FOOTNOTES:
[A] One might expand here on the distinction that in the story stressing character it is the particular persons who interest the reader, while in the story of plot his interest centers in the events, and the people of the story are followed less as individuals than as the human focal points whereon the events take effect. Such fine analysis is tempting, but of little use, for any story is a compact unity of the three elements.
[B] Polti, in "The Thirty-Six Dramatic Situations," uses the word "situation" in a sense practically inclusive of plot. Plot is a word so abused that it even might be advisable to abandon it in discussion in favor of situation. The latter suggests more nearly the requisite idea of persons keyed for struggle. In particular, plot carries too many connotations of mere complication, which is not one of its essential qualities.
[C] In discussing the principles of construction it is obviously impossible to illustrate the text by quotation, for just construction could be shown only by reprinting an entire story. The reader must supplement what is said here by independent analytical reading. The only fortunate thing about the situation is that the matters which can be adequately illustrated by brief quotations—such as vividness in narrating—are chiefly matters of execution and least subject to profitable objective study.
[D] This story is a particularly instructive instance of how much the secondary events are within the writer's control, and also of how much depends on their just selection and ordering. The twin plot themes of the book are the struggle of man with man and the struggle of man with nature; they are developed almost entirely without aid from the superficially main events of the story, Maud's coming aboard the schooner and what follows. That is precisely the artistic defect of the work.
[E] The three fundamental plot themes are man's struggle with nature, man's struggle with man, and man's struggle with himself. The human element is inherently a part of any plot.
[F] It would be difficult to overstate how much of its appeal such a story as Fannie Hurst's "T. B.," reprinted in "The Best Short Stories of 1915," owes to its author's careful development of the personality of Sara Juke. Yet the story is not strictly a character story. In less competent hands the bare story would have been nothing; as it is, it is a fiction of real worth and significance.
[G] I will note here a matter suggested rather than stated by the general discussion, which is intended to be practical rather than philosophical. Narration must be in the first or third person, but the two fundamental types are personal and impersonal narration, and the line between them is not drawn by the pronouns I and he. Truly, when the story is told in the first person, the writer adopts the personal viewpoint of the narrating character, but when the writer chooses to write in the third person he also adopts the personal viewpoint of the character of whose soul he assumes knowledge, if he does so as to the soul of only one. This is the case, with a shifting personal viewpoint, when the writer assumes knowledge of the minds and souls of several characters, but not of all. Assuming knowledge of the soul of a character necessarily involves looking at the world through his eyes. It results that the only real impersonal viewpoint is to write in the third person and either to renounce all knowledge of motives or to assume knowledge of all events and the spirits of all the characters, when the reader will gain the impression of an impersonal relator rather than of a shifting personal viewpoint. The point is of no great importance, but realization of it may be of some slight service. In particular, if the story is told in the third person, but from the viewpoint of a single major character, universal knowledge of events cannot be assumed.
[H] The writer should strive to realize this fact. The necessity is not to make the reader accept a story as literal truth, but to make him accept it as fictional truth. Many of Poe's stories are unbelievable, but their power is felt to the full though they are not believed. In other words, the reader will grant the author his premises.
[I] In connection with the subject of vivid narration of an important event I might illustrate the text by brief quotation. Unlike matters of construction, matters of strict execution can be shown by pungent quotation. The question is not whether it is possible, but whether it is useful. Take this sentence from Stevenson's "Kidnapped": "His sword flashed like quicksilver into the huddle of his fleeing enemies." It is perfectly descriptive, alive as the sword was alive in the hand of Alan Breck. But no one by reading it can learn to write like it, a capacity to be gained only by long and arduous practice, such as Stevenson's. A good many books on technique have more quotation than text, and while free quotation lends a superficial weight to the whole, it is not of much practical use to one seeking to learn how to write. His own reading will offer him examples in plenty, and the most or even the only useful thing a work on technique can do for him is to state the principles he should try to follow in his own work.
[J] I once read a story in manuscript wherein a character related a commonplace tale of woe to another, with the result that the other's eyes "glistened with hot tears." Not only has the expression been worked to death, so that it has no primary freshness for a reader, but it is too artificial and strained for a story of the commonplace.
