correctness in detail, and yet seemed either utterly dead, or to walk
out of the canvas at every point and hit you violently in the eye? Such
a painting often has a bright-red tiled roof--every tile visible and in
its proper place; a violently blue sky decorated here and there with
solid masses of apparently unmeltable snow; grass an acute green; trees
emphatic as to outline, every branch clearly defined in its appointed
place; sheep standing out like pure-white snowflakes on the acute grass;
the smoke from the cottage chimney a thick grey mass suggesting a heavy
bale of wool; each brick, each window frame, each paling emphasised with
careful exactness.
The amateur who produces a painting after this style is usually very
pleased with it, and attributes any adverse criticism, that a competent
artist may pass upon it, to professional jealousy!
"What is wrong with it?" I have heard a student ask, when a master has
condemned such a canvas. "It was all there, every detail, exactly as I
have painted it."
Yes, it may have been all there, but something else was there which the
artist omitted to include, and the something else was "atmosphere." The
artist may put in every twig and tile, every plant and pane of glass;
but if he omit the play of light, the glamour of haze, the mystery of
shadow, the marvellous suggestiveness of the undefined, his painting
will be lifeless and wooden, or altogether unbalanced, no matter how
accurate the drawing.
Equally, the author needs atmosphere if his writing is to rise above the
dead level of the uninspired; but while one can define to some extent
(though not entirely) what is atmosphere in a painting, it is next to
impossible to give an exact definition of atmosphere in writing. It is
an elusive quality difficult to describe off-hand. So intangible is it
that you can seldom put your finger on a passage and say, "Here it is!"
yet all the while you may be fully conscious of there being--back of the
writing--something more than plot, or purpose.
The atmosphere of a book may appertain to matters moral or material; it
may affect the mind or the emotions; it may be beneficial or baneful; it
may give colour or glamour, light or shade; it may be mysterious or
mesmeric. But whatever its trend, in the main it lies in suggestiveness
rather than in definite statement. Like its prototype, "atmosphere" in
writing is an unseen environment, yet it permeates and influences the
whole, giving it character and even vitality.
[Sidenote: "Atmosphere" is Invaluable as a Time Saver]
In writing it is possible to suggest a great deal that could not be
described in detail within the limits imposed on you by the length of
your book and the consideration of balance. Moreover, the things
suggested may be of secondary importance beside the main action of the
story, and yet be very useful in furthering the idea you have in mind,
or in helping to convey a particular impression.
In such cases the introduction of atmosphere may do much for you. While
you give only a hint here and there, or a few sidelights in passing, you
may yet manage to convey to the readers a "feeling" that carries them
beyond the cut-and-dried facts you may be handling, or lifts them above
the mere working-out of a plot. It is the haze that may hide, and yet
indicate, a something in the distance, just beyond the range of
sight--and the suggestion of something still beyond is always alluring;
the infinite within us rebels against finite limitations, and welcomes
anything that points to further ideas, further possibilities.
Thus atmosphere is invaluable as a time saver. Life is too short (and
the publisher too chary of his paper and printing bill) to allow any of
us, save the truly famous, to describe minutely the whole background of
our writing, spiritual, mental, or material. If we can, by a few
expressive words, or phrases, create an atmosphere that shall reproduce
in the reader's mind the train of thought, or the scene, that was in our
own mind as we wrote, we shall, obviously, be spared the making of many
sentences, and the covering of much paper with descriptive matter and
soul analyses, that might otherwise overweight our main theme.
[Sidenote: Abstract Qualities are Usually Suggested]
Atmosphere usually suggests some abstract quality rather than a concrete
item. We say that a work has an outdoor atmosphere or an old-world
atmosphere or a healthy atmosphere; or we may merely say "it has
atmosphere," meaning a subtle over- (or under-) current that clothes the
framework of the narrative with a glamour or a spiritual quality that
will help to reinforce, or mellow, or illuminate the author's picture.
