The great artists among men of letters have occasionally and by
tradition burst into an _Ars Poetica_ or an _Arte nuevo de hacer
Comedias_, and it should come as no surprise that Henry James has left
us some sort of treatise on novel-writing--no surprise, that is, to the
discriminating reader who is _not_, for the most part, a writer of
English novels. Various reviewers have hinted obscurely that some such
treatise is either adumbrated or concealed in the Notes for "The Ivory
Tower" and for "The Sense of the Past"; they have said, indeed, that
novelists will "profit greatly," etc., but no one has set forth the gist
or the generalities which are to be found in these notes.
Divested of its fine verbiage, of its clichés, of its provincialisms of
American phrase, and of the special details relating to the particular
book in his mind, the formula for building a novel (any novel, not
merely any "psychological" novel); the things to have clearly in mind
before starting to write it are enumerated in "The Ivory Tower" notes
somewhat as follows:--
1. Choice of names for characters; names that will "fit" their owners,
and that will not "joggle" or be cacophonie when in juxtaposition on the
page.
2. Exposition of one group of characters and of the "situation." (In
"The Ivory Tower" this was to be done in three subdivisions. "Book I"
was to give the "Immediate Facts.")
3. One character at least is hitched to his "characteristic." We are to
have one character's impression on another.