pressed the former, and Maupassant the latter. The American ideal is 'The Single Effect.' The French ideal is The Dramatic Effect.' The short story is, therefore, a narrative drama with a single effect." What is the single effect? According to Poe, the "brief tale" is not a work of art unless it produces a unified impression on the reader. Dramatic narrative, as Mr. Pitkin says, is much less easily defined. "What we vaguely call plot and discern in the modern story is the dramatic quality. . . . A plot is a climactic series of events, each of which both determines and is determined by the characters involved. . . . There must be a climax, an event remarkable in some respect; and something must happen to the character as a result of something which he has done; and the character must express himself in the episodes. In other words, every story whose excellence is generally admitted is more than a picture of character, more than a good complication, more than a fragment of biography, and more than an exciting episode. It is all these together, and in it they are so arranged that the reader is surprised by what happens to the hero, and thrilled by what the hero does to each situation. This thrill is the thrill of drama only if the hero somehow exhibits his human nature by conduct in a crisis." Every narrative contains three basic factors. and these three directions of emphasis result in three fundamental types of story. The single effect is produced, now in character drawing, now in the dramatic intensity of the plot, and now in the sensuous quality of the setting. And the resulting types are commonly called, respectively, (1) the character story; (2) the complication story; (3) the atmosphere story. Intensification of more than one of the three factors gives four more types: (4) the character-complication story; (5) the character-atmosphere story; (6) the complication-atmosphere story; (7) the threephase story. The well-modeled short story must admit of being read easily at a single sitting. If the plot is intrinsically simple and swift no compression is demanded. The natural telling of any plot suited to the short story will not exceed the proper bounds. The advice given to the writer to strike from his pages every phrase which is not absolutely indispensable to conveying his idea is deadly. It rests upon the fatal, all too easy, confusion of rhetorical compression with the suppression of irrelevant matter. It is a grave error to suppose that fine dramatic effects are to be produced by paring one's narrative language down until it becomes the baldest possible report of the story facts. The outcome is a meagre report, excellent newspaper writing perhaps, but not dramatic narrative with a single effect. Taking up the question, what to write about, Mr. Pitkin says that the theme is limited by restraints set by the story form, those set by the writer's knowledge and beliefs, and those set by his audience. The theme, in order to produce a single effect, must be one which can be adequately handled within the space of a single perusal. Editors have limited the story to an ordinary maximum of 8,000 words (in England about 6,000), and they sometimes deceive themselves into believing that this measures the natural or proper size. This 8,000-word limit sets three restrictions upon the theme. It excludes all subjects which involve: (a) an intricate plot; (b) elaborate staging; (c) detailed interpretation. The author should learn two general rules: (a) A theme is unfit for a short story if its plot calls for a staging so elaborate that there remains for the development of the dramatic narrative not space enough within the assigned limits of the story's total length. (b) A theme is unfit, also, if its plot calls for the extensive staging of situations which interrupt the dramatic narrative. As for what is good in the way of themes, editors assure us that "human interest" is the flavor and perfume of every excellent story. Psychologically, the interesting thing is the thing which provokes thought, and the thought-provoking situation is what we call a problem, so that "human interest" is confined to problems, and every good story is a problem story. The single effect in dramatic narrative is generally produced, not by depicting a mere problem, but by depicting a conflict. And this conflict ends in one of two ways: (a) It brings out an act which is uniquely characteristic of the actor, or else (b) it finishes with a merely consistent act of violation. These are the only two clearly marked types of conduct which hold the reader's interest to the last without altering its quality. In directing the short story writer how to produce the single effect, Mr. Pitkin says: "Pay no special attention to description of scenes, character drawing, philosophizing, or stylistic effects until you have stated all the essentials of the plot so clearly that the theme and the outcome and the single effect are apparent (though not necessarily vivid) and unequivocal. . . . The story's the thing, after all; and all its finish, its clever turns, its ingenious trappings, and its sparkling epigrams are but poor tinsel, once the drama which