But we do not say a book has a millionaire atmosphere, or a detective
atmosphere, even though the book be about these people. They correspond
with the solid objects in the landscape, and are quite distinct from the
atmospheric effects that can do so much to enhance the charm, or subdue
the sordidness, of these solid objects.
It does not necessarily follow that the atmosphere of a book is a
wholesome one. There are some writers who create a positively poisonous
atmosphere for the mind; but, fortunately, the trend of humanity is in
the direction of clean thought and wholesome living, even though our
progress be slow and we encounter set-backs; and vicious books are
seldom long-livers, while those the public call for again and again are
invariably books with a healthy atmosphere.
The student might make a special note of this!
Atmosphere in a well-written book is often so unobtrusive that the
reader fails to recognise it as a specific element in the make-up of the
story that did not get there by accident. It is so easy to fall into the
error of thinking that this or that characteristic or ingredient is due
to the author's style, or temperament, or genius; certainly it may be
due to either or all of these things, but if it is worth anything it is
also due to a well-thought-out scheme on the part of the writer.
In other words, atmosphere only gets into a work if it is put there. It
does not merely "happen along," and if you want your writing to be
imbued with atmosphere, you must supply it; it won't come of itself. And
before you can supply it, you must first think out what you want that
atmosphere to be and then decide how best you can secure it.
[Sidenote: "Atmosphere" covers a Wide Range of Suggestion]
It may have to do with spiritual aspects of life--high ideals, faith,
healthy thought, right living. Ruskin's _Sesame and Lilies_ comes under
this head, even though the subject-matter is not religious according to
our ordinary use of the word. From beginning to end one is thinking on a
higher plane than that of material consideration; one's thoughts are
continually branching out beyond the actual purport of the book as set
forth by the author.
An old-world atmosphere has a special charm for many readers. We find it
in _Cranford_, Jane Austen's books, and many others of a bygone
period--though it should be noticed that in these cases the authors did
not purposely incorporate it in their work. They put atmosphere,
certainly; but it has only become an "old-world" atmosphere by the
courtesy of Father Time: in their own day, these books were quite
up-to-date productions. Certain modern books have an old-world
atmosphere--_The Broad Highway_ and _Our Admirable Betty_, by Jeffery
Farnol; _When Knighthood was in Flower_, by Charles Major (and many
others will occur to the mind); but in each case the old-world
atmosphere had to be put there very carefully by the author.
The hysterical atmosphere needs no description. We know too well the
type of book that keeps its characters (and aims to keep its readers),
from the first chapter to the last, keyed up to an unnatural pitch of
emotionalism, with copious details about everybody's soulful feelings
and temperaments and lingerie. Books with this atmosphere were
constantly striving to get their heads above water in the years of this
century preceding the war. They are interesting from one, and only one,
point of view: they indicate the diseased mentality that has always come
to the surface in periods of the world's history prior to some great
human upheaval.
A pessimistic atmosphere is fairly common--especially does it seem to
find favour with young writers. One of the best examples of a book with
a really pessimistic atmosphere is the _Rubaiyat_ of Omar Khayyam.
Atmosphere has sometimes transformed the commonplace into something rare
and delightful. _Our Village_, by Miss Mitford, is an instance. Here you
have the most ordinary of everyday events described in such a way that
they are invested with a halo of charm.
[Sidenote: To Create an Atmosphere]
To create the atmosphere you desire, you must be thoroughly imbued with
it yourself--you cannot manufacture it out of nothing. It must so
possess you while you are at your work that it is liable to tinge all
you write. You will never make other people sense what you do not sense
yourself.
For instance, it would not be possible for an out-and-out pagan to write
a book with a sympathetic evangelical atmosphere, any more than the
Kaiser could write a book imbued with the spirit of true Democracy.
Then you must insinuate your atmosphere at times and seasons when it
will make the most impression on the reader without interfering with, or
hindering, the development of the story; remembering that it is always
better to suggest the atmosphere than to put it in with heavy strokes.
