The Technique of Fiction Writing Part 9

If the main situation of any story is essentially tragic, it will never do not to hint the fact until the climax is reached, when a reader will be overwhelmed, rather than upborne and stimulated, by the torrent of battle, murder, or sudden death. The opening scene of "Macbeth" presages the lurid character of the whole play, and serves to key reader or spectator for murder. Likewise, in the case of a story essentially light and happy in content, the purpose of the writer is to develop and present one of life's many attractive phases, and that purpose will be defeated or at least hampered if woebegone people and unpleasant situations are given place in the fiction.

Considerations of contrast may lead the writer to incorporate in his story matter out of keeping with its general tone and main situation, but the effort is really to emphasize the general tone by striking a few discordant notes. Contrast is too delicate a matter to be discussed with any profit; whether or not the device shall be employed in any story is a problem that only the artistic sense of the writer of the particular story can answer.

It is very easy to say that a story should be told so as to prepare a reader for the climax, that he may accept it, yet, in a sense, the thing can be achieved only by adequate practice of the whole art of fiction.

The general necessity is to make the whole course of events seem real and actual; the more specific necessity is to give a reader a definite clue to the nature of the story, that he may not be shocked into disbelief by the climax. This must be done un.o.btrusively, as every other technical device must be employed, under penalty of failing in its office.

A quotation showing effective employment of the device will not be useless. Stevenson's short story "Thrawn Janet" leads up to an encounter with the devil, and the author loses no time in preparing a reader for the entrance of his satanic majesty. The story begins thus:

"The Reverend Murdoch Soulis was long minister of the moorland parish of Balweary, in the vale of Dule. A severe, bleak-faced old man, dreadful to his hearers, he dwelt in the last years of his life, without relative or servant or any human company, in the small and lonely manse under the Hanging Shaw. In spite of the iron composure of his features, his eye was wild, scared, and uncertain; and when he dwelt, in private admonitions, on the future of the impenitent, it seemed as if the eye pierced through the storms of time to the terrors of eternity. Many young persons, coming to prepare themselves against the season of the Holy Communion, were dreadfully affected by his talk. He had a sermon on 1st Peter, v. and 8th, 'The devil as a roaring lion,' on the Sunday after every seventeenth of August, and he was accustomed to surpa.s.s himself upon that text both by the appalling nature of the matter and the terror of his bearing in the pulpit. The children were frightened into fits, and the old looked more than usually oracular, and were, all that day, full of those hints that Hamlet deprecated. The manse itself, where it stood by the water of Dule among some thick trees, with the Shaw overhanging it on the one side, and on the other many cold, moorish hill-tops rising towards the sky, had begun, at a very early period of Mr. Soulis' ministry, to be avoided in the dusk hours by all who valued themselves upon their prudence; and guidmen sitting at the clachan alehouse shook their heads together at the thought of pa.s.sing late by that uncanny neighborhood."

Here Stevenson loses no time in keying his reader to the general pitch of the story. It is a task that the writer of any story must undertake.

The general nature of the tale should be suggested as soon as possible, and the story should not be allowed to falsify its introductory hints, but should reaffirm them constantly, until all the divergent strands of the fiction are knotted together in the climax, which will need no interpretation. Take another instance from Stevenson, the beginning of "Markheim," where Markheim murders the dealer in curios.

"'Yes,' said the dealer, 'our windfalls are of various kinds. Some customers are ignorant, and then I touch a dividend of my superior knowledge. Some are dishonest,' and here he held up the candle, so that the light fell strongly on his visitor, 'and in that case,' he continued, 'I profit by my virtue.'

"Markheim had but just entered from the daylight streets, and his eyes had not grown familiar with the mingled s.h.i.+ne and darkness of the shop.

At these pointed words, and before the near presence of the flame, he blinked painfully and looked aside."

A little farther on:

"The dealer once more chuckled; and then, changing to his usual business voice, though still with a note of irony, 'You can give, as usual, a clear account of how you came into the possession of the object?' he continued. 'Still your uncle's cabinet? A remarkable collector, sir!'

"And the little pale, round-shouldered dealer stood almost on tiptoe, looking over the top of his gold spectacles, and nodding his head with every mark of disbelief. Markheim returned his gaze with one of infinite pity, and a touch of horror."

