Aside from the effect upon our story writers, this doctrine of constant action and complication and entanglement has also been one of the causes that have kept American fiction until very recently almost entirely in the cheaply Romantic school of the long-forgotten past. It has become strongly rooted in our readers through a perpetual diet of fiction that embodies these “vital” ingredients, and consequently also in our editors who must alertly watch the demand to engage successfully in its supply. As far as we are concerned it would seem that the great realists and naturalists have lived and died in vain. We are still writing largely fairy tales, American in color and setting to be sure, about bizarre adventures and quixotic adventurers. And in our institutions of learning we are still preaching that stories must be full of thrilling incidents and brave dénouements to be interesting and meritorious. We are still living in the fantastic land of improbable plots where men bound and rebound according to specific orders of the author. That “the value of a dramatic action has nothing to do with novelty of incident or the tingle of physical suspense”; that “Character, motive and fatality, man and the earth and the gods—such are the elements of dramatic action,”[3] has, as yet, occurred to few of us.
An admission must be made: It is becoming increasingly difficult to find plot material that hasn’t been worn threadbare by immoderate use. The South Seas and the Pacific Islands have been pretty well covered. Alaska and Hudson Bay are no longer inviting. The cow-boy story, though not yet entirely extinct, is fast becoming so. The crook story, though still popular with a particular type of magazine and magazine purchaser, requires a greater measure of ingenuity to be attractive. Baseball and football heroism is still going strong but the market is limited. The Country-Boy-who-becomes-a-Wall-Street-magnate story will probably continue as long as the large business fiction magazines will retain their million-and-more circulation marks, but it is beginning to tax the writer’s inventive capacity for brilliant deals for the hero to get to that crowded narrow thoroughfare below Brooklyn bridge. The rash-things-that-pretty-girls-do story is just now having its vogue, but will blow over like a Bill Hart or Douglas Fairbanks fame. The situation is gloomy indeed, even critical—if we wish to look at it that way. Many old writers as well as young ones admit it.
But we don’t. We are optimists. When cornered we say: “Yes, the present market does have some such aspect, but it simply proves one thing—the necessity for the greater mastery of technique, for more originality.” Then we proceed to elucidate. We define originality. It isn’t concerned with theme but with the handling of theme. There are no new themes under the sun; never were. A novel twist applied to a threadbare theme is originality. These twists can be learned—that’s what we, teachers of technique, are here for: to show how. The secret lies not only in plenty of action and complication but in the spectacular handling of these elements. There are many ways of doing it effectively; plot order, for instance.
The common fault of the inexpert literary mechanician is that he usually tells his story in the chronological order. Assuming that his story presents a series of twenty steps, composed of incidents and episodes of varying intensity, he presents them all in the order of time of occurrence, thus obtaining a quiet narrative lacking in either suspense or “punch.” But it is possible to juggle these steps in different ways so as to get them to unfold in a most dramatic sequence. It is possible to reverse this chronological order and begin with incident number twenty and work back to number one. That is, instead of narrating the crimes of our picaresque hero, which finally get him into jail, in the order of commission, we begin with the man already safely tucked away behind the bars—it is nearly always a man; women get into jails but rarely in our fiction, except for the heart-rending scene of meeting their husbands or sweethearts—and then work back to his crimes and the day when evil was not yet in his heart and he was still attending the Y. M. C. A.
We may then use this “logical” method of plot order or we may use a mixed method or we may use any one of a number of variants of these methods. We may, for example, begin with step number five and run up to step number ten, then work in steps one to five and proceed with step number eleven. Or we may begin with step one, then skip number two, withholding it as a missing link in the chain for the sole purpose of intriguing the reader, and spring it after step nineteen. All we need to know is how to do these jugglings with the greatest possible skill—and this is where originality comes to the fore: in the play of craftsmanship.
This jugglery we can teach with an absolutely clear conscience. We can cite any number of great masters who have at various times employed these several schemes of plot development. Maupassant and Kipling and Stevenson and Poe and O. Henry and even the quiet Chekhov have all placed their stamp of approval upon these methods by employing them in their own celebrated little masterpieces. There is really no necessity to question whether they came upon these methods consciously or intuitively, from within or without. This would raise the uncomfortable problem of synthetic and analytic processes, which would merely confuse the student and lead nowhere. There may be a distinction between incidents marshalling themselves in some inevitable sequence of which the author may not even be aware and incidents juggled about artificially by a writer who has had it impressed upon him that method A is more dramatic than method B. There may be a distinction; but for our purposes it is best not to consider it. Suffice us merely to point out that our story-construction lore is justified by the masters. The deductions are simple enough: Learn the tricks of the masters and be a master yourself.
I said we can teach plot legerdemain with a clear conscience. As for me, however, I have often shuddered to think what a zealous graduate might have done to such a story as Conrad’s “Youth.” In his or her deft hand it certainly would not have remained a mere “Narrative,” told in the colorless chronological order; it would have become a finished short-story. Assuredly finished.
And yet it must be admitted that a skillful manipulation of our tricks is, after all, not so easily acquired. There is a brain and a temperament which is especially adaptable to them, but to the majority they remain an occult science forever beyond their ken. These unhappy toilers cannot apply them to their labors. For most students are unable to construct the slightest kind of plot. There’s a certain knack that must be acquired. The young, inexperienced mind must be disciplined along certain grooves. Most students seem to be unable to concentrate unless driven to do so. I experiment with my class. Unexpectedly I announce a theme and request the class to construct an incident. Like children bent upon solving a puzzle, they go to work and I am left to examine the result. Fully fifty per cent. have used the same situation and dénouement, as if by agreement; forty-nine per cent. have striven to inject a novel twist or “O. Henryism” at the end. But the one per cent! Why here is but a thin bit of paper, with just a few lines scribbled on it. If this is an incident, it is a very short incident, indeed. It reads: “I have never been able to write under pressure. I must find myself in a proper mood. I suppose I shall never make a story writer.” I smile. I have a vivid picture of young Tommy Sandys losing his scholarship because one elusive word had refused to respond to his bidding.
CHAPTER III
“O. Henryism”
The mottoes of most of our fiction periodicals are told on their covers: “A magazine of clever fiction,” “A magazine of bright fiction,” “A magazine of entertaining fiction,” “A magazine of frisky fiction.” But with all the available supply of novel plot material exhausted by writers who had the good fortune of being here before our generation had an opportunity, what is left to us is neither clever, bright, nor entertaining. However, O. Henry proved that it was possible to take the same age-old material and brighten it up with a coat of sparkling cleverness. He had but to juggle his incidents in such a way as to make them follow one another in a most spectacular sequence. He had but to play upon the credulity of his reader. Like the stage magician, he said to his audience: “Observe that there is a tree here and a fountain there, and without moving a finger I shall reverse their positions. Now watch, presto! Here they are!” And the audience applauded, wondering how he did it, and crowned him king of the wizards.