CLEARNESS
Anything that is not clear to a reader either causes him to skip it
and therefore miss part of the story's substance and effect, or else
makes him puzzle. In either case the illusion suffers. If he
puzzles, he has to use up attention on a point the writer had counted
on being clear, his mind is on the puzzle, not obsessed by the spell;
the story's flow is stopped, the reader is conscious of himself, his
difficulty and limitations, perhaps also of the author as the cause
of his troubles--in a word, the reader has got away. Every time you
confuse him you lose him. Deliberate mystification is a writer's
prerogative; having all his plans upset by mystification where none
was expected or desired is a calamity.
_Author's Ostrich Habit_.--Naturally enough, authors are inclined to
a kind of reversed ostrich habit. If a point was clear to them when
they wrote it, they take for granted that {71} it must be clear to
the reader. They forget that they have full knowledge of all that is
or happens in their fiction, while the reader can know only what
comes to him from the printed page. Often when an editor points out
an unclearness they argue with him, blissfully ignoring the fact that
the editor is himself a reader and that the reader found it unclear.
Possibly the author proves his case--that is, he points out other
passages in the story which do clear up the unclearness if the reader
remembers them and makes the correct inferences and connections. The
fact that, in the actual test, these passages failed to produce the
intended results on the reader slides off the author like water off a
duck. Still less does he get the idea that a reader shouldn't be
distracted from the story by being compelled to go into a more or
less complicated reasoning process in order to get what should have
been handed to him on a platter. Even if several editor-readers
found the point unclear, he stands by his guns.
Aside from the author's vastly superior knowledge of his material and
intentions, many of his readers may be his mental inferiors. Also
many of them may not be so {72} interested in his story as he is and
so give it less close attention than he expects. Part of them
habitually "skip" through a story and demand a plain and shining
path. Certainly no one mind is exactly like another and all readers
will not respond as does the author to any given set of stimuli if
even a tiny loophole is left open. A rule given playwrights is that
if it is essential to impress a basic point on the audience, the
point must be made at least three times in the first scene. So
extreme a rule is not needed for fiction, but the necessity of
clearness, even on minor points, is no less pressing.
It is a natural and common mistake to overestimate the average
reader's interest and attention and his ability and willingness to
solve puzzles when he sits down to read a story. A writer usually
forgets that to the reader his is merely one story out of dozens or
hundreds recently read, out of thousands and ten thousands total.
The writer's friend-critics have a personal interest in him and a
very special interest in his story that carry them smilingly over
many obstacles; to the average reader the writer probably means
nothing whatsoever personally--quite {73} possibly his name at the
head of the story was not even read--and the story is merely one of
very many. Any special attention to it must be won by the writer's
skill and careful work.
Talbot Mundy, knowing in advance the general lines of this book, has
furnished me from his voluminous reading with various quotations
bearing on points covered, among them this from Quintillian:
"Care should be taken, not that the reader may understand if he will,
but that he must understand, whether he will or not."
And from Whitman:
"Nothing can make up for the lack of definiteness."
_Ambiguous Words and Sentences_.--Any good text-book on English
covers the subject and most writers would profit by the study
thereof. If when they try a short story out on their friends they
would ask for practical detailed criticism on such points as this,
they would get laboratory results far more valuable than the
proverbially undependable criticism of friends on the story as a
whole.
_Proper Names_.--Be careful to give your characters names no two of
which are similar. {74} The reader meets them for the first time and
has the task of identifying each name with the proper character
whenever it occurs. Why confuse him with two characters named "Lowe"
and "Rowe," "Towne" and "Browne," "Morgan" and "Mordan," or even
"Hadley" and "Hatfield"? Yet many and many a manuscript contains
this needless stumbling-block for readers.
The same mistake is made in names of places, ships, and so on.
