Our own discoveries are among the few things of life that we manage to remember.
Having dissected a novel, and made notes on the way it was constructed, turn to your own work (whether a long or a short story), and see what you have to show in the way of a main idea, a good framework, a purpose for each character, a reason for each incident, well-balanced secondary matter, with a steady crescendo and accelerando leading to a good climax.
I need not point out the application. It is for you to make your own stories profit by your study of the methods of the great writers.
PART FOUR
POINTS A WRITER OUGHT TO NOTE
Beautiful and striking thoughts are a common everyday occurrence; the uncommon occurrence is to find the person who can reduce those thoughts to writing in such a manner as to convey, exactly to another mind the ideas that were in his own.