Lansing, Marion Florence, My Summer Self, 116, The Literary Articles in Periodicals, 31, 72 Literature of Escape, The, Hillyer, 299 Lloyd, Anne, To a Highboy, Silhouettes, 49 McBride, Emily Raymond, Churches, 200 Adventures in Old McCarty, John L., Killing Two Birds, 130 MacCreary, Marjorie, Educational Markets, 288 McGowan, Susan W., Writing For the Youngest Magazine, Making a One-Man, Rose, 245 Making Vacations Pay for Themselves, Harris, 253 Mann, Fred B., Wanted: Attention-Callers, 50 Mansfield, Margery Swett, Wanting the Cake, 23 Manuscript of Hardy's "Tess," Werner, 111 Manuscript Market, The, 26, 63, 96, 133, 170, 236, Markets, The Writer's List of 100 Verse, 203 Markets, The Writer's List of Greeting Card, 318 Masters, George, Business in Writing, 372 Mayse, M., High School Poets, 314 Miller, Bess East, In Praise of the New Haven Moody, E. N., In Dispraise of the Notebook, Moody, Minnie Hite, Spring, A Decade, 83 Nance, E. C., How a Young Minister Increased His News and Notes, 31, 68, 108, 165, 210, 229, 248, 325 Newton, Janet, On Free Verse, 131 Novel, Problems of the, Hull, 20. Novel, The Law of the, Werner, 217 Novel, What Is a Detective? Van Dine, 160 Odde, John A. L., Truthful Week, 223 O'Kane, Walter C., What I Like Best in Outdoor Olsen, T. C., The English Papers and What They O'Neill and the Untrained Playwright, Halman, 215 Ortel, Ralph B., Detouring but with a Definite Ob- Petterson, Rena Oldfield, Complete Manuscripts Pre- Photostat Comes to the Aid of the Writer, The, Play, Analyzing the One-Act, Tanner, 355 Play, The One-Act: Its Form and Technique, Tan- Plays, Full-Length, for Amateurs, Harris, 109 Plot-Boilers, 189, 269, 284, 310, 341, 369 Poetry Critique, Technical, Hillyer, 18 Prose Criticism, Tanner, 55, 84, 163, 186 Publishers, American: Little, Brown & Company, Radio Dramatists, Technique for, Knapp-Jones, 4 Roch, Loretta, Unasked Advice, 81, After Shake- Rose, Donald F., Making a One-Man Magazine, 245 S. and N. Alphabetical Education, The, Rose, 248 Sharp, R. V., The Prize-Winning "Magazine," 149 "Short-Short" Story Markets, The Writer's List of, Short Story, Some Aspects of the Modern, Galli- Short Story, What Is a, Browne, 126 Smith, Belle Walker, The Right Kind of Greeting Stevens, Ada Borden, Stumbling Blocks to the Be- Stoddard, Hope Elizabeth, Tabloid Book Review, 12 Story, The Magazine, Joseph, 179 Stories, Why Many Are Rejected, Baker, 73 Story Writer, Problems of the Serious, Uzzel, 37 Stumbling Blocks to the Beginner, Stevens, 308 Swain, J. Howard, "Postage and Perseverance,' 288 Tanner, William M., Writing the Humorous and Satirical Sketch, 13, Prose Criticism, 55, 84, 163, 186, Writing the Simple Narrative, 120, The One- Act Play: Its Form and Technique, 327, Analyz- Thomas, Anne Metcalf, Tabloid Book Review, 12, Trachsel, Myrtle Jamison, When Writers Meet, 276 Trevarthen, Margaret, Augusi, 225 Van Dine, S. S., What Is a Detective Novel? 160 Wade, Blanche Elizabeth, Sea Partners, 259 Wad for Writers, Some Uses of the, Harris, 335 Waite, L. S., Forethought in Writing, 167 Warner, Frances Lester, When a Man Writeth, 337 Wellington, C. Frederic, A Literary Alphabet, 62 Werner, W. L., The Manuscript of Hardy's "Tess," 111, The Law of the Novel, 217 Westcott, Nell C., Small-Town Opportunities, 200 When a Man Writeth, Warner, 337 When Writers Meet, Trachsel, 276 Whitaker, Roberts, Spider-Web Writing, 313 Willetts, Gilson. The Writer's Handy Index File, 131 - Wills, Russell, Still All's Well that Ends - With Writing the Simple Narrative, Tanner, 120 Youmans. Eleanor, On Snake Stories, 234 Young, Frank Kenneth, Contest Syndicates, 93 AN AUTHORS' MONTHLY MONTHLY FORUM Volume 40 January, 1928 Number 1 Some Aspects of The Modern Short-Story I' By JOHN GALLISHAW N the field of short-story writing in America, today, there exists a very peculiar situation. On the one hand, you have editors who cannot get enough good stories, and on the other hand you have a very large number of writers whose stories are not acceptable. The condition is complicated by the fact that many editors receive stories which are almost good enough, whose writers would be delighted to accept any suggestion from the editor, and to put that suggestion into effect. Yet, one of the most frequent plaints of the aspiring writer is that an editor does not read his story, and that the editor ought to make suggestions as to how to improve it. Quite obviously, this first complaint that the editors do not read stories won't stand much investigation, because the whole success of any magazine depends upon the amount of good fiction that it can place before its readers. No editor who is blind enough to overlook any possible source of supply will continue. very long as an editor; competition is too keen. But the legend persists that the manuscripts of unknown writers are returned unread. There is an ancedote of the woman who sent to an editor always felt that you did not read stories. Now I know. I gummed together pages 8 and 9, pages 70 and 71, pages 200 and 201, of my story, and when the story came back the pages were still gummed