The Writing Of The Short Story Part 3

II

Scene of the story is the prairie desert of the West in time of drouth. A party of men, including two who are not yet through their work in an eastern college, are riding in search of water, having had none for two days. Water is found, but shortly afterwards one of the two young men is missing. The talk of the others reveals the absent one's unselfishness and friendly devotion to his chum. Soon he is seen riding up excitedly and beckoning. The others follow him to a rough eminence, where he stops and listens, imploring them to tell him whether they can hear a voice calling. When they hear it too, he is a.s.sured that he has not lost his reason from the thirst, and together they begin a search which results in their discerning a cavern in the side of an embankment where a man lies on a couch moaning for water. As they try to enter, he warns them away with the cry of "smallpox."

The story is told to a group of friends gathered together of an evening, and the narrator draws from among his books a copy of Shakespeare found in the cavern by one of the men, bearing on its fly leaf, in addition to the owner's name, the word _Brasenose_, the name of one of the colleges at Oxford. The pathos of the story is in this last touch, an Oxford student dying so loathsome a death in a strange and desert land, and dying so heroically.

Divisions of the story. 1. Visualization of the desert and the men. The scent of water. Drinking from the muddied stream.

2. One of the young men starts off alone in a delirium of pain (_m_3_). He returns suffering from the fear that he has lost his reason (_m_3_).

3. The discovery of the cave (_V_3_ and _F_2b_). The delirious talk of the sick man. His sudden joy in the unexpected presence of human beings (_V_3_ and _m_3_). His final "G'way! G'way!

Smallpox!"

4. The narrator of the story shows the copy of Shakespeare and the inscription on the fly leaf.

The story in the original contains about three thousand words. It is important that the suffering of the men be developed at some length in a convincing fashion. It serves as a preparation for the more terrible suffering of the one man who moans for water as he tears the foul smallpox sores. This should be presented in as visualizing a way as possible and with as full showing of mood as may be. The conclusion in division 4 must be altogether different in tone from the preceding.

Narrator and listeners are in a world of ease and comfort, and their interest in the story is an interest in something pathetically remote.

SITUATIONS TO BE DEVELOPED INTO PLOTS

(Adapted from published stories not original)

1. Rome in the early centuries after Christ. Three persons are involved, one man and two women, one of whom has just pledged troth to the man.

The man and the other woman are devotees of a mystic faith, whose priest residing in a dark cavern in the hills calls now one, now another devotee to pa.s.s through the "void" to eternal fellowship with G.o.d.

2. Oklahoma at the time of the opening of the strip for settlement. A man and his wife and two children come from Kansas to find land in the strip on the day of the run. They have failed in Kansas and are almost out of money. The husband, who is to make the run for the strip on horseback when the signal guns are fired, falls sick.

3. A lumber camp. In addition to the men, a man and his wife who cook and take care of the camp, and a half-witted ch.o.r.e boy. The ch.o.r.e boy tries to take care of the men and keep them from drinking. A number of the men go off to a neighboring town for a spree, and the ch.o.r.e boy goes with them.

4. Some place in the region of the mountain whites of the Carolinas and Tennessee. A beautiful girl with a tinge of negro blood that does not show in nature, intellectual endowment, or appearance. A mountain white to whom she is betrothed. A young man from the North visiting the family with whom she is staying is attracted by her. The contrast of the life of the mountain whites to which her betrothal if fulfilled dooms her, and that of the world of taste and culture which her nature demands.

QUESTIONS ON "A DOCTOR OF THE OLD SCHOOL," FROM THE "BONNIE BRIER BUSH"

I

1. _a._ What has been accomplished in your sympathies by this? 2. _b._ Has this been through direct statement of things calling for your sympathies, or through "effects"? _c._ Is the method c.u.mulative and gradual, or direct and insistent? _d._ Would you say that the method here is objective or subjective? _e._ What symbols do you find that you have employed largely, and for what purpose have the devices for which two of these stand been employed? _f._ Would you say that the author puts much or little meaning into his words? Is the style diffuse and thin, or does it accomplish much with few words? Indicate a paragraph or page that justifies your conclusion and say how. _g._ Are the inferences which you are made to draw logical or emotional, and do they seem to you delicate and subtle or simple and direct? Indicate some of them in confirmation of your conclusion.

