The Technique of Fiction Writing

by Robert Saunders Dowst

Importance—Plot and Situation—Spiritual Values of Story—Order of Events—Introduction—Primary and Secondary Events—Climax—Naturalness—The End—Preparation—Proportion—General Considerations.

A story is the relation of what certain persons did in certain places and under certain conditions of existence, and in its broadest aspect the art of narration includes the description of persons and delineation of character, the depiction of scenes, and the suggestion of atmosphere. But these matters bulk so large in themselves as to call for separate treatment. My purpose here is to discuss constructive technique, how the bare story, a succession and progression of events, should be planned and built up before writing. The problem is constructive, not executive, and should be considered and settled, within limits, before setting pen to paper.

In fact, much of the technique of fiction writing concerns matters of conception and construction. Giving the story its verbal flesh after it is thoroughly mapped out in mind in accord with the canons of the art is in truth a more or less simple matter to the writer who has any command of language and literary facility. The result may not be a masterpiece—which is a significant idea, justly elaborated, and perfectly told—but it will possess one of the elements of a story worthy to live. The trouble is that so many writers set about the task of expression when all they have in mind is the merest germ of an undeveloped idea or story, and then are forced to wrestle with construction and with language at one and the same time. Each task is great enough for the undivided attention of the ablest artist. I believe that in the end the constructive task is pretty well done, but that the more strictly literary task to give the conception verbally perfect expression is usually somewhat slighted. We have so many well conceived and elaborated stories, and so very few so perfect in expression that they deserve to live, a fact indicating that construction can be learned by nearly all, though literary power seems to be incommunicable. The proper attitude for the beginner, who has not the facile practice of his art at his fingers' ends, is to treat the first draft of his story as merely tentative and an aid to development.

ORDER OF EVENTS

The discussion of plot and situation in the preceding chapter was pointed to emphasize the importance of the constructive phases of technique. A plot is not merely a climactic sequence of events or happenings; a plot is some human struggle, some conflict between opposed forces, that finds concrete expression in a climactic sequence of events; and an infinite number of persons and incidents may be devised to give specific expression to a single fundamental plot idea. Having fixed upon a plot, the writer of fiction should realize precisely what is the human problem or struggle involved, and should consider just what sort of characters and just what sort of incidents will give most effective, most interesting expression to the particular story idea. This he should be the more ready to do because a story usually comes to mind ready formed as a series of events, and only infrequently is the first combination the best, that is, the one which will present most forcefully the underlying plot, struggle, problem, or essential story idea. The writer of fiction has for material vast infinity of imaginable characters and imaginable events; he should manipulate that material to a narrowly specific end, the end of giving most effective expression to his particular story idea or plot. In other words, he is an artist, and must devise and re-devise, select and reject, arrange and re-arrange that with which he deals.

Another condition of his art requires the fiction writer to master the technique of construction and always to practice it before approaching his strictly executive task of writing. A story is usually more that a mere physical spectacle, more than a sequence of physical happenings. Each event, each situation is fictionally significant or interesting by virtue of its relation to the natures or spirits of the persons involved. Through the physical tissue of what happens runs the psychical thread of personality, relating part to part and rendering the whole indeed one story. A story is a thing of spiritual values as well as a physical spectacle, and it cannot be written adequately by visualizing its events and following them with the pen. Some part of its spiritual value rests in necessary implication from what happens, but not all. The rest must be brought out deliberately by the writer, and he cannot hope to do so to the full unless before writing he realizes the necessity and shapes his work accordingly. The point is of very great importance. It would be hard to overestimate the number of potentially fine stories that have been ruined through failure to realize that the main situations or happenings of each fiction could not have full effect on a reader unless many subtle matters of personality and spirit were deliberately brought out in advance.

The first concern of the writer who has found his bare story is to determine the order in which to cast both its major and minor events. The necessity that the more important happenings of the story be given some climactic arrangement, to hold and stimulate the reader's initial interest, has been touched upon before, but the general ordering of events is a matter of such importance that it will be discussed at length.

The aim of any story is to interest, and the writer should endeavor to touch his reader's interest as quickly as possible. Long, purposeless, and therefore dull introductions—usually the result of the writer's having set to work with no very definite idea of what he has to do—should be avoided; the writer should consider precisely what his story is, and then how he may best set it in motion without delay. The technique is easy to state but hard to meet. Perhaps it may be possible to set off with a happening sufficiently unique and striking in itself to arouse a reader's interest; descriptive touches as to setting or as to a character may be employed; or—after the fashion of some modern writers—one may indulge in a little philosophical overture forecasting the nature of the tale. A classification of the several ways to open a story might be made, but it would not be useful. In the first place, each good story is perfectly unique; in the second place, independent reading of fiction will show the ways much more completely than mere statement. One slight matter is perhaps worth noting. Often inherently dull introductory matter can be given piquancy on the lips of a narrating character.

The writer should not distort his story merely to begin it interestingly. The aim of fiction is to interest, but the person to be interested is the cultured reader, not the mere sensation-sop. If a particular story is forbidden by its content to begin with a rush, it should not be wrenched and distorted to that end. The writer who seeks merely to cater to current tastes with each tale will do well to devise fictions that will subserve his purpose naturally. Thereby he will achieve his aim the more easily, and may spare the reading public much inferior work. But it is always well to make quite sure that any story cannot be begun swiftly before adopting the more leisurely approach. Kipling's "Without Benefit of Clergy" might have been begun so much less invitingly by one less skilled.

The more complicated the plot, the more difficult it will be to arrange its elements justly. The events of the structurally simple story usually can be related in chronological order; one gives place to the other without effort or preparation. The story with a complicated plot is not so simple to order justly. In the structurally simple story nearly all events have a primary value; each is a definite step in the climactic ascension of the whole. In the story of complicated plot, on the contrary, there are a comparatively small number of events having this primary value in that they are definite steps in the climactic ascension, and there are also a comparatively large number of minor events having only a secondary value in that they serve to give the primary events naturalness, intelligibility, and effect. Thus, in the story displaying the conflict of two characters, the chief events will be those giving the struggle the most intense expression, and the minor events, having only a secondary value, will be those which serve to prepare the various conflicts and to build up and vitalize the two opposed persons. Even if these minor events are only secondary in intrinsic significance, they are essential to the story, and the task of its writer—no easy one—is to order its primary events so that they will form a climactic ascension in point of tensity and interest, and to order its secondary events so that they will function naturally in endowing the primary events with the fullest measure of significance to the reader.