The Technique of Fiction Writing Part 1

The Technique of Fiction Writing.

by Robert Saunders Dowst.

PREFACE

Many books have been written on fiction technique, and the chief excuse for the present addition to the number is the complexity of the subject.

Its range is so wide, it calls for so many and so different capacities in one attempting to discuss it, that a new work has more than a chance to meet at least two or three deficiencies in all other treatments.

I believe that the chief deficiency in most works on fiction technique is that the author unconsciously has slipped from the viewpoint of a writer of a story to that of a reader. Now a reader without intention to try his own hand at the game is not playing fair in studying technique, and a book on technique has no business to entertain him. Accordingly, I have striven to keep to the viewpoint of one who seeks to learn how to write stories, and have made no attempt to a.n.a.lyze the work of masters of fiction for the sake of the a.n.a.lysis alone. Such a.n.a.lysis is interesting to make, and also interesting to read, but it is not directly profitable to the writer. It is indirectly profitable, of course, but it will give very little direct aid to one who has a definite story idea and wishes to be told the things he must consider in developing it and writing the story, or to one who wishes to be told roughly how he should go about the business of finding real stories. In fact, I believe that discussion and a.n.a.lysis of perfect work has a tendency to chill the enthusiasm of the beginning writer. What he chiefly needs is to be told the considerations he must hold in mind in conceiving, developing, and writing a story. The rest lies with his own abilities and capacities to work intelligently and to take pains.

Therefore the first part of this book takes up the problems of technique in the order in which they present themselves to the writer. Beginning with matters of conception, the discussion pa.s.ses to matters of construction and development, and finally to matters of execution, or rather the writing of a story considered as a bare chain of events. Then the matters of description, dialogue, the portrayal of character, and the precipitation of atmosphere are discussed, and lastly the short story and novel, as distinct forms, are taken up.

Usually the propositions necessary to be laid down require no demonstration; they are self-evident. That is why a book on technique for the writer need not indulge in fine-spun a.n.a.lysis of perfect work.

Where a.n.a.lysis will lend point to the abstract statement, I have made it, but my constant aim has been not to depart from the viewpoint that the reader has in mind some idea of his own and wishes to be told how to handle it. Unquestionably literary dissection is useful in that it gives the beginning writer familiarity with the terminology and processes of the art, but the main object of a book on technique is to place the results of a.n.a.lysis, directly stated, in logical sequence.

I will note one other matter. A great part of the technique of fiction writing concerns matters of conception and development which are preliminary to actual writing. In fact they are essentially and peculiarly the technique of fiction. The story that is not a justly ordered whole, with each part in its due place and no part omitted, cannot have full effect, however great the strictly executive powers of its writer. Verbally faultless telling will not save a story which is not logically built up and developed, either before writing or in the process of writing. The art of telling a story is largely the art of justly manipulating its elements. The art of telling it with verbal perfection is not so much a part of the strict technique of fiction writing as it is of the general technique of writing. Therefore I have made little attempt to discuss the general art of using words. For a.s.sistance in studying the art of expression the reader should turn to a work on rhetoric. The subject is too inclusive for adequate treatment here. Moreover, it is debatable whether the art of verbal expression can be studied objectively with any great profit. But the art of putting a story together can be studied objectively with profit, and its principles are subject to direct statement.

I desire to acknowledge my indebtedness to Mr. William R. Kane, of The Editor Magazine, for much helpful criticism and many valuable suggestions.

INTRODUCTION

"A work of art is first cloudily conceived in the mind; during the period of gestation it stands more clearly forward from these swaddling mists, puts on expressive lineaments, and becomes at length that most faultless, but also, alas! that incommunicable product of the human mind, a perfected design. On the approach to execution all is changed.

The artist must now step down, don his working clothes, and become the artisan. He now resolutely commits his airy conception, his delicate Ariel, to the touch of matter; he must decide, almost in a breath, the scale, the style, the spirit, and the particularity of execution of his whole design."

Thus Stevenson, in "A Note on Realism," takes it for granted that the artist in pigments, stone, or words cannot reproduce until he first has produced, cannot show a perfect work unless he paints, builds, or writes along the lines of a perfected design.

