CHAPTER III
HOW TO BEGIN
You have now obtained your story—in its bare outlines, at least. The next question is, How are you to make a start? Well, that is an important question, and it cannot be evaded.
Clarence Rook, in a waggish moment, said two things were necessary in order to write a novel:
- (1) Writing Materials,
- (2) A Month;
but he seems to have thought that the month should be a month's imprisonment for attempting such an indiscretion. In these pages, however, we are serious folk, and having thanked Mr Rook for his pleasantry, we return to the point before us.
First of all, What kind of a novel is yours to be? Historical? If so, have you read all the authorities? Do you feel the throb of the life of that period about which you are going to write? Are its chief personages living beings in your imagination? and have you learned all the details respecting customs, manners, language, and dress? If not, you are very far from being ready to make a start, even though the "story" itself is quite clear to you.
Our great historical novelists devour libraries before they sit down to write. One would like to know how many books Dr Conan Doyle digested before he published "The Refugees," and Stanley Weyman before he brought out his "A Gentleman of France." Do not be carried away with the alluring idea that it is easy to take up historical subjects because the characters are there to hand, and the "story" practically "made." Directly you make the attempt, you will find out your mistake. Write about the life you know best—the life of the present day. You will then avoid the necessity of keeping everything in chronological perspective—a necessity which an open-air preacher, whom I heard last week, quite forgot when he said that the sailors shouted down the hatchway to the sleeping Prophet of Nineveh: "Jonah! We're sinking! Come and help us with the pumps!"