[Sidenote: The art of writing a short story]
The art of writing a short story is like the art of managing a small
allowance. It requires the same care, self-restraint, and ingenuity,
and, like the small allowance, it affords excellent practice for the
beginner, as by the very limitations it imposes on her ambition, it
preserves her from errors of judgment and tastes into which she might
be hurried by fancy or fashion.
[Sidenote: What to avoid]
There are many things lawful, if not expedient, in the three-volume
novel that in the short story are forbidden—moralising, for instance,
or comments of any kind, personal confidences or confessions. These can
indeed be made so entrancing that the narrative itself may be willingly
foregone. The wit of a Thackeray, the wisdom of a George Eliot, has
done as much: but these gifts are rare, so rare that the beginner will
do well to assume that she has them not, and to stick fast to her
story, especially if it be a short one; since on that tiny stage where
there is hardly room for the puppets and their manœuvres, there is
plainly no space for the wire-puller.
[Sidenote: Explanations]
Even more cheerfully may be renounced those dreary addenda called
explanations. Nowhere in a story can they possibly be welcome. At the
end they would be preposterous; at the beginning they scare away the
reader; in the middle they exasperate him. Who does not know the chill
of disappointment with which, having finished one lively and promising
chapter, one reads at the beginning of the next, “And now we must
retrace our steps a little to explain,” or words to the same depressing
effect? Explain what?—the situation? That should have explained itself.
Or the relation of the actors? A word or two in the dialogue might
do as much. More I, as the reader, do not wish to learn. I am fully
interested, I am caught in the current of the tale, I am burning to
know if the hero recovered, if the heroine forgave, if the parents at
last consented: I am in no mood to listen to a _précis_—for it is never
more—of the past events that prepared this dilemma, or of the legal,
financial, or genealogical complications by which it is prolonged. With
these dry details the author may do well to be acquainted, for the due
direction and confirmation of his plot; but the reader has nothing
to do with them, and in a work of art they are as needless and as
unsightly as the scaffolding round a completed building, or the tacking
threads in a piece of finished needlework.
[Sidenote: Redundancy]
Equally incompatible with the short story is that fertile source of
tedium, redundancy. “The secret of being wearisome,” says the French
proverb, “is to tell everything.” What then is the end of those who
tell not merely everything, but—if an Irish turn of expression may
be permitted—a great deal more? It is to encourage the practice of
skipping in the general reader, and—much to the detriment of more
parsimonious writers—in the reviewers as well. A large number of novels
picturesquely described as weak and washy, might be converted into very
readable stories by the simple process of leaving out about two volumes
and a half of entirely superfluous and unentertaining matter.
[Sidenote: “Phillup Bosch.”]
On the staff of an amateur magazine to which in early youth the writer
contributed, there was one most obliging and useful member whose
business it was to provide “copy” for the odd corners and inevitable
spaces between the more important papers. He wrote, you will observe,
not because he had anything in the world to say or tell, but because a
certain amount of space must at all costs be covered; and the effusions
thus inspired he signed with the modest and appropriate pseudonym of
“Phillup Bosch.” How often in fiction of a certain class may even
now be recognised the handiwork of this industrious writer, always
unsigned, indeed, at least by the old familiar name. The sparkle of
his early touch is gone, but his unmistakable purpose is the same.
The glamour of “auld lang syne” may to his old friends endear these
interpolations, but from a literary point of view it is much to be
desired that he would lay aside his pen for ever. And yet it must
be acknowledged that without his aid there are three-volume novels
that could never have been written. Fortunately, the short story is
independent of him.
[Sidenote: Disadvantages]
The disadvantages of the short story become more distinct when we
consider its possible theme. The crowded stage and wide perspective of
the novel proper; all transformations of character and circumstance in
which length of time is an essential element; even the intricately
tangled plot, deliberately and knot by knot unfolded—these are beyond
its reach. The design of the short story must itself be short—and
simple. A single, not too complicated, incident is best; in short, the
one entire and perfect action, that Aristotle—I quote from Buckley’s
translation—considered the best subject of fable or poem. To the
writer might well be repeated the stage-manager’s advice to aspiring
dramatists, quoted by Coppée in his _Contes en Prose_:
“If they come to me with their plays when I am at breakfast, I
say—‘Look here, can you tell me the plot in the time it takes me to eat
this boiled egg? If not—away with it—it is useless.’” The author of a
short story submitted to the same kind of test would have to be even
more expeditious.
