The Writing Of The Short Story Part 1

The Writing of the Short Story.

by Lewis Worthington Smith.

SUGGESTIONS FOR TEACHERS

In the author's cla.s.ses the three stories in the volume ent.i.tled "Three Hundred Dollars" are first studied because of their simplicity, and these are followed by parts of "The Bonnie Brier Bush," and then by the stories from Bret Harte. Mrs. Phelps Ward's "Loveliness" is especially valuable for ill.u.s.trating methods and devices for making a simple theme dramatically interesting. Students are required to mark stories with the symbols and discuss them with reference to the principles of which this little book is an exposition, but no recitation on the book itself is required. Perhaps one-third of the time in the cla.s.s-room is spent in discussion of the short themes written by the cla.s.s, and when convenient these are placed on the board before the cla.s.s for that purpose. In the theme work following the suggested subjects the effort is made to confine instruction and practice to one thing at a time, but at the conclusion of the work of the term each member of the cla.s.s is required to hand in a complete original story.

THE WRITING OF THE SHORT STORY

NARRATIVE FORMS

=1. Elements of the Story.=--This little volume is meant to be a discussion of but one of the various forms that literature takes, and it will be first in order to see what are the elements that go to the making of a narrative having literary quality. A story may be true or false, but we shall here be concerned primarily with fiction, and with fiction of no great length. In writing of this sort the first essential is that something shall happen; a story without a succession of incidents of some kind is inconceivable. We may then settle upon _incident_ as a first element. As a mere matter of possibility a story may be written without any interest other than that of incident, but a story dealing with men will not have much interest for thoughtful readers unless it also includes some showing of _character_. Further, as the lives of all men and women are more or less conditioned by their surroundings and circ.u.mstance, any story will require more or less _description_. Incidents are of but little moment, character showing may have but slight interest, description is purposeless, unless the happenings of the story develop in the characters _feelings_ toward which we a.s.sume some att.i.tude of sympathy or opposition. Including this fourth element of the story, we shall then have _incident_, _description_, _character_, _mood_, as the first elements of the narrative form.

=2. A Succession of Incidents Required.=--A series of unconnected happenings may be interesting merely from the unexpectedness--or the hurry and movement of the events, but ordinarily a story gains greatly in its appeal to the reader through having its separate incidents developed in some sort of organic unity. The handling of incidents for a definite effect gives what we call plot. A plot should work steadily forward to the end or denouement, and should yet conceal that end in order that interest may be maintained to the close. Evidently a writer who from the first has in mind the outcome of his story will subordinate the separate incidents to that main purpose and so in that controlling motive give unity to the whole plot. Further, the interest in the plot will be put on a higher plane, if in the transition from incident to incident there is seen, not chance simply, but some relation of cause and effect. When the unfolding of the plot is thus orderly in its development, the reader feels his kindling interest going forward to the outcome with a keener relish because of the quickening of thought, as well as of emotion, in piecing together the details that arouse a glow of satisfaction.

=3. The Character Interest.=--We can hardly have any vital interest in a story apart from an interest in the characters. It is because things happen to them, because we are glad of their good fortune or apprehensive of evil for them, that the incidents in their succession gain importance in our emotions. We are concerned with things that affect our lives, and secondarily with things that affect the lives of others, since what touches the fortunes of others is but a part of that complex web of destiny and environment in which our own lives are enmeshed. In the story it is not so true as in the drama that, for the going out of our sympathies toward the hero or the heroine, there should be other contrasting characters; but a story gains color and movement from having a variety of individualities. Especially if the story is one of action, definite sympathies are heightened when they are accompanied by emotional antagonisms. In "The Master of Ballantrae," we come to take sides with Henry Durrie almost wholly through having found his rival, the Master, so black a monster. Such establishment of a common bond of interest between us and the character with whom our sympathies are to be engaged is a most effective means of holding us to a personal involvement in the development of the plot. There must not be too many characters shown, the relations between them must not be too various or too complexly conflicting, but where the interplay of feeling and clashing motives is not too hard to grasp, a variety of characters gives life and warmth of human interest to a story.

