CHAPTER X
PLEASING THE READER
Divide all readers into majority and minority. It is legitimate and profitable to aim at either. Now make your big decision, and it is a very big one. At which of these will you aim? If the majority, study and analyze their tastes and reactions. If the minority, study and analyze the majority first; then study the minority. Their tastes are not necessarily opposite, but they are necessarily different, also various; the minority are a unit only in being different from the majority. But you can reach them fairly well merely by giving them the opposite of what the majority like. Your problem is whether you can get a better slice of attention from the majority of readers in competition with the majority of writers or from the minority of readers in competition with a minority of writers.
Majority vs. Minority.—Your own peculiar gifts and inclinations in writing should be the deciding factor, but you can make no intelligent decision until you really have some understanding of the two groups between which you must decide. If you write for money only, study them till you have your human-nature formulas at your finger-ends and almost automatically apply them to every idea, expression or bit of material that comes up for consideration. If you write for art only, study them just the same (you'll be getting the best material in the world), but instead of turning the results into formulas turn them into your understanding. If you write according to the method—commonly called inspiration and attributed to what we, sometimes hastily, term genius—of merely exploding yourself into the world at large without deigning to look at said world, continue to explode as usual, but when your creation is all created go over it with pencil, blue-pencil and waste-basket in the light of knowledge and understanding of whichever audience you prefer as target, and make very, very sure that what you inspired into your story is going to reach that audience just as you intended it should and is going to please and interest them as much as you fondly imagined.
For, you see, you are almost certainly not a genius. A genius makes his own rules and they are better for his case than are any rules other people can make for him. If any genius is by strange chance reading this book I hope he will stop and read no other in place of it. He will almost surely do far better without. God knows the world is too full of rules for writing fiction and of people who allow the rules to ride them out of all ability to use the rules. The proper function of rules is that of mere guides and suggestions to be weighed, analyzed, and then either discarded or so thoroughly absorbed that their application during the act of creating is automatic and subconscious and their use as tests after creating is no more than the author's own spontaneously critical view of what he has written. Nothing in this book is intended to hang like a "Do it now" motto on the author's wall; its one intention is to give him a fresh point of view and the kind of foundation that will enable him to make his own rules out of his own understanding.
In this book we are concerned primarily with the majority of readers and, unless otherwise specified, have in mind his likings and reactions.
Choice of Material and Theme.—The majority of readers would probably value their lives above any other selfish consideration—life in the sense of existence but also in the sense of health and vigor. Next, such things as love, success, wealth, happiness, uplift, knowledge, beauty and contest, not necessarily in the order named. These, or combinations of these, such as success in a contest for life or love or wealth, offer a safe beginning in selecting material or a theme for fiction. These are the fundamental things vital to human beings. The further you get from them, the more must you approach appeal to a minority. (The majority, of course, does not always consist of the same individuals, but merely of most individuals, and shifts in membership more or less with each shift of point at issue.)
Happiness.—Human beings would on the whole rather be happy than unhappy. Therefore happy themes and pleasant material are surest for pleasing the majority. Generally speaking, people read fiction for entertainment and prefer feeling happier rather than unhappier when they lay down a story. Sympathy, morbidness and a desire to play with the fire of fear, horror and suffering give rise to contrary tastes in fiction, the drama and other forms of art, but the general, fundamental desire is for happiness.
What is happiness? I attempt no definition. One man knows probably as well as any other. All of us can watch other human beings and have a very fair idea of what makes most of them happy.
Generalizations on human nature are unsafe but, to take an extreme case, a story of cripples, deformities and disease, unless this material is very strongly counteracted with success, love, sympathy, etc., would please none but abnormal readers. Deformities and disease offend the inherent love of life, health and beauty. Again, the majority prefer non-tragic stories, preferring to think of life rather than death, of success rather than unsuccess.
Let me make it emphatically plain that I am attempting no such foolish thing as a catalogue of material for fiction. My one purpose is to lead the writer into doing what he so often fails to do—consider his material very carefully from the point of view of the probable reactions of human beings instead of choosing it according to God knows what silly rules for writing fiction or merely repeating the material and themes he has seen that other writers use.