[Sidenote: The art of omission]
It may be observed that all these suggestions are of a negative order,
and concerned with “the tact of omission.” It is indeed of the first
importance in the composition of the short story. As a famous etcher
once said to the writer while she stood entranced before a study of
river, trees, and cattle, that his magic touch had converted into a
very poem, an exquisite picture of pastoral repose—“The great thing
is to know what to leave out.” It is part of that economy already
insisted upon, “to express only the characteristic traits of succeeding
actions,” and, as Mr. Besant exhorts us, to suppress “all descriptions
which hinder instead of helping the action, all episodes of whatever
kind, all conversation which does not either advance the story or
illustrate the characters.”
[Sidenote: Grasp of point]
[Sidenote: Dramatic instinct]
How this “essential and characteristic” is to be distinguished from
all around it is another matter. It is a work that a great French
master of the art described as a _travail acharné_. But it is also very
often made easy by native instinct, like that which directs these born
story-tellers—their name is legion—of both sexes and all conditions,
who never put pen to paper, but who in hall or cottage, drawing-room
or kitchen, nursery or smoking-room, whenever they unfold a tale, hold
all their audience attentive and engrossed. Their method when analysed
appears to chiefly depend, first on their firm grasp of the main point
and purport of their story, next on their liberal use of dialogue in
the telling of it. At least thus do the listeners to one enchanting
story-teller endeavour to explain the dramatic flavour she imparted to
the commonest incidents of domestic life. For instance, this is what
she would have made of a theme so ungrateful as the fact that, the
butcher having sent too large a joint, she had returned it to him. For
the benefit of inexperienced housekeepers, it is perhaps as well to
explain that a fair average weight for a leg of mutton is declared by
experts to be nine pounds.
“Directly I went into the larder, I said, ‘Jane, what on earth is that?’
“‘Why, ma’am,’ she said, ‘it is the leg of mutton you ordered.’
“‘What!’ I said, ‘the _small_ leg of mutton? Where is the ticket?’
“‘Please, ma’am, the butcher’s boy has not brought it.’
“I said, ‘Tell him to come into the kitchen.’
“When he came I made her weigh that leg of mutton before him. It
weighed eleven pounds four ounces!
“I said, ‘Take that back to your master, and ask him from me if he
calls that a _small_ leg of mutton?’”
The expression, the intonation, and the, at times, almost tragic
emphasis, it is, unfortunately, impossible to reproduce; but even
in this colourless record we may admire the terseness and vigour,
the masterly beginning that at once arouses curiosity, and the truly
artistic reserve that does not by outcry or comment detract from the
force of the climax! Consider, too, how in some hands this simple tale
might have been embroidered and interrupted: by description of the
scenery outside the kitchen-window; by a minute account of the lady’s
family and connections, or of the previous history of the cook; by a
dissertation on joints in general and the story-teller’s favourite
dishes in particular, with other digressions too numerous to mention;
and by comparison you may divine what constitutes “the characteristic”
of a story.
[Sidenote: Points to aim at]
If now, seriously speaking, you review the tablets of your memory
and mark the scenes imprinted there, you will see that whereas some
figures, incidents, speeches, and even details of the background
are vivid as ever, others have vanished away. Again, you will find
that a conversation may be often best reported, in fidelity to the
spirit rather than the word, by suppressing all the repetitions and
superfluous phrases that encumbered the actual dialogue. Lastly, if
you attentively consider the character of some one you know and
understand, you may discover that it is revealed and epitomised in
certain particular words and actions, and that by repeating these you
might present a much more striking portrait of the original than by
a lengthy memoir of all that he, or she, did and said in common with
other people. Thus from your own experience you may gather useful hints
as to the kind of condensation desirable for the short story. Others
may, and ought to, be acquired by the study of the best literature;
but in this, as in every form of creative work, the artist, in the
beginning as at the end, must draw his chief inspiration from life
itself.
[Sidenote: Literary capabilities]
There is one thing that the shortest story does not exclude, and that
is the highest artistic ambition. That the length of any work can be
no measure of its importance or effect is best illustrated by such
masterpieces as the minor poems of Milton, Wordsworth, Shelley, or
Tennyson. The literary capabilities of the short story, still in its
infancy, have yet to be discovered, probably by the very generation of
those to whom this paper is especially addressed. Therefore one must
the more earnestly entreat them to cherish the highest aims in their
writing, to lavish on it the greatest care. Nowhere can “signs of
weariness, of haste, in fact of scamping,” be so inexcusable as on the
miniature canvas, or ivory, of the short story. Rather it deserves the
finish of the finest cameo, of the most highly polished gem.
Finally, with that uncomfortable feeling that is apt to overtake one
after preaching, the writer is obliged to confess that all this advice
is easier to give than to follow, and concludes with the wish that her
young readers may
“Better reck the rede
Than ever did the adviser.”