The Technique of Fiction Writing

by Robert Saunders Dowst

The fact is patent, I think, that the writer of fiction will gain small benefit from conceiving the romance as something separate and apart from the novel; likewise, that a book on technique without confusion may treat the writing of long fiction generally as the writing of novels. It is true, of course, that the essential bent of any particular writer may lead him to deal with the facts of the soul rather than the facts of the body, or that any particular story may be a spiritual rather than a physical adventure; nevertheless the story of the spirit must still develop facts and show their relations, and the technical resources of its writer are precisely the same as those of the writer who deals predominately with the more concrete physical facts of life.

It would be interesting to go at some length into this question of romance, all its connotations and implications. In particular, there is an antithesis in common thought, with romanticism and realism the two opposed members, which it would not be too dull to discuss. But the discussion would not give much light to one who desires to acquire a knowledge of the mechanics of fiction, long or short. It is permissible to call a realist one who transcribes predominately physical details, and it is permissible to call a romanticist one who transcribes predominated [typo for "predominantly"?] spiritual details, but in both cases the basic technique is identical. The realist can confine himself to physical facts because his story deals largely with the everyday actualities of life, and its subordinate spiritual values will be felt by a reader through inference from the facts. The romanticist must state spiritual facts directly because they are the very stuff and essence of his story. He is none the less a realist if there are spiritual actualities—an indisputable proposition—and if he states them as they exist for him.

The critical discussion that treats realism and romanticism as opposed artistic philosophies is so confused that it would serve no useful purpose to go into the matter here. What little I have to say on the subject will be said in the next chapter. But it is not inappropriate to call attention to the fact that every story conceived—in Stevenson's phrase—from within outwards, the only genesis for a work of art, is merely a subjective reality; it never happened. Perhaps it is so essentially commonplace that it probably has happened sometime; perhaps it is so little abnormal that very possibly it has happened. Or perhaps it may be of such a nature that it never could have happened. In any event, whatever the nature of the story, its verity and reality as a fiction depend solely upon its writer's elaborative and executive powers. If his hand falter, tangibility and concreteness in the matter of the story will not save it, will not make it seem real to a reader. The lives of most men are commonplace, but the relatively few lives that are not commonplace are as real and actual as those that follow beaten paths. In the lives of most, the spiritual element is subordinate, perhaps, but in the lives of some few it is enormously influential and supremely real. Realism, the artistic philosophy, asserts that fiction should present only the real. The assertion is nonsense for two reasons. First, the commonplace, or, if you please the inevitable, the only reality which realism admits, is not the only reality. Second, the verity or reality of fiction cannot be ascertained by any objective test, cannot be determined by the physical possibility of its matter, its people and their acts, for a fiction is purely subjective, a conception, and conceivability is the sole test of its verity. The writer of a story transcribes what he sees, not necessarily what is.[R]

As stated, the writer of fiction will derive small benefit from conceiving novel and romance as entirely different types of fiction. The distinction between them used to be insisted upon much more pedantically than is the case to-day, and the present tendency to call any story of book-length a novel is a healthy sign. The technique of the novel, in the narrow sense of a picture of society, and the technique of the romance, in the narrow sense of a story not of "real" life, are broadly the same. And where there is no difference in technique the artist should admit no difference in type. If he does admit any difference in type, and allows it to influence him, his conceptive faculty will be hampered and that is artistic death. It is hard enough to find a story that is worth while, a story that will interest, without subjecting one's self to the added and totally unnecessary difficulty to bring all one's ideas to the measure of some fancied type as a first test. The writer of fiction should be warned that it is supremely difficult to avoid becoming artificial and mechanical, and that he will surely become so if he does his conceptive thinking in terms of analysis. In the first place, the analytical habit of mind is directly opposed to the creative; in the second place, the analysis that divides long stories into novels and romances in the special sense is false. The way to find a story is to look for a story, forgetting all that pedants have written and failures practiced. The silly criticism that classifies fiction by its content is beneath contempt; the writer of fiction who heeds it is supremely foolish.

