A manual of the short story art

Front matter

The original of tliis book is in tine Cornell University Library.

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Cornell University Library PN 3373.C59

Foreword

A famous actress, long since dead, once remarked with bitterness : "In my day all that was necessary to produce a play were two boards and a passion; today all that is necessary are two sticks and a wardrobe." In adapting this statement to the writing art I am tempted to paraphrase it as follows: In the good old days all that one needed to become a writer was an idea and a dozen goose quills ; today all that one needs is a dozen rhetorics and a blue pencil.

This book was written with an eye on the student, not on the rules of composition and rhetoric. It conceives of the student as a creature who loves to use his eyes and ears, and who takes delight in playing the amateur detective and in ravelling and unravelling plots. It assumes that a young man or a young woman is filled to overflowing with warm, living interests and desires and aspirations which, taken together, constitute a greater driving force toward success in writing than anything which the textbooks and teachers can give him. By taking advantage of these natural desires and instincts and not working against them it is believed that the teacher may best "draw out" the student to the fullest self-expression.

One of these deep-seated instincts of the student is to see things in the concrete. For that reason the method of presenting exercises commonly used in this book is the so-called "projective method." Instead of being asked to viii FOREWORD

describe a city street, the student is asked to read a sentence that helps him to visualize a street and then to write down what he sees.

Another deep-seated instinct of a boy is to "get somewhere." Much as we may decry this by-product of the American worship of efficiency, we must accept it as a fact, whether or not we ignore it in theory. The American boy hates to mark time. For that reason he gives the best of himself in supporting his football team which is fighting its way toward a very definite and materially visible goal, and withholds all but the minimum amount of himself from the mastering of Latin conjugations where the goal is shrouded in mists of "sweetness and light." For the same reason the average boy hates the thought of writing "themes" where the only relation of one to the other is as the relation of the chapters on Unity, Coherence and Mass in his textbook are one to the other, and where the final result is the blue pencil or the wastebasket.

In this book the short story is the goal, and the descriptive and narrative bits which are required of the student in the early chapters are all steps in a carefully charted path leading directly toward that goal.

Needless to say there are many other instincts, characteristic of boy nature, which this textbook attempts to utilize in tempting a boy to give the best of himself to the art of writing, which, lest we become tedious, we shall leave for the individual instructors and students to discover for themselves as they proceed to put these exercises into practice.

To summarize briefly what has just been said, the purpose of this book is to take the study of English Com-

FOREWORD ix

position out of the hands of the sons of Martha, who have monopolized it for many weary and all but fruitless years, and restore it to the sons of Mary to whom by birthright it naturally belongs. In other words, it is an attempt to transfer the art of composition from the field of the Sciences back to the field of the Arts, and to invest it with that most potent of all incentives to success — ^the artist's true joy in his wOTk.

While the scheme of this book, taken as a whole, presents a new attack upon an old problem, the principles underlying the plan are not new. Perhaps the chief claim to originality which the book deserves is that its author has wandered somewhat off the beaten track in his search for these principles and for the illustrative matter to make them clear.

I am indebted first of all to the psychologists and the students of the human mind, from Aristotle down. In the second place I am indebted to Mr. H. C. Peterson who in a very elementary book intended for high schools, and to Miss Gertrude Ruck who in a book intended for teaching " Expository Writing" to college girls discovered some psychological methods of approach which I considered adaptable for short story writing. I am indebted to innumerable authors who have in one way or another revealed some of their "trade secrets." One source which yielded richly of this material was the "Editor Magazine."

For assistance in reading manuscript and for criticism and suggestions I wish to acknowledge with gratitude and appreciation my indebtedness to the following teachers of English: Dean L. B. R. Briggs of Harvard University ; Dr. Laura Lockwood, Wellesley College ; Professor

X FOREWORD

W. S. Ament, Pomona College ; Professor M. G. Frampton, Pomona College; Professor Charles A. Noble, Grinnell College; Professor George F. Richardson, Oregon State College; Professor Paul F. Wood, University of Southern California ; Professor Irving R. Outcault, California Normal College ; Miss Esther B. Tiffany, University of Wisconsin.

