A GENERAL SURVEY
Let us take a general survey of what is to follow, beginning with
fundamentals.
_The Art Process_.--The art process of fiction involves three
elements--the Material, the Artist and the Reader. So far as my
experience and observation go, the Reader is not regarded as a part
of the art process and in both theory and practise fails to get
anything approaching due consideration. For that reason his part in
the art process will receive full treatment in this book, while
Material and Artist, being already amply covered in thousands of
texts, will receive more cursory treatment. The reader can,
nevertheless, be made a complete basis of both rhetorical and
fictional theory. Almost any important element can, for that matter;
it is merely a matter of choosing the point from which you shall look
at the circle. The reader's having been {18} hitherto slighted in
this respect is alone sufficient reason to choose him if for no other
purpose than that of viewing the art process from a new angle and
thereby getting a more balanced concept of it. Personally, I believe
the reader's angle the correct one, being the final step, the test of
the other two.
Philosophers will at once quarrel with both my theory and my
terminology. If they will confine their quarreling to the field of
philosophy, they may settle the issue as they please. Must a genius
think only, or at all, of his readers when he sits down to write?
Probably not, but this book is not written for geniuses, who need no
rules or guidance or at least think they do not. Certainly either
genius or plain human will fall into ruin if he thinks overmuch on
rules and regulations of any kind when he should be giving himself up
to creating. But I've noticed that even geniuses generally revise
their work after its first launching in ink. Why?
Must art be seen or heard by others before it can be art? Naturally
I realize that the Venus de Milo was a work of art before it was dug
up, but what of that? It was only a potential work of art from any
practical point {19} of view and of no good to any one until brought
where material and the artist's work on the material could continue
and complete the process by creating in human beings the thoughts and
emotions they strove to express. In that word "express," by the way,
lies the whole divergence of theory. Theories have made it
practically subjective only, ignoring its objective side--the
recipient. Can you, outside the most abstract abstractions of
philosophy, express anything without expressing it _to_ some one? If
you think you can, how are you going to be sure that you have
expressed it? Who is to be the judge on this point? You, the
artist, alone? Perhaps the philosophers can show me my position is
untenable, but they can't show me one single fiction editor in all
the world who wouldn't throw up his hands in despair at the very idea
of letting every "artist" be the judge as to whether he had expressed
what he thought he had expressed. Even non-editors, who haven't been
tortured by the mistaken idea of "artists" that they have succeeded
in expression, would be more than slow to admit the artists
themselves as competent judges or to abide by the artists' judgments.
{20}
Consigning abstraction to the background, you are a fool if you put
into material what no one else can get out of it. And I'd say that
you were not a genius, the two terms not being mutually exclusive,
for a genius--at least all whom the world has been able to
discover--does not fail to convey his message to at least a few.
To how many people and to what grades of intelligence must the artist
convey his message in order to prove himself an artist? I do not
know. Neither, I think, does anybody else. There seems almost equal
disagreement as to the character and quality of the message to be
conveyed. But I can see no doubt that some message must be conveyed
to somebody and it would seem that the greater and better the message
and the more the recipients, the more successful is the work of art.
On the practical basis that the would-be fictionist wishes to sell
his fiction to the magazine or book houses, it follows naturally that
as a first step his success will be measured by the number of people
to whom he is able to convey his message, the thought and feeling he
desires to express. After reaching them, it of course becomes a
question of the quality {21} of his message, but that quality can be
known only by those readers reached by it. It becomes a question,
also, of the degree to which he reaches them.
But first, and most of all, he must reach them.
_Clearness_.--It follows that the prime essential is clearness. If
they are to get his message at all, they must be able to understand
what he says. If they are to get it fully, he must express exactly
what he means and do so in such manner that they will understand it
exactly as he means it. This may seem too elementary for
consideration. It isn't. The theory is readily admitted but not
sufficiently practised. The guiltiest are often the most unconscious
of their guilt, for it is a common serious failing of writers to
believe that because they have made things plain to themselves they
have made them plain to others.
Clearness is not merely a question of unambiguous sentences, though
the majority of writers do not successfully mount even that simple
hurdle. Clearness includes supplying all necessary details,
suppressing the unnecessary ones, giving to each the proportionate
emphasis you wish the reader to give to it {22} and seeing to it that
his response is exact, and so shaping your presentation of the story
that the reader _must_ follow the exact path you have mapped out for
him.
_Other Essentials_.--A valuable accessory in attaining clearness is
simplicity. But most writers abhor simplicity, apparently because
being simple seems to them to ruin their chance of being "literary."
Clearness, simplicity, force, but the last two of this old triology
of the rhetorics are really included under clearness in its full
meaning. So, too, perhaps, are unity and structure. In any case,
all are necessary in getting the writer's message to his readers.
Shall I sound hopelessly elementary and banal when I say that, to
register his message in full force, the author must enlist his
reader's sympathies? Yet the majority of those who attempt fiction
either give this necessity no thought or are unbelievably crude and
stupid, not only missing chance after chance to secure this sympathy,
but continually and needlessly alienating it. I do not use
"sympathy" in its sugary sense, but shall attempt no exact definition
in this chapter of preliminary survey.
{23}
As essentials for the securing of the reader's sympathies may be
included unity and structure--in some of their phases more properly
included here than under clearness.
Also, he must economize his reader--carefully regulate demands on
attention, thought and feelings according to a human being's normal
ability to respond as well as according to the varying needs of
different parts of the tale.
