Put yourself in your hero’s place and see what you would do under similar circumstances. If you were in love with a young woman, you wouldn’t get down on your knees, and swear by all that was holy that you would die if she didn’t marry you, at the same time tearing your hair out by handfuls, and then endeavour to give her a concise biography of yourself.
You would put your arm around her, the first minute you had her to yourself, if you felt reasonably sure that she cared for you, and tell her what she meant to you—perhaps so low that even the author of the story couldn’t hear what you said, and would have to describe what he saw afterward in order to let his reader guess what had really happened.
It is a lamentable fact that the description of a person’s features gives absolutely no idea of his appearance. It is better to give a touch or two, and let the imagination do the rest. “Hair like raven’s wing,” and the “midnight eyes,” and many similar things, may be very well spared. The personal charms of the lover may be brought out through the mediations of the lovee, much better than by pages of description.
The law of compensation must always have its place in the artistic story. Those who do wrong must suffer wrong—those who work must be rewarded, if not in the tangible things they seek, at least in the conscious strength that comes from struggling. And “poetic justice,” which metes out to those who do the things that they have done, is relentless and eternal, in art, as well as in life.
“Style” is purely an individual matter, and, if it is anything at all, it is the expression of one’s self. Zola has said that, “art is nature seen through the medium of a temperament,” and the same is true of literature. Bunner’s stories are as thoroughly Bunner as the man who wrote them, and The Badge of Courage is nothing unless it be the moody, sensitive, half-morbid Stephen Crane.
Observation of things nearest at hand and the sympathetic understanding of people are the first requisites. Do not place the scene of a story in Europe if you have never been there, and do not assume to comprehend the inner life of a Congressman if you have never seen one. Do not write of mining camps if you have never seen a mountain, or of society if you have never worn evening dress.
James Whitcomb Riley has made himself loved and honoured by writing of the simple things of home, and Louisa Alcott’s name is a household word because she wrote of the little women whom she knew. Eugene Field has written of the children that he loved and understood, and won a truer fame than if he had undertaken The Master of Zangwill. Kipling’s life in India has given us Plain Tales from the Hills and The Jungle Book, which Mary E. Wilkins could not have written in spite of the genius which made her New England stories the most effective of their kind. Joel Chandler Harris could not have written The Prisoner of Zenda, but those of us who have enjoyed the wiles of that “monstus soon beast, Brer Rabbit,” would not have it otherwise.
You cannot write of love unless you have loved, of suffering unless you have suffered, or of death unless some one who was near to you has learned the heavenly secret. A little touch of each must teach you the full meaning of the great thing you mean to write about, or your work will be lacking. There are few of us to whom the great experiences do not come sooner or later, and, in the meantime, there are the little everyday happenings, which are full of sweetness and help, if they are only seen properly, to last until the great things come to test our utmost strength, to crush us if we are not strong, and to make us broader, better men and women if we withstand the blow.
And lastly, remember this, that merit is invariably recognised. If your stories are worth printing, they will fight their way through “the abundance of material on hand.” The light of the public square is the unfailing test, and a good story is sure to be published sooner or later, if a fair amount of literary instinct is exercised in sending it out. Meteoric success is not desirable. Slow, hard, conscientious work will surely win its way, and those who are now near the bottom of the ladder are gradually ascending to make room for the next generation of story-writers on the rounds below.