emotional excitement on which alone creative work is properly accomplished. He cannot see all his work at once as the painter sees his canvas. Imagine the technical difficulties of a painter whose canvas was always being rolled off one stick on to another stick and who was compelled to do his picture inch by inch, seeing nothing but the particular inch which happened to be under his brush. That difficulty is only one of the difficulties of the novelist.
I mention these things in order to emphasise the formidableness of the novel. The beginner should not commence his first novel without the consciousness of a high resolution. He must dwell on the immensity of that which he has undertaken. He must gird his loins for the journey. He must eat the literary passover. He must take breath for the plunge. He should feel as a man feels who has determined to propose to a woman, or to give up smoking, or to save half his income. If he omits these preliminary mental formalities, if he forgets to furnish himself in advance with a great stock of resolution, perseverance, and energy, the chances are in favour of a fiasco, with consequent loss of self-respect and self-confidence.
It cannot be too fiercely insisted upon that a novel which is begun casually during a brief period of leisure and lightly taken up from time to time as occasion serves, will never be a good novel. While a novelist, especially a beginner, is writing a novel, the novel must be “on his mind,” and it must be waiting for him at the back of his intelligence even when he is engaged on other things. It must keep him awake at nights, and wake him after he has gone to sleep. It must intrude itself on his attention, must be his hourly companion, like a profound grief or anxiety. I say “grief or anxiety” rather than joy. For it is a fact that few novelists enjoy the creative labour, though most enjoy thinking about the creative labour. Novelists enjoy writing novels no more than ploughmen enjoy following the plough. They regard the business as a “grind”; some of the most successful hate their profession; some of the greatest artists in fiction have never found themselves able to write except under absolute exterior compulsion. Whereas some of the least gifted novelists are known to find a mild pleasure in their work. Hence the beginner who begins with ardour and then discovers that the zest quickly fades, should not argue therefrom that he has no vocation; he should rather nerve himself and set his teeth and clench his hands for a continuance of effort. The mysterious impulse which drove him to begin is a better proof that he has the vocation than his disgust and repulsion in the midst of the task are a proof that he has it not. There are moments in the working-day of every novelist when he feels deeply that anything — road-mending, shopwalking, housebreaking—would be better than this eternal torture of the brain; but such moments pass.
The best proof of a vocation for the novel is that abstention from fictional composition should produce a feeling of uneasiness, dissatisfaction, and guilt. A talent never persuades or encourages the owner of it; it drives him with a whip.
To Begin.
I will assume that the beginner has come to the tremendous decision of writing a novel —not a mere serial, not something that can be cut up into instalments, but a novel, a volume, an affair that will be printed on hundreds of pages, bound in cloth, sold at six shillings, and passed and repassed over the counters of Mudies’ and Smiths’. And the beginner says, “How ought I to begin?” There are numerous slightly different ways of beginning, including several quite good ones. But I shall prescribe one definite course, since I am persuaded that the aspirant prefers a single recipe or course to a choice of them.
Nearly all that I have previously said concerning the composition of short stories and serials may be said of the composition of the novel; and, equally, much of what I shall say about the novel will apply to the short story and the serial.
Selection of subject, as the reader will remember, is the most important thing in writing fiction. Here I may remark that the beginner with a genuine vocation will probably decide to write a novel long before a theme occurs to him. It is the vague desire to write a story, not a particular desire to write a particular story, which characterises the genuine novelist. Many people who have hit on an “idea” are moved to write merely by their chance possession of that idea, and not at all by a fundamental instinct.
The beginner should proceed through the following stages:—
(I) He will invent and elaborate the plot. Now the action, as I have before explained, should spring out of the characters, and the characters should spring out of the general environment Therefore the first dim indefinable efforts of the imagination will be concerned with the environment. By the environment I mean the place or places where the action is to pass, the general class and sort of people involved, and the broad effect of landscape and other surroundings. The mind must ponder on these things until they begin to take shape. Then follows the conjuring-up of one or two (probably not more than three at the outside) appropriate principal characters. And at length, when these have shown themselves, the nature of the action must be considered and evolved. Of course it may well happen that the first naked hint of the proposed book will be a hint of an action or a situation, or of a character, entirely separate from any notion of general environment. This is quite normal and correct, but the beginner must take care to carry that hint backward to a suitable environment first, and not forward into a detailed action until the environment and characters are more or less defined. Having arrived at a broad notion of his scheme, the beginner should write it out with all the literary skill at his command, and submit it to a friend for perusal and criticism. Let there be no diffidence or false modesty in pursuing this very advisable course. The preliminary sketch will perhaps extend to two or three thousand words.
(2) The act of writing it will tend to make it clearer and to expose hidden weaknesses, and the next stage will be to cure the weaknesses, to bring the strong parts into relief, and to amplify throughout. The process of amplification will consist of inventing subsidiary characters, choosing precise environments for various leading episodes, settling the leading episodes, and devising minor episodes. By this time the principal characters and scenes should exist with some completeness in the mind. The whole book should now be planned out into chapters according to the main divisions into which the action naturally falls. The beginner must concentrate his powers specially upon the closing scenes of the tale, the solution of problems, the final effects on character. He must permit himself no shirking; he must grapple firmly with the difficulties which are certain to arise, and not leave them till he has devised a satisfactory way out of each of them. Time and energy spent here are well spent. A day over the plot before the actual writing has begun may save ten days later on. In the result, the beginner must have a list of chapters with brief particulars of the episodes in each, showing where the various characters enter the story and disappear from it, where descriptions are. to occur, and so on. This catalogue of the contents of chapters need have no literary finish whatever; but it should be clear and fairly full, especially towards and at the climax.
(3) He may now commence upon the actual writing of the book. Let him bear in mind that it is unwise to begin with descriptions or explanations. He should plunge into the action, and at once present some of the principal characters dramatically, postponing explanatory matter until the reader’s attention has been arrested. In regard to the writing, he must spare no pains on it; he must polish every detail, however minute, in succession, and leave nothing unfinished behind him. He will probably begin his task in a glow of enthusiasm, and he must proceed with it in a spirit of absolute thoroughness and warm ardour until this first glow begins to cool. He may feel a diminution of his own interest at the end of the first or second chapter; in any event the reaction is sure to occur fairly soon. When it does occur, let him stop. Even if he has only written four or five thousand words he will find that in writing them he has acquired a much firmer grasp of the characters and the action than he had before, and for the first time he will really perceive what the book is going to look like, and what its atmosphere will be. On the other hand, he will also perceive for the first time the true immensity of the whole task in front of him, and he will be appalled by it.
(4) Therefore I recommend that from this the first point of his discouragement, he should proceed with the
