PLEASING THE READER
Divide all readers into majority and minority. It is legitimate and
profitable to aim at either. Now make your big decision, and it is a
very big one. At which of these will you aim? If the majority,
study and analyze their tastes and reactions. If the minority, study
and analyze the majority first; then study the minority. Their
tastes are not necessarily opposite, but they are necessarily
different, also various; the minority are a unit only in being
different from the majority. But you can reach them fairly well
merely by giving them the opposite of what the majority like. Your
problem is whether you can get a better slice of attention from the
majority of readers in competition with the majority of writers or
from the minority of readers in competition with a minority of
writers.
_Majority vs. Minority_.--Your own peculiar {121} gifts and
inclinations in writing should be the deciding factor, but you can
make no intelligent decision until you really have some understanding
of the two groups between which you must decide. If you write for
money only, study them till you have your human-nature formulas at
your finger-ends and almost automatically apply them to every idea,
expression or bit of material that comes up for consideration. If
you write for art only, study them just the same (you'll be getting
the best material in the world), but instead of turning the results
into formulas turn them into your understanding. If you write
according to the method--commonly called inspiration and attributed
to what we, sometimes hastily, term genius--of merely exploding
yourself into the world at large without deigning to look at said
world, continue to explode as usual, but when your creation is all
created go over it with pencil, blue-pencil and waste-basket in the
light of knowledge and understanding of whichever audience you prefer
as target, and make very, very sure that what you inspired into your
story is going to reach that audience just as you intended it should
and is going to please {122} and interest them as much as you fondly
imagined.
For, you see, you are almost certainly not a genius. A genius makes
his own rules and they are better for his case than are any rules
other people can make for him. If any genius is by strange chance
reading this book I hope he will stop and read no other in place of
it. He will almost surely do far better without. God knows the
world is too full of rules for writing fiction and of people who
allow the rules to ride them out of all ability to use the rules.
The proper function of rules is that of mere guides and suggestions
to be weighed, analyzed, and then either discarded or so thoroughly
absorbed that their application during the act of creating is
automatic and subconscious and their use as tests after creating is
no more than the author's own spontaneously critical view of what he
has written. Nothing in this book is intended to hang like a "Do it
now" motto on the author's wall; its one intention is to give him a
fresh point of view and the kind of foundation that will enable him
to make his own rules out of his own understanding.
In this book we are concerned primarily {123} with the majority of
readers and, unless otherwise specified, have in mind his likings and
reactions.
_Choice of Material and Theme_.--The majority of readers would
probably value their lives above any other selfish
consideration--life in the sense of existence but also in the sense
of health and vigor. Next, such things as love, success, wealth,
happiness, uplift, knowledge, beauty and contest, not necessarily in
the order named. These, or combinations of these, such as success in
a contest for life or love or wealth, offer a safe beginning in
selecting material or a theme for fiction. These are the fundamental
things vital to human beings. The further you get from them, the
more must you approach appeal to a minority. (The majority, of
course, does not always consist of the same individuals, but merely
of most individuals, and shifts in membership more or less with each
shift of point at issue.)
_Happiness_.--Human beings would on the whole rather be happy than
unhappy. Therefore happy themes and pleasant material are surest for
pleasing the majority. Generally speaking, people read fiction for
entertainment {124} and prefer feeling happier rather than unhappier
when they lay down a story. Sympathy, morbidness and a desire to
play with the fire of fear, horror and suffering give rise to
contrary tastes in fiction, the drama and other forms of art, but the
general, fundamental desire is for happiness.
What is happiness? I attempt no definition. One man knows probably
as well as any other. All of us can watch other human beings and
have a very fair idea of what makes most of them happy.
Generalizations on human nature are unsafe but, to take an extreme
case, a story of cripples, deformities and disease, unless this
material is very strongly counteracted with success, love, sympathy,
etc., would please none but abnormal readers. Deformities and
disease offend the inherent love of life, health and beauty. Again,
the majority prefer non-tragic stories, preferring to think of life
rather than death, of success rather than unsuccess.
Let me make it emphatically plain that I am attempting no such
foolish thing as a catalogue of material for fiction. My one purpose
is to lead the writer into doing what he so {125} often fails to
do--_consider his material very carefully from the point of view of
the probable reactions of human beings instead of choosing it
according to God knows what silly rules for writing fiction or merely
repeating the material and themes he has seen that other writers use._
A few stray points may be of some service:
The beginners and the very young are as a class the writers most
given to tragedy and morbidness. As they develop they generally
change to more cheerful material.
