What Fiction is.
The art of fiction is the art of telling a story. This statement is not so obvious and unnecessary as it may seem. Most beginners and many “practised hands” attend to all kinds of things before they attend to the story. With them the art of fiction is the art of describing character or landscape, of getting “atmosphere,” and of being humorous, pathetic, flippant, or terrifying; while the story is a perfunctory excuse for these feats. They are so busy with the traditional paraphernalia of fiction, with the tricks of the craft, that what should be their principal business is reduced to a subsidiary task. They forget that “character,” landscape, “atmosphere,” humour, pathos, &c., are not ends in themselves, but only means towards an end.
The art of fiction is not the art of making an otherwise uninteresting story interesting by dint of literary skill and theatrical devices. It is the art of telling an intrinsically interesting story. The story itself—that is to say, the naked events or chain of events to be narrated—must be interesting. Imagine that you meet a friend after an absence during which something extraordinary has happened to you or to some one whom you know. You are brimming over with a choice bit of gossip. You cannot keep it to yourself. You break in: “Oh, I must tell you this!” And you begin. Perhaps the affair concerns people with whom your friend is unacquainted, and therefore certain explanations are necessary in order that he may grasp the full beauty of the situation. You are impatient because you cannot come to the point at once. “I must just explain first,” you say, and you compress all preliminaries into the smallest possible space, but omitting nothing essential. And your friend says: “Yes”—“Yes”— “Yes,” growing more and more interested. His interest is kindled by yours. You never bother your head about atmosphere, landscape, character-drawing; yet all the time you are achieving these things unconsciously, in so far as they are necessary to the appreciation of your choice bit of gossip. At length you come to the central facts of the situation. You are preoccupied with them, not with the devices of narrative. The situation is so interesting that it wants no ornament, and what humour or pathos or wit comes out of it, emerges naturally and inevitably, because it must emerge. You arrive at the end. “Now isn’t that interesting?” you ask your friend with confidence. “Rather!” he exclaims. And you breathe with relief.
Now that is precisely the spirit in which fiction should be written. The writer himself should be tremendously absorbed in the story; which is equivalent to saying that the naked events, the plot, should be interesting. Part of the secret of Balzac’s unique power over the reader is the unique intensity of his own interest in the thing to be told. This singular interest gives animation to the extraordinarily long descriptions and explanations which Balzac constantly employed. You can almost hear him saying to you as he pants heavily through these preliminary pages: “Wait a minute, wait a minute. It’s absolutely necessary that I should make this clear, otherwise you wouldn’t quite grasp the point . . . I’m coming to the story as fast as I can.”
Plot, therefore, is the primary thing in fiction. Only a very clever craftsman can manipulate a feeble plot so as to make it even passably interesting. Whereas the clumsiest bungler in narration cannot altogether spoil a really sound plot Hence the beginner has special need of a sound plot Some years ago there was a movement against the supremacy of plot, or subject, in art The cry was—“Subject is nothing; treatment is everything.” The general public, following for once a classical ideal of taste, would not tolerate this theory, which has now died a natural death. I will quote from an illuminative essay of Matthew Arnold’s, slightly altering the phraseology to suit the case. He says: “It is a pity that power should be wasted, and that the novelist should be compelled to impart interest and force to his subject, instead of receiving them from it, and thereby doubling his impressiveness.” I italicise this epigrammatic statement, because it is of paramount importance, and goes to the very root of fiction as of every other creative art. Matthew Arnold, who got his ideas from the Greeks, enumerated three principles as being vital to good art:—
(1) The all-importance of the choice of a subject
(2) The necessity of accurate construction.
(3) The subordinate character of expression.
And the curious thing is that these three principles are vital not only to good art but to commercial or popular art. It will be equally to your advantage to conform to them, whether your aim is to produce a rival to Adam Bede or to thrill the readers of a halfpenny paper with a sensational serial.
The very Short Story.
Much nonsense has been talked about the short story. It has been asserted that Englishmen cannot write artistic short stories, that the short story does not come naturally to the Anglo-Saxon. Whereas the truth is that nearly all the finest short-story writers in the world to-day are Englishmen, and some of the most wonderful short stories ever written have been written by Englishmen within the last twenty years. It has also been stated that the short-story form is exceedingly difficult, and that “the art of the short story” is an art by itself. This is not so. No one has yet shown wherein the art of the short story differs from the art of the novel. And there can be no doubt in the mind of any expert who has succeeded equally well in the short story and the novel that a short story is a simpler achievement than a novel. It may be easier to write a bad novel than a good short story, but it is manifestly absurd to argue that a good novel is easier to accomplish than a good short story. One might as usefully assert, in the art of music, that it was easier to compose a symphony than an “album-leaf,” because in the symphony there was no restriction of space. Similar powers of observation, invention, imagination, and description are needed in the novel and in the short story. But the constructive power and the sustained strength required for a good novel far exceed those required for a good short story. The short story is the simplest form of fiction, and the shorter it is the simpler it is. The beginner should therefore begin with very short stories.
Process of Invention.
The minimum length of the short story of commerce is about one thousand five hundred words, and the tyro will do well to try that length. I will attend him in detail through his maiden enterprise. A work of fiction should properly take shape in the mind of the author in the following stages: —First, he should get a notion of the scene and general environment; then, the characters should present themselves, springing out of the environment; last of all, the plot should present itself, springing out of the characters. This natural order applies both to novels and to short stories; but it perhaps applies more particularly to novels; and in short stories the actual practice is often a reversal of the order. The central idea of the plot comes first, then the characters, then the environment.
The plot of a fifteen-hundred-word story cannot be much more than a mere episode. But, however slight a plot is, it must have a central idea; it must have a “point”; it must raise an issue and settle that issue; the interest of the reader having been excited must be fully satisfied. In other words, the plot must be complete; it cannot be a mere slice cut from something longer. In inventing his plot, the tyro should err on the side of melodrama and ingenuity, rather than on the side of quietude and simplicity. What he wants is a tale that “tells itself,” a striking situation, a novel climax. Too much plot is better than not enough plot. I can offer no suggestions as to subject; the story may or may not relate to love; but it must not end unhappily—this is essential.
Having arrived at a fairly precise notion of his story, the tyro should write down the naked plot in two or three hundred words, or he should explain it to a friend. If the plot will not stand this test, it is not a good plot for his purposes. If it will, he may proceed, for a tale that looks interesting in outline will bear
