THE USE OF MODELS IN WRITING FICTION.
We have seen how a real incident is worked over into the fundamental
idea for a composition. The same principle ought to hold in the use
of real persons in making the characters in, a novel, or any story
where character-drawing is an important item. In a novel especially,
the characters must be drawn with the greatest care. They must be made
genuine personages. Yet the ill-taste of “putting your friends into a
story” is only less pronounced than the bad art or drawing characters
purely out of the imagination. There is no art in the slavish copying
of persons in real life. Yet it is practically impossible to create
genuine characters in the mind without reference to real life. The
simple solution would seem to be to follow the method of the painter
who uses models, though in so doing he does not make portraits. There
was a time in drawing when the school of “out-of-the-headers” prevailed,
but their work was often grotesque, imperfect, and sometimes utterly
futile in expressing even the idea the artist had in mind. The opposite
extreme in graphic art is photography. The rational use of models is the
happy mean between the two. But the good artist always draws with his eye
on the object, and the good writer should write with his eye on a definite
conception or some real thing or person, from which he varies consciously
and for artistic purpose.
The ordinary observer sees first the peculiarities of a thing. If he
is looking at an old gentleman he sees a fly sitting upon the bald spot
on his head, a wart on his nose, his collar pulled up behind. But the
trained and artistic observer sees the peculiarly perfect outline of the
old man's features and form, and in the tottering, gait bent shoulders,
and soiled senility a straight, handsome youth, fastidious in his dress
and perfect in his form. Such the old man was once, and all the elements
of his broken youth are clearly visible under the hapless veneer of
time for the one who has an eye to see. This is but one illustration
of many that might be offered. A poor shop girl may have the bearing of
a princess. Among New York illustrators the typical model for a society
girl is a young woman of the most ordinary birth and breeding, misfortunes
which are clearly visible in her personal appearance. But she has the
bearing, the air of the social queen, and to the artist she is that alone.
He does not see the veneer of circumstances, though the real society girl
would see nothing else in her humble artistic rival.
In drawing characters the writer has a much larger range of models from
which to choose, in one sense. His models are the people he knows by
personal association day by day during various periods of his life,
from childhood up. Each person he has known has left an impression on
his mind, and that impression is the thing he considers. The art of
painting requires the actual presence in physical person of the model,
a limitation the writer fortunately does not have. At the same time,
the artist of the brush can seek new models and bring them into his
studio without taking too much time or greatly inconveniencing himself.
The writer can get new models only by changing his whole mode of life.
Travel is an excellent thing, yet practically it proves inadequate.
The fleeting impressions do not remain, and only what remains steadily
and permanently in the mind can be used as a model by the novelist.
But during a lifetime one accumulates a large number of models simply
by habitually observing everything that comes in one's way. When the
writer takes up {the} pen to produce a story, he searches through his
mental collection for a suitable model. Sometimes it is necessary
to use several models in drawing the same character, one for this
characteristic, and another for that. But in writing the novelist
should have his eye on his model just as steadily and persistently as
the painter, for so alone can he catch the spirit and inner truth of
nature; and art. If it is anything, is the interpretation of nature.
The ideal character must be made the interpretation of the real
one, not a photographic copy, not idealization or glorification or
caricature, unless the idealization or glorification or caricature
has a definite value in the interpretation.