A few stray points may be of some service:
The beginners and the very young are as a class the writers most given to tragedy and morbidness. As they develop they generally change to more cheerful material.
The percentage of tragic and morbid stories would dwindle rapidly if it were not for the empty writer's desire to "do something strong" and his inability to get strength in any other way.
The horror story has its legitimate place, as has any story dealing with human emotions, which are the very heart-food of fiction and of unfailing interest to the human readers. Suffering, unsuccess, death, all the unpleasant things you please, are good fiction material. But, if I may make the distinction, they are good, not because they hurt, but because, like happier things, they appeal to the readers' human sympathy and understanding.
Since I shall not give it space anywhere else, the question of realism versus idealism may be dragged in here from the point of view of the readers' liking. When I first came to New York, in youthful throes over this and similar momentous questions, I had the good fortune of a letter to William Dean Howells and, trembling at this God-given opportunity, broached my chief problem. Mr. Howells was incapable of anything but gentleness, and the process of his gentleness in my case was so kindly that its words are no longer clear in my memory, but the gist of his reply is very clear indeed. He told me to go ride on a Fifth Avenue bus and write down whatever caught the attention of a young man fresh to New York. I pass on to others that very excellent advice. Go ride on a bus or sit still somewhere and write about whatever catches your attention. The question of whether the result is realism or idealism is one you can afford to forget, for the main point is that you should follow your own particular gift for seeing life. The only attention you need give the result is consideration of its appeal to people in general, changing or not changing the result according to the relative value you assign to popularity and art, remembering that the two need not be mutually exclusive goals and that either realism or idealism finds response in a sufficient number of readers.
The Philosophy of Fiction.—Doubtless there are a hundred explanations of the fundamental appeal of fiction to human beings. That given by George Henry Lewes seems particularly illuminating and practically helpful.
It is, in substance, as I recollect it:
Fiction appeals to man because it enables him to attain vicariously, through the characters in the story world, the perfection and success he can not attain in real life, and to live for a while in a world of his own choosing instead of in the real world that has been thrust upon him.
The first part of this definition does not seem to apply to realistic and analytical fiction, though the second part does, nor does any of the definition seem to take sufficient account of the reader's enjoyment of the exercise of his sympathies or the broadening of his understanding and knowledge or of his sheer joy in artistic excellence. This apparent failure to cover the ground, however, is not so real as it seems. Joy over artistic excellence is essentially a critic's feeling, not a reader's—the joy of a technician, not of a recipient, of a cook, not of a diner. And if you will apply my distinction between fiction and the various things for which fiction is a mere vehicle, the contributions to understanding and knowledge are not a part of fiction itself and therefore need not be covered by the definition. The exercise of the reader's sympathies may also be accounted for by strict application of this distinction; or the "vicarious perfection and success" of the definition may be broadened to a comparison of the reader's own life with lives of the story people, better here, worse there, either stimulating variety and satisfaction or affording the vicarious improvement of condition.
But, whether or not you consider the definition all inclusive, there is in it a fundamental idea whose practical application would go far toward winning for most writers a far stronger and deeper hold on readers. Sophomoric critics and writers may be inclined to sweep it off the boards, since it both deals with fundamentals and undermines some habitual angles of criticism, but most submitted manuscripts and perhaps most published fiction would be much stronger if the writers thereof had made intelligent application of an intelligent understanding of this principle. Perfection and success have in them the element of completeness, and completeness is a fundamental desire of the human being, partly because of the pleasant restfulness of its attainment.
I do not say that every story should reek with success and perfection, but I do say that before you even partly eliminate these factors you should have an intelligent understanding of what you are doing and should sacrifice them only for such other factors or elements as you are sure will more than compensate in the particular case.
Also I say, without hesitation or qualification, that, in the type of story containing little or no fundamental appeal other than a march of events and the success of a more or less perfect hero or heroine (the type that includes the large majority of submitted manuscripts) the application of this principle means an incalculable increase in effectiveness. In other words, if the presentation of success and perfection constitutes a fundamental appeal to readers, see to it that you give these things in rich measure unless you compensate fully for their absence or partial absence.
