How to write short stories

Front matter

I PN 3373 .B7 Copy 1

Book 3M

Gopightl^? .

Foreword

npiHE great purpose of "How To Write Short Stories" is to induce the new writer to look at his profession in a business-hke way and to go to w^ork with his business sense fully awake. The book also seeks to answer some specific questions which usually rise up to vex the new writer and in general to make the technique of writing for publication more clear and simple.

L. Josephine Bridgart.

CHAPTER ONE^

Common Business Sense in Viewing One's Work_

WRITING for publication is a business. If the new writer will accept this fact he will have laid a foundation upon which, if he have the necessary natural ability, he can build success.

If a young woman tells you that she intends to take up nursing, and later reveals that her chief reason for doing so is that the uniforms in a certain hospital have attracted her, or that she enjoys reading to the sick, -or dislikes the business life her father has suggested for her, or has heard that nurses make a great deal of money, you immediately feel that her nursing will not be a great success. You reason that nursing involves some very hard and disagreeable duties., and that a girl who thinks only of the incidental pleasures or the monetary rewards is pretty sure to fail. It is not common business sense to enter a profession without taking into consideration the requirements of that profession.

I have read this lack of common business sense between the lines of many a first story. Some of these stories tell how a young girl with no experience won a prize in a short story or novel contest ; often the prize-winning story was written in an afternoon, or an evening, or in the dead of night as the result of an idea which came to the author after she had retired. Some of these stories are about attractive young women who sold an editor a manuscript because she was attractive, or because she was poor, or because she was sick or saucy. Such stories show plainly that the authors are depending upon personal charm or "an inspiration" or luck rather than upon hard work to win acceptances. They do not stop to reason that before they can hope to sell a manuscript they must learn how to produce a manuscript that some editor will want to buy.

One would naturally suppose that a person who intended to make a business of writing English would first see to it that his English was correct, pure, idiomatic, all that is meant by "good English." As a matter of fact the necessity of reaching any standard, so far as his English goes, does not even occur to many an arrogant young writer. He may worry a little about construction and style and ask a few hurried questions about viewpoint and plot development, but the reviewing of his English grammar and rhetoric does not suggest itself to him. His manuscript may be so full of slang that a cultured English, Scotch or Irish reader could not follow it ; it may again and again lapse into foreign idioms or expressions that are markedly colloquial ; it may even not be correct grammatically; but if the sentences make sense (or almost sense) the writer is content. He is sure he can sell his "swell article" or "darn good yarn" if only he can find an editor not dazzled by the "big names."

In letter after letter I have had writers confess to me that they did not want to be bothered mastering the fundamental principles of the profession they sought to enter. One man wrote me that his returned stories had been "accompanied by rejection slips with very few exceptions." "These exceptions," he explained, "have been advice to study grammar or style or something else equall}' obnoxious to my sense of application to dry things. I have been told that I have good ideas but rank clothing for those ideas."

A woman wrote me, complaining that I spent a great deal of time in showing her where she had broken rules and in pointing out how she could make her story more nearly perfect technically. "Why," she inquired, "do you not tell us how to make our stories salable and then help us to attain perfection afterwards?"

Story-writing and article-writing and poetrywriting are like dress-making and carpentry. They must follow certain rules if they are to attain perfect results or results that satisfy the money-spending public. Unless you follow the rules governing the construction of a table you connot produce a table that w^ill' attract the careful buyer. Unless you respect the principles governing the construction of a story or an article or a poem you cannot produce a manuscript that the careful editor will consider worthy of a place in his magazine. In any other trade or profession, I think, the beginner expects to encounter a great deal of hard work. He expects to master certain rules, learn to apply them and then make himself skillful by practice. Believe those of us who have tried it: Writing for publication means careful preparation and a great deal of hard work, just as millinery and surgery and sculpture do.

In. her autobiography Ellen Terry tells of actresses who had explained to her that they did not^care to be hampered by rules. The successful actress had replied that is was w^ise to learn the rules before one decided to abandon them. "Before you can be eccentric," she commented pithily, "you must know where the circle is."

