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Some months ago I discussed in these pages a number of Victor Hugo's chapter endings in "Ninety-three." The last sentence above is curiously like some of Hugo's in artistry. Reader-interest is raised to a high pitch by the use of the first person plural, the present tense of the verbs and their dramatic force, "rushing, flying, plunging;" the whole is clipped short at the end but with that qualifying "so far" holding the suspense. It might be expected that the novelist would take advantage of the heightened suspense to write some necessary explanatory matter in the next chapter — which he does. The reader will read through an essay on logic after that scene. Like all novels which have pleased the millions over several generations, this has a careful balancing of emotional values.

The beginning of this scene is as interesting as the ending. "The same shadows that are falling on the prison" (where we have left Sydney Carton)" - are falling, in that same hour of the early afternoon, on the Barrier with the crowd about it, when a coach going out of Paris drives up to be examined."

The trick of using the sun, or the moon, or the stars, or the shadows, or the winds, to ease the shock of scene-shifting is as old as story-telling and as effective as it ever was. The reader likes it better than being told "just at that moment"; the shock seems less abrupt. A warning of the dramatic value of this scene is given by the shift from the past verb tense - which has been used up to this point in the story to the present; the shadows "are falling," not "were falling." One sentence sets the scene the Barrier the crowd. Conversation starts at once. For a time we are not told who is speaking what need of that? More important is the indirect identification of the passengers, and the knowledge that Darnay has not recovered from the effects of the drug. Quotation marks are only for the speech of the examiners, the replies for the occupants of the coach are curtly summarized: "Greatly too much for him." "This is she." "It is." "She and no other." Why? Ask yourself that question.

At first the place of the observer, the reader, is not made clear. He might be just seated in his chair, reading the book. But the unusual dramatic treatment makes him a little uncertain. Soon his worst fears are realized

he is in the coach! "Houses pass by us." "The hard, uneven pavement is under us." "We strike into the skirting mud." Too much of this would be monotonous, of course, but there is n't too much. It is dangerous for any but a great artist to put his reader in a coach, and keep him there. The possibility of losing him altogether is great - he resents being put bodily anywhere but just where he is. Only a great artist can do it well. But anyone can try.

Remember that this scene is almost an "aside" so far as the story of Sydney Carton is concerned, Carton awaiting the Guillotine. Yet we are not allowed to forget him or his plight. Did you notice how many times the Guillotine was brought in? Note how it is done, without apparent forcing, or impeding the action of the scene itself. The incident at the end is especially effective, where the postilions halt the coach to ask the number sent to the Guillotine that day. It serves a triple purpose: to emphasize the danger of pursuit, to indicate that even the drivers are unfriendly and to throw the horror of the Guillotine over the whole picture. Instinctive technique? Perhaps. But not the kind of technique that comes from the idle day dream of the dilitante or the mechanical plot-pattern of the correspondence school student. Rather it is the careful craftsmanship of an honest workman who has the presses to feed regularly and who has bought dearly experience of what the millions want to read. And although this example is from the historical novel, a form of writing which is not much employed today, it contains instructive hints to anyone who essays any form of fiction.

It seems that our bright young men and women are almost entirely neglecting the historical novel in their writing. The informal biography on the one hand and the ultra

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modern novel on the other are drawing them away from a type which has always enjoyed great popularity. Both these may soon be discovered to be will-of-the-wisps. The informal biography may be interesting to readers but usually it is not honest. The biographers are indulging more and more in journalistic and highly imaginative treatment of their subjects. However gaily they may flaunt the lowering scowls of the scholars, they cannot flaunt the laughter of the common sense reader, and many of the late biographies are tempting it. Biography during the past few years has been made ridiculous, so much so that one of the most brilliant and promising of the young writers told me the other day that he was deserting the form entirely. When we see the thoughts of the greatest war-lord of the ages dwelling on a certain countess on the eve of a great battle, some of us find it a little difficult to repress a smile.

