion of reality will have some emotional effect on a reader. As Stevenson said to Balfour: "I'll give you an example—'The Merry Men,' There I began with the feeling of one of those islands on the west coast of Scotland, and I gradually developed the story to express the sentiment with which the coast affected me."

A distinction should be noted here. "The Merry Men" is a strict story of atmosphere; its author, as he implicitly states, started with an emotional effect, or "sentiment," and devised only such persons and action as would deepen on a reader the emotional impression initiated in this case by the setting. But, as has been stated, any story told so as to create the illusion of reality will have some totality of emotional effect on a reader, apart from its specific emotional effects in various parts, unless the fiction is very commonplace. That is to say, the strict story of atmosphere, which has been touched on briefly in discussing story-types, subordinates its action and its people to its totality of emotional effect; in the normal story, whether it stresses personality or event, atmosphere, or totality of emotional effect on a reader, is a subordinate consideration, resulting from the necessity that an observer of persons and events be affected thereby in some general way. At least it is true that the writer of a story of complication of incident or of character cannot permit any consideration of atmosphere to interfere with the events in the first case or the persons in the other. Whatever totality of emotional effect may reside in his work will be inherent in the conception, as it would be inherent in such a spectacle for an observer, if the story should happen in actuality.

The sensible—because the most profitable—way for the writer of fiction to fit the matter of atmosphere into his general artistic philosophy is to disregard it entirely, except where it constitutes a primary consideration, that is, except in relation to the strict story of atmosphere. The reason for this cavalier treatment of the matter has been brought out. If any story is told so as to create the illusion of reality, some general emotional effect will be produced on its reader, will be inherent in the conception, as it would be inherent in the spectacle, if actual. It all comes down to this: by telling his story justly as a course of events involving real people in a definite environment, the writer will produce on a reader whatever totality of emotional effect is inherent in the conception. If there is no totality of emotional effect inherent therein the writer cannot produce it except by changing the whole conception and writing a different story. In the case of the strict story of atmosphere the writer's attitude is different. He sets out, not with a story, but with an emotional effect, and devises people and events and setting to produce it.

The point can be made clearer by more specific discussion. Assume that a writer has conceived a story with a definite plot, involving definite people, set in a New England village. Anybody who knows New England or has read Alice Brown or Mary E. Wilkins Freeman can testify that such a story, justly told, will have a definite and peculiar atmospheric value. But its atmosphere, its totality of emotional effect on a reader will be inherent in its setting and people, perhaps even in its events. The story itself will determine its atmosphere, which can be only the peculiar impression that a New England village, its people and their lives, produce on an observer. By choosing to write such a story, or by choosing to write any definite story, a writer debars himself from creating any atmosphere not involved in the story selected for writing. On the other hand, if a writer desires to put together a story of atmosphere, he starts with an emotional effect as the basic conception, and then casts about for a setting, people, and incidents that will produce such emotional effect. It all depends upon what the writer starts with. If he starts with an emotional effect, he may narrate any course of events, and draw any sort of people, and place the tale in any sort of setting, provided only that events, people, and setting be such as to produce the desired atmosphere or effect. But if the writer starts with a definite story, the only atmosphere he can create thereby is the atmosphere inherent in the conception.[P]

Though it is true that a writer may and should disregard the matter of atmosphere in writing a story which he has conceived as a definite course of events involving definite people, since any atmospheric possibilities of the fiction will be inherent in the conception and will be realized by telling it justly as to people, events, and setting, nevertheless a qualification must be stated. No story is conceived as definitely as it is written; the writer first grasps the plot or main situation, perhaps also the characters, and then expands the outline into a congruous presentation of a phase of life by filling in details as to environment, people, and events. This filling-in process may and should be performed partly at least before writing, but even if the writer postpones it until he is wrestling with the problem of execution, he must remember one thing. Any story has a general tone, largely determined by its climax or main situation. This tone or key of a story is not its atmosphere strictly, perhaps, but the dividing line between the two matters is very faint. The atmosphere of a story is its general emotional effect upon a reader, and its tone is very nearly the same thing, being the result of its writer's having justly performed his selective task by transcribing only such matters as harmonize with the main situation, tragic or comic. And a writer must regard the matter of the tone of a story in developing and writing it, if it is to have the significant simplicity and unity which alone can give the fiction maximum power and effect.

The practical problem can be stated most simply thus: a reader's intelligence and sensibilities must be prepared for the crisis, climax, or main situation by incorporating in the story only such matters of environment, personality, or event as harmonize with the emotional character of the main situation. The necessity is most stringent, of course, in the case of the short story, but it is a consideration to be borne in mind in writing any type of fiction. It is merely another aspect of the general question of preparation, which has been touched upon before. The situations of a story must be prepared in a mechanical sense, that is, the writer must prepare to place his people where each situation demands that they be placed; the people themselves must be developed and individualized, that the situations may have full dramatic value; and the mind and heart of a reader of the story must be prepared for the climax, which is the whole story in little.

If the main situation of any story is essentially tragic, it will never do not to hint the fact until the climax is reached, when a reader will be overwhelmed, rather than upborne and stimulated, by the torrent of battle, murder, or sudden death. The opening scene of "Macbeth" presages the lurid character of the whole play, and serves to key reader or spectator for murder. Likewise, in the case of a story essentially light and happy in content, the purpose of the writer is to develop and present one of life's many attractive phases, and that purpose will be defeated or at least hampered if woebegone people and unpleasant situations are given place in the fiction.

Considerations of contrast may lead the writer to incorporate in his story matter out of keeping with its general tone and main situation, but the effort is really to emphasize the general tone by striking a few discordant notes. Contrast is too delicate a matter to be discussed with any profit; whether or not the device shall be employed in any story is a problem that only the artistic sense of the writer of the particular story can answer.

It is very easy to say that a story should be told so as to prepare a reader for the climax, that he may accept it, yet, in a sense, the thing can be achieved only by adequate practice of the whole art of fiction. The general necessity is to make the whole course of events seem real and actual; the more specific necessity is to give a reader a definite clue to the nature of the story, that he may not be shocked into disbelief by the climax. This must be done unobtrusively, as every other technical device must be employed, under penalty of failing in its office.

A quotation showing effective employment of the device will not be useless. Stevenson's short story "Thrawn Janet" leads up to an encounter with the devil, and the author loses no time in preparing a reader for the entrance of his satanic majesty. The story begins thus:

"The Reverend Murdoch Soulis was long minister of the moorland parish of Balweary, in the vale of Dule. A severe, bleak-faced old man, dreadful to his hearers, he dwelt in the last years of his life, without relative or servant or any human company, in the small and lonely manse under the Hanging Shaw. In spite of the iron composure of his features, his eye was wild, scared, and uncertain; and when he dwelt, in private admonitions, on the future of the impenitent, it seemed as if the eye pierced through the storms of time to the terrors of eternity. Many young persons, coming to prepare themselves against the season of the Holy Communion, were dreadfully affected by his talk. He had a sermon on 1st Peter, v. and 8th, 'The devil as a roaring lion,' on the Sunday after every seventeenth of August, and he was accustomed to surpass himself upon that text both by the appalling nature of the matter and the terror of his bearing in the pulpit. The children were frightened into fits, and the old looked more than usually oracular, and were, all that day, full of those hints that Hamlet deprecated. The manse itself, where it stood by the water of Dule among some thick trees, with the Shaw overhanging it on the one side, and on the other many cold, moorish hill-tops rising towards the sky, had begun, at a very early period of Mr. Soulis' ministry, to be avoided in the dusk hours by all who valued themselves upon their prudence; and guidmen sitting at the clachan alehouse shook their heads together at the thought of passing late by that uncanny neighborhood."

Here Stevenson loses no time in keying his reader to the general pitch of the story. It is a task that the writer of any story must undertake. The general nature of the tale should be suggested as soon as possible, and the story should not be allowed to falsify its introductory hints, but should reaffirm them constantly, until all the divergent strands of the fiction are knotted together in the climax, which will need no interpretation. Take another instance from Stevenson, the beginning of "Markheim," where Markheim murders the dealer in curios.

"'Yes,' said the dealer, 'our windfalls are of various kinds. Some customers are ignorant, and then I touch a dividend of my superior knowledge. Some are dishonest,' and here he held up the candle, so that the light fell strongly on his visitor, 'and in that case,' he continued, 'I profit by my virtue.'

"Markheim had but just entered from the daylight streets, and his eyes had not grown familiar with the mingled shine and darkness of the shop. At these pointed words, and before the near presence of the flame, he blinked painfully and looked aside."

A little farther on:

"The dealer once more chuckled; and then, changing to his usual business voice, though still with a note of irony, 'You can give, as usual, a clear account of how you came into the possession of the object?' he continued. 'Still your uncle's cabinet? A remarkable collector, sir!'

"And the little pale, round-shouldered dealer stood almost on tiptoe, looking over the top of his gold spectacles, and nodding his head with every mark of disbelief. Markheim returned his gaze with one of infinite pity, and a touch of horror."

Note how strongly and withal how naturally the whole of this, and particularly the last sentence, suggests that Markheim has come into the shop to do murder. The story is keyed to tragedy at once, its reader with it. His mind is prepared in advance, that the significant event, when it is related, may be accepted without question.

As stated, this matter of keying the story and its reader to the pitch of the main situation or climax is not precisely the matter of atmosphere, but it has close affiliations therewith. It is even more important to the writer of fiction. Any atmospheric value in a story will be brought out by telling it justly as a course of events involving real people in a definite environment, and preparation of a reader for the main situation of a story is a part of just and adequate narration. The writer's hints of the character of what is to come must be unforced and natural, but they must be effective.

It is obvious, of course, that the more tense or strange the main situation of a story, the greater the necessity that a reader be prepared for it. If the main situation consists in commonplace characters doing some commonplace thing, a reader will accept the spectacle without artificial preparation, but if the main situation is highly dramatic, the normally placid course of a reader's thought and feeling must be agitated and stimulated in advance, or he will not rise with the climax. In other words, the fiction will not have verisimilitude emotionally. A story is both a physical spectacle and an emotional progression; the author must write both for the reader's eye and for his soul. If any story touches emotional heights, its reader must be stimulated thereto by proper preparation.

It remains to consider the matter of atmosphere, as the term is used with relation to the strict story of atmosphere, which emphasizes the emotional value of the whole for a reader rather than the significance of the events or characters.