You may wish to make a story the very breath of the out-doors. But in
order to do this, it would not be necessary to stop all the characters
in whatever they were saying or doing, while you describe scenery and
sunsets, or explain to the reader how "out-doory" everything and
everybody is! This would easily spoil the continuity and flow of the
whole, by switching the reader's mind off the plot and on to another
train of thought. Instead, you would make the whole book out-doory
without any pointed explanation--"setting the stage" in the open air as
much as possible, emphasising the features of the landscape rather than
boudoir decorations, mentioning the sound of the soughing trees or the
surging sea, rather than the tune the gramophone was playing;
introducing the scent of the larches in the spring sunshine rather than
the odour of tuberoses and stephanotis in a ballroom. In each case the
one would suggest freedom in the open air, while the other would suggest
conventionalities indoors.
In some such way, you would rely on touches in passing to produce the
desired effect, always bearing in mind the importance of getting these
touches as telling as possible.
Such allusions (often merely hinted at, rather than spoken) should be
equal in effectiveness to long paragraphs of detailed description;
therefore, choose carefully the means by which you hope to secure your
end. Your touches must be so true and so sure that they instantly
convey to the reader's mind your own mental atmosphere.
In this, as much as in any other phase of writing, you need an instinct
for the essentials, _i.e._ a feeling that tells you instantly what will
contribute most surely to the making of the atmosphere you desire, and
what is relatively unimportant.
Atmosphere is the element in your work that can least of all be faked
without detection--or cribbed from other writers.
It must permeate the whole of your story whether long or short, and be
something beyond the mere words you write down. The readers must feel,
when they finally close the book, that they have got more from you than
what you actually said; that you led their thoughts in directions that
carried them off the highway of the obvious, giving them visions of
things that were unrecorded.
The Method of Presenting a Story
The method of presenting the story needs a little consideration.
The most common, and the most desirable as a rule, is the narrative,
told in a third person; _i.e._ the writer relates a story about certain
people, but does not himself pose as a character involved in the story.
Beginners will do well to adhere to this type of story, until they have
attained to a certain amount of fluency with their ideas.
[Sidenote: Writing in the First Person]
Another popular method is the narrative told in the first person, _i.e._
the writer relates a story about certain people, in which he also plays
a more or less important part. If well written, this form makes a
pleasant change from the story written in the third person; but it
necessitates a certain amount of experience on the part of the writer,
if it is to be saved from dulness.
Moreover, its limitations are hampering to the beginner. If you are
writing in the third person, you, as the author, are allowed (by that
special concession granted to makers of fiction) to know everything that
every character in your story thinks or does. You may relate in one
paragraph what the hero was thinking and doing in San Francisco, and in
the next what the heroine was thinking and doing at the same moment in
New York.
But if you are writing in the first person, you have not the same
licence to roam all over the universe, penetrating the deepest recesses
of people's lives and laying bare their secret thoughts to the glare of
day. You are supposed to stick to your own part and mind your own
business. If you manage to find out other people's business as the story
proceeds, there must be some sort of circumstantial evidence as to how
you found it out; it will not be enough merely to state that it is so,
as you could do were you writing in the third person.
For instance, in a MS. I pick up from the pile on my table I read:
"He paused when he reached the drawing-room door and glared at her,
livid with rage. She returned his look with one of haughty
indifference. Then he left the house, and as he walked along the
cheerless streets, he clenched his fists and hissed between his teeth,
'You shall suffer for this.' She, meanwhile, rang the bell for tea and
resumed the novel upon which she had been engaged when he arrived."
Told in the third person, it is easy to let the reader know what he and
she were thinking and saying and doing at the same moment. But supposing
you were writing all this in the first person with yourself as the
heroine, it would not be so easy to convey the same information to the
reader. You could write:
"He paused when he reached the drawing-door and glared at me, livid
with rage. I returned his look with one of haughty indifference. Then
he left the house, and I rang the bell for tea and resumed the novel
upon which I had been engaged when he arrived."
