made subordinate to character-drawing the interest is sure to be less
vivid. He remarks:--
In character-studies the pleasure we take is critical; we watch,
we approve, we smile at incongruities, we are moved to sudden
heats of sympathy with courage, suffering, or virtue. But the
characters are still themselves, they are not us; the more clearly
they are depicted, the more widely do they stand away from us,
the more imperiously do they thrust us back into our place as
a spectator.... It is not character but incident that woos us
out of our reserve. Something happens as we desire it to happen
to ourselves; some situation, that we have long dallied with in
fancy, is realized in the story with enticing and appropriate
details. Then we forget the characters; then we push the hero
aside; then we plunge into the tale in our own person and bathe in
fresh experience; and then, and then only, do we say that we have
been reading a romance.--_A Gossip on Romance._
All these considerations are of interest to the student, and they
should all be taken into account when he is looking for a subject
or when he is considering methods. As a matter of practical work,
it is probably true that nobody goes to work to construct stories
without having some theme, some dominating suggestion in mind. He
will therefore form his plot or shape his subject according to this
germinating thought, without for the moment taking theories much
into account. Have a theme he must, and to my thinking the more
objective this is the better. The more it deals with outward things
and shows what is within through them; the more it has of incident and
is concerned with the actualities of life; the more it has of broad
realities as distinguished from the trivialities of existence, the more
likely it is to succeed.
In the treatment of a theme, the first thing is to be sure that it is
thoroughly known to the writer. I do not mean that it is necessary to
know every detail. I do mean that what is known should be apprehended
clearly; that there should be no doubt about the end and the beginning,
whatever vagueness there may be about the minutiæ of the way from one
to the other. It is especially important in story-writing that the
author know his characters before he write about them. It is generally
safe to compose half a dozen chapters before beginning a novel,
chapters which are not to be used in the book at all, but which serve
to make the author acquainted with the personages he is to deal with.
If every young novelist would study the methods of Hawthorne in this
respect it would be to his advantage. Any one who is at all accustomed
to examining literature critically knows how almost universal it is
that new authors show in the first third or quarter of their books
that they are slowly becoming aware of the natures of the characters
in their fiction. Often the middle of the work is reached before the
writer has any clear or intimate knowledge of the men and women whom he
is trying to picture.
I do not believe in hard and fast rules for the construction of
stories. Methods of work must vary with individual temperaments. My
own way of work naturally seems to me the most logical, but I realize
that this is a question which each writer must decide for himself.
Personally, I find it necessary to know the general course of a story,
and above all to know the end, before I can begin it. Once these are
clear and true in my mind, I deliberately consider the beginning. I say
“deliberately consider” because the succeeding steps have so much the
air of being involuntary. Once I have decided where to begin, I devote
myself to the study of my characters. I walk the streets with them;
they have a share in my waking and in my sleep. I know the general
course of the history I am trying to tell, but the details I am content
to learn slowly. The thing which I endeavor to do is to be sure of the
character of those who are involved in this history. I am not without a
feeling that an old fellow who sits in solitary state in the attic of
my brain tells me the incidents of the narrative, but the acquaintance
of the actors I must make for myself.
Not only must a story be known to the writer but it must for the time
being at least be true to him. He must believe it as he writes; he
must be completely possessed by a sense of the verity of what he is
telling, or he cannot persuade the reader to accept it as real. It may
seem to you that this is equivalent to saying that a novelist must
be a good deal like the White Queen in “Through a Looking Glass,”
who practiced until she was able to believe as many as six impossible
things before breakfast. The difference is that the novelist does not
have to practice. The characters become so vital in his mind, they act
so independently and with so evident a will of their own, that it is
impossible not to feel that their story is actual. Of course I do not
mean that if the novelist were put on oath he would affirm that the
tale is true; yet it seems to me that if I were called upon to swear
that a story which I had written were not true, I should go about
forever after with a humiliated sense that I had committed perjury.
I think it is the experience of every novelist that characters in a
tale will often act apparently at their own good pleasure and in open
defiance of the intention of the writer. They are not infrequently
almost as independent of the will of the author of their being as the
modern child is said to be independent of the will of the author of
his. I have myself struggled to force characters to do a certain thing
and have written and rewritten certain chapters in my effort to make
them follow my wishes. I could set down the words which declared that
they had done the thing which I desired, but I knew that I was lying
and I was conscious that my characters knew that I knew it, so that
of course there was nothing to do but to tear up the falsehood and
tell the truth. The explanation of all this is, I suppose, that the
superficial conclusions of the mind are corrected by the unconscious
logic of the imagination. The characters of the personages in the
story being what they are, the personages must inevitably behave in a
certain way, and an underlying perception of this fundamental truth
prevents an imaginative author from being able to treat his fictitious
people as puppets.