The intrinsic difficulty to blend such diverse matters as people, events, and setting or environment into an even emotional unity requires that the strict story of atmosphere be a short story. Even if it is not a short story in point of actual length, it will be a short story in point of structure, that is, it will lead relatively few characters through little diversity of setting to a single main situation, or perhaps even to no main situation, in a dramatic sense. As noted in discussing story types, the progression of the particular atmosphere to the point of highest intensity gives the strict story of atmosphere much of its story-character. The human element is incidental and subordinate. However, the task of keeping people, events, and setting true to a fixed emotional tone is so difficult that a writer cannot sustain the effort for long. Many novels or relatively lengthy stories have high atmospheric value; Hardy's Wessex novels possess the quality, as does much of Joseph Conrad's work, "Almayer's Folly," for instance; but it is generally true that the intrinsic difficulty of the story of atmosphere tends to confine it within brief limits. It is certainly true that only the skilled hand can compass the feat of writing it at all.

I have stated that the setting of a story is not its atmosphere, and that is true. Nevertheless the setting is most often what determines the emotional effect of the whole. A hundred instances might be cited—"The Merry Men," "The Fall of the House of Usher," "Almayer's Folly," "The Return of the Native." This results from the fact that setting or environment is much more potent to produce a relatively definite emotional effect on an observer than either a person or an event, the two other elements of a story. A murder may produce a very definite feeling of horror in an observer or reader, but the emotion, while definite, is not linked inevitably to murder alone. Many other spectacles will horrify. Likewise, a person may produce a feeling of disgust in an observer or reader, but so will an infinite number of other persons, all radically different from each other and the first. But the emotional effect of the west coast of Scotland is special and peculiar to that setting; there is no single word in the language characterizing it. That is why Stevenson had to write "The Merry Men" to state it, just as Poe had to write "The Fall of the House of Usher" to state the specific emotional effect of that particular house, and Hardy had to write "The Return of the Native" to state the emotional value of his Wessex moors.

Moreover, when the writer finds the germ of his story in a person seen actually or in imagination, it is more than likely that the emphasis of the completed work will be on character, and when he finds it in an event or situation, it is more than likely that the emphasis of the completed work will be on plot. But when a countryside or house or stretch of sea-coast suggests a story, it can hardly result otherwise than that the completed work will emphasize the emotional value of the setting.

The setting of the strict story of atmosphere may determine its emotional effect, but the emotional tendency of the setting must not be affected adversely by the people or the events. That is why the setting is not atmosphere, though it may determine the atmosphere. A gloomy and terrific setting will have small emotional effect upon a reader if the people and events of the story are not such as to deepen the impression initiated by the setting, for the people and events cannot be emotionally neutral. If they are seemingly real, that is, if the story is well told apart from the matter of atmosphere, they will make some impression on a reader. Unless their impression is of a piece with that of the setting, the unity of emotional effect will be destroyed. And if there is no unity of emotional effect, there is no atmosphere, in the strict sense.

Confession is good for the soul; let me say that if there is a technique of writing so as to produce a unity of emotional effect I am unable to state it. The matter is exceptionally delicate, and only the broadest sort of abstract statement can be made. One can state—as I have stated—that the emotional effect of a story of atmosphere is usually initiated by and dependent on the setting, and that the emotional effect initiated by the setting must be reinforced by the writer's choice and handling of people and events. But that is about all that can be said. A specific story of atmosphere might be taken and examined in detail with profit, if space were available; yet the devices employed by its writer would not completely exhaust the resources of atmospheric writing, and abstract statement of them here will not cover the whole technique. Poe's technique in "The Fall of the House of Usher" is not identical with Stevenson's in "The Merry Men," nor with Conrad's in "Almayer's Folly."

Fortunately, the strict technique is not of great practical importance. Any story will gain in power by possession of an atmospheric quality, but that quality will be present if the basic conception is not trivial and feeble, and if the story is told adequately as to its three elements of setting, personality, and event. Any emotional value inherent in the thing will then be felt by a reader, as he would feel the emotional value of the spectacle, if real. Any story that is lived vicariously by its writer in the person of the character from whose viewpoint it is told, and is written justly as a course of events involving real people in a definite environment, will have all the effect on a reader attainable by the particular conception. And as to the strict story of atmosphere, it will be hopeless for the writer of fiction to attempt it until he can handle the less artificial and less difficult forms with some approach to real facility and adequacy.

One specific point of the technique of writing the strict story of atmosphere should be noted, for it is important. The emotional effect is usually initiated and determined by the setting, natural or artificial, as a tropical island or a house. Characters and events must be subservient to the particular emotional value. It results that there can be no real dramatic opposition of characters and traits in the strict story of atmosphere, for the moral nature of an individual has no affiliation with the emotional quality of a countryside or any other setting. Development of strict traits of character, which are essential to drama, will not serve to deepen for a reader the emotional suggestion of a setting. The writer of the strict story of atmosphere must seek to invest his people with such traits as will reinforce the emotional suggestion of the setting, and these traits cannot be strictly of character. Rather they will be attributes of appearance, action, mind, and soul. Insanity is an instance of such an attribute of mind, not strictly of character. The point is difficult to state abstractly, as is the whole of the technique of atmosphere, but a reading of either "The Fall of the House of Usher" or "The Merry Men" will clarify my meaning. The people of either story are less human beings than humanized emotional abstractions, of the same stuff of gloom or mystery as the house or sea. It is needless to state that the whole weakness of the story of atmosphere as a fiction results from the necessary devitalizing of its characters, for fiction primarily concerns man, his conflicts and his loves.

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CHAPTER XII
THE SHORT STORY

Definition—Two Types—Dramatic Short Story—Atmospheric Short Story—Origins—Assumed Unity and Singleness of Effect of Dramatic Short Story—General Technique of Form—Characterization—Interest and Too Great Simplicity—Limitation upon Complexity—Length—Coherence of Form—Compression.

A story is a fiction with a plot, as distinguished from a tale, which is a string of incidents that happened to happen to the characters. In the story the events are linked together by the natures of the people concerned; personality influences event and event influences personality. And the short story is, simply, a short story, a fiction, possessing a plot, that could be and has been told adequately within brief limits. A plot is a dramatic problem. Therefore the short story may be defined roughly as a story embodying a dramatic problem which can be stated and worked out adequately as to all its elements of personality, event, and setting within relatively brief limits.

The general nature of the short story having been stated, it is necessary to qualify and distinguish. Fiction is concerned primarily with the intrinsic interest and significance of man and his acts, the elements of drama, but there are three fundamental types of story, two of which are normal and the other abnormal. The types are the story stressing personality and the story stressing incident, which are normal, and the story stressing atmosphere, which is abnormal in that persons and events are subordinate to the emotional value of the whole for a reader, which is usually determined by the setting. Personality is the most prominent element of the story of character, and the events are the most prominent element of the story of complication; each story stresses one of the twin elements of drama, the persons and their acts; and each story possesses both of such elements. That is, both the story of character and the strict story of plot—plot as a mere sequence of events—have some dramatic value. But the strict story of atmosphere has no dramatic value; its nature forbids that it should. The emotional effect is usually determined by the setting, and the human traits that will intensify a setting—and with which the characters must be invested—are not such as to give rise to a dramatic opposition between the persons. The definition of the short story as a story embodying a dramatic problem which can be presented adequately within brief limits does not cover the short story of atmosphere.

In other words, there are two types of short story, apart from the three types determined by the placing of emphasis upon any one of the three fictional elements of personality, event, and setting—the dramatic short story and the short story of unity of effect. The dramatic short story is either the story of character or the story of complication of incident; the short story of unity of effect is the story of atmosphere. The two types here contrasted—the dramatic story and the atmospheric story—could not be covered adequately or to any purpose by a single definition; they are radically different. In defining the short story I have defined merely the dramatic short story, and in discussing it I shall confine myself largely to the dramatic short story likewise, for the story of atmosphere has been considered elsewhere.

Knowledge of the origin of the two basic types of short story, the dramatic story and the atmospheric story, will clarify the writer's conceptions of the types. The story of atmosphere, or story of totality of emotional effect on a reader, was first consciously perfected by Poe, wherein lies America's single claim to having originated a distinct literary type. By following in prose his poetic philosophy—as stated in "The Philosophy of Composition"—Poe produced such stories as "Ligeia" and "The Fall of the House of Usher," which have little or no real dramatic value, yet which are certainly not mere tales, for they have plot- or story-value. As I have stated, in the case of the story of atmosphere, such as these two of Poe's, the climactic ascension of the particular emotional impression to the point of highest intensity supplies much of the plot-or story-element of the fiction.

On the other hand, the dramatic short story, embodying a true plot, may be said to have originated in France. The type was suggested by Poe's work; the mere mechanical hint, that of a brief story, was received eagerly by French writers, and the dramatic element, entirely altering the fundamental character of the fiction, was speedily injected. The result has been that the offshoot has entirely overshadowed the parent stem, and this simply because there is so much more material for the dramatic story than there is for the story of unity of emotional effect. The story of atmosphere is most difficult to do well, so that relatively few are published; it has no wide popular appeal, with the same result; while the range of emotional effects is narrow that may be produced on a reader by a work of fiction, that is, there is less material for the story of atmosphere than for the dramatic story.

It is time now to notice a matter concerning which much glib statement has been made, the "unity" and singleness of effect of the short story. The usual remark of the writer or talker on short story technique is that the ideal or typical short story will manifest the dramatic unities of time, place, and action, and will produce a single effect. But it is notorious that only relatively few stories do manifest the dramatic unities, so the speaker or writer goes on to say most lamely and indefinitely that the laws of technique must give way to the requirements of any particular story. Grant me for the moment that the dramatic unities are not essential to the perfect short story, that Maupassant's "The Necklace" is as technically perfect a short story as Poe's "The Cask of Amontillado," and the viciousness of preaching thus to the short story writer becomes apparent. The only definite thing he is told, that the unities are essential to the perfect short story, is false.

The vice of such statement originates in failure to distinguish between the two types of short story, the story of atmosphere and the dramatic story. The story of atmosphere, of totality or unity of emotional effect on a reader, can hardly escape manifesting the dramatic unities of place, time, and action. The emotional effect will usually be that of a single definite place, for reasons brought out in the preceding chapter; the time will be brief, on account of the inherent difficulty to sustain the atmosphere; and there will be little complication or prolongation of the action, for the same reason. But the dramatic short story is not subject to the limitations imposed by the necessity always to regard atmosphere, or emotional effect, and it may or may not manifest the dramatic unities.

The way to state the relation between the matter of unity and the dramatic short story, the short story of true plot, is this: on account of the limited space available, the plot for a dramatic short story will tend to involve relatively few shifts of setting, relatively short spaces of time, relatively few and relatively simple events, and relatively few persons. No other sort of plot can be adequately handled within narrow word limits. The short story must be written with verbal fullness and elaboration, that its phrasing may not be bare and unlike the shaded contours of life, and the plot complicated as to any one of its three elements of personality, setting, and event cannot be adequately developed in a few thousand words. The short story is the result of just conception and selection, rather than of mere rhetorical compression. Stevenson's "Markheim," for instance, is written more elaborately than almost any other episode in fiction, long or short, that is, any other episode of equal length in point of the time it would take to happen in actuality.