they overlay is veiled, blurred, or broken." Why is it that so many newspaper men have become good story writers? "It is because the newspaper man becomes proficient in setting down the story, the whole story, and nothing but the story. The facts without trimmings he must deliver daily. Doing this, he masters the first and most important trick of story telling." The beginner cannot do better than to imitate the newspaper man's procedure in its essentials. Having an idea for a story, sketch it in the following form: 1. The theme is. 2. The main complication is. In answering these questions, do not use single words or phrases. Use declarative sentences, whenever possible. Other modes of expression are hazy and may only conceal a vagueness in your own mind. Next, draw up a bald report of the story in less than five hundred words, mentioning only as much as is needed to make it absolutely clear. State it as if you were reporting an actual happening for a newspaper. Finally, expand it so as to produce the strongest possible single effect. What the simple report must contain is the first matter to be settled after the general idea of the story has been hit upon. The writer must fix upon his material before concerning himself with its literary form. Now, this material includes: (a) The circumstances giving rise to the main complication; (b) the persons actively involved in the main complication; (c) the main complication itself; (d) the character trait (if any) which shapes the course of events; (e) the crucial situation (sometimes ambiguously called the climax) in which the consequences of the initial complication reach their highest intensity; (f) the outcome or solution of the critical situation (sometimes called the dénouement); (g) the import (or lesson) of the story, if it happens that this is as striking as the events themselves. To render the facts of the story is a reporter's task. Reporting, however, is not story-telling. The double ideal is fulfilled in a story when its items are selected and ordered so as to yield a single dramatic impression in a task which Mr. Pitkin calls integration. "In order to integrate a given set of items," he says, you must first fix sharply the particular single effect at which you are aiming. . . . Having chosen the single effect which is to be stressed, the writer must select and report only those features of the characters, the setting, and the complication which produce that effect. And, if some features necessary to the coherent telling of the story do not produce the effect, they must be reported as colorlessly as possible, in order that they may not yield an antagonistic impression. Here we have, in new guise, the ancient and familiar rule of relevancy. Usually this has been applied chiefly to argumentation, and lately to plot; but it properly governs absolutely every detail of narrative. What its dictates are we must now inquire. Every element of a story may, of course, serve to heighten the total effect. But there are five kinds which do so in a superlative degree. They are: (1) The dominant character; (2) the plot action; (3) the order of events; (4) the point of view (a) toward the story (artist's attitude), (b) within the story (angle of narration); (5) the atmosphere." For handling the dominant character Mr. Pitkin gives four rules: "1. Eliminate every trait and deed which does not help peculiarly to make the character's part in the particular story either intelligible or more open to such sympathy as it merits. "2. Do not describe a trait, or feature, or other peculiarity, if it can be portrayed in action that is relevant, "3. Paint in only the high lights'; that is: (a) never employ a commonplace or merely accurate incident or other detail, if an unusual or acutely characteristic one can be found to depict the same trait equally well; (b) never qualify or elaborate a trait or episode merely for the sake of preserving the effect of the character's full reality. "4. Depict in their true proportion all three phases of conduct, namely (a) sensing the crucial situation; (b) deliberating over its solution, and (c) solving it by decisive action." To handle the plot action effectively, little technical skill is required. It raises only two questions worthy of discussion: The question of directness and the question of necessity. Action is direct which, in every complication, moves toward the crucial situation. Only such events may be introduced as heighten the single effect, and they may be developed only up to the point at which they begin to obscure the plot action either by interrupting it or else by diverting interest from it to themselves. There are two typical errors in plot action. "An episode may violate either the first or the second clause of the general principle and thus give rise to two kinds of faulty action, which we may name: (a) Irrelevancy; (b) over-intensification." As regards irrelevancy, many writers admit matter to their pages "because it is really connected with the story," or "because, being connected with it in fact, it will lend a desirable air of reality to the tale," but, as an artist striving to exhibit some single effect of a dramatic