that they will not return rejected manuscripts, often do return them when a stamped, addressed envelope is enclosed. Always use envelopes, and not book-post wrappers, in order to minimise the wear and tear of your manuscript. If you wish to economise in postage (a serious item to the beginner), leave the envelope open and send it by book-post.
Take care that the envelope which you enclose for the return of the manuscript is large enough to hold the manuscript. Scores of beginners annoy editors by their carelessness in this obvious detail.
When a manuscript has been declined by a dozen editors, waste no further postage on it. Put it in a drawer marked “Frosts,” and after a few weeks’ interval examine it critically. You will then probably be able to discover why it failed to attract. I attach much importance to this examination of failures.
Remember that editors often make their preparations many weeks in advance. It is useless to send in Christmas stuff in the middle of December, or an Easter article at the end of March. The aspirant should buy or construct for himself a calendar of notable events, anniversaries, feasts, holidays, &c., and should keep well in advance of it.
When the aspirant has succeeded in contributing to several well-known papers, he should have their names printed on his card, with the words “Contributor to.” A card so ornamented will often assist him to obtain both courtesy and information when in search of material for articles.
Every serious freelance must have access to a large public library, preferably the reading-room at the British Museum, which is an inexhaustible mine of raw material for the journalist The regulations for the issue of tickets may be obtained from the Superintendent of the reading-room.
The difficulty of obtaining personal interviews with editors or their responsible assistants is greatly exaggerated in the popular mind. These sultans or viziers can usually be seen by the man who is calmly determined to see them. But the aspirant should not approach them unless he has a definite proposal to make, and until he can furnish credentials as to his capacity.
All magazines, many weeklies, and a few dailies send proofs of accepted articles for correction. The correction of such proofs— which have already been corrected by a “reader”—is a quite simple affair, and need not frighten the veriest tyro. In the Appendix (pp. 226, 227) will be found a practical illustration and explanation of the principal signs used in proof-correcting.
In the matter of remuneration, one or two papers pay on acceptance, but they are seraphic exceptions. Some papers pay during the week following publication, and some during the month following publication. The accountants of some papers are not to be relied upon. Some papers, even wealthy papers, will never pay until they are asked, and even then as little as possible. Some papers, and among them several of considerable reputation, have invariably to be dunned before a cheque is forthcoming. If the contributor does not receive a cheque during the month following the month of publication, he should send in an account, giving the title, date, and length in inches of his contribution, and requesting a remittance.
Final Counsel to the Freelance.
I must warn the aspirant that he is bound to fail at first. Article after article will be rejected, and the process of rejection may continue uninterrupted for months. This is, indeed, the experience of ninety-nine out of every hundred beginners. But the aspirant should not be discouraged. He should persevere, and above all he should keep up a regular flow of articles. And while waiting for success he may positively assure himself that success does not tarry, (a) because his articles are not carefully read, (b) because the market is overcrowded with good stuff, or (c) because editors are fools. I need say no more in this connection.
Just as the aspirant is bound to fail at first, so he is bound to succeed in the end if he perseveres and directs his efforts with sagacity. Success, trifling to begin with, will increase; the standard of work will rise; and the time will certainly come when the freelance will cease to be solely a freelance. Either he will get a post on the staff of some paper with which he has gradually connected himself, or he will develop, as dozens of journalists do, into a novelist or some other kind of author. It is no part of this manual to deal with the duties of a staff appointment I therefore pass to the subject of authorship proper, and in particular to the subject of fiction.
Chapter IV
Short Stories
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
