DISTRACTIONS
To hold a reader in the illusion of a story it is of course necessary
to hold his attention, not merely in a general way, but entirely and
without break, interruption or hindrance. He must live wholly and
every instant in the story world--must never be recalled for even the
fraction of a second to the real world he lives in.
In writing any story there are a thousand chances of breaking the
illusion by some little touch. Most of these are almost
automatically avoided even by writers of small ability. Otherwise
there would be no fiction. The point is that what are usually a very
small minority are not avoided by most writers. The result is that
editors are likely to reject the story because it does not "hold the
interest," is not "convincing" or "lacks punch." Their finding is
probably just, though they may not have analyzed for {53} causes, and
the writer is not enlightened or even convinced of the finding.
_Disproportionate Damage from Distractions_.--Failing to avoid even
an extreme minority of the chances for breaking the illusion is
enough to injure the story very seriously. You can't afford to let
your reader escape from the story's spell, slip back into the world
he really lives in, even momentarily. For you have to waste at least
a little of the story's potential force in getting him back again,
which means that you can never get him back _quite_ so fully as you
had him before. You may even not get him back at all. You can't
afford to have him become even momentarily a critic, for you must
waste at least a little of the story's potential appeal in order to
change him back from the critical attitude to sympathy and
absorption. You can't afford to let his attention wander off to
side-issues, for the story has to stop working at being a story in
order to get him back on the main line and it needs every atom of its
strength for the main job.
We recently published one of the best stories _Adventure_ ever
printed, a combination of simple narrative appeal and of literary
{54} excellence of the first water. It is bringing us many letters
of appreciation. To-day I read a long letter from one reader who had
found in that story nothing, either good or bad, except that there
was an indirect inconsistency as to one character's exact age. That
was what you might call the _net result_ of that story on a reader.
All the strength and merit of an otherwise splendid story completely
wrecked for a reader by that one trifling point! Undoubtedly others
detected the same inconsistency but suffered less acutely or did not
register their "kick." But in each case the appeal of the story lost
strength out of all proportion to the size of the detail involved.
It is a typical, not an exceptional, case, except for the unusual
merit of the story ruined. Thousands of letters like that come in
from readers, often many on the same tiny slip or discrepancy. To
those readers the story in question left as its chief impress upon
them a violence--at one tiny point--to their knowledge of fact or
sense of consistency. In each case how many other such readers are
there who do not write us?
Other thousands of readers protest over {55} such slips, such
distractions from the illusion, but are not so completely swamped by
them that they fail to consider the merits of the story as a whole.
But, even with them, how big looms the tiny flaw in proportion to the
whole! In each case how many other such readers are there who do not
write in?
_How to Use Your Friends_.--No point that may distract a reader can
be so small that it is not serious. You can not measure the harm
done; in one case there may be no harm, in another a little, in
another a great deal. But if writers who have their friends
"criticize" their stories would ask these friends to give less
attention to "literary" points and take careful note of every little
thing that in any way attracted attention to itself or sent the mind
wandering off to things outside the story, they would get some
invaluable pointers--of the only kind that the usual friend is really
capable of giving. If some day the colleges make systematic
laboratory tests along these lines they should get data as surprising
as they would be useful.
_Unusual Words_.--Consider how tiny a thing is capable of pricking
the bubble of illusion, of jerking the reader for a brief {56}
instant back into his real world so that he must be drawn again into
the fiction spell. If in reading a story you come upon some such
word as "pringle," "anodic," "calipash," "mansuetude," "spiracle,"
"frigorific," "cambist," "gibbous," "ortelic" you probably find it
unfamiliar and, if so, of course know that you do. Therein lies the
breaking of the illusion. However brief the total time occupied by
your reaction to the word, however slightly you may seem to have
paused over it, you _paused_ and you paused over _it_--gave attention
to _it_, not to the story. You had to _remember yourself_, your own
knowledge and experience. Quite possibly you also considered the
author's contrasting knowledge and experience, and the author is not
the story. Possibly you tried to figure out the meaning of the word
from its derivation or the context, or dredged your own memory for
it, making your pause over it still longer. Perhaps your pause
totaled only a few seconds or a fraction of one second, but--the
illusion was broken and had to be rebuilt.
