the year in a crowded suburb and his short vacation at some crowded
seashore resort, persistently wrote of the exploits of a marvellous
detective who ran Sleuth-hound Bill to earth in Gory Gulch. Since 1914,
he (the young man) has sent me many MSS.--from France, Salonika, Egypt,
India, and Flanders--and these are generally love stories, and seldom
bear a trace of battle-smoke or high adventure. (I am speaking of
amateur work, remember.)
I have nothing to say against a desire for new horizons; it is a
legitimate part of our development. And I can understand that for a
certain type of weakly and rather starved personality there is a slight
compensation for the lack of change they crave, in putting down on paper
their longings and ideals, and in writing romance in which they
secretly see themselves in the leading part.
But this is not saleable matter; neither is it particularly readable
matter, as a general rule (though there are occasional exceptions, of
course). Because in such cases the writers are invariably dealing with
situations the inwardness of which they know really nothing. Or else all
their knowledge has been obtained from the writings of others; they are
merely repeating other people's ideas and other people's descriptions.
[Sidenote: Choose your Topic from your own Environment]
You cannot write convincingly on topics about which you know little. You
can cover reams of paper--amateurs are doing it every day of the
year!--with descriptions of people, and houses, and scenes, and walks of
life with which you have only a hearsay acquaintance; but such writing
is scarcely likely to be worth printing and paying for.
If the schoolgirl, instead of wasting her time on something that reads
like a washedout _rechauffe_ of _The Scarlet Pimpernel_, would try her
hand at a story of schoolgirl life, she might produce something really
bright and alive, even though it lacked the symmetry and finish that
years of practice bring to a writer. And though the MS. did not find a
market at the time, on account of immaturity of style, it might prove
valuable later on when the writer had gained experience. It would give
her data she had forgotten in the intervening years.
And the girl who spends her ink on the philanderings of the faithless
wife (a species, by the way, that she has probably never set eyes on,
having been brought up like most of the rest of us in a decent circle of
sane relations and friends) might, perhaps, have done some charming
pictures of domestic life, as did the authors of _Cranford_ and _Little
Women_ in their day.
If the aunt, instead of hoping to influence factory girls of whom she
knows absolutely nothing, and whose conversation, could she but hear it,
would be an unintelligible language to her, had turned her invalidism to
practical account, and passed on useful hints and ideas to other
invalids, she might have written something that would have been welcomed
by others similarly handicapped.
And so on, down to the city clerk, who never can be made to realise that
a type of story most difficult to lay hands on is the one that deals,
accurately, with the inside of that world peopled by the bankers and
stockbrokers and money magnates. The detective tracking Sleuth-hound
Bill has the tamest walk-over in comparison with the daring, and tense
excitement, surrounding some financial deals.
[Sidenote: Original Work is rare: the Universal Tendency is to Copy]
I do not say that these writers would necessarily have placed their MSS.
had they written on the lines suggested; it takes something besides the
theme and background to make a good story. But I do say that they would
have been many degrees nearer publication, had they dealt with types and
circumstances that had come within their personal cognisance, rather
than with those they only knew by hearsay.
The outsider would scarcely credit how rare it is for an editor to
receive a piece of really original work; the universal tendency is to
copy other people's productions rather than trouble to discover original
models.
The schoolgirl, studying water-colour drawing, prefers to work from a
"copy," showing some other person's painting of a vase of flowers,
rather than have her own vase filled with real flowers before her. Some
one else's work saves the inexperienced the responsibility of
selection--and selection is always a difficult point for the beginner,
who finds it hard to decide what to include in, and what to leave out
of, a picture.
[Sidenote: Beginners are Seldom Aware that they are Copying others]
In the same way, inexperienced fiction writers find it easier to copy
other people's stories; though, unlike the schoolgirl and her
painting-copy, they are quite unconscious that they are doing so; they
usually imagine that what they have written is entirely original.