Note that these elements are given lavishly in the "dime-novel" type of story. This is probably the lowest type of all (not because of the superabundance of action, but because of unnaturalness and all-round poor workmanship), yet its audience is huge and its hold on them tremendous. And if you think this audience is limited to the unsophisticated and the very young, you are vastly mistaken; that hold is too fundamental for a majority of even our cultured classes to escape from if it is given fair opportunity. To advance exciting and abundant action as the sole cause for this hold, as is commonly done, does not sufficiently account for it. The proof is that practically none of these stories is willing to trust to action alone for popularity. They almost always include another factor. And that factor is the double one of the success and perfection of the hero. The authors of such stories may include this factor only because they have seen others do so and may not analyze beyond "people like it," but in that analysis they are thinking straighter and truer than are most of the learned and scholarly exponents and critics of the writing art who lose themselves, their goal and their followers in a maze of artificial regulations and meaningless formalities.
Reality.—To preserve balance, let us leap to the opposite point of view and review in our minds what was said in the chapter on convincingness. For the reader's pleasure in vicarious success and perfection to have soundness and stability, or for any other fiction purpose I can conceive, the story world must be a reproduction of our real world or of a modified real world consistent within itself. Part of a reader's fiction enjoyment lies in his familiarity with things presented, in finding things in their proper place, in the vanity of "I know that already." That a hero should attain remarkably complete success is acceptable to our reason because such success is frequently attained in real life. But a hero made remarkably perfect in all respects is likely to be too much for our common sense and to break the story's hold on us. "There ain't no such animile;" we know it, and, however much the joys of vicarious perfection may lure us along through the story, the illusion is seriously weakened.
The obvious remedy is a balanced middle course.
Giving Characters Strong Appeal.—In following this middle course the need in fiction to-day, aside from the dime-novel type, is more emphasis on the perfection element, not less. (Incidentally, it would help characterize a hero, and an appalling percentage of submitted manuscripts lack even that amount of characterization.) Give your hero or heroine sufficient faults and weak points to make him as human and fallible as you please, but give him also the strong elemental appeal of being close to the limit of human perfection in one or two traits of character, or physical or mental characteristics, or along one or possibly two lines of ability. Unless, of course, you are fully prepared to counteract the loss of this valuable asset with other elements. A sadly large proportion of would-be writers are not thus prepared, and many a story by a skilled author could have been improved by an understanding use of this element.
The same principles apply in less degree to minor characters. Villains, of course, aim at perfection in evil and their success generally must cease at whatever point will render the hero's success most effective, but in their case the conflict between naturalness and success-perfection is often easily avoided by the simple and effective device of giving your villain a quite human allowance of commendable or pleasing perfections, leaving the net villain-product as evil as you please—the engaging villain, the fascinating rascal, the merely human trouble-maker.
The usual fundamental compensation for a story's lack of perfection and success appeal is the appeal to the reader's sympathy with elements similar to those in himself or his life, including the appeal to his sympathy for those suffering or enjoying as he has done. Personally I'm rather inclined to believe the substitute not quite so effective, the other appeal seeming the more elemental and therefore the stronger of the two. Lewes' definition can be made sufficiently inclusive if we say that fiction's hold is due to its enabling the human being to live life vicariously, at his own pleasure, on his own initiative and always as the ultimate controller of destiny, since he can at any moment toss the story aside, wiping out the entire story world. But if this is so, isn't it safe to say that the normal human being on the whole prefers pleasure to pain and finds more pleasure in success and perfection than in failure and imperfection? Psychologists can justly retort with, "But what are pleasure and pain?" The common-sense answer to that is that the psychologists can't agree among themselves upon a definition, that fiction is not written for psychologists but for people in general, and that most of us have a sufficiently definite idea of what pleases people in general and what is disagreeable to them.
