EXECUTIVE TECHNIQUE OF NARRATION
Narration Method--Story of the Commonplace--Story of the
Bizarre--Vividness--Suspense--Emphasis and Suppression--
Matter of Weight--Expansion and Vividness--Primary and
Secondary Events--Transition--General Narration--Blending
of Elements.
The writer who has discovered a good plot, so that his interest will not
flag in writing, and who has fully developed the conception, so that he
can have a single eye to execution, will meet few obstacles in setting
down the whole story. Difficulties there will be in plenty, but they
will be self-imposed. That is to say, it will be very easy to give the
justly elaborated conception expression approximately adequate, but it
will be very hard to give the conception verbally faultless expression.
If the writer strives merely to tell the story, the labor of writing
will be slight; if he strives to write with artistry and power, it will
be infinitely great.
This book is on the technique of fiction writing, not on the technique
of writing; my aim is to discuss only the matters of technique peculiar
to the art of fiction. Thus, in this chapter I shall have occasion to
state that the important event should be emphasized, and that vividness
in narration is a means to that end, but how to narrate vividly is a
question of rhetoric generally, and it is not my purpose to discuss it.
Moreover, it is emphatically true that the capacity to narrate vividly
cannot be attained by the mere study of examples, the only way in which
the matter can be studied. The writer can only strive constantly in his
work to write with definition and force. It is all a matter of practice,
whether or not the capacity must be inborn. But the principle of fiction
technique, that the important event should be emphasized in some way,
whether by vividness or expansion, is subject to direct statement and to
assimulation from the direct statement. Therefore statement of the
principle is all that a work on fiction technique need attempt. The rest
lies with the writer himself.[I]
The first chapter on the executive technique of narration took up the
two preliminary problems of the mode of narration and of manner or
style; this second chapter has to do with certain other matters that
must be considered in writing a story, viewed as a chain of events.
Character, atmosphere, and dialogue will receive separate treatment, and
for discussion of the strict technique of expression the reader is
referred to works on rhetoric, except that in discussing the technique
of description in the next chapter I shall have occasion to touch upon
nicety of expression.
METHOD
The method of narration is necessarily influenced somewhat by the style
the writer of a story strives first to find and then to maintain, but
the style does not entirely determine the method, or the method the
style. The matters are distinct, though mutually influential.
There are two kinds of lives, or at least two kinds of incidents, the
humdrum and the bizarre. Likewise and consequently there are two kinds
of stories to be told, the humdrum and the bizarre. Each may be
fashioned into something worth while. Whether the matter of a story is
worth while depends on the significance of the phase of life involved;
whether the story itself is worth while depends on its plausibility or
verisimilitude, which depends on the way it is constructed and told.
The humdrum story, that deals with the more common actualities of life,
the little details that are significant only in combination or in
relation to certain characters, can be told as simply as the writer
desires. He has only to set down the succession of details that
constitutes the story. Each new incident will not only advance the
narrative progress of the story, but the commonplace nature of each
incident in itself will tend to give the fiction its necessary
plausibility. Simply because each incident is common and of universal
occurrence the reader will accept it and the story compounded of such
elements. Matter of fact phrasing, not phrasing too "literary" in spots,
is most suitable.[J] Such a story does not require high lights of
expression, and they should not be interpolated.
The story dealing with the strange and wonderful is another matter. In
writing it the author's aim is the same as in writing the commonplace
story, to give it plausibility and verisimilitude, but the task is
infinitely more difficult. Proper construction will aid greatly, and in
execution the writer has two resources.
The first is the method of Defoe, and consists in showing the reader the
strange course of events through a lattice of familiar thoughts and
things. It is an attempt to give the essentially bizarre story something
of the plausibility and power of the story of the commonplace by
interpolating universally familiar matters of detail. They are
unnecessary to the bare story, but they are useful to give the reader a
thread of connection between his own experience and the strange fiction.