* * * * *
The importance of knowing the end from the beginning is the same
whether one is telling an anecdote or is writing a history, a romance,
or a biography. It is necessary to discriminate clearly in regard
to the climax of an anecdote, as it is to be sure of the climax of
a novel. Everybody knows how the story which in the mouth of one
man is racy and pointed becomes stupid and ineffective the moment
it is told by another. I have to thank an English gentleman for
having unconsciously furnished me with an example of the disadvantage
of relating an anecdote with the wrong end first. He told in the
smoking-room of a London hotel an incident which I dimly remembered as
being in James Dodds’ “Biographical Study of Chalmers,” and I made a
note of his version in order to compare the two. This is Dodds’ story:--
[Chalmers] was present at an evening party where a very
accomplished lady was discoursing most eloquent music from the
fashionable opera of the day. When she was at the overture and the
recitatives he looked perplexed, as if listening to a medley of
madness; but when she struck upon some lively and expressive airs,
he turned with a look of great relief to the gentleman who was
next to him: “Do you know, sir, I love these lucid intervals!”
This is the way in which the English gentleman told it:--
“I say, don’t you know, Dr. Chalmers called tunes lucid intervals.
Wasn’t that deuced good? Lucid intervals, by Jove! He heard a lady
sing, don’t you know, and that’s what he said. He didn’t mean all
tunes of course; but she’d been playing things, you know, and
putting in instrumental fal-lals and crazy things on the keys,
and finally came to a song. I call that devilish witty, don’t you
know!”
It is hardly necessary to give examples of this fault, and this seems
absurd and extravagant. It came so providentially, however, at the very
time when I was writing these lectures, that it was not to be resisted.
It is excellent practice for the student to write out stories or
incidents which come under his observation, and good things which he
hears said or told. There are few exercises in which it is more easily
possible to interest an ordinary class in composition than work of this
sort, and it may be made of a good deal of value. To be really of use
it is necessary that the story be told and retold until it is in the
best possible form that the student can compass. It should be done as
carefully as if it were a great and complete narrative.
I said in another talk that I am not willing to concede that
conversation is an art which comes by nature, and the justice of this
must be especially felt by one who listens when story-telling is the
order of the day. Those who succeed in telling a story well are those
who have taken the trouble to learn how. It is a mistake to suppose
that the carelessly spoken anecdote which is so felicitously put
that it seems to be the thought of the moment has cost the narrator
nothing. He has consciously labored to attain the art of telling things
well; and while here as everywhere natural gifts count, the man who
cultivates a small talent can generally outshine him who leaves a great
talent to take care of itself.
I have perhaps spoken so as to give the impression that a story makes
itself. I mean nothing of the sort. It is true that the first germ of
a fiction is often caught in the mind as a plumy-winged seed of the
wild clematis is caught in the cranny of a wall. Sometimes a chance
word, the sight of a face in the crowd, a bit of information or talk,
will become the suggestion from which a story will grow. It must be
nurtured, however, if its growth is to be vigorous or symmetrical. It
must be brooded over and watched; it must be nourished and tended. When
a story is well formed in the mind and the characters are well defined,
it will grow and develop spontaneously, but it must be given a good
start first. In other words, the theme must be dwelt upon until it is
so completely a part of the thought that the mind will carry it forward
unconsciously, and the tale will seem to be going on of itself.
It is customary to say that all narrative has four elements: first,
what happened,--the plot or story; second, what persons were
concerned,--the characters; third, the situation, which is both in
time and space,--in other words the when and the where; fourth, the
central motive,--the thing of interest or significance for which the
whole is told. These elements seem to me to be likely to come to the
writer in the order in which I have named them. Sometimes he is aware
of the central purpose first, especially in fiction written with a
declared motive; but this does not appear to be the natural order in
the case of fiction really imaginative. An author must of course have
a comprehension of the central motive before he begins to write, but
he deduces it from his plot rather than forms a plot to embody the
idea. All this analysis is of more value in revision of work or in
criticism than in actual composition. The writer who is really alive
and interested in what he is doing thinks of his story as a story and
as a transcript from life, not as a combination of four elements.