It is difficult to get the novice to distinguish between writing
anything down on paper, and creating it in his own brain. So many think
the mere passing of thoughts through the brain, and the transmitting of
those thoughts to paper, are indications of their ability to write; and
that what they write must be original.
And yet in most beginners' MSS. scarcely any of the incidents, or
situations, or plots ever came within the writer's own purview; the
majority are hashed up from the many stories one reads nowadays--though
the author has no idea that he is only stringing together selected ideas
that originated in other people's brains.
There are many reasons to account for this. For one thing, the novice
feels safe in using the type of material that has already been
published. The world is wide, human nature is varied, and it is not
easy to decide what to take; therefore the writer who plans his story on
time-honoured lines is relieved of the responsibility of selection.
Then, again, if a particular type of story has been accepted and
published, it has received a certain hall-mark of approval, and
forthwith others tread the same path; there is less uncertainty here
than in breaking new ground.
There is yet another reason: to evolve anything that is new and
unhackneyed necessitates our taking trouble; and some amateurs will not
take any more trouble than they can possibly help; they do not recognise
that writing stands for hard work.
[Sidenote: Tried Old Friends we have Met before]
I cannot spare the space to touch on well-worn plots, but here are a few
of the sentences and expressions that haunt amateur MSS.
Have you ever read a story that opened, "It was a glorious day in June,"
followed by a page of blue sky, balmy breezes, humming bees, not a leaf
stirred, and scent of roses heavy on the air? Of course you have. We all
have. That glorious day in June is one of the most precious perennials
of the story-writer's stock-in-trade.
You know at once that twenty summers will have passed o'er _her_ head,
and that _he_ is just round the corner waiting to come upon her all
unawares, so soon as the author can quit cataloguing nature's beauties.
And have you ever read a story that opened with "A dripping November fog
enveloped the city"? Of course you have; and you know at once, before
you get to the next line, which describes its denseness and the slippery
pavements, and a host of other discomforts, that you are going to be
ushered into an equally dismal city boarding-house, and introduced to a
lovely-complexioned girl whose frail appearance is only enhanced by her
deep mourning, and hear the sad story of the pecuniary straits that
necessitated her bringing her widowed mother (often fractious), or it
may be a younger sister (always sunny and the lodestar of her life),
from their lovely old home in the country, while she earned a living in
town. And, without fail, she has always imagined that they were well
provided for, till the family lawyer (always old) broke the news after
the funeral that the place was mortgaged up to the hilt, and even her
father's life insurance had been allowed to lapse.
You know all the rest--the dreary tramp round in search of work, and the
way she irons out her threadbare garments to make them last as long as
they can (irrespective of the fact that the mourning was new only a few
weeks before, and she presumably had a good stock of underwear in her
prosperous days), and a host of other harrowing experiences until--it
comes right in the end.
And all because the story opened with a dripping November fog! Why, I
believe the average amateur would consider it almost improper to start a
desolate orphan on a quest for work in the metropolis in anything other
than a dense November fog!
And yet--how much more cheerful for her, poor dear, could she but begin
her career on a dry day--and some November days in London are quite
sunny and bright--so much better for her in the thin jacket she always
wears on such occasion, and her worn-out shoes!
It would be such a blessed thing if we need not start with the weather,
nor the number of summers that had floated over the sweet young
heroine's head (or winters, if the central figure be an old man). But
the amateur clings to these openings.
Then take "the boudoir." After the weather I don't think anything haunts
me more persistently than the boudoir. "Lady Gwennyth was sitting
reading a letter in her luxurious (or cosy, or dainty) boudoir,
when----" etc.
Now why is it that the girl who starts out to write fiction loves to
introduce her heroine in this wise? It is most unlikely that the amateur
knows much about a boudoir--few of us do. It is a room that appertains
solely to the rich, and to only a small proportion of the rich at that.