_The Illusion_.--Lastly, to convey his message fully, he must _impose
and preserve the illusion of his story_. In this are really included
all the necessities named, even clearness. And, I think, all
necessities that can be named. This, it may be said, _is_
fiction--the imposing and preserving of an illusion. I make it the
basis of this book because it offers what seems at present the angle
of approach most needed in teaching the successful writing of
stories, in correcting the faults most common and most fatal, and in
providing writers with a consistent and comprehensive theory that
they can apply to their needs and problems as these arise.
Itself a return to the solid foundation of underlying elementals, it
has the very {24} practical merit of compelling writers to make the
elementals the constant test of their work. Necessarily involving a
constant and careful consideration of the reader, it seems the best
remedy for the greatest weakness in fiction writing--the tendency to
limit the art process to the second of its three steps, Material,
Artist and Reader. If the third step can be helped to its due share
of attention, the first step can wait its turn, at least so far as
the successful writing of magazine and ordinary book fiction is
concerned.
Do I then mean that the prime object of fiction is the imposing of an
illusion? That here lies the test of fiction? That no fiction is
written or read or valued except for its success in creating an
illusion? The imposing of an illusion is the object and test of
fiction _as fiction_. Fiction serves many purposes. It may teach
something, show something, what you please. But for these things it
is only a vehicle, and the test of it _as a vehicle_ lies in its
success at imposing an illusion.
As to whether my theory of fiction is "new" and "revolutionary" I can
offer only that it was new to my experience and revolutionary only in
that, in the actual editorial work of {25} helping writers develop
their abilities for fiction, it has seemed to effect results that no
other theory was able to effect. I might add, also, that the fiction
department of a Coast University, having come across some of my
correspondence with contributors, wrote me that the fully developed
principle of preserving the illusion had not, to their knowledge,
been elsewhere advanced, that they had adopted it as a regular part
of their course, and that it had satisfactorily stood the test of
several years. On the other hand I have learned, even since the
actual writing of this book was begun, that for several years Doctor
Dorothy Scarborough has taught this principle to her classes in
short-story writing in Columbia University.
As to the newness of dividing the art process into the three steps of
Material, Artist, Reader, I can not say. So far as I know, it is my
own idea, the joining together of two lines of thought on which I had
been working. On the other hand, I should be amazed if others had
not previously advanced the same theory.
_Literature vs. Magazine Fiction_.--What distinction do I make
between literature and magazine fiction? In fundamentals, none.
{26} Only a small percentage of magazine fiction is literature in the
distinctive sense of that term. That so little of it is literature
is partly due to the arbitrary and entirely non-literary restrictions
imposed by the magazines with their various aims as to types of
audience. Some will not accept unhappy endings, some bar sex
questions, some use no stories of foreign lands, some demand action,
some permit no mention of drink or tobacco, some will have no
"problems," some require a breezy, sophisticated style, some must
have this, some abhor that. Most writers must sell what they write
or stop writing through lack of means or lack of tenacity. Naturally
they generally strive to make their goods acceptable to the market,
writing with a careful eye on the likes and dislikes of the magazines
and all the more harassed and limited because what is one magazine's
meat is another magazine's poison.
Some, like Sinclair Lewis, Talbot Mundy and others, fully realizing
the situation and keeping their heads, write what they know will
sell, write it as well as they can under the limitations, and keep on
writing it until they have attained sufficient standing and {27}
financial foundation--and sufficient mastery--to write what they wish
and in the way they wish. But the vast majority become permanent
slaves in the galley where they must serve their apprenticeship,
perhaps growing very skilful in handling one oar among the many oars
but hopelessly unable to paddle their own canoe.
If money success is essential or preferred, by all means draw a sharp
distinction between literature and magazine fiction and, unless you
are quite sure your talents are considerable, confine yourself to the
latter. On the other hand, granted sufficient ability, aiming at the
former may very well carry you further in every way. If what you
wish is, regardless of worldly success, to write the best that in you
lies, forget everything else, including the restrictions of the
magazines.
Another cause of the scarcity of literature in magazine fiction is
that writers, editors and readers become obsessed with fads,
generally of a superficial nature, as to style, or treatment, or
types of material. Underneath this is a more fundamental cause--the
habit of imitation. O. Henry wrote and died and even yet the mails
are full of manuscripts {28} from writers who are trying to write O.
Henry stories--and can't, for the simple and everlasting reason that
no one of them is O. Henry. Every John Smith of them would do better
work if he wrote John Smith stories, but lots of them are still
selling O. Henry stories because editors too are still under the O.
Henry spell or know that many of their readers are. Kipling, Doyle,
James and other famous authors have each their army of imitators,
many a sheep-like soldier serving in several armies at once.
Nor do the imitators always aim so nigh. Any writer popular in the
magazines, no matter how ephemeral his vogue, serves them almost
equally well. The lowest depths are reached when the model is no one
in particular but merely a composite of all that is most hack and
usual on the printed page.
Not long ago there arose again the fad of beginning a story with a
paragraph of philosophy. It has spread like a disease and, I think,
is one. There were--or are--the era of glittering sophistication in
style, the _Dolly Dialogues_ and _Prisoner of Zenda_ eras, doublet
and hose, business, sex, Stevensonian rhythm, and so on.
{29}
But all these fads and other limitations serve only to lower the
proportion of literature in magazine fiction. Neither they nor
anything else creates any fundamental difference between the two.
Both are fiction, both subject to the laws of fiction. And even that
magazine fiction beyond the pale of literature is aimed, somehow, at
the reader and is to be judged on that basis.
{30}