Far less unusual words than those cited will be unfamiliar to part of
most audiences.
{57}
Would one such word do very serious damage? Very unlikely. But it
would do some, and even a small damage is to be avoided if possible.
Would four such words? There can of course be no definite
measurement, but one thing is sure--_four would do far more than four
times as much damage as one_. The effects are cumulative, following
a kind of geometrical progression. And no one knows when a serious
breaking-point may be reached.
Is a writer never to use a "big word"? Not if it's too big for his
audience. In the mouth of a character he may put any word he
pleases, provided it is used for sound purposes of characterization
or for some other specific demand of the story itself, but not for
the mere telling of the story. He might, for example, wish to
impress a learned or scientific atmosphere. In this case, too, there
is the saving fact that the reader need not know the meaning of these
words, and knows that he need not, just as he would know he need not
if he were actually living in the scene. He does not feel challenged
by them. "Big words" may be justified in scores of typical
instances, but there is no instance in {58} which it does not pay to
consider whether the damage may not outweigh the gain.
Even an unusual word whose meaning is at once apparent to any one,
like "cat-silent," should be carefully weighed as to advantages _vs._
disadvantages before it is used. And only in the rarest instances
can there be justification for using such a word more than once in
the same story, lest the recurrence added to the unusualness make a
double distraction.
_Foreign Words_.--The same applies to words from foreign languages.
Undoubtedly they are valuable in giving color, but this value is too
often attained at too high cost in distraction and is frequently
attainable through other means without loss. The damage they do is
by no means theoretical, for readers do not hesitate to complain to
editors on this score. I do not remember their doing so in the case
of "big words," for naturally a man doesn't go to the trouble to
admit he doesn't understand words in his own language, while often
rather proud of not understanding foreign words. Sufficient color
through foreign words can be gained by using only a few, even if
these few are repeated, and by using only those instantly clear from
{59} the context or from unmistakable similarity to the corresponding
English word (like "_fader_") if context heads the reader in that
general direction. There is comparatively only a slight risk in
using those that are very generally known, like "_ami_" or "_mon
chère_" also ejaculations that are evidently such and therefore make
no demand on the reader's understanding.
_Classical, Historical and Fictional References_.--The danger, of
course, is that the reader may not be familiar with the reference,
knows that he is not, and therefore becomes conscious of himself as a
reader. Another risk is that, being familiar with them, his mind
drifts off to them more than the writer intended. Used with
discretion, they may have value, but they are generally not used with
discretion and, generally speaking, a story is the better for telling
itself without covering part of the ground by means of what are
practically quotations from other stories. Also, there are other
dangers than that of simple distraction, which will be covered under
other heads.
_Unusual Proper Names_.--To put this case concretely, here is the
list of the male {60} characters in one single story I read yesterday
in a manuscript: "Tom Goit," "Braith," "Grahame," "Tim Stine," "Linus
Kime," "Jestock," "Bissonet," "Heads," "Arnet," "Jimson,"
"Kliedjorn," "Jed Willoughby," "Andy Meenal," "Yard Sant," "Simson,"
"Angus Stell," "Gant," "Beezaw," "Colin Corbin," "Happy Falls," "Jim
Light," "Rafe Gillen," "Charley Jance." It is probably not entirely
complete, but was made by running through the pages and taking all
names noted, usual or unusual. Can any human being read that story
without having his attention distracted to the fact that those names
are violently unusual? Doesn't the fact that they are unusual add an
air of unreality to the whole story--story-book names instead of real
people's names? Won't many readers be definitely irritated by the
artificiality and mannerism? Aside from this and similar breakings
of illusion it was a good story and will undoubtedly be printed
somewhere. Its author is a successful writer of fiction. But hasn't
the story lost very appreciably through that amazing collection of
proper names?
