settle. If the story is dominated by one character, and particularly if
it is a genuine _Character Study_, the writer naturally feels that he
cannot do better than to name it after the character it depicts; and he
has good authority for so doing in the example of Poe ("Berenice,"
"Elenora," "Morella"), Hawthorne ("Sylph Etherege," "Ethan Brand,"
"Wakefield"), Irving ("Wolfert Webber," "Rip Van Winkle"), James ("Sir
Dominic Ferrand," "Nona Vincent," "Greville Fane"), Stevenson ("Olalla,"
"Thrawn Janet," "Markheim"), Wilkins ("Louisa"), Davis ("Gallegher,"
"Cinderella"), Kipling ("Lispeth," "Namgay Doola"), etc., etc. A good
rule to observe would be this: If the name of the chief personage gives
a hint of character, or if it is sufficiently unusual to attract
attention, it may be used as a title; but in general it will be stronger
if used in combination.
In the endeavor to make his title distinctive and attractive the
novice is liable to fall into the error of making it cheap and
sensational. A title which offends against good taste must not be
used, no matter how desirable it may appear in the matter of
attractiveness. The newspaper caption writer who headed an account
of a hanging "Jerked to Jesus!" attained the acme of attractiveness,
but he also committed an unpardonable sin against good taste. The
short story writer seldom descends to such depths of sensationalism:
his chief offense consists in the use of double titles, connected by
the word "or." Often either title alone would be passable, if not
really good; but their united form must be placed in the category of
bad titles. Such titles are rated as bad chiefly through the effects
of association. It used to be common for a story to bear a double
title; but to-day the custom has been relegated to the cheap,
sensational tale of the "penny dreadful" order, and the conjunctive
title is a recognized mark of "yellow" literature. This fault in a
title can usually be corrected by the use of either of the titles
alone, as may be seen from a study of the following:
(1) "The Story of Dora; or, Innocence Triumphant."
(2) "Jessie Redmond; or, The Spider and the Fly."
(3) "Outwitted; or, The Holdup of No. 4."
(4) "The Battle of the Black Cats; or, A Tragedy Played with
Twenty Thousand Actors and Only One Spectator."
(5) "Fate; or, Legend of 'Say Au Revoir, but not Goodbye.'"
(6) "The Romance of a Lost Mine; or, The Curse of the Navajos."
(7) "A Little Bunch of Rosebuds; or, Two Normal Graduates."
(8) "Her Silk Quilt; or, On the Crest of the Wave."
(1) Neither part is particularly happy. "The Story of Dora" is too
general, and conveys an idea of largeness and time that is better suited
to the novel than to the short story; "Innocence Triumphant" is cheap,
sensational and trite. (2) "Jessie Redmond" is too commonplace a name to
be a good head line; "The Spider and the Fly" was worn out years ago.
(3) Either title alone is good; "The Holdup of No. 4" is preferable
because of its definiteness. (4) "The Battle of the Black Cats" alone
would pass, in spite of its hint of sensationalism; but the second part
is of course ludicrously impossible. (5) "Fate" is too indefinite; the
second title is cheap and old. (6) Either would do, though the first is
somewhat vague, and "Curse" savors of sensationalism. (7) Either would
do, though the first sounds rather silly. (8) The first is good; the
second is vague and rather old.
That a title should be new is so obvious that offenses against this
rule are usually unconscious; yet in some cases stories have been
capped with stolen headings, where the theft was so apparently
intentional that it seemed as if the writer wished to fail. Lapses in
this regard are usually due to the writer's ignorance of the value of
a title; or to the too ready use of the abstract theme, as mentioned
before. Of such titles are "All's Well that Ends Well," "Love's Labor
Lost," and "The Irony of Fate," all of which are great favorites with
the beginner. Like charity, they will cover a multitude of sins, but
they constitute so great a literary sin in themselves that they
should be rigorously eschewed. To this class belongs also such a
title as "Cuba Libre!" which is so very old, and which during the
last few years has been so twisted and mishandled in every
conceivable way that its mere use is an irritation. Such a title will
frequently be apt, specific, attractive, and, in application, new;
but it will so exasperate the reader that its use will be perilous.