It is not necessary to learn a great mass of rules in order to become a writer. It is necessary that each writer recognize the principles underlying the profession he seeks to enter. It is necessary that a writer should know how to turn out sentences that are grammatical, clear, free from crudities that would offend cultured readers. It is necessary that a writer of articles should know how to build up an article so that it will catch and hold the interest and leave the reader in no doubt as to what the author is "trying to say." It is necessary that a poem should satisfy the ear and the aesthetic taste of the reader to whom it seeks to appeal. It is necessary that a story should be so put together that it catches the interest at the outset, holds the mind alert and expectant until the climax is reached and ends with the reader more or less surprised and, intellectually at least, satisfied.

The rules which so irritate the careless writer are the result, not of arbitrary decision on the part of some over-educated rhetorician or stylist,

I but principles which have been deduced from a careful study of successful writing. If my neighbor has been to Philadelphia and found he can save time by taking the Pennsylvania Railroad, and I'm in a hurry, I should be very foolish if I took the D. L. & W. or a taxicab just because the D. L. & W. station pleased my fancy better than that of the P. R. R. or I liked to travel by myself. If my brother carpenter has proved that a table will stand firm only when it is supported by four legs or what corresponds to four legs,, I'm not very wise in trying to balance mine on two or three or one just because I'm too lazy to find material for four or don't particularly enjoy constructing four-legged tables.

The editor does not care at all about rules as .lies. He wants a manuscript that wall hold his readers' interest. If you can break the rules and still produce a manuscript that will grip the attention from the first sentence to the last you need not fear that your irregularities will cause you a rejection. If your story is interesting in the middle, but dull at the beginning and end, or catches the attention easily but cannot hold it, or catches and holds it easily but loses it just at the last — it seems good sense to try and discover whether the breaking of some rule has not spoiled the whole effect.

A thousand times I have been told that successful wa-iters allow their viewpoint to shift about in the short story, and I have been asked why it is that all the text-books on writing declare against the shifting viewpoint. I can only reply

(i Ho7v to Write Short Stories

that the successful writers who break rules succeed, not because of their breaking rules, but because their style or their characterization or their plot material is strong enough to offset whatever may be faulty in their work. And remember that a trained writer can do with impunity what the new writer can not. If you're travelling where you know every foot of the country you may strike across fields or take some by-path and reach home safely and promptly. If you are going over unfamiliar ground it's wise to keep to the road and watch the sign-posts.

*'Oh, Iknow my English is bum," admits one eager young writer, "and I often get the tail of my story where the head ought to be, but I can't help it ! I think so fast I can't stop to watch my sentences as I go along, and I hate to rewrite a manuscript after it's all done. I'm going to have Prof. Smith revise all my stuff for me."

When I was a young girl I learned how to ride a bicycle without learning how to mount. I could manage very well if anybody would get me started, but I couldn't start myself. This proved very inconvenient ; there was only one friend who was willing to bother with me, and when he wasn't at hand I had to stay home. After a while even this young man found attending to two wheels rather a burden. He bought a tandem and for several weeks I traveled far and happily. Then my friend and I quarreled and my bicycling came to an abrupt close. If you wish to write for publication learn all that is necessary to fit you for such work. The person upon whom you dei

Hozi' to Write Short Stories T

pend for revision may quarrel with you or die or go out of business and you be left with some very promising but quite unsalable manuscripts on you hands.

I had almost headed my chapter "The Lazy Young Writer," because I have been so impressed with the fact that a great many new writers hope to succeed by some other means than their own intelligent, conscientious effort. Not long ago a woman asked me to criticise a manuscript for her and added that if I knew how she had wept and prayed for success I would speak a few encouraging words concerning her composition. T won't comment upon the lack of business sense in paying a person to tell you the truth and then trying to induce him to say more or less than the truth. I will say that a writer should be ashamed to pray for an acceptance until he has exerted all his natural and acquired powers to make his manuscript worthy of acceptance. I have a fixed belief in prayer and I daily pray for guidance in my work and courage and patience in performing my task, but I spend far more time w^orking on my manuscripts and criticism than I do praving over them.

A bright young electrician, employed in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, told me that his superior had once pointed out a careless error with the remark : "The good Lord gave us brains and the good Lord expects us to use them !" There is sturdy faith and good common sense rather than irreverence in this speech. The good Lord has given the ambitious young writer a certain amount of brain matter. With this He expects him to win his own success.

