Critics have agreed that the short story must conform to certain
conditions. First of all, the writer must strive to make one and
only one impression. His time is too limited, his space is too
confined, his risk of dividing the attention of the reader is too
great, to admit of more than this one impression. He therefore
selects some moment of action or some phase of character or some
particular scene, and focuses attention upon that. Life not
infrequently gives such brief, clear-cut impressions. At the
railway station we see two young people hurry to a train as if
fearful of being detained, and we get the impression of romantic
adventure. We pass on the street corner two men talking, and from
a chance sentence or two we form a strong impression of the
character of one or both. Sometimes we travel through a scene so
desolate and depressing or so lovely and uplifting that the effect
is never forgotten. Such glimpses of life and scene are as vivid
as the vignettes revealed by the search-light, when its arm slowly
explores a mountain-side or the shore of a lake and brings objects
for a brief moment into high light. To secure this single strong
impression, the writer must decide which of the three essentials--
plot, character, or setting--is to have first place.
As action appeals strongly to most people, and very adequately
reveals character, the short-story writer may decide to make plot
pre-eminent. He accordingly chooses his incidents carefully. Any
that do not really aid in developing the story must be cast aside,
no matter how interesting or attractive they may be in themselves.
This does not mean that an incident which is detached from the
train of events may not be used. But such an incident must have
proper relations provided for it. Thus the writer may wish to use
incidents that belong to two separate stories, because he knows
that by relating them he can produce a single effect. Shakespeare
does this in Macbeth. Finding in the lives of the historic Macbeth
and the historic King Duff incidents that he wished to use, he
combined them. But he saw to it that they had the right relation,
that they fitted into the chain of cause and effect. The reader
will insist, as the writer knows, that the story be logical, that
incident 1 shall be the cause of incident 2, incident 2 of
incident 3, and so on to the end. The triangle used by Freytag to
illustrate the plot of a play may make this clear.
AC is the line of rising action along which the story climbs,
incident by incident, to the point C; C is the turning point, the
crisis, or the climax; CB is the line of falling action along
which the story descends incident by incident to its logical
resolution. Nothing may be left to luck or chance. In life the
element of chance does sometimes seem to figure, but in the story
it has no place. If the ending is not the logical outcome of
events, the reader feels cheated. He does not want the situation
to be too obvious, for he likes the thrill of suspense. But he
wants the hints and foreshadowings to be sincere, so that he may
safely draw his conclusions from them. This does not condemn,
however, the "surprise" ending, so admirably used by O. Henry. The
reader, in this case, admits that the writer has "played fair"
throughout, and that the ending which has so surprised and tickled
his fancy is as logical as that he had forecast.
To aid in securing the element of suspense, the author often makes
use of what Carl H. Grabo, in his The Art of the Short Story,
calls the "negative" or "hostile" incident. Incidents, as he
points out, are of two kinds--positive and negative. The first
openly help to untangle the situation; the second seem to delay
the straightening out of the threads or even to make the tangle
worse. He illustrates this by the story of Cinderella. The
appearance of the fairy and her use of the magic wand are
positive, or openly helpful incidents, in rescuing Cinderella from
her lonely and neglected state. But her forgetfulness of the hour
and her loss of the glass slipper are negative or hostile
incidents. Nevertheless, we see how these are really blessings in
disguise, since they cause the prince to seek and woo her.
The novelist may introduce many characters, because he has time
and space to care for them. Not so the short-story writer: he must
employ only one main character and a few supporting characters.
However, when the plot is the main thing, the characters need not
be remarkable in any way. Indeed, as Brander Matthews has said,
the heroine may be "a woman," the hero "a man," not any woman or
any man in particular. Thus, in The Lady or the Tiger? the author
leaves the princess without definite traits of character, because
his problem is not "what this particular woman would do, but what
A woman would do." Sometimes, after reading a story of thrilling
plot, we find that we do not readily recall the appearance or the
names of the characters; we recall only what happened to them.
This is true of the women of James Fenimore Cooper's stories. They
have no substantiality, but move like veiled figures through the
most exciting adventures.