Another maddening and very common practise among writers is to use
sometimes a character's last name, sometimes his first. Even a short
story with only two or three characters can be made a needless
omelette of confusion, for this bad habit is extended to include
titles and nick-names or familiar forms of the full names. Consider
"Doctor James Stanley," "Edward D. Gage" and "Captain John S.
Tompkins." "Gage" is a lawyer and often called "Judge" by his
intimates. "Tompkins'" lack of height earns him the usual "Shorty."
The author uses some of each, possibly for the sake of "variety," and
the three characters become, to the reader, an army and hopelessly
{75} confused--"Stanley," "Ed," "Cap," "Gage," "Shorty," "Jim,"
"Judge," "John," "Doc," "Tompkins," "James," "Johnnie," "Edward."
Such a confusion is alone enough to ruin the blissfully unconscious
writer's story. For the simple reason that readers can only half
know what is going on. Yet in practise it is a very common mistake.
_Technical and Foreign Words; Classical, Historical and Fictional
References and Allusions_.--The confusion arises when a reader
happens not to understand the word, even from the context, or to be
unfamiliar with the reference. Writers seem to take it for granted
that all readers will grasp the meaning without effort or delay. Or
mystify deliberately to air their culture. The warning seems silly
when set down on paper but is warranted by the number of offenses in
actual practise.
_Naming Characters Early_.--Sometimes an effect of reality is gained
by not at once naming characters in a story, giving the reader as it
were, the effect of looking down upon a new world whose figures are
no more known to him than they would be at first sight in a real
scene. Generally, however, a reader is likely {76} to resent being
left to follow, for even a few pages, the fortunes of a nameless
person. Include particularly the narrator in a first-person story.
_Dialogue_.--Over and over again an editor is compelled to go back
over a passage of dialogue in manuscript and "count out" with finger
or pencil until he finds a line that is definitely connected with a
particular speaker. The characters are not sufficiently
individualized to be recognized from their lines, context fails to
identify, the lines are not labeled with the speakers' names and the
least flicker of attention leaves one lost at the end of a dozen or
even half a dozen speeches. Sometimes the author himself gets lost
and mixes or omits. An ordinary reader doesn't have to "count out"
as does the editor--he is more likely to snort and pass on, with part
of the story lost to him and its net register on him badly damaged.
If he doesn't snort and pass on he stops to puzzle it out. Why
injure a story by so crude an omission?
_Too Many Characters_.--The heading is self-explanatory. All the
characters in any story are utter strangers to the reader until he
becomes familiar with them; he can keep clear {77} in his mind only a
limited number of new acquaintances all made in the course of a few
minutes; the kind of writer who uses many characters is usually the
kind who is unable to individualize them with any vividness. A novel
or novelette gives greater scope, but in a short story it may almost
be given as a general rule that the fewer the characters, the
stronger the story, not counting characters used in blocks, such as
mobs, armies, spectators. Structure and proportion, as well as
clearness, are of course involved.
_Dialect and Slang_.--Neither is familiar in all places or to all
classes, and on the point of clearness both are to be condemned.
Their advantages will be considered later.
The stupidest blunder in handling dialect is to misspell a word
without really changing its pronunciation, thus confusing the
reader's eye yet gaining only the appearance of dialect--and the
reader's irritation.
_Contradictions and Inconsistencies_.--Their variety is infinite and
their occurrence in submitted manuscripts frequent beyond the belief
of those who read only the corrected printed page. A woman changes
the color of her eyes; with a conversation that could {78} occupy
only one minute there is coincident action that couldn't possibly be
compressed into five, or, _very_ commonly, a bland lapse of even more
time without any action; a six-shooter emits seven shots without
reloading; of a party of fourteen, five turn back and ten remain; a
character uses a word that would never be used by such a person in
real life, or acts, without explanation, entirely at variance with
his nature as the author has pictured it; the hero acts on
information he has not yet received; a man's name changes during the
story; a woman opens a door already open; a character goes somewhere
else without leaving or becomes present without arriving. When you
encounter such a break in a printed story doesn't it jar you out of
the illusion, lessen your respect for the author, and therefore
permanently damage his story's hold on you?