=4. Uses of Description.=--Inasmuch as there are other interests in our lives than those which are established by our relations with our fellows, interests connected with the material world about us, any narrative will probably have occasion to include some description. It may be necessary merely as an aid to our understanding of some of the details upon which the plot turns, it may help us to realize the personalities of the characters, and it is often useful in creating background and atmosphere, giving us some of the feelings of those with whom the story deals as they look upon the beauty, or the gray dullness, of the changing panorama of their lives. Stevenson's description of the "old sea-dog" in "Treasure Island" is an excellent ill.u.s.tration of the effectiveness of a few lines of description in making us know something very definite in the man.

"I remember him as if it were yesterday, as he came plodding to the inn door, his sea-chest following behind him in a handbarrow, a tall, strong, heavy, nut-brown man; his hands ragged and scarred, with black, broken nails, and the saber cut across one cheek, a lurid white."

=5.= Rossetti in "The Bride's Prelude," a story in verse, after merely glancing at the opening of the tale, devotes eight stanzas to description introduced for the purpose of background and atmosphere. Two of them are given here.

"Within the window's heaped recess The light was counterchanged In blent reflexes manifold From perfume caskets of wrought gold And gems the bride's hair could not hold

"All thrust together: and with these A slim-curved lute, which now, At Amelotte's sudden pa.s.sing there, Was swept in some wise unaware, And shook to music the close air."

This helps us to enter into the life and spirit of the time and place, to conceive imaginatively the likings, the desires, the pa.s.sions, the purposes, and the powers that shall be potent in the story.

=6. Kinds of Description.=--Description is primarily of two kinds, that which is to give accurate information, and that which is to produce a definite impression not necessarily involving exactness of imagery. The first of these forms is useful simply in the way of explanation, serving the first purpose indicated in paragraph four. The second is useful for other purposes than that of exposition, often appealing incidentally to our sense of the beautiful, and requiring always nice literary skill in its management. It should be borne in mind always that literary description must not usurp the office of representations of the material in the plastic arts. It should not be employed as an end in itself, but only as subsidiary to other ends.

=7. Various Moods as Incidents.=--The moods in the characters of a story and their changes are connected with the incidents of the story, since they are in part happenings, and with the characters, since they reveal character. Apart from direct statement of them, we understand the moods of the actors in the little drama which we are made to imagine is being played before us from the things they say, from the things they do, and from gestures, att.i.tudes, movements, which the author visualizes for us.

If these moods are not made clear to us or we cannot see that they are natural, definite reactions from previous happenings in accord with character, we do not have a sense of organic unity in the narrative. We become confused in trying to establish the dependence of incident and feeling upon something preceding, and our interest flags. Everything that happens in a well-told story gives us feelings which we look to find in those whom the happenings affect in the tale, feelings which should call forth some sort of responsive action for our satisfaction.

Clearly, if the characters are cold, if we cannot find in them moods of the kind and intensity that to us seem warranted, the story will be a disappointment.

LITERARY DIVISIONS AND GENERAL PRINCIPLES

=8. The Conceptual and Emotional.=--Theoretically all writing is divided easily into two cla.s.ses, conceptual and emotional, the literature of thought and the literature of feeling. In the actual attempt to cla.s.sify written composition on this basis, however, no sharp distinction can be maintained. Even matters of fact, certainly such matters of fact as we care to write about, are of more or less moment to us; we cannot deal with them in a wholly unemotional way. In our daily lives we are continually reaching conclusions that differ from the conclusions reached by others about the same matters of fact, and are trying to make these matters of fact have the same value for others that they have for us. This is true of our business life as well as of our social and home life. It always will be so. It is doubtless true that if our knowledge of matters of fact embraced a knowledge of the universe, and if the experience of each of us were just like that of his fellow and included all possible experience, we might reach identical conclusions. This is not true and never can be true. It is in effect true of a small portion of the things about which we think,--the addition of one to two makes three for every one,--but outside of these things, writing need not be and seldom is purely conceptual.

=9. Subject-matter.=--Various as are the things about which we write and manifold as are our interests in them, they may be cla.s.sified for our purposes under four heads: Matters of Fact, Experience, Beauty, Truth.