I wish also to acknowledge my indebtedness to the following writers and journalists who read the manuscript and gave many suggestions of practical nature: Miss I. R. A. Wiley of England, Mr. Demaree Bess of St. Paul, and Mrs. Edith FuUerton Scott of Detroit.

For assistance in reading proof I am indebted to Mr. Kenneth B. Hunter of the English Department of the University of Minnesota, and Professor A. B. Anderson and Dr. J. C. Hazzard of Macalester College.

I wish to express my appreciation of the following members of the Macalester College Faculty who have at different times assisted me in teaching freshmen classes where these methods have been used and who have helped me build up this system upon the solid basis of classroom results : Miss Frances B. Tiffany, Miss Frances B. Kelley, Professor F. D. McRae, Professor John Porter Hall, Miss Helen Kellogg, Miss Margaret Doty, Dr. C. L. Wilson, Mrs. L. R. Shero and Miss Sana McKenney.

Great assistance of most invaluable nature has been rendered by Miss Dorothy Dornberg, Miss Clara Jones, Miss Carrie Krugmeier, and Miss Ada Newcomb, members of the Macalester College Quill Club.

Acknowledgment is due the following writers and publishers for the right to use material in this book: Edward J. O'Brien, Annual Anthologies of Best Short

FOREWORD xi

Stories, The Editor Magazine, The Student Writer, The Gateway Magazine, The Atlantic Monthly, Edna Ferber, Wilbur Daniel Steele, Georges Polti, Henry Holt & Company, and Doubleday, Page & Company,

A WORD TO THE TEACHER

The following plan of using this book has been found to be effective.. One week may very profitably be spent on each of the first five chapters with the exception of the fourth which deserves two weeks. A week means three class recitations with theme assignments and sometimes an impromptu theme in class. The first five chapters serve to introduce the student to the more elementary materials of the short story, train his hand in the fundamentals of style, and form the habit of almost daily writing.

Following this introductory stage a week may be devoted to gathering material for plots according to the directions in Chapter VI; and while this is being done outside of class hours, the class periods may be used for impromptu themes or class discussions based upon the exercises in Chapter XI. Then should follow one or two weeks' study -of each of the following chapters: VII, VIII, IX, and X. Stories should not be written these weeks ; they should merely be planned.

Finally a month or three weeks should be given over to the writing of an original short story which should afterwards be carefully revised.

When the book is used for advanced classes in short story writing the first five chapters may be passed over a little more rapidly and the more intensive work begin with Chapter VI. One story of each of the four types xiv A WORD TO THE TEACHER

should be required of the students, one of which should be very carefully revised as the crowning effort of the course.

The most annoying difficulties in a course of this kind are usually connected with rhetoric, style, and plot building. For that reason the material in Part III has been included in this book to relieve the teacher of some of the burden of overcoming these faults of the student. It should be reserved for specific individual assignments — to be prescribed by the teacher whenever and wherever it seems to be particularly needed.

The main body of technique is grouped together in one short chapter (Chapter XI) which the student is to read and re-read and refer to constantly while he is writing his complete short story. This chapter discloses the whole premise upon which this book is based: That only as the student is required to apply his knowledge in actual exercises will the knowledge be assimilated, become part of that larger body of actual working knowledge which the student already possesses, and which, when it is made an integral part of himself, becomes wisdom.

A WORD TO THE STUDENT

It is only fair to tell you right at the beginning what this book cannot do for you. It cannot give you the background of a wide and deep experience of life. It cannot give you that liberal culture and training of intellect which only years of reading and study can give you. The highest attributes of a writer — character, culture and vision — ^this book cannot and does not pretend to give you. It furnishes only the smallest part of the requirements of a writer — the technique and formula of one specific mode of writing.

