The contemporary short story, a practical manual

Preface

A distinguished British critic, Professor Hugh Walker, remarks: "There is no other form of literature in which America is so eminent as in the writing of short stories." This dictum alone is sufficient justification for introducing a course in this subject into every college in the land. Not only is a better understanding and appreciation of the finest short stories fostered by such a course, but not a few students find themselves able to write tales that are accepted by reputable American periodicals — if not during their undergraduate years, at any rate shortly afterward.

Writing fiction for the magazines is both an art and a business. This volume accordingly aims to teach promising young authors, whether in or out of college, how to write stories that shall be marketable as well as artistic. It attempts to state succinctly, and as clearly as may be, some fundamental principles of short-story writing. These principles are based upon somewhat extensive reading of short fiction in English, botli classic and contemporary; of a pretty large number of manuscripts submitted to important periodicals; and of most of the critical works on the short story. Many of the pages are written from the editorial standpoint. I have not attempted to set up an impracticable ideal on the one hand, nor to concede too much to the lower range of popular taste on the other.

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Preface

No apology need be offered, even in a university classroom, for the better sort of contemporary short stories. They justify themselves as worth-while studies of human life and character. They cannot be written without an adequate first-hand acquaintance with life. A good many lack polish of style; but a surprising number possess it. Surely, when so original a genius and so great an artist as Kipling devotes himself chiefly to the short story, no attitude of timidity is necessary in proclaiming that this form of literature has come into its own; and our best magazines will see to it that it does not decline. The short story can no longer be dismissed, with a lofty wave of the academic hand, as "mere enter tainment. ,, It must be taken seriously.

Acknowledgment is made with gratitude to Professors C. T. Winchester, Bliss Perry, Brander Matthews, Stuart P. Sherman and Henry S. Canby, for suggestions and quotations obtained from their text books; also to Mr. Eric Schuler, secretary of the Authors' League of America, to the Methodist Review for permission to reprint a part of my article, "Some Notes on the Short Story," and to the following newspapers, magazines, publishers, and authors who have kindly allowed illustrative passages to be reproduced: the New York Times and Sun, the Saturday Evening Post, Harper's, Scribner's, the Pictorial Review, Everybody's, the Smart Set, McClure's, Good Housekeeping, Harper's Bazar, the Metropolitan, the Bookman, the Strand, Henry Holt and Company, The Macmillan Company, Houghton Mifflin Company, Charles Scribner's Sons, Dodd, Mead and Company, Hearst's International Library Company, G. P. Putnam's Sons, Doubleday, Page and Company, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,

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Preface

Mr. W. W. Jacobs, Mr. Melville Davisson Post, Mr. Julian Street, Mr. Charles G. D. Roberts, Mr. Freeman Tilden, Mr. Donn Byrne, Mr. Thomas Grant Springer, Miss Fannie Hurst, Mrs. Gertrude Atherton, Mr. Ward Muir, Mr. Harry Leon Wilson, Mr. Herbert Quick.

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Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. Originality: Kinds and Methods 1

II. Common Faults 43

Chapter I Originality: Kinds And Methods

Mr. Hawthorne's distinctive trait is invention, creation, imagination, originality — a trait which, in the literature of fiction, is positively worth all the rest. . . . The inventive or original mind as frequently displays itself in novelty of tone as in novelty of matter. Mr. Hawthorne is original at all points.

— Edgar Allan Poe.

It ought to be the first endeavour of a writer to distinguish nature from custom; or that which is established because it is right, from that which is right only because it is established. — Samuel Johnson, The Rambler.