Poe was the first writer to say much of anything definite about his art, and commentators on technique who have followed him have merely expanded his thesis rather than said something new. The only trouble, in relation to the short story, is that Poe spoke of unity and singleness of effect with his own peculiar type of short story in mind, the short story of unity or totality of emotional effect, the short story of atmosphere. When he stated that the short story—his type of short story, the short story of atmosphere—should possess unity and produce a single effect, he stated the truth, but when it is stated that the short story meaning both the story of atmosphere and the dramatic short story—should manifest the unities and produce a single effect, the statement is false. In the first place, the dramatic short story is not the result of the same technique as the story of atmosphere; in the second place, the unity stated by Poe to be essential to the story of emotional effect is not the same thing as the old dramatic unities, which are mechanical. The fact that the story of atmosphere can hardly escape manifesting the dramatic unities does not amalgamate the two matters. Poe's unity is unity of emotional effect: the dramatic unities are singleness of time, place, and action, a matter that can be preserved by anyone, though usually at the expense of the interest of the story. How few have written and can write so as to produce a unity of emotional effect need only be suggested to enforce my point.

The matter would not be worth treating thus minutely were it not for the strong tendency to mislead of any statement that the short story must manifest the dramatic unities. Within very elastic limits, the unities are a convention of the drama, but they are not a convention of fiction, long or short. The art of the stage and the art of the story differ radically; the advantage given the play by the conciseness of its spectacle is compensated by the advantage given the story by its more inclusive character and greater flexibility. I have said that a plot or story of plot is a dramatic problem, and the word "dramatic" has connotations of the stage, but what was meant was that a plot is a conflict between persons, within a single person, or with nature. It was not meant that a plot or story of plot is subject to the conventions of the stage. The art of fiction is infinitely more inclusive and flexible than the art of the stage, and the writer of fiction must utilize to the full the advantages of his art in order to compensate his work in the eyes of a reader for its weakness—relative to the play—in vividness and body.

One may say that the spectacle of life is infinitely various, so that the writer of fiction has plenty of material for stories at hand. But life, despite the efforts of Mrs. Grundy, is subject to no conventions, social, moral, or artistic, and the short story writer who brings all his ideas to the dramatic unities as a first test will winnow little grain from the chaff. When the short story writer finds a hint for a story he should consider whether he can bring out with his few thousand words all the matters necessary to the fiction's having full effect on a reader, but the less he frets about any abstract unity or singleness of effect the better. The words have a plausible sound in discussion, but they mean nothing, except in relation to the story of atmosphere. It means something to say that the dramatic short story should possess unity of tone; it means something to say that it should possess unity of style; but it means nothing to say that it should possess unity, simply, unless the dramatic unities are meant, and in that case the statement is false. Some short stories happen to possess the dramatic unities; more do not.

By the very nature of the conceptive process the writer seizes his story ideas in terms of persons, events, or atmosphere. And when he has a definite story idea he first should develop it so as to give it maximum effect, and then should consider whether he must write a short story or novel or romance to give his developed idea adequate expression. The writer who starts with some abstract knowledge of fiction technique, and seeks to vivify rules of construction into a definite story, will accomplish very little. Good stories are not conceived that way, and good writers do not go to work that way. The story is the thing, and it does not lie between the covers of this or any other book on technique. It lies in the people and events the writer sees in reality or in imagination, and to find it the writer must turn to life or to his dreams. After the story is found the writer's knowledge of and facility in technique will come into play in the work of development and execution.

The broad outlines of the technique of the dramatic short story were implied in the statement that it will tend to involve relatively few shifts of setting, relatively short spaces of time, relatively few and relatively simple events, and relatively few persons. Its unity of tone—which is characteristic of the short story, dramatic and of atmosphere—results from its simplicity as to persons, events, and setting, and its unity of style results from its unity of tone. The elements of the short story are less complex than those of a longer fiction, and the fact causes all the modifications in the general technique of fiction as manifested by the short story. In the short story, for instance, there is less opportunity than in the novel to manage secondary events to build up character or personality. The whole process must be swifter, and the writer must depend largely on direct statement and description.

This matter is of some importance. As to setting, the technique of the short story and of the novel are identical; there is merely less setting in the short story—speaking quantitatively—because the type involves fewer shifts of place, even if the action does not happen in one place. And the technique of the short story and of the novel are identical as to action; the short story merely involves fewer episodes. But as to the people, the technique of the short story and of the novel differ. It is true that the short story involves few persons, relatively to the novel, just as it involves relatively few shifts of setting and relatively few events, but the difference is more than quantitative, and so affects the technique of the type. It affects the technique of the short story because characterization is a matter achieved by showing the person in action, by describing him, by transcribing his speech, and by stating his qualities directly. That is to say, characterization goes on in every part of the story, except where setting is being touched in. And it will go on there, to a slight extent, if the environment is given in terms of the impressions received by the character affected. On the other hand, narration, or verbal treatment of the event, and the description of setting, or verbal treatment of the environment, are more or less distinct and separate elements of a story. The matter is delicate, and I run some risk of being obscure here, but the net result of the simplicity and separateness of both the narrative and the descriptive process is that the narrative and descriptive technique of the short story is the narrative and descriptive technique of fiction generally. Writer of novel and writer of short story can narrate a murder in much the same way, or touch in a countryside with identical technique, but they cannot handle their people similarly.

Perhaps the point can be made clearer. The writer of a novel and the writer of a short story alike must invest their people with the vivacity, distinction, and concreteness of real men and women, but where the one has five hundred pages, let us say, the other has only five thousand words. It is a task difficult enough at best to precipitate a man in a few drops of ink. It is also difficult to narrate the man's actions with some of the vividness of reality, or to touch in a real world for him to move in. But note this. Where the novelist must deal with a large number of events and scenes, the short story writer has only a few to handle; he has about as many words available for each of his few as the novelist has for his many. That is not the case in creating characters. The process of characterization must permeate any fiction, forwarded by the narrative matter, the dialogue, the expository matter, and the descriptive matter alike. And the novelist has five hundred pages to initiate, reinforce, and complete the illusion of personality where the short story writer has but five thousand words. The novelist has more people to vivify, it is true, but not enough more than the short story writer to give the latter an equal chance if he follows the same technique.

It all comes down to this: a story, long or short, can be broken up into its several episodes and scenes, which are mechanically separable, but its people move through the whole. Since any event or any scene is in a sense a mere item of a story, not universally influential, the technique of handling event or scene simply as such is much the same, whatever the type of story. But since the element of personality is universally present and influential in a story, the technique of characterization varies with the essential nature of the story as a whole.

The result of the condition upon the general technique of characterization as applied in the short story must now be stated.

I have said already that the whole process must be swifter, but that is not very definite. Expanded, the statement amounts to saying that the short story writer cannot develop personality with the fullness and diversity of the novelist; he must concentrate his verbal resources upon the trait developed by the few events of the story and upon a few striking peculiarities of appearance and speech. As to the strict trait of character, the story itself will point the way. It will have one main situation, and probably that one will be of such a nature as to involve relatively simple attributes of soul in the persons concerned. As to the more superficial matter of making the persons seem real and lifelike, the writer must describe sharply, rather than at length—as Stevenson did in "A Lodging for the Night"—and must make his people talk as individually as possible. The general aim, of course, is the same as in the longer story, to present real characters of unique appearance and speech. And the writer's resources—again of course—are the same, but the brevity of the short story forces him to concentrate upon one matter of soul, one matter—or at most a few—of appearance, and one matter of speech. The whole art of fiction is selective; even the novel cannot present justly the complete man; and the short story, simply because it is short, is the most highly selective fiction of all. It cannot present the whole man, but it must seem to. A reader will not feel the absence of traits not involved in the events, and by vivid and brief descriptive touches, reinforced by unique speech, any character can be invested with what will be accepted as a complete physical presence.

As stated, the story itself, if a true story and not a tale, will show its writer that his expository matter or direct statement as to character must bear only upon the traits involved in the plot-situation of the story. The necessity is not peculiar to the short story, but it is more insistent than in the case of the novel. The other points of the technique of characterizing in the short story are purely verbal, and the writer's success depends upon his faculty in pungent description and in handling speech.

The remainder of the technique of the short story, apart from the matter of creating real men and women, is not verbal, but constructive, and is implied in—as it results from—the brevity of the fiction. Unlike the novelist, the writer of the short story has space for nothing but the story. He cannot drag in by the heels episodes unessential to the story solely for the sake of their intrinsic interest; he cannot waste words upon unessential persons. He is faced by two facts—that his story must be interesting, so that it will probably have to involve considerable complication as to persons, events, and setting, and that it must be told with enough verbal fullness and elaboration to give it the body and seeming of life. Trimming between the necessity to interest and the necessity to invest his story with reality, the writer first must find an interesting story, and then, in writing, or in developing and writing, must be vigilant to transcribe nothing unessential to the story, or he will be forced to exceed his space-limit.

The process comprehends most of the technique of the short story. The whole difference between it and the novel is that the novel is more discursive. Much of the novel's interest, quite permissibly, may inhere in persons, episodes, and matter generally without relation to the main thread of the story. But a short story's interest may not inhere in matter foreign to the thread of the story. That is the case not because of any arbitrary requirement that it be a "unity," but simply because a short story cannot be told adequately as to the story without exceeding the word-limit if unessential matter be incorporated with it.

The fallacy, whether on the part of commentator on technique or writer of fiction, in approaching the short story as some sort of artificial fictional unity lies in the implicit disregard of the necessity to interest. The first necessity is that a story interest, and to meet it the writer must devise some complication of persons, motives, and events, and usually that will involve some diversity of setting, or change of place. The second necessity is that the story be told so as to create the illusion of reality, and to meet it the writer will be forced to exhaust his few thousand words. The necessity that the story interest can be met only rarely without violating the unities of the drama; therefore they are not a convention of the art of the short story. Apart from the matter of unity of tone and style, the short story is a unity only in that it is one single story, nothing more, nothing less. That is, each word is essential to the fiction as such. But that does not mean that the story or plot is a unity in itself. It may involve much diversity in the three fictional elements of personality, event, and setting, the last of which includes time.

