MUCH

UCH has been said about the qualifications a short story writer should bring to his work. A few laboratory attempts have been made to determine experimentally these qualifications but the results so far have been insignificant. That the short story writer employs certain faculties in the evolution and execution of a story is, of course, obvious, but the relative importance of these faculties is, as yet, a matter of divided opinion. Writers, however, — who usually take their equipment for granted - could hardly fail to profit from a classification and discussion of the principal elements that constitute the mental and emotional equipment of the successful fiction writer.

POWER OF OBSERVATION. The writer utilizes all the experiences of events, people, places, and thoughts — or, in other words, plot, character, atmosphere, and theme that life has brought to him. But he must be able to observe this fund of knowledge that has come to him before he can use it. He must learn to know characters first hand, to know how they behave under the stress of circumstances, how they react to events, places, and ideas.

The necessary extent of a writer's observation has frequently been a matter of debate. No one will deny that the wider and keener the observation the greater the equipment, but this does not mean that every writer must travel extensively and participate in the hec

tic life of great cities, in the spectacular dramas of unusually active personalities, or in world-wide movements or events. One may observe life in one's own village and produce highly dramatic fiction. We all remember Mrs. Gaskell's "Cranford" with its quiet little dramas and keen visualizations. Jane Austen's novels and Louisa M. Alcott's novels are other illustrations. Sherwood Sherwood Anderson's "Winesburg, Ohio" contains poignant stories, born of keen observation of life and character in a small town. It is close observation which gives to the finished product of a writer verisimilitude, that quality of lifelikeness which we frequently compliment by designating as Realism.

IMAGINATION. The power to visualize requiries an active imagination. In his effort to explain characters and their behavior the writer uses his imagination to imbue his fictive people with individuality and intimacy. It is necessary for him to imagine how people would act in the circumstances in which he has placed his characters. It is necessary to imagine just what they would say and how they would say it, just how they would feel and think. And it is necessary to imagine clearly the precise situations in which they would act most characteristically.

INVENTIVENESS. The ability to observe people and to imagine their possible reaction to a given situation does not necessarily pro

vide the power to supply those dramatic situations which test character. Inventiveness is necessary to supply the threads, the sad or cheerful, whimsical or ironical incident which changes the life of a person and the destiny of a story. The ingenuity of drawing out a character, of sounding his temperament, of bringing out all his dormant forces and into active play and interplay requires a faculty capable of complicated patterns, requires the power of inventiveness.

THE SENSE OF THE DRAMATIC. Any examination of amateur stories discloses a surprising lack of the sense of the dramatic on the part of most would-be story writers. Practically, the sense of the dramatic can be divided into two distinct forces: the ability to select what is potent and interesting in the mass of trivialities that dominate existence, and the power of rendering trivialities dramatic. If "the work of the Short Story is to make life vivid by signalizing moments”. as one textbook on story-writing claims the writer must have a sense of the dramatic strong enough to determine what a signalizing moment is. The almost classic example of Mary E. Wilkins Freeman's "Revolt of Mother" exploits just such a moment. In the twenty years of the old couple's life together there have been many moments but not sufficiently dramatic for the purpose of the author. But the building of the new barn after twenty years of Mother's waiting for a new home does constitute a signalizing moment and

Mother revolts.

MASTERY OF THE MEDIUM OF EXPRESSION. A thorough knowledge of the language in which one writes is essential. A vocabulary comprehensive enough to express all the shades of thought and emotion that the writer may wish to convey is an asset well-worth acquiring. Words are the bricks with which the literary builder constructs his edifice and he ought to know their potentialities and characteristics.

The number of manuscripts seeking a market that show a shaky knowledge of elemen

tary grammar is much too large, as any editor will testify. It is a matter of common sense that he who undertakes to write for publication should acquaint himself with the ordinary grammatical conventions of his medium.

But mastery of the medium does not end with the acquisition of a comprehensive vocabulary and a knowledge of grammar. Effectiveness of expression requires a knowledge of sentence and paragraph structure, of rhetorical arrangement and emphasis. Dullness, monotony, and flatness of expression are all too prevalent in amateur manuscripts and not infrequent in manuscripts by professionals.

This brief discussion of the equipment of the story writer may need further explanation. The five qualifications enumerated are not presented as absolute requirements without which no writer can succeed. They are desirable and the writer who is endowed with them by nature is fortunate indeed. But what of those who have not been blessed with these aptitudes or have been blessed with but one or a few of them?

An interesting answer to these queries is found in the autobiography of Hugh Walpole. This English novelist, who has also published some of the most brilliant short stories written in the past decade, admits his limitation of artistic equipment. "I discovered," he writes, "at a very early age, that I had neither an accurate nor deeply penetrating mind. My brain was soppy shocking and is so . . . to this day. I disMy memory was covered also another thing about my thoughts

that they were never either new or original. Certain perceptions I had, a feeling for atmosphere and an eager passion for whatever seemed to me beautiful in any shape or form, but when I had seen my beautiful thing I could not translate it into something 'rich and strange' and I cannot today. My envy of certain poets of my time. tain poets of my time . . . for their wonderful, sharp, poignant perception of the beauty and strangeness of everyday things is sharp to bitterness. And yet 'envy' is not the word nor 'bitterness' either. Their gifts give

her first job in New York, where, after several years of newspaper work in Milwaukee, she went "to find more romance." There her first reportorial work was secured by presenting to the city editor of the New York World a list of suggested subjects for news stories. She was allowed to try some of them on the chance of acceptance, and she soon showed unusual talent for interviewing. Her quiet charm, her success in covering the stiffest assignments, her infinite capacity for writing anytime and anywhere, soon made her a distinctive and popular figure in New York literary circles. There was a finish, a delicate humor, to that early work that promised something more as she came to know life and know its values. Determined to write fiction, she gave up reportorial work, doing enough special articles to support herself, but for a long time she could not sell her stories.