incident, a writer must suppress everything that does not make for this end. Over-intensification, unlike irrelevancy, is a fault to which very good writers are susceptible. Indeed, it is the supreme literary virtue running wild. He who clearly perceives his theme, its best single effect, and the plot action is most likely to be carried away by them and to overdraw some significant feature. The order of events in a story is a stumbling block. Not one beginner in twenty gets over it successfully, nor does more than one magazine story in five. "Everybody who has read manuscripts knows that the so-called 'story-sense' and the knack of story-telling are two distinct gifts, almost as independent as the eyes are independent of the ears. Some writers conjure up delightful plots but cannot narrate them effectively, although they have all the details well in hand and write a flowing narrative style. Others, on the contrary, devise weak plots and seem to have little feeling for character and complication; but give them a plot and they dash off a capital story. There is a wellknown story writer of to-day whose greatest successes have been built upon plots given to him by obliging editors, and whose desperate efforts at originality usually gain him admittance only to third-rate magazines." Order in story-writing is important. "Throughout his work, the student should keep in mind the principle of simplicity, which may be thus stated: Alter the historical order no more than is necessary." With respect to the material of the story, there arise three special problems of order: (a) The opening event; (b) the closing event; (c) the distribution of events throughout the plot action. The opening event has two functions; it must awaken the reader's interest in the story, and it must also carry him quickly into it. Mr. Pitkin distinguishes ten ways of getting a start, listing them in the order of their general excellence, noting that the fifth alone is often better than its rank. A story, he says, may open with: Direct action: (1) Which reveals in some measure the setting, the characters, and the theme of the single effect; (2) which reveals character only; (3) which reveals the setting only; (4) which reveals only the theme or the single effect. (5) A philosophical overture. (Anticipatory generalizations without action.) Indirect action: (6) Which reveals setting, characters, and the theme or single effect; (7) which reveals character only; (8) which reveals the setting only; (9) which reveals only the theme or single effect; (10) pure description. (No action and no anticipatory generalizations.) "In comparison with the opening, the closing event is no problem at all. The variety of endings is much less, and one's choice is not supremely important. Furthermore, the material is more plastic, and may be experimented upon freely without involving radical changes in the body of the story. There are three types of endings: (a) The direct dénouement; (b) the significant aftermath; (c) intepretative comment. The direct dénouement is the ideal finish of the pure dramatic story. . . . I cannot drop this topic without urging the student to study carefully the maturer stories of O. Henry, who surpasses all writers past and present in his mastery of the direct dénouement. What a host of his complications do not solve themselves until the last fifty words!" The author's point of view involves the question of style, which, Mr. Pitkin says, is in the first sense the result of mastering story technique; in the second sense, the result of mastering grammar and rhetoric; and, in the third sense, the result of the artist's attitude toward his material and all that pertains to it. Atmosphere in story writing is the emotional flavor of the place and time in which the dramatic events unfold. "Many students," says Mr. Pitkin, "get the notion that environment is atmosphere; and so they fall into the technical blunder of trying to produce atmosphere by elaborate descriptions of scenery. Their belief is false and their practice only occasionally sound." The business of the short story, reduced to its simplest terms, is a "problem of three bodies": (a) The reading public; (b) the author, and (c) the publisher. One thing should be borne in mind. The novel may successfully appeal to a single reading public; the short story must appeal to many. Again, the popular magazine shuns every topic which deviates much from the tastes of the supposed majority of the class or classes to which it appeals. Because of this, three types of short stories are unsuited to the average magazine: Satire, allegory, and the "fate drama." The " fate drama" is the opposite of the "uplift story," after which so many editors are sighing. Maupassant's "The Piece of String' would probably have been rejected by most American magazines, because it is not pleasant reading. "Most men and women are a little depressed by the thought that they are not the captains of their souls, and they do not wish to pay fifteen cents, still less thirty-five, for the depression. They get more than enough of it gratis every day. They read fiction, especially magazine fiction, either for pure