Chapter VII: Part FOUR: Points a Writer Ought to Note (3)

You may wish to make a story the very breath of the out-doors. But in order to do this, it would not be necessary to stop all the characters in whatever they were saying or doing, while you describe scenery and sunsets, or explain to the reader how "out-doory" everything and everybody is! This would easily spoil the continuity and flow of the whole, by switching the reader's mind off the plot and on to another train of thought. Instead, you would make the whole book out-doory without any pointed explanation--"setting the stage" in the open air as much as possible, emphasising the features of the landscape rather than boudoir decorations, mentioning the sound of the soughing trees or the surging sea, rather than the tune the gramophone was playing; introducing the scent of the larches in the spring sunshine rather than the odour of tuberoses and stephanotis in a ballroom. In each case the one would suggest freedom in the open air, while the other would suggest conventionalities indoors.

In some such way, you would rely on touches in passing to produce the desired effect, always bearing in mind the importance of getting these touches as telling as possible.

Such allusions (often merely hinted at, rather than spoken) should be equal in effectiveness to long paragraphs of detailed description; therefore, choose carefully the means by which you hope to secure your end. Your touches must be so true and so sure that they instantly convey to the reader's mind your own mental atmosphere.

In this, as much as in any other phase of writing, you need an instinct for the essentials, _i.e._ a feeling that tells you instantly what will contribute most surely to the making of the atmosphere you desire, and what is relatively unimportant.

Atmosphere is the element in your work that can least of all be faked without detection--or cribbed from other writers.

It must permeate the whole of your story whether long or short, and be something beyond the mere words you write down. The readers must feel, when they finally close the book, that they have got more from you than what you actually said; that you led their thoughts in directions that carried them off the highway of the obvious, giving them visions of things that were unrecorded.

The Method of Presenting a Story

The method of presenting the story needs a little consideration.

The most common, and the most desirable as a rule, is the narrative, told in a third person; _i.e._ the writer relates a story about certain people, but does not himself pose as a character involved in the story. Beginners will do well to adhere to this type of story, until they have attained to a certain amount of fluency with their ideas.

[Sidenote: Writing in the First Person]

Another popular method is the narrative told in the first person, _i.e._ the writer relates a story about certain people, in which he also plays a more or less important part. If well written, this form makes a pleasant change from the story written in the third person; but it necessitates a certain amount of experience on the part of the writer, if it is to be saved from dulness.

Moreover, its limitations are hampering to the beginner. If you are writing in the third person, you, as the author, are allowed (by that special concession granted to makers of fiction) to know everything that every character in your story thinks or does. You may relate in one paragraph what the hero was thinking and doing in San Francisco, and in the next what the heroine was thinking and doing at the same moment in New York.

But if you are writing in the first person, you have not the same licence to roam all over the universe, penetrating the deepest recesses of people's lives and laying bare their secret thoughts to the glare of day. You are supposed to stick to your own part and mind your own business. If you manage to find out other people's business as the story proceeds, there must be some sort of circumstantial evidence as to how you found it out; it will not be enough merely to state that it is so, as you could do were you writing in the third person.

For instance, in a MS. I pick up from the pile on my table I read:

"He paused when he reached the drawing-room door and glared at her,
livid with rage. She returned his look with one of haughty
indifference. Then he left the house, and as he walked along the
cheerless streets, he clenched his fists and hissed between his teeth,
'You shall suffer for this.' She, meanwhile, rang the bell for tea and
resumed the novel upon which she had been engaged when he arrived."

Told in the third person, it is easy to let the reader know what he and she were thinking and saying and doing at the same moment. But supposing you were writing all this in the first person with yourself as the heroine, it would not be so easy to convey the same information to the reader. You could write:

"He paused when he reached the drawing-door and glared at me, livid
with rage. I returned his look with one of haughty indifference. Then
he left the house, and I rang the bell for tea and resumed the novel
upon which I had been engaged when he arrived."

But if you wished to let the reader know how the bad-tempered creature clenched and hissed, you would have to get at it by some round-about means--your dearest friend might call at the moment and tell you that she had just passed him in the cheerless street clenching and hissing; or some other such device could be employed. But all this involves extra thought and care in the construction of the story.

[Sidenote: A Stumbling-block to the Amateur]

Amateurs are much given to story-writing in the first person; it seems such an easy method (when they know nothing about it); they invariably see themselves in a leading part, and make the hero or heroine do and be all they themselves would like to do and be. But they never go far before they trip up against this block of stumbling--the impossibility of the first person singular "I" being in two places at the same time, and seeing inside people's hearts and brains, to say nothing of their locked cupboards and secret drawers.

Also, the beginner is apt to forget the _role_ he is supposed to be playing when he puts himself into a story, and he lapses, at intervals, into the third person.