I emphasize the matter because the beginning writer is apt to devise stories too simple to present a real problem to awaken a reader's interest. There is also the converse fault, of course, that of devising a story too complicated to be given adequate expression in few words, but this fault will tend to correct itself through the difficulties the writer will meet in execution. The other will not tend to correct itself. The more simple the story, the easier it will be to write with some approach to adequacy. The writer who fancies that a short story must involve as little as possible diversity of people, events, and places may very well continue to devise stories too simple to awaken interest, however effectively they may be told. He will have no trouble in writing each one within his space, but he will have trouble in getting them published, for each will be lacking in essential fictional value, the capacity to interest. Here I can make only general statement, and it is impracticable to dwell on the fact that real and highly individualized characters will invest a simple story with all the interest of a more complicated fiction. The general truth, however, is that the interest of a tale lies in the problem it presents and solves, that a problem involves complication and diversity, and that a writer may go astray who seeks only the dramatically unified and simple plot. His work will interest a reader if he creates real people, but the capacity to do so is a rare faculty. At the bottom of it, a story, long or short, is a sequence of events; they should not be too simple, for, apart from the human element, simplicity presents no problem to awaken a reader's interest.

The sole limitation upon the complexity and diversity of the short story as a whole is the difficulty to develop in few words a plot complicated as to personality, event, place, or time. Accordingly, the plot suitable for a short story will tend to be simple, but it need not be so simple that the events, apart from the people, will not awaken interest. Moreover, the unskilled writer who has experienced the difficulty to develop an interesting plot in few words will be astonished by the results of a little forethought and careful planning before writing. Elimination and suppression of inessential and relatively unimportant matters will enable him to set forth adequately, though in a few words, a story of real body and interest.

The whole discussion should awaken realization of the fact that the short story is the most difficult form of prose fiction. To the general difficulty of all fiction it adds the difficulty that whatever is done must be done in a few words. The writer of novel or romance has only to interest, and his space is practically unlimited. The short story writer must interest, and he must interest in few words and pages. He must depend solely on his story; he has space for nothing else. He should remember that each item of unessential matter given place by him will lessen by just so much the number of words available to give the real story verisimilitude and consequent interest and appeal. To take the conceptive aspect of it, in devising a short story he should remember that inclusion of any accidental and unessential matter must lessen by just so much his power to awaken interest by some diversity and complication in the real story.

When a story idea is found, the writer should determine precisely what matters must be brought out if the fiction is to have full effect on a reader, who will have only the writer's words to go on. The writer should realize precisely what elements of personality are significant in relation to the main situation, which is the story in little, and should prepare to develop the motives and traits involved. He should determine precisely what will be the most effective physical movement for the story, the nature and order of events, also the setting or environment. He should consider the essential nature of the main situation, or climax, and, if he cannot manage that preceding events shall prepare a reader for it, he should prepare from the beginning of the story to hint what is to come, as Stevenson does in "Markheim." Finally, he should grasp the developed story as a whole, and be vigilant to transcribe nothing unessential, for if the story is real fictional knot or problem, and worth while, he cannot do so without sacrificing essential matter or exceeding his limits.

The physical brevity of the short story certainly has great influence in the direction of simplicity. But its brevity does not subject the dramatic short story to the conventions of the stage. It must be a unity, so-called, but only in this, that every word must be necessary to develop the story-idea, which, in itself, may be simple or somewhat complex. The short story of atmosphere is another matter.

Coherence is a word much better than unity to express the most significant attribute of the dramatic short story. The form is coherent in that every word, line, and sentence has relation to the story itself. The novel is relatively incoherent in that it often embodies whole stories without relation to the main story, or matter without relation to any story at all. The most pungent way to put the point of the whole discussion is to state that the short story, viewed merely as a sequence of words, is coherent in that each word serves to forward a single story-idea to its conclusion. That is not to state that the story-idea itself is coherent or a unity. It is a unity in that it is single, one story, but the one story need not manifest unity of time, place, and action. The sooner the short story writer clears his head of any notion that the verbal coherence of the dramatic short story involves some indefinable unity in its matter or story-idea, or some equally indefinable singleness of effect, the better for him, his work and pocketbook.[Q]

There would be no great profit in summarizing here the items of technique treated in other chapters. All are of use in the short story, functioning as in other forms of prose fiction. Apart from the matter of characterization, the peculiar technique of the short story is constructive and supervisory, rather than executive. The writer must make certain that he has one story and nothing else, for only one story can be adequately developed within brief limits. In writing, he must take care to transcribe only story-matter, for the same reason. But in narrating an event, or in describing a setting, after he has determined that event and setting are essential to his single story, the writer may employ the technique of general narrative or descriptive writing. Whatever the form of fiction, its aim is the same, to show real men and women doing in a real world the things one might expect from their natures and the circumstances of their lives.

In the chapter on story types something was said as to the current insistence upon the verbal compression of the short story. As stated there, the short story, dramatic or atmospheric, is not the result of mere rhetorical compression, rather of the inherent brevity of the conception. The executive technique of long story and short are identical, except as to the single matter of characterization. The short story develops its fewer episodes with as much rhetorical elaboration as the novel develops its many, and the writer who conceives that a short story can be produced by verbal paring and filing is on the highroad to failure.

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CHAPTER XIII
THE NOVEL

Novel and Romance—Romanticism and Realism—Techniques of Novel and Romance—Incoherence of Novel Relative to Short Story—Novel as Medium of Self-Expression—Interpolation of Personal Comment—Significant Simplicity—Permissible Inclusiveness of Novel—Full Development of Personality—Variety of Action—Length—Initial Idea—Story—Life—Society—Singleness of Story—Social Emphasis.

I have a small dictionary on my desk which defines the novel as a "fictitious prose narrative or tale presenting a picture of real life," and the romance as "any fictitious and wonderful tale: a fictitious narrative in prose or verse which passes beyond the limits of real life." The definitions state a distinction easier to feel vaguely than to justify. One may say with truth that Jane Austen's "Sense and Sensibility" or Trollope's "The Warden" presents a picture of real life, but can one also say with truth that Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter" or Stevenson's "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" passes essentially beyond the limits of real life simply because each book states a physically impossible thing—the brand of his sin over Arthur Dimmesdale's heart and the metamorphosis of Dr. Jekyll? Either matter is a mere symbol, devised to give concreteness to a spiritual fact. Is it not true than human life, the material for fiction, has its spiritual actualities as well as its physical facts? and does not the romance—as it is commonly understood—differ from the novel merely in that it narrates a real adventure of the soul rather than a real adventure of the body?

The fact is patent, I think, that the writer of fiction will gain small benefit from conceiving the romance as something separate and apart from the novel; likewise, that a book on technique without confusion may treat the writing of long fiction generally as the writing of novels. It is true, of course, that the essential bent of any particular writer may lead him to deal with the facts of the soul rather than the facts of the body, or that any particular story may be a spiritual rather than a physical adventure; nevertheless the story of the spirit must still develop facts and show their relations, and the technical resources of its writer are precisely the same as those of the writer who deals predominately with the more concrete physical facts of life.

It would be interesting to go at some length into this question of romance, all its connotations and implications. In particular, there is an antithesis in common thought, with romanticism and realism the two opposed members, which it would not be too dull to discuss. But the discussion would not give much light to one who desires to acquire a knowledge of the mechanics of fiction, long or short. It is permissible to call a realist one who transcribes predominately physical details, and it is permissible to call a romanticist one who transcribes predominated [typo for "predominantly"?] spiritual details, but in both cases the basic technique is identical. The realist can confine himself to physical facts because his story deals largely with the everyday actualities of life, and its subordinate spiritual values will be felt by a reader through inference from the facts. The romanticist must state spiritual facts directly because they are the very stuff and essence of his story. He is none the less a realist if there are spiritual actualities—an indisputable proposition—and if he states them as they exist for him.

The critical discussion that treats realism and romanticism as opposed artistic philosophies is so confused that it would serve no useful purpose to go into the matter here. What little I have to say on the subject will be said in the next chapter. But it is not inappropriate to call attention to the fact that every story conceived—in Stevenson's phrase—from within outwards, the only genesis for a work of art, is merely a subjective reality; it never happened. Perhaps it is so essentially commonplace that it probably has happened sometime; perhaps it is so little abnormal that very possibly it has happened. Or perhaps it may be of such a nature that it never could have happened. In any event, whatever the nature of the story, its verity and reality as a fiction depend solely upon its writer's elaborative and executive powers. If his hand falter, tangibility and concreteness in the matter of the story will not save it, will not make it seem real to a reader. The lives of most men are commonplace, but the relatively few lives that are not commonplace are as real and actual as those that follow beaten paths. In the lives of most, the spiritual element is subordinate, perhaps, but in the lives of some few it is enormously influential and supremely real. Realism, the artistic philosophy, asserts that fiction should present only the real. The assertion is nonsense for two reasons. First, the commonplace, or, if you please the inevitable, the only reality which realism admits, is not the only reality. Second, the verity or reality of fiction cannot be ascertained by any objective test, cannot be determined by the physical possibility of its matter, its people and their acts, for a fiction is purely subjective, a conception, and conceivability is the sole test of its verity. The writer of a story transcribes what he sees, not necessarily what is.[R]

As stated, the writer of fiction will derive small benefit from conceiving novel and romance as entirely different types of fiction. The distinction between them used to be insisted upon much more pedantically than is the case to-day, and the present tendency to call any story of book-length a novel is a healthy sign. The technique of the novel, in the narrow sense of a picture of society, and the technique of the romance, in the narrow sense of a story not of "real" life, are broadly the same. And where there is no difference in technique the artist should admit no difference in type. If he does admit any difference in type, and allows it to influence him, his conceptive faculty will be hampered and that is artistic death. It is hard enough to find a story that is worth while, a story that will interest, without subjecting one's self to the added and totally unnecessary difficulty to bring all one's ideas to the measure of some fancied type as a first test. The writer of fiction should be warned that it is supremely difficult to avoid becoming artificial and mechanical, and that he will surely become so if he does his conceptive thinking in terms of analysis. In the first place, the analytical habit of mind is directly opposed to the creative; in the second place, the analysis that divides long stories into novels and romances in the special sense is false. The way to find a story is to look for a story, forgetting all that pedants have written and failures practiced. The silly criticism that classifies fiction by its content is beneath contempt; the writer of fiction who heeds it is supremely foolish.

In the following discussion the term "novel" will be used simply to denote a plotted fiction of book-length.