The percentage of tragic and morbid stories would dwindle rapidly if
it were not for the empty writer's desire to "do something strong"
and his inability to get strength in any other way.
The horror story has its legitimate place, as has any story dealing
with human emotions, which are the very heart-food of fiction and of
unfailing interest to the human readers. Suffering, unsuccess,
death, all the unpleasant things you please, are good fiction
material. But, if I may make the distinction, they are good, not
because they hurt, but because, like happier things, they appeal to
the readers' human sympathy and understanding.
{126}
Since I shall not give it space anywhere else, the question of
realism _versus_ idealism may be dragged in here from the point of
view of the readers' liking. When I first came to New York, in
youthful throes over this and similar momentous questions, I had the
good fortune of a letter to William Dean Howells and, trembling at
this God-given opportunity, broached my chief problem. Mr. Howells
was incapable of anything but gentleness, and the process of his
gentleness in my case was so kindly that its words are no longer
clear in my memory, but the gist of his reply is very clear indeed.
He told me to go ride on a Fifth Avenue bus and write down whatever
caught the attention of a young man fresh to New York. I pass on to
others that very excellent advice. Go ride on a bus or sit still
somewhere and write about whatever catches your attention. The
question of whether the result is realism or idealism is one you can
afford to forget, for the main point is that you should follow your
own particular gift for seeing life. The only attention you need
give the result is consideration of its appeal to people in general,
changing or not changing the result according to the {127} relative
value you assign to popularity and art, remembering that the two need
not be mutually exclusive goals and that either realism or idealism
finds response in a sufficient number of readers.
_The Philosophy of Fiction_.--Doubtless there are a hundred
explanations of the fundamental appeal of fiction to human beings.
That given by George Henry Lewes seems particularly illuminating and
practically helpful.
It is, in substance, as I recollect it:
_Fiction appeals to man because it enables him to attain vicariously,
through the characters in the story world, the perfection and success
he can not attain in real life, and to live for a while in a world of
his own choosing instead of in the real world that has been thrust
upon him._
The first part of this definition does not seem to apply to realistic
and analytical fiction, though the second part does, nor does any of
the definition seem to take sufficient account of the reader's
enjoyment of the exercise of his sympathies or the broadening of his
understanding and knowledge or of his sheer joy in artistic
excellence. This {128} apparent failure to cover the ground,
however, is not so real as it seems. Joy over artistic excellence is
essentially a critic's feeling, not a reader's--the joy of a
technician, not of a recipient, of a cook, not of a diner. And if
you will apply my distinction between fiction and the various things
for which fiction is a mere vehicle, the contributions to
understanding and knowledge are not a part of fiction itself and
therefore need not be covered by the definition. The exercise of the
reader's sympathies may also be accounted for by strict application
of this distinction; or the "vicarious perfection and success" of the
definition may be broadened to a comparison of the reader's own life
with lives of the story people, better here, worse there, either
stimulating variety and satisfaction or affording the vicarious
improvement of condition.
But, whether or not you consider the definition all inclusive, there
is in it a fundamental idea whose practical application would go far
toward winning for most writers a far stronger and deeper hold on
readers. Sophomoric critics and writers may be inclined to sweep it
off the boards, since it both deals with fundamentals and undermines
some habitual {129} angles of criticism, but most submitted
manuscripts and perhaps most published fiction would be much stronger
if the writers thereof had made intelligent application of an
intelligent understanding of this principle. Perfection and success
have in them the element of completeness, and completeness is a
fundamental desire of the human being, partly because of the pleasant
restfulness of its attainment.
I do not say that every story should reek with success and
perfection, but I do say that before you even partly eliminate these
factors you should have an intelligent understanding of what you are
doing and should sacrifice them only for such other factors or
elements as you are sure will more than compensate in the particular
case.
Also I say, without hesitation or qualification, that, in the type of
story containing little or no fundamental appeal other than a march
of events and the success of a more or less perfect hero or heroine
(the type that includes the large majority of submitted manuscripts)
the application of this principle means an incalculable increase in
effectiveness. In other words, if the presentation of {130} success
and perfection constitutes a fundamental appeal to readers, see to it
that you give these things in rich measure unless you compensate
fully for their absence or partial absence.