Sometimes, in order to dodge the difficulties, an author will write one part in the form of a diary, thus enabling a character to talk about herself (it is usually a feminine character who keeps a diary!). Then, when the limitations of the first person singular hamper the progress of the story, the diary is dropped for a time, while the author revels in the all-embracing freedom of writing in the third person.

This is a weak method, however, and plainly a subterfuge; being practically an announcement that the author could not or would not take the trouble to work the story through in correct form. It is also bad from an artistic standpoint; it does not hang together well; past and present tenses are apt to get mixed; it produces an unsatisfactory feeling in the mind of the reader, who so often is in doubt as to whether the author is writing as a character in the story or merely as the author--and anything that leaves a confused, unsatisfactory feeling in the reader's mind is poor art.

[Sidenote: Writing a Story in the Form of a Diary]

A story written entirely in the form of a diary is sometimes attempted. And closely allied to this is the story written as a series of letters.

Both methods are popular with amateurs. Most people regard a diary as the simplest type of writing, requiring neither style nor sequence, nor even the thinnest thread of connection running through the whole, unless the author so desires. Moreover, though every one does not feel competent to write a book or even a short story, we all feel competent to keep a diary--most of us _have_ kept one at some time in our career. What can be easier therefore than to write a story in diary form? And we proceed to write our story as we wrote our own diary, with this difference that we put into the fiction diary the sort of happenings we used to deplore the lack of, when we wrote down our own daily experiences.

Until we have given some study to the subject we do not recognise that, while a series of somewhat disconnected sentences and brief entries may be very useful as records for future reference, likewise may be moderately serviceable as safety-valves for overwrought, self-centred temperaments, they are seldom of interest to any one save the writer, and if put forward as recreational reading, may easily prove uninteresting in the extreme, even with the addition of a love episode! A story in diary form needs to be written by an experienced pen if it is to resemble a genuine diary, and yet hold the reader's interest throughout, and culminate in a good climax.

[Sidenote: A Story told in Letters]

A story told in a series of letters can easily be the dullest thing imaginable. What is an excellent letter seldom makes an excellent chapter in a novel. A letter, if it is to seem a real letter, should be discursive; and this is the very thing the amateur needs to guard against when writing a story, if that story is to show force and action; he is prone to be too discursive as it is. In any case, unless it is remarkably well done, the reader chafes at the delay inevitably caused by the irrelevant small talk that is the hallmark of most letters.

Some writers have managed to handle the "letter-form" in an interesting manner, by relying on descriptive narrative, rather than any striking plot, to hold the reader. _The Lady of the Decoration_ by Frances Little, is a good example.

[Sidenote: The Introduction of Dialect]

Dialect should be approached with caution. It is so easy to be tedious and unintelligible in this direction.

Remember that you are writing in what is almost a fresh language to most people, when you employ a dialect that is purely local; hence you are imposing an extra mental strain on the reader; and in order to compensate for the additional demand you make on his brain, you must give him something above the average in interest. No one, in these days of hustle, is going to take the trouble to wade through a species of unknown tongue, and wrestle with weird spelling and unfamiliar idiom, unless there is something remarkably worth while to be got out of it. And for one who will spare the time to fathom the mysteries of the dialect, there are thousands who will give it up.

[Sidenote: The Object Of Writing a Book is not to Befog the Reader's Mind]

If it be necessary to write in a particular dialect, avoid so far as possible the use of expressions that in no way explain themselves, and crowding the pages with the more obscure colloquialisms of the district. The object of writing a book is not to befog the reader's mind.

One knows that dialect is sometimes imperative in order to create the right atmosphere and to state things as they actually occurred. In such cases it is usually best to use it only in small quantities--as where a native strolls across very few pages, and is on view for only a short while. Yet you must see that your dialect is correct. Merely to write a few words phonetically, and put a "z" in place of an "s" (as is sometimes done, for instance, when making a native of Somerset speak), is not convincing.

To write a story throughout in dialect calls for exceptional skill; and, as a rule, it can only be done successfully by those who have known a dialect from childhood, or at any rate have spent some years in its company. The names of Sir James Barrie and S. R. Crockett naturally come to one's mind in this connection.

[Sidenote: "An Honest Tale speeds best being Plainly Told"]

The beginner will be wise to write his early experiments in plain English and in the third person. Fiction that is free from confusion of style, mixed methods, and uncertainty of handling always does the best. The story that is related in a clear direct manner is most popular with the public--likewise, it is the most difficult to write well, though few beginners believe this: it looks so very simple!

Fallacies in Fiction

I have come to the conclusion that the contrariness of human nature is largely responsible for the rejection of many of the MSS. that never get into print; but not the contrariness of the editor (as the unsuccessful writer generally thinks when he sees his MS. back once more in the bosom of his family).

Most of us, at one period or another, feel we could shine much more brilliantly in some other environment than the one in which we find ourselves. It has been described as "a divine discontent." There is plenty of discontent about it, I allow; but I am not so sure that it is divine. While it may be, and often is, the expression of a real need for a little more growing space, it is sometimes the outcome of mere restlessness, or a lazy, selfish desire to escape the irksome things that are in our own surroundings, vainly imagining that we can find some pathway in life where there are no disagreeables to be faced.