In this same line of criticism and revision it is well to note that
Narration is necessarily specific, progressive, and cumulative. It
is specific in that it deals with facts rather than with theories,
with incidents rather than with deductions, with events rather than
with reflections. It is progressive in that the interest must move
forward, and the theme must advance with the incidents. A collection
of incidents does not make a narrative any more than a pile of lumber
makes a house. There must be a sequence of events related to each other
by the tie of cause and effect. Narration is cumulative because this
chain of cause and effect must lead to some conclusion, some climax,
some end. Even in the relation of the most trifling anecdotes these
three qualities are to be found, and in their perfection lies the
secret of the greatest works of literature. The theorists who excuse
inartistic and unsymmetrical fiction by the theory that a novel should
be a piece cut out of life and having neither beginning or end, forget
that that which is comely and fit, so long as it is part of the living
tree-trunk, becomes an unsightly block when it is chopped out. It must
be shaped and finished to be again beautiful. The story which has by
relation been taken from its place in actual life must be worked and
polished by art; it must become a whole in itself or it is forever an
uncomely log, crudely disfiguring the landscape and fit only to be used
as material for work or to feed the fire.
XVII
NARRATION CONTINUED
The point of view is of no less importance in Narration than in
Description. It is perhaps not so strictly observed, because to the
ordinary writer it is less obvious. As a rule it is not specifically
announced. If a tale is in the form of an autobiography, as “Robinson
Crusoe,” for instance, or “Henry Esmond,” the point of view is of
course that of the perceptions of the character who relates. To this
the author must confine himself, and every time that he introduces
incidents, words, or thoughts which this character could not have
known he violates it. He breaks the continuity and interrupts the
impression of the reader. Less obviously, many novelists practically
hold to the personality of one or two of their characters for their
point of view. Without any specification of the fact, they refrain
from telling anything which might not have been known or felt by these
personages. An admirable illustration of this method is “The Scarlet
Letter.” Throughout the entire book there are practically only three
individualities through whose perceptions the reader is called upon to
look. The author does not claim at any point to be confining himself to
these or to any one of these; yet the comments and reflections which
are outside the observation of Hester Prynne, Arthur Dimmesdale, and
Roger Chillingworth are so close to them as almost to seem part of
their thought. What is not actually within their perception is little
more than the author’s expression of their unformulated emotions or
interpretations of their motives. More than two thirds of the book
is given from the standpoint of the inner life of the wearer of the
scarlet letter, and the greater portion of the remainder is from that
of the minister.
Of course the writer may, if he choose, take as the point of view the
position of all knowledge. He may decide to speak as one who knows
every thought. The inexperienced writer is especially likely to be fond
of this method. He is apt to dance about in a confused and confusing
will-o’-the-wisp ubiquity. The early days of story-writing are marked
by a delightful sense of omnipotence and omniscience which seldom
outlives the completion of the first novel. While this feeling lasts
the author holds it a sort of duty to allow his readers to look in
turn through the eyes of each of his characters. It is as if he were
proprietor of a peep-show. He cannot bring himself to defraud the
reader by putting him off with anything less than a glimpse through
every peep-hole. Whatever is the point of view chosen, it must, as in
all other sorts of composition, be held throughout. The point of view
of a single character is that which gives most intensity to a tale. The
character chosen becomes the embodiment of the thoughts and emotions
of the reader for the time being, and dominates all others. This is
perhaps even more emphatically true when this is done by implication.
The assumption of a single personality in the story as that which
shall dominate seems to come from the absorbing interest of the author
in this character, and it almost surely not only makes this the most
significant figure in the tale, but imparts to the story fervor and
strenuousness.
It is perhaps well to add a word of warning. It is not wise to expect
too much from the reader in the way of coming to a point of view
remote from his ordinary attitude of mind. The short stories of Miss
Wilkins tacitly ask the reader to assume the mood of an observer who
sees the pathetic and yet humorous quality in homely life. They owe
their success in no small degree to the simplicity of this point
of view and the consistency with which it is kept throughout. In
“Pembroke” the same author goes farther, and tacitly asks us to regard
the quarrels of obstinate and ill-tempered rustics with the profound
seriousness demanded by the crushing blows of inexorable fate. It is
asking too much. We cannot look upon these rural contests of obstinacy
with the solemnity demanded by a Greek tragedy. It is a far cry from
the “Œdipus” or the “Antigone” to “Pembroke;” and Miss Wilkins
makes too great a demand upon the reader when she seems to assume so
profound a solemnity. It seems to me that herein lies one secret of the
disappointment felt in reading “Pembroke” after the delights of the
author’s short stories.
The selection of incidents is naturally a matter of the greatest
importance in the construction of any narrative, whether historic
or fictitious. It is evident that it is impossible to tell the whole
truth about any person, whether it be a character real in flesh and
blood or one of the personages so much more real in imagination. A
novelist cannot set down all the particulars of the life of those
about whom he writes, and in the case of any story it must be only the
significant incidents that will attract the reader. The literary code
which professes to find all facts of life of equal value is on the face
of it absurd, and had the men who claim to hold it lived up to their
creed their novels would never have got beyond manuscript. Choice is
necessary, and the great principle of choice is significance.