Note that these elements are given lavishly in the "dime-novel" type
of story. This is probably the lowest type of all (not because of
the superabundance of action, but because of unnaturalness and
all-round poor workmanship), yet its audience is huge and its hold on
them tremendous. And if you think this audience is limited to the
unsophisticated and the very young, you are vastly mistaken; that
hold is too fundamental for a majority of even our cultured classes
to escape from if it is given fair opportunity. To advance exciting
and abundant action as the sole cause for this hold, as is commonly
done, does not sufficiently account for it. The proof is that
practically none of these stories is willing to trust to action alone
for popularity. They almost always include another factor. And that
factor is the double one of the success and perfection of the hero.
The authors of such stories may include this factor only because they
have seen others do so and may {131} not analyze beyond "people like
it," but in that analysis they are thinking straighter and truer than
are most of the learned and scholarly exponents and critics of the
writing art who lose themselves, their goal and their followers in a
maze of artificial regulations and meaningless formalities.
_Reality_.--To preserve balance, let us leap to the opposite point of
view and review in our minds what was said in the chapter on
convincingness. For the reader's pleasure in vicarious success and
perfection to have soundness and stability, or for any other fiction
purpose I can conceive, the story world must be a reproduction of our
real world or of a modified real world consistent within itself.
Part of a reader's fiction enjoyment lies in his familiarity with
things presented, in finding things in their proper place, in the
vanity of "I know that already." That a hero should attain
remarkably complete success is acceptable to our reason because such
success is frequently attained in real life. But a hero made
remarkably perfect in all respects is likely to be too much for our
common sense and to break the story's hold on us. "There ain't no
such animile;" we know it, and, {132} however much the joys of
vicarious perfection may lure us along through the story, the
illusion is seriously weakened.
The obvious remedy is a balanced middle course.
_Giving Characters Strong Appeal_.--In following this middle course
the need in fiction to-day, aside from the dime-novel type, is more
emphasis on the perfection element, not less. (Incidentally, it
would help characterize a hero, and an appalling percentage of
submitted manuscripts _lack even that amount of characterization_.)
Give your hero or heroine sufficient faults and weak points to make
him as human and fallible as you please, but give him also the strong
elemental appeal of being close to the limit of human perfection in
one or two traits of character, or physical or mental
characteristics, or along one or possibly two lines of ability.
Unless, of course, you are fully prepared to counteract the loss of
this valuable asset with other elements. A sadly large proportion of
would-be writers are not thus prepared, and many a story by a skilled
author could have been improved by an understanding use of this
element.
{133}
The same principles apply in less degree to minor characters.
Villains, of course, aim at perfection in evil and their success
generally must cease at whatever point will render the hero's success
most effective, but in their case the conflict between naturalness
and success-perfection is often easily avoided by the simple and
effective device of giving your villain a quite human allowance of
commendable or pleasing perfections, leaving the net villain-product
as evil as you please--the engaging villain, the fascinating rascal,
the merely human trouble-maker.
The usual fundamental compensation for a story's lack of perfection
and success appeal is the appeal to the reader's sympathy with
elements similar to those in himself or his life, including the
appeal to his sympathy for those suffering or enjoying as he has
done. Personally I'm rather inclined to believe the substitute not
quite so effective, the other appeal seeming the more elemental and
therefore the stronger of the two. Lewes' definition can be made
sufficiently inclusive if we say that fiction's hold is due to its
enabling the human being to live life vicariously, at his own
pleasure, on his own initiative {134} and always as the ultimate
controller of destiny, since he can at any moment toss the story
aside, wiping out the entire story world. But if this is so, isn't
it safe to say that the normal human being on the whole prefers
pleasure to pain and finds more pleasure in success and perfection
than in failure and imperfection? Psychologists can justly retort
with, "But what are pleasure and pain?" The common-sense answer to
that is that the psychologists can't agree among themselves upon a
definition, that fiction is not written for psychologists but for
people in general, and that most of us have a sufficiently definite
idea of what pleases people in general and what is disagreeable to
them.