But whatever the motive may be, there is a universal idea among the inexperienced that some other person's job is preferable to their own; some one else's circumstances more interesting and romantic and dramatic and enthralling than theirs could ever be. And the result is--much wasted opportunity.

[Sidenote: The Amateur so Seldom has First-hand Knowledge of his Subject]

Now the sum-total of this, in regard to story-writing, is the fact that fully 80 per cent. of the fiction submitted to editors deals with situations of which the writer has practically no first-hand knowledge; as a natural consequence it is unconvincing and often incorrect.

The schoolgirl who has never travelled beyond Folkestone or Boulogne, and whose knowledge of fearsome weapons is limited to a hockey-stick, riots one across the Continent on a "Prisoner of Zenda" chase, directly she starts to write.

The girl of twenty, living a quiet, useful life in some small provincial town, in close attendance upon a kindly invalid aunt, devotes the secret midnight candle to writing the life-story of a heartless butterfly of a faithless wife: while the kindly invalid aunt is surreptitiously writing decorous mid-Victorian stories of very, _very_ mild wickedness coming to a politely bad end, and oppressively good virtue arriving at the top (with more moral advice than plot, or anything else). The niece imagines she is writing just the type of story that the public craves; and the aunt is under the delusion that hers is just the sort of literature that is wanted for distribution among factory girls.

The maiden of high degree writes of the lily-white beauty of the girl in the grimy garret. The democratic daughter of the colonies invariably sprinkles a few titles about her MS.

Before the war, the anaemic young man in a city office, who spent most of the year in a crowded suburb and his short vacation at some crowded seashore resort, persistently wrote of the exploits of a marvellous detective who ran Sleuth-hound Bill to earth in Gory Gulch. Since 1914, he (the young man) has sent me many MSS.--from France, Salonika, Egypt, India, and Flanders--and these are generally love stories, and seldom bear a trace of battle-smoke or high adventure. (I am speaking of amateur work, remember.)

I have nothing to say against a desire for new horizons; it is a legitimate part of our development. And I can understand that for a certain type of weakly and rather starved personality there is a slight compensation for the lack of change they crave, in putting down on paper their longings and ideals, and in writing romance in which they secretly see themselves in the leading part.

But this is not saleable matter; neither is it particularly readable matter, as a general rule (though there are occasional exceptions, of course). Because in such cases the writers are invariably dealing with situations the inwardness of which they know really nothing. Or else all their knowledge has been obtained from the writings of others; they are merely repeating other people's ideas and other people's descriptions.

[Sidenote: Choose your Topic from your own Environment]

You cannot write convincingly on topics about which you know little. You can cover reams of paper--amateurs are doing it every day of the year!--with descriptions of people, and houses, and scenes, and walks of life with which you have only a hearsay acquaintance; but such writing is scarcely likely to be worth printing and paying for.

If the schoolgirl, instead of wasting her time on something that reads like a washedout _rechauffe_ of _The Scarlet Pimpernel_, would try her hand at a story of schoolgirl life, she might produce something really bright and alive, even though it lacked the symmetry and finish that years of practice bring to a writer. And though the MS. did not find a market at the time, on account of immaturity of style, it might prove valuable later on when the writer had gained experience. It would give her data she had forgotten in the intervening years.

And the girl who spends her ink on the philanderings of the faithless wife (a species, by the way, that she has probably never set eyes on, having been brought up like most of the rest of us in a decent circle of sane relations and friends) might, perhaps, have done some charming pictures of domestic life, as did the authors of _Cranford_ and _Little Women_ in their day.

If the aunt, instead of hoping to influence factory girls of whom she knows absolutely nothing, and whose conversation, could she but hear it, would be an unintelligible language to her, had turned her invalidism to practical account, and passed on useful hints and ideas to other invalids, she might have written something that would have been welcomed by others similarly handicapped.

And so on, down to the city clerk, who never can be made to realise that a type of story most difficult to lay hands on is the one that deals, accurately, with the inside of that world peopled by the bankers and stockbrokers and money magnates. The detective tracking Sleuth-hound Bill has the tamest walk-over in comparison with the daring, and tense excitement, surrounding some financial deals.

[Sidenote: Original Work is rare: the Universal Tendency is to Copy]

I do not say that these writers would necessarily have placed their MSS. had they written on the lines suggested; it takes something besides the theme and background to make a good story. But I do say that they would have been many degrees nearer publication, had they dealt with types and circumstances that had come within their personal cognisance, rather than with those they only knew by hearsay.

The outsider would scarcely credit how rare it is for an editor to receive a piece of really original work; the universal tendency is to copy other people's productions rather than trouble to discover original models.

