On the art of writing fiction

by Unknown

THE SHORT STORY

Lanoe Falconer

The art of writing a short story

The art of writing a short story is like the art of managing a small allowance. It requires the same care, self-restraint, and ingenuity, and, like the small allowance, it affords excellent practice for the beginner, as by the very limitations it imposes on her ambition, it preserves her from errors of judgment and tastes into which she might be hurried by fancy or fashion.

What to avoid

There are many things lawful, if not expedient, in the three-volume novel that in the short story are forbidden—moralising, for instance, or comments of any kind, personal confidences or confessions. These can indeed be made so entrancing that the narrative itself may be willingly foregone. The wit of a Thackeray, the wisdom of a George Eliot, has done as much: but these gifts are rare, so rare that the beginner will do well to assume that she has them not, and to stick fast to her story, especially if it be a short one; since on that tiny stage where there is hardly room for the puppets and their manœuvres, there is plainly no space for the wire-puller.

Explanations

Even more cheerfully may be renounced those dreary addenda called explanations. Nowhere in a story can they possibly be welcome. At the end they would be preposterous; at the beginning they scare away the reader; in the middle they exasperate him. Who does not know the chill of disappointment with which, having finished one lively and promising chapter, one reads at the beginning of the next, “And now we must retrace our steps a little to explain,” or words to the same depressing effect? Explain what?—the situation? That should have explained itself. Or the relation of the actors? A word or two in the dialogue might do as much. More I, as the reader, do not wish to learn. I am fully interested, I am caught in the current of the tale, I am burning to know if the hero recovered, if the heroine forgave, if the parents at last consented: I am in no mood to listen to a précis—for it is never more—of the past events that prepared this dilemma, or of the legal, financial, or genealogical complications by which it is prolonged. With these dry details the author may do well to be acquainted, for the due direction and confirmation of his plot; but the reader has nothing to do with them, and in a work of art they are as needless and as unsightly as the scaffolding round a completed building, or the tacking threads in a piece of finished needlework.

Redundancy

Equally incompatible with the short story is that fertile source of tedium, redundancy. “The secret of being wearisome,” says the French proverb, “is to tell everything.” What then is the end of those who tell not merely everything, but—if an Irish turn of expression may be permitted—a great deal more? It is to encourage the practice of skipping in the general reader, and—much to the detriment of more parsimonious writers—in the reviewers as well. A large number of novels picturesquely described as weak and washy, might be converted into very readable stories by the simple process of leaving out about two volumes and a half of entirely superfluous and unentertaining matter.

“Phillup Bosch.”

On the staff of an amateur magazine to which in early youth the writer contributed, there was one most obliging and useful member whose business it was to provide “copy” for the odd corners and inevitable spaces between the more important papers. He wrote, you will observe, not because he had anything in the world to say or tell, but because a certain amount of space must at all costs be covered; and the effusions thus inspired he signed with the modest and appropriate pseudonym of “Phillup Bosch.” How often in fiction of a certain class may even now be recognised the handiwork of this industrious writer, always unsigned, indeed, at least by the old familiar name. The sparkle of his early touch is gone, but his unmistakable purpose is the same. The glamour of “auld lang syne” may to his old friends endear these interpolations, but from a literary point of view it is much to be desired that he would lay aside his pen for ever. And yet it must be acknowledged that without his aid there are three-volume novels that could never have been written. Fortunately, the short story is independent of him.

Disadvantages

The disadvantages of the short story become more distinct when we consider its possible theme. The crowded stage and wide perspective of the novel proper; all transformations of character and circumstance in which length of time is an essential element; even the intricately tangled plot, deliberately and knot by knot unfolded—these are beyond its reach. The design of the short story must itself be short—and simple. A single, not too complicated, incident is best; in short, the one entire and perfect action, that Aristotle—I quote from Buckley’s translation—considered the best subject of fable or poem. To the writer might well be repeated the stage-manager’s advice to aspiring dramatists, quoted by Coppée in his Contes en Prose:

“If they come to me with their plays when I am at breakfast, I say—‘Look here, can you tell me the plot in the time it takes me to eat this boiled egg? If not—away with it—it is useless.’” The author of a short story submitted to the same kind of test would have to be even more expeditious.

