Broad Beans." Speaking of blight, the writer says: "I would not presume
to dictate to the experienced gardener, who doubtless has his own method
of dealing with the black blight that is so common on these plants; but
for the benefit of the novice I would say that, personally, I always
find it a good plan to nip off the tops of the beans so soon as the
black fly appears. And, failing a better plan, the amateur might try
this."
Articles written in this strain are fairly common, and are often the
outcome of modesty on the part of a writer who does not wish to appear
too dogmatic, or "to take too much upon himself." But from the utility
point of view they are poor stuff, and are suffering as much from
"blight" as the unfortunate beans, since each statement seems to be
disparaged in some way by the over-diffident author!
Either the remedy suggested for the black fly _is_ a remedy, or it
isn't. If it is a remedy, then it is as applicable to the bean owned by
the experienced gardener as to the one owned by the novice. In short--if
it be advantageous to nip off the tops of blighted broad beans, the
writer should have said so in simple English, without apologising for
his temerity in making the statement, and thereby discounting all he
says.
[Sidenote: Ambiguity must not be Allowed to Pass]
Aim at writing with accuracy, clearness and precision. Ambiguity should
never be allowed to pass. Any sentence that you feel to be in the
slightest degree uncertain, or obscure, as to meaning should be reworded
so as to leave no doubt whatever as to your meaning.
If, on re-reading your article, you are not quite sure what you meant
when you wrote any passage, take it out altogether. Do not leave it in
to puzzle the reader, even though you add a footnote--as Ruskin
did--explaining that you have no idea what you meant when you wrote it.
In order to avoid an ambiguous style, two things are necessary: the
ability to think clearly and concisely, and the ability to write down
exactly what one thinks.
[Sidenote: The Subject Should Regulate the Choice of Words]
The choice of words should be influenced by the subject of your writing.
A dignified subject calls for dignified language. A racy subject calls
for racy language; and so on.
If your theme be a lofty one, do not "let down" the train of lofty
thought it should engender, by introducing some word or phrase that
induces a much lower--or a different--plane of thought and ideas. It is
a backward policy, to say the least of it, to weaken, or obliterate, by
ill-chosen language, the ideas you set out to foster in the reader. It
is no extenuation to plead that the jarring phrase is particularly
expressive; if it actually counteracts the ideas you seek to convey, it
cannot be expressing your meaning.
The beginner often gets himself tied up in a knot with negatives; and
even if he steer clear of actual error, he is apt to overdo himself with
double negatives. It is better to make a direct statement in the
affirmative if possible, than to involve it in negatives.
Instead of saying "a not uncommon fault," it is clearer at first sight
if you say "a common fault," or "a fairly common fault." I know it does
not always follow that the exact reverse fulfils the purpose of the
double negative; a fault may be "not uncommon" and yet not exactly
common. Nevertheless it is always possible to get the precise shade of
meaning in the affirmative; and until a writer is quite fluent, it is
better not to risk confusing the reader's mind by the introduction of
too many negatives.
[Sidenote: The Tendency to Use Involved Sentences]
In the praiseworthy desire to use fine English, the beginner is very apt
to get a sentence such a mixed-up maze of words that there seems little
hope of the meaning ever getting out alive at the other end!
I take this from a MS. just to hand:--
"Not that her parents would have entirely agreed with the supposition
that there might have been that in his character which, had he not felt
himself unequal to the task which affected him not a little in its
apparent issue, even though actually simple in its ultimate object, it
would have been possible for him to utilise to such an extent that he
might not have entirely disappointed their none too sanguine estimate
of his ability."
I admit that all amateurs do not rise to such cloud-wrapped heights; but
many are nearly as bad!
Then, again, I have known the idea the author had in view when he
started a paragraph, to get lost half-way through! This is due to the
fact that the mind has not been trained to sustain consecutive thinking,
but is permitted to veer round to all points of the compass like a
weather-cock.