The ultra-modern novel, by its daring, has become immensely profitable. Attempts by reactionary elements to impose censorship have only added fuel to the flame of popularity. Wherever a book has been suppressed in any community, its nation-wide success has been assured. But when suppression becomes wholesale, and the books suppressed legion, the whole affair begins to lose its novelty.

Political Boston has earned the undying gratitude of many publishers by calling the attention of the world to juicy morsels of modern fiction which carry their imprints. Just recently nine books have fallen under this local ban, including publications of Boni and Liveright, Dutton, Macaulay, Doran, Harcourt, Brace, & Company, Harpers and Century. Political censorship, most reasonable people will agree, is an evil. Yet this latest overt act represents a state of mind which is fairly prevalent.

However much you and I may sympathize with liberal editorial policies, it is dangerous to overestimate the penetration of sophistication into the great mass of the reading public. And the net result of stiffening of public resistance against modernism on the fortunes of writers will be the wiping out of a large section of the profitable market.

It is true that during the past few years, loose biography and looser modern fiction have been the easiest roads to success for the unknown novelist. That this will continue to be so is open to grave question. The historical novel seems just at this moment to be a rather good bet. And remember that anything which happened before the Armistice is, in this fast-moving day and age, history.

You

How to Write a Poem

By W. L. WERNER

have doubtless been pestered by schools and professors who guarantee to teach you all about verse-writing in a year or a semester or ten lessons. Don't be fooled. You can learn how to write a poem in five minutes. Save your time; save your money. Versification is one of the easiest jobs in the world.

Pick any subject, anything at all, the nearest thing at hand. As I write, the nearest object is an inkwell. There's your subject.

Next you need to say a few things about your subject in prose. What can one say about an inkwell? An inkwell stands near me. Good! It may hold blue ink, or black, or red. Splendid! By tracing the ink in alphabetical forms on paper, I can achieve words, ideas, romance. Enough! There are three separate ideas; that's sufficient for any poem. The rhythm and rhyme will carry many an idea that's too thin for prose; consider Poe's "Bells" and Tennyson's juvenalia and "Jabberwocky" itself. In writing prose one must search for an idea; in writing verse one must search for a rhyme.

Having now the prose basis for your poem, set down the necessary words. Being necessary, they are most important; being important, they should be placed at the end of the line in order to get both end-emphasis and rhyme emphasis. See Arthur Guiterman's book reviews for such rhymes, or better Byron and Browning. The important words in

your three sentences are: ink, well, red, blue, black, romance.

Take any rhyming dictionary and get rhymes for these words. For ink, there are drink, sink, think, etc. With well, go tell, sell, fell, and a word beginning with h. For red, we have said, bed, bread, dead; for blue, true, flew, clew; for black, tack, rack, back; for romance, dance, prance, etc.

You now have three ideas for a poem and as many rhymes as you'll need to start. But you'll want a bit of sentiment; add to your word-list, mother, love, friendship, heart. You'll want a bit of romance; add the words, moon, heavens, sea, magic, courage, mystery.

You now have a working vocabulary of about 35 words; all you need to do is to arrange them in rhythmic order with the rhymed words at the ends of the lines. Begin with the first sentence:

On my table is a well.

Now run through the rhymes, sell . . . fell tell . . . That's it!

Many stories ink can tell.

Now for the second sentence, the color stuff.

It may have the color, blue,
Symbolizing friendship true
Or the magic of the sea

Or the heaven's mystery.

That's enough for blue; now let's paint the same formula red.

It may have the color, red,

Shade of hearts that broke and bled,
Red for mother's love so dear,

Red for courage without fear.

And so we come to four black lines.

It may have the color, black,

For the dead who come not back,
For the dark and stormy noon,
For the nights without a moon.

Well, you see, there are fourteen lines already and it's about time to use the third sentence and end the poem.

Here are colors, here is ink,

Gay and fearful thoughts to think;
Shake the words into a dance,

From the inkwell draw romance!

There you are, complete in 18 lines and 55 minutes. All the important, the sentimental,

the romantic words are there; the three sentences and most of the rhymes have been used. Perhaps one might make another poem from the by-products some day.