Again, we shall find difficulty in separating each of these from each of the others. Some of our experiences have certainly been revelations of matters of fact; without our experiences, we should hardly have acquired any real sense of the beautiful; save for them we could not have known anything of truth. No accurate definition of these things carefully distinguishing between them can be attempted here. It may be a.s.sumed that what is meant by matters of fact will be understood without definition. As we read the story in great measure for the purpose of enlarging our experience, this part of our possible literary material is worth considering further. In the child we are able to detect very early a growing curiosity. That curiosity does not disappear when the child has grown from boy to man; he is still asking questions of the universe, still trying to piece the fragments of his knowledge into a law-ordered and will-ordered whole. What he knows has been the product of experience, what he may yet know further must be the product of experience. This experience may not all be personal, but even that which he gets at second hand is so far useful in helping him toward that understanding of the universe for which he hopes. He never will reach that understanding, all his experience will make but a fraction of things to be known matters of fact to him; and yet a deathless interest in the scarcely recognized belief that the facts and forces of which he has known have some unifying principle makes his emotions quicken at every new experience that may have possible significance.

=10. Appeal of Experience, Beauty, and Truth.=--It will be evident, then, that experience which somehow makes the impression of superior importance may be presented inorganically and yet gain an interested hearing. The method of creating this impression, whether through the appearance of conviction in the writer or by various literary devices, need not detain us here. We shall be concerned merely with noting that the possible relation of the particular to the general, of this experience to the whole of experience, makes it a thing of moment. In just what way experience develops in us the sense of the beautiful, just what it is in anything that makes us distinguish beauty in it, cannot now be determined. It will be enough for us to know that literature makes a large appeal to a sense of the beautiful in us, a sense not fortuitous and irrational, though varying, but normal and almost universal, dependent upon natural laws of development. Truth is also difficult of definition, but we may understand that when out of experience, as through a process of reasoning, we have reached a conclusion that is something more than a matter of fact, a conclusion touching our emotions and having vital spiritual interest to us, the experience, whether our own directly or at second hand, has brought us to a truth. Truth is, perhaps, that matter of fact of universal intelligence that transcends the matter of fact of the finite mind.

=11. Literary Principles and Qualities.=--There are some fundamental principles of literary presentation which we may briefly review here.

All our study of science, and in a less obvious fashion, of all the physical, social, and artistic world about us, is more or less an attempt to cla.s.sify, simplify, and unify facts whose relations we do not see at a glance. We must observe and learn the facts first, but they will be of no great utility to us as unrelated items of knowledge. The need of establishing some sort of law and order in our understanding of the ma.s.s of phenomena of which we must take cognizance is so insistent that we early acquire the habit of attempting to hold in mind any new fact through its relation to some other fact or facts. In other words, we can retain the knowledge we acquire only by making one fact do duty for a great many other facts included in it. Our writing must not violate what is at once a necessity and a pleasure of the mind. Unity, simplicity, coherence, harmony, or congruity, must all be sought as essential qualities of any writing. We must also indicate our sense of the relative values of the things with which we deal by a proper selection of details for presentation, a careful subordination of the less important to the more important through the proportion of s.p.a.ce and attention given to each, and through other devices for securing emphasis. Let us keep in mind value, selection, subordination, proportion, emphasis, as a second group of terms for principles involved in writing. We may also wish to give our subject further elements of appeal through what may be suggested beyond the telling, through the melody and rhythm of the words, or through a quickening of the sense of the beautiful. Suggestion, melody, rhythm, beauty, are to be included, then, in a third group of qualities that may contribute to the effectiveness of what we write.

=12. Conceptual Writing.=--Of the literary qualities that have just been discussed, only the first group is perhaps essential to what has been designated as conceptual writing. Here we may place expository writing on subjects wholly matter of fact, mathematical discussions, scientific treatises largely, though not necessarily, and other writing of like character. As unity is the quality of importance here, we may well consider the units of discourse. Our first unit is that of the whole composition, the second that of the paragraph, and the third that of the sentence. Which of these is the prime unit, as the dollar is the prime unit of our medium of exchange, may not be evident at once; but if we examine the writing of clear thinkers carefully, without attempting to settle the matter in any doctrinaire fashion, we shall find that the paragraph, and not the sentence, is the more unified whole. I turn to Cardinal Newman, and in the middle of a paragraph find the sentence, "This should be carefully observed," a sentence meaningless when taken from the context. As a part of the paragraph it has a function, but it is certainly as a unit of detail and not as a prime unit. A writer like Carlyle makes these lesser units more important, but they are still subordinate to their use in the paragraph. In all our writing we shall do much for the unity, simplicity, and coherence of our work by seeing to it that our paragraphs are properly arranged and that each fulfills this function of a prime unit in the composition.

