FUNDAMENTALS OF
FICTION WRITING
_By_
ARTHUR SULLIVANT HOFFMAN
INDIANAPOLIS
THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
COPYRIGHT, 1922
BY ARTHUR SULLIVANT HOFFMAN
_Printed in the United States of America._
PRESS OF
BRAUNWORTH &. CO.
BOOK MANUFACTURERS.
BROOKLYN. N. Y.
_To_
JAMES H. GANNON
Whose Understanding Cooperation Has
Made the Application of These
Principles a Pleasant Task
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I By Way of Introduction
II A General Survey
III Creating the Illusion
IV Your Readers
V Distractions
VI Clearness
VII Overstrain
VIII Convincingness
IX Holding the Reader
X Pleasing the Reader
XI Plot and Structure
XII Character
XIII Individuality vs. Technique
XIV The Reader and His Imagination
XV The Place of Action in Fiction
XVI Adaptation of Style to Material
Appendix: Your Manuscripts and the Editors
Index
{1}
FUNDAMENTALS OF FICTION WRITING
CHAPTER I
BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION
Living in so complex a civilization, we generally fail to realize how
complex have become our mental habits. We have come more and more to
think upon complexities until, for the most part, the more elementary
facts, processes and approaches are slighted or omitted as beneath
the high development of our minds. However learned our thinking may
be, its foundation must be elementary thinking, and, if elementary
thinking is neglected because it seems too elementary for attention,
the result is likely to be unsoundness of the whole structure because
it has been erected on unsound foundation.
Add to faulty thinking habit the human {2} tendency to accept as
established what has been handed down to us by our thought
predecessors, dead or contemporaneous. Progress can be made only to
the extent this tendency is overcome by chance or guarded against.
Guarding against it requires particularly the close scrutiny of
elementals.
It is particularly unfortunate that, the specialists of course being
the most complex thinkers of us all, we have allowed our habit of
specialization to leave to them more and more the guidance of general
thought, thus drifting further and further from elementary methods of
thinking.
The more thoroughly you analyze modern thinking methods and their
results, the more evident becomes the damage done.
Simplicity is the key, but, being rather proud of our complexity and
advancement, we have become such strangers to simplicity that we even
distrust it when we meet it. It is most pitiful of all that a mere
outward show of complexity gains more respect than does a simple
essential unadorned. Yet it is true. Almost automatically
simplicity produces in us a reaction of contempt, a feeling that our
highly developed minds have long {3} ago passed on beyond such
childish matters. We are too advanced to bother over the elementals
and the result too often is much frantic "progress" along wrong paths.
In the course of my editorial work it impressed itself on me more and
more that there was somewhere unsoundness in both the editorial basis
of criticism and the writers' basis of creation. Being afflicted
with the prevalent complex method of thought, it was only gradually
that I came to suspect that the unsoundness traced back to some of
the elementals all of us seemed to be taking for granted. My
suspicions have grown the stronger during the years of "laboratory"
work, at some points ripening into convictions, so that in this book
intended to be of practical service to writers of magazine fiction
they will inevitably show. They must, therefore, be labeled in
advance as departures from the usual dicta laid down, so that the
reader can make allowance accordingly.
While my personal history is unimportant, some of the details that
may indicate, or that seem to have influenced, the theories developed
have place in this book as guide-posts in valuing or discounting it.
{4}
It is, for example, only fair to make plain in advance that I am
probably far less familiar with books on how to write fiction than
are most beginners who may read this book, and probably know--or
remember--less concerning the dicta of critics and other authorities
on literature in general. On the other hand, in view of the probable
reaction to some of my unacademic views, I claim the right to state
that these views do not result from lack of academic training. Also
a brief statement of my experience as editor and writer seems called
for by way of warrant for my venturing to advance any theories at all.
I have been an editor more than twenty years, a magazine editor for
nearly twenty, serving on seven widely different
periodicals--general, specialized and fiction--_Chautauquan, Smart
Set, Watson's, Transatlantic Tales, Delineator, Romance, Adventure_.
At intervals during that time I have contributed fiction and articles
to _Everybody's, McClure's, Bookman, Country Life, Delineator, Smart
Set_ and half a dozen others. Previous to this there were nearly
three years as editor of a country weekly and two years of teaching
English and literature in high school. I {5} specialized in English
at one university and added some graduate work in fiction writing at
another.
As a child my home influence was decidedly literary, even to a point
that might be designated "highbrow," with the natural flavoring of
science rather to be expected in a house largely occupied by my
grandfather's microscopes and shelves of specimens. In a word, my
early training was decidedly academic, and as a "cub" I came to the
magazine "game" spelling "literature" with a very large capital "L"
and with more than the usual cub reverence for books and magazines
and all that pertains thereto.