For self-evident reasons the title should be short. Aptness and
specificness do not require an epitome of the story; and a title like
"Why Tom Changed His Opinion of Me," or "What the Rabbit Drive Did
for Me" is prosy as well as long. It used to be the custom to make
the title of a writing a regular synopsis of the matter contained
therein; but modern readers object to being told in advance exactly
what is to happen. No ruling concerning the proper length of a short
story title is possible; but generally speaking, the shorter the
title the better it is. Compound titles connected by "or," like those
previously mentioned, are as offensive in their length as in their
sensationalism.
To illustrate further these several points I introduce here a few good
titles used by successful short story writers. They are roughly divided
into three classes according to their derivation. The title may be the
text of the story:
Edgeworth: "Murad the Unlucky."
Hawthorne: "The Wedding Knell;" "The Prophetic Pictures."
James: "The Real Thing;" "The Lesson of the Master."
Poe: "The Masque of the Red Death;" "'Thou Art the Man!'"
Stockton: "The Transferred Ghost."
Wilkins: "The Revolt of Mother;" "Two Old Lovers."
The title may represent the principal character by name or by some apt
appellation:
Davis: "Gallegher."
Hawthorne: "The Ambitious Guest;" "Feathertop."
Irving: "The Spectre Bridegroom;" "Rip Van Winkle."
Poe: "Morella;" "Ligeia."
Stevenson: "Markheim."
Wilkins: "A Modern Dragon;" "A Kitchen Colonel."
The title may mention the principal object:
Adee: "The Life Magnet."
Burnett: "The Spider's Eye."
Hawthorne: "The Great Stone Face;" "The Great Carbuncle."
James: "The Aspern Papers."
Kipling: "The Phantom Rickshaw."
Poe: "The Black Cat;" "The Gold Bug."
Stevenson: "The Bottle Imp."
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 18: "Literary Chat." _Munsey's Magazine._ May, '98.]
[Footnote 19: "Misleading Titles of Books," by William Mathews. _The
Saturday Evening Post._ Apr. 21, 1900.]
V
THE USE OF FACTS
All fiction is founded upon fact, for the boldest imagination must have
some definite point from which to take its flight; but the ungarnished
truth is seldom literature in itself, though it may offer excellent
material for literary embellishment. The amateur, content with knowing
that he is recounting what did actually happen, falls into the most
inartistic ways, because he does not understand that facts are properly
only crude material for the fictionist.
The one place where the average short story writer should _not_ seek
his material is the world of literature. Almost from the time when
men first began to dabble in letters they have drawn on their
predecessors for their subject matter; but this practice has produced
a deal of unconscious plagiarism, which is responsible for most of
the conventional and stereotyped stories with which we are afflicted
to-day. Of any one hundred average stories submitted for sale,
probably seventy-five are damned by their hopelessly hackneyed
conception and treatment; and they suffer because the writer, reading
some attractive story built upon a similar plot, has attempted to go
and do likewise, and has unconsciously used all the conventional
parts while omitting the essential individuality.
It is safe for the novice to go only to the world for literary material.
The matter so obtained will be intrinsically the same as that gained
from the writings of others, but the fact that you get your information
through your own senses will considerably obviate the danger of adopting
the conventional view in the matter. I do not mean to say that you
should deliberately set out to search for new types and incidents as
Dickens did, though I would certainly commend such a course; I mean
rather that you should be content to write of what you personally and
intimately know, and not attempt to treat of matters of which you have
only a vague superficial knowledge, or of which you are totally
ignorant. Excellent stories have been written by men who were personally
unacquainted with the matters with which they dealt, but they were in
every case masters of their art, who knew how to gain and use
second-hand information and how to supplement insufficient data with
literary skill.