Contrasting the short story and the novel, and dwelling on the relative coherence of the briefer form, I had occasion to state that the novel is relatively incoherent in that much of its interest for a reader quite permissibly may inhere in matter with little or no relation to the main thread of the story. Of course, incoherence is not a point of the technique of the novel. Incoherence is not a point of the technique of anything, except of some of the ultra modern schools in music, painting, and verse. The statement as to the incoherence of the novel was made incidentally in developing the argument that the short story cannot be incoherent because its brevity forbids that it present even its single story-idea adequately and also set forth irrelevant matter. On the other hand, the novel may set forth irrelevant matter because its length is not only a greater but a more elastic quantity than that of the short story; if the interruptions of the story are not too frequent and sustained, the power of the story over a reader will not be lessened to any appreciable extent. That is not to say that the novelist should seek to interrupt himself.

A good many serious writers—so-called—choose to write the novel simply because it does offer an opportunity for direct self-expression greater than any afforded by briefer fiction. They are confined to fiction—may they pardon the remark—because they have met, or feel that they will meet, difficulty in finding a publisher for their various theories stated as such; so they blithely write a novel, with insertions of politics, religion, sociology, what not, and palm it off on the unhappy public for a story. Of course such direct expression of one's opinions is not self-expression through the medium of a work of art. It is only choosing deliberately to do poor work for the sake of money or notoriety or vanity. Writing the "problem novel" is not quite the same thing. If a social problem, as the friction between capital and labor, is utilized as the fundamental plot—or conflict-theme of a novel, a good deal of personal opinion may be introduced by the author without injury to the artistic coherence of the story. But it is well to remember that the primary aim of fiction is to interest, an aim that can be achieved most easily and most completely by telling a good story. Propaganda is apt to be supremely dull anyway, and it is bound to seem dull to one who is looking for a story and nothing else. The practical implications of a work of art must be mere implications, resting in inference, or the work will be feeble and misshapen.

The novelist can indulge in personal comment and yet present the whole of his story, for his space is practically unlimited. The writer of the short story must sacrifice either the comment or the story. The result is that the typical novel is more incoherent than the typical short story. The finer the book as a whole, the easier it is to forgive or overlook the defect, for defect it is. One can forgive Thackeray his rambling asides and his diffidence in approaching his story, for in all of his books the story is present and in each it is a fine thing. But "Vanity Fair," for instance, is too significant a fiction to suffer constant interruption without causing a reader to become impatient. If a story is essentially weak, interpolating personal comment and unrelated matter generally will make it weaker; if it is essentially fine and significant, passages without bearing on the story will irritate the reader.

Whatever the art, whoever the artist, his task is to hold pen or chisel or brush true to the outlines of his conception. If his hand leave its proper course, whether of set purpose or through inaptitude, his work must suffer. The art of fiction is so infinitely difficult that the practitioner should welcome rather than bewail his obligation to hew to the line, for by concentrating upon the story and nothing else he will be led to leave no gaps in his presentment. A work of art is a thing of significant simplicity. Just because the novelist works in words, just because his materials have some significance for a reader in themselves—unlike the clay and marble of the sculptor, the stone of the architect, and the pigments of the painter, which, unwrought upon, have no message for an observer—the novelist is not at liberty to throw words together without some set purpose. The inherent significance of each word must have just relation to the whole, if the whole is to have the direction and significant simplicity of a work of art. The real condition is that the novelist, unlike the writer of the short story, may tell his story adequately and do something else, but the artistic quality of his work will suffer, that is, its power over a reader will be diminished, if he interpolates foreign matter. Artistry is simply the faculty to realize to the utmost the inherent power of one's conceptions, and the artistry of any fiction lessens as the appeal of the story for a reader diminishes. And the appeal of a story as such must diminish with every interruption, unless its power over a reader be very great, and in that case any break in its movement will irritate and offend.

I have cited Stevenson's "The Ebb-Tide" a number of times already, and the book may be instanced here. It is a tremendously powerful bit of work, considering the nature of its matter, and its power over a reader in large part results from its author's having confined himself strictly to the story. The conception is significant, and the story as written is significant because the conception is set forth whole and unmarred. The reader's attention is not distracted by matter irrelevant to the story. Its theme, the impossibility that a weak man should be other than weak, however he may be circumstanced, is developed adequately, and nothing else is developed. No book could be more wisely recommended to the writer of fiction for study of the essential technical processes of fiction. It shows adequate treatment of personality, adequate treatment of events, and adequate treatment of setting, shows fictionally real people doing fictionally real things in a fictionally real environment. Above all, it is a story, nothing else, and is pointed to bring out its value as a whole; that is it has the significant simplicity of a true work of art. It is coherent as to the story it embodies, and in its coherence lies its power. The bare conception is somewhat weak in that it tends to arouse an intellectual rather than an emotional interest in a reader; moreover, the conception is positively unpleasant and depressing, in the conventional sense; but the book as written is a powerful thing because it realizes to the full the inherent capacity of its matter to interest and impress by telling the story adequately and by bringing out nothing but the story.[S]

The novel, then, should be coherent as to the story it embodies, but that is not the whole of its peculiar technique. The story itself may be widely inclusive, may, in a way, involve a number of stories. The novelist should not seek deliberately to combine the unrelated, but he need not follow a single thread. He can turn aside into bypaths of action that will bring out the natures of his people with more fullness than the straight course of the story itself, and he can involve his minor characters in sub-plots, relatively unimportant stories of their own. Generally, the novelist will seek to develop personality with greater fullness and detail than the writer of the short story, and, as a result, the action of the novel will be more diffused and looser, less pointed, than the action of the short story. Or, conversely, the long story necessarily involves more varied action than the briefer form, and therefore develops more varied traits in the actors. Relative to the short story, the novel is a natural type of fiction in that it can make some approach to presenting the whole man, with all his contradictory and inconsistent traits and impulses; relative to the novel, the short story is an artificial type of fiction in that the comparatively direct and pointed character of its action forbids that it develop more than one or a few significant traits of personality. The writer of the short story cannot qualify and distinguish as to his people's natures, and that is why the fine short story is less humanly significant than the fine novel, for no man is pure saint or pure villain, pure this or pure that. We are all bewilderingly inconsistent, wherein lies most of the interest of life. The novel can show its people blown here and there by the winds of desire, as in life, and that is what the short story cannot do.

Each story is a rule to itself, so far as the question of scope and variety of action is concerned, but the novelist will derive small benefit from introducing unnecessary people and unnecessary events merely to lend a greater illusion of movement or bustle to the whole. Action, in fiction, is action which plays a necessary part in the story, and the novelist should not interpolate insignificant events any more than he should interpolate his own opinions on life and morals. His task is to tell some particular story, no more, no less.

It is difficult to state the relative inclusiveness of the novel without laying a false emphasis on its permissible scope and variety of content, for the novel should be exclusive as well as inclusive. That is, it should not be a mere welter of people and what they do, but should possess some single human significance, some primary reason for being, by which its writer can test the availability of matter that suggests itself to him. Between the conciseness and singleness of "The Ebb-Tide" and the unnecessary length and complexity of some of the Victorians lies a golden mean easier to recognize in specific books than to state abstractedly. "The Ebb-Tide," though not a short story in point of length, is somewhat brief, and it is a short story in structure, in point of the singleness of its story-idea, the small number of its characters, and the comparative simplicity of its action. Of course, it is none the less a fine novel, a fine long story; the point is that there are thousands of other stories, equally fine, perhaps more humanly significant, which cannot be written so concisely, but which need not run to the length of "David Copperfield," "The Virginians," or "The Cloister and the Hearth." To attempt to set mechanical limits of length for the novel would be mere silliness, but it is true that the average idea for a long story can be given complete and adequate expression in one or two hundred thousand words. Usually there is no need to write at much greater or inordinate length, unless irrelevant matter is introduced for its own sake. And the introduction of such matter for its own sake can only hinder the effect of the story itself on a reader. It may render the book, the mere sequence of words, more interesting, but irrelevant matter cannot render the story itself more interesting. The distinction should be noted and realized, for the novelist's aim is to interest through his story, not merely to interest.

There is another way to approach the matter of the novel's relative inclusiveness and length, perhaps a better way. Where the novelist first conceives his story definitely as such, as a course of events, he should bring all matter which suggests itself for writing to the test of relation to the story. He has only to write the story, duly elaborated, and thereby he will take care of the matters of length and complexity and inclusiveness without detached calculation to that end. But if the novelist finds his initial idea in terms of a life or of a phase of society, the idea does not plot or diagram the whole story for him. He has yet to evolve the story as such, and he may devise as short and simple a thing as "The Ebb-Tide" or as long and complicated a thing as Tolstoi's "War and Peace." Usually it will be found, I think, that the very long novel—"Tom Jones," "Jean Christophe," "David Copperfield," "Anna Karenina," "Les Miserables," "The Virginians"—was first conceived in terms of a life or a society, rather than in terms of a definite story. It is certainly true that only the life of an individual or the life of a society can serve to bind together the motley elements of a very long novel, giving it some artistic coherence. "David Copperfield" can be called one story in that it consists of Copperfield's life and related matters, but "Our Mutual Friend" is in no sense a single story. It is merely a number of stories devised to be told together and therefore dovetailing to some extent.

It all comes down to this: if the novelist conceives a definite story, he has only to tell it, but if he conceives a life or a society he has yet to devise his story. And the matters which can have some relation to a life or a society are much more varied than those which can have some relation to a course of events. In other words, the conception of a story as such limits the writer's choice of matter. If one starts with a story, one can tell only the story. If one starts with a life or a society, one can write pretty much at large.

In discussing the short story, it was possible to state that it must embody one story-idea, for the physical brevity of the form prohibits adequate development of more than a single story. But if I stated that the novel must embody one story-idea, no more, no less, the statement would be false, for the length of the form is practically unlimited. As Dickens did in "Our Mutual Friend" and other books, the novelist can tell together three or four unrelated stories if he so desires. He has the space. The question is not whether he can but whether he should tell more than one. The answer is that he should confine himself to one. Perhaps a little supporting argument is called for.

The most obvious criticism of this limitation upon the novelist is that it savors strongly of artificiality, rather than of art. The reader may think of Dickens himself, his marvelous people, the world of delight in his books. But Dickens, it may be said with all reverence, was no story-teller. His is a fictional world turned upside down. His stories are less than nothing; his major characters are less than nothing; but his little people are gods. All his books are mere cardboard beside the works of such a one as Dostoievsky, but in each book—with a few exceptions—there is some stupendous Weller or Micawber, not a man, but a god. One goes to Dickens almost as to vaudeville, and "Pickwick" is his best book because it is no story. In it Weller and the others run wild unrestrained by the necessities of any predetermined course of events. But a story is a predetermined course of events, actually or in effect, and the mere fact that Dickens could write poor stories and yet interest by his wonderful people does not falsify the technique of fiction.