[Sidenote: "Every Why hath a Wherefore"]
If you enunciate a problem, see that you give the solution. If you start
to elucidate some theory (or the reader is led to believe that you are
going to elucidate it), do not forget all about it, and switch off to
something else.
If you have no solution to offer, it is wiser and more satisfactory, as
a general rule, not to put forward a problem at the close. A sense of
incompleteness--or of something still awaiting fulfilment--is as
disastrous to the success of an article as it is to the success of a
book.
[Sidenote: Undesirables]
Beware of labouring a thought. If your point is only a slight one, do
not reiterate it in various forms or over-embellish it.
If no big idea lies behind your sentences, no amount of impressive,
ornate language will make your writing great.
People sometimes think that a fanciful style of writing will hide
defects; whereas, on the contrary, it often emphasises them.
Avoid using many quotation marks and italics; they make a page look
fidgety. Also they indicate weakness. If your remarks are not strong
enough to stand alone, without words or phrases being propped up by
quotes or underlinings, they are no better when so decorated.
A lavish use of extracts from other people's writings is undesirable. As
I have said elsewhere, neither the publisher nor the reader is keen to
pay for what they can read--and probably have already read--elsewhere.
A pedantic style of phraseology, and a desire to let other people see
how much one knows, are amateur failings.
Some beginners go to the other extreme, and adopt a slangy,
purposely-ungrammatical style, with the beginnings and finals of words
clipped away, and a cultivated slovenliness that they imagine gives a
picturesque quality, or an ultra up-to-dateness, to their writing.
But no good work is ever built on such foundations. The first thing to
aim for is clarity, and the ability to express yourself in an easy,
natural and concise manner, always using the fewest and the best words
for the purpose, and employing them according to modern methods.
[Sidenote: Improbabilities, misnamed "Imaginative Writing"]
Amateurs often lean towards the improbable--calling it imaginative
work--partly because they fancy they are less hampered by rules and
restrictions than if they take everyday, mundane subjects. Yet--paradox
though it may seem--the improbable must be bounded by probability in its
own sphere; and imagination must be kept within definite limits and work
according to definite forms--else it is no better than the gibberings of
an unhinged mind.
Beginners frequently choose the moon, the stars, or the ether as the
background for their imaginary characters; or they revel in after-death
scenes that are supposed to represent the next world--either of
suffering or of happiness. And a favourite ending is something like
this, "Suddenly I awoke, and lo, it was only a dream," etc.
Avoid all these hackneyed themes, and obvious tricks.
It takes a Dante to lead us convincingly through the mazes of an unknown
world.
Perhaps you feel that you are a Dante? Possibly you are: greatness must
make a start somewhere. But in that case, there will be no need for you
to strain after effect; genius can be evinced in the treatment of the
simplest subjects.
Therefore experiment at the outset with everyday themes, and perfect
your style in this direction before embarking on a very ambitious
programme: we must learn to walk before we can run. The airman does not
start turning somersaults the first time he goes aloft (or, if he does,
that is the last time we hear of him, poor fellow).
It is a mistake to think that the undisciplined wanderings of an
untrained mind betoken imaginative genius. It is the way one handles the
commonplace that reveals the true artist; and style plays an important
part in this, though it is by no means everything!
The question of imaginative work is big enough to deserve a volume to
itself: much has already been written on the subject, and much remains
to be said--too much to make it possible to do it justice in a book of
this description. But I mention it here, in passing, to warn the
beginner against spending much time on work that is not imaginative but
merely impossible, until thoroughly grounded in the rudiments of his
craft.
[Sidenote: Pecularity is not Originality]
Literature seldom gains by peculiarities of style or marked mannerisms,
even though these are to be found in the works of certain writers who
are of unquestionable ability. Such devices tend to become monotonous,
and as a rule the public will only tolerate them when the subject matter
of a book is so good that it is worth while to plough through the
writer's mannerisms to get at it--_i.e._ mannerisms are put up with only
when the writer is great in spite of them: no one is great because of
his mannerisms; they are only superficial disturbances.
