How To Write Stories

Front matter

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Preface

Mosr students of the short story have one of two dominant interests in the art. Hither they seek culture or they seek a livelihood. If they seek culture, they strive to learn the principles of art and artistic expression, first and foremost. If they aim at a livelihood from writing stories, they wish chiefly to grasp the technique of building a salable story, and this involves the technique of appealing to large masses of magazine readers. In my

:- previous textbooks I have addressed primarily the cultural group. This new volume is written exclusively for the professional. While the major topics must be the same, their treatment differs widely. Literary comparisons and some discussions of esthetic problems found place in my earlier works but have been omitted here. On the other hand, I have found it necessary to take up, for the professional writer, certain psychological matters, notably the emotions, which would have been somewhat out of place in a cultural study of the short story. sh:

Unfortunately, the full treatment of character analysis — could not be included, although it logically belongs here. Midway in my studies along that line, my material became so voluminous and so intricate that it could neither be summarized nor subdivided. It will appear as a separate volume in the near future.

Writers who wish a more detailed explanation of practieal plot-making processes following the method set forth here are referred to “Narrative Technique” by Thomas H. Uzzell, (Harcourt, Brace and Company).

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Contents

CHAPTER PAGE I. How to Stupy THESE Lessons. ...... 1 ADING YOURSELF o yal <0 6 ones 6 III. Purposes IN WRITING STORIES . e ae o eo 17 VR ELOWAEOAWVORE. E oh ores RA aTe 34 MORY OURGEIRST! STORY. e. EN, o e e aoea s 48 DREO BUILDING . W. a a ae Mo Moy ease cs 57 ME S AT TOSS SLT): 3:7). e a a e oa o eu tues 83 VRR ERODUCING KOUR EFFECTS se hoe cs a ens h 101 EXERC HARACTER ACTION % a ES a. u r aoe 139 X. THE UNIQUELY CHARACTERISTIC AcT.... 162 XI. Emotions AND THEIR PORTRAYAL ..... 188 XII. COMEDY AND TRAGEDY IN CHARACTER Drawane E E E SRR oo Ge oc 221 XE eer, ORDER OF EVENTS: 20s e siete anres 240 Vee EANDING YOUR READERS tere o sca senna 262 XV. Markets AND MARKETING ........ 288 Lins anaes MMA arenes BP! 9 Aer eect)

Introduction

Writers need vocational training even more than many other toilers do. For one thing, they have much more to ~ learn than the rest of the world has. Then, too, many subjects and techniques which the young author should master are incredibly difficult and can be mastered much more economically through the aid of textbooks, lectures, discussions, and experiments.

Centuries ago printers, sculptors, and playwrights learned the value of vocational training. During the past decade journalists have learned it, and today the untrained young man who joins a newspaper staff must compete with graduates of schools of journalism, who outstrip him in general information as well as in newspaper lore. It is only the literary writer who lags behind, as every editor, every literary agent, and many intelligent readers know to their sorrow. With a few exceptions — perhaps eight or ten — our novelists and short story writers exhibit defective craftsmanship too consistently. They fail most often in their knowledge of psychology and nearly as much in their understanding of the basic conditions of the publishing business. Ninety-five writers out of every hundred would gain much from proper systematic instruction here, and the other five would gain little or nothing only because they are the lucky few who early in life had discovered their own special aptitudes and have unfalteringly developed them.

All this holds true of the novelist and essayist, but not so universally as of the short story writer, especially in America. Leisurely, somewhat informal, and laboring under few restrictions imposed by extraneous factors, the vii viii INTRODUCTION novelist is free to exercise a looser craftsmanship than his fellow author who earns a living by writing in briefer form for the magazines. These periodicals have come, in the natural course of events, to influence the art of the short story amazingly. On the whole it has been a good influence — of this there can be no reasonable doubt. For one thing, it is assuredly true that the enormous demand for stories, week in, week out, down the years, as well as the unprecedented prices paid even for fair stories of certain popular types, is the fundamental cause of our supremacy in this field.

The short story is the highest form of American art. As to this there is not the slightest dispute among competent critics here or abroad. What painting and sculpture were to the ancient Greeks, the short story is to us. It indubitably expresses something distinctive in our ways of feeling and thinking. Some day perhaps a keen psychologist will tell us just what this distinctive something is. I hope to live to hear his verdict. For the present it is enough to know that in American life and art this mode of expression has “ come to stay.”