It is surely not unreasonable to expect that a writer who wishes to have his short stories accepted by a certain magazine shall familiarize himself with some of the fiction previously printed in that magazine — and in a good many others. Yet would-be contributors are constantly offering to patient editors tales whose plots are so threadbare that to print them would be to invite ridicule from a majority of subscribers. The first duty of a fiction writer is to read fiction widely, in order to avoid the hackneyed and the trite. Ask any magazine editor what kind of story he wants, and he will tell you, in effect, that he wants the story that is "different," that is separated by something fresh and original — whether in plot, character, dialogue, or atmosphere — from the mediocre manuscripts that deserve nothing better than a printed rejection slip. Such originality does not mean, of course, a plot original in its entirety, for such plots were exhausted long ago. It means permutations and combinations of old material such as shall result in an impression of originality, especially at the close of the story — the place where, in short fiction, the real effect on the reader is almost invariably produced: in Maupassant's The Necklace, for example.

Dr. Samuel Johnson declared, somewhat unjustly, that even Gulliver's Travels reveals no striking originality of plot; that, granted the dwarfs and giants of the first two parts, everything follows as a matter of course. There is, however, nothing very like Gulliver in literature, especially in its last two parts; and that is the main thing; that is, to speak colloquially,

"the answer." Nobody has succeeded in writing very much like Jonathan Swift; and few have had the temerity to try. That unforgettable picture of those luckless immortals, the Struldbrugs — as vivid, says Leslie Stephen, as anything in Dante or Milton — is alone enough to attest Swift's profound originality in the realm of the creative imagination.

The originality of Shakespeare evidently did not lie in invention of plots, which he "lifted" with a royal hand, but in creation of characters — where, unlike so many popular novelists and short-story writers of to-day, he never repeats himself — and in associative imagination, in comparison by metaphor and simile. Scott's title to eminence now rests almost entirely upon his "colossal creative power." Even Poe reveals inability to do more than a few things well — chiefly the horror story and the mystery tale. In the latter his invention and ingenuity are certainly noteworthy.

Examples of essential originality in recent magazine stories by various authors might be multiplied; but a few will serve. John Taintor Foote's Opus 43, Number 6 x turns upon a famous pianist's pretence of ignorance of his

1 Saturday Evening Post, Feb. 13, 1915.

art — a pretence skilfully maintained in order that he may enjoy the company of the young girl whom he loves, by taking piano lessons from her. The revelation at the close is deftly managed and the total effect is highly pleasing. Yet there is no attempt at a completely original plot. What is revealed is simply a new "twist" in an old situation:

He moved across the room and stood uncertainly by the piano.

"Lezzon?" he suggested timidly.

Miss Hicks wet her lips with the tip of her tongue. She remained behind the table.

"Where were you last night?" she inquired.

The guilty Leopold grew scarlet.

That restored her courage. He was not the old Scarecrow when he blushed — not the wonderful though mad being who turned a piano into a choir of heavenly voices. She came part way from behind the table.

"Why have you been coming here?" she demanded.

"Muzeek lessons," he offered weakly.

Miss Hicks laughed him to scorn. She withdrew altogether from the protection of the table and confronted him.

"Music lessons — your grandmother!" she said. "I was at Carnegie Hall last night. Now, why have you been coming here?"

Leopold met her level glance and quailed to his marrow before it. He could deceive her no longer! Where was he to find words to tell her? It would have been a terrifying task in warm Hungarian. In his limping, contemptible English it was sacrilege to think of it. He looked in dumb hopelessness about the poor, dear and now familiar room. He was about to be swept out of it forever. His eyes came at last to the piano. They widened slowly.

"Seet down!" he said with an imploring gesture.

She did so, wondering. Leopold sank to the piano bench and gathered a great sheaf of golden notes in his hands.

Outside, the plumber's washing danced in the cold March wind. Over the court wall Miss Hicks could see a bare and lonely tree. Its forlorn background was a wind-swept tenement house.

She had one desolate glimpse of all this — then it was gone. . . . Rich meadows, velvet green, stretched on and on before her. Her nostrils were filled with the breath of newborn violets. Brooks laughed. Birds sang. Butterflies flashed in the sunlight. A million lovers met and kissed — for Leopold had called on the magic of the Scandinavian gentleman.

Miss Hicks was stirred by nameless longings, sweet beyond words or thought. They made her heart flutter and surge. They filled her throat and eyes.