=13. The Sense of Value.=--When, in addition to statement of mere matters of fact, an author wishes to impress his readers with his own sense of the importance and the value of what he has to say, or of some special phase of his subject, he will employ the principles of the second group spoken of in a preceding paragraph. They cannot be ignored, indeed, in explanation of the simplest matters of fact, but a writer who means to convince and persuade will make more use of them. His personality will express itself in the selection of details and in the emphasis he places upon one detail or another. Among the literary forms which, besides being conceptual, are also concerned with persuasion, we find the oration, the essay, a great deal of business correspondence, and much of what we read in magazines and newspapers.

=14. Writing having Artistic Quality.=--When in addition to expressing matters of fact or truth, appealing perhaps to experience, we wish to arouse some sense of the beautiful and the artistic, we shall give our writing some or all of the qualities of the third group. Evidently, writing of this sort is in many respects the most difficult, since the writer must have regard for unity and the related principles, as well as for the qualities which peculiarly distinguish it. Experience, beauty, and truth are all available as subject-matter, and all the principles governing literary composition are concerned. Here we shall find the poem, the drama, the oration in some of its forms, most essays of the better sort, the greater part of good critical writing, literary description, and all narrative forms except the matter-of-fact historical writing of unliterary scholars.

=15. Two Things Requisite in Writing.=--It is to be borne in mind that the foregoing cla.s.sifications are by no means absolute. Gardiner in his "Forms of Prose Literature" says very truly that the "essential elements, not only of literature, but of all the fine arts, are: first, an organic unity of conception; and second, the pervasive personality of the artist." It is true that much of our writing does not aspire to literary character, but in very little of our writing of any sort can we afford to neglect the first of these elements, and in very little of it do we care to leave the second out of account. Even in exposition of the simpler sort we may give to our writing the distinction of a more luminous style and the stronger appeal of a warmer personal interest, if we shape it into organic unity and make evident in it "the pervasive personality of the artist."

THE STORY IN PARTICULAR

=16. The Art of the Story.=--However abstract the thinking of civilized man may become, "all our intelligence," to quote Ladd's "Outlines of Physiological Psychology," "is intelligence about something or other, ... resting on a basis of sensations and volitions." Difficult as it is and difficult as are the problems involved in its construction, the story is from some points of view the most elementary of literary forms.

It is concerned directly with matters of sensation and volition. If it is to play upon our emotions, it must revive sensations and volitions, make us in some degree part of the action. Experience is at once its warp and woof, but while it gives us new experiences, it must, in connection with them, revive old ones and so become tangible and real for us.

Of the memories that have come to us through the senses of sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste, those that are visual are probably the most clearly defined and persistent for most people. The sensation of hearing doubtless comes next, and then those of touch, smell, and taste.

A name will suffice to make us see the face of an absent friend; a few words, or the sight of a music roll, is enough to make us hear a favorite melody; a line or two on a printed page brings back to us the scent of the hayfield or the heavy odor of hyacinths in a conservatory.

We must remember, too, that this may be in each case, not simply a bringing back of the idea of the things, but a reviving of the sensations themselves. The seat of sensation is after all the brain.

Originally we experience sensation through some excitation of the end organs of sense, the ear, the nerves of touch, the retina; but these sensations become a.s.sociated with verbal images in the mind, and finally the excitation of the verbal images results also in the revival of the original sensation. There is perhaps no one of us who has not seen wholly imaginary moving shadows or flashing lights in the dark. Such cases are not good ill.u.s.trations of the point, possibly, but most of us can at will hear a connected succession of notes with which we have familiarized ourselves. In my own recent experience there occurred a very clear and wholly unexpected subjective sense of smell when reading of an experiment with frogs which recalled the distinctive odor of slimy water. Mr. James Sully, in "Illusions," says, "Stories are told of portrait painters who could summon visual images of their sitters with a vividness equal to that of reality, and serving all the purposes of their art." The same writer says again, and this is peculiarly significant, that "the physiologist Gruithuisen had a dream in which the princ.i.p.al feature was a violet flame, and which left behind it, _after waking_ for an appreciable duration, a complementary image of a yellow spot." Here a purely subjective impression had been reproduced in the nerves of sense.