Again, the fact that the novelist should confine himself to one story at a time does not debar him from following side-issues, provided they have relation to the main course of events, or from creating minor people like Dickens', if he has the power. Dickens could have placed his people in real stories instead of in the weak fictions they serve to ennoble.

Finally, I will state abstractly the conditions from which result the artistic, not the physical necessity that the novelist confine himself in each book to a single story-idea.

The aim to interest is the aim of fiction, long and short, and the body of a writer's resources to accomplish the aim make up the body of fiction technique. But the aim of the writer of plotted fiction is not simply to interest; it is to interest through a story, a course of events functioning together in that they embody some sort of problem. Leaving aside the matter of executive artistry, and premising that the writer will realize to the full the possibilities of his story, it is accurate to state that the interest a story will arouse will be in accordance with the human significance of the problem it embodies. Adequate fictional treatment of the problem to win love or to make a living will be more interesting than adequate fictional treatment of the problem to escape payment of an income tax. And the possibilities of any problem of life to arouse a reader's interest can be realized to the full only by setting out that problem and nothing else. Only by showing the thing in isolation and high relief can the writer reveal to, and force home upon a reader its ultimate significance. If anything unrelated to the story or problem is brought out, something of the power of the story as such will be lost. Likewise, if two or more stories or problems are each completely developed in one book, neither will have that singleness of appeal to a reader which is essential if each is to have maximum effect.

In other words, a novel does not function as a mere physical spectacle; being a story, it must have a motive, an artistic purpose; and if it has more than one it will be at cross purposes as a work of art. That is not a mere "artistic" defect. It is a practical defect in that motive, purpose, and story will not have extreme effect. Nor is it to say that the novel may not be very complicated as to any or all of its three elements of people, events, and setting. "Anna Karenina" is complicated enough, in all conscience, but every item of the novel has relation to its one story either in that it serves directly to develop the horrible tragedy of Anna's life or in that it forwards the presentment of the society which she renounced.

The painter cannot put two different pictures side by side on the same canvas without hampering the effect of each; still less can he commingle the two. The architect cannot build on two designs at once. Nor can the novelist—if he would have each story realize to the full its inherent capacity to interest—combine different stories in the same book. He can develop personality in great detail; he can follow by-paths of action; he can involve his minor characters in subplots; but the main course of the story must be single, not duplicate or triplicate, that the whole may have point and significance.

The reader will observe that this book lays absolutely no restrictions on the conceptive faculty. It preaches that the way to write fiction is to look for a story, and, when it is found, to write it so as to give it full effect. It may be a short story; it may be a novel. It may have its genesis in a dream, in a life, in a situation, in a society. But, whatever its nature, whatever its length, its effect on, its interest for, a reader, can result only from itself. The story as such cannot be fortified by the introduction of foreign matter, although the interest of the writer's text as a mere sequence of words may be heightened thereby. But the aim of the writer of novel or short story is to interest through his story as such, not merely to interest. A newspaper is interesting, yet a newspaper is not a story, however much fiction it may embody.

The novel or long story is apt to have a strong social emphasis simply because the interplay of society and the conflict of its members supply much more material for stories than the more isolated phases of human life. The novelist is under no obligation to reproduce a social spectacle in each book, but more often than not he will find that he must do so to bring out the full value of his conception. It follows that he will do well to go about with an observant eye, for it is the little details of the novel of manners that lend verisimilitude to the whole. And such matters cannot be invented; they must have been observed; for a reader knows them whether or not the writer does too.

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CHAPTER XIV
CONCLUSION

Story and Tale—Realism the Method—Realism the Dogma—Philosophy of Fiction—Interest—Power of the Real Problems of Life—Test of Merit—Aim of Executive Artistry—Verisimilitude—Ultimate Artistic Significance of Plot.

The purpose of this book has been to shed a little light on the essential technical processes of the art of fiction; to state a general philosophy of fiction has not been my aim. Accordingly, the text touches only incidentally upon the fundamental types of fiction and a writer's fundamental purposes in adopting any one of them as a medium for expression of himself or his conceptions. Partly to justify some of the text, and partly because it may prove of practical service, I shall state briefly a general theory or philosophy of fiction-not my theory, merely, nor that of anyone else, but simply the theory which is implied in the content and aim of the art itself.

The content of fiction is man and what he may experience, in body, mind, and soul; the aim of fiction is to interest. Certain results follow, but before stating them it will be well to clear the way a little.

I have stated that a story is a fiction with a plot, and have defined a plot as a dramatic problem, that is, a course of events which function together as a whole in that they influence and are influenced by character or personality. And nine-tenths of the technique of fiction is concerned with the object to develop a plot. To develop a tale, a fiction, long or short, without a plot, only direct narrative and descriptive writing is requisite; it is the plot-element of a fiction, with all its implications as to personality, that forces the writer of a story—a fiction with a plot—to weave together cunningly each strand of his matter, narrative, exposition, dialogue, description, that the whole pattern may show fictionally real people doing in a fictionally real world what one might naturally expect from their natures and the circumstances of their lives. The task is infinitely more difficult and delicate than to take a Sinbad the Sailor or a Cinderella through a course of happenings without essential relation to the nature of either person, who is, in each case, a mere human focal point for the events to be precipitated upon. Accordingly, this book concentrates upon the fiction of plot, or story, rather than the fiction without plot, or tale. The technique of the fiction of plot comprehends and includes the technique of the tale, which could be ignored here without loss.

Whether or not a fiction possess a plot, and is a story, or lacks a plot, and is a tale, it will be concerned with people and what they do, the man and his acts. Long or short, a fiction must deal with man, at least with personality, as do London's "The Call of the Wild" and Kipling's "The Ship That Found Herself." Since fiction deals with man, it deals both with physical and spiritual facts, with the facts of the soul and the more tangible things of the body and the earth. It results that either the spiritual or physical element of any fiction may largely outweigh the other, at least, preponderate over it. That is, the long story may be what is known as a novel or what is known as a romance, and the brief story may reveal the fate of the spirit rather than the fate of the body and mind.[T]

Precisely at this point one encounters a difficulty raised by critical comment on fiction, the whole complex of obscurantism about "realism" and "romanticism." Instead of wasting space in trying to unravel the threads of the tangle as stated by those who have knotted it, it will be much easier and much more profitable to state a few facts that will demonstrate the essential fallacy of such discussion.

In the first place, realism characterizes a method, one that might better be called the method of stating the concrete in detail. If a story is concerned largely with the more common actualities of everyday life, it is possible that its writer may best create his illusion of reality by itemizing the physical facts in some detail.

In the second place, "realism" has been elevated from a mere technical method into an artistic creed or dogma. The assumption is made that only the more tangible matters of life are realities, and that fiction should seek to present only the real.

It is unnecessary to do more than state that the first term of this assumption is false. Not only are there facts of the spirit as well as facts of the body and the phenomenal universe, but the spiritual fact is precisely the fact which is fictionally significant. Fiction deals with man for man, and man is man just and only because he has an intelligence and a soul, enabling him to impose his will upon brute matter and to rise superior to evil fortune.

The second term of the realists' assumption is that fiction should present only the real. And the essential fallacy of the assumption is this: it ignores the fact that the first aim of fiction is to interest. Philosophy, not fiction, must give us a test of truth and reality. Irrespective of what is real—a question that the confirmed realist answers falsely, because partially and exclusively—one who denies the reality and significance of the spiritual life of man, and therefore refuses to give it fictional treatment, debars himself from presenting much interesting matter.

It might not be too dull, incidentally, to go into the question of how much the world of the spirit shall be allowed to impose its necessities on the world of the flesh, but the matter is subordinate, part of the general question of verisimilitude. Frequently, to give concrete fictional treatment to a fact of the soul, the writer will have to falsify deliberately as to physical facts, as Stevenson did in "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde."

Realism, the technical method expanded into an artistic dogma, has much to answer for. In the hands of the French, it has been responsible for much that is uselessly unpleasant and brutal; in the hands of English and American writers, it has been responsible for much dullness. The unpleasant facts and petty concerns of life alike are significant only in relation to the persons they affect; in themselves, they are dreary or repellent items. If the ugly fact has no relation to the story as such, it should not be given place; if the commonplace detail has no relation to the course of the story, and will perform no office in lending reality to the fiction in a reader's eyes, it should not be transcribed.

The misconceptions that cluster about realism the dogma affect adversely both the writer of long fiction and the writer of short fiction. But the writer of short fiction, if he has read even a little critical comment in an endeavor to inform himself of the essential nature of his art, will have been confused and misdirected by the eternal quarrel over the short story, what it is, whether it is a distinct literary form, its totality or unity of effect, and so forth. I have said much on this head in discussing the short story, and shall not repeat the argument here. It is enough to say that the short story most certainly is a distinct literary form, in that it is brief enough to be read at one sitting and embodies a plot or dramatic problem, which is not true of the tale. But its distinction from other forms of fiction, plotted and unplotted alike, does not lie in its totality or unity of effect, except in the case of the short story of atmosphere. The dramatic short story, whether it stresses character or the event, differs from the novel or romance not in that it possesses a plot—so do the longer types—but in that it is brief. And it differs from the tale—which also is brief—in that it possesses a plot. The short story of atmosphere is abnormal, and a type in itself.

As was stated in the chapter on the short story, the only sense in which the dramatic short story can be said to possess unity is purely verbal. As a mere sequence of words, it possesses unity in that each word is essential to the story. That is not to say that the matter of the story, its people, situations, and settings, is "unified," whatever the word may mean so applied. The form is verbally coherent, but not necessarily coherent in substance, except that it embodies one plot—or story-idea, no more, no less. The one story-idea may involve great diversity in its three elements of people, events, and setting. It would not be worth while to discuss the general false emphasis upon the unity of the short story were it not for the strong tendency of such discussion to lead the writer to devise stories too simple really to interest, apart from the appeal to their characters.

It seems to me that the question of realism and the question of the dramatic short story's assumed unity of substance are the two pitfalls into which the feet of the writer of fiction who reads the mass of comment on his art are most apt to stray. It is difficult enough to find an interesting story without having one eye blinded by a false artistic philosophy. Generally, in reading critical comment on specific stories and authors and on the art of fiction, the writer of fiction will do well to remember that such matter is written for the general reader, not for the practitioner of the art, and that the poor critic must say something! He cannot discuss technique, for he would be both dull and unintelligible to the general reader. So he says what he does.

It remains to state a true artistic philosophy for the writer of fiction, that philosophy which is implied in the content and aim of the art of fiction itself. The content of fiction is man and what he possibly or conceivably may experience; the aim of fiction is to interest. It would be more accurate to state that the content of fiction is personality and what it may experience—witness any animal story, or Kipling's story of a steamship, cited above—but fiction deals so exclusively with man that the first statement may stand.