II

1. _a._ Do you see any change in the method of presenting MacLure here?

_b._ How is it an advance in the development of the story or not? _c._ Was Part I. preparation for this or not, and if so, how? _d._ Does this have a definite climax and denouement, and if so, where?

III

1. _a._ How does this make an advance upon the preceding in the revelation of MacLure? _b._ Does it in any way get nearer to elemental human feeling? _c._ Does it anywhere appeal directly to sensation? _d._ Do you find in this any feeling for the mystery of existence? Does it seem to be an integral part of the story, coming from its essential emotion and free from obtrusive moralizing, or not? _e._ Is there any increase in intensity of feeling in this or not, and if so, how is it indicated in the symbols you have employed? _f._ Has MacLure now been presented to us with full showing of his distinguishing characteristics or not? and do we find in him a vital human nature?

IV

1. _a._ Do you think a death-bed scene a good subject for literary presentation or not? Why? _b._ Would you call it a difficult thing to present or not? _c._ Do you find anything objectionable here? _d._ Has the interest of the whole story depended upon incident or upon showing of character? _e._ Does this Part IV. serve in any particular way to round out our knowledge of MacLure, and if so, in what way? _f._ What is the especially appealing thing in the portrait of MacLure? And what in the fortune and circ.u.mstance of his life? _g._ Does this appeal touch in any fashion upon our sense of a something inscrutable governing our lives? _h._ Which of the different sorts of subject-matter (see section 9) seem to you to be the more largely employed here? So far as it is concerned with experience, is it a reviving of what we have experienced or an addition to our knowledge of life? Is there in it a truth that you could formulate into a law of life, or is the truth so much a matter of emotion as merely to touch the sensibilities and so give us a wider vision?

QUESTIONS ON "LOVELINESS," BY ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS-WARD

(_Atlantic Monthly_, August, 1899)

1. _a._ Do you detect in this story any purpose beyond that of recounting a series of happenings? If so, what? _b._ If you were to write the story, would you think it prospectively a difficult thing to arouse interest in a dog? _c._ Has that been done here or not? _d._ If so, what are some of the author's devices and how successfully employed?

2. _a._ What is the artistic purpose of the first two paragraphs? Why does the author delay so long in telling us that she is writing of a dog? _b._ Does she let her own feeling for the girl and dog appear or not? If so, is it obtrusive or not? Effective or not, as your markings indicate? _c._ Are there any incidents in the story that a reader might for any reason be unwilling to accept? _d._ If so, how is the handling such as to disguise the difficulty or not, as the case may be?

3. _a._ What devices are employed to make us interested in Adah? _b._ Are we made to feel that her dependence upon the dog is natural and deserving of sympathy or not, and if so, how? _c._ Are the incidents so managed as to maintain interest in the expectation of the denouement or not? _d._ Does the story seem to have sufficient unity of purpose and plan or not?

4. _a._ What symbols do you notice that you have employed most largely?

_b._ Is the story written in the way of direct statement or of suggestion? _c._ For what frequent purpose would you say that the writer employs _F_2_? _M_3_? _M_2_? _d._ Can you say in what the art of the story especially consists? _e._ What would you probably have thought of the story were its art less delicate and sure?

GENERAL OUTLINE QUESTIONS FOR STUDY OF STORIES IN CURRENT MAGAZINES, ETC.

1. _a._ Upon what is the interest of the story especially dependent?

_b._ Are the incidents presented rapidly and coherently, or slowly and disconnectedly? _c._ Is there a clearly defined plot or not? _d._ Does the plot have a climax of entanglement, or does it fail in developing this feature of the story interest?

2. _a._ How is character presented? _b._ Are the characters well chosen for their reactions among themselves? _c._ Are the things they do and say continually consistent or not? _d._ Are they sufficiently individualized to escape the appearance of the conventional and to hold interest?

3. _a._ Does the story state facts and happenings merely, or does it get hold of vital sensations and revive them? _b._ If so, in what ways does it seem to do that? _c._ In general does it seem to you subjective or objective in method?

4. _a._ How much of the interest of the story is in the development of the plot and how much in the stirring of vital sensations, including sympathetic moods? _b._ Does the development of the story center about any idea or att.i.tude toward life? _c._ What excellences and what faults do you find in the story?

ENGLISH LITERATURE.

_The Arden Shakespeare._