=17. The Place of Sensation in Writing.=--The thing that it seems important to dwell upon here is that subjective sensations do go out from the brain and stimulate in a very real fashion the sensations that are naturally excited by external stimuli localizing themselves in the end organs of sense. As these sensations, while not the all of emotion, are largely involved in emotion as its more poignant element, and as emotion is a first requisite in the appeal of a story, it is evident that the writer of stories will do well to acquire the art of reviving sensations. Further, as in the quickening of sensations our ideas become more tangible and real, writers who employ other literary forms will find that their style gains clarity and distinction by a like appeal to sensation when possible. Just how successful story-writers make appeal to sensation, revive experience, give new experience, and touch the sense of the beautiful is to be taken up more definitely in the following pages. We can understand, of course, that subjective sensations are not as strong as those which we experience directly, but on the other hand they may be more varied, they may crowd in upon us more rapidly, they may be more congruously chosen for a definite effect than in our actual life. The total effect may then be no less p.r.o.nounced. In discovering how this is brought about we shall find the art of the short story.

SPECIAL STUDY OF THE STORY

=18. Symbols for Visualization.=--On a.n.a.lyzing a story for the purpose of discovering the elements of which it is composed, and the kind and degree of appeal which they have for us, we shall find it convenient to employ a few symbols for the purpose of labeling our findings for discussion in the cla.s.s room. Some of the directions which we make will be based upon differences in the way in which the things presented are effective in our minds, others upon differences in the things presented, themselves. First we shall work with symbols of description and visualization, of which for convenience we may distinguish four sorts shading one into the other, not clearly defined, and yet worth discussing, that we may cultivate a sharper sense of qualities of effectiveness in visualization. For these four sorts of visualization we may employ the symbols, _V__1, _V__2, _V__3, _VB__3. For the first of these the symbol _V__1 is not very satisfactory, since we will employ it for simple description which presents rather the idea of the thing than a mental picture, but it will perhaps be simpler to use it than to use a symbol for the word description. Having in mind the idea of a thing, we may by mental effort, if the idea is defined with sufficient clearness, call up the image of the object. _V__2 is the symbol for a visualization through a suggestion which the mind, by reason of the interest kindled, fills out to something more than the mere idea, more or less definite imagery resulting. In the _V__3 form, we are, as it were, compelled to see the image without mental effort, so swiftly and surely do the verbal memory images reestablish old sensations or combine with old sensations to the formation of new. In the fourth form, we will add the _B_ (Beauty) when the image which we see is such as to appeal pleasurably to the aesthetic sense. That there should be perfect agreement in the use of any one of these symbols in any particular case is, of course, not to be expected. Our individual experiences have been so different and the a.s.sociations of sensation are so varied that the character and intensity of any visualization must differ in each individual. This, of course, is one of the things that complicate the problem of literary composition and make study of these things of particular importance.

=19. Audition and Other Sensations.=--As the problem of audition is of less moment than that of visualization, we will make but the one distinction between such presentation of sound as calls up the idea of the sound only, _a__1 and such as produces in us the sense of the sound itself, _a__2, premising that any one who chooses may make the three divisions preceding.

Appeals to the other senses as occurring less often, we may group together under the symbol _S_, using 1 with this, as with _a_, when it comes to us in the conceptual way, and 2 when it comes as an excitant of sensation.

=20. Instances of Visualization.=--Before we go farther, it will be well to examine briefly an example or two of literary description.

"The rim of the sun was burning the hilltops, and already _V__2 the vanguard of his strength stemming the morning mists, when I and my companion first trod the dust of a small _V__2 town which stood in our path. It still lay very hard and white, however, and sharply edged to its girdle of olive _V__1 and mulberry trees drenched in dew, a compactly folded town well fortified by strong walls and many towers, with the mist upon it and softly over it like a veil. For it _V__2 lay well under the shade of the hills awaiting the sun's coming. In the streets, though they were by no means _V__1 asleep, but, contrariwise, busy with the traffic of men _S__2 and pack mules, there was a shrewd bite as of night air; _V__2 looking up we could perceive how faint the blue of the sky was, and the cloud-flaw how rosy yet with the flush of Aurora's beauty-sleep. Therefore we were glad to get into the market place, filled with people and set around with goodly brick buildings, and to feel the light and _S__2 warmth steal about our limbs."

--MAURICE HEWLETT, "Earthwork out of Tuscany."