I know many wealthy women and many well-born women who haven't a
boudoir, simply because the cramped conditions of modern living seldom
leave them a room to spare for this purpose. The fact is the boudoir
proper does not really belong to this purposeful age. It is a relic of
the more leisurely Victorian times and the ease-loving, well-to-do
Frenchwoman of pre-war days. Most modern women have very little time to
spend in a boudoir if even they need one; nevertheless it appears with
unfailing regularity in stories dealing with the richer ranks of life,
till you would think it was as necessary to a woman's entourage as--an
umbrella!
Why is it that the heroine has usually refused a couple (if not more)
offers of marriage, before she is brought to our notice, with yet
another offer looming on the horizon? In real life, as we know it in
this twentieth century, it is most unusual for a girl to be constantly
turning down offers of marriage like applications for charity
subscriptions though there are exceptions here and there, certainly.
Yet I scarcely open a love-story that does not state that the heroine
had already refused "every eligible man in her circle"; though the
reader can seldom see why _one_ man should have proposed to the damsel,
much less a crowd!
The heroine presented to us by the amateur is invariably a most ordinary
young person, often quite uninteresting, and lacking the faintest streak
of distinctiveness. And then the question arise--Why should all the
eligible men in the town have proposed to her?
Perhaps one explanation is the fact that inexperienced writers have not
learnt the art of depicting character; as they do not know how to convey
an idea of her attractiveness, they think if they state that she was
attractive that is sufficient. But statements are not sufficient; she
must be attractive.
* * * * *
The youthful heroine and the aged grandmother may also be quoted as
evergreen types that long ago had become monotonous. Whether girls
married in their teens as a matter of course, a couple of generations
ago, I do not know, as I was not there; but the youthful heroine was a
_sine qua non_ in Victorian fiction.
She is not a _sine qua non_ now, however; anything but; the
seventeen-year-old bride is by no means the rule in these times; there
is practically no limit nowadays to the age at which a woman may receive
offers of marriage.
Nevertheless, the amateur persistently follows bygone models, and still
clings to the very young heroine; no more than eighteen summers are, at
the outside, allowed to pass over her lovely head before she is
introduced to our notice.
* * * * *
And certain traditions are still followed in regard to other details.
Her complexion is always of the rose-petal order, her hair is always
escaping in a series of stray curls about her neck and forehead (and, by
the way, these "stray curls" of fiction are sadly responsible for many
of the untidy lank locks of to-day!). If you read as many MSS. as I do,
you would think that no straight-haired, ordinary complexioned girl had
the least chance of a personal love-story, despite the fact that most of
the girls one knows in real life, who have married and lived "happy
ever after," have been either sallow or sunburnt or colourless, or just
healthy-looking.
If you doubt whether a successful heroine can be evolved out of a woman
no longer in her teens, and with a complexion that would not stand
pearls, remember the Hon. Jane, in _The Rosary_.
* * * * *
In addition to the youthful heroine, the aged grandmother needs to be
given a long rest. When the young wife who married in her teens visits
her old home in company with her one-year-old infant, it is invariably
the dearest old lady who comes forward to embrace her first grandchild;
and from her own conversation and the description of her general
appearance, the sweet old soul must be at least eighty, despite all that
Nature might rule to the contrary, to say nothing of the dressmaker!
Tradition has it that grandmothers must have white hair, and spectacles,
voluminous skirts, and knitting in their hands as they sit in an
easy-chair with comfortably slippered feet on a hassock; and that is the
sort of grandmother the amateur brings on the scenes, irrespective of
the fact that the grandmother of to-day is skipping about in girlish
skirts and high-heeled shoes, with hair and complexion as youthful as
she likes to pay for.
* * * * *
Nothing in the way of fiction is more difficult to write than a
thoroughly good love story. And yet the beginner invariably starts with
a love story, and continues with love-stories, as though there were no
other possible selection.
I do not think it is often possible to write a good love-story until one
has had some experience of life. It is so easy to mistake neurotic
imaginings and over-strung emotionalism for love; and it is still easier
to fall back on the conventional things that the conventional hero and
heroine do and say in the conventional novel, and imagine that we are
recording our own ideas and experiences.