Too many novices have the mistaken idea that only those things which are
dim and distant are fit for artistic treatment. They have not cultivated
their powers of perception, and have failed to grasp the truth that
human nature is in most respects the same the world over, and that
persons and places, apparently the most ordinary, have stories to tell.
Before Mary E. Wilkins began to write her New England tales few thought
to look to those bleak hills and commonplace people for literary
material; and doubtless many New Englanders, feeling the impulse to
write, viewed with scorn their unpoetic surroundings and longed for the
glamour of some half-guessed clime; Miss Wilkins, appreciating her
environment, won fame and fortune through her truthful depictions of
those things which others, equally able to write but less able to see,
had despised.
It is a common trick of aspiring writers to locate their stories in
England, to speak proudly but uncertainly of grand estates, noble
castles, and haughty lords and ladies, and to make mistakes which would
be ridiculous were they not so inexcusable. There is a certain
half-feudal glamour about England yet which appeals strongly to the
callow author: it lends that rosy haze of romance and unreality which is
popularly associated with fiction; but it was long ago done to death by
mediocre writers and laughed out of good literary society, and to-day
America will not suffer any such hackneyed fol-de-rol.
Similarly the amateur will locate his story in the "best" society of
some American metropolis, when he has never been out of his native
village, and knows nothing of the class with which he deals except
through the society column of his newspaper. Therefore he will of course
"fall flat when he attempts to delineate manners. It is too evident that
he has not had the _entree_ to the circle he would describe: his
gentlemen commit too many blunders, his ladies are from the wrong side
of the town, the love-passages are silly and vulgar, the whole result is
stupid and offensive--to those who know. The thing hopelessly lacks
tone; it might pass below stairs, but not in the drawing-room."[20] It
is not only those of wealth and leisure who are eligible for literary
purposes; indeed, their lives, apparently so gay and exciting, are often
a dull and regular series of attempts to kill the dawdling time. If the
young writer would look into the lives of his own simple neighbors he
would find much better matter for his intended stories.
Again, the novice, in his search for something different, will place his
tale in the dim and distant past, when all men were brave and all women
lovely; and in so doing will expose himself to ridicule and contempt for
his evident ignorance of the matters of which he pretends to treat. It
is very probable that any age seems dull and commonplace to those who
live in it, for "familiarity breeds contempt" for almost anything; but
though we of to-day have no valiant knights, armed cap-a-pie, riding
forth to the jousts to do battle for their ladies fair, we have men just
as brave and deeds fully as valorous and far more sensible; and the
world is, and always will be, full of noble and romantic and marvelous
things.
If, however, you feel that you must write of times and scenes and
peoples which are either past or foreign, it is your first duty to
inform yourself to the best of your ability concerning them. I do not
believe that any writer can successfully locate his story in a foreign
country unless he has personal knowledge of the scenes and persons
that he describes, or unless he is thoroughly versed in the language
and literature of the country--and in the latter case he would
probably be too pedantic to write readable stories. At first thought
it does not seem so difficult to handle English subjects, for there we
have the advantage of a common language and, to a considerable extent,
of common racial traits; but even that common language, as spoken on
the other side of the Atlantic, has an every-day vocabulary differing
from ours, and the English government and social system present
difficulties almost insurmountable to one who cannot study them face
to face. In dealing with themes of the past there is more opportunity.
There we are all on the common ground of an absolute dependence on
such books as may preserve for us pictures of those times, and
complete information--complete, at least, in the sense that no one
knows more--can be had at the price of a certain number of hours of
painstaking study. If, then, you desire to write of the days that are
gone, see to it that you first thoroughly acquaint yourself with the
history of those times. There are few towns too small to possess a
library, and few libraries too small to contain such historical books
as you may need.
