Short stories in the making; a writers' and students' introduction to the technique and practical composition of short stories

Foreword

What is wanting in this book, critics, teachers, and students will all too readily discover without my help. Let me rather point out, then, what it is meant to do.

First. It deals with short stories (contes) in the making. Therefore it is intended for the writer. And because many of the readers most interested in such a book are beginners, it is intended in large part for the inexperienced. Yet it is intended for the advanced undertaker of story-telling too ; for no one can stake the border between elementary theory and expert application of it, and even the experienced writer may find surety and improved method in a study of technique. Yet the book is for the non-writer also — for him who wishes in compact form a reasonably complete and concrete explanation of the short story and its nature.

Second. The book does not profess to be scholarly — certainly not to be scholarly in the academic sense. It has avoided the historical entirely ; it attempts no comparative studies in development and types, no evaluating estimates ; it is not a research volume, and the reader will seek through it from end to end without finding a single formal citation of authorities, the proof that the writer knows the conventional doctrine, dares not depart from it, and is ready with marshaled knowledge to protect himself from any who may accuse him of betraying the gentle trusting reader by novelty or new departure. Not that this book can pretend to either of these. At most (and even this it does not

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profess), it adds a trifle of discussion at a place or two. But it does undertake to make its own approach and use its own plan in summarizing what is our present knowledge of the theory and technique of the short story.

Third. The book is written, not from the critic's hut from the practicing author's viewpoint — from the standing-ground and outlook of the man to whom the abstract theory, although interesting and valuable, is less interesting and valuable than the concrete management and application of it. It is written to meet the needs of the man who, for practical and utilitarian reasons no less than from abstract intellectual interest, desires to know the what, the how, and the why of the short story. I have written good, bad, and indifferent short stories, and hope to keep on writing; and this interest in the mechanics, the artisanry and art, the technique of the work, has caused me to treat the subject from the viewpoint of the active worker rather than from that of the esthetic theorist or the literary investigator. Throughout, I have been concerned to learn the governing rule, and then to state it in such form that my statement may make it available to other practitioners, especially to apprentice workers striving to extend their workman's knowledge and develop their artisan skill. (The author expects to publish soon a companion volume, To-day's Short Stories Analyzed, in which the practice of modern writers of short stories will be fully illustrated and exemplified.)

Fourth. Most of the principles stated are drawn as much from reading and observation of the ordinary mill run of short fiction, in book collections and in magazines, for the last twenty years, as they are from the recognized authorities on short story writing. He who reads and runs

Foreword ix

away sometimes carries with him well-defined ideas that are usable another day ; and I have felt that such readers' observations and conclusions are as valuable in checking up the statements of the authorities, as the statements of the authorities are in checking up one's own observations and conclusions. I owe (as any one can see from this book) a great debt to some of these authorities — especially to Pitkin, Albright, and Esenwein, if I must discriminate — and I here acknowledge it, with gratitude. But even so I have endeavored to remain independent in reaching and stating my conclusions ; and in this I have been frequently aided by personal experience of success or failure in handling problems of like sort in my own writing.

Fifth. The book attempts to define terms with especial precision ; with tedious over-precision, some may think. It tries, too, not to employ the same term with two meanings in any position where confusion may result. Probably it fails sometimes in this attempt to avoid ambiguity and confusion; but on the whole I trust that it succeeds enough to lessen for its readers the difficulties of this sort that occasionally I have met in my own reference to treatises upon fiction.

Sixth. Plot being indispensable to the true short story, or conte, and the short story being in effect a narrative drama, the book undertakes to re-present the familiar theory of the stage play, but to present it adapted and applied to the nature and needs of the short story. This fact calls for mention only because so outright an application of formal stage plot theory to short story narration has not been made elsewhere — not, at least, in English. A satisfactory treatment of the theory of the specialized short story (conte) plot has yet to be produced ; but lacking x Foreword

it, the student will find in a re-statement of the theory of stage plot like that given in this book, a helpful presentation of essential principles. . . .