When you come to the chapter on "Character" consider in connection
with some of the points suggested there the points here suggested as
to perfection of hero. Both there and here it might pay to run over
in your mind the story characters that have best stood the test of
ages, from "Achilles," "Ulysses" and the faithful "Achates" up to
modern times. Best of all, forget you are a writer and as a reader
shake yourself free for a few moments from all book learning and
culture, all {135} preconceived ideas, all opinions of all critics
and very particularly free from self-deception. Reduce yourself thus
to a plain, common or garden human being, open to any natural
impulses or likings and honestly willing to recognize and confess
them. Then pick out the heroes or heroines you most enjoy, that have
the strongest hold on your liking, being careful not to test by the
literary criteria that have been imposed on you. If you do this
honestly and keenly you may not wholly agree with my point of view,
but I'll venture you'll consider your time well spent and that your
allegiance to various learned dicta may be somewhat shaken.
Particularly if you habitually identify yourself with the heroes as
you read, don't you find yourself reveling in a hero's superior wit,
grace, comeliness, strength or skill? Isn't this proud joy in him
something deeper and more abiding than tests imposed by
sophistication? Be honest.
To get at the whole matter from a different angle, don't human beings
like to idealize?
One other point. When the world was young the individual rose or
fell, lived or died, in accordance with the degree of his {136}
physical strength, skill, courage and beauty. Mental and moral
values were later factors. The physical is the most elemental, the
most deeply rooted, in the race. Also, so long as we have wars and
policemen, it remains the strongest, the court of last appeal. A
thousand years from now it may have sunk into comparative oblivion,
but even then the racial instinct of respect and admiration for it
will persist. If you doubt its greater hold on human beings at
large, forget books and study people--not just one class or type but
people in general. No, I am not a materialist; the moral or mental
can overcome the physical, but it is the physical that is there
first, that is the more elemental in matters of liking and disliking,
the strongest in natural impulse. And what I am trying to drive home
is the need of greater consideration of the elemental likes and
dislikes of readers, for they are being forgotten under the more
vocal and visible likes and dislikes imposed by a civilization and
culture often artificial and therefore weaker.
Why not, then, whenever you can do so without sacrifice of values
more important to the particular case (as you generally can), {137}
see to it that your hero makes this fundamental appeal in some way?
On the other hand, remember the facts of life. Listen to the
following from William Ashley Anderson, a writer who, though an
American, fought through the British East African campaign and has
spent a good many of his years in meeting life in the raw at far
corners of the world as well as life in its softer centers:
"Villains who always look like monsters strike me as burlesque.
"Villainous-looking men are frequently good-hearted and heroic.
Good-looking men may be fiends. Character is really indicated more
by expression than features--and a clever villain can control his
expression. Primitive types, of course, betray themselves most
easily. The expression of the most cruel men is usually dull,
stupid, hungry--or with a look of wildness or concentration in the
eyes. A good man, drunk, may become an arch-villain. His looks then
might be the looks of an arch-villain; sober, he might have the
appearance of an angel. 'Lucifer was the most beautiful of all the
angels'!
"By the same token the employment of handsome, powerful heroes is
often exasperating. On the average, handsome men are less likely to
be brave than homely men--because of the very fact that they are
handsome; and a man with pretty features seldom has a strong
character (since the character is {138} often spoiled by too much
praise in youth, or too much flattery from women after reaching
adolescence). You remember Cæsar's encounter with Pompey, when the
former instructed his hard-bitten veterans to strike at the faces of
the handsome soldiers of Pompey.
"It is a fact that a man conscious of a handsome set of teeth recoils
more at the thought of losing several of them from a blow than he
does at the idea of broken limbs."
_Poor Heroes, Heroines and Villains_.--By all means do not idealize
into such perfection and success that your characters are unhuman and
unconvincing, but, I implore you, in making them human do not add any
recruits to the great army of main characters who are unintentionally
presented as imbecile. Sometimes carelessness is responsible for
this stupidity, but generally the cause is the writer's surrender to
the difficulties of plot--it is so easy to keep the plot machinery
clanking along by having the hero become a temporary idiot.
Misunderstanding may be the basis of tragedy and drama, but a man can
misunderstand without qualifying for an asylum for the feeble-minded.
Please also lend your efforts to the needed work of abolishing the
heroine, supposed to {139} be all that is most worth striving for,
who is really empty of everything except vanity, false pride, cruelty
and sublime selfishness--who, at her worst, offers her hand to the
winner of a contest or the performer of some feat. I wish some one
would organize a writers' league whose members were pledged either
not to let their heroes leap into the arena at her bidding or to have
them, after recovering her glove, throw it in her face. But I fear
she will continue to hold sway undetected, as she does in real life.