In the following discussion the term "novel" will be used simply to denote a plotted fiction of book-length.

Contrasting the short story and the novel, and dwelling on the relative coherence of the briefer form, I had occasion to state that the novel is relatively incoherent in that much of its interest for a reader quite permissibly may inhere in matter with little or no relation to the main thread of the story. Of course, incoherence is not a point of the technique of the novel. Incoherence is not a point of the technique of anything, except of some of the ultra modern schools in music, painting, and verse. The statement as to the incoherence of the novel was made incidentally in developing the argument that the short story cannot be incoherent because its brevity forbids that it present even its single story-idea adequately and also set forth irrelevant matter. On the other hand, the novel may set forth irrelevant matter because its length is not only a greater but a more elastic quantity than that of the short story; if the interruptions of the story are not too frequent and sustained, the power of the story over a reader will not be lessened to any appreciable extent. That is not to say that the novelist should seek to interrupt himself.

A good many serious writers—so-called—choose to write the novel simply because it does offer an opportunity for direct self-expression greater than any afforded by briefer fiction. They are confined to fiction—may they pardon the remark—because they have met, or feel that they will meet, difficulty in finding a publisher for their various theories stated as such; so they blithely write a novel, with insertions of politics, religion, sociology, what not, and palm it off on the unhappy public for a story. Of course such direct expression of one's opinions is not self-expression through the medium of a work of art. It is only choosing deliberately to do poor work for the sake of money or notoriety or vanity. Writing the "problem novel" is not quite the same thing. If a social problem, as the friction between capital and labor, is utilized as the fundamental plot—or conflict-theme of a novel, a good deal of personal opinion may be introduced by the author without injury to the artistic coherence of the story. But it is well to remember that the primary aim of fiction is to interest, an aim that can be achieved most easily and most completely by telling a good story. Propaganda is apt to be supremely dull anyway, and it is bound to seem dull to one who is looking for a story and nothing else. The practical implications of a work of art must be mere implications, resting in inference, or the work will be feeble and misshapen.

The novelist can indulge in personal comment and yet present the whole of his story, for his space is practically unlimited. The writer of the short story must sacrifice either the comment or the story. The result is that the typical novel is more incoherent than the typical short story. The finer the book as a whole, the easier it is to forgive or overlook the defect, for defect it is. One can forgive Thackeray his rambling asides and his diffidence in approaching his story, for in all of his books the story is present and in each it is a fine thing. But "Vanity Fair," for instance, is too significant a fiction to suffer constant interruption without causing a reader to become impatient. If a story is essentially weak, interpolating personal comment and unrelated matter generally will make it weaker; if it is essentially fine and significant, passages without bearing on the story will irritate the reader.

Whatever the art, whoever the artist, his task is to hold pen or chisel or brush true to the outlines of his conception. If his hand leave its proper course, whether of set purpose or through inaptitude, his work must suffer. The art of fiction is so infinitely difficult that the practitioner should welcome rather than bewail his obligation to hew to the line, for by concentrating upon the story and nothing else he will be led to leave no gaps in his presentment. A work of art is a thing of significant simplicity. Just because the novelist works in words, just because his materials have some significance for a reader in themselves—unlike the clay and marble of the sculptor, the stone of the architect, and the pigments of the painter, which, unwrought upon, have no message for an observer—the novelist is not at liberty to throw words together without some set purpose. The inherent significance of each word must have just relation to the whole, if the whole is to have the direction and significant simplicity of a work of art. The real condition is that the novelist, unlike the writer of the short story, may tell his story adequately and do something else, but the artistic quality of his work will suffer, that is, its power over a reader will be diminished, if he interpolates foreign matter. Artistry is simply the faculty to realize to the utmost the inherent power of one's conceptions, and the artistry of any fiction lessens as the appeal of the story for a reader diminishes. And the appeal of a story as such must diminish with every interruption, unless its power over a reader be very great, and in that case any break in its movement will irritate and offend.