The method is persuasive, and requires a high degree of craftsmanship to
employ well. Familiar and unfamiliar must be woven together with a
careful and skilful hand. And obviously it requires space. Examples are
Defoe's work--often cited--such as "Robinson Crusoe" or "A Journal of
the Plague Year," or Balzac's "Peau de Chagrin."
The second method to give to the strange and wonderful verisimilitude
and plausibility is not persuasive, but consists in writing with such
vividness, definition, and force that the verbal picture will be
accepted without question as visual evidence. Seeing is believing. In
fact, the more strange or wild any chain of events, the deeper their
impression on a reader, provided always that he be made to see them.
Obviously, to the use of this method the highest powers are necessary,
the power to select the salient and distinctive points of the thing to
be drawn, excising all superfluous matters, the power to choose the
exact and vivid word, and, finally, the power--more, seemingly, than
that of mere word-selection--to precipitate reality in words, one
sometimes manifested by works the diction of which is not particularly
dynamic. It is the method of Stevenson and Kipling, among others, and to
the author who can employ it no degree of novelty in the physical
conditions of a story is a deterrent. He can show the thing like a
painting or a stage scene, and his reader runs breathlessly with him,
caught up in the race of events. The method demands the highest
imaginative powers in the author, that he may actually see the matter he
is depicting, in detail and in the mass, and the highest executive
powers, that he may fix its living image with his pen.
This method to present the bizarre event with all the color and body of
reality--of course it may be employed in depicting the commonplace as
well, though expression of the commonplace should not be too
heightened--is the method of the severe literary artist, because it is
compatible with the most perfect unity and the greatest brevity. To
arouse emotion in a reader the writer must have something more than mere
color in his work, but to make a reader see anything it is only
necessary always to search for the right word, which is the word both
exact and dynamic. Yet if this is the sole condition, it is a doubly
hard one. The perfectly exact word is so elusive, and, when discovered,
it is so often lacking in the requisite force. Exactness is not enough;
the needful word is the one that not only will fit the author's vision,
but give it life; and it is here that figurative language finds its
office. "I saw a fleet," is exact. "I saw a hundred sail," is equally
exact, and much more vivid.
Vivid, direct writing, which does not depend on connection with his own
experience to hold the reader, is the most practicable narrative method
for use in the short story or novel of incident, that is, in the typical
fiction, where interest centers in the course of events. In other words,
it is the typical narrative method; the method of coaxing the reader
into believing the strange by showing it in juxtaposition with the
familiar is a variation from type. Narration consists in stating what
happened. If what happened was commonplace, the reader need only be told
it; if what happened was strange, the reader must be coaxed or forced to
believe it, and the writer must either coax him or narrate with such
vividness and power that the word will have the body and reality of the
fact.
SUSPENSE
The term suspense is often misused to characterize a quality of
narration supposed to result from the employment of some technical
device. What is meant, of course, is that a good story, involving real
people, justly related, will hold its reader's interest until the
denouement is reached. Suspense means continued interest, and can result
only from sound conception, careful elaboration, and adequate narration
of a story. The reader who is shown real people in an interesting
situation will be in a state of suspense through his curiosity and
desire to learn what happened next. There is no technical device to
create suspense, for suspense can result only from the worth of the
whole story. I mention the matter thus briefly on account of the misuse
of the term. If there is any technique to create suspense, it is the
technique to order a story's events in a climactic ascension, and is not
an executive device.
EMPHASIS AND SUPPRESSION
A story is made up of a succession of happenings, some of major and many
of minor importance, and in telling it the writer must emphasize the
most important events to impress their significance upon a reader. It
will not do to relate the whole, indiscriminately, with as much
vividness as the writer can command, for the fictional value of the
whole necessarily resides in the relation between its chief events, and
that relation can be made apparent only by showing them in high relief.
The most important events of a story must be emphasized; events of some
but not of controlling importance must not be stressed too much; and the
very trivial events, which are usually matter of transition, necessary
only to the mechanical progress of the story, should be suppressed by
narrating without detail and in general terms.