Need of a specialized term by which to indicate the specialized form of short fiction sometimes awkwardly called the true short story, has long been felt. ^Professor Canby's suggestion of the term conte has not been bettered ; and as without undue violence to historical descent or to strict meanings conte can be applied to this particular type of short prose fiction, I have ventured to employ it interchangeably with the term " short story," in order that students using this book may at least become familiar with this possible synonym.

Those who complain of the fullness and, possibly, redundancy of the treatment given very simple matters, I would ask to remember that the book is largely for beginners in short story writing and readers of ordinary education seeking instruction or an increase in literary understanding and appreciation, who can find these things in study of short story principles. Those who mislike the occasional discussion of remote or special problems, will please remind themselves that I am writing for persons also who have more than a tyro's interest in the technicalities of the subject. Those who blame me for omitting an explanation of narration itself, are referred to the numerous excellent treatises already in print upon the general principles of narrative writing, with the suggestion that even in writing about the short story, one must begin somewhere, assuming some preparation at least for study of the special type. And those who wonder why matters so important to literary art as style and

Foreword xi

esthetic qualities are not discussed, are told — in the strictest confidence, please — that style and literary art are quite another story.

A last word — to those who scoff at " attempts to manufacture writers." This book is written to guide and help persons who wish to write short stories. But it is not written with the belief that short story writing, or any other form of literary composition, can be taught. It cannot. Literature is art, and art is incommunicable. Theories of its methods and success can be inferred and explained; its practical technique can frequently be explained and acquired. But neither theory nor technique makes art; the living spirit is not in them. Moreover, many a person who aspires to write lacks ability to achieve even technique. Books such as this are not written with any other belief. They can aid intellectual expansion; they can enable the competent to acquire technique; but more than this they cannot do unless the student bring to them an equipment of capacity, ability, and natural gift approaching talent or genius. Technique can produce well conceived, well planned, well constructed, and often salable stories, but it cannot produce living literature. Let no prospective student think otherwise.

Eobert W. JSTeal.

Table Of Contents

PAGE

CHAPTER I. Theory of the Short Story Type (Conte) . 1

I. Fiction Aims at the Interpretation of Life and the Di-

version of the Reader, by Means of Concrete Presentation.

II. The Short Story, or Conte, Is a Type in Itself.

III. The Short Story, or Conte, is a Drama in Narrative.

IV. The Plot of the Short Story, or Conte, Must Be

Dramatic.

V. The Short Story Requires Persons in Action in a Time

of Crisis.

VI. Singleness of Effect Is Necessary to the Short Story.

VII. The Short Story, or Conte, May Aim at Different

Kinds of Effect.

VIII. Some Short Stories, or Contes, Emphasize Theme.

IX. Some Short Stories Emphasize Plot.

X. Some "Short Stories Emphasize Character.

XI. Some Short Stories (Contes) Emphasize Atmosphere.

CHAPTER II. Theory and Practice of the Plot . .71

XII. The Short Story Plot Much Resembles That of the

One-Act Play.

XIII. The Exposition Is the Introducing Part of the Plot.

XIV. The Exciting Moment, or Inciting Impulse, Begins

the Development.

XV. The Rising Action Develops the Plot to Its Decisive

Moment.

XVI. The- Falling Action Brings the Outcome and Close.

CHAPTER III. The Compositional Construction -of the Short Story 122

XVII. The Opening Seizes Interest, Introduces Action,

Strikes the Keynote, and (Perhaps) Conveys Exposition.

XVIII. The Purposes of the Opening Can Be Served by

Various Kinds of Beginning.

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XIX. In the Body of the Story, the Chief Constructional

Problem Is That of Sequence.

XX. The Ending, if Separate from the Climactic Moment,

Exists Merely to Supplement and Close the Narrative.

XXI. A Preliminary Scheme of Important Compositional

Facts Will Help the Author.

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