The art of omission

It may be observed that all these suggestions are of a negative order, and concerned with “the tact of omission.” It is indeed of the first importance in the composition of the short story. As a famous etcher once said to the writer while she stood entranced before a study of river, trees, and cattle, that his magic touch had converted into a very poem, an exquisite picture of pastoral repose—“The great thing is to know what to leave out.” It is part of that economy already insisted upon, “to express only the characteristic traits of succeeding actions,” and, as Mr. Besant exhorts us, to suppress “all descriptions which hinder instead of helping the action, all episodes of whatever kind, all conversation which does not either advance the story or illustrate the characters.”

Grasp of point

Dramatic instinct

How this “essential and characteristic” is to be distinguished from all around it is another matter. It is a work that a great French master of the art described as a travail acharné. But it is also very often made easy by native instinct, like that which directs these born story-tellers—their name is legion—of both sexes and all conditions, who never put pen to paper, but who in hall or cottage, drawing-room or kitchen, nursery or smoking-room, whenever they unfold a tale, hold all their audience attentive and engrossed. Their method when analysed appears to chiefly depend, first on their firm grasp of the main point and purport of their story, next on their liberal use of dialogue in the telling of it. At least thus do the listeners to one enchanting story-teller endeavour to explain the dramatic flavour she imparted to the commonest incidents of domestic life. For instance, this is what she would have made of a theme so ungrateful as the fact that, the butcher having sent too large a joint, she had returned it to him. For the benefit of inexperienced housekeepers, it is perhaps as well to explain that a fair average weight for a leg of mutton is declared by experts to be nine pounds.

“Directly I went into the larder, I said, ‘Jane, what on earth is that?’

“‘Why, ma’am,’ she said, ‘it is the leg of mutton you ordered.’

“‘What!’ I said, ‘the small leg of mutton? Where is the ticket?’

“‘Please, ma’am, the butcher’s boy has not brought it.’

“I said, ‘Tell him to come into the kitchen.’

“When he came I made her weigh that leg of mutton before him. It weighed eleven pounds four ounces!

“I said, ‘Take that back to your master, and ask him from me if he calls that a small leg of mutton?’”

The expression, the intonation, and the, at times, almost tragic emphasis, it is, unfortunately, impossible to reproduce; but even in this colourless record we may admire the terseness and vigour, the masterly beginning that at once arouses curiosity, and the truly artistic reserve that does not by outcry or comment detract from the force of the climax! Consider, too, how in some hands this simple tale might have been embroidered and interrupted: by description of the scenery outside the kitchen-window; by a minute account of the lady’s family and connections, or of the previous history of the cook; by a dissertation on joints in general and the story-teller’s favourite dishes in particular, with other digressions too numerous to mention; and by comparison you may divine what constitutes “the characteristic” of a story.

Points to aim at

If now, seriously speaking, you review the tablets of your memory and mark the scenes imprinted there, you will see that whereas some figures, incidents, speeches, and even details of the background are vivid as ever, others have vanished away. Again, you will find that a conversation may be often best reported, in fidelity to the spirit rather than the word, by suppressing all the repetitions and superfluous phrases that encumbered the actual dialogue. Lastly, if you attentively consider the character of some one you know and understand, you may discover that it is revealed and epitomised in certain particular words and actions, and that by repeating these you might present a much more striking portrait of the original than by a lengthy memoir of all that he, or she, did and said in common with other people. Thus from your own experience you may gather useful hints as to the kind of condensation desirable for the short story. Others may, and ought to, be acquired by the study of the best literature; but in this, as in every form of creative work, the artist, in the beginning as at the end, must draw his chief inspiration from life itself.

Literary capabilities

There is one thing that the shortest story does not exclude, and that is the highest artistic ambition. That the length of any work can be no measure of its importance or effect is best illustrated by such masterpieces as the minor poems of Milton, Wordsworth, Shelley, or Tennyson. The literary capabilities of the short story, still in its infancy, have yet to be discovered, probably by the very generation of those to whom this paper is especially addressed. Therefore one must the more earnestly entreat them to cherish the highest aims in their writing, to lavish on it the greatest care. Nowhere can “signs of weariness, of haste, in fact of scamping,” be so inexcusable as on the miniature canvas, or ivory, of the short story. Rather it deserves the finish of the finest cameo, of the most highly polished gem.

Finally, with that uncomfortable feeling that is apt to overtake one after preaching, the writer is obliged to confess that all this advice is easier to give than to follow, and concludes with the wish that her young readers may

“Better reck the rede

Than ever did the adviser.”