Fundamentally, emphasis and suppression are matters of weight, while
proportion is a matter of space. There is a real relation between
preserving proportion and laying emphasis, but it is accidental. When an
important event is somewhat complicated, as a love scene, proportion
requires that it be narrated in detail, for it would take some time to
happen in reality; and due emphasis will be secured by detailed
narration. But when an important event is inherently simple in character
and brief in the time it would take to happen, proportion requires that
it be given not too much space, while emphasis requires that it be
stressed. To stress such an event, the writer's sole recourse is
vividness in narration. The physical details are few, but they must be
made strikingly impressive. Where an event is essentially complicated,
a knot of many details, emphasis may be laid by detailed narration, by
expansion, and proportion will not be violated. In the case of the
important but inherently simple event there are no great number of
details to be marshalled on the page, and the writer can only strive to
invest his few words with power.
The writer should consider the matter of proportion in allotting the
space of a story before writing, as has been stated. In writing, the
mere fact that he follows events in detail with his pen will lead him to
emphasize by expansion, where the subject matter naturally calls for
that mode of securing emphasis. Where expansion is impossible on account
of the absence of details to be narrated, the writer's realization of
the importance of the event will lead him to cast about for the vivid
word. That is to say, in dealing with the important events of a story
the way to write is to visualize the procession of happenings and to
follow them with the pen in detail, seeking the vivid and emphatic word
where the event is vivid and emphatic. When the event is a bundle of
many details, setting them down will emphasize the episode by expansion;
and where the event is simple, and a mere detail in itself, as a blow,
vividness in narration will counterfeit the force of the episode.
Normally, the succession of chief events will take up the greater part
of the space available for a story, and, if the work of construction has
been done properly before writing, the writer will have his attention
free to visualize each successive happening and to picture it. The
difficulty will be to express perfectly. The process is natural. It
cannot be too strongly insisted that the way to write the strict story
part of a story is to strive to see the thing in imagination and to get
it on paper with the breath of life in it. By following his vision with
his pen the writer will take care of the matters of proportion and
emphasis without detached calculation looking to that end.
But that is not quite true in narrating secondary events and writing
general matter of transition, the part of a story that gives the main
events a natural sequence and proper spacing, or that develops
character. The main events exist only for the story; they are the story.
The secondary events and matter of transition exist largely for the sake
of the reader. Such events prepare the characters, for instance, that
the main situations may have true and full dramatic value to the reader,
while the general matter of transition serves to give the main events
spacing and the story plausibility. And in narrating secondary events,
and writing matter of transition, the writer cannot have an eye solely
to imagining the procession of little happenings and to reproducing them
in detail. If he wrote so they would bulk as large as the main events,
and the short story would fill a novel and the novel an encyclopaedia.
Instead, the writer must realize the reasons that led him to choose or
devise each secondary event while constructing the story, and must
narrate each minor event so that it will just perform its designed
function and no more. The major events of a story are primarily
significant, and it is sufficient to narrate them so as to counterfeit
them as they would be in reality. The minor events of a story are not
significant in themselves, but only in relation to something else, and
in narrating them the writer should develop only their significant
phases. They must be given reality and verisimilitude, but their aspects
and implications unimportant to the story should not be detailed and
thereby stressed. All aspects of the main events are to be detailed
simply because all aspects of the main events are important to the
story. They are the story.
The discussion is somewhat abstract and involved, but necessarily so.
The technique will be easier to practice than it sounds, much easier,
for instance, than to narrate the simple but important event with due
emphasis through vividness. That necessity is supremely easy to state or
realize, but supremely hard to meet in writing a story. The technique of
handling secondary events and matter of transition is hard to state
abstractly and to grasp from mere discussion, but when it is grasped it
is comparatively easy to apply in writing, for it calls for no executive
power, merely the negative power to leave out the insignificant.