And now the sun went down and a yellow moon hung above the breathless trees. . . . Leopold had done it. Technically he was improvising on the theme of Opus 43, Number 6.

In reality he took Miss Hicks by the hand and led her to a moonlit glade. Then he whispered — whispered to her, while nightingales sang. He was no longer funny. . . . He was dear beyond all earthly things — her own! Her very own!

Suddenly black terror seized her — he was leaving — he was gone! . . . She looked up to see him standing by the piano, back in her own room.

Miss Hicks raised one hand to her throat — tiny hammers were beating there. Her eyes were no longer frank and boyish. They had become deep pools of mystery.

"I'm — glad — you — came!" she breathed, and flushed into a pink glory.

Leopold discovered that his arms could do more than sweep from end to end of the keyboard.

A similar new "twist" is visible in a powerful and moving tale by Henry C. Rowland, The Copy -Cat. 1 Here a man of unusual strength but feeble courage, who has sunk to the level of a beachcomber, suddenly gains the necessary fortitude to win a fist fight by seeing his recently acquired dog snarl defiance at a former % owner and their common enemy, a brutal sea captain. The animal, a thoroughbred, imparts the same quality to his new master. It is a vivid moment and the memory of it remains with the reader:

A sudden weakness sapped their life from Bill's great limbs. His knees tottered, his arms hung limp. He looked hopelessly at Matey, and then his hanging jaw

1 Saturday Evening Post, May 18, 1907. [6]

came slowly up and his eyes grew fixed and staring, while the swaying legs slowly stiffened and the big hands closed.

For the dog, his first panic over, had pulled himself together — as Bill had tried to do, and failed. Now, as the man's eyes fell upon the hound, they read in the bulging muscles, bristling hair, and bared, glistening fangs, not fear, but rage and a savage and stubborn defiance. Even as Bill watched, Matey sprang forward in a series of short, stiff -legged bounds, then stood with his strong neck rigid, his bristling tail straight out — and as the captain, awed for the moment by the ferocity of the animal, paused, Matey filled his deep chest and roared out a booming defiance at his master's foes and his !

A fierce glow of exultation set Bill's pulses throbbing. In a flash the mantle of fear fell from him. He had needed only the impulse, the example, the suggestion, and Matey had furnished it, and again, as his clarion war-cry bugled forth, Bill felt a thrilling impulse to voice his own defiance in a roar that should rock the lofty palms. . . .

The attack, when it came, was swift and terrible. With the scream of a panther, Bill leaped upon his foe. He was met by a crashing blow which glanced from the side of his head and flung him to the sand, but almost as he struck he was up again and had closed with another rush. This time the captain's blow fell short, and the next moment Bill's great hands had found the captain's throat and the huge, bony fingers sank into it until the sailor's breath came in whistling gasps. In vain he tried to tear loose the terrible grip. The tense, bulging muscles were like the weather shrouds of a ship. He struck out wildly, dealing short, heavy blows, and presently these

en had their effect, for Bill loosed his hold and sprang clear again. But the captain's head was reeling and there were black flashes before his eyes. He tottered slightly, gasping for breath, and then the huge, springing figure was upon him again, this time as a human flail which dealt crushing, devitalizing blows on head and face and body, until the captain, groping and striking blindly, reeled, tottered and fell.

It is probable that he might have lost his life beneath the terrible chastisement had there not come a diversion. Seeing the champion overthrown, the rabble began to stir and mutter as if forming for a concerted attack. The movement caught Bill's lurid eye, and in a transfiguration of Olympic wrath he whipped up a stake which was lying near and descended upon them. Fortunately, his cudgel was of no great dimensions or the mortality might have mounted high. As it was, all escaped alive, the burden of i the punishment falling on the shipping agent, Mendoza.

If in some one element a story is thus memorable through originality, that is enough. It will satisfy the reading public; and this means that it will satisfy the editor. A fiction magazine lives to please and must please in order to live. The editor merely feels the public pulse. " You can kill your magazine," says a prominent editor, "by one poor issue." If his circulation drops, he knows that his contributors' short stories have not shown enough freshness and originality to induce readers to keep on buying his periodical at the news stands. The old-style millionaire's attitude, "the public be damned!" has nothing in common with the attitude of a successful editor. He must be a barometer of the changes in public taste and must alter his plans at the first symptom of those changes.