The schoolgirl, studying water-colour drawing, prefers to work from a "copy," showing some other person's painting of a vase of flowers, rather than have her own vase filled with real flowers before her. Some one else's work saves the inexperienced the responsibility of selection--and selection is always a difficult point for the beginner, who finds it hard to decide what to include in, and what to leave out of, a picture.

[Sidenote: Beginners are Seldom Aware that they are Copying others]

In the same way, inexperienced fiction writers find it easier to copy other people's stories; though, unlike the schoolgirl and her painting-copy, they are quite unconscious that they are doing so; they usually imagine that what they have written is entirely original.

It is difficult to get the novice to distinguish between writing anything down on paper, and creating it in his own brain. So many think the mere passing of thoughts through the brain, and the transmitting of those thoughts to paper, are indications of their ability to write; and that what they write must be original.

And yet in most beginners' MSS. scarcely any of the incidents, or situations, or plots ever came within the writer's own purview; the majority are hashed up from the many stories one reads nowadays--though the author has no idea that he is only stringing together selected ideas that originated in other people's brains.

There are many reasons to account for this. For one thing, the novice feels safe in using the type of material that has already been published. The world is wide, human nature is varied, and it is not easy to decide what to take; therefore the writer who plans his story on time-honoured lines is relieved of the responsibility of selection.

Then, again, if a particular type of story has been accepted and published, it has received a certain hall-mark of approval, and forthwith others tread the same path; there is less uncertainty here than in breaking new ground.

There is yet another reason: to evolve anything that is new and unhackneyed necessitates our taking trouble; and some amateurs will not take any more trouble than they can possibly help; they do not recognise that writing stands for hard work.

[Sidenote: Tried Old Friends we have Met before]

I cannot spare the space to touch on well-worn plots, but here are a few of the sentences and expressions that haunt amateur MSS.

Have you ever read a story that opened, "It was a glorious day in June," followed by a page of blue sky, balmy breezes, humming bees, not a leaf stirred, and scent of roses heavy on the air? Of course you have. We all have. That glorious day in June is one of the most precious perennials of the story-writer's stock-in-trade.

You know at once that twenty summers will have passed o'er _her_ head, and that _he_ is just round the corner waiting to come upon her all unawares, so soon as the author can quit cataloguing nature's beauties.

And have you ever read a story that opened with "A dripping November fog enveloped the city"? Of course you have; and you know at once, before you get to the next line, which describes its denseness and the slippery pavements, and a host of other discomforts, that you are going to be ushered into an equally dismal city boarding-house, and introduced to a lovely-complexioned girl whose frail appearance is only enhanced by her deep mourning, and hear the sad story of the pecuniary straits that necessitated her bringing her widowed mother (often fractious), or it may be a younger sister (always sunny and the lodestar of her life), from their lovely old home in the country, while she earned a living in town. And, without fail, she has always imagined that they were well provided for, till the family lawyer (always old) broke the news after the funeral that the place was mortgaged up to the hilt, and even her father's life insurance had been allowed to lapse.

You know all the rest--the dreary tramp round in search of work, and the way she irons out her threadbare garments to make them last as long as they can (irrespective of the fact that the mourning was new only a few weeks before, and she presumably had a good stock of underwear in her prosperous days), and a host of other harrowing experiences until--it comes right in the end.

And all because the story opened with a dripping November fog! Why, I believe the average amateur would consider it almost improper to start a desolate orphan on a quest for work in the metropolis in anything other than a dense November fog!

And yet--how much more cheerful for her, poor dear, could she but begin her career on a dry day--and some November days in London are quite sunny and bright--so much better for her in the thin jacket she always wears on such occasion, and her worn-out shoes!

It would be such a blessed thing if we need not start with the weather, nor the number of summers that had floated over the sweet young heroine's head (or winters, if the central figure be an old man). But the amateur clings to these openings.

Then take "the boudoir." After the weather I don't think anything haunts me more persistently than the boudoir. "Lady Gwennyth was sitting reading a letter in her luxurious (or cosy, or dainty) boudoir, when----" etc.

Now why is it that the girl who starts out to write fiction loves to introduce her heroine in this wise? It is most unlikely that the amateur knows much about a boudoir--few of us do. It is a room that appertains solely to the rich, and to only a small proportion of the rich at that. I know many wealthy women and many well-born women who haven't a boudoir, simply because the cramped conditions of modern living seldom leave them a room to spare for this purpose. The fact is the boudoir proper does not really belong to this purposeful age. It is a relic of the more leisurely Victorian times and the ease-loving, well-to-do Frenchwoman of pre-war days. Most modern women have very little time to spend in a boudoir if even they need one; nevertheless it appears with unfailing regularity in stories dealing with the richer ranks of life, till you would think it was as necessary to a woman's entourage as--an umbrella!

