On the art of writing fiction

by Unknown

“My dear,” said an experienced chaperon to a young débutante, “study to be natural.” Whereupon everybody who heard her laughed. Yet the old lady knew what she was talking about and had not really been guilty of a contradiction in terms. Under artificial social conditions it is not possible to be natural until the rules of the game have been learnt. Situations are continually cropping up in which Nature, unassisted by Art, will play you the shabby trick of turning her back upon you and leaving you to demean yourself in a ludicrously unnatural manner. No débutante, however great may be her inborn grace and ease of deportment, would venture to be presented at Court without having gone through some preliminary rehearsal; scarcely would she face a first ball or a first dinner-party unless a few previous hints and instructions had been conveyed to her. But, fortified by an exact knowledge of what is the right thing to do, she sails forth confidently, she dares to be herself, and she makes, let us hope, the desired impression in quarters where it is desirable that an impression should be made.

Study how to please

Not dissimilar is the case of the budding novelist; although there is no denying that it is easier to show a young lady how to carry herself than to show a would-be prose-writer how to please. His apprenticeship must needs be a longer and a less definite one. Rules, indeed, there are for him—cut and dried rules, relating to accuracy of grammar and punctuation, avoidance of involved sentences, neologisms, catch phrases and the like; but these will not take him quite the length that he wishes to go. They will not take him quite that length; yet they will help him on his way, and he must condescend to study them. Furthermore, he should study slowly and carefully the works of those who have attained renown chiefly by reason of their style. Addison, Gibbon, Macaulay, Carlyle, Ruskin, Sterne—to select at random half a dozen names out of the throng which at once presents itself—he ought not only to be familiar with the writings of all these and other masters of English prose, but to scrutinise closely their several methods, so that he may come by degrees to understand what the capabilities of the language are and what admirable, though widely divergent, results have been arrived at by those who have vanquished its difficulties.

With that language it is true that some of the writers just cited have taken liberties: one, in particular, has allowed himself enormous and audacious liberties. But that is only because he had made the language so completely his servant that he was in a certain sense entitled to do as he pleased with it. The student is not recommended to imitate Carlyle; for the matter of that, he is not recommended to imitate anybody, direct, deliberate imitation being as surely foredoomed to failure in literature as in all other arts. But he may be advised to dissect, to analyse, to search patiently for the secrets of proportion, of balance, of rhythmical, harmonious diction. Haply he will discover these; in any event he will reap the benefit of having mixed with good company, just as, in playing no matter what game, we all insensibly improve when we are associated with or pitted against our superiors. And the stricter the rules by which he determines to bind himself down the better it will be for him in the long run. In musical composition many things are said to be “forbidden”—so many that the bewildered student of harmony and counterpoint, knowing how frequently great composers have transgressed the limits within which he is cramped, is apt to exclaim in despair, “But you won’t let me do anything! Why may I not do what Bach has done?” The only answer that can be returned is, “Because you are not Bach.” Ultimate ease and liberty are the outcome, as dexterity is the outcome, of early discipline; it may be that they are never truly or certainly acquired by any other means.

The necessity of “infinite pains”

It is, in short, the old story of “infinite pains.” Whether “the capacity for taking infinite pains” is or is not satisfactory as a definition of genius is another question; but we may at least be sure that infinite pains are never wasted. Not that we have any right to expect an immediate and abundant harvest. It is the slow, but sure, education of the taste and the ear that has to be aimed at, and this will only come to us by imperceptible degrees. Gustave Flaubert, than whom no more painstaking writer ever lived, was so persuaded of the artistic compulsion that lay upon him to use the right word or the right phrase, so convinced that for every idea there is but one absolutely fitting word or phrase, that he would spend hours in tormenting himself over a single sentence. Often at the end of all he remained dissatisfied—could not but be dissatisfied. In one of his letters he draws a pathetic parallel between himself and a violinist who plays false, being well aware that he is playing false, yet lacking the power to correct his faulty execution. The tears roll down the unhappy fiddler’s cheeks, the bow falls from his hand....

Writers too lenient with themselves

Ah, well! we cannot all be artists like Flaubert. We are mediocrities at best, most of us; we know that we are mediocrities, and we are not going to cry about it. But let us acknowledge, with the humility which beseems us, how immeasurably he was our superior, not in genius alone, but in industry, in conscientiousness, in self-sacrifice. We mediocre folks, who have acquired a certain facility of expression, are apt to be only too lenient with ourselves. The exact word that we want, the precise phrase suitable to our purpose, are not forthcoming; but others are ready and will serve well enough. We take the others, hoping that nobody will notice their ineptitude. The beginner also will, in process of time, arrive at this fatal facility, and it is not in the least likely that he will have strength to resist a temptation to which ninety-nine authors out of a hundred succumb. All the more important, therefore, is it that he should adopt and observe the strictest rules at starting; so that he may form a style of which, once formed, he will never be able to divest himself. We made a comparison just now between the arts of literature and equitation. They have not a great deal in common; but they are so far alike that early training has the first and last word in each. There are men who are almost in the front rank amongst riders, but who have never reached, and never will quite reach, that rank, because of the errors of those who instructed them in their youth. Heavy-handed they are, and heavy-handed they will remain till the end of the chapter. So it is, not only with mediocre writers, but even with some who belong to the first class. These have taken up tricks and mannerisms, pretty enough and pleasing enough while the charm of novelty still hung about them, but provoking and perilous from the moment that they have lost that charm, that they have ceased to be servants and have become masters. Macaulay, for example, had an admirable style; yet after a time one grows irritated with it, knowing so well in what manner he will deal with any given subject under the sun. At the opening of some sonorous, well-balanced paragraph the reader is prone to say to himself, with a sigh, “Ah, I see you coming with your distressing antitheses!” And there, sure enough, they are, neat, polished, brilliant, turned out to order—wearisome. But if, during his lifetime, some reader of his had had the impudence to point this out to him, and if, with the modesty which is a part of true greatness, he had admitted that the criticism was not unjust, could he, do you think, have written otherwise than as he did?

Success attained

Therefore, let the tyro put away from him all insidious temptations to be brilliant or original; let him think chiefly, if not solely, of being lucid; let him store up for himself a vocabulary from which all ambiguous terms shall be rigorously excluded. So, having studied, he will be able, like the débutante, to be natural, and will have gained possession of a style which will, at any rate, be correct and his own. So, too, he may perhaps be able to look back not discontentedly upon a measure of good, solid work accomplished, when the time shall come to hang up the fiddle and the bow, to lay aside the worn-out old pen and make his final bow to a public by whom he may anticipate with some confidence that he will be speedily and mercifully forgotten.