In the best short stories of the day there is not only essential originality but also something more than brainless entertainment. There is a solid kernel of thought, often a big idea, back of the narrative. Such a short story is much more likely to deserve preservation in a volume than the "whipped syllabub" of the extremely light entertainer — the modern descendant of the Court Fool. A good short story must indeed be entertaining, but it may be something more without degenerating into a sermon or a treatise. In his early work, Henry James was entertaining, though in his later period he was an excellent example of how not to write fiction for popular consumption. Even what Matthew Arnold said of the Greeks is not inapplicable to the modern short story:

Their theory and practice alike; the admirable treatise of Aristotle, and the unrivalled works of their poets, exclaim with a thousand tongues — "All depends upon the subject; choose a fitting action, penetrate yourself with a feeling of its situations; this done, everything else will follow. 1 "

Ward Muir's Sunrise 2 furnishes an almost extraordinary illustration of this doctrine of the subject. A beautiful girl in China who, having lived always underground, has never seen the sun, is taken out of her surroundings by her lover, at night, and the next morning beholds her first sunrise. She believes that she has looked upon the very face of God; and the shock causes her death. She dies happy, however, though her lover is left distracted:

I raised my eyes from Kima's kneeling figure, and saw — the sun.

It was a burnished ball, emerging, as I looked, from a bed of fog. Moment by moment it grew more distinct, more and more fiery. The clouds were furling off from it like ornate curtains drawn from before an immense and inconceivable furnace. Its rays were drinking the vapors from the abysses, like steam. And then I saw the sun as an Eye.

I stood, staring and dizzy; and beside me I heard a movement. Kima had risen from her knees, and was standing too, confronting the sun. Her body was strung taut and quivering. The fight, beating upon us ever brighter and brighter, was round her like a halo.

1 Preface to Poems of 1853. 2 McClure's, Oct., 1914.

"What is this?" The words burst from her in a cry of awe. "What is this?"

The sun swam clear of the clouds. Its full force rained upon us. And suddenly I heard Kima again:

"J must look!"

With a gesture at once sublime and despairing, she tore the bandage from her brow.

I was paralyzed. I knew — knew — that Kima was lost to me; but I could not move.

She gazed, entranced, for one tremendous moment, full into the face of the sun, then fell on her knees, and in an abandonment of adulation prostrated herself to the ground, her hands outspread in abject reverence. . . .

At last, with an effort that was pain, I bent down and touched her.

She paid no heed.

I tried to raise her.

She was inert. She slipped sideways in my hands, and I saw her face.

It was the face of one who had beheld in the firmament a radiance unimaginable. Its dazzling and calamitous grandeur had stricken her to the earth, and stunned her in her adoration of its peerless majesty. She had lifted up her eyes to the glistering portent of the risen sun; she had rested them upon that stupefying blaze; she had seen the light ineffable. She had looked upon the sun's magnificence, and the luster of its flaming was too dire to be borne. In that unendurable splendor she had thought she saw God. And, in the terror and bliss of that revelation, her soul had been set free.

Kima was dead!

A strong contrast to this story, in subject, is to be seen in Freeman Tilden's satirical .tale, The Defective, 1 which turns upon a supposed defective's discovery that presumably sane people who were tango-mad, bridge-mad, and so forth, were in reality worse off mentally than he. In despair, he finally takes refuge again in the asylum from which he had been discharged as cured! The originality here lies quite as much in skilful treatment as in the subject. No outline can do justice to this uncommonly humorous tale. It has, in a high degree, both spontaneity and sophistication.