One cannot dabble long at architecture or the graphic arts without gaining keen realization of the fact that conception in its elaborative aspects is as much a part and phase of technique as the executive handling of materials. But the art of literature, and, more narrowly, the art of fiction, deal with materials other than those employed in the other arts; words, not colors or marble, nor yet sounds, are the resource of the story teller to precipitate his conception in enduring form; and words are at once frank and mysterious things. Their primary office is to forward the common business of life; each has some meaning in itself, more or less definite. It results that the writer of a story who sets out with only the merest glimmering of what he means to do in mind can produce a superficially plausible work, a work not too obviously misshapen, a work that means something, at any rate, although his failure to trace a design to guide his hand almost inevitably will prohibit his giving the basic conception most effective expression. And, since almost any sequence of words has some significance, it also results that the writer of fiction who works at haphazard may fail to discover that failure in his work as a whole is due to lack of planning rather than to defective execution. The mere grammatical coherence of a fictionally slipshod piece of work is a s.h.i.+eld between its writer's inquiring eye and its essential defects.

The art of fiction is the art both of the tale and of the story, fictions that differ radically. Their most striking difference is stated in the following pages; here I can only remark broadly that the tale is episodal, consisting of a fortuitous series of incidents without essential connection or relation except that they all happened to happen to the characters, while the story is a whole in that each incident functions in the development of a plot or dramatic problem. If prevision and full elaboration of his basic idea are essential to the writer of a tale, they are doubly essential to the writer of a story, simply because a story is a whole and the result of careful co-ordination of parts.

Even if the writer of some particular story has not worked along the lines of a fully elaborated design, the story actually will manifest co-ordination of parts or else be worthless. A story is more than a series of incidents; it is a series of incidents significant in relation to character. Its writer cannot set to work with an eye solely to the physical spectacle and follow after with his pen; he must prepare his people as well as the events, a task of cunning calculation. He must have an eye to many other matters, but this is not the place to state them. The matter of character is the matter significant here, because the whole difference between tale and story is made by the presence or absence of relation between events and personality. And it is certain that the writer of a story cannot hope to do the best work if he postpones until the moment of actual writing the task of moulding and elaborating his basic idea with a view to giving it maximum effect. The task to express perfectly, in a verbal sense, is difficult enough to claim the undivided attention of the ablest artist, but undivided attention cannot be given the matter of verbal expression by a writer who shapes his substance and picks his words at one and the same time.

Either word or substance must suffer.

Accordingly, to emphasize the necessity that the writer of fiction give full shape and development to his design before writing, I have stated the necessity and discussed technique itself under two heads, conceptive or constructive technique and executive technique. To have carried this division rigorously through the whole book would have been neither possible nor profitable, for it would have involved much repet.i.tion and confusion, but the various items of technique are either largely conceptive and constructive or largely executive, and the best place to discuss each has not been difficult to determine. It was only necessary to contemplate the actual process of conceiving, developing, and writing a story, and to take up in their order the problems that confront a writer of fiction. The only matter which found no natural place, so approached, was that of characterization, which is almost equally a matter of construction and of execution, so that discussion of it has been broken up to some extent.

This approach to technique is the natural approach, and has been adopted for that reason. The more naturally and easily any study can be conducted, the greater the results that will be achieved. But there is a more immediate reason for taking up the phases of technique in the order in which they present themselves to a writer of fiction, thereby emphasizing the existence and importance of the constructive phases of technique. Briefly, it is that construction is at once easier and more important to learn than execution. Perhaps a little argument in support of the statement is called for.

It will not be questioned seriously that it is easier to learn the main principles of construction than it is to learn or discover how to write with finish and power. It is entirely possible to state abstractly the principles of construction, to grasp their reasons and implications from abstract statement, and to apply them by a mere act of the intelligence in writing any story. But it is entirely impossible to state abstractly the principles of writing with finish and power, or to learn to write so from any mere discussion of the matter. The condition is ill.u.s.trated by almost any treatise on rhetoric, where half the text will be made up of examples transcribed to lend some weight to the obviously--and necessarily--inadequate discussion. How to write with finish and power can be learned only by long continued and intelligent practice, if it can be learned at all. Of course, this is not to say that constant practice is not necessary to gain any real facility and adequacy in applying the principles of construction.