If you are yearning to dehver some special message, if you feel within you the cry of thoughts worthy of expression, you are worse than lazy if you allow ignorance of the rules of writing or pure carelessness to make you fail or to defer success. Don't use your God-given imagination on dreams of remarkable and impossible achievements in the realm of literature. Give up the idea of winning success by a single, brilliant effort. Hard work, guided by a knowledge of the principles of your profession, and a thoughtful study of the market will sell more manuscripts than any get-famous-quick scheme your fertile brain can possibly conceive.

I

CHAPTER TWO The Necessary Mental Equipment

N my first chapter I spoke of the necessity of every writer's understanding the principles underlying the work of authorship. I hope no person will peruse my chapter and then decide that he cannot expect to succeed because he cannot afford to go to colleg-e or take up any special course in English. If you can turn out clear, idiomatic English sentences that will stand grammatical analysis you need not fear failure because you were obliged to leave school before you could win a single diploma. A man may be a very good book-keeper and yet never have been to business college. The question is : Can he keep books satisfactorily? If he can his employer does not in the least care how he obtained his knowledge.

Some persons have a natural appreciation of the principles of style, of rhyme and meter, of construction. They read a forceful passage or a beautiful poem or a carefully built argument and they immediately appreciate the rules which govern it. They may not be able to quote any rules, but nevertheless they "sense" them and follow them faithfully in their ovrn work. Upon howmuch natural appreciation of order, harmony, melody you may have depends the amount of actual study you must give to your preparation for the work of authorship.

I believe that it is possible to unfit one's self for the real business of writing for publication by too much preparation, too much regular study. I have read articles intended for the popular magazines which would be meaningless to the average intelligent workman and the great mass of thoughtful and successful business men; and the writer hadn't the slightest intention of soaring over anybody's head. I have met university graduates who were trying to write for publications and who violated the fundamental principles of style and even the rules of grammar. I have known more than one would-be waiter who seemed unable to discuss anything nearer the interests of the mass of magazine readers than such subjects as "Little Known Comedies of Shakespeare's Time" or "A Psychological Study of Charlotte Bronte." If courses in English can make a man unable to communicate with intelligent persons who have been interested in other fields of investigation, or so filled with admiration for the master pieces of literature that he forgets such commonplaces as coherence in the sentence and a pronoun must agree with its antecedent in person, number and gender, and cannot appreciate the fun and pathos and beauty about him, it may be a blessing that no course in higher English is possible for you.

A woman who has for years earned her living by literary work told me that while in college she once consulted her English instructor about some additional work in English. "You don't need more English," the instructor replied. "What you need is a broader outlook. You need experience of life."

*'Oh !" exclaimed the student. Then she asked timidly, "But haven't I a broader outlook than most of the members of my class? I'm older than most of them, and I lived pretty hard between my high school and college courses. Haven't 1 broader outlook than most of the others ?"

"A hundred times broader," the instructor replied. 'T wasn't comparing you with the other members of your class but with George Eliot and other women who have succeeded as authors, the women whose profession you wish to enter. You can't become an author by just studying English."

Not long afterwards the girl was obliged to leave college, but the fact that she could not complete her English course did not worry her. The instructor had made her eager to fare forth into the world in search of that knowledge of life which, to the writer with natural ability, means material.

"But how can I tell whether I have this 'natural abifity' or not?" asks a young writer. "My English is good, and I am never at a loss for words to express my thoughts. My friends enjoy my letters, and at school the teachers always praised my themes. But hundreds of other young men and women could claim as much. I love to write, but how can I know that I have the natural equipment necessary to success as an author ?"

