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IF YOU DON'T
WRITE FICTION
By
CHARLES PHELPS CUSHING
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
ROBERT M. McBRIDE & COMPANY
1920
Copyright, 1920, by
ROBERT M. McBRIDE & CO.
_Printed in the
United States of America_
Published. June, 1920
TO
COUSIN ANN
who "doesn't write fiction," but who is ambitious to market magazine
articles, this little book is affectionately dedicated. If it can save
her some tribulations along the road that leads to acceptances, the
author will feel that his labors have been well enough repaid.
The author thanks the editors of _The Bookman_, _Outing_ and the _Kansas
City Star_ for granting permission to reprint certain passages that here
appear in revised form.
C. P. C.
PREFACE
The publisher assures me that no one but a book reviewer ever reads
prefaces, so I seize upon the opportunity to have a tete-a-tete with my
critics. Gentlemen, my cards are face up on the table. I have declared
to the publisher that nearly every American who knows how to read longs
to find his way into print, and should appreciate some of the dearly
bought hints herein contained upon practical journalism. And, as I kept
my face straight when I said it, he may have taken me seriously. Perhaps
he thinks he has a best seller.
But this is just between ourselves. As he never reads prefaces, he won't
suspect unless you tell him. My own view of the matter is that Harold
Bell Wright need not fear me, but that the editors of the Baseball Rule
Book may be forced to double their annual appropriation for advertising
in the literary sections.
As the sport of free lance scribbling has a great deal in common with
fishing, the author of this little book may be forgiven for suggesting
that in intention it is something like Izaak Walton's "Compleat
Angler," in that it attempts to combine practical helpfulness with a
narrative of mild adventures. For what the book contains besides advice,
I make no apologies, for it is set down neither in embarrassment nor in
pride. Many readers there must be who would like nothing better than to
dip into chapters from just such a life as mine. Witness how Edward
FitzGerald, half author of the "Rubaiyat," sighed to read more lives of
obscure persons, and that Arthur Christopher Benson, from his "College
Window," repeats the wish and adds:
"The worst of it is that people often are so modest; they think that
their own experience is so dull, so unromantic, so uninteresting. It is
an entire mistake. If the dullest person in the world would only put
down sincerely what he or she thought about his or her life, about work,
love, religion and emotion, it would be a fascinating document."
But, you may protest, by what right do the experiences of a magazine
free lance pass as "adventures"?
Then, again, I shall have to introduce expert testimony:
"The literary life," says no less an authority than H. G. Wells, "is one
of the modern forms of adventure."
And this holds as true for the least of scribblers as it does for great
authors. While the writer whose work excites wide interest is seeing the
world and meeting, as Mr. Wells lists them, "philosophers, scientific
men, soldiers, artists, professional men, politicians of all sorts, the
rich, the great," you may behold journalism's small fry courageously
sallying forth to hunt editorial lions with little butterfly nets. The
sport requires a firm jaw and demands that the adventurer keep all his
wits about him. Any novice who doubts me may have a try at it himself
and see! But first he had better read this "Compleat Free Lancer." Its
practical hints may save him--or should I say _her_?--many a needless
disappointment.
C. P. C.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
PREFACE v
I. ABOUT NOSES AND JAWS 1
II. HOW TO PREPARE A MANUSCRIPT 10
III. HOW TO TAKE PHOTOGRAPHS 16
IV. FINDING A MARKET 25
V. A BEGINNER'S FIRST ADVENTURES 32
VI. IN NEW YORK'S "FLEET STREET" 43
VII. SOMETHING TO SELL 54
VIII. WHAT THE EDITOR WANTS 61
IX. AND IF YOU DO-- 72
X. FOREVER AT THE CROSSROADS 79
IF YOU DON'T WRITE FICTION
CHAPTER I
ABOUT NOSES AND JAWS
A foxhound scents the trail of his game and tracks it straight to a
killing. A lapdog lacks this capability. In the same way, there are
breeds of would-be writers who never can acquire a "nose for news," and
others who, from the first day that they set foot in editorial rooms,
are hot on the trail that leads to billboard headlines on the front page
of a newspaper or acceptances from the big magazines.