There can be no general rule for correction. When not the result of
sheer carelessness and indifference, such errors are due to the
author's failure to visualize, to live his scenes himself. This
failure in some cases is due to real inability or comparative
inability, but in very many cases to attention so obsessed and {79}
ridden by principles of plot, rules for character drawing,
regulations for niceties of style, application of technique in
general and requirements of various magazines that there's no
brain-force left for making the story world a really convincing and
natural one in its all important details.
_Holding Reader to Correct Plot Line_.--In other words, proportion
and emphasis. Briefly stated, what is meant here is clearness of
path for the reader through the incidents of the story, so that his
mind will follow or leap ahead only in the exact direction the author
wishes for the fullest effectiveness of his story. This will be
taken up in detail later.
_Simplicity_.--The following from Schopenhauer (thanks to Mr. Mundy)
gives us the heart of the matter:
"Nothing is easier than to write so that no one can understand; just
as, contrarily, nothing is more difficult than to express deep things
in such a way that every one must necessarily grasp them."
Yet to most of those sending manuscripts to magazines simplicity,
particularly simplicity in words and style, is very pointedly
something to be avoided whatever else is {80} done or left undone.
The twin cause of this appalling idea, this curse stupidly laid upon
American fiction, is the firmly rooted belief that literature must be
an expression that is, first, unnatural, second, learned, recondite,
even sophomoric. In its lowest and very common form it is no more
than the crude idea that editors must be very scholarly persons and
that therefore they would scorn any manuscript that didn't have a lot
of "big words" in it. The simple language of Shakespeare, Homer,
Virgil, the Bible and other really enduring classics loom before
their eyes, but no, they follow the jack-o'-lantern of "big words."
They have this excuse--much of the fiction published in magazines and
books is fairly rotten with "big words," a reflection on editors and
reading public as well as writers.
The hard practical argument against "dictionary words" is that most
people find them difficult to understand or at least lack the
definite, vivid, full connotation for them that they have for the
simpler and more common words of our very rich language. Such words
reduce the size of an author's fully appreciative audience. Another
point is that the {81} writer who doesn't know any better than to
make a business of using them is very often himself lacking in an
understanding of their finer shades of meaning. A third point is
that, unless such words are part of his own every-day vocabulary he
is being unnatural in using them and thereby ruins his chances of
attaining real style or producing real literature. Also he gives
through them to his story an unnatural, artificial quality, an air of
being forced. In the eyes of all those with a real understanding of
real literature he makes of himself a plain darned fool.
But can there be no great literature without simplicity? None that
couldn't be greater with it. A straight line is the shortest
distance between two points; any deviation from it is lost motion,
unnecessary; the best literature contains no lost motion and nothing
that is unnecessary. But is not a "big word" sometimes the straight
line? Yes, but for one case of this kind there are twenty when it is
not. Sometimes the author uses it for a simpler phrasing not
sufficiently mastered to come to mind at need; sometimes it is
necessary only because he has committed himself by some roundabout
phrasing demanding it {82} for completion; sometimes he commits
himself to it by following the inferior method of telling the reader
what is inside a character instead of making it plain through what
the character says and does and what other characters say and do to
him.
The final test for the use of "big words" is the nature of the
material or ideas handled. In some cases they are necessary to a
degree, sometimes to a great degree. But in practise the nature of
the material is generally not correctly assayed, or is mishandled, or
the need imagined. The ignorant use them through ignorance; for
those with a good knowledge of words it is generally easier to use
the "big word," the Latin derivative instead of the simpler
Anglo-Saxon.
