each of which has a little life and entity of its own. The beginner must severely interrogate each episode as he does it, and put it through a sort of cross-examination in order to justify its existence. An episode may be a beautiful and effective episode, but if it does not directly help forward the story as a whole, then it has no right to exist Every episode must directly assist the progress of the tale. It is useless to urge that such and such an episode, though it does not help the actual story, illustrates a character or confirms an atmosphere. The subsidiary functions of an episode may be various, but whatever they are they must always combine harmoniously with the principal function of every episode, which is to tell the tale. When, for any reason whatever, you cease to tell the tale, you are sinning not only against policy, but against the classic principles of art. When an episode has been written, it is advisable to inquire: “Assuming that this episode were accidentally omitted, would the reader notice a hiatus? Would the actual tale be impaired?” If the answer is in the negative, then that episode must go.
The remark which I made on page 144 about the beginner’s difficulty in stopping a conversation in mid-course when it ceases to be useful, applies with equal force to all episodes. Whenever any scene has served its purpose in the general scheme of the book, at whatever point it loses its appositeness and begins to be perfunctory, stop it. Stop it ruthlessly, and proceed with the tale at the next interesting point further on. Passages which do not interest the author are not likely to interest the reader, and a book gains enormously by the excision of everything that is not strictly relevant, indispensable, and of paramount interest. The beginner will be astonished at the amount of stuff which may be eliminated without in the least spoiling the story.
Some Minor Details.
Publishers and the public prefer long novels to short ones. It is curious that the most popular novels of the day—those of Miss Marie Corelli and Mr. Hall Caine—are also the longest novels of the day. From ninety to a hundred thousand words is a good length, but there is no objection to a hundred and twenty thousand or even more. Only reviewers have a prejudice against long novels. The beginner should fix for himself a minimum of seventy thousand words. I am bound to state, however, that modern authors, running counter to the wishes of the public, show a tendency to make their novels shorter and shorter. More than one novel of less than forty thousand words has been issued at six shillings.
When the novel is finished it should be read aloud in its entirety to, or by, some discerning and patient friend, and then revised once more. This operation is extremely important.
It is advisable to have the manuscript typewritten in duplicate, since it may experience many vicissitudes before it reaches a printer’s; the cost of a second copy is half that of the first All the sheets should be stitched together, not wired, in one batch, and enclosed in stout brown paper wrappers.
I shall deal fully with the question of negotiating the sale of novels in the chapter entitled “The Business Side.”
It is impossible to advise the beginner about the kind of novel which he should write. But he may be advised not to write either a historical novel or what was styled a few years ago a “sex-novel.” The historical novel is an exhausted form of fictional art; no historical novel with a spark of genius has been published for years, and the market for historical novels is very flat The truth is that the historic convention has become stereotyped and lifeless, and until some powerful talent takes it in hand and rejuvenates it, the beginner will do well to avoid it The sex-novel still lives and cuts a figure in the world; some of the best and some of the most notorious books of the past decade have been sex-novels. For obvious reasons, however, this particular variety of emotional narrative demands a tact, a discretion, an equipoise, which it is extremely unlikely that any beginner will possess.
A domestic novel of modern life, having a simple, strong plot conscientiously worked out with as much vivacity, colour, and movement as the author can command, is at once best suited to the beginner’s pen, and most likely to find a sympathetic audience.
The Artistic Novel.
Fine taste in fiction is almost as rare among novelists as among the general public. The average novelist is but little more pleased than the average reader with the supreme masterpieces of fiction. The average novelist is decidedly not very interested in the progress of his craft—in questions of technique or the achievements of other novelists. Occasionally, however, one encounters an aspirant who is genuinely enthusiastic for the art of the novel, who dreams of artistic perfection first and of popularity afterwards, and whose curiosity about technique is quenchless. To such a man, in search of ideals, I would say that he will find a refuge from the insularity of English fiction in Russian, French, and Italian fiction. The literature of the novel exists chiefly in France. The beginner with artistic aspirations should read the Journal of the brothers De Goncourt, Guy de Maupassant’s essay on Flaubert, Tolstoi’s essay on De Maupassant, and the critical work of Ste. Beuve, Anatole France, Jules Lemaitre, Paul Bourget, and the Comte de Vogue. In English he should read the letters of R. L. Stevenson, Professor Walter Raleigh’s The English Novel, Professor Saintsbury’s essay on Balzac, and Mr. Edward Garnett’s essays on various novels of Turgenev. He will find in these various works an attitude sharply different from the ordinary English attitude towards the technique, the scope, and the aims of the novel.
In selecting classical novels for study, the aspirant should bear in mind that the supremely artistic novels of the eighteenth century were English, while those of the nineteenth century were French. The beginner who wishes to learn how absolute realism may be combined with distinguished and beautiful art should read Richardson’s Clarissa, the first and greatest of all realistic novels of any period or country. Scarcely any English nineteenth-century novelist after Scott has made a general impression throughout Europe; and it is difficult to assert, in the face of a practically united European opinion, that the insular idols of our Victorian era are quite first-rate. They are not The quite first-rate novelists of the nineteenth century are Balzac, Turgenev, Tolstoi, and Flaubert Most of the works of this unrivalled quartet are translated into English, and the aspirant should study them, not only for their technique, which on the whole is unapproached, but for their fine seriousness and their emotional power. Flaubert's Madame Bovary has the reputation of being the most perfectly achieved novel ever written; but between Madame Bovary, Turgenev’s On the Eve, Balzac’s Eugenie Grandet, and Tolstoi’s Anna Karenina it would be futile to discriminate.
The English standard of technique in fiction has decidedly improved of late years, largely owing to the example of Stevenson. At the present time we have at least half-a-dozen writers whose work would pass muster anywhere in Europe. I do not propose to name them. I will only remark that they are not among the notorieties of the hour.
Chapter VII
Non-fictional Writing
Two Kinds of Authors.
Outside the department of fiction, there are two kinds of authors—those who want to write because they have something definite to say, and those who want something definite to say because they can write. Now to the historians, theologians, men of science, and philosophers who constitute the former class, it is obviously absurd to offer any advice that would come within the scope of a primer like the present volume. Of course these experts of erudition and science have to learn to write—and some of them would undoubtedly write better than they do if they had pursued a course of training such as I have indicated in Chapter II. But, having acquired the craft of writing, of expression, they have, in a literary sense, nothing else to learn. Their concern is not really with literature, but with some