But if you wished to let the reader know how the bad-tempered creature
clenched and hissed, you would have to get at it by some round-about
means--your dearest friend might call at the moment and tell you that
she had just passed him in the cheerless street clenching and hissing;
or some other such device could be employed. But all this involves
extra thought and care in the construction of the story.
[Sidenote: A Stumbling-block to the Amateur]
Amateurs are much given to story-writing in the first person; it seems
such an easy method (when they know nothing about it); they invariably
see themselves in a leading part, and make the hero or heroine do and be
all they themselves would like to do and be. But they never go far
before they trip up against this block of stumbling--the impossibility
of the first person singular "I" being in two places at the same time,
and seeing inside people's hearts and brains, to say nothing of their
locked cupboards and secret drawers.
Also, the beginner is apt to forget the _role_ he is supposed to be
playing when he puts himself into a story, and he lapses, at intervals,
into the third person.
Sometimes, in order to dodge the difficulties, an author will write one
part in the form of a diary, thus enabling a character to talk about
herself (it is usually a feminine character who keeps a diary!). Then,
when the limitations of the first person singular hamper the progress of
the story, the diary is dropped for a time, while the author revels in
the all-embracing freedom of writing in the third person.
This is a weak method, however, and plainly a subterfuge; being
practically an announcement that the author could not or would not take
the trouble to work the story through in correct form. It is also bad
from an artistic standpoint; it does not hang together well; past and
present tenses are apt to get mixed; it produces an unsatisfactory
feeling in the mind of the reader, who so often is in doubt as to
whether the author is writing as a character in the story or merely as
the author--and anything that leaves a confused, unsatisfactory feeling
in the reader's mind is poor art.
[Sidenote: Writing a Story in the Form of a Diary]
A story written entirely in the form of a diary is sometimes attempted.
And closely allied to this is the story written as a series of letters.
Both methods are popular with amateurs. Most people regard a diary as
the simplest type of writing, requiring neither style nor sequence, nor
even the thinnest thread of connection running through the whole, unless
the author so desires. Moreover, though every one does not feel
competent to write a book or even a short story, we all feel competent
to keep a diary--most of us _have_ kept one at some time in our career.
What can be easier therefore than to write a story in diary form? And we
proceed to write our story as we wrote our own diary, with this
difference that we put into the fiction diary the sort of happenings we
used to deplore the lack of, when we wrote down our own daily
experiences.
Until we have given some study to the subject we do not recognise that,
while a series of somewhat disconnected sentences and brief entries may
be very useful as records for future reference, likewise may be
moderately serviceable as safety-valves for overwrought, self-centred
temperaments, they are seldom of interest to any one save the writer,
and if put forward as recreational reading, may easily prove
uninteresting in the extreme, even with the addition of a love episode!
A story in diary form needs to be written by an experienced pen if it is
to resemble a genuine diary, and yet hold the reader's interest
throughout, and culminate in a good climax.
[Sidenote: A Story told in Letters]
A story told in a series of letters can easily be the dullest thing
imaginable. What is an excellent letter seldom makes an excellent
chapter in a novel. A letter, if it is to seem a real letter, should be
discursive; and this is the very thing the amateur needs to guard
against when writing a story, if that story is to show force and action;
he is prone to be too discursive as it is. In any case, unless it is
remarkably well done, the reader chafes at the delay inevitably caused
by the irrelevant small talk that is the hallmark of most letters.
Some writers have managed to handle the "letter-form" in an interesting
manner, by relying on descriptive narrative, rather than any striking
plot, to hold the reader. _The Lady of the Decoration_ by Frances
Little, is a good example.
[Sidenote: The Introduction of Dialect]
Dialect should be approached with caution. It is so easy to be tedious
and unintelligible in this direction.