Many writers who are hopelessly clumsy with words draw fat pay checks
because they have a faculty for smelling out interesting facts. In the
larger cities there are reporters with keen noses for news who never
write a line from one year's end to another, but do all of their work by
word of mouth over the telephone.
To the beginner such facts as these seem to indicate that any one can
win in journalism who has the proper kind of nose. This conclusion is
only a half-truth, but it is good for the novice to learn--and as soon
as possible--that the first requisite toward "landing" in the newspapers
and magazines is to know a "story" when he sees one.
In the slang of the newspaper shop a "story" means non-fiction. It may
be an interview. It may be an account of a fire. It may be a page of
descriptive writing for the Sunday magazine section. It may be merely a
piece of "human interest."
As my own experience in journalism covers barely fifteen years, the
writer would not be bold enough to attempt to define a "story" further
than to state that it is something in which an editor hopes his public
will be interested at the time the paper or magazine appears upon the
newsstands. To-morrow morning or next month the same readers might not
feel the slightest interest in the same type of contribution.
Timeliness of some sort is important, yet a "story" may have little to
do with what in the narrower sense is usually thought of as "news"--such
as this morning's happenings in the stock markets or the courts, or the
fire in Main Street. The news interest in this restricted sense may
dangle from a frayed thread. The timeliness of the contribution may be
vague and general. We may not be able to do more than sense it. This is
one reason why men of academic minds, who love exact definitions, never
feel quite at ease when they attempt to deal with the principles of
journalism.
We practical men, who earn a living as writers, feel no more at ease
than the college professors when we attempt to deal with these
principles. When we are cub reporters we are likely to conceive the
notion that a "story" is anything startling enough, far enough removed
from the normal, to catch public attention by its appeal to curiosity.
Later, we perceive that this explains only half of the case. The other
half may baffle us to the end. Instance the fact that a great many
manuscripts sell to newspapers and magazines upon the merits of that
mysterious element in writing known as "human interest." If a reward
were offered for an identification of "human interest" no jury could
agree upon the prize-winning description. A human interest story
sometimes slips past the trained nose of a reporter of twenty years'
experience and is picked up by a cub. It is something you tell by the
scent.
This scent for the trail of a "story" may be sharpened by proper
training, and one of the best places for a beginner to acquire such
training--and earn his living in the meantime--is in a newspaper
office. Yet nothing could be further from the present writer's intention
than to advise all beginners in journalism to apply for jobs as
reporters. Some of the most successful magazine contributors in America
have never set foot inside of a newspaper plant except to pay a
subscription to the paper or to insert a want ad for a chauffeur or a
butler.
If you have nose sense for what the public is eager to read, newspaper
experience can teach you nothing worth while unless it is a deeper
knowledge of human nature. As a reporter you will view from behind the
scenes what the people of an American community are like and catch some
fleeting glimpses of the more unusual happenings in their lives. You
may, or may not, emerge from this experience a better writer than you
were when you went in. Your style may become simpler and more forceful
by newspaper training. Or it may become tawdry, sloppy and inane.
"Newspapers," observed Charles Lamb, "always excite curiosity. No one
ever lays one down without a feeling of disappointment." That was true a
hundred years ago, and appears to be just as true to-day.
Fortunately, the men who write the news get more out of the work than do
their readers. The reporter usually can set down only a fraction of the
interesting facts that he picks up about a "story." His work may be
eternally disappointing to the public, but it is rarely half so dull to
the man who does the writing.
No life into which the average modern can dip is so rich in interest for
the first year or two as that of the reporter working upon general
assignments. A fling at hobo life, ten voyages at sea and more than two
years of army life (a year and a half of this time spent in trekking all
over the shattered landscape of France) do not shake my conviction that
the adventurer most to be envied in our times is the cub reporter
enjoying the first thrills and glamors of breaking into print. There is
a scent in the air, which, though it be only ink and paper, makes the
cub's blood course faster the minute he steps into the office corridor;
and as he mounts the stairs to the local room the throbbing of the
presses makes him wonder if this is not literally the "heart of the
city."
He makes his rounds of undertakers' shops, courtrooms, army and navy
recruiting offices, railway stations, jails, markets, clubs, police and
fire headquarters. He is sent to picnics and scenes of murders. He is
one of the greenest of novices in literary adventure, but, quite like an
H. G. Wells, he meets in his community "philosophers, scientific men,
soldiers, artists, professional men, politicians of all sorts, the rich,
the great."