Why is it that the heroine has usually refused a couple (if not more) offers of marriage, before she is brought to our notice, with yet another offer looming on the horizon? In real life, as we know it in this twentieth century, it is most unusual for a girl to be constantly turning down offers of marriage like applications for charity subscriptions though there are exceptions here and there, certainly.

Yet I scarcely open a love-story that does not state that the heroine had already refused "every eligible man in her circle"; though the reader can seldom see why _one_ man should have proposed to the damsel, much less a crowd!

The heroine presented to us by the amateur is invariably a most ordinary young person, often quite uninteresting, and lacking the faintest streak of distinctiveness. And then the question arise--Why should all the eligible men in the town have proposed to her?

Perhaps one explanation is the fact that inexperienced writers have not learnt the art of depicting character; as they do not know how to convey an idea of her attractiveness, they think if they state that she was attractive that is sufficient. But statements are not sufficient; she must be attractive.

* * * * *

The youthful heroine and the aged grandmother may also be quoted as evergreen types that long ago had become monotonous. Whether girls married in their teens as a matter of course, a couple of generations ago, I do not know, as I was not there; but the youthful heroine was a _sine qua non_ in Victorian fiction.

She is not a _sine qua non_ now, however; anything but; the seventeen-year-old bride is by no means the rule in these times; there is practically no limit nowadays to the age at which a woman may receive offers of marriage.

Nevertheless, the amateur persistently follows bygone models, and still clings to the very young heroine; no more than eighteen summers are, at the outside, allowed to pass over her lovely head before she is introduced to our notice.

* * * * *

And certain traditions are still followed in regard to other details. Her complexion is always of the rose-petal order, her hair is always escaping in a series of stray curls about her neck and forehead (and, by the way, these "stray curls" of fiction are sadly responsible for many of the untidy lank locks of to-day!). If you read as many MSS. as I do, you would think that no straight-haired, ordinary complexioned girl had the least chance of a personal love-story, despite the fact that most of the girls one knows in real life, who have married and lived "happy ever after," have been either sallow or sunburnt or colourless, or just healthy-looking.

If you doubt whether a successful heroine can be evolved out of a woman no longer in her teens, and with a complexion that would not stand pearls, remember the Hon. Jane, in _The Rosary_.

* * * * *

In addition to the youthful heroine, the aged grandmother needs to be given a long rest. When the young wife who married in her teens visits her old home in company with her one-year-old infant, it is invariably the dearest old lady who comes forward to embrace her first grandchild; and from her own conversation and the description of her general appearance, the sweet old soul must be at least eighty, despite all that Nature might rule to the contrary, to say nothing of the dressmaker!

Tradition has it that grandmothers must have white hair, and spectacles, voluminous skirts, and knitting in their hands as they sit in an easy-chair with comfortably slippered feet on a hassock; and that is the sort of grandmother the amateur brings on the scenes, irrespective of the fact that the grandmother of to-day is skipping about in girlish skirts and high-heeled shoes, with hair and complexion as youthful as she likes to pay for.

* * * * *

Nothing in the way of fiction is more difficult to write than a thoroughly good love story. And yet the beginner invariably starts with a love story, and continues with love-stories, as though there were no other possible selection.

I do not think it is often possible to write a good love-story until one has had some experience of life. It is so easy to mistake neurotic imaginings and over-strung emotionalism for love; and it is still easier to fall back on the conventional things that the conventional hero and heroine do and say in the conventional novel, and imagine that we are recording our own ideas and experiences.

There are several reasons why the love-story appeals to the girl who is starting out to write. She is looking forward to a love-story of her own, if she be a normal girl, and has already seen herself in the part of her favourite heroine. Naturally it is not surprising that love-stories are of absorbing interest to her. And a girl usually sees herself as the heroine of her own early love-stories; and she invariably makes her heroine do and say what she would like to do and say under the circumstances, and at the same time she makes the hero do and say what she would like her own lover to do and say--but it does not follow that this is true to life; or that her lover would say the things she credits him with in her story. Very few proposals in real life ever resemble the proposals in fiction!

A girl will often introduce her heroine in a picturesque pose against some lovely background of hills, or woods, or garden flowers; and the hero coming upon her suddenly is made to pause, lost in admiration of the exquisite picture she makes. The girl writes this because--unconsciously, perhaps--she sees herself in the part, and likes to think she would make a very attractive picture that would rivet a man's attention.

But it is not true to life. In reality, the average man seldom notices the scenic fittings under such circumstances. He either sees the girl--or he doesn't. Unless he is an artist looking for useful subjects for his pictures, the background is not often seen in conjunction with the girl. I merely give this as an instance of the way amateurs are apt to see themselves in an imaginary part that in reality is at variance with "things as they are"; and their writings become artificial in consequence.