Corra Harris' Justice 2 is a story whose originality depends upon a powerful arraignment of the man-made equity of law-courts. A woman kills her husband, under circumstances such that she is acquitted — after being ably defended by a woman lawyer who intuitively divines all her wrongs and lays them before the jury. It is a suffrage story, and Mrs. Harris' thesis is: "Men are lawless, and always will be, to a certain limit which they determine themselves, and our system of law, which is fictitious,

1 Smart Set, March, 1914; reprinted in That Night, and Other Satires.

2 Good Housekeeping, May, 1915.

is the only one they'll stand, because it is fictitious!"

Gertrude Atherton's unusual and thrilling character study, The Sacrificial Altar, 1 portrays an intellectual young novelist who is trying to inject some passion into his work. He fails to fall in love with a beautiful girl whom a friend has selected for him, but suddenly conceives the idea of stealing upon her in sleep, defying her scorn "for a few poignant moments" when she awakes, and then rushing forth, "repulsed and quite mad, to weep upon his floor until dawn!" When he sees her asleep, however, he does not feel any thrill. He is profoundly disappointed. Then he decides to give her a little fright. He places a pillow over her head, intending to release it quickly. But a madness of homicide seizes him. At last his emotional nature is aroused ! He holds the pillow over the face of his victim and represses her struggles. After she is dead, he calmly returns to his rooms — and starts a novel, the best that he has written. When he has finished it, he confesses his crime to an intimate friend, who will not believe him. So, in expiation, he commits suicide in the tomb of his ancestors. In outline,

1 Harper's, August, 1916.

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the tale does not sound plausible; but Mrs. Atherton's art in the complete story is fully adequate to her task. The originality lies in the psychology, in the portrayal of an eccentric but gifted artist nature seized by an obsession and hurried to tragic consequence. The depth and power of this story justify Mrs. Atherton's high place in American fiction.

Kipling's tales are full of original ideas — William the Conqueror, The Man Who Would Be King, They, and so on almost ad libitum. A very suggestive title, which fully justifies itself, is William H. Hamby's A Big Idea in the Backwoods. 1 The story grows out of the solution, by an alert young man — aided by the advice and encouragement of a pretty girl — of the problem of a bond issue authorized by three county court judges in Missouri but never paid for by the county. The promise of a railroad had been the lure — also a bribe to each of the three judges. The voters had declined to authorize the payment of either principal or interest, and the matter had dragged on for thirty years, the original amount, $400,000, having been increased by the interest to $1,500,000. The alert young man went to New York, induced

1 Saturday Evening Post, Nov. 9, 1912. [14]

the purchaser of the bonds to compromise for $400,000, then announced to the county an offer of $500,000, succeeded in winning enough votes at a special election — and thus made for himself the tidy sum of $100,000 minus expenses. It was good business both for him and for the voters, since he had been able to show that refusal to settle, during the period of thirty years, had cost the county a loss of $7,400,- 000 in farm values and $1,600,000 in business values. "A county, like an individual," said the young financier, "cannot always go on not paying its debts. The only way we have done it so far is by keeping our assessments so low we barely have money to carry on in a poor way the county's business. The only way we can hope to avoid it in the future is by remaining so poor there is no revenue left for the courts to seize." So the voters bought back their self-respect. This is virtually a business article served up in entertaining fiction form. It is a type of story peculiarly characteristic of the Post and reflects our American absorption in commercial affairs.

A very different sort of originality is shown in Joseph Conrad's notable mystery tale — for nearly everything that Mr. Conrad writes is notable — The Shadow Line. 1 A young captain takes charge of his first vessel. His initial feeling of joy, in which he thinks of the ship as an enchanted princess waiting for him to deliver her, gives place to some slight foreboding when he learns that the previous skipper died in strange circumstances and that the crew seem to be under some spell of fear. The impression which the chief mate leaves upon him is powerfully indicated in the following passage:

Suddenly I perceived that there was another man in the saloon, standing a little on one side and looking intently at me. The chief mate. I was vexed and disconcerted. His long red mustache determined the character of his physiognomy, which struck me as pugnacious.