Since the content of fiction is man and what he possibly or conceivably may experience, the writer of fiction is at liberty to go to fairyland or South Boston, to heaven, hell, or the stock-exchange, for the material for his story. He is subject to no limitations, for whatever he can conceive is open to his use. If he does choose to leave the homely earth, however, he cannot return until he has finished the story. If his story moves in a fairy world subject only to physical laws of its own, such basic conditions of the story must continue to operate. But that is a matter of achieving the aim to interest rather than a matter of content, of telling the story so that it will seem real even though it is unbelievable.

The reader will note that the content of fiction gives him opportunity to write so terrifically "realistic" a thing as Dostoievsky's "House of the Dead," so nobly "romantic" a thing as Hawthorne's "Scarlet Letter," or so finely fantastic a thing as Carroll's "Alice in Wonderland." The sole limitation upon his work is his own conceptive and executive power, unless he foolishly subjects himself to the bondage of some special school. As time goes on, his own essential bent of mind and heart will gradually reveal to him the sort of matter he can handle best.

The influence upon the fiction writer's philosophy of the aim and necessity to interest may now be discussed.

An important point is that there are degrees of interest. A strongly novel course of events will catch and hold a reader's interest, but the interest aroused by a fiction presenting a novel course of events and nothing else is not quite the same thing as the interest aroused by a story which shows real men and women meeting the real problems of life, material or spiritual. The interest aroused by mere novelty is a matter largely of the intelligence; it tends to be evanescent because it has little or no relation to the emotional nature. On the other hand, the other sort of interest, that aroused by the spectacle of real men and women meeting the real problems of life, is deepened and intensified by the emotional element of sympathy and hate for lovable and hateful people. And the real, though perhaps intrinsically simple problems of life—to make a living, win love, overcome temptation—are precisely the problems which are humanly significant because universally experienced. The story which shows real people struggling with such a problem will have a keener interest for a reader through his familiarity with its matter in personal experience. Such a story appeals to the emotions both through its people and through its theme.

This matter is well worth dwelling upon, for, apart from merit in point of executive artistry, the only standard whereby a story can be estimated as relatively significant or relatively insignificant is the standard of interest, that is, interest for the ideal reader, the reader of open and able mind and sympathetic heart. The aim of fiction is to interest, and the story which most deeply interests most completely fulfils the ideals of the art. "Les Miserables" is a greater book than any one of Jules Verne's mechanical romances, not because it is better written, and not because it is a terrific indictment of society—as a modern reviewer might put it—but simply because its people and matter generally arouse the most poignant emotional and intellectual interest in a reader qualified to feel its power. The interest aroused by Verne's sort of story—H. G. Wells' earlier work and Conan Doyle's "The Lost World" are more recent examples—is real, but almost exclusively intellectual, therefore relatively weak and evanescent. Books such as "Les Miserables" cannot be forgotten; the details of the story may vanish from the mind with time; but a reader will retain through life the memory of the book's power, the memory of the eagerness with which he followed the fortunes of its people.

Between masterpieces that will incorporate their essence and memory with a reader's very life—books such as "Les Miserables" and "The Scarlet Letter," to name together the utterly dissimilar—and stories that can serve only to while away an idle hour or two, there are fictions of every sort and condition, the product of all sorts of aims and philosophies, artistic and moral. Apart from the matter of executive artistry, each must take rank as relatively good or relatively feeble in accordance with its power to evoke interest. Some—as the detective story or any story of ratiocination—have in high degree the power to call forth a reader's intellectual interest; some—as the fictional comedy of manners—may interest slightly the mind through their plot and the heart through their people; but each is significant as a fiction solely by virtue of its power to enthrall a reader of open mind and sympathetic heart.

If the power to interest the ideal reader is the sole test of a story's merit as a fiction—and no other test can withstand examination even for a moment—it inevitably follows that to be a masterpiece a story, long or short, must show fictionally real men and women coping with the material and spiritual problems of our common human destiny. No other matter can arouse the deepest and most abiding interest in a reader. However perfect a writer's technique, if he chooses to write of physical or spiritual matters that are relatively trivial and insignificant, he cannot hope to do the finest work. Of course, it is unnecessary to say that the writer of fiction rests under no moral or artistic obligation to attempt a masterpiece in each story he undertakes. He is under obligation to attempt to interest in some degree.

Thus far, in discussing the influence upon the fiction writer's philosophy of the aim and necessity that fiction interest, emphasis has been laid upon the question of matter. But from the aim and necessity results the whole executive technique.

The general proposition is that significant matter cannot arouse a reader's deepest interest unless it is presented to him effectively, nor can relatively insignificant matter arouse whatever interest is attainable by it unless it also is presented effectively. The writer of a story must seek to invest it with reality in the eyes of a reader, and his resources to perform this difficult task make up the body of the technique of fiction.

It follows that the best story in point of executive artistry is the story which realizes most fully the inherent capacity of its matter to interest. However significant the content of a story, if the writer's hand falter in execution, something of the fiction's appeal for a reader will be lost.

The general aim of executive artistry or technique is to invest the story with such reality that a reader will himself see so much of the thing as is physical and feel so much of it as is emotional or spiritual, for only thus can be evoked the full measure of interest inherent in the matter. Unless the writer's words constitute in themselves a primary spectacle and experience for a reader, instead of a mere secondary relation, the story cannot have full effect. A reader will not accept the mere say-so of the writer, who must spread upon his page the very stuff of life itself, rather than mere words.

How difficult the task, it is unnecessary to dwell upon, but one thing should be noted. This necessary power to precipitate reality, this literary power, only infrequently involves writing in a "literary" manner or style. The essence of literary power is to present the particular matter fittingly, not artificially. If the particular story concerns simple, everyday people and simple, everyday events, it should be told in simple, everyday language, for such language will serve best to precipitate the matter for a reader. Literary power is the power to adapt the word to the matter, not the power of "fine" writing. Some stories call for little verbal elaboration, while such a thing as "The Fall of the House of Usher" exhausts the capacities of language, but whatever the nature of any story, its writer's artistry and technical capacity are measurable by the degree in which he succeeds in endowing it with reality and verisimilitude, not by the verbal noise and agility he makes and displays.

Verisimilitude, of course, is a relative term. The matter of the story of everyday life is essentially tangible and concrete, and its writer can invest it with tangibility and concreteness in a degree higher than is attainable by the writer who deals with fantasies and dreams. The measure of verisimilitude attainable by any story is limited by its content. If it deals with fine-spun fancies, it cannot attain the hearty solidity of the story that deals with the matter of fact. No writer can do more than precipitate his conception in his words; if the conception itself is essentially airy and impalpable, so must the story be airy and impalpable. In fact, the perfect fictional illusion is that which most nearly produces on a reader the exact impression the matter would produce if actually experienced. If a story is strictly unbelievable—of course any story is conceivable, or it would not have been written—the writer can do no more than create an illusion of fictional verity, not of literal verity. That is, a reader will accept the author's basic assumptions and the whole story as well, if it is developed logically from the assumptions. Any fairy tale is an instance of what is meant.

I will mention briefly one other consequence of the aim and necessity that fiction interest. Usually the story, or fiction embodying a plot, will interest more deeply than the mere tale. Therefore the writer of fiction usually will choose to write stories rather than tales. The bare fact is that the highest type of fiction, the fiction of greatest power over a reader through its human significance, is adequately plotted simply because it does show real people meeting a real problem of life.

At this point becomes apparent how much that grossly abused word "plot" stands for. Broadly, a plot is a dramatic problem, and a dramatic problem results from the opposition of man and man, the opposition of man and nature, or conflict within a single man. The element of mere complication is not essential to a plot, not being essential to a dramatic problem. "Dramatic situation" is perhaps a better term than "plot," for it has none of the associations of complication that cling to the latter. Even "dramatic situation" is objectionable, because it has connotations of the stage, and suggests an acuteness and tensity, a general brevity and pitch of struggle that is not essential to fiction. "Robinson Crusoe," for instance, though not very tense, is adequately plotted; it shows man's struggle for bread, shelter, and raiment. "Don Quixote" is adequately plotted; it shows man in the grip of a dream, and so at odds with all the world.[U] As stated, all great fiction is adequately plotted simply because it shows real people faced by the real problems of life. The plot of a story of worth stands for its author's effort to isolate one of life's significant elements or problems, and, by showing it in high relief, to invest it with that certain dignity and momentousness, as of life raised to a high power, whereby a reader may be laid under a spell more absolute than any to which the confused and shifting spectacle of life itself can subject him. In the last analysis, great fiction does more than to interest; it whispers to a reader of the significance and worth of human life, and heartens him to live his own.

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APPENDIX

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APPENDIX A
SUGGESTIONS FOR THE STUDENT

It is surely obvious that the only way to learn how to write is—to write. The only way to learn how to do anything is to try until the secret is conquered, and the more difficult the feat or art the longer must be the apprenticeship.

Stepping from abstract study of technique to the actual writing of a story is a violent transition. The student has only a very general knowledge, and now he must give it narrowly specific application. He has read a brief discussion of the mechanics of the art of describing a person, for instance, has read Stevenson's description of Villon and his fellows; now he himself must write a description of Napoleon or Lizzie Smith or John Arthur McAllister; and he desires to write as well as Stevenson.

The only thing to do is to go at the task patiently and with courage. Put the best of you at the moment into each thing you undertake, but do not expect each single item of your work to show an appreciable advance, and do not be discouraged if each thing you do seems as poor or no better than what has gone before. Your first, second, tenth, or fifteenth story may be patent trash, in point of execution, but never mind. After a year or so of intelligent and directed writing the results of your study and application of technique will begin to appear. It is impossible that they should show themselves at once, for technical study will cramp and constrain you until you have gained some real facility in writing in accordance with the canons of art. That is true of all arts, of course. No tool can be used properly without practice.

Perhaps you may desire to submit your practice work to magazines and publishers as you go along, and if you mean to have a serious try at the game it is advisable that you do so. The fact that you are writing for submission will serve as a stimulus; you will receive helpful incidental criticisms from editors, if your work shows promise; and, above all, you will gradually acquire the necessary knowledge of the market, its needs, tendencies, and desires. However, I do not believe it advisable for one who is trying to learn to write to ape deliberately the tone of particular magazines, with an eye to possible sales. That is a trick of the trade—and permissible enough—but it is no way to learn to write fiction. The skilled hand can direct his efforts so, but the apprentice had better center his efforts upon finding some good story and upon writing it to the best he knows how.

A few specific bits of advice as to how to go about practicing the art of fiction may not be useless. Technique is conceptive, constructive, and executive, and the beginner should exercise his latent powers in each department.