There is another reason why the love-story is the beginner's choice: it calls for so few characters. The simplest ingredients are--a nice, beautiful girl and a strong, manly, deserving masculine. Of course, you can vary the flavour by making them rich or poor, misunderstood, down-trodden, capricious, and what not. And you can amplify it by introducing the bold, bad rival (masculine); the superficial, fascinating butterfly rival (feminine); the irate forbidding parent (_his_, if he is rich and she is poor; _hers_, if he is poor and her mother is ambitious and money-grabbing); the designing mischief-maker (a black-eyed brunette, or a brassy-haired blonde); and a host of other well-worn familiar types. But when all is said and done, you need have but two characters to delineate, if you do not feel equal to more--and there is a distinct save of brain in this!

When you reach the climax in any other than a love-story, you are expected to make the _denouement_ something of a slight surprise at any rate, if no more; and we all know that surprises--slight or otherwise--are not altogether easy to manufacture for purposes of fiction. It is simple work to go on talking and describing and making the people talk--about nothing--for pages and pages; but by no means simple to lead it all up to a definite point of culmination. There must be some sort of point to a story; and that point is the trouble as a rule!

But with a love-story, the amateur thinks he need not worry about hunting for a climax--every one knows what the climax must be. "All you have to do is to bring them along the road of life to a suitable spot where they can fall into each other's arms"--thus the novice argues, and proceeds to do it. Another save of brain wear and tear!

In any other situation the _dramatis personae_ are bound to do at least a little talking, to explain how the thing has worked out, or to let you know how matters finally adjusted themselves. But not so our happy lovers! About the longest sentence he is called upon to construct is, "At last!" as he clasps her to him; while her contribution to the duologue need only be, "Darling!" which she whispers, resting her head on his shoulder. And they need not say even this much: for one very favourite method of conclusion, with inexperienced authors, is to bring the hero and heroine suddenly face to face with some such final sentence as, "What they said need not be recorded here: such words are too sacred to be repeated"--a finale that always annoyed me in my young days!

Amateurs are generally very weak in character-drawing, and nowhere is this more noticeable than in love-stories. There is a time-honoured notion that the chief requisites in the heroine are youth and beauty, as I have already said, while the hero must of equal necessity be clean-cut, manly and masterful. With these ideas already fixed in his head, the novice seldom sees any necessity for character-delineation. He explains that the heroine is lovely and the hero in every way a desirable young man, and leaves it at that; forgetting that the mere statement that she is "winsome," or "wistful," or possessed of "clear grey eyes that are the windows of her soul," does not necessarily make her all these things. In the majority of amateur MSS. the heroine, as she depicts herself by word and deed, is a most colourless, stereotyped nonentity; and by no means the glowing, fascinating thing of originality and beauty that the author's adjectives would have us believe; and the hero is frequently no more animated, no more human, than the elegant dummy in a tailor's window.

This may be taken as a fairly safe ruling: If it be necessary for you to label your characters with their chief characteristics, your writing is unconvincing and weak. Their actions should speak louder than your adjectives.

One of the prominent novelists of to-day--who is clever enough and experienced enough to know better--has a trick of letting some one of his characters make a semi-witty remark; after which he adds, "And everybody laughed." This last should be quite unnecessary. If the remark be sufficiently laugh-at-able, it will be self-evident that people smiled; if it is not sufficiently witty to suggest a laugh to the reader, no amount of ticketing will raise a smile, either in the book or out of it.

The same principle should be applied to the presentation of one's characters. If they are to have anything more than a mere walk-on part, they should very quickly explain themselves. The bald statement that the hero is a fine, manly fellow means nothing in reality. What is important is whether his actions and speech suggest a fine, manly character. If they do not, no amount of descriptive matter on the part of the author will conjure up a fine, manly fellow in the reader's imagination.

Some Rules for Story-Writing

In presenting a story it is essential that the reader shall have some idea as to what it is about. To start by keeping the reader roaming along for a page or two among unintelligible remarks, and references to unknown or unexplained events, is to give him strong encouragement to shut up the book without troubling to go any further.

There is something very exasperating about a writer who gives no clue as to who anybody is or what anything is; he is every bit as irritating as the one who goes to the other extreme, and drags the reader through the babyhood and school days of the hero's parents.

These are the opening paragraphs of a MS. offered to me. It is quite a short story, hence there was every reason why space should not have been wasted on unintelligible preamble.

"It happened in this way: through the lions. No, that isn't exactly
right though; the lions didn't really do it, would never have thought
of doing such a thing; but if I had not gone to see them, it would
never have happened. So, you see, they were to some extent
responsible.

"I expect you are saying to yourself, 'What was it that happened?'
Well that is what I'm going to write about. But first I must tell you
that one of my failings from childhood upwards has been the habit of
starting to tell my story right in the very middle; and then I always
feel so annoyed when, after I've been chattering away for I don't know
how long, people look at me and say, 'Perhaps you will try and be
lucid and explain what you are talking about!' It never seems to occur
to them that it is they who are so stupid. But I will tell you at once
about 'me' and then tell you about 'it.' I'll begin at the very
beginning, and try to tell you everything in proper orthodox style."