together," to which the editor replied, "My dear Madam: I do not have to eat a whole egg to know that that egg is bad." This is quite true. Any competent editor can tell in five minutes whether or not a story is hopeless. That's what makes him an editor. If he glances at the first page or two and finds there is nothing there which interests him, and then glances at the end of the story and finds nothing there which interests him, and takes a look somewhere in the middle of that story and finds there nothing of interest, he need read no further to discover that that story has no possible further claim on his attention. It is not to the people who persist in writing hopeless stories that I am addressing myself. It is to those writers whose stories get beyond the first group of readers to the final editorial board, and are rejected after they have been considered in relation to other stories. They have been given a careful reading, but the verdict is against them. The Saturday Evening Post kept a record of the number of manuscripts submitted in a year. sand. It was about one hundred thouThey discovered that when they A returned a manuscript, only four per cent., that is, about four hundred of the rejected writers submitted a second manuscript. Only two hundred, that is, only two per cent., submitted a third. Many of those writers they would have liked to hear from again; but they obviously could n't write eighty or ninety letters analyzing writers' faults. writer can't ask for that. The editor's job is to select. As long as he has sufficient material coming in, he does n't have to go outside to create new writers. On the other hand, some editors who have been anxious to develop new authors do make suggestions to promising writers in regard to revising certain stories. It has been their sad experience that in ninety-nine out of one hundred cases the writers did not understand the suggestions. Instead of causing bad feeling, because when the writer, full of hope, sent in the revised version it was no better than the first version, and frequently it was worse. Editors, as a rule, are too busy to give detailed instruction. The same is true of writers. Instruction takes time and patience; and a writer's time is valuable these days, when established writers receive from one to three thousand dollars for a story, and as high as twenty thousand dollars for a serial. The writer is interested in results rather than in methods. It is here that the critic steps in. A good critic can easily point out to a writer that his task falls into two general categories - that of plotting a story, and that of presenting the scenes within. his story in an interesting fashion. The difficulties of many writers disappear as soon as they learn this distinction between the two ways in which they may achieve interest, through plot and through scenes. The plot is simply the pattern, or arrangement of the happenings. The scenes present the characters in a series of meetings. One writer may be good at plotting, another at presenting characters in scenes. Obviously, if he is especially good at one, he may sometimes neglect the other. The difficulty with the amateur is this: He sees one good writer use a flimsy plot upon which to string together very interesting scenes, and a second writer disregard his scenes because of the breathlessness of his plot. The amateur then proceeds to neglect both plot and scenes. If you can write good scenes, a very slight thread of a plot will enable you to get your story published; if you can invent extremely clever turns of plots you may get your stories published, even though your presentation of the scenes is not so good, but ordinarily, it will be in the cheaper magazines. If you aspire to appear in the better magazines to be anything more than a "hack writer," you must develop this ability to write good scenes. An interesting scene will present no difficulty, since it consists merely in getting two people together. The plot out of which those meetings of people may grow can be a very simple one. If you doubt this, read a good many stories in the popular magazines, and you will find the plots vary only slightly; that your interest is held by the characterization of the people within the different scenes of the story. The difficulty with our American teaching has been that it has placed the emphasis upon the mechanical processes of plotting and has neglected characterization. The chief reason that writers have been unable to put into effect suggestions made by editors is that these usually deal with characterization, and the writers have not been able to follow them out because they have not divided their task into the two problems of plotting and of presenting character in scenes. Unfortunately, story-writing looks easy. Because it looks easy, many untrained people attempt it. What happens? Failure, almost inevitably. Certainly disappointment. Now, the writer, today, is entering an extremely highly paid profession. Because it is highly paid, the competition has become more and more keen. The untrained writer is, |