He is underpaid and overworked. He has no time to give his writings
literary finish; and, in the end, unless he develops either into a
specialist or an executive, he may wear himself out in hard service and
be cast upon the scrap heap. At first, the life is rich and varied.
Then, after a while, the reporter finds his interest growing jaded. The
same kind of assignment card keeps cropping up for him, day after day.
He perceives that he is in a rut. He tells himself: "I've written that
same story half a dozen times before."
Then is the time for him to settle himself to do some serious thinking
about his future. Does he have it in him to become an executive? Or does
he discover a special taste, worth cultivating, for finance, or sport,
or editorial writing? If so, he has something like a future in the
newspaper office.
But if what he really longs to do is to contribute to the magazines or
to write books, he is at the parting of the ways. He should seize now
upon every opportunity to discover topics of wide interest, and in his
spare time he should attempt to write articles on these topics and ship
them off to market.
He has laid the first solid foundation of successful freelancing, for if
he has been able to survive as long as six months in the competition of
the local room he has a nose for what constitutes a "story."
The next thing he has to learn is that an article for a magazine differs
chiefly from a newspaper story in that the magazine must make a wider
appeal--to a national rather than to a local interest. The successful
magazine writer is simply a reporter who knows what the general public
likes to read, and who has learned when and where and how to market what
he produces. Timeliness is as important as ever, so he must look to his
tenses. The magazine article will not appear until from ten days to six
months or more after it is accepted. Some of our magazines begin making
up their Christmas numbers in July, so he must learn to sweat to the
tinkle of sleigh bells.
I wonder how many hundreds of ambitious newspaper reporters are at this
very minute urging themselves to extra effort after hours and on their
precious holidays and Sundays to test their luck in the magazine
markets? The number must be considerable if my experience as a member of
the editorial staff of a big national magazine allows me to make a
surmise. I have read through bushels of manuscripts that had the ear
marks of the newspaper office all over them. They were typed on the
cheap kind of "copy paper" that is used only in "city rooms." The first
sheet rarely had a title, for the newspaper reporter's habit is to leave
headline writing to a "copy reader." Ink and dust had filled in such
letters as "a" and "e" and "o." Most of the manuscripts were done with
characteristic newspaper office haste, and gave indication somewhere in
the text that the author had not the faintest notion of how far in
advance of the date line the magazine had to make up its table of
contents.
Many of these novices showed a promise in skill that might give some
uneasy moments to our most prosperous magazine headliners. If only there
were firm jaws back of the promise! These men had the nose for
journalistic success, but that alone will not carry them far unless it
is backed with a fighting jaw.
I look back sometimes to cub days and name over the reporters who at
that time showed the greatest ability. Three of the most brilliant are
still drudging along in the old shop on general assignments, for little
more money than they made ten years ago. One did a book of real merit
and the effort he expended upon it overcame him with ennui. Another made
the mistake of supposing that he could pin John Barleycorn's shoulders
to the mat. Another had no initiative. He is dying in his tracks.
Who now are rated as successes on the roll call of those cub reporter
days? Not our geniuses, but a dozen fellows who had the most
determination and perseverance. The men who won were the men who tried,
and tried again and then kept on trying.
Mr. Dooley was quite right about opportunity: "Opporchunity knocks at
every man's dure wanst. On some men's dures it hammers till it breaks
down the dure and goes in an' wakes him up if he's asleep, an'
aftherward it works fur him as a night watchman. On other men's dures it
knocks an' runs away; an' on the dures of other men it knocks, an' whin
they come out it hits thim over the head with an ax. But eviry wan has
an opporchunity. So yez had better kape your eye skinned an' nab it
before it shlips by an' is lost forevir."
The names on a big magazine's table of contents represent many varieties
of the vicissitudes of fortune, but the prevailing type is not a lucky
genius, one for whom Opporchunity is working as a night watchman. The
type is a firm-jawed plugger. His nose is keen for "good stories," his
eye equally alert to dodge the ax or to nab Opporchunity's fleeting
coat-tails.