The questioner shows that she has at least one requisite in the making of a successful author, a natural liking for the work of writing. How strong is your desire to write? Do you instinctively pick up a pad and pencil when you are free to think ? Has it ever been pain to you not to be at liberty to put upon paper a thought that has just sprung up or that has been slowly developing in your busy brain? Love for the work of writing, a desire to express yourself, not in a picture or a statue or a piece of machinery, but in articles or stories or poems, this seems to me pretty sure evidence of natural ability. If you have to drive yourself to your desk I do not believe nature intended you to be a writer, no matter how correctly and pleasingly you can run words together. What do you write when you feel you "must sit down and scribble," your own thoughts, or somebody else's ? Is your desire to write a desire for self-expression or is it just a fondness for putting words and sentences together? When your religious poem is finished is it made up of scraps from familiar hymns, phrases from the Bible, a statement that appealed to yot; in last Sunday's sermon, or is it a bit of your own observation, your own experience, your own passionate love for God, or Christ, or the church ? Is your article a careful setting forth of information gleaned from other articles or your own convictions, so strong that you had to put them in writing, whether you offered your manuscript for sale or not? Is your story life as you know life can be, or just an imitation of some stor}^ seen in print or an adaption of some play.

viewed from a comfortable seat in your favorite theatre ?

In your story of sentiment are your characters the result of a study of certain combinations of defects and virtues, with powder to utter a clear warning or a word of hope, or to give the reader a healthful laugh? Or are your men and women and children picked out from other stories or just attractive pictures with no life, no strength, no vivacity? In other words, have you something to say or only the power to group sentences and paragraphs into certain accepted forms.

A woman told me that she had been urged by her friends to write; they thought she had considerable talent. She then naively asked me if I w^ould suggest something for her to write about It is thoughts, not words and sentences, that the editors are willing to pay for. If you have nothing to write about, don't write.

A friend of mine who is very much interested in another profession than authorship told me wistfully that she envied those who could put their thoughts into lasting form. Not long afterwards a well-known magazine asked her for an article. A little later another magazine, which is working along the same lines as those my friend's profession follows, urged her to write a series of articles for its pages. She had never offered a manuscript to any periodical.

"Favored because she has a prominent position and can place several letters after her name?" No, not that. The editors have sought her out because she has thought and studied and . experimented until she knows more about certain subjects than you and I do, and an article from her on one of these subjects, though her style may be inferior to ours, is worth a great deal more to the reading public than one on the same subject frorn you or me.

Have you discovered something that the rest of the world doesn't know? Have you seen sorrow or joy or sin or repentande as those about you have not seen it? Have you the power to find "something funny" in an experience which merely angers or depresses or bores other people? Have you anything at all to offer that can make life seem more serious, more joyous or more beautiful than it was before? Natural ability is more than the ability to express one's self easily in written words. It includes the power to find something to write about in the day's work and play, sorrow and pleasure.

To reiterate: If you have a love for writing, unusual powers of penetration or appreciation or a mass of valuable information obtained at first hand and have mastered the fundamental principles of the work of authorship you are well-equipped mentally for the business of writing for publication.

"I have appreciation," replies some young writer wistfully, "and I can talk or write fluently when I'm not vitally interested in what I'm saying. But when it comes to putting my deeper self, my highest thought into black and white I'm stricken. powerless. I can write only what seems to me not worth printing."

Hoiij to Write Short Stories 15

I once heard a story about a young man who wanted to take up a study of the piano. The teacher to whom he appHed for instruction gave him a piano stool, sat down beside him and called his attention to the key-board. "This," explained the teacher, indicating the middle c, "is c. We may find all the other keys by this. The one immediately below is b, the one below that is a. The one next above is d, the next e. and so on up to g."

It takes practice as well as natural ability and a knowledge of the rules to play Beethoven's i^Ioonlige Sonata. It takes practice as well as a knowledge of the English language and natural ability to produce a group of high-grade poems or articles or stories. Don't decide that you have not the necessary natural equipment and can never succeed in the profession of authorship because you can't write an epic or a masterpiece of fiction at the very beginning of your literary career.

CHAPTER THREE The Finding of Time and Material

A GAIN and again I have met sentences like -^^^^ this in letters accompanying manuscripts submitted for criticism : 'T have little time to write, being a busy housewife." "Unfortunately I am obliged to stand behind a counter ten hours a day." 'T hope some time to be out of the factory and free to follow the profession of authorship." Often the writers hint that success would have come to them long ago, had they had time to go out and invite it. I know that hundreds of men and women feel that if they could only spend all their time writing they would be blessed indeed.