Is it not therefore more natural and so better for this last class to
use the "big word"? That depends on why it is natural--or on whether
it is natural or merely habitual. A writer may have come into the
use of them, not by natural development but through deliberate
effort, a stunt for the sake of seeming learned or being impressive,
so that their use, while easy to him, is merely the result of his
having made of himself a kind of abnormality--an artificial result of
artificial talking {83} and method of thought. On the other hand is
the far rarer case of him whose mind naturally expresses itself
through polysyllables, generally because of an education from books
instead of people. I know one writer who spoke to no one for two
years except for the barest necessities because when he used what to
him was perfectly natural language the people he met thought he was
"stuck up" or showing off.
I do not know why Henry James wrote as he did, but contrast the two
following cases:
I once shared an apartment with an ardent admirer of James and as I
did not share his admiration we argued frequently. James came to New
York while my friend was preparing a bibliography of his idol's
works. There was some question as to several early articles or
stories that had magazine but not book publication and my friend
wrote for the simple information necessary. It could have been given
amply and courteously in two or three sentences. The reply was
appalling in its totally unnecessary complexity, length and creation
of detail, so much so that my friend woke me up to show it to me and
joined in my unholy glee. It was, surely, a natural expression, but
why was it natural? {84} And certainly it was not adapted to the
nature of the material or idea.
Now read the first one hundred and fifty words of _A Coward_ by De
Maupassant, even in translation, then write down the things you know
about the character described in those few very simple words and you
will be amazed at the length of the list.
Consider that De Maupassant and his master Flaubert stand
preeminently for unrelenting search for "the one word" and that both
of them are characterized by extreme simplicity of presentation. And
is any character of Henry James' so much more intricately drawn than
"Madame Bovary"?
Among more modern writers take Joseph Conrad. I am a Conrad "fan,"
but consider him, comparatively speaking, a poor workman though a
great artist. Here we have simplicity of words but not of expression
in a general sense. I do not by any means fully understand most of
his stories and I find that others are about equally at sea if they
are honest or are cross-examined. In most of the qualities that make
a great fictionist he stands in the front rank, but he is lacking in
_corresponding_ ability to simplify and clarify his thought, to make
the proper abstraction {85} and selection of thought expressions.
His content and gifts are so rich that even only a part of them
registered on readers is sufficient to rate him a master, but the
fact remains that he conveys only a part of what he has to say.
Instead of a direct, clear-cut, simple path to his goal he gives the
reader a maze of paths that is not lacking in blind alleys.
Whatever be the generally accepted academic philosophy of simple
versus complex expression, it can not outface the fact that the
minority of readers can not so fully understand or appreciate
complexity and that with them the effectiveness of a story is thereby
crippled. Certainly in practise there is crying need for the mastery
that can say all yet say it simply. If, instead of straining for
complexity, beginners would aim at simplicity, especially of words,
they would not only come closer to writing both good magazine stories
and good literature, but would find themselves able to "handle"
greater and greater complexity of thought and with a precision and
effectiveness that can not be equaled by the other method.
Remember that the simple, every-day words are in almost all cases the
_stronger_ ones.
{86}
_Repetition_.--Before leaving the subject of clearness as a whole (it
will come up again in connection with other subjects), a word might
be ventured on repetition. The present horror of it is a badly
exaggerated reaction. To repeat without due cause an unusual word or
phrase in a short story, or a usual one too close to its first use,
is a distraction and therefore harmful to the illusion, but sometimes
due cause is ignored. A story, all so clear to its author, presents
hundred of facts with which the reader must familiarize himself. The
easier you make this for him and the more you insure his getting all
the points necessary to a full appreciation of your story, the more
fully will your story register on him. To present a vital point once
so vividly that it is almost sure to register is best of all and
correspondingly difficult to do, but keep your eyes open for cases
where repetition, probably not in exactly the same words, will
accomplish the same purpose nearly as well and perhaps more surely.
Aside from clearness, in skilful hands repetition can become a most
subtle and powerful instrument for dramatic and poetic effects of
high literary quality.
{87}