When we speak of significance, we of course mean the relation of the
incident to the central motive of the narrative. The rule is that
details are to be introduced or omitted as they do or do not form an
essential part of the whole. If the writer have not the art so to
weave in his most interesting and novel incident that it shall be an
integral portion of the web, he must omit it. The taste of our time
has very little patience with that excrescence which used to be known
as an episode. Whatever is told should help forward the general plan
of the work. The space and the importance given to each portion must
manifestly be determined by its value in the entire scheme. Proportion
is in effect the same here as in any other form of composition, a
matter which depends upon the intention of the whole.
The young writer who is moved to delight a waiting and to his fancy
impatient world with a new work of fiction has generally read a good
many stories, and is likely to have gained from them some unconscious
sense of proportion. This may save him from utter failure, but he is
likely to stumble over two serious obstacles. In the first place he is
sure to have his favorite situations, and is apt to linger over these
in a fond belief that his readers will be as charmed as he is with
these portions of his tale. In the second place, he is likely to feel a
certain security in using incidents which are taken from real life.
Of the first of these it is sufficient to say that such is the
perversity of fate that it almost never happens that the reader
agrees with the writer--especially with the untrained writer--in
regard to the most interesting portions of a book. Indeed, it is not
amiss for a writer to be a little suspicious of the parts of his work
which he regards with most favor. It is of importance to cultivate a
dispassionate habit of mind, and always to judge the value of portions
with relation to the whole rather than with reference to the author’s
likes or dislikes.
The second point is one which needs to be emphasized. The moment a
man begins to write, his friends begin to offer true stories for
use,--not one out of a hundred being usable; and they invariably
commend these subjects by saying that they are things which really
happened. It is impossible to make the general public understand that
the fact that a thing happened is rather more likely to be against
it as literary material than in its favor. Facts are admirable from
their suggestiveness. No fiction is of value which is not founded
upon them. They are to be used, however, as material which must be
shaped and moulded before it can be used. They are the rocks from the
quarry that must be dressed before they are fit building material.
The danger lies in accepting actuality instead of literary propriety
as the measure of value. There is perhaps no rule more useful or more
necessary to young writers of fiction than to beware of the truth. If
in a first novel are found scenes and incidents which are unreal and
extravagant, the chances are that these are the things which have been
confidently taken from real life,--and which have become hopelessly
unreal in the transfer. In Narration as in Description the thing sought
is not the truth but the impression of truth. The question is not
whether what is told is true, but whether it seem true. We all know
extraordinary incidents which are real yet which are too improbable
to be used in fiction. The reason is obvious. It is necessary for
fiction to be probable, while truth is free from all restrictions. The
novelist is never allowed to take refuge behind the fact that a thing
is veracious. He may tell whatever he has the art to make appear true,
but the criterion of his success is the semblance of verity rather
than verity itself. Aristotle formulated all this long ago,--“Prefer
an impossibility which seems probable to a probability which seems
impossible.” The philosophy of the matter is that fiction is tried by
truth to the laws which lie behind fact, and that it is no less true
in being false than reality is in being true.
It is to be remembered, however, that probability is largely a matter
of consistency. There is always an implied hypothesis, a certain set
of conditions tacitly agreed to, by which the truth, or rather the
apparent truth, of any narrative is to be tried. If one is writing
history, the hypothesis calls for actual facts and things which really
occurred; if it is a novel which is in construction, actuality is no
longer demanded, but probability according to the time and place is
essential; an author may go farther by writing avowed romance, and
may put events impossible and improbable into the very midst of the
life of to-day, if he will but keep them consistent throughout. It is
a question of what the writer attempts to do. If he choose frankly to
cut loose from fact and write a fairy story, the hypothesis gives his
fancy range, and here it is the strict truth which must be shunned as a
violation of the implied conditions. In a number of folk tales we read
passages like this:--
Then the fox stretched out his tail, the king’s son seated himself
upon it, and away they went over stock and stone, so that the wind
whistled through their hair.
It would be manifestly a violation of the rules of fairy lore to say
instead:--
Then the fox stretched out his tail, and the king’s son tried to
seat himself upon it; but of course it would not support him, so
he rolled over in the mud.
To thrust facts upon the reader here is to depart from the standard.
When we sit down to read fairy tales we have tacitly consented to
believe the impossible, and upon this assumption fairy lore becomes, in
the happy phrase of Douglas Jerrold, “as true as sunbeams.”