Ellipsis

“ Well, but life is full, also, of endings, of the results in concrete action of character, of completed dramas. And we expect and give, in the stories we hear and tell in ordinary intercourse, some point, some outcome, an end of some sort. If you interest me in the preparations of two persons who are starting on a journey, and expend all your ingenuity in describing their outfit and their characters, and do not tell me where they went or what befell them afterwards, I do not call that a story. ”

“ The abundance and the vividness of character-presentation; the liveliness and the abundance of the staging of that character; the variety of scene and incident—all most properly connected with the plot, but capable of existing and of being felt without it; the human dialogue; the admirable phrase in that dialogue and out of it, in the digressions, in the narrative, above, and through, and about, and below it all—these things and others (for it is practically impossible to exhaust the catalogue) fill up the cup to the brim, and keep it full, for the born lover of the special novel-pleasure. ”

“ These are the epic poem, the drama, and the novel. Each purports to be, in some sort, a reflex of human life and action, as obeying certain laws and tending to a certain end. In each men are represented, not as at rest, or in contemplative isolation, but in co-operation or collision. In each there is a combination of two elements, an outer element of incident, an inner of passion and character. ”

“ So easily will it be guessed that I fall short of being a creative romancer, that, when the reader looks in vain in these pages for some exalted eloquence of diction, some graphic description of scenery, or some rhapsody on a flower, he will hesitate to cast the blame upon me, the prosaic, especially as here, at the very beginning, I distinctly state that if there is any kind of eloquence in my story, it is the eloquence of strange happenings—a thing which I have endeavoured to keep my pen from spoiling. ”

“ The plot, the characters, the setting of a story which is to live, must have the vividness of real experience. This does not mean that the creator of the story must have actually experienced the plot, the people, and the pictures which together make up his tale—they may be the product of actual experience or of imagination—but it does mean that while he is putting these elements together and creating his narrative he must realize as though it were actual experience the incident of his plot with the characters and in the atmosphere of his creation. ”

“ I consider a story merely as a frame on which to stretch the materials; it is the play of thought, and sentiment, and language, the weaving in of characters, lightly yet expressively delineated; the familiar and faithful exhibition of scenes in common life ”

“ In the first place, we must find something to write about; some condition, experience or deed that is worthy of a plot, a story or a play. As we consider this or that item of plot material, in our search for a plot germ, we pause and ask of it: To what end? To what good? The moment we discern the culmination of a big moment, or the performance of a decisive action, or the accomplishment of a great deed, we have found our plot germ. This is not the beginning of our play, but its culmination, or climax. ”

“ In all I have written I have sought carefully to work into my dialogue each word and sentence recorded of the individual, every available trait or peculiarity of character to be found in contemporary memoirs, every tradition that has come down to us.
To be true to life has been my object. ”

“ What national and racial customs intensify the setting?
“To me, a narrative that has for its aim to interest the reader in its plot is an anecdote, be its plot ever so thick. A narrative that aims to interest the reader in a slice of palpitating life—the joys or sorrows of people—be its plot ever so thin, I call it a short story.”—Benjamin Rosenblatt. ”

“ The province of the epic is the poetical narrative of real or supposed events, and the representation of real, or at least natural, characters; and history, in its noblest examples, is an account of occurrences in which great events are commemorated, and distinguished men appear as agents and actors. Epic poetry and the drama are but narratives, the former partly and the latter wholly, in the form of a dialogue, but their characters and personages are usually, in part at least, the creations of the imagination. ”

“ We shall use for suggestive analysis in this study not a complete specimen of narration, but several examples illustrating two of the three elements necessary to the personnel of a good story. These three recognized elements are the setting or situation which the pictures compose, the atmosphere which the characters create, and the plot or the action in which the characters engage. We shall leave the question of the plot to class work upon the selections from epic poetry to be considered later in this study. ”

“ And first of the dramatic incident, the scene, properly so called—this comes first in importance, beyond doubt. A novelist instinctively sees the chief turns and phases of his story expressed in the form of a thing acted, where narrative ceases and a direct light falls upon his people and their doings. ”

“ From this collection of 104 tales he concludes that: "In the tales of a people those incidents of the everyday life that are of importance to them will appear either incidentally or as the basis of a plot. Most of the reference to the mode of life of the people will be an accurate reflection of their habits. The development of the plot of the story, further-more, will on the whole exhibit clearly what is considered right and what wrong." ”

“ Further, as the lives of all men and women are more or less conditioned by their surroundings and circumstance, any story will require more or less description. Incidents are of but little moment, character showing may have but slight interest, description is purposeless, unless the happenings of the story develop in the characters feelings toward which we assume some attitude of sympathy or opposition. Including this fourth element of the story, we shall then have [2] incident, description, character, mood, as the first elements of the narrative form. ”

“ There are many such,—dramas on the stage of history, life scenes that are pictures in action, tales pathetic, stirring, enlivening, full of the element of the unusual, of the stuff the novel and the romance are made of, yet with the advantage of being actual fact. ”

“ First each novel, and then each class of novels, exists by and for itself. I will take, for instance, three main classes, which are fairly distinct: first, the novel of adventure, which appeals to certain almost sensual and quite illogical tendencies in man; second, the novel of character, which appeals to our intellectual appreciation of man’s foibles and mingled and inconstant motives; and third, the dramatic novel, which deals with the same stuff as the serious theatre, and appeals to our emotional nature and moral judgment. ”