It might be said that this book is merely the mallet and chisel by which the student may be enabled to disengage his vision from the block. The technique is not as important as the vision; and a knowledge of formula is not as important as a knowledge of life. The beginner, without vision and without knowledge of life, will find himself circumscribed by a too slavish observation of the purely mechanical laws of short-story writing. But as he grows in knowledge of life and in breadth of vision he will find himself touching with confident hand certain phases of life regardless of whether they fall into the frame of the conventional plot with its emphasis upon action which too often results in melodrama, seeking rather those more subtle,, intangible clashes between motives and persons which is real drama.

It is advisable that the beginner in any art should xvi A WORD TO THE STUDENT

submit his work to the technique and formula of that art. But that does not mean that he should become complacent as he sees himself attaining the mastery of the external material in which he works. For development in any art is measured not so much by the things done by the student as by the growth within the student ; and this inner growth awaits upon the gradual development of his general intellectual capacities and his ever enlarging knowledge of life.

Contents

PAGE

Foreword vii

A Word to the Teacher xiii

A Word to the Student xv

PART I STUDIES IN SHORT STORY WRITING . . i

CHAPTER

I. The Picture . ' 3

Studies in Visualization 8

II. The Logical Arrangement of a Picture io

Studies in First Impressions 12

III. Supporting the Picture 14

Studies in the Five Senses 17

IV. The Story Emerges from the Picture . 21

Studies in Suggestion 22

V. The Story Emerges from Dialogue . . 27

Studies in Dialogue 31

The House Opposite — Anthony Hope . . 33

VI. Gathering Material for Stories ... 39

Exercises in Gathering Ideas for Stories . 44 zvii xviii CONTENTS

CHAFTBS PAGE

VII. The Story from Character .... 47

VIII. The Story Which Begins With Complication 62

IX. The Story from Setting 72

X. The Story That Grows from a Theme . 80

XI. Some Questions Answered 88

Miscellaneous Studies in Short Story Writing 104

The Spurious One — Gertrude Brooke Hamilton ... 109

Part II Creative Criticism Of Four Short

STORIES IIS

An Interview With James Oppenheim . 118

The Self-Inventory of the Writer of

Stories 122

"The Gay Old Dog" By Edna Ferber . . 124

Creative Criticism of a Story of Character 153

CONTENTS xix

CHAPTE« PAGE

"The Cop and the Anthem" By O. Henry 157 Creative Criticism of a Compucation Story 164 "Greater Love Hath No Man" By Beatrice Walker 169

Creative CM;ricisM of a Story of Atmosphere 180

"The Dark Hour" By Wilbur Daniel Steele 184

Creative Criticism of a Thematic Story . . 196

Part III Some Suggestions For Meeting The Chief Problems In Rhetoric

STYLE, AND PLOT BUILDING . 203

I. First Aro in Revision 205

ExERasES IN Rhetoric 220

II. Self-Cultivation in Style . . . .221

Directions for Exeroses in Style Building 223

III. The Thirty-Six Original Plot Situations 234

Exercises in the Thirty-Six Plot Situations 249

Chapter I The Picture

TVit? prffljpplasm (>f all wrijjnji; js fhf. pirtnrp. The first known writing was picture writing. The latest achievement of human art is the picture drama. The picture is the most simple, the most elemental, the most effective of all methods of presenting thought.

As a matter of fact we habitually think, even in our commonest affairs, not in abstractions but in pictures. Your friend invites you to go with him on a fishing trip. You sit down to consider the matter. Almost at once your mental conceptions take the form of pictures. You see yourself collecting your tackle, and packing your grip. Then you see yourself on the edge of the lake or the creek, and pushing out in a little boat. You see the silver surface of the water all about you and the birches or willows along the water's edge. Perhaps you see your line shake as a fish nibbles at the bait, and then suddenly pull taut as the victim is snared. Or you may see the sun beating down upon your hat and the swarms of little gnats and mosquitoes buzzing round your ears, and your line hanging listlessly in the water with no sign of a "bite." Other things being equal, it depends very largely upon the picture which you see most vividly whether you will accept your friend's invitation or not.

