Leslie Quirk

“ Nowadays a good short story is a cash asset. The demand is steady, the market unlimited, and the prices good. No other form of writing attracts half the attention nor commands half the rates of payment. “Fiction,” says Jack London, “pays best of all, and when it is of a fair quality, is most easily sold.” A literary beginner, I firmly believe, has a much better chance in this field than in any other; and if he possesses a fair education and is in earnest, he has the chance to make a good living and acquire a modest fame. ”

“ When you begin to detect the points in which the editorial needs and whims differ, you are in a position to become acquainted with the literary market.
If you write stories, it is your business to make a systematic and thorough study of magazines that use short fiction. You must learn to note whether action, complications, character drawing, style, humor, or any one of a dozen other qualities is responsible for the acceptance and publication of every story you read. If you find stories that lack plot altogether, you must discover what feature takes its place. ”

“ I believe your first story will be sold because of its plot. Nine first stories out of ten are. The language is handled carelessly, the situations clumsily, and the development illogically. Yet the stories go right into the heart of things, and are different from those of the rank and file. So I say, if you want to get into print, your story must have a strong plot.
Write love stories. “All the world loves a lover,” and editors are human. But make your love story one of action. Don't, as many writers do, take a man and a woman and a dozen meetings and an engagement, and call it a story. ”

“ Your plot must be simple enough to meet the requirements of a short story. In novels and in dramas there are a dozen skeins to be untangled, and a dozen joyous reunions in the last chapter, or just before the curtain drops. The short story should concern itself with but one of these tangles.
Action is the fundamental requisite of a good plot. It transposes affections and situations from what they were at the beginning. A good, selling plot should bridge seeming impossibilities over practically certain disasters to a pleasing end. ”

“ Perhaps the most common error of the young writer is the unconscious padding by the use of remarks, comments, stray bits of information, or morals entirely foreign to the plot. The proper way to tell a short story is to draw a line from the striking introductory sentence straight to the climax, and never, by a hair's breadth, deviate from that line. ”

“ No matter what method of narration you may choose, you must make up your mind at the outset to be simple and direct in telling your story. If you try to put style in your work, it will fall flat. After all, style is more or less of a humbug. If your writing is correct, and straight from the heart, and you put your individuality into it, critics will label your way of telling things “style.” ”

“ The great field to-day is for writers of fiction. There is not half enough to go around. Publishers all over the world are reaching out for both short and long stories. Good ones are extremely difficult to find. Prices have gone up and up and up, but the supply does not begin to equal the demand. Nothing appeals to so wide a class or gives so much pleasure. Love, romance, mystery, adventure, will never lose their charm. ”

“ THE STORY PROPER
The ideal short story is the relation of an isolated incident. In a novel you may introduce your heroine in one chapter and your hero in another, and then shift scenes and seasons with bewildering rapidity to the very end. There is a runaway, perhaps, in which the man saves the girl's life. There is a forest in which the lovers get lost together. There is an automobile wreck that drives them to a farmer's house for supper. But each of these leads up to the climax the inevitable marriage of the two. ”

“ Never display your lack of common sense by any of the petty little tricks common to the writers who believe their manuscripts are not read. If an editor finds the sheets of your story lightly gummed together, he will not take the trouble to separate them. Neither will he sort out pages not properly numbered. He cannot afford to waste time on writers who stoop to such detestable actions. He knows they will never be able to please him with their work.
Your manuscript will be read if it is worth while and properly prepared. If your first page is dull, your second may never be read. ”

“ You must be able to distinguish between a story adapted to Harper’s and The Century, and one that is fit only for the newspapers and syndicates. You must judge your own work honestly and without prejudice.
A story fresh from your brain will sound better than one that has been laid aside for a day or two. You will be able to pass upon its merits more impartially if you put it away until your enthusiasm cools. You will also find that it is good practice to read your stories aloud to some other person before you submit them to any magazine. ”

“ If you will keep always in mind the fact that the editor studies your conclusions to see whether the story proper is worth an examination, it is probable that you will see to it that this part has merit. It is the conclusion, remember, that leaves the taste in the reader's mouth, and makes him decide whether or not the story is worth while. If you end tritely, he will characterize your whole composition as trite; if you round off your story artistically, he will be apt to consider all that has gone before as artistic. ”

“ The true story should also be avoided. Here, again, it is the conclusion that causes a good share of the trouble. In real life, it is next to impossible to find a narrative that ends as you and the editor would wish. To make it artistic at all, you must put in a generous seasoning of the untrue and transform the climax altogether.
The conclusion of any story is worthy of the very best efforts of a writer. It is really the story itself, for it embraces the climax, or culmination of the plot. Nine times out of ten, your whole story may be discovered by reading your last paragraph or two. ”

“ You may get your suggestion as you will, in the night-time staring hard into the darkness, from a stray paragraph in a paper, from a scene on the street, or in any other way; but you must dress it up, and smooth off the corners that are impossible, and the edges that are not to be told, and build up the hollow places, all with your imagination. ”

“ Alden, editor of Harper's, says that were it not for these contributors "the magazine would languish in all its fine tissues for lack of the infusion of new blood."
To-day the literary beginner who succeeds is the one who welcomes suggestions. He knows he cannot turn author on the instant, merely by wishing; the wish-appeasing genii are not abroad in this enlightened age. On the contrary he realizes that he must study the profession; must fit himself for the work. ”