In these days when all things come to Mohamet, the writer may gain a
valuable though impersonal insight into the world at large through
the medium of the public press. The newspapers of to-day are full of
incipient plots, needing only the skillful pen to make them
literature. Reporters go everywhere and see everything, and they
place the result of their multifarious labors in your hands every
morning. They recount actual happenings accurately enough for
literary purposes, they strain for the unusual side of things, and
their purpose is too different from yours to make you liable to the
charge of plagiarism if you rework their material. The receptive
perusal of any newspaper ought to furnish the reader with a fresh
stock of literary material. Such matter is particularly valuable to
the short story writer because of the present and ever increasing
demand for stories of the day, plots, characters, situations, and
local color for which may be culled from any newspaper.
But short story writing is an art, and all facts may not be capable of
literary treatment. "Even actual occurrences may be improper subjects
for fiction. Nature can take liberties with facts that art dare not--a
truth that has passed into a proverb.... Art may fill us with anger,
fear, terror, awe, but the moment it condescends to excite disgust, it
passes out of the realm of art."[21] "There seems no reason why the
artist should not choose any subject, if the production itself
contributes to the satisfaction of the world, making a picture of life,
or of a phase of life, in compliance with the demands of art, beauty,
and truth. Taste is the arbiter of the subject, for taste is always
moral, always on the side of the angels. There are certain things which
are only subjects for technical reform, for the sanitary inspector, and
for the physician--not for the novelist."[22] "The carnage of a
battle-field, the wrecked café or theatre after dynamite has done its
work, had best be handled sparingly.... A good many things that happen
on this planet are not good subjects for art: the pathetic (within
limits) is always in order, but not the shocking. Moral are worse than
physical horrors."[23] "Even genius may waste itself on an unmanageable
theme; it cannot make the cleaning of fish interesting, nor the slums
of New York or Paris attractive."[24]
It is rare indeed that a fact can be used without embellishment. Mere
facts are frequently most unliterary, though they may be susceptible
of a high literary polish. The sub-title "A True Story," which young
writers think so valuable a part of the tale, is too often the
trademark of an unreadable mess of conventional people, ordinary
incidents and commonplace conversation. We find few genuinely true
stories, and when we do find them we seldom care to read them
through. I have read many stories which I knew to be literally true,
because they contained so much of the hackneyed and the irrelevant.
Life itself is a very conventional affair; it abounds with dull
events and stupid people; and for that reason alone fiction would
demand something out of the common. Commonplace persons and
commonplace things do appear in literature, but they must have
something more than their commonplaceness to recommend them.
"The novice in story telling ... has heard that truth is stranger than
fiction, and supposes that the more truth he can get into his tale the
stronger and more effective it will be.... Truth, _i. e._, reality, is
very seldom strange; it is usually tame and flat and commonplace; and
when it is strange it is apt to be grotesque and repulsive. Most of the
experiences of daily life afford material only for a chronicle of
dulness; and most of the 'strange' or unusual happenings had better be
left to the newspaper and the records of the police courts. This
statement may be strengthened. Does not the able reporter select and
decorate his facts, suppressing some, emphasizing others, arranging his
'story' with reference to picturesqueness and effect?
"In other words, verisimilitude, not verity, is wanted in fiction. The
observer notes his facts, and then the artist seizes on the ideas behind
them, the types they represent, the spiritual substances they embody.