pleasure or else for agreeable informal instruction." Still, the "fate drama" is much loved and attempted by beginners. They should bear in mind that the magazine short story specializes in entertaining, not in conveying ideas. The fashion of magazine fiction has changed greatly in a generation. No longer may the story writer insert a moral disquisition in the midst of a love scene. "He must write straight drama, weaving his thesis into it so deftly that he inseminates your mind without your knowing it. If he cannot accomplish this he fails altogether. But if he can, even imperfectly, his influence will exceed by a hundred-fold that of the old-school author-preacher. Many a high school graduate of the rising generation can grind out stories of the Maria Edgeworth stamp, but only a skilled and facile mind could produce a fictionsermon which a good modern magazine would publish." On the side of technique in story writing, Mr. Pitkin says: "An entertaining article might be written on the business devices now employed by professional short story writers; the card catalogue, the 'follow-up system,' whereby one story which has pleased a public is announced as the first of a series; the news clipping bureau, through which the specialist in high society stories receives raw material and the specialist in detective tales receives his matter, finished except in its dramatic form; and so on. But it is not important to instruct the learner in all these tricks of the trade. . . . Nine stories out of every ten are suggested, in one manner or another, by real episodes, and the variety. of real episodes in any field or of any flavor is immeasurably richer than the range of any one man's fancy. These two indisputable facts set the first rule of specialization, which is this: Get in touch with some phase of life; become intimate with something that is going on in the world. They also shape the second rule, which is this: Study one, and only one, emotional quality of your chosen phase of life, for a long time. "Each learner should aim to order his work so as to produce the largest possible number of fairly good stories about his special subject. The lower grade of fiction produced in the course of practice generally finds a market, albeit a cheap one. On the other hand, heavy production of carefully worked out second and third rate stories indubitably hastens toward the high goal of every artist; namely, toward that degree of proficiency at which technical manipulations become habits. The first moment of genuine artistry arrives when the writer begins to use, without thinking of them, all the cautions and principles which we have been discussing in this book. A few fortunates early acquire this ease without orderly help. To them technical instruction seems futile. They say they cannot think of the thousand and one precepts, nor do they have to. This is true. Technique is only a means to establishing habits of behavior. Once the latter are in full swing, thought of the mechanism drops out." Of the many resulting plots, usually the two or three best will alone prove worthy of writing; the rest go into the waste basket. Roughly speaking, there are two types of combination. First, you may invent a situation, and then, keeping it unaltered, put different people into it and compare their behavior. Or, secondly, you may begin with a definite person or with a character trait and you may try it out in many situa tions, seeking that one which brings out most vividly the chosen quality of human nature. Not until you have gone through these operations several times will you realize how prodigious is the host of widely differing stories which lurks potentially in a single character or in one situation. And after you have experimented much, you will perhaps turn the method to profit, by finding a character and a small field of situations which yield a dozen, or even a score, of stories. This is the richest of all finds. For each story in such a series helps to sell the next, and what is still more valuable - the collection will be accepted more eagerly for publication in book form than a miscellany will. Almost every prominent professional writer of brief fiction to-day is producing such series; there is scarcely a magazine that is not always seeking them, and there are few fiction publishers who are not making favorable offers for the book rights. Thus the stories sell twice, bringing double profit; they associate the author's name with a familiar character or theme and thereby add to his reputation, and, through the experimenting they force him to, they ripen his technical skill wonderfully. "There remains one practical question: What are the story writer's prospects? The answer is hard; for, when all is said and done, the chief factors of success and failure are the individual and his opportunity, both of which defy rules and calculation. There are fashions in fiction, as everybody knows; they are sometimes as capricious as the fashions in women's rigging. The last decade has seen the story of the stupid life (miscalled realistic fiction) give way to half a dozen more thrilling types, such as the high-life story, the muck-raking |