On the art of writing fiction

by Unknown

STYLE IN FICTION

W. E. Norris

The main thing

The art of writing fiction has of late years been made the subject of innumerable articles by persons most, if not quite all, of whom are doubtless competent and well-informed; and it seems to be pretty generally agreed upon between them, as a nice, definite sort of dogma to start with, that “the main thing is to have a story to tell.” Possibly that may be the main thing: possibly also the main thing—if, indeed, there be one where several things are indispensable—may be, not that the writer should have a story to tell, but that he should be able to tell it. To tell it, that is, after a fashion which shall move, interest or amuse the great novel-reading public, which, patient and tolerant though it may be—patient and tolerant as some of us must needs acknowledge, with a due sense of contrite gratitude, though it is—nevertheless demands something more than a bald narration of supposed events.

The beginner

The beginner, therefore (for it is only to beginners that the present dogmatiser has the effrontery to address himself), will do well to bear in mind that it is not enough to be equipped with an admirable plot, nor even to have clearly realised in his or her inner consciousness the circumstances and personages involved therein: both have to be made real to the reader; both, moreover, have to be so treated of as, in one way or another, to tickle the reader’s mental palate. This is much the same as saying that the beginner, in order to be a successful beginner, has to acquire a style. Not necessarily, it must be owned, a correct style; still at least a distinctive one. Otherwise he cannot hope to make his audience see people and things as he sees them.

Acquiring a style

But why talk about “acquiring” a style? Does not every human being already possess a style?—dormant, no doubt, yet plainly perceptible in his accustomed turns of speech and methods of expressing himself. And can he do better than utilise this when he sits down with pen and paper to write his story? Perhaps he might do rather better; but there is no need to raise the point at the outset, because the beginner who essays, without preparation or apprenticeship, to tell his story in his own way will very soon discover that that is precisely what he cannot do. The words, somehow, will not come; or, if they do, they come in a manner palpably and grotesquely inadequate; the sentences are clumsy, tautological, badly rounded and jar upon the ear; the effect produced is very far from being the effect contemplated. The tyro, in short, finds out to his sorrow that writing is not in the least the same thing as talking, and that even so modest an achievement as the production of a novel is, after all, an art, the inexorable requirements of which do not greatly differ from those claimed by other arts.

Writing an Art to be learnt

And, indeed, why should they? Nobody would ever dream that they did, were it not that the literary art has no schools, colleges, paid professors, no system of salutary checks to intervene between the student and his public. To one who is conscious of ability it seems so simple to seize a pen and go ahead! In a certain country-house there was a Scotch cook whose scones were beyond all praise. Implored by a Southern lady to reveal the secret of her unvarying success, she replied, after long consideration, “Aweel, mem, ye just take your girdle, ye see, and—and make a scone.” Quite so: you just take pen and paper and—and write a novel. No directions could be more beautifully succinct; but, unfortunately, it is almost as difficult for a writer who has reached a point of moderate proficiency in his calling to say how this is to be done as it was for the cook to explain how scones ought to be made. He may, however, be bold enough to affirm that the thing cannot be done off-hand—that the knack of manipulating language has to be mastered, just as that of swimming, riding, shooting and playing cricket has to be mastered, and that preliminary failures are more or less a matter of course. Swimming is very easy; yet if you take a boy by the scruff of his neck and fling him into deep water, nothing can be more certain than that he will flounder, struggle desperately for a few seconds and then sink like a stone. Probably there are but a very few people who cannot learn to swim; there are many who cannot learn to shoot or ride; it seems doubtful whether an equal number cannot—if only they will condescend to take the necessary pains—learn how to write.

But the trouble is that plenty of men and women who cannot really do these things nevertheless do them after a fashion. Have not the lives of most of us been placed in jeopardy through the erratic performances of some worthy gentleman who is fond of shooting, but who is obviously unfit to be trusted with a gun? Is there an M.F.H. in England whose soul is not vexed every year by the hopeless, good-humoured, dangerous incapacity of certain members of the hunt? Every now and again one sees a steeplechase won by a horse who has carried off the victory in spite of his well-meaning rider; and in like manner it would be an easy, though an ungracious, task to name authors whose books have commanded a prodigious sale without being, in the true sense of the word, books at all.