The argument of the last paragraph is clinched by the fact that of a thousand stories, all of which are well constructed and put together, only a few or perhaps none will be written with any approach to real literary power, in the verbal sense. Of all the writers of to-day who can put together a story in workmanlike fas.h.i.+on how many have the power of the telling word? how many have even a style?

I have yet to substantiate the a.s.sertion that construction is more important for the writer of fiction to learn than execution, but the task is easy. In the last a.n.a.lysis, the power of a story, that is, its power to interest, depends upon its matter, the spectacle it presents.

If the whole conception is justly elaborated and properly put together, it will have very nearly full effect, even though its writer does not give it perfect verbal expression, provided the verbal precipitation of the thing is not too shamelessly inadequate. Perfect verbal expression is necessary to give a properly constructed story maximum effect; it is not necessary to give it approximate effect. But perfect verbal expression will not save a story that is misshapen and distorted through lack of proper construction.

These considerations strongly urge the writer of fiction to master the principles of constructing a story before he frets about the nuances of expression, and just as strongly they impose upon a book on technique the obligation to discuss matters of construction at length and also to discuss them as such. The book which does not explicitly insist that certain matters are matters of construction, therefore to be performed before writing, is very apt to mislead. It is a defect from which too many books on fiction technique are not free, and one that I have tried to avoid.

How comprehensive and inclusive are the principles of construction the first half of this book attempts to show. Here it is enough to state that they embrace matters so different as the manipulation of possible incidents in the interest of climax, and the preparation or building up of the people of a story that its situations may have real dramatic value for a reader. The writer of fiction who merely writes cannot hope to provide by any instinct for these and the other matters of construction, and no power in his words can fortify essential weakness in his matter. Style, literary power, the right word in the right place--all will resist the tooth of time, but no one will preserve a story from the contagion of decay at the heart. Indeed, in the juster sense, a shapely design is the necessary foundation or basis for perfect writing, which is no mere varnish.

In this present era of magazine literature the chances are that nine out of ten actual or prospective writers of fiction who take up a book on technique for serious study will do so with an eye to the short story.

And since this book is for the pract.i.tioner of the art, not for the mere reader of fiction, I have felt myself under obligation to discuss the short story and its peculiar technique with some approach to adequacy.

Statement of the way the short story has been approached may serve to align the reader's mind with the argument.

In the first place, the short story is yet a story, a fiction, so that the general technique of fiction is applicable to it, with suitable modifications here and there. In the second place, the short story is a distinct type of fiction in that it embodies a plot or dramatic problem and is brief enough to read at one not very prolonged sitting. It is at once slighter and more pointed or direct than the long story of plot, the novel or romance. The result is that all its processes, particularly the process of characterization, must be conducted in a fas.h.i.+on more swift and summary than in a long story, and the difference is the whole of the difference in the technique of the two forms.

Unfortunately, a discussion of the peculiar technique of the short story cannot confine itself to this difference without failing to clear away the many misconceptions that becloud the subject. A good deal has been written on the short story, and, since there is really not very much to say, a good many writers have been led into nonsense. With so much misconception in the air, I have felt that it would be useful to state a tenable theory of the short story, and have attempted to do so in the chapter on the form. The matter will be found there and cannot be reproduced here, but brief statement of the argument will complete the foretaste of the book.

Since the short story is a story, at least, it may be divided and cla.s.sified, like all stories, into stories of character, stories of complication of incident, and stories of atmosphere, that is, into stories which emphasize or stress the element of personality, the element of incident, or the element of setting. But the truly significant division of the short story into types, the division which it will be most directly profitable for the writer of fiction to realize, is twofold, not triplicate, and is the division into the dramatic short story and the short story of atmosphere or unity of emotional effect on a reader.