“ Even the diverse elements, the minute side-studies and the profuse comments, are all woven into the organic structure, and are essential to the unfoldment of the plot. They seem to be quite irrelevant interruptions until we look back upon the completed whole and study the perfected intent of the story. Then we see how essential they are to the epic finish of the novel, and to that total effect which a work of genius creates. Then it is seen that a dramatic unity and well-studied intent hold together every part and make a completed structure of great beauty. ”

“ On the other hand, when we write we shall need to distinguish action that indicates character from that which is merely incidental to the plot. In order to develop a story to its climax we may need to have the persons concerned perform certain actions. If by skillful wording we can show not only what was done but also to some extent the way in which it was done, we may give our readers some notion of the character of the individuals in our story. ”

“ When circumstances cross the ruling passion, when rocks lie in the way and winds are contrary, then things happen, characters emerge, slight events are significant, mere adventures are transformed into a real plot. ”

“ The plot, although not an involved one, hides enough mystery to lend the spice of the unknown to the reader's zest, and the simple and natural dénouement emphasizes the high moral ethics of the story, and throws into strong relief the deep human sentiments that dominate the tale. ”

“ The order in which the drama simply says things gives it all its form, while the story told and the picture painted, as the novel at the pass we have brought it to embraces them, reports of an infinite diversity of matters, gathers together and gives out again a hundred sorts, and finds its order and its structure, its unity and its beauty, in the alternation of parts and the adjustment of differences. ”

“ There is, indeed, an astonishing vitality and movement throughout the work, and, elaborate though the plot is, with all varieties and all contrasts of people and conditions, with constant shiftings of the scene, the story yet moves, and moves the interest of the reader too, along the rapid current of events towards the powerful culmination. ”

“ Altogether it is a capital story, full of wild adventure and startling incidents, and told with a genuine simplicity and quiet appearance of truth, as if the writer were really drawing upon his memory rather than his imagination. ”

“ Illustrated.
"The narrative is pervaded by a fine poetical spirit that is alive to the subtle graces of character, as well as to the tender influences of natural scenes. . . . Its chief merits must be placed in its graphic and expressive portraitures of character, its tenderness and delicacy of sentiment, its touches of heartfelt pathos, and the admirable wisdom and soundness of its ethical suggestions."—N. Y. Tribune. ”

“ Common again to both short and long stories, evidently, is a form which, in skilled hands, and used only for those subjects to which it is most appropriate, may give strange reality to the matter presented—the form, I mean, in which the story is told in the first person, as the experience and the sentiment of one character who runs throughout the whole. ”

“ The delights of conversation—so nearly, alas, a lost art!—consist chiefly in the exchange of varied views on single topics. So, when we note how the few primal story-themes and plot developments of all time were handled by those who first told the tales in literate form, the satisfaction is proportionate. ”

“ What is of interest here is not such a motive as possible expression for a view of the world belonging to a more primitive stage in the phase of development, but it is this episode as one of the poetical motives of a novel. ”

“ Not till the story is ended, not till the effect of it has been thoroughly absorbed and digested, does the reader even perceive the simple and natural absence of any grosser element, any hint or suggestion of a baser alloy in the ingredients of its human emotion than in the splendour of lightning or the roll of a gathered wave. ”

“ The present chronicle is an attempt to give an answer, inevitably a very tentative one, to this formidable question; the writer, feeling that, as in all these matters, where the elusiveness of human nature plays so prominent a part, there is more hope of approaching the truth, indirectly, and by means of the imaginative mirror of art, than directly, and by means of rational theorizing. ”

“ The faculty which by a daring leap fixes on the evolutionary hypothesis, or with imaginative subtlety suggests the plot of a novel, is the self-same one which enables us to say, “Our Father, which art in heaven.” ”

“ While narration, description, exposition and argument are the four forms of prose composition, we do not find frequently that selections are exclusively one or another. Nearly every story contains description, and exposition is not infrequent; expositions often contain description and narration, and arguments are often based upon narration and exposition. Excellent language lessons may be given by examining masterpieces to see what forms of composition they represent or which form predominates. ”

“ We have seen that, although the employment of an internal point of view gives a narrative vividness of action, objectivity of observation, immediacy of emotion, and plausibility of tone, it is attended by several difficulties in the delineation of the characters and the construction of the plot. It is therefore in many cases more advisable for the author to look upon the narrative externally and to write it in the third person. ”

“ Every word of the uttered line of poetry, viewed in its reference to the other words, or to previous and later experiences, is present in its own place in the series, is over and done with before later events can come, or when they are present, and is not yet when the former events of the succession are present. ”

“ The three consist of a Romance, an Epic in twelve books, and an Inquiry into the Human Mind, in three volumes. I, Paul, will tickle the Romance; you this very evening shall plaster the Epic, and slash the Inquiry! ”

“ The narrative is one of intense interest from beginning to close, and the characters of the various personages with whom the hero of the story is associated, are drawn with perhaps more skill, and a deeper knowledge of human nature, than in most of the author’s previous novels. ”