Pleasing the public

Well, the neophyte may say, it does not particularly matter to me whether you are pleased to call my book a book or not; so long as I can please the public, and thereby make sure of receiving a handsome cheque from the publishers, I shall be satisfied. To such a reply no rejoinder can be made, save a warning that successes of the kind alluded to have been achieved under heavy handicap penalties. They prove no more than that, as a good horse will occasionally win a race, although he be badly ridden, so a large section of the novel-reading public will tolerate inartistic work and slipshod English for the sake of a good story. And, since you are supposed to be beginning, why should you wish to carry extra weight, or imagine that you are able to do so? It is not given to everybody—alas! it is by no means given to everybody—to conceive a really good and original plot; yet some among us, whose pretensions to excel in that direction are as scanty as need be, may contrive to give pleasure, may to a certain extent please ourselves with our handling of the vocation for which we believe that we are best fitted, may even pocket the cheques which we have earned without feeling that we have robbed anybody.

Infinite variety of the Novel

In other words, novels do not give pleasure or meet with acceptance simply and solely by virtue of their subject-matter. The novel, at least so far as England, which is the great novel-producing country, is concerned, may be regarded as a sort of literary omnibus—a vehicle adapted for the carrying of all manner of incongruous freights, heavy and light. Descriptions of every grade of contemporary society have their places in it; descriptions of scenery and very little else have a right of entry; history is not excluded: its springs are even strong enough to bear the weight of amateur theology and psychical research. Perhaps, strictly speaking, this ought not to be so; but it is so, and if, after so many years of laxity, we were to go in for strict rules and principles, we should be all the poorer for our pedantic exactitude. According to Tennyson, England is a desirable land in which to reside, because it is

“The land where, girt by friends or foes,

A man may speak the thing he will;”

and so the English novel affords a fine, broad field for a man to stretch his limbs in, the sole condition of admittance into it being that he should do so with some approach to grace and symmetry.

The average Reader

It shall not be asserted or pretended that the average reader consciously exacts these things, that he is conscious of having them when he has secured them, or of resenting their absence when he has been defrauded of them. But when he tosses a book across the room, with his accustomed cruelly concise criticism that it is “bosh” or “rot,” the above-mentioned species of resentment is, in most cases, what he unconsciously feels. We ourselves, from the moment that we cease to be average writers, become average readers, and are no whit less unmerciful than the rest of the would. We are not going to be bored by anybody, if we can help it. Possibly, from being in the trade, we may know a little better than those who are not in the trade why we are bored; but that does not soften our hearts, nor are we likely to purchase a second work by an author who has bored us once. Therefore it is worth while to conciliate us, and to consider how this may best be done.

The value of Style

Doubtless, as has been admitted all along, there are more methods than one of capturing and retaining the public ear; but this brief paper professes to deal only with one—that of style. The beginner, we will take it for granted, wants to have a style of his own, wants to make the most that he can of his mother-tongue, wants to clothe his thoughts in readable language, wants above all to send them forth with the stamp of his individuality upon them. And he is confronted at starting by the annoying discovery that he is unable to do this. How is he to do it?

“My dear,” said an experienced chaperon to a young débutante, “study to be natural.” Whereupon everybody who heard her laughed. Yet the old lady knew what she was talking about and had not really been guilty of a contradiction in terms. Under artificial social conditions it is not possible to be natural until the rules of the game have been learnt. Situations are continually cropping up in which Nature, unassisted by Art, will play you the shabby trick of turning her back upon you and leaving you to demean yourself in a ludicrously unnatural manner. No débutante, however great may be her inborn grace and ease of deportment, would venture to be presented at Court without having gone through some preliminary rehearsal; scarcely would she face a first ball or a first dinner-party unless a few previous hints and instructions had been conveyed to her. But, fortified by an exact knowledge of what is the right thing to do, she sails forth confidently, she dares to be herself, and she makes, let us hope, the desired impression in quarters where it is desirable that an impression should be made.

Study how to please

Not dissimilar is the case of the budding novelist; although there is no denying that it is easier to show a young lady how to carry herself than to show a would-be prose-writer how to please. His apprenticeship must needs be a longer and a less definite one. Rules, indeed, there are for him—cut and dried rules, relating to accuracy of grammar and punctuation, avoidance of involved sentences, neologisms, catch phrases and the like; but these will not take him quite the length that he wishes to go. They will not take him quite that length; yet they will help him on his way, and he must condescend to study them. Furthermore, he should study slowly and carefully the works of those who have attained renown chiefly by reason of their style. Addison, Gibbon, Macaulay, Carlyle, Ruskin, Sterne—to select at random half a dozen names out of the throng which at once presents itself—he ought not only to be familiar with the writings of all these and other masters of English prose, but to scrutinise closely their several methods, so that he may come by degrees to understand what the capabilities of the language are and what admirable, though widely divergent, results have been arrived at by those who have vanquished its difficulties.