Setting may or may not be an important factor in the story of
incident. What is meant by setting? It is an inclusive term. Time,
place, local conditions, and sometimes descriptions of nature and
of people are parts of it. When these are well cared for, we get
an effect called "atmosphere." We know the effect the atmosphere
has upon objects. Any one who has observed distant mountains knows
that, while they remain practically unchanged, they never look the
same on two successive days. Sometimes they stand out hard and
clear, sometimes they are soft and alluring, sometimes they look
unreal and almost melt into the sky behind them. So the atmosphere
of a story may envelop people and events and produce a subtle
effect upon the reader. Sometimes the plot material is such as to
require little setting. The incidents might have happened
anywhere. We hardly notice the absence of setting in our hurry to
see what happens. This is true of many of the stories we enjoyed
when we were children. For instance, in The Three Bears the
incidents took place, of course, in the woods, but our imagination
really supplied the setting. Most stories, however, whatever their
character, use setting as carefully and as effectively as
possible. Time and place are often given with exactness. Thus Bret
Harte says: "As Mr. John Oakhurst, gambler, stepped into the main
street of Poker Flat on the morning of the twenty-third of
November, 1850, he was conscious of a change in its moral
atmosphere since the preceding night." This definite mention of
time and place gives an air of reality of the story. As to
descriptions, the writer sifts them in, for he knows that few will
bother to read whole paragraphs of description. He often uses
local color, by which we mean the employment of epithets, phrases,
and other expressions that impart a "feeling" for the place. This
use of local color must not be confused with that intended to
produce what is called an "impressionistic" effect. In the latter
case the writer subordinates everything to this effect of scene.
This use of local color is discussed elsewhere.
Perhaps the writer wishes to make character the dominant element.
Then he subordinates plot and setting to this purpose and makes
them contribute to it. In selecting the character he wishes to
reveal he has wide choice. "Human nature is the same, wherever you
find it," we are fond of saying. So he may choose a character that
is quite common, some one he knows; and, having made much of some
one trait and ignored or subordinated others, bring him before us
at some moment of decision or in some strange, perhaps hostile,
environment. Or the author may take some character quite out of
the ordinary: the village miser, the recluse, or a person with a
peculiar mental or moral twist. But, whatever his choice, it is
not enough that the character be actually drawn from real life.
Indeed, such fidelity to what literally exists may be a hinderance
to the writer. The original character may have done strange things
and suffered strange things that cannot be accounted for. But, in
the story, inconsistencies must be removed, and the conduct of the
characters must be logical. Life seems inconsistent to all of us
at times, but it is probably less so than it seems. People puzzle
us by their apparent inconsistencies, when to themselves their
actions seem perfectly logical. But, as Mr. Grabo points out, "In
life we expect inconsistencies; in a story we depend upon their
elimination." The law of cause and effect, which we found so
indispensable in the story of plot, we find of equal importance in
the story of character. There must be no sudden and unaccountable
changes in the behavior or sentiments of the people in the story.
On the contrary, there must be reason in all they say and do.
Another demand of the character story is that the characters be
lifelike. In the plot story, or in the impressionistic story, we
may accept the flat figures on the canvas; our interest is
elsewhere. But in the character story we must have real people
whose motives and conduct we discuss pro and con with as much
interest as if we knew them in the flesh. A character of this
convincing type is Hamlet. About him controversy has always raged.
It is impossible to think of him as other than a real man.
Whenever the writer finds that the characters in his story have
caused the reader to wax eloquent over their conduct, he may rest
easy: he has made his people lifelike.
Setting in the character story is important, for it is in this
that the chief actor moves and has his being. His environment is
continually causing him to speak and act. The incidents selected,
even though some of them may seem trivial in themselves, must
reveal depth after depth in his soul. Whatever the means by which
the author reveals the character--whether by setting, conduct,
analysis, dialogue, or soliloquy--his task is a hard one. In
Markheim we have practically all of these used, with the result
that the character is unmistakable and convincing.
Stories of scenes are neither so numerous nor so easy to produce
successfully as those of plot and character. But sometimes a place
so profoundly impresses a writer that its demands may not be
disregarded. Robert Louis Stevenson strongly felt the influence of
certain places. "Certain dank gardens cry aloud for murder;
certain old houses demand to be haunted; certain coasts are set
apart for shipwreck. Other spots seem to abide their destiny,
suggestive and impenetrable." Perhaps all of us have seen some
place of which we have exclaimed: "It is like a story!" When,
then, scene is to furnish the dominant interest, plot and
character become relatively insignificant and shadowy. "The
pressure of the atmosphere," says Brander Matthews, holds our
attention. The Fall of the House of Usher, by Edgar Allan Poe, is
a story of this kind. It is the scene that affects us with dread
and horror; we have no peace until we see the house swallowed up
by the tarn, and have fled out of sight of the tarn itself. The
plot is extremely slight, and the Lady Madeline and her unhappy
brother hardly more than shadows.
It must not be supposed from the foregoing explanation that the
three essentials of the short story are ever really divorced. They
are happily blended in many of our finest stories. Nevertheless,
analysis of any one of these will show that in the mind of the
writer one purpose was pre-eminent. On this point Robert Louis
Stevenson thus speaks: "There are, so far as I know, three ways
and three only of writing a story. You may take a plot and fit
characters to it, or you may take a character and choose incidents
and situations to develop it, or, lastly, you may take a certain
atmosphere and get actions and persons to express and realize it."
When to this clear conception of his limitations and privileges
the author adds an imagination that clearly visualizes events and
the "verbal magic" by which good style is secured, he produces the
short story that is a masterpiece.