The other necessity, to describe setting to give the story verisimilitude and concreteness, is not so easy to state or to meet. This sort of descriptive quality must permeate the whole story, as has been stated, and its introduction or creation is a matter of difficulty. The natural and best way to conquer the secret is to imagine the course of events while standing in the shoes of the person from whose viewpoint the story is told, then to follow them with the pen. Where the character would see, feel, hear, or smell something, state the impression upon him. Thus Kipling, in "Without Benefit of Clergy": "... Old Pir Khan squatted at the head of Holden's horse, his police sabre across his knees, pulling drowsily at a big water-pipe that croaked like a bull-frog in a pond. Ameera's mother sat spinning in the lower veranda, and the wooden gate was shut and barred. The music of a marriage procession came to the roof above the gentle hum of the city, and a string of flying-foxes crossed the face of the low moon." Kipling has imagined his story as Holden would have lived it; not only has he seen through Holden's eyes—he has heard with Holden's ears. In this short passage there are three appeals to the sense of sight, and two to the sense of hearing, and the fragment gains by stating more than visual impressions.
The point has been noted in discussing the description of persons, but is worth enlarging upon. The task to give body to a story is difficult enough at best, and the writer can afford to neglect no resource. Of the five senses whereby man grasps his surroundings, that of taste is probably of the least use to the writer of fiction, but the senses of sight, hearing, smell, and touch can all be utilized on occasion. A character at sea can be stated to have seen the waves of a storm, felt the force of the gale and the sting of driven raindrops, and tasted the salt spray, also to have smelt the musty fo'c'sle when he went below. Each touch will give the whole picture added reality for a reader. The beginning writer is too apt to rely solely upon what a character might have seen. A deserted house has a smell as characteristic as its look, and the fragrance of violets is as impressive as their visual beauty. Night can be told from day by its odor, and the rattle of typewriter keys in an office is as suggestive of modern industry as a serenade is of other days and other loves. A hero can feel his sweetheart's soft or toil-roughened fingers as well as see her expensive silks and furs or cheap and much worn dress. Life is a complex of many sense-perceptions, and the more numerous and varied the fleeting impressions a character is stated to have caught, the more concrete and real the story will be for a reader.
Description is the usual but not the happiest term to denote the general process of giving a story a setting and environment of its own. It is—or should be—more than a process of picturing scenes. All pertinent and striking sense-impressions received by the characters should be stated, for only thus can the nearest approach to a just representation of life be made. The writer's sole object is to give the fiction the concreteness of life; it cannot be achieved by painting verbal pictures for a reader, but it can be achieved by stating justly the ways in which the totality of the environment affected the characters. Just description of the characters will make them real men and women for a reader, and just statement of the effects of their environment upon them will make them real people in a real world.
The strictly executive technique of descriptive writing is not hard to grasp, however hard it may be to find the desired word. The impression that the character involved would receive first should be stated first, and the less striking details should follow in the order of their impressiveness. Thus, in describing a skating scene, the observant character should be made to see the interweaving skaters and to hear the peculiar whinnying ring of the skates before he sees individuals. It is all a matter of visualizing, or, better, visualizing and living the story in the shoes of the character from whose viewpoint it is told. The writer who will live each story thus in imagination, and will state the successive impressions the character would naturally receive while moving through such a chain of events in real life, will do far better work than one who strives to carry in his head a body of rules and precepts and to write with observance of them. Technique cannot be discussed without directly stating principles, but the business of actual writing is natural, not mechanical and artificial. The writer becomes artificial precisely when he forgets he is writing a story and begins to daub in descriptive matter without relation to the characters or the events. The thing to do is to get inside the skin of the character from whose viewpoint the particular story or particular part of the story is told, to see with his eyes, hear with his ears, smell, taste, and feel with his nerves, and to state no impression as received by him that the course of events would not allow him to receive. A horse-thief fleeing from a posse will have no eye for the beauties of a landscape. If the writer desires to show the scene for the sake of its contrast with such an event, he must do so lightly and quickly. A reader will be mounted with the pursued man, and his eyes will be ahead.
As to the matter of contrast between event and setting, no rules can be stated. All that can be said is that sometimes it is a useful device. But the main purpose of descriptive matter in the normal story is to give it concreteness, and generally the purpose will be realized best by stating the sense-impressions which would be received in actuality by the characters. A story will gain much in naturalness and plausibility thereby, for the same reason that narration in the first person or from the viewpoint of a single character is the most natural and plausible way to write, if the particular story permits.
One other thing may be useful to note. In describing a person, the writer should strive to state his unique quality as an individual; in describing a scene, also, the writer should seek to bring out its unique quality. That quality should be sifted out and realized in imagination, and then the writer should search diligently for the few telling words that will precipitate it. As the story moves on, men, women, and children, houses, ships, and electric cars, streets, deserts, and smiling fields, will come beneath the writer's pen. And they must all be given reality, not for their own sakes, but for the sake of the story.
CHAPTER IX
SPEECH
Potency of Dialogue—Mechanical Distribution—Naturalness—Directness—Dialect—Situation—Three Resources to Meet Demands of Situation—Physical Effect—Ellipsis—Elements of Language—Style—Verbs of Utterance—Transcription of Speech for it Own Sake—Creative Process.
When the writer of a story is not using narrative or description, he will be transcribing the speech of his characters. And in the matter of transcribing speech the writer of fiction has a chance comparable with that of the dramatist and the practitioner in the graphic arts. The effect of narrative or description upon a reader is secondary and derivative; the effect upon him of written speech or dialogue is very nearly primary. The fiction writer has not the actor's studied tones to give dialogue complete life and body, but the appeal of written speech is infinitely more direct and compelling than that of any other sort of writing. A word is a word, whether spoken or written, and cannot be read without setting up some echo in the ear. When the writer of a story describes its hero, a reader may or may not see an image, faint or distinct, behind the words. But when the writer sets down his hero's words, a reader cannot choose but hear. Even if the words be unnatural and stilted, they will be heard. That is why badly managed dialogue is so potent to ruin a story. The speech of the characters in a story is strongly impressive, whether for good or ill. The more powerful a tool, the more damage it will do if mismanaged.