With that language it is true that some of the writers just cited have taken liberties: one, in particular, has allowed himself enormous and audacious liberties. But that is only because he had made the language so completely his servant that he was in a certain sense entitled to do as he pleased with it. The student is not recommended to imitate Carlyle; for the matter of that, he is not recommended to imitate anybody, direct, deliberate imitation being as surely foredoomed to failure in literature as in all other arts. But he may be advised to dissect, to analyse, to search patiently for the secrets of proportion, of balance, of rhythmical, harmonious diction. Haply he will discover these; in any event he will reap the benefit of having mixed with good company, just as, in playing no matter what game, we all insensibly improve when we are associated with or pitted against our superiors. And the stricter the rules by which he determines to bind himself down the better it will be for him in the long run. In musical composition many things are said to be “forbidden”—so many that the bewildered student of harmony and counterpoint, knowing how frequently great composers have transgressed the limits within which he is cramped, is apt to exclaim in despair, “But you won’t let me do anything! Why may I not do what Bach has done?” The only answer that can be returned is, “Because you are not Bach.” Ultimate ease and liberty are the outcome, as dexterity is the outcome, of early discipline; it may be that they are never truly or certainly acquired by any other means.

The necessity of “infinite pains”

It is, in short, the old story of “infinite pains.” Whether “the capacity for taking infinite pains” is or is not satisfactory as a definition of genius is another question; but we may at least be sure that infinite pains are never wasted. Not that we have any right to expect an immediate and abundant harvest. It is the slow, but sure, education of the taste and the ear that has to be aimed at, and this will only come to us by imperceptible degrees. Gustave Flaubert, than whom no more painstaking writer ever lived, was so persuaded of the artistic compulsion that lay upon him to use the right word or the right phrase, so convinced that for every idea there is but one absolutely fitting word or phrase, that he would spend hours in tormenting himself over a single sentence. Often at the end of all he remained dissatisfied—could not but be dissatisfied. In one of his letters he draws a pathetic parallel between himself and a violinist who plays false, being well aware that he is playing false, yet lacking the power to correct his faulty execution. The tears roll down the unhappy fiddler’s cheeks, the bow falls from his hand....

Writers too lenient with themselves

Ah, well! we cannot all be artists like Flaubert. We are mediocrities at best, most of us; we know that we are mediocrities, and we are not going to cry about it. But let us acknowledge, with the humility which beseems us, how immeasurably he was our superior, not in genius alone, but in industry, in conscientiousness, in self-sacrifice. We mediocre folks, who have acquired a certain facility of expression, are apt to be only too lenient with ourselves. The exact word that we want, the precise phrase suitable to our purpose, are not forthcoming; but others are ready and will serve well enough. We take the others, hoping that nobody will notice their ineptitude. The beginner also will, in process of time, arrive at this fatal facility, and it is not in the least likely that he will have strength to resist a temptation to which ninety-nine authors out of a hundred succumb. All the more important, therefore, is it that he should adopt and observe the strictest rules at starting; so that he may form a style of which, once formed, he will never be able to divest himself. We made a comparison just now between the arts of literature and equitation. They have not a great deal in common; but they are so far alike that early training has the first and last word in each. There are men who are almost in the front rank amongst riders, but who have never reached, and never will quite reach, that rank, because of the errors of those who instructed them in their youth. Heavy-handed they are, and heavy-handed they will remain till the end of the chapter. So it is, not only with mediocre writers, but even with some who belong to the first class. These have taken up tricks and mannerisms, pretty enough and pleasing enough while the charm of novelty still hung about them, but provoking and perilous from the moment that they have lost that charm, that they have ceased to be servants and have become masters. Macaulay, for example, had an admirable style; yet after a time one grows irritated with it, knowing so well in what manner he will deal with any given subject under the sun. At the opening of some sonorous, well-balanced paragraph the reader is prone to say to himself, with a sigh, “Ah, I see you coming with your distressing antitheses!” And there, sure enough, they are, neat, polished, brilliant, turned out to order—wearisome. But if, during his lifetime, some reader of his had had the impudence to point this out to him, and if, with the modesty which is a part of true greatness, he had admitted that the criticism was not unjust, could he, do you think, have written otherwise than as he did?

Success attained

Therefore, let the tyro put away from him all insidious temptations to be brilliant or original; let him think chiefly, if not solely, of being lucid; let him store up for himself a vocabulary from which all ambiguous terms shall be rigorously excluded. So, having studied, he will be able, like the débutante, to be natural, and will have gained possession of a style which will, at any rate, be correct and his own. So, too, he may perhaps be able to look back not discontentedly upon a measure of good, solid work accomplished, when the time shall come to hang up the fiddle and the bow, to lay aside the worn-out old pen and make his final bow to a public by whom he may anticipate with some confidence that he will be speedily and mercifully forgotten.