After much more of this description, it turns out at last that the lions were celebrities at a dinner-party where the narrator met the man she ultimately married.

That was all!

It is foolish to keep the reader dangling in suspense, unless the subsequent revelations are to be sufficiently striking to warrant the suspense. A long explanatory deviation from the actual theme is seldom satisfactory or desirable, in a short story, even when the theme is a big one (unless it be absolutely necessary, in order to elucidate some important detail): but it is inexcusable when the subject is trivial and obvious.

The more "body" there is in your MS. the more it will stand digressive or dilutive passages; the lighter your main theme, the less can you afford to allow the reader's interest to be dissipated over extraneous matter before you reach the main theme.

* * * * *

Until you are an experienced craftsman, introduce the important characters as early as possible. The reader should know them as long as possible if he is to take a keen personal interest in them.

It is better not to describe your characters more than is necessary for actual identification; they should describe themselves by their actions and conversation, as the story proceeds.

To save the monotony of long descriptive passages, that always hamper the movement of a story, it is often possible to make one of the characters, in the course of conversation, give the information that the author is anxious to convey to the reader. But in order to effect this, do not fall into the error of making a character say things that in real life there would be no reason for his saying. You may want to convey the information to the reader that the heroine's ancestors were eminently respectable; but it would be bad art to make her remark to her own parent (or a relative): "As you know, mother dear, grandfather was a distinguished general."

* * * * *

Beginners imagine that the strength of a story is in direct proportion to the way they crowd together incidents, or multiply their characters. But this entirely depends on the quality of the incidents and the importance of the characters.

The whole is greater than a part--always has been and always will be; and if each individual character is weak, and each episode is feeble, no matter how you may elaborate your story, the whole will be weaker than each part.

* * * * *

It is time-saving, when writing a story, to lay the scene in some locality you know well, even though you change the name and preserve its incognito. It is most useful to have a fixed plan of the streets and lanes and buildings and railway station in your mind when writing.

* * * * *

Try to distinguish between a longing to voice your own pent-up emotions, and a desire to give the world something that you think will interest or instruct them. Three-quarters of the love-stories girls write are merely outlets for their own emotions; and picture what they wish would happen in their own lives--with no thought whatever as to whether the MS. contains anything likely to interest the outsider.

* * * * *

Short sentences and short paragraphs are usually an advantage in stories as well as in articles; they give crispness and brightness to the whole. Whereas long sentences and long paragraphs are both stodgy to read and uninteresting to look at, (and it must not be forgotten that the look of a page sometimes counts a good deal with the public).

I know that instances can be cited where celebrated people have written long sentences and ungainly paragraphs, and yet have been read. President Wilson, in his most famous Note to Germany, led off with a sentence of one hundred and seventy-one words, while there were only twelve full-stops in the whole message. But President Wilson, at that particular date, scored heavily over every other writer, in that the whole world was eagerly willing to read anything he wrote--even though he had omitted all stops and capital letters!--whereas the majority of us, alas, have to persuade or coax or beguile the public into looking at our words of wisdom, and we have to make the reading as easy for people as we can. Otherwise they will not bother their heads about us!

People were willing to put up with President Wilson's diffuse and "trailing" manner of writing, because at the moment he was the mouthpiece of the inhabitants of the United States. Any one who is the mouthpiece of over ninety millions of people can cease to worry about style--some one is sure to read him no matter how he expresses himself.

But so long as we manage to avoid having positions of such greatness thrust upon us, we shall do well to keep our sentences terse and short, and our MSS. broken up into paragraphs.

[Sidenote: The Question of Polish]

There is much divergence of opinion as to how far it is desirable to polish one's work. Personally I think it all depends upon the work.

Some authors put down their ideas in a very rough form, and seem unable to realise the possibilities of those ideas and their development, till they see them on paper.

Others are able to think in minute detail before they put a line on paper.

Some people can never leave anything alone, and will tinker with half a dozen fresh proofs (if they can induce the publisher to supply them). Others are more sure of themselves, or disinclined to alter what they have written.

The late Guy Boothby used almost to re-write his stories, after they were set up in type; the margins of most of the slip proofs being so covered with new matter and alterations that they had often to be entirely reset. So expensive did this become, that at last I decided to keep his typed MS. in a drawer for a week or two, and then send it back to him, asking him to do whatever rewriting was necessary before it was set up.

Of course, writers may alter a good deal in their first MS., before ever it gets to the publisher; but my experience has been that the author who worries his proof is the one who has previously worried his MS. (and sometimes his family too)! It is primarily a matter of mind-certainty, combined with the question of temperament.

One thing is undeniable: some writers will polish their MSS. into things of beauty; others will polish all the individuality and life out of theirs. In the latter case, however, I am inclined to think there was not much individuality and life to start with!

So far as the beginner is concerned, my advice is Polish; most of us can stand a good deal of this without losing anything worth keeping, or coming to a bad end!