Perhaps the heroes are as bad, but I am a man myself.
_Moral Values_.--Nearly all people are moral to the extent of
preferring good to bad when they have nothing at stake, as, for
example, when reacting to merely imaginary people in a story. They
side with the hero against the villain.
Readers with a discriminating sense of moral values are likely to be
alienated by a character, supposed to be good, who is made to act
contrary to good morals or ethics by the apparently unconscious
author. Readers without this discriminating sense are a moral
responsibility laid upon the author; he is culpable if he still
further befogs their {140} discrimination between right and wrong by
winning their approval of a character and then letting that character
seduce them unawares into bad ethics.
Fiction is more than a reflection of the times; it is a builder of
its contemporaneous thought and morality. If I were asked to name
the five greatest influences upon the character of a people I should
most emphatically include fiction and it would be nearer first than
last among the five. Watch its effect upon your child. If you are
of analytical turn, seek far back in memory for the origin of your
own ethical standards and ideals, or for the influences that
strengthened or weakened them. Watch the mass of people respond to
the standards held up by fiction--and by the drama, motion-pictures
and other forms of art. Do not swallow the excuse that they "only
give what the people demand"; those of you on the "inside" will know
better.
I know the defenses offered for the picaresque story. I am familiar
with the plea of "art for art's sake." It seems to me mere idle
talk. Art is for life, not life for art, and if art, however
justified by its own laws, {141} pollutes the soul of a people, then
the cause of that pollution should be wiped out.
Realism and the spread of knowledge can justify a picture of life as
it is, though too often the author's real interest is not in the
reality of what he presents but in its ugliness. An author is
justified in using fiction as an instrument against what he sincerely
believes mistaken morality, though his own morality is impeached if
he ventures his dissent without most anxious consideration of the
seriousness of what he is doing. But there is no excuse whatever for
presenting ugliness as beauty, crime dressed in honor, vice as
admirable, crookedness as amusing, rottenness as normal, evil as
good. He who makes a criminal a hero is playing with hell-fire, if I
may use so old-fashioned a metaphor. He who writes a story of crime
triumphant is a debaucher of public morals. He who presents, however
bedecked and disguised, a parasite, a fop, a hypocrite, a brute, a
crook, as admirable is a dry-rot in the heart of the people. He who
fills his stories with sex, not for the purposes of honest realism
but for the sake of sex-exciting more nickels from human beings, is
far lower and less courageous than the pimp.
{142}
I can not ask you to accept my point of view in these matters, yet,
because of the broadcast, invidious evil involved and because the
morality of fiction seems a thing seldom touched upon by text-books,
I do ask that you weigh your responsibilities. A surprising number
of offenses are purely inadvertent and are eagerly corrected by the
authors when pointed out, for most writers are not evil in intent.
These slips, at least, can be more guarded against, for they are due
more to lack of careful weighing than to lack of a moral sense. One
common and easily detected lapse is the use of the principle that the
end justifies the means--the philanthropic criminal, for example, by
emulating whom any one can justify almost anything he wishes to do.
From the purely practical point of view these things are for the most
part irritations to the discriminating. Often with the
undiscriminating they add nothing to the story's effectiveness,
though operating in real life after the story itself is forgotten.
As to the popular and financial success of polluting fiction you will
notice that the public is sufficiently sound usually to react
eventually, {143} especially if given half a chance, against the very
thing it has embraced.
_Needless Offenses_.--Write it down in red ink that any slur upon any
religion that creeps into your story will cause everything else to be
forgotten by some of your readers in their indignation over that
affront. And make up your mind that anything offering even the most
remote possibility of being twisted into a slur will assuredly be so
twisted. Protestants, Catholics, Jews, Scientists, all have
representatives with chips balanced on the edge of their shoulders.
Generally the slur is taken as a deliberate insult on the part of
both author and editor, often as sure evidence of a systematic
campaign of propaganda. If the hero happens to be a minister,
priest, rabbi or reader, other sects accuse you of propaganda in
favor of the particular religion involved. If the villain happens to
be one of these, then it is followers of the religion involved who
complain. More, the villain need be only a follower of some religion
to convict you of felonious assault upon that religion itself.