“ Your first sentence should plunge your reader into the action of your story. Leave your descriptions until you have interested him; then what would have bored him at first will prove only a pleasing explanation of the situation. In the ideal short story, the descriptions are sifted in so adroitly that there is no lagging of movement.
Don't begin your story by having a beautiful maiden wondering if her lover is true. Don't begin by saying that the heroine, dressed in well-fitting clothes, makes a handsome picture. Don't begin by presenting a girl who is reviewing her past life. ”

“ You will grow discouraged, no doubt, before you dispose of your manuscript. But if you have not the bull-dog tenacity to stick to it, to meet each returning manuscript with a smile, and to go on hoping and believing in yourself, you have no business in the literary profession. ”

“ Fifthly, don't have a story within a story. All of us have read tales of a railroad wreck, where in the course of a thousand words an injured man is carried to a farm house. Just when you get interested, the man rises up in bed and says: “I will now tell you of my past.” And then you find that the real story is about to begin, and that the wreck, and the girl who bandaged his head, and the quaint old farmer really had nothing to do with the story proper. Common sense should teach that this style is to be avoided. ”

“ It seems to be the fate of most writers to have a tendency either to take up a great deal too much time in telling their story, or to do it admirably nearly to the end and then seemingly to tire and hurry through to the climax. You will find, most likely, that in writing a story you have a habit of completing it in 1,000 words, or even less, or else taking five or six times that many. ”

“ Those who were on the alert for offence, who resented a marginal note as a slight, and bumptiously demanded that their work be printed just as they had written it, were commonly not much more desired by the reader than by the editor."
In conclusion, it may not be amiss to suggest that the short story writer often becomes a novelist. It is true that all who can write short fiction cannot produce a readable book, but a little reflection will show that a large percentage of the novelists served an apprenticeship writing short stories. ”

“ Too many young writers consider the ease with which a story may be written, rather than its adaptability for any magazine. A great number of students in high schools and colleges write fiction which is praised by classmates and teachers, and which may really be good from an artistic standpoint, but which is entirely out of line with the needs of any magazine. ”

“ Don't write in the first person till the conceit of being a mainstay of a story is a thing of the past. If you persist in being one of the characters, just study yourself. You will find that in the story you are either a conceited ass or a person of impossible intelligence. Telling a story in the first person is open to serious objections. ”

“ We get thousands of manuscripts, alleged stories, in which the story is not worth the telling, meaningless, flat, inane; and yet many of these stories are cleverly told. They lack merely one thing, and that is the story itself. ”

“ To place a story to good advantage, you must know the market through and through. It is not enough to know that the leading ten-cent magazines use love stories. You must know wherein those found in McClure's differ from those in Munsey's, in Everybody's, in The Cosmopolitan, in every other magazine that has a personality. ”

“ The religious papers and magazines brighten their pages with fiction. The juvenile publications pay excellent prices. The household and domestic journals run serials and short stories. Even the class publications give space to fiction. Hundreds of newspapers throughout the country offer good markets. The several syndicates purchase liberally and pay well. For no class of work is the market as wide as for the short story. ”

“ Have the country lass, whom the hero loves devoutly, discover him in her father's chicken-coop with a fat pullet under his arm. There's material for a little love comedy. Or have the tourist, begging a drink at the hermit's hut, suddenly cringe at his feet. ”

“ You are taking an unfair advantage of your manuscript when you do not do it, and you are insulting the editor, who does not care where your story or article or poem has been, so long as it is presented to him invitingly. ”

“ Young writers have a habit of using a series of stars or dashes to indicate the lapse of time in their stories. There is no reason for this, other than that the plot is wrongly constructed or that the writers err flatly. The craze for chapter divisions is a senseless one, and comes from a study of the novel. ”

“ A beginner apes those who have gone before, and as soon as he learns that in his own individuality lies the only style he can hope to acquire, he is on the high road to success in literature. He must learn to be himself ”

“ The strain on the eyes will be readily apparent, and the thoughtfulness of the writer who seeks to make easier the task by double spacing his work will be appreciated. Again, if a manuscript can be made acceptable by changing it somewhat, the space between the lines gives plenty of room for correction. Nothing that will serve to lessen the work of an editor should be left undone. ”

“ In spite of a process for manufacturing plots, however, there are many writers who sit at their desks, gazing blankly at the white paper and praying for inspiration, which in most cases includes something to write and the thoughts to clothe that something. If writers would only concede that in many instances inspiration is only another name for inclination, there would be less praying of this nature. ”

“ The best short stories have been written in the third person. These are far more apt to be simple and direct, free from irritating deviations from the central theme, and withal stronger and more interesting. ”

“ There is no reason to go on reading; no promise of anything better. Would it not be more interesting if begun a little differently? For instance :
“The horse stopped suddenly, and the man lifted his head with a jerk. ”

“ First, it is much easier on the eyes if the lines are not close together. Munsey is said to get three thousand manuscripts each month. Of course, these are handled by a great many readers for the company, but at the same time one man has to read a large number of them. ”

“ They are as fresh to-day with the human heart as they were in old Pompeii and countless ages before."
Nor is the call only for stories by well-known authors. The editors of the very best magazines are constantly on the alert for new writers. ”

“ Also conducts a literary bureau under direct supervision of Leslie W. Quirk, in which is offered expert criticism of manuscripts, advice as to strengthening, correcting, revising, mastery of technique, etc., together with a list of magazines, syndicate, or newspaper markets for which each is best adapted. Established 1895.
Sample copy of The Editor, containing more information for writers than any school offers, and full particulars of literary bureau, will be mailed to any address for ten cents. ”