Someone has said that a story is merely a series of pictures strung together by dialogue, and as a matter of fact this is not by any means the poorest definition of a story. Teachers of public speaking have pointed out that nothing is much more effective in a speech than a series of well chosen pictures which illustrate and amplify the central thought. Thus you see that whether you are writing a story or delivering a speech the picture method is equally effective. Whether your hearers are illiterate peasants or the most learned scholars you can rest assured that the picture as a means of conveying thought is very rarely futile or inappropriate.

So we may reaffirm that the fundamental element in all writing is the picture. It is the raw material, the protoplasm out of which the first writing came, and the mastery of it and the shaping of it to artistic and effective ends is the chief goal of our greatest writers of today. Therefore if you intend to become a writer or speaker, or merely an intelligent reader of other men's writings, you should learn how to see and how to reproduce a picture.

Your first step toward the writing of the short story will be to put into practice this fundamental principle. You are to see a picture and to see it as vividly as you can. With that purpose in view give your concentrated attention for several minutes to the sentence in the middle of the next page.

OLD UNCLE JOHN SAT

IN HIS COMFORTABLE

ARM-CHAIR BEFORE THE

FIRE, SMOKING HIS PIPE

Did you get a picture? Now shut your eyes and wait until the picture becomes very clear, so clear that you begin to see the vaguely discerned objects in the shadows creep out to the edge of the flickering fire's glow. Do you see the way Uncle John sits — ^the lines on the cheeks and brow — the way he holds his hands — ^the garments he wears? Is he a real man, or merely a phantom man without a shadow and without a complexion, without wrinkles or freckles or anything to distinguish him from any other man? Is it a room different from all other rooms — ^a real room in fact?

Now take a perfectly clean sheet of paper and put that picture down in words. Take care not to have any other character enter and do not conjecture what Uncle John is thinking about. All that we want is a picture. Remember that every object is not equally distinct; some things are in the shadow, some are in the light. Try hard to put down all those salient little details which individualize that room and make it different from all other rooms. Begin with the thing which affects you most or stands out the brightest, and go straight ahead. Don't look to right or left. Let your pen go as fast as your fingers can make it. Don't pause for the word that won't come. Leave a blank and come back to it later. Don't stop to correct a word which you think may be misspelled. There will be plenty of time fdr that later. Your chief business for the time being is to get that picture down on the paper before you.

After your picture is completed, and not before, you may lean back in an easy chair and proceed to go over it, as the saying runs, "with a fine-tooth comb." Make this one of your nlost carefully observed laws of writing: After writing down your picture_in hot blood, revise it

THE PICTURE 7

. mucoid bloed. At this point you cannot be too careful. You will see the wisdom now of leaving space enough between the lines for interlinear corrections. Wide margins are also a great help. .In your first themes look out especially for the following faults:

1. Have you used abstract or general words for concrete or specific ones ? For instance, did you say that the room was dirty when you might have said that there were splotches of mud on the floor?

2. Were the sentences monotonously similar in form and length?

3. Did you use commas where they were not needed to make the meaning clear?

4. Did you use too many "ands"?

When you have finally made all the corrections you can, copy the theme neatly on a clean sheet of paper, writing on one side of the paper only, leaving good margins — and your first task is done.

THE ADVICE OF A FAMOUS TEACHER TO A FAMOUS PUPIL

"Everything which one desires to express must be looked at with sufficient attention, and during a sufficiently long time, to discover in it some aspect which no one has as yet seen or described. In everything there is still some spot unexplored, because we are accustomed only to use our eyes with the recollection of what others before us have thought on the subject which we contemplate. The smallest object contains something unknown. Find it. To describe a fire that flames, and a tree on the plain, look, keep looking, at that flame and that tree until in your eyes they have lost all resemblance to any other tree or any other fire.