[Sidenote: To get under way, Start where you are]

Do not waste time in waiting for something extraordinary or sensational to turn up, in the way of a plot, or you may have to wait a long while. Begin with some everyday happening and invest it with personality.

If you can, avoid making your early MSS. love stories. The _denouement_ of a love story is so obvious: try to write something on less obvious lines; it will be better practice for you.

Study some of the many delightful books that have been written in other than love motifs, yet dealing with events of ordinary life; such as _The Golden Age_, and _Dream Days_, by Kenneth Graham; _A Window in Thrums_, by Sir James Barrie; _The Country of the Pointed Firs_, by Sarah Orne Jewett; _Timothy's Quest_, by Kate Douglas Wiggin.

Genius is shown in the ability to take simple themes, and treat them greatly.

About the Climax

The most important part of a story should be the climax (I use the word climax in its modern sense, meaning the terminal point where all is brought to a conclusion, the _denouement_, the final catastrophe). The climax must be in the author's mind from the very first sentence, and everything he writes should be with this in view--_i.e._, his own view, not that of the reader; it must be his aim throughout the story to conceal the climax from the reader till the last moment. Nothing with an obvious solution will hold the reader's interest.

Every piece of writing should have some sort of a conclusive ending--a satisfactory one if possible. Writers sometimes make their fiction terminate in an abrupt, unsatisfactory manner, which is no real finish, and leaves the reader wishing it had not all ended like that, and wondering if there is more to come.

When such defects are pointed out, the amateur invariably replies, "But it must end like that, because that is what actually happened." They forget that the fact a circumstance actually happened is no guarantee that it was worth recording; nor is the circumstance necessarily the symmetrical finish to the story,--and a piece of writing should be symmetrical, and in well-balanced design. You cannot always detach an incident from contingent happenings, and then say it is complete. The larger proportion of our actions are linked with, and interdependent upon, other actions.

Therefore see to it that your story terminates in a satisfactory manner. That which apparently ends in failure to-day, may take a new lease of life to-morrow and prove to be merely a stepping-stone to new developments.

It is not bound to be a happy ending (though if there be a choice, happy endings are by far the best, in a world that has enough of sorrow in its work-a-day life); but it must be an ending leaving a sense of right completion with the reader--the conviction that this is the logical conclusion of the whole.

All great works of art leave behind them a sense of fulfilment, the "something attempted, something done," that is always the desirable finale to the human heart and mind. We hate to be left in a state of never-to-be-satisfied suspension; and we invariably reject and condemn to oblivion the work that deliberately leaves us thus.

Some people have an idea that it is "artistic" to leave a story in a half-finished condition, or with a disappointing ending, or a general feeling of blankness. A few years ago there was a mania for this type of story among small writers: those who were not clever enough to produce originality of idea, and at the same time get their work logical, symmetrical and conclusive, would seize on some miserable, or at any rate uncomfortable, ending--drown one of the lovers the day before the wedding; part husband and wife irrevocably, and possibly kill their only child in a railway accident in the last chapter--anything in fact that would produce what one might call a "never-more" finale. And then a certain section of the public (who really did not like it at all, but feared to say so lest they should appear to be behind the times!) would exclaim, "So artistic!"

Yet it was anything but artistic; three-quarters of the time it was logically and morally bad; logically bad because it was seldom the true and natural conclusion that one would have seen in real life; morally bad because it is actually wrong to manufacture and circulate gloom unnecessarily.

I repeat again I would not imply that all endings must be happy; great tragedies need tragic conclusions; suffering is as much a part of real life as joy; a certain course of action must inevitably lead to a sorrowful ending, and there is no getting away from the unalterable truth, "The wages of sin is death." But the type of story to which I am alluding is seldom great or tragic: it is not even painful; it is more often weak and washy, and ends with unsatisfactory incompletion because the author fancied it was brilliantly original!

Always work steadily towards the climax, speeding up the movement as you near the end. Make big events come closer and closer together, with less detail between, the nearer you are to the conclusion.

Do not anticipate your climax, and get there too soon, and then try to make up the book to the required length by adding on an after-piece.

The climax should be such that it leaves in the reader's mind a sense of absolute fitness, a certainty that it was after all the one right ending--even though it came as a great surprise.

The Use of "Curtains"

When a story is presented in sections, as in a serial or a play, it is advisable to make each section end--so far as possible--in such a manner that the reader is set longing for the next part. Thus, while the climax is generally the solution of a problem, a "curtain" is usually a problem needing solution (literally, a good place for ringing down the curtain, since the audience will be on tenterhooks to know what happens next).

This arrangement is sound business as well as a good mental policy. It is wise to make an instalment leave some final, incisive mark on the mind of the readers, if there is to be an interval before the story is resumed, otherwise it may be difficult for the public to recollect what went before, and the thread of continuity will be lost.