When you come to the chapter on "Character" consider in connection with some of the points suggested there the points here suggested as to perfection of hero. Both there and here it might pay to run over in your mind the story characters that have best stood the test of ages, from "Achilles," "Ulysses" and the faithful "Achates" up to modern times. Best of all, forget you are a writer and as a reader shake yourself free for a few moments from all book learning and culture, all preconceived ideas, all opinions of all critics and very particularly free from self-deception. Reduce yourself thus to a plain, common or garden human being, open to any natural impulses or likings and honestly willing to recognize and confess them. Then pick out the heroes or heroines you most enjoy, that have the strongest hold on your liking, being careful not to test by the literary criteria that have been imposed on you. If you do this honestly and keenly you may not wholly agree with my point of view, but I'll venture you'll consider your time well spent and that your allegiance to various learned dicta may be somewhat shaken. Particularly if you habitually identify yourself with the heroes as you read, don't you find yourself reveling in a hero's superior wit, grace, comeliness, strength or skill? Isn't this proud joy in him something deeper and more abiding than tests imposed by sophistication? Be honest.
To get at the whole matter from a different angle, don't human beings like to idealize?
One other point. When the world was young the individual rose or fell, lived or died, in accordance with the degree of his physical strength, skill, courage and beauty. Mental and moral values were later factors. The physical is the most elemental, the most deeply rooted, in the race. Also, so long as we have wars and policemen, it remains the strongest, the court of last appeal. A thousand years from now it may have sunk into comparative oblivion, but even then the racial instinct of respect and admiration for it will persist. If you doubt its greater hold on human beings at large, forget books and study people—not just one class or type but people in general. No, I am not a materialist; the moral or mental can overcome the physical, but it is the physical that is there first, that is the more elemental in matters of liking and disliking, the strongest in natural impulse. And what I am trying to drive home is the need of greater consideration of the elemental likes and dislikes of readers, for they are being forgotten under the more vocal and visible likes and dislikes imposed by a civilization and culture often artificial and therefore weaker.
Why not, then, whenever you can do so without sacrifice of values more important to the particular case (as you generally can), see to it that your hero makes this fundamental appeal in some way?
On the other hand, remember the facts of life. Listen to the following from William Ashley Anderson, a writer who, though an American, fought through the British East African campaign and has spent a good many of his years in meeting life in the raw at far corners of the world as well as life in its softer centers:
"Villains who always look like monsters strike me as burlesque.
"Villainous-looking men are frequently good-hearted and heroic. Good-looking men may be fiends. Character is really indicated more by expression than features—and a clever villain can control his expression. Primitive types, of course, betray themselves most easily. The expression of the most cruel men is usually dull, stupid, hungry—or with a look of wildness or concentration in the eyes. A good man, drunk, may become an arch-villain. His looks then might be the looks of an arch-villain; sober, he might have the appearance of an angel. 'Lucifer was the most beautiful of all the angels'!
"By the same token the employment of handsome, powerful heroes is often exasperating. On the average, handsome men are less likely to be brave than homely men—because of the very fact that they are handsome; and a man with pretty features seldom has a strong character (since the character is often spoiled by too much praise in youth, or too much flattery from women after reaching adolescence). You remember Cæsar's encounter with Pompey, when the former instructed his hard-bitten veterans to strike at the faces of the handsome soldiers of Pompey.
"It is a fact that a man conscious of a handsome set of teeth recoils more at the thought of losing several of them from a blow than he does at the idea of broken limbs."
Poor Heroes, Heroines and Villains.—By all means do not idealize into such perfection and success that your characters are unhuman and unconvincing, but, I implore you, in making them human do not add any recruits to the great army of main characters who are unintentionally presented as imbecile. Sometimes carelessness is responsible for this stupidity, but generally the cause is the writer's surrender to the difficulties of plot—it is so easy to keep the plot machinery clanking along by having the hero become a temporary idiot. Misunderstanding may be the basis of tragedy and drama, but a man can misunderstand without qualifying for an asylum for the feeble-minded.
Please also lend your efforts to the needed work of abolishing the heroine, supposed to be all that is most worth striving for, who is really empty of everything except vanity, false pride, cruelty and sublime selfishness—who, at her worst, offers her hand to the winner of a contest or the performer of some feat. I wish some one would organize a writers' league whose members were pledged either not to let their heroes leap into the arena at her bidding or to have them, after recovering her glove, throw it in her face. But I fear she will continue to hold sway undetected, as she does in real life. Perhaps the heroes are as bad, but I am a man myself.