There are several reasons why the love-story appeals to the girl who is
starting out to write. She is looking forward to a love-story of her
own, if she be a normal girl, and has already seen herself in the part
of her favourite heroine. Naturally it is not surprising that
love-stories are of absorbing interest to her. And a girl usually sees
herself as the heroine of her own early love-stories; and she invariably
makes her heroine do and say what she would like to do and say under
the circumstances, and at the same time she makes the hero do and say
what she would like her own lover to do and say--but it does not follow
that this is true to life; or that her lover would say the things she
credits him with in her story. Very few proposals in real life ever
resemble the proposals in fiction!
A girl will often introduce her heroine in a picturesque pose against
some lovely background of hills, or woods, or garden flowers; and the
hero coming upon her suddenly is made to pause, lost in admiration
of the exquisite picture she makes. The girl writes this
because--unconsciously, perhaps--she sees herself in the part, and likes
to think she would make a very attractive picture that would rivet a
man's attention.
But it is not true to life. In reality, the average man seldom notices
the scenic fittings under such circumstances. He either sees the
girl--or he doesn't. Unless he is an artist looking for useful subjects
for his pictures, the background is not often seen in conjunction with
the girl. I merely give this as an instance of the way amateurs are apt
to see themselves in an imaginary part that in reality is at variance
with "things as they are"; and their writings become artificial in
consequence.
There is another reason why the love-story is the beginner's choice: it
calls for so few characters. The simplest ingredients are--a nice,
beautiful girl and a strong, manly, deserving masculine. Of course, you
can vary the flavour by making them rich or poor, misunderstood,
down-trodden, capricious, and what not. And you can amplify it by
introducing the bold, bad rival (masculine); the superficial,
fascinating butterfly rival (feminine); the irate forbidding parent
(_his_, if he is rich and she is poor; _hers_, if he is poor and her
mother is ambitious and money-grabbing); the designing mischief-maker (a
black-eyed brunette, or a brassy-haired blonde); and a host of other
well-worn familiar types. But when all is said and done, you need have
but two characters to delineate, if you do not feel equal to more--and
there is a distinct save of brain in this!
When you reach the climax in any other than a love-story, you are
expected to make the _denouement_ something of a slight surprise at any
rate, if no more; and we all know that surprises--slight or
otherwise--are not altogether easy to manufacture for purposes of
fiction. It is simple work to go on talking and describing and making
the people talk--about nothing--for pages and pages; but by no means
simple to lead it all up to a definite point of culmination. There must
be some sort of point to a story; and that point is the trouble as a
rule!
But with a love-story, the amateur thinks he need not worry about
hunting for a climax--every one knows what the climax must be. "All you
have to do is to bring them along the road of life to a suitable spot
where they can fall into each other's arms"--thus the novice argues, and
proceeds to do it. Another save of brain wear and tear!
In any other situation the _dramatis personae_ are bound to do at least a
little talking, to explain how the thing has worked out, or to let you
know how matters finally adjusted themselves. But not so our happy
lovers! About the longest sentence he is called upon to construct is,
"At last!" as he clasps her to him; while her contribution to the
duologue need only be, "Darling!" which she whispers, resting her head
on his shoulder. And they need not say even this much: for one very
favourite method of conclusion, with inexperienced authors, is to bring
the hero and heroine suddenly face to face with some such final sentence
as, "What they said need not be recorded here: such words are too sacred
to be repeated"--a finale that always annoyed me in my young days!