How long had he been looking at me, appraising me in my unguarded day-dreaming state? I could not have been in that cabin more than two minutes altogether. Say three. ... So he could not have been watching me more than a mere fraction of a minute, luckily. Still, I regretted the occurrence. But I showed nothing of it as I rose leisurely (it had to be leisurely) and greeted him with perfect friendliness.

There was something reluctant and at the same time attentive in his bearing. His name was Burns. We left the saloon and went round the ship together. His face in the full light of day appeared very pale, meager, even haggard. Somehow I had a delicacy as to looking 1 Metropolitan, Sept -Oct., 1916.

too often at him; his eyes, on the contrary, seemed fairly glued on my face. They were greenish and had not much expression.

He answered all my questions readily enough, but my ear seemed to catch a tone of unwillingness. . . .

There was a sort of earnestness in the situation which began to make me feel uncomfortable.

In this story, atmosphere and style count for much. Mr. Conrad, like Poe, has an almost hypnotic effect on his reader. The impression produced by his most somber masterpieces recalls Whitman's phrase, "the huge and thoughtful night." They are quite unlike those of any other living writer — stamped with personality and with literary quality of the highest order.

Such stories are not turned off every week, even by an expert. A short-story writer is fortunate if he gets three or four really big ideas for a tale in a year; his other stories, if he writes, say, one a month, will have to depend more upon execution than upon conception. The ambitious young writer should remember that, particularly during his first three or four years of apprenticeship, only his exceptional tales are likely to find editorial favor. Moreover, most authors under twenty-five years of age had better not be writing short stories at all — for magazine publication. At one-and-twenty they can hardly have enough knowledge of life to produce worth-while fiction, can hardly have developed enough personality to be really individual — which, after all, is what it means to be original. Guy de Maupassant did not begin to publish until he was thirty. Kipling, an important exception, "broke into print" at twenty-three with Plain Tales from the Hills and, if one judges him by a single volume, reached his highest point as a short-story writer at twenty-six in Life's Handicap. Many a successful writer of short fiction — for example, Charles E. Van Loan — has not attained success until he was nearer forty than twenty. Mr. Van Loan was for many years a sporting editor on a newspaper, and his excellent baseball stories are an indirect result of that training.

Just as many a minor poet is famous for a single poem, so many a short-story writer achieves fame by only a single tale. Edward Everett Hale's name is coupled with The Man Without a Country. In some cases this one story has perhaps contained the author's only truly original idea, his contribution to the none-tooextensive list of stories that are "different." Any reader who follows for several years every issue of a highly popular magazine like the Saturday Evening Post will note that some writers appear frequently, others rarely, and still others only a single time. In the case of the authors who appear oftenest, a distinct falling-off in originality may every now and then be discerned. Irvin S. Cobb once started a series of mystery tales in the Post, with the scene in New York City, the general title of the series to be The Island of Adventure. The first two tales went very well; but the series was cut off in its prime. Mr. Cobb ran out of ideas. He himself humorously said that it was because he knew too much about New York. Inventiveness cannot be forced; and it is only a real genius, like Kipling in his prime, who can be both highly prolific and highly original. The unevenness of the Sherlock Holmes tales is recognized by everybody save the blindest worshipper; and Arthur B. Reeve's ingenious tales of Craig Kennedy, "scientific detective," creak audibly now and then in their machinery.

From the standpoint of immediate popular success, there is, of course, such a thing as too much originality. Even Kipling and Conan Doyle bombarded editors in vain for more than one year. Their daring imagination produced stories so individual that editors hardly knew what to make of them. 1 The fact is that your editor is generally a timid creature. If he has convictions — and not always does he possess strong ones — he does not invariably have the courage of his convictions. He may be afflicted with what Saintsbury calls kainophobia — fear of the new and strange. But Kipling, with the persistence of genius, finally made editors and book publishers see that tales of India, if sufficiently well written, were not anathema to the multitude; and when, after disappointing experiences with other kinds of stories, Conan Doyle got A Study in Scarlet, the first of the Sherlock Holmes series, accepted he instantly had the public at his feet. "It's dogged as does it." In the Strand Magazine (October, 1915) a well-known author says of his early struggles :