Like the majority of magazine editors, I found that my first task was
to shove most of my academic training and point of view into the
background, making of them an accessory rather than a guide, and
adopting an altogether new scale of relative values. A few months
accomplished the greater part of the change, but it required years to
develop suspicion of that new and commonly accepted scale, to ripen
the suspicion to conviction and to build up a third scale to take its
place in my work.
{6}
Before entering the magazine field, I remember only one questioning
of precepts and tenets. About 1900 I refused to read any more
authors "for style," realizing I was against my will absorbing too
many of their individualities, Stevenson's sentence-rhythm in
particular imposing itself on my literary efforts to a decided
degree. "Style is the man" seems to have been one of the textbook
statements that sank in deepest, and it gave me courage to rebel
against another of its kind.
In my college course three things stand out as strong in influence.
All were encountered in work of the thesis class conducted by
Professor Joseph Villiers Denney with a sound judgment and breadth of
view that were bound to be stimulative and give permanent value.
First, laboratory experiments upon the class itself showed us, to our
great surprise, the tremendous degree of variation in individuals as
to the quality and degree of their imagination-response to the
printed or spoken word. I have met few writers or editors who had
any conception of this variation or who had even given the matter a
thought, yet it is of basic importance to both.
{7}
The second idea outstanding from my college course is the explanation
of the psychological appeal of fiction given by George Henry Lewes to
the effect that man finds enjoyment in fiction because by following
the fortunes of the hero or identifying himself with him he can
attain vicariously the perfections and successes he can not attain in
real life. I have not seen it for twenty-four years and may have
distorted it, but the idea as stated has been the one acted upon.
Third, there was Spencer's economy as a basis of rhetorical theory.
I remember nothing whatever about it except that he included economy
of the reader's attention. To what extent this phase of his idea is
responsible for my own theories I do not know. Memory tells me I
recalled it only after working out my own, but it is reasonable to
hold it a cause though an unrealized one.
_Analytics of Literature_, by L. A. Sherman, made a decided
impression on me during college or in the years immediately
following. Undoubtedly I gained much from it, but at present I am
unable to state its content in any but the most vague way and can not
detect any but academic influences from it, though {8} in this I may
be doing it serious injustice. De Quincey's _On the Knocking at the
Gate in "Macbeth"_ made vivid the use of relief scenes. From some
book by Brander Matthews I learned that the short story should have
only one point.
Five years after college I read Tolstoy's _What Is Art?_ Read it
with interest, resentment, bewilderment and enthusiasm. It was the
first real blow to my unquestioning acceptance of all the usual
canons of art. The impress was tremendous, but, quite in keeping
with my miserable memory, the only definite, abiding impression I can
identify is the emphasis laid on simplicity, with the corollary that
creative work must reach peasant appreciation if it is to be classed
as art. Years later I came to attach more and more importance to
simplicity, arriving at that attitude by paths leading from practical
experience--laboratory work, as it were, paths that to my vague
recollection seem not at all those of his approach, but I can make no
exact measure of the extent to which Tolstoy may have done my
thinking for me or at least influenced it. Probably the influence is
far greater than I realize.
{9}
In any case, the above are the _total_ of the outside influences. It
is, of course, impossible for any one to live in contact with his
fellows in a world filled with type and opinions without absorbing
ideas from others, but in the sense of influences sufficiently
definite to make conscious impress I can add nothing to the above
list. In nearly twenty years, if I have read any book or article
dealing with the philosophy of literature I do not recall the title
or the occasion. Five or six years ago I read a third or half of a
book that taught the writing of fiction, but laid it down because it
was too difficult for me to understand and seemed not in accordance
with my own ideas. I have never read any other text on fiction
writing, though I have spun the pages of a number of them to gain a
general idea of methods and theories, finding only the usual ones.
This lack of reading authorities was at first due to lack of time,
but for years I have carefully avoided the influence of others'
theories to the best of my ability so that I should not be diverted
or forestalled in an effort to work out my own. Naturally, most of
the accepted theories and methods are current because {10} they are
sound, but there is a minority of cases in which a dissenting view
seems warranted.
My warrant for dissent is that to a very great extent the main faults
(other than those due to lack of natural ability) in the fiction
submitted to magazines seem directly due to faults in accepted
theories and methods. These faults in theory and teaching may be
roughly summarized under two heads:
(1) Assigning to readers theoretical reactions based on traditional
editorial and critical precepts instead of basing editorial precepts
on actual reactions of readers. In particular, lack of emphasis upon
preserving the illusion.
(2) Overwhelming writers with demands of technique and academics and
thereby doing all possible to ruin individuality and real ability.