The interest in the short story among Americans seems to be much greater than that manifested elsewhere. The serious attention given to this form of art in our colleges has no parallel abroad. I am not interested just now in explaining this fact— I am rather wishing to make you realize that the art is neither a passing fancy among us Americans nor a trivial thing, in either the artistic or the commercial sense. It is a deeply rooted taste and habit with us; and the mew vogue of the motion picture has only served to intensify it.

This intense interest.of ours in the short story has made the American product superior to the stories from any other part of the earth. There is much to admire in some of

INTRODUCTION ix the Russian writers, and even more to wonder at in the French; but, when all the merits are weighed and due consideration given to the number of competent authors and their volume of high grade output, we must say as the sorrowful chamberlain did to Queen Victoria at the yacht race: “ Your Majesty, the Americans are first. And there is no second.”

There are, in the United States today, a score of excellent story writers to every one of equal skill in any other country. We have a dozen magazines publishing good stories to every one similar publication abroad. We seem to have a thousand story readers where England, France or Germany has a scant hundred. In no other country on earth has this form of art been taken seriously enough to find its place in the universities. And nowhere else has technical skill advanced to such a degree as here.

Every dispassionate and competent observer agrees, I think, that there are many story writers now living who are immeasurably superior to Poe in every respect. It is not so generally admitted that there are many who outrank or at least equal Maupassant, but I do not hesitate to maintain this. I might name a dozen living authors whose philosophy of life, dramatic sense, skill in swift portrayal, and sheer power of words hold their own easily in comparison with the great French master. I think that three or four Americans could be named who, possessing all of Maupassant’s powers, add to them other powers which he never displayed —notably “ atmosphere” and elemental human sympathy.

You must realize that these facts make it all the more necessary for you to master story technique. To write for an American audience you have to compete with more skilled authors than you would if you were trying to reach an English, French or German public.

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HOW TO WRITE STORIES

Chapter I How To Study These Lessons

I must ask you at the outset to take every point made in the following lessons with the utmost seriousness. The ideas here set forth are not personal notions, drawn from some quack theory about fiction. They are conclusions which have been worked out by many different observers and scientists and editors and authors. Some of them were reached two thousand years ago and have not been shaken by centuries of criticism. Some of them are very recent discoveries of psychologists and have been tested in many ways known to scientific method. Some of them represent the mature conclusion of men who have read thousands of manuscripts for publishers and have dealt with the reading public for many years. Some of them come from writers of high rank who have been blessed with the critical sense that enabled them to see their own efforts and methods of work in a detached way. All of them have been tried out for years in almost every important college and university of the United States where advanced fiction writing and journalism are taught. All of them have been studied closely, even suspiciously, by many prominent editors and authors, and with but few exceptions, these persons have recognized the soundness of the statements, as well as the manner of applying them to story telling. 1

2 HOW TO STUDY THESE LESSONS

The proof of the pudding is in the eating. The final test of the system here set forth must be the success of those learners who follow it conscientiously. On this test we may rest the case. For about ten years my teaching methods have been undergoing this test. I have used them myself, and more than two hundred other teachers have tried them out. Several thousand learners have been trained in this manner, and the benefits they have derived are clear. For a few years I tried to follow up their success. While the number of students was small, this was not hard, but pretty soon the task became impossible. Today these students are writing for practically every magazine of any consequence in the United States, Canada and England. Many of them have written successful novels. A few have written stories for educational purposes; some are doing similar work in the field of publicity; some are seeing their plays staged; a number have made good in the motion picture world; while in the newspaper field there are scores engaged in general reporting, special correspondence work, and feature story writing.

All this I mention here not by way of boasting but for a better purpose. I want you to rid yourself of that doubting frame of mind which is so common in learners. Don’t suspect a statement simply because it sounds strange to you. Don’t let skepticism become a cloak for laziness or lack of will, as it often does with some people. When you come to some of the more difficult lessons in this course, lessons which may demand days, if not weeks, for mastering, don’t lean back and say to yourself: “ What’s the use of all this dry stuff anyhow? TIl bet Kipling and Jack London me bothered to learn it. If they can win without it, I can.’

If you do a you will be wrong,— wrong in your surrender and wrong in your assumptions. Kipling and

HOW TO STUDY THESE LESSONS 3

London and all the rest did bother to learn everything that is in these lessons. They picked it all up from many sources and, notably in Jack London’s case, lost years of precious time simply because all the facts and rules about story telling had not been brought together concisely in a single book.

