Grasp especially the composition of the action. It is usually built on one of the following plans:
(a) The single line of sequence, as in Hans Andersen’s “Princess on the Pea,” or “The Sleeping Beauty,” or “The Frog Prince;”
(b) The three-parallel line—what the first did, what the second did, what the third did,—as in “The Golden Pears” and in “Dummling;”
(c) The balanced antithetical plan, two contrasting courses of action placed side by side,
| what the beautiful, industrious child did |
| what the ugly, idle child did, |
as in “Mother Holle” or in “Diamonds and Toads.”
(d) The cumulative plan, as in “Henny-Penny,” “The Cat and the Mouse in the Malt House,” “The House that Jack Built,” “The Old Woman and her Pig.” Do not miss the increase in interest and suspense.
Note in the three-parallel structure the climactic “thirdness” and its distinguishing characteristic; it is the youngest and the stupid third member of the family who turns out to be the cleverest and most favored of fortune; it is Dummling who marries the sweetest princess; it is the woodcutter’s third daughter who proves considerate of the dumb animals, frees the castle of enchantment, and marries the prince.
Note, too, that the old-world story-tellers were sensitive to the dramatic effect of the contrasts in life. The miller’s daughter, innocent victim of her father’s ambition, sits down in despair to weep over an impossible task, and “at this moment the door opens and in comes a comical little dwarf” who with three magical whirrs of the spinning-wheel turn a roomful of straw into gold. It is the very day of her fifteenth birthday that the princess must take to explore the castle and come upon unsuspected spinning-wheel with which to prick her finger that the witch’s prophecy may be fulfilled, but, as is the merry good luck of romance, it is on the last day of the hundred years that the prince goes hunting to spy, not deer, but the towers of the identical castle in which the Sleeping Beauty lies, inquires about it of everyone until he meets the very man who can tell him what “my father told me,” and rides off to awaken the princess. It is always so in literature sound at heart, whether it be in a Shakespearean comedy, in which cottages appear in the forest in the nick of time as night is falling and lovely ladies and gallant knights are footsore and weary; or whether it be in simple fairy tale abounding in porridge pots, appearing when folks are on the brink of starvation and cooking like mad, “as if they would feed the whole world” at the magic words, “Little pot, cook,” or in frogs popping out of near by wells in time to say, “Your wish shall be fulfilled, within a year you shall have a little child,” or in small ovens and red apple-trees placed “conveniently low.” The scholarly student of narrative or dramatic technique recognizes this as what he calls comic relief to offset the pathos of the situation; the student lacking this knowledge accepts with satisfaction the plausibleness of timely happening.
After this careful work read the story again for enriched appreciation of it. Now put the book away and go about your business.