These two types are as different as black and white, and the misconception noted above consists in confusing them. The short story of atmosphere is Poe's sort of story; he said something definite and true about his peculiar art; but later writers, critics rather, have padded and distorted his words to cover the whole field of the short story. The general result is much printed folly, and the specific result for the short story writer is that he is continually urged, commanded, entreated, and advised to invest his work with some mysterious "unity."

The advice is sound if the short story of atmosphere, the short story of unity or totality of emotional effect, is meant; the short story of atmosphere is a mysterious and subtle unity in that its people and happenings are curiously of a piece with its setting, serving to deepen or intensify the emotional effect of the setting on a reader. But, applied to the dramatic short story, the advice is unsound, for the dramatic short story may and usually does involve much diversity and contrast in its three elements of people, events, and setting. The only sense in which it can be said to be a unity is that it is verbally coherent, a single story. The single story may involve radically different people, happenings, and scenes.

The positive evil tendency in telling the short story writer to seek to invest his work with "unity" is that if he follows the advice his material will be restricted, and he will write stories too simple really to interest, apart from the appeal of their characters. And this point of interest brings up another aspect of this book which I would mention.

The last chapter states a general theory or philosophy of fiction which it will prove most profitable for the writer of fiction to grasp, however imperfectly I may have stated it. The theory is not profound, in the sense that it is mysterious, being merely the theory which is implied in the content and aim of the art of fiction itself. The content of fiction is man and what he may possibly or even conceivably experience; the aim of fiction is to interest, in Stevenson's words, "the one excuse and breath of art--charm." How much is implied in the content and aim of fiction I have tried to show in my closing pages, but the theory there stated is the guiding principle of the whole book, and any value it may have derives from such unforced handling of the subject. Apart from the merit of my own work, one thing at least is certain. If commentators on the art of fiction generally would deal less in "isms" and seek less to display their profundity and critical ac.u.men, the actual writer of fiction might read them with some profit.

As it is, the greatest single danger threatening the pract.i.tioner of the art is that his eagerness for all that pertains even remotely to his trade may lead him to take seriously the empty thunders of the schools and to forget that his business is to interest and captivate Mr. and Mrs. Smith, simply that.

To sum up, my desire has been to write a book that would be of some practical use, at least practically suggestive to the writer of fiction; therefore the only natural way to approach technique has been adopted, and I have indulged in a.n.a.lysis only when the a.n.a.lysis would be useful in itself or would serve to clear away misconception. In other words, the book has been written strictly for the writer, not the reader of fiction, and that implies much.

CHAPTER I

THE WRITER HIMSELF

Critical Faculty--Cultivation of Genius--Observation and Information--Open-mindedness--Att.i.tude Toward Life-- Prejudice and Provincialism--The Social Question--Reading-- Imagination.

Accessible as are the data of the fiction writer, the facts and possibilities of life, their very accessibility places him under strict necessity to sift the useful from the useless in search for the pregnant theme. For if life presents a multiplicity of events to the writer, from which he may select some sort of story with little labor to himself, life also presents the same multiplicity of events to the reader, who can see the obvious as well as the lazy writer, and who will not be pleased with a narration of which he has the beginning, middle, and end by heart. A tale which does not interest fails essentially, and novelty, in the undebased sense of the word, is the root of interest. Therefore the writer of fiction who takes himself and his art seriously must develop the open and penetrating eye and the faculty of just selection.

All is not gold that glitters, a fact that too often becomes painfully evident only when some tale discovered with joy and developed with eagerness lies coldly spread upon paper. The beginner who will approach his own conceptions in a spirit of unbiased criticism and estimation before determining to set them down will save himself useless labor, much postage, and many secret tears. Half of the essentially feeble work produced that has not a chance of getting published is the result of the writer's falling in love with his own idea simply because it is his own idea. The defect is in conception rather than in execution, and a matter of first importance to the writer is to develop the faculty of estimating his unelaborated ideas.

Unquestionably this faculty can be developed. The struggle for its development is half over, in a practical sense, when the writer comes to judge his concepts at all before writing, when he wins free of the habit of writing just to be writing, and of choosing to work on a particular tale because it is the best he can squeeze from his brains at the particular moment, rather than because it is absolutely good and he knows it to be absolutely good.