I am not saying this to discourage any attempt at originality of style;
real originality is usually most desirable; what I am anxious to impress
on the beginner is the fact that mere peculiarity is not originality.
Nor will it benefit anyone's work to copy the mannerisms of great
writers--since these are often their defects.
[Sidenote: Mannerisms are soon Out of Date]
It must also be remembered that many mannerisms are nothing more than
fashions of the moment, just as most slang is; and in these rapid times
they quickly become out of date, whereupon they give a book an
antiquated touch. And few things are more difficult to survive than an
atmosphere that is merely old-fashioned and nothing more.
It will be quite time enough, when you are expert at writing clear,
understandable English, to decide whether your genius can best find
expression in long and complicated sentences as used by Henry James, or
in such cynical scintillations as those favoured by Bernard Shaw, OF in
the paradoxical methods of G. K. Chesterton, or what you will. No limit
need be set once a person has ideas to give the world, and can write
them down in simple, direct, well-chosen language.
The Ubiquitous Fragment
Amateurs often think it is much easier to write a "fragment" than to
write a complete anything. The one who hesitates as to whether he has
the ability to write a long story, is quite sure he is capable of
writing a fragmentary bit of fiction--one of those vague scraps with
neither beginning nor ending that are always tumbling into the editor's
letter-box--and he feels that all vagueness, and lack of finish, and the
fact that the MS. gets nowhere, are sanctioned because he adds, as a
sub-title some such qualification as "An Episode," or "A Character
Study," or "A Glimpse."
In the same way a writer who is too diffident to attempt a volume of
essays, will feel perfect confidence in sending out a MS. labelled "A
Reverie," or "A Meditation," even though it be nothing more than a
rambling collection of platitudes on the sunset.
In most cases it is a distrust of his own powers that inclines the
amateur to embark on writing of this type.
[Sidenote: A Fragment may be Incomplete, but it should not be Formless]
Fragments may be exceedingly beautiful; they are really most acceptable
in this hurrying age when life often seems too crowded with work-a-day
cares to leave us much leisure for sustained reading. But they must
embody the fundamental principles of Form; and they must be constructed
with even more attention to artistic presentment, (or the means used to
captivate the reader), than would be necessary for a lengthier work.
Also, though they are but fragmentary, they must appear to be portions
of a desirable whole, sections of a well-finished piece of work. Their
apparent incompleteness should seem due to the author having
insufficient time--not insufficient knowledge--to finish them.
What is set down must not only be good work in itself, but it must
suggest other good work as a completion.
You have probably seen some reproduction of a fragmentary pencil or
pen-and-ink sketch, by an experienced artist, showing only a portion of
a figure or a building; yet so suggestive that the onlooker
instinctively fills in the remainder, and constructs out of the artist's
unfinished drawing a picture complete and beautiful.
I have several such sketches before me on my study wall. One shows a
corner of a quadrangle in the precincts of a cathedral. In the
background there is a Gothic west window, a buttress, and a piece of a
tower; while a flight of steps in a corner of the quadrangle, a bit of
old-world stone-work around a doorway and window, a fragment of roof and
a cluster of chimneys, with half a dozen lines indicating an ancient
flagged walk, comprise the remainder. Only a few inches of paper and a
few pen-strokes--nevertheless instinctively the mind runs on, and sees
the whole of the cathedral in the shadowy background; the side of the
quadrangle past the old doorway; even the street beyond with its cobble
stones and market women. Indeed, you can visualise all the life of the
quaint sleepy, French town if you look long enough at the little
fragment; not because it is all indicated by the artist and left in an
incomplete state, but because what he did put down is so vital, so
suggestive, so fraught with possibilities, that the mind fills in all
the blanks, and fills them in with beauty corresponding with the
specimen he has shown us.