A man who has earned thousands of dollars writing for publication and who is selling books regularly told me that he believed it easier to get a start as an author if you had to earn your own living. 'T've known a number of young men," he said, "who have thrown up their positions in order to have more time to write, and each one has told me that as soon as he gave up his regular work the ideas that had been clamoring for expression began to slink away. Each man confessed that when he had nothing to do but write he seemed to have nothing to say^"

Of course after a writer has won distinct success and his desire is wholly toward the profession of authorship he would be very foolish to

How to Write Short Stories II

keep himself to uncongenial employment for fear freedom would mean a dearth of ideas. It rs the beginner, who must live awhile before he can have very much to say, who is mistaken in supposing that he could profitably put in five or seven hours a day writing. But even the successful writers. I believe, feel the need of some less exalted task to enable them to do their best work in the line of authorship. Longfellow, whom we might think could work best if his thoughts were always on the heights, wrote :

"The everyday cares and duties, which men call drudgery, are the weights and counterpoises of the clock of time, giving its pendulum a true vibration and its hands a regular motion ; and when they cease to hang from the wheels, the pendulum no longer swings, the hands.no longer move, the clock stands still."

Longfellow's experience seems to confirm the statement of the vigorous young prose writer who is a part of the rushing literary life of the twentieth century. '^

You have to cook, nurse babies, "bang on a typewriter," oversee a camp of rough wood-choppers when you long to write. If to write is your peculiar gift you will be given time. While you are waiting you are living. And life means material.

In proof of what I say let me give some extracts from the history of a present-day writer : She studied English in high school and was told that she had unusual talent. Before she went to college she sold some little sketches to her home newspaper; they were sketches depicting life in the town and pleased the readers of the town paper ; the editor had known that they would anri this is why he bought them. They did not deal with life outside the girl's small world. While in college she tried to secure some vacation work and was impressed by the "wants" in the newspaper .and the human nature back of them. She wrote an article about the "want column" and sold it to a small magazine. Then she was taken ill and her physician not only ordered her out of college but insisted that she do no more literary work for several months. He sent her away to a tiny little village hundreds of miles from New York.

The girl obeyed the command to rest but as soon as she was herself again she wrote an article, showing the little village as it had looked to her, coming fresh from New York, and she sold her manuscript to the Magazine Supplement of a New York newspaper. Before she could get back to her own work she was called to go to a college town and nurse a sick sister. She had no time to write while there but the contrast between the old conservative town and the college life within it gave her an idea for another sketch. Later she wrote the sketch and sold it to a New York magazine.

She fell sick again and another period of inaction followed. Then the physician suggested her taking up stenography and typewriting just because her active brain demanded exercise and she seemed unable to stand the nervous strain of

I literary work or study which led to it. So she took up stenography. The new Hne of thought and the entirely fresh atmosphere of a business school worked wonders with her physically, and before she realized what she was doing she was planning a story about a boy stenographer. She had it all done but the final copying when she secured- her first position.

The position was with a magazine editor, and that heartened her a good deal, but the regular hours and steady work were hard after the habit of semi -invalidism, and even with her new strength she did not dare do any further writing at home. She tried to be the very best stenographer she could. But one day the editor of the Children's Page said to her, ''Do you happen to have a child's story I could examine? I want just a little story for the very little folks. I know you did some writing before you came to us. Have you a child's story?"

Had she? Yes, a little story that had been carefully written, rejected by two or three juvenile-magazines and then put away until she could decide what to do with it. She brought it to the office the next day and showed it to the editor.

"Good," commented the editor, "up to here. I don't see why you added this last part. There's a good climax right here, and it ends a story of just the length I want. May I cut it off here?"

The stenographer knew why she had added j:he last part, but she saw the good climax, with the editor's pencil pointing it out, and she agreed with a singing heart to sell the story in its curtailed form. A little later she took out the boys' story, copied it in as plain long-hand as she could compass and sent it to the Youth's Companion, which promptly mailed her a check for thirtyfive dollars.

Then the magazine failed and she was obliged to take another position, with a drug house. One day the head chemist and a salesman had a quarrel, after which the chemist went about his duties, irritated and depressed. The girl laughed at him and just to cheer him up sat down on a box in the laboratory and wrote a poem about the pharmaceutical salesman. She had not thought of producing anything for publication, but the chemist seemed to enjoy her effort so much that she typewrote it and sent it to a pharmaceutical journal. It sold.