Note how strongly and withal how naturally the whole of this, and particularly the last sentence, suggests that Markheim has come into the shop to do murder. The story is keyed to tragedy at once, its reader with it. His mind is prepared in advance, that the significant event, when it is related, may be accepted without question.

As stated, this matter of keying the story and its reader to the pitch of the main situation or climax is not precisely the matter of atmosphere, but it has close affiliations therewith. It is even more important to the writer of fiction. Any atmospheric value in a story will be brought out by telling it justly as a course of events involving real people in a definite environment, and preparation of a reader for the main situation of a story is a part of just and adequate narration.

The writer's hints of the character of what is to come must be unforced and natural, but they must be effective.

It is obvious, of course, that the more tense or strange the main situation of a story, the greater the necessity that a reader be prepared for it. If the main situation consists in commonplace characters doing some commonplace thing, a reader will accept the spectacle without artificial preparation, but if the main situation is highly dramatic, the normally placid course of a reader's thought and feeling must be agitated and stimulated in advance, or he will not rise with the climax. In other words, the fiction will not have verisimilitude emotionally. A story is both a physical spectacle and an emotional progression; the author must write both for the reader's eye and for his soul. If any story touches emotional heights, its reader must be stimulated thereto by proper preparation.

It remains to consider the matter of atmosphere, as the term is used with relation to the strict story of atmosphere, which emphasizes the emotional value of the whole for a reader rather than the significance of the events or characters.

The intrinsic difficulty to blend such diverse matters as people, events, and setting or environment into an even emotional unity requires that the strict story of atmosphere be a short story. Even if it is not a short story in point of actual length, it will be a short story in point of structure, that is, it will lead relatively few characters through little diversity of setting to a single main situation, or perhaps even to no main situation, in a dramatic sense. As noted in discussing story types, the progression of the particular atmosphere to the point of highest intensity gives the strict story of atmosphere much of its story-character. The human element is incidental and subordinate.

However, the task of keeping people, events, and setting true to a fixed emotional tone is so difficult that a writer cannot sustain the effort for long. Many novels or relatively lengthy stories have high atmospheric value; Hardy's Wess.e.x novels possess the quality, as does much of Joseph Conrad's work, "Almayer's Folly," for instance; but it is generally true that the intrinsic difficulty of the story of atmosphere tends to confine it within brief limits. It is certainly true that only the skilled hand can compa.s.s the feat of writing it at all.

I have stated that the setting of a story is not its atmosphere, and that is true. Nevertheless the setting is most often what determines the emotional effect of the whole. A hundred instances might be cited--"The Merry Men," "The Fall of the House of Usher," "Almayer's Folly," "The Return of the Native." This results from the fact that setting or environment is much more potent to produce a relatively definite emotional effect on an observer than either a person or an event, the two other elements of a story. A murder may produce a very definite feeling of horror in an observer or reader, but the emotion, while definite, is not linked inevitably to murder alone. Many other spectacles will horrify. Likewise, a person may produce a feeling of disgust in an observer or reader, but so will an infinite number of other persons, all radically different from each other and the first.

But the emotional effect of the west coast of Scotland is special and peculiar to that setting; there is no single word in the language characterizing it. That is why Stevenson had to write "The Merry Men" to state it, just as Poe had to write "The Fall of the House of Usher" to state the specific emotional effect of that particular house, and Hardy had to write "The Return of the Native" to state the emotional value of his Wess.e.x moors.

Moreover, when the writer finds the germ of his story in a person seen actually or in imagination, it is more than likely that the emphasis of the completed work will be on character, and when he finds it in an event or situation, it is more than likely that the emphasis of the completed work will be on plot. But when a countryside or house or stretch of sea-coast suggests a story, it can hardly result otherwise than that the completed work will emphasize the emotional value of the setting.

The setting of the strict story of atmosphere may determine its emotional effect, but the emotional tendency of the setting must not be affected adversely by the people or the events. That is why the setting is not atmosphere, though it may determine the atmosphere. A gloomy and terrific setting will have small emotional effect upon a reader if the people and events of the story are not such as to deepen the impression initiated by the setting, for the people and events cannot be emotionally neutral. If they are seemingly real, that is, if the story is well told apart from the matter of atmosphere, they will make some impression on a reader. Unless their impression is of a piece with that of the setting, the unity of emotional effect will be destroyed. And if there is no unity of emotional effect, there is no atmosphere, in the strict sense.

Confession is good for the soul; let me say that if there is a technique of writing so as to produce a unity of emotional effect I am unable to state it. The matter is exceptionally delicate, and only the broadest sort of abstract statement can be made. One can state--as I have stated--that the emotional effect of a story of atmosphere is usually initiated by and dependent on the setting, and that the emotional effect initiated by the setting must be reinforced by the writer's choice and handling of people and events. But that is about all that can be said. A specific story of atmosphere might be taken and examined in detail with profit, if s.p.a.ce were available; yet the devices employed by its writer would not completely exhaust the resources of atmospheric writing, and abstract statement of them here will not cover the whole technique.

Poe's technique in "The Fall of the House of Usher" is not identical with Stevenson's in "The Merry Men," nor with Conrad's in "Almayer's Folly."

Fortunately, the strict technique is not of great practical importance.

Any story will gain in power by possession of an atmospheric quality, but that quality will be present if the basic conception is not trivial and feeble, and if the story is told adequately as to its three elements of setting, personality, and event. Any emotional value inherent in the thing will then be felt by a reader, as he would feel the emotional value of the spectacle, if real. Any story that is lived vicariously by its writer in the person of the character from whose viewpoint it is told, and is written justly as a course of events involving real people in a definite environment, will have all the effect on a reader attainable by the particular conception. And as to the strict story of atmosphere, it will be hopeless for the writer of fiction to attempt it until he can handle the less artificial and less difficult forms with some approach to real facility and adequacy.

One specific point of the technique of writing the strict story of atmosphere should be noted, for it is important. The emotional effect is usually initiated and determined by the setting, natural or artificial, as a tropical island or a house. Characters and events must be subservient to the particular emotional value. It results that there can be no real dramatic opposition of characters and traits in the strict story of atmosphere, for the moral nature of an individual has no affiliation with the emotional quality of a countryside or any other setting. Development of strict traits of character, which are essential to drama, will not serve to deepen for a reader the emotional suggestion of a setting. The writer of the strict story of atmosphere must seek to invest his people with such traits as will reinforce the emotional suggestion of the setting, and these traits cannot be strictly of character. Rather they will be attributes of appearance, action, mind, and soul. Insanity is an instance of such an attribute of mind, not strictly of character. The point is difficult to state abstractly, as is the whole of the technique of atmosphere, but a reading of either "The Fall of the House of Usher" or "The Merry Men" will clarify my meaning.

The people of either story are less human beings than humanized emotional abstractions, of the same stuff of gloom or mystery as the house or sea. It is needless to state that the whole weakness of the story of atmosphere as a fiction results from the necessary devitalizing of its characters, for fiction primarily concerns man, his conflicts and his loves.

FOOTNOTES:

[P] Of course, the initial conception of a story of atmosphere may limit the writer's power to manipulate his material. Thus when Stevenson pitched upon the emotional effect of the west coast of Scotland as that to be produced by "The Merry Men," he debarred himself from placing his story in any other setting, though he could pick and choose freely among possible events and people. A general emotional effect, as of beauty, is somewhat indefinite, and may be produced alike by stories differing widely in their three elements of setting, people and events.

CHAPTER XII

THE SHORT STORY

Definition--Two Types--Dramatic Short Story--Atmospheric Short Story--Origins--a.s.sumed Unity and Singleness of Effect of Dramatic Short Story--General Technique of Form-- Characterization--Interest and Too Great Simplicity-- Limitation upon Complexity--Length--Coherence of Form-- Compression.

A story is a fiction with a plot, as distinguished from a tale, which is a string of incidents that happened to happen to the characters. In the story the events are linked together by the natures of the people concerned; personality influences event and event influences personality. And the short story is, simply, a short story, a fiction, possessing a plot, that could be and has been told adequately within brief limits. A plot is a dramatic problem. Therefore the short story may be defined roughly as a story embodying a dramatic problem which can be stated and worked out adequately as to all its elements of personality, event, and setting within relatively brief limits.

The general nature of the short story having been stated, it is necessary to qualify and distinguish. Fiction is concerned primarily with the intrinsic interest and significance of man and his acts, the elements of drama, but there are three fundamental types of story, two of which are normal and the other abnormal. The types are the story stressing personality and the story stressing incident, which are normal, and the story stressing atmosphere, which is abnormal in that persons and events are subordinate to the emotional value of the whole for a reader, which is usually determined by the setting. Personality is the most prominent element of the story of character, and the events are the most prominent element of the story of complication; each story stresses one of the twin elements of drama, the persons and their acts; and each story possesses both of such elements. That is, both the story of character and the strict story of plot--plot as a mere sequence of events--have some dramatic value. But the strict story of atmosphere has no dramatic value; its nature forbids that it should. The emotional effect is usually determined by the setting, and the human traits that will intensify a setting--and with which the characters must be invested--are not such as to give rise to a dramatic opposition between the persons. The definition of the short story as a story embodying a dramatic problem which can be presented adequately within brief limits does not cover the short story of atmosphere.

In other words, there are two types of short story, apart from the three types determined by the placing of emphasis upon any one of the three fictional elements of personality, event, and setting--the dramatic short story and the short story of unity of effect. The dramatic short story is either the story of character or the story of complication of incident; the short story of unity of effect is the story of atmosphere.

The two types here contrasted--the dramatic story and the atmospheric story--could not be covered adequately or to any purpose by a single definition; they are radically different. In defining the short story I have defined merely the dramatic short story, and in discussing it I shall confine myself largely to the dramatic short story likewise, for the story of atmosphere has been considered elsewhere.

Knowledge of the origin of the two basic types of short story, the dramatic story and the atmospheric story, will clarify the writer's conceptions of the types. The story of atmosphere, or story of totality of emotional effect on a reader, was first consciously perfected by Poe, wherein lies America's single claim to having originated a distinct literary type. By following in prose his poetic philosophy--as stated in "The Philosophy of Composition"--Poe produced such stories as "Ligeia"

and "The Fall of the House of Usher," which have little or no real dramatic value, yet which are certainly not mere tales, for they have plot- or story-value. As I have stated, in the case of the story of atmosphere, such as these two of Poe's, the climactic ascension of the particular emotional impression to the point of highest intensity supplies much of the plot-or story-element of the fiction.

On the other hand, the dramatic short story, embodying a true plot, may be said to have originated in France. The type was suggested by Poe's work; the mere mechanical hint, that of a brief story, was received eagerly by French writers, and the dramatic element, entirely altering the fundamental character of the fiction, was speedily injected. The result has been that the offshoot has entirely overshadowed the parent stem, and this simply because there is so much more material for the dramatic story than there is for the story of unity of emotional effect.

The story of atmosphere is most difficult to do well, so that relatively few are published; it has no wide popular appeal, with the same result; while the range of emotional effects is narrow that may be produced on a reader by a work of fiction, that is, there is less material for the story of atmosphere than for the dramatic story.

It is time now to notice a matter concerning which much glib statement has been made, the "unity" and singleness of effect of the short story.

The usual remark of the writer or talker on short story technique is that the ideal or typical short story will manifest the dramatic unities of time, place, and action, and will produce a single effect. But it is notorious that only relatively few stories do manifest the dramatic unities, so the speaker or writer goes on to say most lamely and indefinitely that the laws of technique must give way to the requirements of any particular story. Grant me for the moment that the dramatic unities are not essential to the perfect short story, that Maupa.s.sant's "The Necklace" is as technically perfect a short story as Poe's "The Cask of Amontillado," and the viciousness of preaching thus to the short story writer becomes apparent. The only definite thing he is told, that the unities are essential to the perfect short story, is false.

The vice of such statement originates in failure to distinguish between the two types of short story, the story of atmosphere and the dramatic story. The story of atmosphere, of totality or unity of emotional effect on a reader, can hardly escape manifesting the dramatic unities of place, time, and action. The emotional effect will usually be that of a single definite place, for reasons brought out in the preceding chapter; the time will be brief, on account of the inherent difficulty to sustain the atmosphere; and there will be little complication or prolongation of the action, for the same reason. But the dramatic short story is not subject to the limitations imposed by the necessity always to regard atmosphere, or emotional effect, and it may or may not manifest the dramatic unities.

The way to state the relation between the matter of unity and the dramatic short story, the short story of true plot, is this: on account of the limited s.p.a.ce available, the plot for a dramatic short story will tend to involve relatively few s.h.i.+fts of setting, relatively short s.p.a.ces of time, relatively few and relatively simple events, and relatively few persons. No other sort of plot can be adequately handled within narrow word limits. The short story must be written with verbal fullness and elaboration, that its phrasing may not be bare and unlike the shaded contours of life, and the plot complicated as to any one of its three elements of personality, setting, and event cannot be adequately developed in a few thousand words. The short story is the result of just conception and selection, rather than of mere rhetorical compression. Stevenson's "Markheim," for instance, is written more elaborately than almost any other episode in fiction, long or short, that is, any other episode of equal length in point of the time it would take to happen in actuality.

Poe was the first writer to say much of anything definite about his art, and commentators on technique who have followed him have merely expanded his thesis rather than said something new. The only trouble, in relation to the short story, is that Poe spoke of unity and singleness of effect with his own peculiar type of short story in mind, the short story of unity or totality of emotional effect, the short story of atmosphere.

When he stated that the short story--his type of short story, the short story of atmosphere--should possess unity and produce a single effect, he stated the truth, but when it is stated that the short story meaning both the story of atmosphere and the dramatic short story--should manifest the unities and produce a single effect, the statement is false. In the first place, the dramatic short story is not the result of the same technique as the story of atmosphere; in the second place, the unity stated by Poe to be essential to the story of emotional effect is not the same thing as the old dramatic unities, which are mechanical.

The fact that the story of atmosphere can hardly escape manifesting the dramatic unities does not amalgamate the two matters. Poe's unity is unity of emotional effect: the dramatic unities are singleness of time, place, and action, a matter that can be preserved by anyone, though usually at the expense of the interest of the story. How few have written and can write so as to produce a unity of emotional effect need only be suggested to enforce my point.

The matter would not be worth treating thus minutely were it not for the strong tendency to mislead of any statement that the short story must manifest the dramatic unities. Within very elastic limits, the unities are a convention of the drama, but they are not a convention of fiction, long or short. The art of the stage and the art of the story differ radically; the advantage given the play by the conciseness of its spectacle is compensated by the advantage given the story by its more inclusive character and greater flexibility. I have said that a plot or story of plot is a dramatic problem, and the word "dramatic" has connotations of the stage, but what was meant was that a plot is a conflict between persons, within a single person, or with nature. It was not meant that a plot or story of plot is subject to the conventions of the stage. The art of fiction is infinitely more inclusive and flexible than the art of the stage, and the writer of fiction must utilize to the full the advantages of his art in order to compensate his work in the eyes of a reader for its weakness--relative to the play--in vividness and body.

One may say that the spectacle of life is infinitely various, so that the writer of fiction has plenty of material for stories at hand. But life, despite the efforts of Mrs. Grundy, is subject to no conventions, social, moral, or artistic, and the short story writer who brings all his ideas to the dramatic unities as a first test will winnow little grain from the chaff. When the short story writer finds a hint for a story he should consider whether he can bring out with his few thousand words all the matters necessary to the fiction's having full effect on a reader, but the less he frets about any abstract unity or singleness of effect the better. The words have a plausible sound in discussion, but they mean nothing, except in relation to the story of atmosphere. It means something to say that the dramatic short story should possess unity of tone; it means something to say that it should possess unity of style; but it means nothing to say that it should possess unity, simply, unless the dramatic unities are meant, and in that case the statement is false. Some short stories happen to possess the dramatic unities; more do not.

By the very nature of the conceptive process the writer seizes his story ideas in terms of persons, events, or atmosphere. And when he has a definite story idea he first should develop it so as to give it maximum effect, and then should consider whether he must write a short story or novel or romance to give his developed idea adequate expression. The writer who starts with some abstract knowledge of fiction technique, and seeks to vivify rules of construction into a definite story, will accomplish very little. Good stories are not conceived that way, and good writers do not go to work that way. The story is the thing, and it does not lie between the covers of this or any other book on technique.

It lies in the people and events the writer sees in reality or in imagination, and to find it the writer must turn to life or to his dreams. After the story is found the writer's knowledge of and facility in technique will come into play in the work of development and execution.