You can go pretty far in this art with only moderate application. The average story of the average magazine can be written with a year’s training in the principles herein set forth. To go beyond this point requires intense application. You must master the niceties of this technique as thoroughly as a great pianist masters the keyboard. There is no limit to the time and effort you can profitably spend on such progress. In so far as you do not exert yourself thus, you will remain on a lower level of skill.

There are many ways of studying these lessons. Each of you can find the way suited to your particular need. Make sure what your need and your interest is; then study accordingly.

Suppose you are a business man having no intention of becoming a professional writer but simply interested in story telling as it relates to advertising and publicity work in your own line of business. I advise you to read the course through, two or three lessons at a sitting; ignore the exercises but study the examples very carefully. You will find certain sections quite useless and others decidedly illuminating.

If you are engaged in advertising and publicity work, and have no thought of changing to fiction, I recommend that you study much more thoroughly and work out at least one exercise in conjunction with each lesson. The bearing of some of the lessons on your work will not be directly apparent. Never mind! See it through, and you will be

4 HOW TO STUDY THESE LESSONS agreeably surprised, perhaps months afterward, when the import of such seeming irrelevancies suddenly flashes on | you in connection with some advertising problem. Many - advertising and publicity men have followed this course in short form and have found high value in it.

Should you be a teacher of rhetoric or literature, you will probably be familiar with about one-third of the contents at the outset. Skim such sections. But do all the work called for on the remaining sections. The value of the technique as a basis for literary criticism and for teaching young people how to write is widely recognized. The lessons dealing with popular tastes and human interest and market demands will not prove particularly useful for your own teaching work, though you may be glad to know the facts they set forth. If you are as busy as most teachers are, however, I advise you to pass them by, so that you may concentrate on the sections dealing with character drawing and complications.

If you are a college student and want to find whether you can become a writer, there is only one course to pursue. Master every thought in the whole series. Work through every exercise conscientiously. Do not rush! That is the unpardonable sin in this field. If you come upon something you do not understand, go over it several times. If you still do not get it, pass on to the next lesson, and, weeks later, return to the knotty point and hack away at - it again. It is absolutely certain that you will miss many of the important features of the course on first reading. These features are subtle. Hard study and much observation of human nature are the price of mastery here.

If you are already engaged in any kind of literary work, be it newspaper reporting or the higher forms of fiction, I cannot lay down any rule of procedure for you. Probably you are chiefly concerned with discovering some special

HOW TO STUDY THESE LESSONS 5 weakness in your own writing methods and the way of overcoming it. Your trouble may lie anywhere in the whole range of technique. What you must do is to run through the lessons till you find what you need.

If you have never done any professional writing and have not studied literature and criticism closely, but want to learn how to write, you should do all the work here as slowly and as thoroughly as possible. Spend three years at it. You should carry on considerable outside reading at the same time. You should study the masters of style, men like Stevenson, Hardy, Conrad, Jack London, and others. You should also make a point of reading fiction in the current magazines. You must get rid of the notion that you can leap to fame in a month or a year. Be content with steady progress, however slow it may seem. Let every new - idea soak in. And let your writing habits develop apace.

Chapter II Finding Yourself

Brrore any sensible man enters upon a course of action involving much hard work and perhaps sacrifice, he seeks to assure himself that the enterprise is worth while. He ought to do this if he intends to become a story teller, just as surely as he should and would do it were he to invest his fortune and time in, say, shipbuilding or the grocery business. If he does not, he is pretty sure to find himself writing in haste and repenting at leisure. For his failure to investigate the worth-while-ness of the story teller’s art means a failure to study the story market, its nature, its soundness, its changing demands and its permanent needs. And this neglect is quite certain to have the same evil consequences it would lead to with the grocer who opened his store and bought his stock without first taking pains to ascertain how many other grocers there happened to be in the neighborhood, and whether the people roundabout preferred pickles or pomegranates.

So, as a mere matter of prudence and common sense, we must first ask and answer r the question: What’s the use of telling stories?

When I raise this question, I mean to include under it the telling of allt- kinds of stories. I have in mind the telling of true stories, such as the faithful newspaper reporter sets down when he tells you about the terrible fire in Smith’s Furniture Factory last night at 10:30, which destroyed 12,000 golden oak chairs and 1,234 folding beds.