And while we are studying the sketch, it may be noticed that though this
is but an unfinished fragment, it is perfectly balanced, and shapely
and proportionate as it stands. The patch of light on the flagged path
is balanced by the shadow in the doorway. The flight of crumbling stone
steps, the most conspicuous feature in the foreground, has been drawn
with the utmost pains in every detail. Even the cathedral window looming
in the background has its exquisite tracery carefully drawn, no scamping
the work because it was only the background of an incomplete sketch.
In the same way, a fragmentary word picture should be properly
constructed, and absolutely accurate in detail (so far as that detail
goes), well proportioned, carefully balanced, containing distinct charm
in itself. The background may be only lightly indicated, but even so, it
should contain possibilities--(the cathedral may be in misty shadow, but
you must be able to see enough of it to know that it _is_ a cathedral,
and a great cathedral at that).
The central idea must be placed well in the foreground, it should be
clearly stated, and be something worth calling an idea.
The points you mention, but leave unamplified should be something more
than windowless, blank walls, or blind alleys leading nowhere; they
should open up fresh vistas of thought, and send the reader's mind out
and beyond the limits of your sentences.
Your word-picture must be satisfying in itself, even though one realises
that it is but a small part of a much larger whole that might have been
written, had time and space permitted.
Certain literary fragments extant are probably portions of large works
the authors had in view but did not finish; Coleridge's "Kubla Khan,"
for instance. The type of fragment I am talking about in this chapter,
however, is actually finished, so far as the author's handling is
concerned; but unfinished in detail and setting, or with only a
vignetted background.
Some writers have set down a few lines with neither introduction nor
development plot, yet such is the force and the revealing quality of the
sentences they put down, and the accuracy of their sense of selection,
that they have conveyed as much, and suggested as much, to the mind of
the reader as if they had written pages. The following verse of William
Allingham is an example Here is a volume of suggestion in seven lines.
Four ducks on a pond,
A grass bank beyond,
A blue sky of spring,
White clouds on the wing:--
What a little thing
To remember for years--
To remember with tears!
Tennyson wrote some beautiful fragments. "Flower in a Crannied Wall"
contains a world of thought, and could easily furnish a theme for a row
of ponderous books; "Break, break, break," has poignant possibilities.
William Sharp, as "Fiona Macleod," wrote some charming prose fragments;
but behind each you will invariably find a complete idea, and an idea
that suggests others.
Practise writing fragments by all means, but see that they are shapely,
and suggestive of greater space and a bigger outlook than can be
measured by the number of sentences. Above all, let each embody some
idea--and let there be no uncertainty as to the whereabouts of that
idea, no ambiguity as to what you are driving at.
To produce a good fragment you must do some intensive thinking, because
you have not space to spread yourself out. This will be a gain to all
your writing. The rambling, formless habit of thinking is the bane of
the amateur, and the type of MSS. resulting therefrom is the bane of the
editor.
Concerning Local Colour
Local colour can be a powerful factor in enhancing the charm of a story
or article. It may be introduced as the background against which the
scene is laid; or as a sidelight on the scenery, customs, and types of
people peculiar to a district. Anything can be utilised that conjures up
in the reader's mind the idiosyncrasies of a definite locality--only it
must be something that _will_ conjure up the scene.
One advantage of local colour is the opportunity it gives the writer of
a double hold on the reader's interest--he may captivate by the setting
of his theme no less than by the theme itself. Also it enables him more
effectually to take the reader "out of himself," and place him in a new
environment--an essential point if that reader is to become absorbed in
what he is reading.
Mere verbatim description of scenery is not the best way to work in
local colour; it is liable to become guide-booky. Neither is a catalogue
of the beauty spots of a locality any better. Usually the most
advantageous method is a judicious, illuminating touch here and there,
revealing outstanding characteristics, and emphasising the material
things that give "colour," _i.e._, variety and vivid distinction, to a
scene.
They may be topographical characteristics or they may be personal
characteristics.