On the other hand there is a certain advantage in the use of such
names in some types {61} of story and for some audiences, though not
in the story from which the above are taken or for the audience at
which it is aimed. Some readers like proper names that are baldly
fictional and unreal; that is what fiction means to them--unreality,
utter difference from their own lives. These are much the same
readers who like their stories filled with duchesses, earls and
ancestral halls. A generation or two ago these were a rather large
group, and larger still before that, but nowadays folks are more
sophisticated in their fiction and need illusions that run more
nearly with reality. And, at best, isn't it rather a cheap method of
abnormality?
Unusual names serve also to make the characters more vivid to the
reader's mind, but this method of characterization is a crude one
that should give way to better ones entailing no risk.
In humorous stories of a certain type they are entirely legitimate.
On the other hand, look carefully at your proper names lest, in a
serious story, you give a character a name like "Hencastle" that
brings a grin where you do not wish to have a grin.
Alliterative proper names are another {62} phase of the evil in the
case of readers sufficiently sophisticated to note the alliteration
at all.
Avoid proper names that are difficult or ambiguous of pronunciation.
Don't give your characters the same names as those of real people
prominent in the public eye unless a name is so common that it is not
likely to distract the reader from the story's illusion through
thoughts of the real person; even a too similar name is risky in some
cases, _e.g._ any variation of the unusual name "Roosevelt."
_Dialect_.--While belonging more properly under later heads it
serves, too, as a simple distraction in itself. Its advantages are
obvious, yet some readers will read no story with dialect in it and
some magazines will print none.
_Mistakes_.--A typographical error, a mistake in spelling,
punctuation or English is sure to check and drag out of the illusion
any reader who notes it. Such matters are definitely the editor's
responsibility, but he is far from infallible and the author would,
in most cases, profit by safeguarding against him. An editor will be
grateful, particularly the assistant {63} editor who edits copy and
reads proof. In our own office we can quote you lots of rules as to
correct English--and show you violations of them in our own pages.
Mistakes in fact and statement will be considered later.
_Unusual Mannerisms of Style_.--Distinction is to be made between, on
the one hand, individuality and deliberate shaping of style to attain
a particular atmosphere or suit particular material and, on the other
hand, mannerisms that are necessary to neither of these ends and
harmful in distracting attention to themselves. No one can possibly
draw a definite line between these two groups, but a warning is badly
needed against forgetting the danger. It is a question for
laboratory test. Try to get your friends--or better, your
enemies--to read your story with this point in view, or do not
mention it beforehand and cross-examine them afterward as to what
mannerisms registered on their attention. And don't hand-pick your
critics or "dogs" from any one class or group unless you mean your
story to appeal to no other.
A novelette, which had to be rewritten because of it, used the
following mannerism {64} hundreds and hundreds of times until each
recurrence was not only a distraction but an agony: "he ran, and
running, laughed aloud," "he sang, and singing, voiced his mood," "he
fought, and fighting, worked toward the house." Another writer
habitually, in the words following or introducing a line of dialogue,
carries the legitimate "he said," "he urged," "he encouraged," etc.,
to such distracting extremes as "he frightened," "he anguished," "she
informed," "he recognized," "he remorsed." Of late years there has
developed the fad of saying "the heart, or soul, or head, of him" for
"his heart," "his soul," "his head," etc. This variation from the
usual has, in prose, a very limited field in which its advantage
exceeds its damage.
A mannerism of style is warranted if it so fits into a story that it
is an integral and practically unnoted part of it; otherwise it is a
harmful factor. A better adapted mannerism could have gained the
desired effect without making of itself an obtrusion.