Her first novel, "Romance," appeared in 1906, but Miss Gale says that the only novel previous to "Miss Lulu Bett" which she would care to have mentioned is "Birth," published in 1918. "Miss Lulu Bett," published in 1920, won the Pulitzer Prize. She also dramatized this book in a week for its successful Broadway appearance. In 1923 "Faint Perfume" was published.

Of "Birth," "Miss Lulu Bett," and "Faint Perfume," Wilson Follett says:

"The first sums up and closes a long but prelimi

nary stage of this author's development. The second represents her instant attainment, without ostensible preparation or transition, of unqualified mastery in a medium as different from the former one as etching is different from photography. And the last, 'Faint Perfume,' is corroboration and promise. Briefly, the fact of present significance - the fact

as dramatic, as everyday people. When she began to study people, to be interested in common things, to portray character through small incidents, she really began to write. But she also realized that in addition to a knowledge of human beings, she must use that knowledge sympathetically. "People," she has said, "want to meet their own problems in a story, but they never respond to cynicism."

most heavily is that Miss Gale has done it again. One such triumph as 'Miss Lulu Bett' might be interpreted by a fantastic enough skepticism — as an accident, the result of chance and momentary influences; a fluke, a miracle. 'Faint Perfume' eliminates this interpretation and makes it certain, to even the most skeptical, that the miracle is not the book but Miss Gale herself. Both books are natural enough manifestations of that new person whom she has marvelously contrived to become. Granted this person, who certainly could have been foreseen by nothing that preceded her advent, to believe in the books still unwritten is not so much an act of faith as the mere recognition of a fact accomplished. . . And now, in 'Preface to a Life,' we find the two extremes of Miss Gale's development brought to

stories number more than one hundred.

With the realization that people want human nature and that human nature is the same in New York as in Friendship Village, Miss Gale returned to Portage to write. She became a persistent winner of prizes. Charles Hanson Towne, in his new book, "Adventures in Editing," tells of her reception of his announcement that she had won the Delineator Two-Thousand-Dollar Prize for her story, "The Ancient Dawn."

in the method of realism or veritism. 'Miss Lulu Bett' and 'Faint Perfume' were each impressionism applied to a life's one most crucial and nuclear situation. In the present story of Bernard Mead, lumber dealer of Pauquette, Wisconsin, we have the method of impressionism applied to the entire area of biography. The treatment is all selection, crystalization; yet it is a whole life that we read, a complete round of the normal human relationships. And the title, like the book, tells the deep truth that human beings go from cradle to grave in a mood of expectancy, existing for fulfillments always postponed and never arriving."

"PREFACE to a Life" is a story of the inner

calm and outward frenzy of Bernard Mead, told in terms of his outward conformation and inner revolt. The significant story is all told in Part III, dated 1925. It shows Bernard for the first time incapable of making his own decision; a force beyond his control has grasped him and carries him with it to a place where he stands alone and misunderstood, not only by those who recognize him merely as an outstanding figure in Pauquette, but by the ones who are closest to him, and in whose intimacy he might have expected to find understanding. A casual reader of Part III would find it hard to countenance Bernard's utter surrender to the immensities of his new conception of life, but the review of the previous quarter-century offered in Parts I and II makes clearer the capitulation which seems to spell ruin for him. Whatever the reader's opinion of Bernard's future, to which he himself feels that fifty years of life have written only the preface, the first two parts of the novel strengthen the claims of his family and friends to the propriety of regarding Bernard as a pathological case. He who has always moulded his course of action to fit the desires of others, when the compromises were often difficult, now cannot a lesser compromise because he is being controlled outside of himself. Small promise for the life to come when the preface results in this situation.

when the way is offered, which borders on insanity.

Bernard Mead is the outstanding figure of the novel, but to him as hero are appended a wealth of lesser characters. It is hard to say which of the women fulfills the functions of heroine; not his wife Laura, surely, but is it Alla Locksley, the woman he might have married or is it his mother, who in the end comes nearest to comprehending him? Seldom will you find so many excellent subordinate characters used to such scattering and yet definite purpose. It would seem that Miss Gale felt so plainly the personalities of all the residents of Pauquette that she could not keep them out of the pages of her book. For which, of course, thanks be. Whenever some new phase of life's puzzle needs to be introduced for Bernard's development, a minutely-drawn new character appears to sponsor the introduction. Thus we have the casual words and thoughts of Mrs. Molly Bitlow and Orville Henderson; the aunts, Antoinette and Marcia, and Leon Ballard who married Marcia and died; Belnap, who married Alla but failed to remain sane. Dr. McCormack; Augustus Barling; Curtis the superintendent; the gentleman referred to merely as "the Pauquette rector"; all these contributors to Mead's life are moved in and out of the story quickly and surely, but they leave on the reader a substantial impression. The hovering individuality named, appropriately, Dr. Dove, appears in the beginning and does her part; steps inconsequently to the background and then fades entirely from view. But at the best time she reappears, sending flowers to one not dead, and eventually taking up her abode with the Meads once more, by that act implying that Bernard Mead is a subject for care. Even the dead men of Pauquette, revealed Spoon River-like in Bernard's thoughts

The work of the first two parts is to show that had not Bernard succumbed to the control of his numerous female relatives for twenty-five mature years had he turned to love and Alla rather than to duty and three generations of adoring women living too close to him he would have escaped sooner and more gradually from the suppressions which, long-endured, could result only in an escape,