[K] A good deal of abstract statement might be made as to the description of persons, but the main considerations have been stated. The whole philosophy of this phase of technique rests on the necessity that every line of a story be given as much as possible of the concreteness and vivacity of life. It is useless to give a long description of a character once and for all when he first comes up in a story. Even if a reader gains a sharp impression therefrom, he will not carry it with him through the succeeding events involving the character. His first impression of the person must be kept alive by repeated descriptive touches, not so much because the person must be described adequately as because every part of the story must have the body of life. The distinction is fine, but real, and perhaps may be made clearer by imagining a reader witnessing an event in which a friend is involved. He knows his friend, as he can know no character in a story; nevertheless he sees him uninterruptedly as the event develops. To counterfeit the process in a story, descriptive touches as to the persons must be interspersed with the narrative matter, though the persons have been described already. A story should describe persons in action and repose.
[L] The writer should not have an eye to the origin of his words only while writing dialogue. In narrating the homely and commonplace event, and in describing everyday scenes, where the value lies in everyday associations, the suggestive English word should be used. The matter has been touched upon, though not in these terms. The whole endeavor in fiction writing generally should be to make the word chime with the substance.
[M] A great deal of close argument might be developed here. A plot is a chain of events influencing and influenced by character, and by character is meant not persons but traits. In some story, let us say, the avarice of one man brings him into conflict with another, also impelled by avarice. The conflict, of course, is not between two disembodied attributes, but between two persons, and the writer of such a story must individualize them. He should endeavor to give a reader an idea of how they look, by describing them, and of how they talk, by individualizing their speech. But he need not emphasize nor even bring out any phase of their spiritual natures not material to the story. That is to say, the writer of a story, in order to give it the seeming of life, should make every effort and employ all means to invest each character with a definite physical presence or illusion of actuality, but he should not try to displace the inner nature of each person in like detail.
[N] It will be instructive to realize why direct statement of a character's outstanding moral quality is less effective than skillful description of his person, though both the statement and the description are fundamentally descriptive writing. One may say that a moral attribute cannot be described, can merely be stated, but that is a statement of the condition rather than of the cause. The root of the matter is that the appearance of a person is the resultant of a combination of details; by stating the significant details in proper relation the writer can force a reader to perceive for himself the totality of the person's appearance. But a quality of soul is unified and undetailed. It is ineffective to say that a person is cruel simply for the same reason that it is ineffective to say that he is handsome. It follows that any breaking up of a quality of soul into its elements, if possible, will increase the effectiveness of the statement. Thus, cruelty may result from essential virility of soul in combination with insensitiveness, and so forth.
[O] To accomplish this subordinate and strictly unnecessary characterization the writer must employ the same three means of speech, direct statement, and action. But the action will constitute only a secondary event or events in the story, and must not bulk too large at the expense of the primary events.
[P] Of course, the initial conception of a story of atmosphere may limit the writer's power to manipulate his material. Thus when Stevenson pitched upon the emotional effect of the west coast of Scotland as that to be produced by "The Merry Men," he debarred himself from placing his story in any other setting, though he could pick and choose freely among possible events and people. A general emotional effect, as of beauty, is somewhat indefinite, and may be produced alike by stories differing widely in their three elements of setting, people and events.
[Q] The root cause of all the unintelligent discussion of the short story's unity in books on technique is failure to distinguish between form and content. The mere fact that no word without relation to the story-idea can be transcribed does not mean that the story-idea—complex of people, events, and settings—is a unity. The short story is a unit in that it is one story, rather than two or ten, but—it is not impertinent to ask—what of it? A single story may involve great diversity and complication of elements. And it is what is known as a short story if it can be presented adequately within some few thousand words, though it begin in a king's palace with tragedy and end in laughter in a Harlem flat. Poe's type of short story is another matter; it does possess unity of content in that setting, personality, and events are subtly alike.
[R] For a plainer, because less philosophical discussion of the fallacies of realism, the artistic philosophy, see p. 199.
[S] "The Ebb-Tide" is interesting in connection with the general question of plot. Its plot is the struggle within Robert Herrick between an artificially stimulated resolution and an essential weakness of moral fibre. The mere mechanical complication that he and his fellows steal a schooner laden with bottled water thinking her laden with champagne is no part of the plot, only a circumstance of the action, yet, as plot is commonly understood, the circumstance would be taken as the heart of the plot in itself. Also, "The Ebb-Tide" is interesting in connection with the matter of realism and the fallacies of the cult. The realists might claim the book, but they would have a merry time to point any essential difference between it and "The Master of Ballantrae," which they would reject. And a distinction that can be justified only when applied to extreme types-say "Pride and Prejudice" and "Frankenstein"—is not very convincing.
[T] In a sense, the mind is of the body rather than of the soul, where it functions in the common business of life.
[U] Dostoievsky's "The Idiot" should be compared with "Don Quixote," for the fundamental theme of each book is the same.