And is our result a poem? God forbid! You must work out one of these exercises every day for a year or five or ten years. And sometime, somewhere, the usual sort of thing that happens to everybody may happen to you. Somebody may tramp all over one of your pet ideas, or a taxi may run over a child that you know, or a useless war may kill a million men including your sweetheart, or God in His infinite carelessness may strike you blind. Then, when you sit down to your daily exercise, the rhythms will tug at you like wild horses and the rhymes will swing into place like soldiers on parade, and you may - you may achieve a poem!

Criticism of Poetry

The May issue of THE WRITER will inaugurate a new feature
of poetry criticism by Robert Hillyer, whose series on the tech-
nique of modern poetry has been widely popular. Mr. Hillyer
will criticise two poems every month, without mentioning the
authors' names. Any subscriber to THE WRITER desiring to sub-
mit poems for such criticism may send them to Mr. Hillyer in
care of THE WRITER. Please note that no copies of poems will
be returned, whether or not they are discussed.

Writing and Placing the Children's Play

By CONSTANCE D'ARCY MACKAY

HERE is an art about which no book

THERE is an art aboun,

has ever been written; about which the card catalogues of the vastest public libraries are silent; about which no brochure is passed from hand to hand. And yet it is a craft that is sedulously practiced not only in Europe but in America. It thrives in playhouses and classrooms, in colleges, in Little Theatres, and in teachers' training schools. Great playwrights as well as the veriest beginners have experimented with it. It is the art of the children's play.

What is its fascination for the playwright or the tyro? Only in a very few instances is it a thing of great money making power. The poet and the children's playwright are alike in knowing that their reward, as Robert Louis Stevenson has said, must be in the work itself.

There have been a few instances where children's plays have brought fame and fortune to their authors: "Peter Pan," by Barrie; "Editha's Burglar" and "Little Lord Fauntleroy," by Frances Hodgson Burnett; "The Blue Bird," by Maeterlinck (which with the exception of a few scenes is really a children's play), and perhaps a little less successful from the monetary point of view, but every whit as delightful, "Treasure Island," by Jules Eckert Goodman, "Snow White," by Jessie Graham White, and, for children who are a little older, "Prince and Pauper," "The Piper," "Little Women," "Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm," and "Mother Carey's and "Mother Carey's Chickens."

Since this range covers twenty years, it is evident that no great financial reward can be looked for. No, it is the lure of the work itself the touch of fantasy that delights the experienced playwright, the deliberate stepping back into romance, history, or faerie, the Never Never Land of childhood. And for

the inexperienced playwright it offers a wonderful field for the testing, strengthening, and developing of his powers. Nor are the financial rewards of the average successful children's play which is given in Little Theatres, colleges, and schools a sneezing matter.

Percival Wilde (himself the author of several charming children's plays, including "Reverie" and "The Toy Shop"), has recently intimated that such a children's play taken over a certain number of years, will, if it proves popular, bring its author a sum in at least four figures. To gain this figure or perhaps to have his rewards run into five figures the playwright takes into account magazine rights, book rights, second serial rights, production rights, and (but this is very rare) movie rights, though it is hoped that with the new movement for movies there will actually be children's movies and then these rights will yield more revenue.

Children's plays read over the radio bring money to the reader; but not to the author of the plays. Perhaps, this, too, will change.

American managers nowadays will not consider children's plays, so it is of no use for the tyro to waste time on that field. But in a practical notebook should be kept a list of Children's Theatres and Little Theatres to which his play may be sent when it is completed. An even wiser method is to try out the play under an assumed name and a temporary title in the locality in which the author lives, testing the response of the child audience, watching to see where the play needs cutting, or strengthening, or crystallizing. Playwriting is rewriting. But, as has already been suggested, it is the joy of the work itself which has led such well-known dramatists as Lady Gregory, Walter de la Mare, and Milne to dip their experienced pens into the rainbow fluid of fantasy.

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