In addition to the youthful heroine, the aged grandmother needs to be given a long rest. When the young wife who married in her teens visits her old home in company with her one-year-old infant, it is invariably the dearest old lady who comes forward to embrace her first grandchild; and from her own conversation and the description of her general appearance, the sweet old soul must be at least eighty, despite all that Nature might rule to the contrary, to say nothing of the dressmaker!
Tradition has it that grandmothers must have white hair, and spectacles, voluminous skirts, and knitting in their hands as they sit in an easy-chair with comfortably slippered feet on a hassock; and that is the sort of grandmother the amateur brings on the scenes, irrespective of the fact that the grandmother of to-day is skipping about in girlish skirts and high-heeled shoes, with hair and complexion as youthful as she likes to pay for.
Nothing in the way of fiction is more difficult to write than a thoroughly good love story. And yet the beginner invariably starts with a love story, and continues with love-stories, as though there were no other possible selection.
I do not think it is often possible to write a good love-story until one has had some experience of life. It is so easy to mistake neurotic imaginings and over-strung emotionalism for love; and it is still easier to fall back on the conventional things that the conventional hero and heroine do and say in the conventional novel, and imagine that we are recording our own ideas and experiences.
There are several reasons why the love-story appeals to the girl who is starting out to write. She is looking forward to a love-story of her own, if she be a normal girl, and has already seen herself in the part of her favourite heroine. Naturally it is not surprising that love-stories are of absorbing interest to her. And a girl usually sees herself as the heroine of her own early love-stories; and she invariably makes her heroine do and say what she would like to do and say under the circumstances, and at the same time she makes the hero do and say what she would like her own lover to do and say—but it does not follow that this is true to life; or that her lover would say the things she credits him with in her story. Very few proposals in real life ever resemble the proposals in fiction!
A girl will often introduce her heroine in a picturesque pose against some lovely background of hills, or woods, or garden flowers; and the hero coming upon her suddenly is made to pause, lost in admiration of the exquisite picture she makes. The girl writes this because—unconsciously, perhaps—she sees herself in the part, and likes to think she would make a very attractive picture that would rivet a man's attention.
But it is not true to life. In reality, the average man seldom notices the scenic fittings under such circumstances. He either sees the girl—or he doesn't. Unless he is an artist looking for useful subjects for his pictures, the background is not often seen in conjunction with the girl. I merely give this as an instance of the way amateurs are apt to see themselves in an imaginary part that in reality is at variance with "things as they are"; and their writings become artificial in consequence.
There is another reason why the love-story is the beginner's choice: it calls for so few characters. The simplest ingredients are—a nice, beautiful girl and a strong, manly, deserving masculine. Of course, you can vary the flavour by making them rich or poor, misunderstood, down-trodden, capricious, and what not. And you can amplify it by introducing the bold, bad rival (masculine); the superficial, fascinating butterfly rival (feminine); the irate forbidding parent (his, if he is rich and she is poor; hers, if he is poor and her mother is ambitious and money-grabbing); the designing mischief-maker (a black-eyed brunette, or a brassy-haired blonde); and a host of other well-worn familiar types. But when all is said and done, you need have but two characters to delineate, if you do not feel equal to more—and there is a distinct save of brain in this!
When you reach the climax in any other than a love-story, you are expected to make the dénouement something of a slight surprise at any rate, if no more; and we all know that surprises—slight or otherwise—are not altogether easy to manufacture for purposes of fiction. It is simple work to go on talking and describing and making the people talk—about nothing—for pages and pages; but by no means simple to lead it all up to a definite point of culmination. There must be some sort of point to a story; and that point is the trouble as a rule!