Unquestionably, too, the critical faculty is powerless to supply worthy conceptions. But that is beside the point. If the conceptions are worthy, the just critical faculty will recognize their merit, and give the writer courage and confidence to send each tale across the almost inevitable sea of rejections until it comes to port, as it surely will, if well done. And if the conceptions are feeble, and the writer cannot better them, it will be better for him and all concerned that he discover the truth.

Whether the essential genius of the teller of tales, the power that first supplies a theme of moment and then a fitting garb for it, is a plant capable of nurture, is not for me to attempt to show, or even to state. Fortunately, the question is academic. The dons may debate the point, but for those who themselves labor in the literary vineyard the thing to remember is that the same habits of observation and practice which some claim will create the literary faculty will at least foster its growth, if it is a gift, as others claim, and not to be artificially cultivated. Steady hours at the desk and moments with the notebook, the cultivation of the seeing eye, the informed mind, and the sympathetic heart, may not be able to create the divine spark. But it may burn within one for all that; and shall one neglect to bring it to full flame on the mere chance that it may not exist because of the possibility that it cannot be created? If the chance of its existence is great enough in the individual's eyes to justify the labor of writing at all, it is great enough to justify undertaking the correlative activities of observation and self-culture. At the least of it, these can result only in making one a better and more complete man or woman, irrespective of the literary result. The writer who fancies that his labor is but to string words, and that idea or pa.s.sion come to life in the barren mind or heart, is foredoomed to failure. No equation can be formed between something and nothing, nor can something come from nothing. All life and all art is a quid pro quo; the writer must barter his time and sweat for his raw materials, ideas.

There is little need to state that of writers of equal genius the one with the deepest reservoirs of observation and information to draw upon will produce the more significant work. In relation to expository and argumentive writing the fact is patent; in relation to the writing of fiction it may be less obvious, but, curiously enough, is even more impressive when perceived. The writer of special treatise or argument may "devil" his subject for the occasion; though the writer of fiction may specially investigate the phase of life or society with which he deals, his investigations will aid him only in the external matters of dress, customs, speech, or atmosphere. For the preservation of the essential congruity and justness of the whole as a presentation of life he must depend solely upon his own innate familiarity with life, which cannot be brushed up for the occasion, for it necessarily derives from the totality of the individual's experience and the use he has made of it.

In this connection it may be noted that above all else the writer of fiction must be catholic in his interests and sympathies. He is the sieve through which the motley stream of life is poured to have selected for presentation its most significant aspects, and any unwisely cherished aversions of his are so many gaps in the netting through which, to his own loss, worthy matter constantly will escape. It is difficult enough at best for even the most open-minded writer to achieve some approach to an adequate presentation of a phase of life, and for the writer whose vision is distorted by prejudice and predilection, however perfect his technique, it is nearly impossible. The writer of fiction is concerned with political, social, or religious dogmas only in so far as they impinge upon and affect the individual life whose course his pen is tracing, and his only proper and fruitful att.i.tude toward such dogmas is that of observer, not of fierce advocate or equally fierce a.s.sailant. The heart of the people is sounder than its head, perhaps because larger, and life is a complex of pa.s.sion rather than a complex of intellectual crusades. The writer of fiction addresses the whole man, his emotional nature as well as his intelligence, and should address him by presenting the whole man, instead of some feeble counterfeit not actuated primarily by pa.s.sion.

Emotion can be evoked only by the portrayal of pa.s.sion, and emotion--sympathy, disgust, admiration, any spiritual excitement--is the root of the appeal of fiction. There are other elements of interest, primarily intellectual, as in the detective story or any story of ratiocination, but emotional appeal is the one essential in work of any compa.s.s. Emotional appeal is attainable only through a just presentment of life, and toward life the writer of fiction must preserve an att.i.tude of observation and ready acceptance. In the last a.n.a.lysis, that is his business. The world pays its wage to the scientist for the narrow, intensive view; it pays its wage to the teller of tales for the broad, extensive view.