FINDING YOURSELF a

I also have in mind here the telling of stories by political speakers and after-dinner orators, the telling of stories about the wonders of nature by the observant scientist watching the belching volcano and the devastating earthquake. Of course, I also am considering the telling of such stories as magazine editors and book publishers would buy, but I wish to warn you at the outset that you ought not to think that the story teller’s art is confined to this commercial field; nor should you suppose that this field alone is worth while.

The Truth is that

The story teller’s art is the art of narrative, and this art deals with the events of history as well as with imaginary affairs. It likewise deals with narrative told for the purposes of education and culture no less than with narrative told for simple entertainment. It is the art of reporting men and things in action. Whether these men and things be real or imaginary makes little difference, so far as the art and its technique are concerned. It requires essentially the same skill and the same understanding to describe the actions of a real man as it does to depict those of an imaginary man.

Perhaps your personal interest lies in writing commercially successful fiction. If so, then you will be learning much more than the trick of magazine writing when you master the art of story telling.

Now, this question: What’s the use? — divides promptly into two distinct problems:

1. What’s the use of story telling —to the reader?

-2. What’s the use of story telling —to the writer?

I think we ought to consider the reader first. For, after all, it is he who is the ultimate consumer of your tales. He is the market which you must know and reach, no matter which sort of stories you may wish to send forth. Of course, it may be that you do not care whether your tales please any reader or win the attention of any publisher; but if you are thus disposed, as a few great writers like Stendhal and Henry James have been, you are an extraordinary exception and probably will not benefit by any study of story writing such as here follows. Every normal man who wants to write, whether it be a letter or a novel, naturally wants to write it for somebody to read. Writing is a form of communication; it is a rather meaningless performance if it is not clearly addressed to some particular reader or reading group. And, needless to say, it is, when thus indulged in, a highly unprofitable business, as the balance sheets of Stendhal and Henry James prove only too clearly. So I assume you are willing to agree with me that you ought to think carefully, at the outset, about your prospective reader and the value your writing may have for him.

WHAT’S THE USE TO THE READER?

Story telling serves two tremendous purposes for the reader:

1. Education. 2. Entertainment.

As for its educational value, this may be of any four distinct kinds:

1. Simple information.

2. Interpretation of facts already known, but not understood by the reader.

3. Stimulation of one’s imagination.

4. Stimulation of one’s will—which I should call moral inspiration.

As for the value of the story by way of entertainment, it is two-fold:

1. It may achieve simple relaxation, the “ let-down” of the well-known “ Tired Business Man” at the end of a hard day’s grind; or

2. It may bring intellectual pleasure through the play of ideas in the form of fantasy.

Very briefly let us look at each of these values. I think most of them will surprise you with their importance. Few story tellers realize, until pretty late in life, what an immense service their art can and does render to mankind in these many ways. If you appreciate its value at the beginning of your career, probably you will go at the drudgery of learning with much stronger and more stubborn enthusiasm.

Story telling is the most universal and the easiest way of teaching people.

_ The foundation of all education is story telling. The

teller of tales is the first and the last teacher of mankind.

This truth was discovered thousands of years ago. It has never been successfully challenged, and probably never will be. For it grows out of some peculiarities of human nature that are essentially unchangeable, as we shall see in a moment. It was story telling that Plato, the great philosopher of Athens, resorted to when, finding the truths of his difficult philosophy too hard for men to grasp in their abstract form, he sought to make himself clear by recasting his beliefs in the form of fables. It was story telling that Christ adopted when, in his efforts to reach the simple folk of the countryside, he invented the wonderful parables. And still today it is story telling that our wisest educators employ whenever they seek to instruct the young or enlighten the old as to subjects that are somewhat difficult.

Nowhere is this art more useful than in the conveying of elementary information to children. For many years French school children have been learning the geography of France chiefly through a remarkable story book entitled Le Tour de France. This book recounts the wanderings, the fortunes and misfortunes of two boys who set out alone from Alsace, after the death of their parents, to find their uncle in Marseilles. The episodes are vivid and most effectively told. The reader’s interest in the narrative is well sustained. And at the same time the ingenious author has woven into the adventures accurate accounts of the towns the boys visited, faithful descriptions of mountains, rivers, factories, railroads and the people, with the results that the reader, when he has finished the book, has acquired a very solid understanding of France. In passing, I may remark that such a book written about the United - States ought to find a ready market, and it might run through dozens of editions, as the French book has.