The result, when all goes well, is as lifelike as life itself, though it
is not a copy of anything (in detail) that really lives.... The budding
writer of fictitious tales must be familiar with facts, at least in his
own range: he must know life and nature, or his work is naught. But when
he has this knowledge, he must put the facts in the background of his
mind.... Real incidents, dragged against their will into an (alleged)
imaginary narrative, are apt by no means to improve it, but to sound as
'flat and untunable' as our own praises from our own mouths."[25]
"There must be no misconception about great fiction being a transcript
of life. Mere transcription is not the work of an artist, else we should
have no need of painters, for photographers would do; no poems, for
academical essays would do; no great works of fiction, for we have our
usual sources of information--if information is all we want--the Divorce
Court, the Police Court, the Stock Exchange, the Young Ladies' Seminary,
the Marriage Register, and the House of Parliament--those happy
hunting-grounds of sensation-mongers and purveyors of melodrama. All
these things certainly contain the facts of life which one must know for
the constructive work of the imagination, for they are the rough
material, the background of knowledge from which the illusion of real
life must proceed. But they are not life, though they are the
transcription of life. The human significance of facts is all that
concerns one. The inwardness of facts makes fiction; the history of
life, its emotions, its passions, its sins, reflections, values. These
you cannot photograph nor transcribe. Selection and rejection are two
profound essentials of every art, even of the art of fiction, though it
be so jauntily practised by the amateur."[26]
And even if the facts which you purpose to use are of undoubted value
for artistic treatment, there may be other reasons which make their
use questionable. In the first place, people do not really prefer
truth to fiction. They require plausibility, but they are all too
familiar with life themselves, and in the idle hours in which they
turn to fiction they desire to be lifted out of reality into the
higher realm of fancy. Nor will they, even in the form of fiction,
tolerate what seems like too gross an invasion of the privacy of the
home, or the sanctity of the soul of a man. They must always feel
vaguely that the suffering characters are really only puppets created
for their amusement, or their pity for the characters will develop
into anger and disgust for the author.
In using facts, then, the first thing to learn is what to suppress and
what to elaborate, and that involves that most necessary possession of
the story teller, a sense of proportion. Because a conversation about
the weather occupies two dull people for ten minutes is no reason that
it should receive an equal number of pages; and because an important
event is almost instantaneous is no excuse for passing it with a single
line. Again, the fact that you are relating what actually occurred does
not relieve you of the necessity of making it plausible. Painters
acknowledge that there are color combinations in nature which they dare
not reproduce, lest they be dubbed unnatural; and similarly things exist
which the writer may present only after he has most carefully prepared
the way for their credence. The truth is that we have declared that even
nature shall conform to certain conventions, and we reject as impossible
any deviations from our preconceived ideas.
The facts upon which Hawthorne built "The Ambitious Guest" are
these:--The White Hills of which he speaks (¶ 1) are the famous White
Mountains of New Hampshire; the Notch (¶ 1) is the real name of a real
mountain pass, which is just as he describes it; the Flume (¶ 22) is a
waterfall not far from the Notch; the valley of the Saco (¶ 1) is really
where he places it. The references to Portland (¶ 3), Bartlett (¶ 5),
Burlington (¶ 7), Bethlehem and Littleton (¶ 18) are all references to
real places in the vicinity. At the point where Hawthorne locates his
story there actually was a mountain tavern called the Willey House, and
a modern inn stands on the spot to-day. Concerning the catastrophe which
he describes I found the following account:
"Some time in June--before the great 'slide' in August,
1826--there came a great storm, and the old veteran, Abel
Crawford, coming down the Notch, noticed the trees slipping
down, standing upright, and, as he was passing Mr. Willey's he
called and informed him of the wonderful fact. Immediately, in a
less exposed place, Mr. Willey prepared a shelter to which to
flee in case of immediate danger; and in the night of August
28th, that year, he was, with his family, awakened by the
thundering crash of the coming avalanche. Attempting to escape,
that family, nine in number, rushed from the house and were
overtaken and buried alive under a vast pile of rocks, earth,
trees and water. By a remarkable circumstance the house remained
uninjured, as the slide divided about four rods back of the
house (against a high flat rock), and came down on either side
with overwhelming power."[27]
The book goes on to state further that the family consisted of the
father and mother, five children--the eldest a girl of thirteen--and two
hired men. The bodies of the parents, the oldest and youngest children,
and the two hired men were found.
It is probable that Hawthorne derived his information from the
newspapers, though he may have heard the story by word of mouth, for
there is little doubt that he actually visited the spot where the
catastrophe occurred. But the bald facts of the case, however gained,
are essentially as we have them here, and that is sufficient for our
purpose.