It will be seen that the process of narrating the minor events of a
story is not natural, but highly artificial. The process of narrating
the main events is natural; it consists merely in imagining and
reproducing them with as much body and color as possible. Where
undivided attention to phrasing is most essential, the writer can give
it; where it is least essential, in setting out a minor event, the
writer must give much attention to what aspects of the episode he should
emphasize. He cannot reproduce it in full detail simply for what it is
in itself. Just narration of secondary episodes and transitional
passages is a matter of calculation; just narration of the more
important events of a story is a matter of warm creation and verbal
power.
TRANSITION
In a sense, all events of a story may be said to have a primary value,
for an event is at least a happening and has some interest for a reader.
But the people of a story must be carried on from event to event, major
or minor, and the story with them. The necessity causes the insertion of
transitional matter in any story that has more than a single episode.
Transitional matter has no capacity to evoke interest in itself, unless
it be so detailed as to form a succession of petty happenings, in which
case it ceases to be strictly transitional. Therefore it should be
gotten over with as quickly as possible. The writer should narrate in
general terms, as has been stated in discussing proportion, the only end
being to forward the mechanical progress of the story. No emphasis need
be laid on such matter. A frequent fault in beginning writers is lack of
capacity to pass from one event to another smoothly and swiftly. Many
seem unable to step from detailed to general narration where the story
demands it, and as a result their stories lose interest. The details of
important events are the breath of life to a story, but details without
fictional purpose only clog the action and discourage the reader's
interest. Matter of transition should be handled as swiftly as can be
done without rendering the whole story jerky and unbalanced. It may be
noted that transitional matter on the lips of a narrating character can
be given piquancy and made interesting in itself, like introductory
matter.
Often transitional matter may be entirely omitted. Thus Maupassant, in
"The Necklace," does not attempt to make the story an unbroken
chronological progression. The nature of each particular story
determines its content, of course, and where matter of transition is
necessary or desirable the writer should realize its nature and handle
it accordingly.
BLENDING OF ELEMENTS
Each story has two primary fictional elements, the people and the
events, but it has three mechanical elements, the action, the speech of
the characters, and the matter descriptive of persons or places. And
while each tale is unique, and any one of these mechanical elements may
largely preponderate over the others, nevertheless the normal fiction
will devote a substantial amount of space to each. If the story
permits--a proviso implied in discussing any matter of technique--it
will be well for the writer to strive to distribute and intermingle its
action, dialogue, and descriptive matter in a texture pleasing because
varied. The whole should not be built of unwieldy chunks of description,
speech, and action succeeding one another with monotonous regularity,
but descriptive touches should be intermingled with the dialogue, and
narrative matter with word-painting and the speech of characters.
Obviously this is no absolute rule, and is perhaps not ever a matter of
strict art, but it is true that a reader quickly wearies of much of the
same thing, and a story is for its reader. Moreover, a story as a whole
will gain in verisimilitude by judicious distribution of its mechanical
elements. The matter is merely another phase of the necessity to give a
fiction the seeming of life, and should not be neglected, the more so
because it is easy and a mechanical matter. The beginner can afford to
neglect no chance for success.
FOOTNOTES:
[I] In connection with the subject of vivid narration of an important
event I might illustrate the text by brief quotation. Unlike matters of
construction, matters of strict execution can be shown by pungent
quotation. The question is not whether it is possible, but whether it is
useful. Take this sentence from Stevenson's "Kidnapped": "His sword
flashed like quicksilver into the huddle of his fleeing enemies." It is
perfectly descriptive, alive as the sword was alive in the hand of Alan
Breck. But no one by reading it can learn to write like it, a capacity
to be gained only by long and arduous practice, such as Stevenson's. A
good many books on technique have more quotation than text, and while
free quotation lends a superficial weight to the whole, it is not of
much practical use to one seeking to learn how to write. His own reading
will offer him examples in plenty, and the most or even the only useful
thing a work on technique can do for him is to state the principles he
should try to follow in his own work.
[J] I once read a story in manuscript wherein a character related a
commonplace tale of woe to another, with the result that the other's
eyes "glistened with hot tears." Not only has the expression been worked
to death, so that it has no primary freshness for a reader, but it is
too artificial and strained for a story of the commonplace.