"This is the way to become original. ., . .

"When you pass a grocer seated at his shop door, a janitor smoking his pipe, a stand of hackney coaches, show me that grocer and that janitor — their attitude, their whole physical appearance — embracing likewise, as indicated by the skilfulness of the picture, their whole moral nature; so that I cannot confound them with any other grocer or any other janitor. Make me see, in one word, that a certain cab horse does not resemble the fifty others that follow or precede it."

Flauberfs advice to Maupassant.

STUDIES IN VISUALIZATION

1. Little Johnny sat on the bank of a pond, with one shoe

and stocking off, in deep meditation.

2. The street of smooth asphalt gleamed under the summer

sun.

3. Mary, with her bonnet hanging loose, leaned over the

gate, watching the road closely.

4. The soda clerk, in neat apron, stood behind the marble

counter.

5. At the end of the long portage, the old harvester stopped

for a moment to contemplate the glare of the setting sun upon the placid water of Lake Silence.

6. The immense cathedral stood right before him.

7. The riveter was working on the rattling steel girder.

8. Old Pben, with his scythe on his shoulder, stood by the

old farm gate at the close of day.

9. A lone musician sat with his guitar in a small boat, play-

ing to the moonlight on the water.

10. In the door of the tent Old Indian John, the last of his

tribe, sat smoking his stone pipe.

11. The professor sat behind his desk waiting for his ques-

tion to be answered.

12. With a gun in his hand and a dependable bird dog at his

side he started out over the wild hay meadows.

13. The day was warm and the stands were crowded with

people waiting for the race to begin.

THE PICTURE 9

14. Aunt Tilly sat on a straight back chair, reading the

family Bible.

15. Grandmother Grey sat knitting in the back yard under

the old apple tree.

16. The Old Doctor sat in his old office chair.

17. Little Marie sat on the floor of the nursery, playing

with her dolls.

18. Old Silas and his friends had seated themselves around

the old stove, in the general merchandise store, which was lighted by a hanging oil lamp.

19. On the wall above the mantle of the fireplace hung a

20. Alice, a little girl three years old, was playing with a

broken toy wagon on the street.

21. The moon shone brightly on the little old cabin, dis-

closing a darky seated on the front step with his banjo.

22. The chimney sweep, with bag of tools over his shoulder,

came whistling down the street.

23. Shortly after landing we marched five miles inland, and

then, for the first time, I saw the remaining ruins of the ancient Spanish fort.

24. Old Granny Chappie was busily weeding her garden

beside the house.

25. Mary sits at her desk, busily writing a theme for

English.

26. The old man in ragged coat sat on the bench in the park.

27. Freddie, standing on the outside of the circus tent with

one eye glued to a tiny opening, seemed very intent on what was happening inside.

28. Old Rover was stretched out on the back step sunning

himself.

29. Little Tom sat playing in the sand pile by the garden.

30. John was sitting on the ground fixing his automobile.

Note: The exercises above may be divided into three seta. to be used in three succeeding years, or to avoid too great duplication in assignments when ased in several sections of a Freshman College English course.

Chapter II The Logical Arrangement Of A Picture

In your description of Uncle John what detail did you put first? His face? The effect of the light upon the room? The room as a whole? Or did you begin back in the corner?

This is an important question; for upon its answer hinges the clearness of effect which your picture will make upon your readers. The first thing we must learn after the elementary art of visualization has been mastered is the art of beginning in the right place.

I call this an art because that is what it practically amounts to in the hands of a true artist. However, it is an art founded upon a firmly established principle, and it will prove of inestimable help to you to know what this principle is. On its face tiiis principle sounds very simple: Describe first the thing which you see first.

But as a matter of fact there is hardly a more difficult thing in the world than to determine definitely what you see first. Our method of observing things has become by long habit so rapid a process that to many of us it seems instantaneous. When we sit down and attempt to find stages in this process, we find it almost impossible.

