CHAPTER VII
PARTICULAR ACCOUNTS
The second large division heading explains itself. In an atmosphere of facts all the true narrative types stand. Whether these types are used as retainers of truth only is another question. Manifestly they are not. Manifestly there is much fiction that succeeds merely because it is cast in the true story mold. But the concern of the writer who chooses any one of these forms is to pour truth into it, whether the truth be historical actualities or only artistic probabilities.
It is more helpful to consider the types on their simplest basis; hence in a study like this, one would assume for content always real happenings. The necessity that the story go unquestioned does not, however, excuse the recorder of actual events from using his imagination. Indeed, only by using it can he come to write true history or true biography. Without "the inward eye" one cannot see the past. Without sympathy—which is another word for imagination—one cannot know his fellowman. A biographer, an historian, above all else should be able to see the unseen, not the unseen of the unreal, but the unseen of the real, a vastly different thing! The two are exact opposites, the what-is and the what-was set over against the what-was-not and the what-could-not-be.
In this chapter five types of narratives of actual events are grouped as particular accounts, or adventitious history, in contrast with continuous personal history, and continuous impersonal, or community history.
Particular accounts have to do with those small happenings that seem to come by chance, those events that form, as it were, complete and detachable bits of life. That is to say, each relation is of something that has taken place or been witnessed in a comparatively short time—an incident of a trip downtown, a characteristic action of a great man, an important political event, an adventure, a brief series of pleasures.
I. The Incident
Definition
The word "incident" comes from the Latin and means "falling upon or into something, impinging from without;" hence something depending upon or contained in another thing, as its principal. In narrative, then, it is the record of a subordinate act or of an event happening at the same time as some other event and of less importance. Any little occurrence may be considered an incident. The report of it generally has excuse for being in the fact that knowledge of it throws light on the main event or intensifies interest therein. Accordingly every good narrative of this type possesses a horizon larger than itself. Somewhere within the story there is a clause connecting the event with other occurrences or with the prime occurrence.
How to tell an incident
An incident may or may not be an eye-witness account. Indeed, an incident may be told by a person removed the third, the hundredth degree from the happening. The essential thing is the evidence of reality. Of course there are fictitious incidents—like those in "Robinson Crusoe"—but the whole care of the writer in such cases is to simulate truth. Very often a work of fiction is but a skillful piecing together of actual small happenings. An incident is valued in itself for one of two reasons—either for the fact which it records or for the author's humanity revealed in the narration. Though slight, an incident should be well told. It need not be pointed, but it should proceed in an orderly and interesting fashion. The diction should be natural. As hinted before, an incident should have a setting. The reader ought to be able to feel something of where the characters have come from and whither they are going. The more nicely such a coherence is suggested, the more pleasing the little story will be.