Fortunately, villains generally have no religion to speak of, but
sometimes it is essential {144} to the story's best interests to
include them at least formally in some particular fold. When it is,
do so, taking care to avoid any faint suggestion of connection
between their villainy and their faith. The type of mind that
considers the villainy of a single fictional character an attack on a
religion as a whole can be given consideration only within the bounds
of reason.
Readers are sensitive, too, on the subject of race. We have a saying
in the office that the only safe villain is an atheist American.
Since 1917 atheist Germans can be used; in fact, they are being used
until the monotony of it is wearing. A Swede as villain is taken by
some as sure sign of malignant persecution of the Swedes, an English
hero proves anti-Irish propaganda, of late even Mexicans and
Spaniards begin to protest against a fellow countryman's being used
as villain, thus robbing authors of a time-honored resource.
Even local pride rallies to the attack if fiction happens to paint
its locality in unpleasing colors.
Write your story according to its just demands, but avoid needlessly
trampling upon the toes of any of your readers. Sore toes {145} are
not conducive to the imposition of successful illusions.
_Positive vs. Negative Plots_.--Lack of consideration of this
fundamental question leads many writers into losing, unconsciously
and often needlessly, one strong, elemental hold upon the sympathies
of their readers.
Human beings like a hero better than a villain. They enjoy success
more than failure, construction better than destruction.
Consequently they derive more pleasure from following to success the
fortunes of a hero, with whom they sympathize or identify themselves,
than from following to failure the fortunes of a villain, who stands
always for the opposition. Both appeals are strong, but the point is
that the first is essentially the stronger.
Analyze a little further the reader's reactions to a negative plot.
The villain is the central character, the course of whose fortunes
forms the thread of the story. The reader, of course, knows this
from the start. He knows, too, from experience with fiction, that
this villain is almost surely doomed to failure and possibly death
and that the interest of the story lies in watching him be {146}
hunted down, defeat his own ends or get caught in a net. A strong
interest, assuredly, but inherently second in strength and lure to
that of a positive plot. In the first place, the reader knows that
he is going to a funeral, real or metaphorical. Some people like
that above all other things, but most do not. Vengeance is strong in
appeal, but at best vengeance is only an attempted and inadequate
compensation for loss of success or perfection. Second, the reader
can give only divided interest and allegiance. He generally prefers
that right should triumph, so he arrays his sympathies against the
villain, but fiction experience has firmly fixed in him the habit of
arraying himself with the central character, in this case the
villain. The usual result is that his interest has to
straddle--divide; he is at war with himself throughout the story. If
the villain succeeds, the reader's moral sense is hurt. If the
villain fails, the reader's primal sympathy with the central
character of a narrative is hurt. He can't have an unrestrained good
time no matter what happens. And his fundamental purpose in reading
fiction is to have a good time.
{147}
Fiction with only positive plots would be monotonous and the negative
plot gives a needed relief, but when you turn to it remember you are
under the handicap of a weakened hold upon your readers.
_Restraint at the Wrong Time_.--Have you ever considered how often
the reader is robbed of his vicarious enjoyment by being hurried on
when he'd really like to stop and revel or gloat? For example, take
the villain. After a career of hellish atrocities and maddening
injuries to others, often causing years of suffering, he is paid back
during the few seconds required to make a quick neat bullet-hole
through his forehead or to plunge him over a cliff. I confess myself
un-Christian enough to long for a more proportionate punishment. So
do all other readers I have questioned.
Take the lost-treasure story for another bald, extreme example.
After pursuing the treasure through a whole story of obstacles and
strain you finally get it. The author tells you you have it and
promptly drops the curtain. You don't get a chance to run the
doubloons through your fingers, to finger the jewels, to sit on the
bar silver, to review {148} happily all the pleasant things you can
do with it. Yet if you really found a treasure, in those first
moments of final attainment all the long struggle for it might become
as nothing and, in looking back, these might be the moments most
vivid and colorful. Generally when story people find the treasure
they don't seem to care a hang. In real life there would be
drunkenness or delirium of joy. Edwin Lefèvre first called my
attention to this cruelty by authors, vowing to write a treasure
story in which the reader would have a real chance to gloat. If he
does so, I've an idea most of us will get particular enjoyment
therefrom.
And the love-story. The monotony of what is technically and vulgarly
known as "the clinch at the end" is sound reason for not always
carrying the reader quite that far along the path of true love, and
yet, in spite of all our sophistication, don't most of us down in our
hearts enjoy that satisfying culmination of the events we've been
following with so much interest? Wasn't it what we wished to happen?