Transcriber's Note: | |
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| Spelling and punctuation have been preserved as in the originalpublication except for the following changes: | |
| Page 24 | less obvious, but, curiously enough, is is changed to less obvious, but, curiously [enough, is] |
| Page 25 | familiartiy with life, which cannot be brushed up changed to [familiarity] with life, which cannot be brushed up |
| Page 28 | Christrophe," "War and Peace," much of Thackeray's changed to [Christophe]," "War and Peace," much of Thackeray's |
| Page 33 | and deficiences before writing is necessary to make changed to and [deficiencies] before writing is necessary to make |
| Page 37 | Incident—Archtypal Character—Short Story and changed to Incident—[Archetypal] Character—Short Story and |
| Page 43 | archtype of all stories. An historical analysis changed to [archetype] of all stories. An historical analysis which stresses the bare incident, is archtypal of changed to which stresses the bare incident, is [archetypal] of |
| Page 54 | distincly social in nature. The possibilities for the changed to [distinctly] social in nature. The possibilities for the Balzac and and Thackeray are supreme masters in changed to Balzac [and Thackeray] are supreme masters in |
| Page 62 | Polti, in "The Thirty-Six Dramatic Situations, changed to Polti, in "The Thirty-Six Dramatic [Situations,"] is a word so abused that it even might be advisible changed to is a word so abused that it even might be [advisable] |
| Page 65 | hapenings; a plot is some human struggle changed to [happenings]; a plot is some human struggle |
| Page 67 | writers—one may indulge in a little philisophical changed to writers—one may indulge in a little [philosophical] |
| Page 72 | selection and ordering of its secendary events, changed to selection and ordering of its [secondary] events, |
| Page 82 | lost derelicts of people move. Their speach is changed to lost derelicts of people move. Their [speech] is |
| Page 84 | analytical of more than one charactcer the writer changed to analytical of more than one [character] the writer lays bare the souls of all charactcers instead of changed to lays bare the souls of all [characters] instead of |
| Page 85 | virture of each type may be utilized changed to [virtue] of each type may be utilized |
| Page 86 | omniscent viewpoint may carry the story changed to [omniscient] viewpoint may carry the story idiosyncracies, and to make changed to [idiosyncrasies], and to make |
| Page 89 | will be a be a glorified and persecuted changed to will [be a] glorified and persecuted |
| Page 102 | alloting the space of a story before writing, as has been changed to [allotting] the space of a story before writing, as has been |
| Page 111 | half fallen back, and made a strange excresence on either changed to half fallen back, and made a strange [excrescence] on either |
| Page 117 | strict if unconcious regard for the laws of technique. changed to strict if [unconscious] regard for the laws of technique. |
| Page 127 | a story involves a charactcer from such a district changed to a story involves a [character] from such a district |
| Page 132 | feeling and appreciation that any reader. changed to feeling and appreciation [than] any reader. |
| Page 133 | "'A lady stepped on her Junebug,'" changed to "'A lady stepped on her [Junebug.]'" |
| Page 138 | influencial in numerous directions in a story. changed to [influential] in numerous directions in a story. |
| Page 140 | it may be difficult to do so unobstrusively changed to it may be difficult to do so [unobtrusively] |
| Page 143 | "Yuh" for "you" is in instance. We all "yuh" changed to "Yuh" for "you" is [an] instance. We all "yuh" |
| Page 153 | will have some totality of emontional changed to will have some totality of [emotional] |
| Page 167 | Poe produced such stories as "Legeia" changed to Poe produced such stories as ["Ligeia"] |
| Page 170 | connotations of the state changed to connotations of the [stage] |
| Page 175 | the writter's resources—again of course changed to the [writer's] resources—again of course |
| Page 180 | thou and words, though it begin in a changed to [thousand] words, though it begin in a |
| Page 182 | and the metomorphosis of Dr. Jekyll changed to and the [metamorphosis] of Dr. Jekyll |
| Page 191 | laying a false emphasis on its pormissible scope changed to laying a false emphasis on its [permissible] scope |
| Page 211 | Your, first, second, tenth, or changed to [Your first], second, tenth, or |
| Page 214 | obvious reasons your laboratory anaylsis of changed to obvious reasons your laboratory [analysis] of |
| Page 218 | connoiseur rather than the humble practitioner changed to [connoisseur] rather than the humble practitioner |
| Page 219 | but writing with an definite aim changed to but writing with aim state its chief values as succintly as changed to state its chief values as [succinctly] as |