Amateurs are generally very weak in character-drawing, and nowhere is
this more noticeable than in love-stories. There is a time-honoured
notion that the chief requisites in the heroine are youth and beauty, as
I have already said, while the hero must of equal necessity be
clean-cut, manly and masterful. With these ideas already fixed in his
head, the novice seldom sees any necessity for character-delineation. He
explains that the heroine is lovely and the hero in every way a
desirable young man, and leaves it at that; forgetting that the mere
statement that she is "winsome," or "wistful," or possessed of "clear
grey eyes that are the windows of her soul," does not necessarily make
her all these things. In the majority of amateur MSS. the heroine, as
she depicts herself by word and deed, is a most colourless, stereotyped
nonentity; and by no means the glowing, fascinating thing of originality
and beauty that the author's adjectives would have us believe; and the
hero is frequently no more animated, no more human, than the elegant
dummy in a tailor's window.
This may be taken as a fairly safe ruling: If it be necessary for you to
label your characters with their chief characteristics, your writing is
unconvincing and weak. Their actions should speak louder than your
adjectives.
One of the prominent novelists of to-day--who is clever enough and
experienced enough to know better--has a trick of letting some one of
his characters make a semi-witty remark; after which he adds, "And
everybody laughed." This last should be quite unnecessary. If the remark
be sufficiently laugh-at-able, it will be self-evident that people
smiled; if it is not sufficiently witty to suggest a laugh to the
reader, no amount of ticketing will raise a smile, either in the book or
out of it.
The same principle should be applied to the presentation of one's
characters. If they are to have anything more than a mere walk-on part,
they should very quickly explain themselves. The bald statement that the
hero is a fine, manly fellow means nothing in reality. What is important
is whether his actions and speech suggest a fine, manly character. If
they do not, no amount of descriptive matter on the part of the author
will conjure up a fine, manly fellow in the reader's imagination.
Some Rules for Story-Writing
In presenting a story it is essential that the reader shall have some
idea as to what it is about. To start by keeping the reader roaming
along for a page or two among unintelligible remarks, and references to
unknown or unexplained events, is to give him strong encouragement to
shut up the book without troubling to go any further.
There is something very exasperating about a writer who gives no clue as
to who anybody is or what anything is; he is every bit as irritating as
the one who goes to the other extreme, and drags the reader through the
babyhood and school days of the hero's parents.
These are the opening paragraphs of a MS. offered to me. It is quite a
short story, hence there was every reason why space should not have been
wasted on unintelligible preamble.
"It happened in this way: through the lions. No, that isn't exactly
right though; the lions didn't really do it, would never have thought
of doing such a thing; but if I had not gone to see them, it would
never have happened. So, you see, they were to some extent
responsible.
"I expect you are saying to yourself, 'What was it that happened?'
Well that is what I'm going to write about. But first I must tell you
that one of my failings from childhood upwards has been the habit of
starting to tell my story right in the very middle; and then I always
feel so annoyed when, after I've been chattering away for I don't know
how long, people look at me and say, 'Perhaps you will try and be
lucid and explain what you are talking about!' It never seems to occur
to them that it is they who are so stupid. But I will tell you at once
about 'me' and then tell you about 'it.' I'll begin at the very
beginning, and try to tell you everything in proper orthodox style."
After much more of this description, it turns out at last that the lions
were celebrities at a dinner-party where the narrator met the man she
ultimately married.
That was all!
It is foolish to keep the reader dangling in suspense, unless the
subsequent revelations are to be sufficiently striking to warrant the
suspense. A long explanatory deviation from the actual theme is seldom
satisfactory or desirable, in a short story, even when the theme is a
big one (unless it be absolutely necessary, in order to elucidate some
important detail): but it is inexcusable when the subject is trivial and
obvious.
The more "body" there is in your MS. the more it will stand digressive
or dilutive passages; the lighter your main theme, the less can you
afford to allow the reader's interest to be dissipated over extraneous
matter before you reach the main theme.
* * * * *
Until you are an experienced craftsman, introduce the important
characters as early as possible. The reader should know them as long as
possible if he is to take a keen personal interest in them.
It is better not to describe your characters more than is necessary for
actual identification; they should describe themselves by their actions
and conversation, as the story proceeds.