Beginners think that local colour is primarily a matter of hills and
hedgerows, sunbonnets and smocks--the picturesque element that we look
for in the countryside. But conversation can give local colour to a
story without a single descriptive sentence. Pett Ridge can transport
you in an instant to the heart of Hoxton or the Walworth Road, by means
of some bit of cockney dialect. W. W. Jacobs will give a salty,
far-sea-faring flavour to the most untravelled public-house in Poplar,
in merely recounting a trifling difference of opinion between some of
the customers!
Local colour has justified the existence of more than one book that is
thin both in literary quality and in plot; _The Lady of the Lake_ is an
instance. But I do not advocate a writer aiming for success on similar
lines.
Some words and expressions open up a much wider vista to the mind's eye
than do others. Consider your descriptive passages critically, and see
if, by a different choice of words, you can, in the same length of
sentence, give the reader a larger outlook.
[Sidenote: American Writers excel in the Handling of Local Colour]
Some British writers appreciate to the full the artistic value of local
colour (Rudyard Kipling and Mrs. F. A. Steel can make one feel as well
as see India; Blackmore's books breathe Devonshire; Lafcadio Hearn--if
one can call him British!--envelops one in the Oriental odour of
Japanese temples; Shan F. Bullock's stories are Ireland herself); but
many ignore its possibilities and set the scene with a nondescript
society background, or an equally non-commital rural haze.
American writers make rather more use of local colour. And the reason is
clear: no other country presents so great a variety in the way of
climate, scenery, and human types as does the United States. An American
author need only sit down and write of what he sees immediately around
him, and, so long as he keeps away from such modern items as the
ubiquitous commercial traveller and advertisement signs, and devotes his
attention to natural objects and local paraphernalia (human and
otherwise), he is certain to be recording what is novelty to a large
proportion of his fellow-countrymen. Moreover Americans are more given
to dealing with things in a straightforward, unconventional manner than
are the British writers, writing of what they actually know and see
around them, unhampered by classical traditions and age-old literary
usages. Hence, there is often a freshness, a vividly-alive quality in
their descriptions, that can only be obtained by writing with a subject
red-hot in the mind.
The author who merely rushes into the country for a few days, or spends
a couple of weeks on the Continent, or sprints through the European
ports of China, to obtain local colour, for a story, usually gets about
as "stagey" and artificial a result as does the home-keeping,
middle-class girl, who has her heroine presented at the Court of St.
James, and draws the local colour from the Society columns of a daily
paper!
You must know your "locality" well yourself if you are to make the local
colour real to your readers; second-hand or hastily collected data are
no good.
The would-be author will do well to study typically-American authors,
with a view to observing their use of local colour--particularly those
who wrote some of their best work before the motor-car and telephone
exercised their levelling and linking-up influences.
To name one or two: Mary E. Wilkins and Sarah Orne Jewett have
specialised on New England village life; Charles Egbert Craddock (Miss
Murfree) on the Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee; George Cable on
Louisiana; James Lane Allen on Kentucky; Amelie Rives, in her earlier
books, on Virginia; etc.
And it is worth while noting that such writers give, not only pictures
of the scenery about them, but also an insight into the native
character. Thus both Mary E. Wilkins and Sarah Orne Jewett depicted the
rigid pride of the New Englanders, as well as the poor but picturesque
quality of the soil. George Cable showed the temperament of the
Southerner as well as the tropical glamour of the Southern States. Owen
Wister has made us love the large-hearted, child-like, primitive cowboy,
as well as feel the vastness and the very air of the plains and the
mountains of Wyoming.
Such work is local colour at its best, since it gives us the human
traits as well as the scenic conditions predominating in a locality, and
enables us to form a mental picture of the people and the place as a
whole.
Closely allied to this, is that most fascinating study--the effect of
climate, scenery, and general environment on character. But as that
subject is outside the purview of this book, I merely suggest it to the
student as something well worth following up, if there be an opportunity
for first-hand observation.
For the novelist who specialises on temperamental delineation, it has
wide possibilities.
Creating Atmosphere