For getting data on the first of these points I have been
exceptionally well situated. More than any other magazine on which I
have served, more than the half dozen others under the same roofs,
more, so far as I can judge, than any other magazine I know, {11}
_Adventure_ gets definite, concrete response and criticism from its
readers. So far as the male sex is concerned, probably no other
magazine has a more generally representative audience, ranging
through all classes from the highest to the lowest brows. The great
number of letters and talks resulting from this keen personal
interest of its readers in the making of the magazine has been
invaluable in giving its editor, for more than ten years, the actual,
specific reactions of readers, as opposed to the theoretical
reactions that accepted editorial theories assign to them.
The overemphasis on technique and academics I consider the most
harmful factor at work in the field of American fiction, from both
the literary and the magazine point of view. I can claim no special
equipment for speaking on this point other than a decidedly academic
training followed by over twenty years of practical laboratory work,
and arrival at conclusions by abandoning all accepted precepts and
going back to the simple elementals.
The object of this book is not exploitation of theories but practical
service to writers and {12} would-be writers. It is aimed directly
at the faults that are the chief causes of rejection of manuscripts
by magazines and book houses. General theories are used chiefly to
give foundation and perspective, so that a writer, knowing the
general ends in view, may be enabled to solve intelligently and
consistently even those problems in his work that can not be covered
specifically by any "book of rules." It is a crying need that
writers should learn to work less by rule of thumb and more from a
general understanding of what fiction really is and of what
determines its success. For twenty years I have watched the flow of
manuscripts--more tens of thousands than I like to remember--and am
year by year more convinced that more embryo writers of appreciable
ability are ruined by an overdose of technique at the hands of their
literary doctors or by slavish copying of the work of some
"successful" writer than by any three other causes you please to name.
Technique, naturally, should be a means, not an end. In most of the
teaching of the day so much emphasis is placed on it and such large
quantities of it are shoved down the beginner's throat, before he has
developed {13} himself sufficiently to digest it instead of merely
chew it, that in a majority of cases he loses himself and his talents
in an empty struggle with formulas and formalities. He may learn to
chew very well indeed, but the odds are that he isn't chewing
anything and that he has starved himself to death. As a matter of
fact, he has ceased to be himself.
Perhaps the reason for this overemphasis on technique is that those
responsible for the books, classes and correspondence courses
designed to help the budding fiction writers are, with very few
exceptions, chiefly theorists with no great background of either
actual editorial experience or an even fairly considerable
accomplishment in writing fiction. Those who have both, even a
moderate degree of both, are so very few that in number they
constitute only a fraction of a per cent. of those at work in this
field. The teachers of fiction, a good many of them, give extremely
valuable service, but the majority of them either approached their
work from abstract and academic beginnings or, having sold fiction
themselves, built too much from their own experiences, knowing too
little of the many different paths by which others must {14}
progress. Both groups seem to have been too much influenced by
technique and academics in general.
The editors, too, for the same and other reasons, have contributed
toward making technique too great a factor. It is physically
impossible to give individual criticism to every manuscript that
comes in, or, when given at all, to give it fully in all cases.
Almost never are the reasons for an acceptance given and only in a
general way at best. As a result, writers in their early formative
stages are left in the dark unless they turn to the other teachers.
Much of the criticism given by editors, too, is academic and centers
on technique--because that kind of criticism is easier for us to
give. Still again, we often mislead a writer by failing to
distinguish carefully between the needs and likes of the particular
magazine as opposed to those of magazines in general.
Whatever the reasons for the exaggerated part technique plays in
American fiction, it is the chief hope of this little book that it
may to some degree counteract this curse of formula and encourage
beginners to more direct effort for individuality and a more natural
expression of it.
{15}
Perhaps this is not a book at all, but merely a collection of talks.
Certainly there is little attempt at carefully unified structure.
Its writing must be done at odd moments, for I am still in editorial
harness. Also it will be done only in such moments and manner as
make the writing of it a pleasure rather than a task.
I use the pronoun "I" without stint or apology, for that is the
natural method to follow when one person speaks to another and, while
I object strenuously to an author's obtrusion of himself into his
fiction, the first personal pronoun in books of exposition is often
of distinct advantage in precision as well as in ease and clearness.
Finally, this book is not meant for geniuses. They should by all
means march their own paths, finding or making their own methods,
each to his taste. Though this is a book of suggestions, not of
rules, the genius does not need it. But wait,--alas! half my
possible readers are gone from me at the ending of that last
sentence, self-dismissed as indubitable geniuses. I'd forgotten that
the writing world is composed chiefly of geniuses, most of them
indubitable and--self-dismissed.
{16}
But _you_--I think you'd better read on until you find stronger
reason to turn away, for, to be friendly frank, the odds are so very
heavily against your being a genius. As for me, I don't even know
more than three or four geniuses at the very most and you can be
entirely at your ease in my quite ordinary society.
{17}