The Technique of Fiction Writing

by Robert Saunders Dowst

The practical problem can be stated most simply thus: a reader's intelligence and sensibilities must be prepared for the crisis, climax, or main situation by incorporating in the story only such matters of environment, personality, or event as harmonize with the emotional character of the main situation. The necessity is most stringent, of course, in the case of the short story, but it is a consideration to be borne in mind in writing any type of fiction. It is merely another aspect of the general question of preparation, which has been touched upon before. The situations of a story must be prepared in a mechanical sense, that is, the writer must prepare to place his people where each situation demands that they be placed; the people themselves must be developed and individualized, that the situations may have full dramatic value; and the mind and heart of a reader of the story must be prepared for the climax, which is the whole story in little.

If the main situation of any story is essentially tragic, it will never do not to hint the fact until the climax is reached, when a reader will be overwhelmed, rather than upborne and stimulated, by the torrent of battle, murder, or sudden death. The opening scene of "Macbeth" presages the lurid character of the whole play, and serves to key reader or spectator for murder. Likewise, in the case of a story essentially light and happy in content, the purpose of the writer is to develop and present one of life's many attractive phases, and that purpose will be defeated or at least hampered if woebegone people and unpleasant situations are given place in the fiction.

Considerations of contrast may lead the writer to incorporate in his story matter out of keeping with its general tone and main situation, but the effort is really to emphasize the general tone by striking a few discordant notes. Contrast is too delicate a matter to be discussed with any profit; whether or not the device shall be employed in any story is a problem that only the artistic sense of the writer of the particular story can answer.

It is very easy to say that a story should be told so as to prepare a reader for the climax, that he may accept it, yet, in a sense, the thing can be achieved only by adequate practice of the whole art of fiction. The general necessity is to make the whole course of events seem real and actual; the more specific necessity is to give a reader a definite clue to the nature of the story, that he may not be shocked into disbelief by the climax. This must be done unobtrusively, as every other technical device must be employed, under penalty of failing in its office.

A quotation showing effective employment of the device will not be useless. Stevenson's short story "Thrawn Janet" leads up to an encounter with the devil, and the author loses no time in preparing a reader for the entrance of his satanic majesty. The story begins thus:

"The Reverend Murdoch Soulis was long minister of the moorland parish of Balweary, in the vale of Dule. A severe, bleak-faced old man, dreadful to his hearers, he dwelt in the last years of his life, without relative or servant or any human company, in the small and lonely manse under the Hanging Shaw. In spite of the iron composure of his features, his eye was wild, scared, and uncertain; and when he dwelt, in private admonitions, on the future of the impenitent, it seemed as if the eye pierced through the storms of time to the terrors of eternity. Many young persons, coming to prepare themselves against the season of the Holy Communion, were dreadfully affected by his talk. He had a sermon on 1st Peter, v. and 8th, 'The devil as a roaring lion,' on the Sunday after every seventeenth of August, and he was accustomed to surpass himself upon that text both by the appalling nature of the matter and the terror of his bearing in the pulpit. The children were frightened into fits, and the old looked more than usually oracular, and were, all that day, full of those hints that Hamlet deprecated. The manse itself, where it stood by the water of Dule among some thick trees, with the Shaw overhanging it on the one side, and on the other many cold, moorish hill-tops rising towards the sky, had begun, at a very early period of Mr. Soulis' ministry, to be avoided in the dusk hours by all who valued themselves upon their prudence; and guidmen sitting at the clachan alehouse shook their heads together at the thought of passing late by that uncanny neighborhood."

Here Stevenson loses no time in keying his reader to the general pitch of the story. It is a task that the writer of any story must undertake. The general nature of the tale should be suggested as soon as possible, and the story should not be allowed to falsify its introductory hints, but should reaffirm them constantly, until all the divergent strands of the fiction are knotted together in the climax, which will need no interpretation. Take another instance from Stevenson, the beginning of "Markheim," where Markheim murders the dealer in curios.

"'Yes,' said the dealer, 'our windfalls are of various kinds. Some customers are ignorant, and then I touch a dividend of my superior knowledge. Some are dishonest,' and here he held up the candle, so that the light fell strongly on his visitor, 'and in that case,' he continued, 'I profit by my virtue.'

"Markheim had but just entered from the daylight streets, and his eyes had not grown familiar with the mingled shine and darkness of the shop. At these pointed words, and before the near presence of the flame, he blinked painfully and looked aside."

A little farther on: