Anonymous

“ We have schools of Painting, Sculpture, and Music—why not a school of Fiction? Let it be supposed that a would-be artist has conceived a brilliant idea which he is anxious to embody in literature or put on a canvas. In order to do so, he must observe certain well-established rules which we may call the grammar of art: for just as in literature a man may express beautiful ideas in ungrammatical language, and without any sense of relationship or development, so may the same ideas be put in a picture, and yet the art be of the crudest. ”

“ Speaking of the first work of a young writer, Anthony Trollope says: "He sits down and tells his story because he has a story to tell; as you, my friend, when you have heard something which has at once tickled your fancy or moved your pathos, will hurry to tell it to the first person you meet. But when that first novel has been received graciously by the public, and has made for itself a success, then the writer, naturally feeling that the writing of novels is within his grasp, looks about for something to tell in another. ”

“ These pests of fiction, to reader and writer alike, can only be eradicated in one way. I have already mentioned the way—to begin at the beginning. In the case of 'The Woman in White,' I get back, as I vainly believe, to the true starting-point of the story. I am now at liberty to set the new novel going, having, let me repeat, no more than an outline of story and characters before me, and leaving the details in each case to the spur of the moment. For a week, as well as I can remember, I work for the best part of every day, but not as happily as usual. ”

“ The beginner in fiction often asks: Is it not best to prepare for novel-writing by writing short stories? The question is much to the point, and merits a careful answer.
First of all, what is the difference between a novel and a short story? The difference lies in the point of view. The short story generally deals with one event in one particular life; the novel deals with many events in several lives, where both characters and action are dominated by one progressive purpose. To put it another way: the short story is like a miniature in painting, whilst the novel demands a much larger canvas. ”

“ Young writers, who fail to mark off the individuality of one character from another, by the strong lines of difference which are found in real life, endeavour to atone for their incompetency by emphasising physical and mental oddities. This is a mere literary "trick." To invest your hero with a squint, or an irritating habit of blowing his nose continually; or to make your heroine guilty of using a few funny phrases every time she speaks, is certainly to distinguish them from the other [59] characters in the book who cannot boast of such excellences, but it must not be called characterisation. ”

“ The daily press is the great mirror of human events. When we open the paper at our breakfast table we find a literal record of the previous day's joy and sorrow—marriages and murders, failures and successes, news from afar and news from the next street—they all find a place. The would-be novel writer should be a diligent student of the newspaper. ”

“ Personality itself is a mysterious thing. We know what it means when it is used to distinguish a remarkable man from those who are not remarkable. "He has a unique personality," we say. Now that personality—if the man be a writer—will show itself in his literary offspring. It will be in evidence over and above rule, regulation, canons of art, and the like. [111] If there be such a thing as a mystic presence, then style is that mystic presence of the writer's personality which permeates the ideas and language in such a way as to give them a distinction and individuality all their own. ”

“ Human nature is said to be much the same the world over, and yet every personality is absolutely a new thing. Goethe might attempt a rough classification by saying we are either Platonists or Aristotelians, but actually a great many of us are neither one nor the other, and there are infinities of degrees amongst us even then. New character is a necessary outcome of the advancing centuries, and new personalities are being born every day.
No; the world still loves a story, and there are stories which have never been told. It is, perhaps, true, that the story-tellers have not found them yet. ”

“ Now I designate Beauty as the province of the poem, merely because it is an obvious rule of Art that effects should be made to spring from direct causes—that objects should be attained through means best adapted for their attainment—no one as yet having been weak enough to deny that the peculiar elevation alluded to, is most readily attained in the poem. Now the object Truth, or the satisfaction of the intellect, and the object Passion, or the excitement of the heart, are, although attainable, to a certain extent, in poetry, far more readily attainable in prose. ”

“ In each case language is made the bearer of the writer's personality. Style in literature is the breathing forth of soul and spirit; as is the soul, and as is the spirit in depth, sympathy, and power, so will the style be rich, distinctive, and memorable. Professor Raleigh says that "All style is gesture—the gesture of the mind and of the soul. ”

“ The smaller your object of artistry, the nicer should be your touch, the more careful your attention to minutiæ. That, surely, would seem an axiom. You don't paint a miniature in the broad strokes that answer for a drop curtain, nor does the weaver of a pocket-handkerchief give to that fabric the texture of a carpet. But the usual writer of fiction, when it occurs to him to utilise one of his second best ideas in the manufacture of a short story, will commonly bring to his undertaking exactly the same slap-dash methods which he has found to serve in the construction of his novels. ”

“ Returning to the question previously referred to, one may well hesitate to advise a novice to commence writing short stories which demand such infinite care in conception and execution. The tendency of young writers is to verbosity—longwindedness in dialogues, in descriptions, and in delineations of character,—whereas the chief excellence of the story is the extent and depth of its suggestions as compared with its brevity in words. Should not a man perfect himself in the less minute and less delicate methods of the novel before he attempts the finer art of the short story? ”

“ How many times have you put a novel away with the remark: "It drags awfully!" The narrative that drags is not worthy of the name. There are a few writers who can go into byways and take the reader with them—Mr Le Gallienne, for instance—but, as a rule, the digressive novelist is the one whose book is thrown on to the table with the remark just quoted. A story should be progressive, not digressive and episodical. Hence the importance of movement and suspense. Keep your narrative in motion, and do not let it sleep for a while unless it is of deliberate intention. ”

“ Style, per se, is absolutely unteachable simply because it is the man himself; you cannot teach personality. Can Dickens, Thackeray, and George Meredith be reduced to an academic schedule? Never. Every soul of man is an individual entity and cannot be reproduced. But although style is incommunicable, the writing of easy, graceful English can be taught in any class-room—that is to say, the structure of sentences and paragraphs, the logical sequence of thought, and the secret of forceful expression are capable of exact scientific treatment. ”

“ Of course, this is merely a personal preference with which the reader may have no sympathy; but the fact remains that, if a writer produces real literature and it does not sell, he has not therefore failed in his purpose; he may not receive many cheques from his publisher, but it is real compensation to have an audience, "fit though few."
On the general question of literary success, George Henry Lewes says: "We may lay it down, as a rule, that no work ever succeeded, even for a day, but it deserved that success; no work ever failed but under conditions which made failure inevitable. ”

“ I believe that, if he liked, a man could go on writing till his physical strength gave out. Most men exhaust themselves prematurely by something artificial—their manner of living—Scott and Dickens for example. Victor Hugo, on the other hand, who was so long in exile, and who necessarily lived a very simple life during much of his time, was writing as well as ever when he died at a good old age. So, too, was Carlyle, if we except his philosophy, the least interesting part of him. The great secret is perhaps for the writer to be content with the life he was living when he made his first success. ”

“ Literature, philosophy, politics, or sport may be handled in a loosely discursive style; and the writer, while indulging himself, is apt to think he is pleasing the reader. I think he can make no greater mistake. The dialogue [88] is generally the most agreeable part of a novel; but it is only so as long as it tends in some way to the telling of the main story. It need not be confined to this, but it should always have a tendency in that direction. The unconscious critical acumen of a reader is both just and severe. ”

“ Now, a plot is much like a drama, and should have a beginning, a middle, and an end; answering roughly to premiss, argument, and conclusion. There is no better training in plot-study than the reading of such a book as Professor Moulton's "Shakespeare as a Dramatic [45] Artist," in which the author, with rare critical skill, exhibits the construction of plots that are an object of never-ceasing wonder. I will dare to reiterate what I have said before. Take your stand at the end of the story, and work it out backwards. ”

“ No; a novelist, as such, should have no religion, no politics, no social creed; whatever he believes as a private individual should not interfere with the outgoing of sympathy in constructing the characters he intends to set forth. Human nature is a compound of the virtuous and the vicious, or, to change the figure, a perpetual oscillation between flesh and spirit. ”

“ This is enough to give the beginner an idea of the way in which stories and plots sometimes "occur" to writers of fiction. It is, however, only one of a thousand ways, and my advice to the novice is this: Keep your eyes and ears open; observe and inquire, read and reflect; look at life and the things of life from your own point of view; and just as a financier manipulates events for the sake of money, so ought you to turn all your experiences into the mould of fiction. ”

“ The exercise of writing out a plain, unvarnished statement of what you are going to do is one that will enable you to see whether your story has balance or not, and it will most certainly test its power to interest; for if in its bald form there is real story in it, you may well believe that when properly written it will possess the true fascination of fiction. ”

“ Further, the foundation principles of the art of fiction cannot be learned more effectively, even for the purpose of writing novels, than in practising short stories. All the points brought forward in the preceding pages relating to plot, dialogue, proportion, climax, and so forth, are elements of the latter as well as of the former. If, as has been said, "windiness" is the chief fault of the beginner, where can he learn to correct that error more quickly? The art of knowing what to leave out is important to a novelist; it is more important to the short story writer ”

“ SUCCESS Minor Conditions of Success
1. Good literature has the same value in manuscript as in typescript, but from the standpoint of author and publisher, it can hardly be said to have the same chances. Penmanship does not tend to improve, and some of the scrawly MSS. sent in to publishers are enough to create dismay in the stoutest heart. It is pure affectation to pretend to be above such small matters. Just as a dinner is all the more appetising because it is neatly and daintily served, so a MS. has better chances of being read and appreciated when set out in type-written characters. ”

“ If ideas, plots of stories, and new groupings of character do not "rise" in your mind, it is simply because you lack the power to originate them spontaneously. Take the somewhat fabulous story of Newton and the apple. Many a man before Sir Isaac had seen an apple fall, but not one of them used that observation as he did. In the same way there are scores of men who have the same experiences and live the same kind of life, but it occurs to only one among their number to gather up these experiences into an interesting narrative. ”

“ A raven, having learned by rote the single word "Nevermore," and having escaped from the custody of its owner, is driven at midnight, through the violence of a storm, to seek admission at a window from which a light still gleams—the chamber-window of a student, occupied half in poring over a volume, half in dreaming of a beloved mistress deceased. ”

“ I propose to show in this chapter that a literary artist can never afford to despise details. He may have genius enough to write a first-rate novel, and sell it rapidly in spite of real blemishes, but if a work of art is worth doing at all, it is worth doing well. No writer is any the better for slovenly inaccuracy. ”

“ It is needless to demonstrate that a poem is such, only inasmuch as it intensely excites, by elevating, the soul; and all intense excitements are, through a psychal necessity, brief. For this reason, at least one half of the "Paradise Lost" is essentially prose—a succession of poetical excitements interspersed, inevitably, with corresponding depressions—the whole being deprived, through the extremeness of its length, of the vastly important artistic element, totality, or unity, of effect. ”