On the art of writing fiction

by Unknown

Pictorial effect

In story-writing it is always well, I may almost say essential, to see your scenes in your mind’s eye, and to make of them pictures, so that your figures group and pose, artistically but naturally, and that there shall be colour introduced. The reader has thus a pleasant picture presented to his imagination. In one of my stories I sketched a girl in a white frock leaning against a sunny garden wall, tossing guelder-roses. I had some burnished gold-green flies on the old wall, preening in the sun; so, to complete the scene, I put her on gold-green leather shoes, and made the girl’s eyes of much the same hue. Thus we had a picture where the colour was carried through, and, if painted, would have been artistic and satisfying. A red sash would have spoiled all, so I gave her one that was green. So we had the white dress, the guelder-rose balls greeny white, and through the ranges of green-gold were led up to her hair, which was red-gold.

I lay some stress on this formation of picture in tones of colour, because it pleases myself when writing, it satisfies my artistic sense. A thousand readers may not observe it; but those who have any art in them will at once receive therefrom a pleasant impression.

Character of scenery and people determine character of tale

With regard to the general tone of a story, my own feeling is that the character of the scenery and character of the people determine the character of the tale. A certain type is almost always found among the people that harmonises with the scenery. Nature never makes harsh contrasts. Where, in a stone and slate district, a London architect builds a brick house and covers it with tiles, it looks incongruous. I was at one time in Yorkshire, near Thirsk. In the village all the farms and cottages were of brick and tiles; a London architect built a church of white stone, and covered it with blue slate. That church never would look as if it belonged to the people, it will never harmonise with the surroundings. So some architects transport Norman buildings into old English towns—the effect is hateful. In Nature everything tones together. In the Fens of Ely the people are in character very suitable to the fenland—silent, somewhat morose; on the moorland, wherever it is, they are independent, wayward, fresh, and hearty. In my judgment, then, the aspect of the country has much to do with determining the character of the story told concerning it. In writing a novel you are drawing a picture, and your background must harmonise with your figures in the forefront, the colours must not be incongruous. You would not paint a pirate under a maypole, nor put village dancers among rocks and caverns.

Illustrations

I do not like to appear egotistical, but in writing for young beginners, I think that nothing could more illustrate my meaning than to tell them how I have worked myself.

One day in Essex, a friend, a captain in the Coastguard, invited me to accompany him on a cruise among the creeks in the estuary of the Maldon river—the Blackwater. I went out, and we spent the day running among mud-flats and low holms, covered with coarse grass and wild lavender, and startling wild-fowl. We stopped at a ruined farm built on arches above this marsh to eat some lunch; no glass was in the windows, and the raw wind howled in and swept round us. That night I was laid up with a heavy cold. I tossed in bed, and was in the marshes in imagination, listening to the wind and the lap of the tide; and Mehalah naturally rose out of it all, a tragic, gloomy tale. But what else could it be in such desolation with nothing bright therein?

Contrast and harmony

Some little while ago I went to Cheshire, and visited the salt region. It vividly impressed my imagination—the subsidences of land, the dull monotony of brine-“wallers’” cottages, the barges on the Weaver, the blasted trees. Well, then, in contrast, hard by was Delamere forest, with its sea of pines, its sandy soil and heathery openings, the Watling Street crossing it, the noble mansions and parks about it. The whole aspect of the salt district on one hand, and the wild forest on the other, seemed as if it could produce in my mind only one kind of story; and with the story, the characters came; but they came out of the salt factories on one side, out of the merry greenwood on the other, artificiality and some squalor on one side, freshness and simplicity on the other. It may not be with others as with myself, but with me it is always the scenery and surroundings that develop the plot and characters. Others may work from the opposite point, but then, it seems to me, they must find it hard to fit their landscape to their dramatis personæ and to their dénouement.