The technique of conception is practiced unconsciously by anyone who seeks to find a story for writing, but exercise of the conceptive faculty should not be limited to the times when you desire actually to write. You should form a habit of thinking creatively, of mentally shaping into stories the material offered by observation, thought, and reading. If this is done, and notes kept of your promising ideas, you will have on hand constantly considerable amount of material, and you will not be forced to waste time in casting about for an idea when the spirit moves you to write. Moreover, I think most essentially feeble stories are stories conceived and thrown together on the spur of the moment as the writer sits and looks at a sheet of white paper, and if you have five, ten, or a hundred stories more or less completely blocked out in your files or in your mind, you can choose for writing one fitted to your mood and also worth the writing. It is almost impossible to judge the worth of an idea immediately after it is conceived; by separating the conceptive and executive processes you will be led to avoid much waste labor in developing what is essentially weak.

A more mechanical exercise of the conceptive faculty, but a very valuable one, is to shape and re-shape what I will term abstract stories. As stated, a story or plot is a dramatic conflict, showing the opposition of man and nature, man and man, or opposed traits in the same man. The process of developing an abstract story is to select from a list of human traits and motives two or more which present an essential opposition, such as avarice and generosity, then to seek to give the basic abstract opposition most effective concrete fictional expression by devising persons to be invested with the traits and by devising a course of action to show the persons in conflict under the influence of the traits. Thus, taking the traits of avarice and generosity, husband and wife, for instance, may each be endowed with one, and a course of events devised to give the necessary conflict between them expression in action. The writer of fiction who will perform this exercise now and then, as opportunity offers, not only will chance upon much valuable material; he also will acquire a firm grasp on plot, the story-essence of a story, and will be led to realize that mere complication or ingenuity is the least of a plot. The exercise is valuable because it is the only possible way to exercise the conceptive faculty in detail. A story-idea gained from observation usually is seized as a whole, but a story-idea gained by manipulating human traits and motives is built up from nothing by combining its elements. The story built up in this way probably will involve a social conflict, a conflict between man and man, rather than between man and nature or opposed traits in the same man, because the opportunity for combination is greatest in the first case.

The next point is how to exercise the constructive faculty, how to practice constructive technique, and here you have many resources, only a few of which need be mentioned.

In the first place, you can study the ways the masters have put together their stories; this, though not quite practice, is almost as valuable, if conscientiously and properly done, and is a necessary basis for practice. For obvious reasons your laboratory analysis of fiction must confine itself largely to the short story, though you can go through the process mentally and less thoroughly in reading longer work.

Provide yourself with a collection of short stories in one volume and a few from current magazines that you think good, also with a number of different colored inks or crayons. Read a story through a couple of times, that you may know definitely what it is, and then read it again critically, underlining every word, except those which serve only to forward the progress of the story as a mere course of events, and striking out every word or passage which seems to you inessential to the whole. Use a single color to mark a single process, and neglect the superficial character of the words, whether they be narrative, descriptive, or serve to embody dialogue. Thus, dialogue may serve to forward the progress of the story as a course of events, in which case it should not be underlined, may serve to characterize, in which case it should be underlined with the color taken to mark characterization, or may serve to touch in setting, in which case it should be underlined with the color taken to mark any passage where the author strives to touch in the environment. It will not be profitable to be too minute, to employ too many colors; the matters you will require to make visually distinctive are not many. Straight narration, including the whole physical progress of the story, whether detailed or general, requires no color; characterization, including the process of individualizing a person as to his nature, as to his appearance, and as to his speech, requires one; the process of touching in setting requires another; the process of preparing a reader emotionally for succeeding events requires a third; the process of intensifying atmosphere—if the story is of atmosphere—requires a fourth. And mark each passage in accordance with its main purpose or function, for many passages will subserve more than one end.

A number of stories treated in this way will be most profitable to study. In particular, each one will display graphically and yet in detail wherein lies its value as a fiction, whether in its people, in its events, or in its setting, and will show plainly the cunning blending of elements which is at once the fact and the result of the technique of construction.

In the second place, you can exercise your faculty of construction by closing the decorated book or magazine and trying to reproduce two or three of the stories you have studied. In doing this no effort should be made to transcribe from memory; realize, rather, the basic theme of each story, the general character of its people, and the main course of its events, and strive to produce as effective a thing from such materials as did the author. The very great value of this sort of practice work lies in the fact that you have a positive standard of comparison ready for your story when it is written. Place yours and the original side by side, and you can see precisely where you have failed, if you feel that you have. In examining your own work, look to the matter of expression less than to the matter of construction; see if you have realized the necessity to build character here, to touch in setting there, even if your attempt to do so has failed in a degree through lack of executive deftness.

In the third place, the faculty of construction can be exercised in original work, and to do so does not necessarily involve writing a complete story. Ten stories can be blocked out and roughly shaped in the time it would take to write one, and the more rapid process is preferable for the beginner because it will teach him that the first conception is not usually the best conception. Write thousand-word outlines of ten stories as you have opportunity, put them aside for a while, and then see if you cannot re-shape their people, re-devise and re-order their events, to make them more effective, more interesting fictions. In blocking out a story do not state happenings merely; indicate your people's natures, their looks, their speech, and indicate where you would touch in setting, depict character by action, speech, or description, or hint to a reader the emotional quality of what is to come.

It will take a very real degree of courage and perseverance to carry out a course of practice in conceptive and constructive technique long enough to accomplish its end. But if you will lay out for yourself along the lines indicated here such a course of study and practice, and then will perform the necessary work, you will certainly gain more insight into the essential processes of fiction than you can acquire merely by accepting at face value such story-ideas as may come to you and by writing them out one after the other. In particular, you will acquire the faculty to re-mould and re-shape your material, instead of seizing each idea too uncritically. And that is half the battle, for it is precisely the attitude and habit of the professional as contrasted with the attitude and habit of the amateur.

Little need be said as to the best way to practice the technique of execution. When you find or devise a story that you feel is truly worth the writing, write it as best you can, after careful and directed planning. You can also try to reproduce the work of others, and again the great value of this sort of practice lies in your having a positive standard of comparison ready for your work when it is written. Or you can practice piecemeal, if you have the necessary enthusiasm, can go about with a notebook in your pocket, as did Stevenson, and try to precipitate in telling words the casual impressions that come to you. At all events, write from a primary spectacle, whether of the imagination or of actuality, and try to reproduce something definite in your words rather than to string together vociferous but meaningless phrases.

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APPENDIX B
SUGGESTIONS FOR TEACHERS

The instructor in fiction technique has my hearty sympathy. His must be all the woes of manuscript reader, editor, and friend of the author rolled into one.

It would serve no purpose to list here the inherent difficulties of the business of teaching the art of the story, such as that made by the fact that the instructor must deal with a number of individuals differing not only in point of powers but in point of earnestness. But there is reason to note one thing. The aim of the course should not be academic. It should not be allowed to degenerate into a course in the appreciation of fiction, the most constant danger to which lecturing and abstract discussion on fiction technique is subject. The student should not be permitted for a moment, even, to become merely the appraising connoisseur rather than the humble practitioner of the art. Such shifting of viewpoint is fatal.

History can be taught piecemeal; so can mathematics and a hundred other subjects; but the art of fiction cannot, even if it is teachable at all. The one great secret of the art of fiction is the art of construction, and it will profit a class little to assign short exercises in handling specific elements of a story, the elements of personality, event, or setting. The whole secret of fiction writing is to blend all these matters into an interesting and significant whole, and the only way to seek or impart it is to construct and write or to require the class to construct and write whole stories. And the proper use of a text-book, aside from general study by the class and the discussion of reading-assignments, is for reference in criticising the stories that have been written by and read before the class.

The general aim of the teacher should be to keep the student writing, but writing with a definite aim. The simplest sort of story to write, of course, is the story of plain action, and, concomitantly with discussion of plot, it will be advisable to outline for writing two or three relatively simple stories. Choose these from magazines not too recent; give the class the main course of events, the people, and the setting to work from; and read the original story when reading and discussing the work of the class, for a fixed standard of comparison is extremely valuable. As the course proceeds, more complicated stories can be outlined for reproduction, and from the first it will be useful to require the student to hand in with the story he has written an outline of a story of the same general type, but original with himself. After telling the class where they may find each story they have unconsciously worked upon, state its chief values as succinctly as possible, and point out wherein each student's work has or has not realized such values, and also indicate any value in the class-work not present in the original. Incidentally, point out the merits and defects of the original outlines handed in with the complete stories. Of course, the whole business must be highly selective; discuss fully a little of the best work, rather than say a few inadequate words as to each student's.

As the opportunity offers, it will be advisable to engage in oral story-building with the class. State two or more traits or motives that involve a conflict, and then call upon individuals to outline a story presenting the dramatic opposition. Or assign for reading a particular newspaper of particular date, and require individuals first to state what news item seems to offer the best suggestion for a story and then to outline the story suggested by it. This sort of work is extremely valuable in itself and to keep the class from forgetting that they are trying to learn the secret to find, develop, and write good stories.

Finally, as to the matter of original work. When the student is asked completely to develop and write a story of his own, it will be best to let him work in any direction he pleases, rather than to require him to show some particular type of story. The matter of type can be touched on in discussion. And, to emphasize the importance of construction, it will be well to require submission of a completely developed outline of each story before writing, also to discuss and re-shape these with the class, stating their outstanding values and weaknesses. The general endeavor should be to impress upon each student the fact that the material of fiction is infinitely plastic, so that he should shape and re-shape his conception before writing until he is certain that he has exhausted its possibilities. The matter of verbal execution should not be given any great emphasis simply because it cannot be treated in class with any great profit. The instructor can say that this passage is bad and that good, hardly more. But a poorly constructed story can be taken apart and rearranged more effectively, and the process can be grasped by the student because it is somewhat mechanical. Furthermore, the technique of fiction and the technique of verbal expression are different matters, and the instructor in the first will be wise if he leaves the matter of nice expression to the instructor in the second. Of course, obvious verbal crudities in class work should be pointed out.

The real service that a course in technique can perform for an earnest student is threefold. It can lead him to realize keenly that the aim of fiction is to interest, that this aim can be attained most completely by presentment of a human conflict or problem, and that adequate fictional presentment of such a conflict, problem, or plot is to be achieved only by a cunning blending of the elements of personality, event, and setting. That course in fiction technique is the best course which does the most to open the eyes of the student to the essential nature of the art and most definitely shows him the matters he must bear in mind in putting together a story. If he leaves the hands of the instructor with a knowledge of the fundamentals of construction, the instructor will have done well.

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APPENDIX C
TO WRITE A STORY