Why, then, should we enjoy leaving before it does happen, carrying
with us only a hint or an inference that {149} it would happen at
all? To be sure, we can imagine the scene to suit each his own
particular fancy instead of having to accept the author's, and,
however individual the story may have been, the "clinch" is
comparatively a standardized performance with fewer enticements of
novelty, and yet--most human beings are human beings.
The above are crude illustrations, but they illustrate an important
principle in the business of pleasing a reader. The usual failure to
take advantage of the opportunity is only another one of the thousand
losses of advantage resulting from not training writers to habitual
weighing of the reader's reactions, particularly his elemental
reactions. Proportionate space and emphasis in a story must be
determined primarily by relation to plot, but the object of plot is
interest and if you can, without much or any loss in general
proportion, give the reader somewhat more play at this or that point
for the natural reactions he wishes to exercise, why not pleasure him
instead of suppressing him?
It is not a question of pleasant _versus_ unpleasant reactions, but
of whatever the reader happens to feel. It may be horror or {150}
some other unhappy emotion for which he desires more time and space.
The important thing is to give him what he desires.
_Talking Down to the Reader_.--Naturally no reader likes it and
illusion suffers in consequence. Don't be a schoolmaster or an
encyclopedia to him. If it's necessary to give him information,
weave it gently and unobtrusively into the story. Don't tell him
things he is almost sure to know already. Treat him as an equal;
don't speak down to him from a superior height. It seems bad taste,
as well as a loss in effectiveness, to ask a reader's interest in
your characters and then sneer at them yourself. If you are asking
him to join you in the sneering, he may prefer a more kindly and
courteous attitude and be irritated at you and your invitation.
_General Irritations and a General Recipe_.--Most of the points
covered in the last five chapters have general application to the
reader's likes and dislikes.
Note this:
On most points bearing on the writing of fiction, a well-thought-out
violation of the general rule or custom can often increase
effectiveness. Old methods and formulas, {151} however sound as a
general rule, lose in effect through endless repetition. They have
become usual, have worn down their original hold, the reader knows
what to expect. Give him something different and he is grateful.
Merely to be on the lookout for such opportunities is good for you in
that it keeps you from falling into the hopeless rut of routine and
slavery to rules.
_First-Person Narratives_.--Do readers prefer them? I think nobody
knows--nor will know until somebody takes a national census on the
point. Why not decide the question solely according to the demands
of the particular story and your own bent of ability, since readers
are divided on the point? Some are irritated by too much "I" and by
a point of view limited strictly to one angle; others like the unity
and sharp definiteness of such a point of view and freedom from the
author's God-like ability to know so much of what goes on in the
minds of all the characters.
_Fooling the Reader_.--Making a fool of a person is not likely to win
his sympathy. There is a world of difference between legitimate
surprise and deliberately making a {152} reader create and live in an
illusion and then showing him he's a fool for having trusted you to
guide him aright. The story that, at the very end, proves to have
been all a dream (which the author led the reader into believing a
reality) is an example of this kind of vaudeville horseplay.
_Two Setting Appeals_.--Some readers get the greater enjoyment from
settings and material with which they are familiar, others from those
as far removed as possible from their daily life. In the first case
the appeal is probably that of realism mixed with the joys of
self-conceit and pride of knowledge, in the second, probably of
novelty and of the freedom from the imagination-fettering, homely,
routine details that is so characteristic of most classic and some
modern tragedy. Here again there is no comprehensive laboratory
knowledge, and the reader's reaction should not be made the deciding
factor when there is any doubt as to the author's comparative ability
or the demands of the particular story itself.
In the case of the "costume" or "doublet and hose" story, as in some
other kinds of unfamiliar setting, there is also the appeal of
pageantry.
{153}
Temporary factors play their part in influencing readers' reactions.
When the tide of war fiction began to ebb there was a noticeable
reader reaction toward anything that would take one's thoughts away
from the Great War. The magazines suddenly shut their doors against
stories of the war, but the mere absence of these was not enough:
there arose a noticeable demand for fiction that would carry one
clear out of these modern times into past eras of greater simplicity
and less wholesale horror. War itself was not tabooed, but it must
be war of the old-fashioned kind.
{154}