_Fiction as a Vehicle_.--There are two ways of writing a story. One
is to write fiction only; the other is to combine fiction with
something else. Readers like both and both {65} are legitimate, but
the latter is of course not pure fiction; fiction is merely the
vehicle for the other thing or things. One of the greatest evils
among present-day fiction writers is the failure to make this
distinction and keep it clearly in mind. Too often a writer does not
realize that there is anything else mixed with his fiction;
consequently his product is not straight or well-built fiction nor is
the fiction part of it a carefully made vehicle for the other thing.
To make fiction serve any end other than its own is very likely to
weaken its value as fiction, and before a writer thus weakens it he
should make very sure that the advantages gained from making it carry
something else compensate for that weakening. If he wishes to give
his reader, for example, some direct philosophy, well and good, but
he should--and seldom does--weigh the attendant loss.
There is a second distinction that should be made. When I say "plus
something else" I mean plus something else that is added as a load is
put upon a wagon, not something that comes to the reader as a result
of the fiction. To say in a story "a man may prosper exceedingly on
a policy of utter selfishness, but, {66} having all his life taken
without giving, in the end he gives for what he took" is putting a
load on the wagon. To let the story itself say that, merely to tell
a story that illustrates and brings home that truth without
mentioning it specifically (unless through the mouth of a character),
is only letting straight fiction perform a natural office, though a
natural office that can be overworked at the cost of a well balanced
whole. The former is the easier and less artistic method, and far
too many writers follow it far too often. Its evil is that of any
"load"--it breaks the illusion, tending to make the reader think of
the person who hands him this bit of philosophy, of himself, of the
world in general, instead of the story world only.
The present-day fad of opening a story with a bit of philosophy,
though objectionable on another score, does little damage to the
illusion, since it comes before the spell begins and may even serve
as an intermediate step.
_Obtrusion of Author_.--This is a crying evil, a serious damage to
the illusion. The author has no more business to appear concretely
in his story than a playwright has upon the stage when his play is
being acted. Once in ten {67} thousand times he may himself be
sufficiently interesting to atone for the wreck of the story's spell;
the other nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine times he is a
mistake, a bull in a china-shop. The following, all taken from
submitted manuscripts, range from crude to subtle obtrusions:
"At the time of which I wish to speak"
"you must understand"
"consider the case of John Holt. But first consider the environment"
"see him"
"and it is the correct word"
"it is necessary to add, in explanation of this seeming paradox"
"had, somewhat grumbingly, be it said,"
"he had, for instance, tried,"
"and disappears from this story,"
Each of these compels a reader to realize that some one is talking to
him. You can't be carried away in a dream when conscious that some
one is telling it to you. Sometimes the point is made that an
author's obtrusion puts the reader on more intimate terms with him.
What has that to do with fiction as such? If the author didn't
obtrude himself, the reader would have no interest in intimacy or
non-intimacy with him. If the author is the one out of ten thousand,
all right; otherwise, not.
{68}
If a writer must express philosophy or opinions specifically, let him
use the legitimate device of the first-person narrative, taking care
that the narrator is cast in such character as to make these opinions
natural to him. Or else baldly use fiction as vehicle only, making
his story a conversazione.
There is another legitimate device. Kipling ends a story with "I
think he was right." But he begins that story with "When I was
telling you of." In other words, he tells the story in an
undeveloped frame or brackets. Partly by leaving the frame
undeveloped and impersonal, his skill is sufficient to make you feel
that it is not Kipling himself who talks to you, but some unknown
participator in the action of the story or an onlooker. It is
really, in effect, a first-person narrative with the privileges of
such.
First-person narratives, unless presented as addressed to a
fictitious audience such as the narrator's children or grandchildren,
of course permit a fairly free direct address to or at the reader,
since the writer poses as the actual teller. Incidentally, however,
it is not consistent with his telling what goes on inside the
characters unless made plain to him as one of them.
{69}
As found in submitted manuscripts, the great majority of authors'
obtrusions seem unconsidered, and are accompanied by the damage to be
expected from walking in the dark. The remainder, almost without
exception, seem ill-considered. One exception out of a thousand
instances is not a heavy average.
{70}