We can get at this problem best by calling to our aid the analogy of the moving-picture machine. A naturalist who has difficulty in discovering the exact motions of a wild animal when it is running at top speed has recourse to the ultra-rapid movie camera. There comes a day

LOGICAL ARRANGEMENT OF A PICTURE ii

when he has the opportunity of making a series of pictures of the animal in motion. These pictures, when released upon the screen, reveal the animal moving at one-fifth its actual speed, thus enabling the student to observe accurately the exact sequence of its motions. A similar method has been used on groups of industrial workers by students of scientific management to discover ways and means of eliminating waste motions in industry.

As one means of getting at our problem, then, I suggest that we, figuratively speaking, bring to our aid a device similar to that of the moving-picture machine. That is to say, let us attempt to get our first impressions of a scene quickly, and then take them into a dark room, so to speak, and examine them slowly.

How shall you do this ? Select an old church, a blacksmith shop or a dark cellar for your experiment. Step in, take one sweeping glance around you, and then step out again. What impression did you get? When you come to examine your results you will find that you will be able to deduce the following principle : The tendency of the good description is to move from the general to the particular, from the effect as a whole to the effect as detail. The mass of details, contributory to this general impression, should come later.

Another way of retarding your process of observation is to station yourself a long distance away from an object and approach it slowly. You can then record your impressions in the actual order in which they come to you.

"Southward, above and beyond the deep green chain, tower other volcanic forms — very far away, and so palegray as to seem like clouds. Those are the heights of Nevis — another creation of the subterranean fires.

"It draws nearer, floats steadily into definition : a great mountain flanked by two small ones ; three summits ; the loftiest, with clouds packed high upon it, still seems to smoke; the second highest displays the most symmetrical crater-form I have yet seen. All are still grayish-blue or gray. Gradually through the blues break long high gleams of green.

"As we steam closer, the island becomes all verdant from flood to sky; the great dead crater shows its immense wreath of perennial green. On the lower slopes little settlements are sprinkled in white, red, and brown; houses, windmills, sugar-factories, high chimneys are distinguishable — cane-plantations unfold gold-green surfaces.

"We pass away. The island does not seem to sink behind us, but to become a ghost. All its outlines grow shadowy. For a little while it continues green ; but it is a hazy, spectral green, as of colored vapor. The sea today looks almost black : the southwest wind has filled the day with luminous mist ; and the phantom of Nevis melts in the vast glow, dissolves utterly."

— Lafcadio Hearn.

This substantiates your first conclusion : that the stages through which perception passes are always from the general effect to the particular details. "Perception is not the instantaneous thing we are accustomed to think, but occupies time, though brief time," writes Miss Buck in "Essentials of Expository Writing." "The stages through which perception passes on its way to completeness are, in their essential features, the same for all normal observers."

STUDIES IN FIRST IMPRESSIONS I. Step into a building and out again quickly, in imagination or in reality, and then record your first impression in one or two sentences.

A cathedral A kitchen An attic

A grocery store An old church A barn

A. cellar A cozy parlor A schoolroom

LOGICAL ARRANGEMENT OF A PICTURE 13

II. Describe in one paragraph, giving the general impression first and following with only a few of the most significant details, the glimpses you get from a rapidly moving train, of a lake, a river, a wood path, a street in a village, a crowd pouring from a hall, a burning house.

III. (i) Describe the way a black spot on the horizon resolves itself into detail as you approach : a factory, a village, a clump of trees, a farmer in the field.

(2) Watch an approaching train, steamboat, automobile, horseman, cyclist or drove of cattle, and record your impressions.

IV. Describe as in Chapter I one of the following:

1. The little store invited the weary shopper to its quiet.

2. As Vera reached the top of the hill, the rising sun

was just peeping over the horizon.

3. Alice stood gazing at the beautiful silver path the