Look at the more recent textbooks on geography, hygiene, history and politics published in our own land, and you will find an ever increasing number of them being cast, in part or in whole, into narrative form. This is no fad of the moment. It is a tendency which has been steadily strerfgthening ever since men began to take education seriously. You will find its beginning far back in the school teaching methods of ancient Greece. You will come upon it again in the class rooms of old Rome, in the cloisters of the church fathers, in the funny old books on moral instruction, which our own forefathers in England and Colonial America- used, in the “ Rollo Books,” in a host of travel books, such as the old “ Boy Travellers Series,’ from which I learned more geography than ever in the schoolroom. And already we see the beginnings of a still further expansion of this same tendency in the field of the motion picture.

The motion picture is a form of story telling. It is narrative no less truly than a chapter from the Arabian Nights. It happens to present its events in the form of photographs, rather than in words; but this is, after all, a slight difference. If anything, the picture is much more nearly pure narrative than the written tale ever can be; for words, in spite of the writer’s best intentions, always suggest ideas and interpretations which color and even alter the meaning of the simple events of the story. Now, the motion picture is rapidly becoming one of our greatest educational instruments — and this in spite of the lingering hostility of some conservative educators toward it, and also in spite of the disrepute into which the screen has been brought, thanks to the collossal stupidity and vulgarity of some producers, who should have been jailed long ago by a Vigilance Committee. Today the American people are probably being educated more extensively and more thoroughly in geography, in politics and in modern history during the few minutes which they spend daily in the motion picture theatres than their children are during their long hours in the schools. The travel pictures, the pictorial news, the recent device of throwing on the screen pungent editorial comments from the daily papers, and the occasional appearance of distinctly educational drama, —all these, I claim, are exerting an immense influence upon the minds of Americans. And more and more the possibilities of teaching by way of the screen are being | appreciated; so that, at this moment, we see more progressive instructors using it to teach athletes how to run, jump and box; workmen how to handle their tools; and medical students how to render first aid and operate on patients.

Potent as the motion picture is though, it still lags far behind the press in its educational influence. I think everybody will agree that the modern newspaper and magazine do more in the way of informing the public than either the screen or the school does. And everybody knows that the greater part of every such publication is devoted to story telling. Remember, story telling includes the true stories no less than the imaginary, for the art is one and the same, with but minor technical differences. And the newspaper’s first page, filled as it usually is with reports of important current events, is a feat of story telling no less truly than Mrs. Rinehart’s mysteries are.

Now, think back over your own experiences and see if you cannot put your finger pretty definitely on the source of some of your strongest opinions. How did you come to believe that the United States ought to go to war against Germany? Did you reason it out? Did you let yourself be persuaded by some argument about the German violations of international law? Or about the undesirability of war? Probably not. The chances are that one day you picked up your newspaper and read on the first page a simple straightforward story about some submarine captain turning his guns on a lifeboat full of helpless women ` and children. And you threw down the paper and said: “This must stop! ”

That’s the way men are usually moved to deeds. Not by argument. Not by cool reflection. But by seeing — either in real life or through the testimony of witnesses who tell the story of men and things in action.

THE WHY OF IT

You may be interested to know more about the reasons for this curious and universal fact. Why are people influenced more deeply by stories than by argument or exposition, or even moral persuasion? Why is the stump speaker who fills his speech with anecdotes pointing his argument a spell-binder, while the serious and oversolemn scientist or professor who knows a thousand times more about his subject received coldly and perhaps with yawns when he sets forth in strict logical order and with punctilious neatness all the arguments for his thesis?

Well, the deepest reason is quite simple and, I think, understood already by most people who have ever given the matter any thought. It is simply this:

Men are what men do. Things are what things do.

The world is a world of action and motion.

Hence, the most direct and the most convincing way to find out what a man or a thing really is is to find out what that man or thing is doing.

No man ever does or ever can make himself known through words and arguments alone. Language, as has been said, is not merely a mode of expression: it is a device for concealing thought. The protestations a man makes, the ideals he claims allegiance to, the arguments he advances on this or that topic, and everything he says is in greater or less degree modified by his interests and desires. He suppresses, he defends, he praises or condemns, he does not state the bald facts either about himself or about the thing he may be talking about. And so