Remember that you are writing in what is almost a fresh language to most
people, when you employ a dialect that is purely local; hence you are
imposing an extra mental strain on the reader; and in order to
compensate for the additional demand you make on his brain, you must
give him something above the average in interest. No one, in these days
of hustle, is going to take the trouble to wade through a species of
unknown tongue, and wrestle with weird spelling and unfamiliar idiom,
unless there is something remarkably worth while to be got out of it.
And for one who will spare the time to fathom the mysteries of the
dialect, there are thousands who will give it up.
[Sidenote: The Object Of Writing a Book is not to Befog the Reader's
Mind]
If it be necessary to write in a particular dialect, avoid so far as
possible the use of expressions that in no way explain themselves, and
crowding the pages with the more obscure colloquialisms of the district.
The object of writing a book is not to befog the reader's mind.
One knows that dialect is sometimes imperative in order to create the
right atmosphere and to state things as they actually occurred. In such
cases it is usually best to use it only in small quantities--as where a
native strolls across very few pages, and is on view for only a short
while. Yet you must see that your dialect is correct. Merely to write a
few words phonetically, and put a "z" in place of an "s" (as is
sometimes done, for instance, when making a native of Somerset speak),
is not convincing.
To write a story throughout in dialect calls for exceptional skill; and,
as a rule, it can only be done successfully by those who have known a
dialect from childhood, or at any rate have spent some years in its
company. The names of Sir James Barrie and S. R. Crockett naturally come
to one's mind in this connection.
[Sidenote: "An Honest Tale speeds best being Plainly Told"]
The beginner will be wise to write his early experiments in plain
English and in the third person. Fiction that is free from confusion of
style, mixed methods, and uncertainty of handling always does the best.
The story that is related in a clear direct manner is most popular with
the public--likewise, it is the most difficult to write well, though few
beginners believe this: it looks so very simple!
Fallacies in Fiction
I have come to the conclusion that the contrariness of human nature is
largely responsible for the rejection of many of the MSS. that never get
into print; but not the contrariness of the editor (as the unsuccessful
writer generally thinks when he sees his MS. back once more in the bosom
of his family).
Most of us, at one period or another, feel we could shine much more
brilliantly in some other environment than the one in which we find
ourselves. It has been described as "a divine discontent." There is
plenty of discontent about it, I allow; but I am not so sure that it is
divine. While it may be, and often is, the expression of a real need for
a little more growing space, it is sometimes the outcome of mere
restlessness, or a lazy, selfish desire to escape the irksome things
that are in our own surroundings, vainly imagining that we can find some
pathway in life where there are no disagreeables to be faced.
But whatever the motive may be, there is a universal idea among the
inexperienced that some other person's job is preferable to their own;
some one else's circumstances more interesting and romantic and dramatic
and enthralling than theirs could ever be. And the result is--much
wasted opportunity.
[Sidenote: The Amateur so Seldom has First-hand Knowledge of his
Subject]
Now the sum-total of this, in regard to story-writing, is the fact that
fully 80 per cent. of the fiction submitted to editors deals with
situations of which the writer has practically no first-hand knowledge;
as a natural consequence it is unconvincing and often incorrect.
The schoolgirl who has never travelled beyond Folkestone or Boulogne,
and whose knowledge of fearsome weapons is limited to a hockey-stick,
riots one across the Continent on a "Prisoner of Zenda" chase, directly
she starts to write.
The girl of twenty, living a quiet, useful life in some small provincial
town, in close attendance upon a kindly invalid aunt, devotes the secret
midnight candle to writing the life-story of a heartless butterfly of a
faithless wife: while the kindly invalid aunt is surreptitiously writing
decorous mid-Victorian stories of very, _very_ mild wickedness coming to
a politely bad end, and oppressively good virtue arriving at the top
(with more moral advice than plot, or anything else). The niece
imagines she is writing just the type of story that the public craves;
and the aunt is under the delusion that hers is just the sort of
literature that is wanted for distribution among factory girls.
The maiden of high degree writes of the lily-white beauty of the girl in
the grimy garret. The democratic daughter of the colonies invariably
sprinkles a few titles about her MS.