Moral Values.—Nearly all people are moral to the extent of preferring good to bad when they have nothing at stake, as, for example, when reacting to merely imaginary people in a story. They side with the hero against the villain.
Readers with a discriminating sense of moral values are likely to be alienated by a character, supposed to be good, who is made to act contrary to good morals or ethics by the apparently unconscious author. Readers without this discriminating sense are a moral responsibility laid upon the author; he is culpable if he still further befogs their discrimination between right and wrong by winning their approval of a character and then letting that character seduce them unawares into bad ethics.
Fiction is more than a reflection of the times; it is a builder of its contemporaneous thought and morality. If I were asked to name the five greatest influences upon the character of a people I should most emphatically include fiction and it would be nearer first than last among the five. Watch its effect upon your child. If you are of analytical turn, seek far back in memory for the origin of your own ethical standards and ideals, or for the influences that strengthened or weakened them. Watch the mass of people respond to the standards held up by fiction—and by the drama, motion-pictures and other forms of art. Do not swallow the excuse that they "only give what the people demand"; those of you on the "inside" will know better.
I know the defenses offered for the picaresque story. I am familiar with the plea of "art for art's sake." It seems to me mere idle talk. Art is for life, not life for art, and if art, however justified by its own laws, pollutes the soul of a people, then the cause of that pollution should be wiped out.
Realism and the spread of knowledge can justify a picture of life as it is, though too often the author's real interest is not in the reality of what he presents but in its ugliness. An author is justified in using fiction as an instrument against what he sincerely believes mistaken morality, though his own morality is impeached if he ventures his dissent without most anxious consideration of the seriousness of what he is doing. But there is no excuse whatever for presenting ugliness as beauty, crime dressed in honor, vice as admirable, crookedness as amusing, rottenness as normal, evil as good. He who makes a criminal a hero is playing with hell-fire, if I may use so old-fashioned a metaphor. He who writes a story of crime triumphant is a debaucher of public morals. He who presents, however bedecked and disguised, a parasite, a fop, a hypocrite, a brute, a crook, as admirable is a dry-rot in the heart of the people. He who fills his stories with sex, not for the purposes of honest realism but for the sake of sex-exciting more nickels from human beings, is far lower and less courageous than the pimp.
I can not ask you to accept my point of view in these matters, yet, because of the broadcast, invidious evil involved and because the morality of fiction seems a thing seldom touched upon by text-books, I do ask that you weigh your responsibilities. A surprising number of offenses are purely inadvertent and are eagerly corrected by the authors when pointed out, for most writers are not evil in intent. These slips, at least, can be more guarded against, for they are due more to lack of careful weighing than to lack of a moral sense. One common and easily detected lapse is the use of the principle that the end justifies the means—the philanthropic criminal, for example, by emulating whom any one can justify almost anything he wishes to do.
From the purely practical point of view these things are for the most part irritations to the discriminating. Often with the undiscriminating they add nothing to the story's effectiveness, though operating in real life after the story itself is forgotten. As to the popular and financial success of polluting fiction you will notice that the public is sufficiently sound usually to react eventually, especially if given half a chance, against the very thing it has embraced.
Needless Offenses.—Write it down in red ink that any slur upon any religion that creeps into your story will cause everything else to be forgotten by some of your readers in their indignation over that affront. And make up your mind that anything offering even the most remote possibility of being twisted into a slur will assuredly be so twisted. Protestants, Catholics, Jews, Scientists, all have representatives with chips balanced on the edge of their shoulders. Generally the slur is taken as a deliberate insult on the part of both author and editor, often as sure evidence of a systematic campaign of propaganda. If the hero happens to be a minister, priest, rabbi or reader, other sects accuse you of propaganda in favor of the particular religion involved. If the villain happens to be one of these, then it is followers of the religion involved who complain. More, the villain need be only a follower of some religion to convict you of felonious assault upon that religion itself.
Fortunately, villains generally have no religion to speak of, but sometimes it is essential to the story's best interests to include them at least formally in some particular fold. When it is, do so, taking care to avoid any faint suggestion of connection between their villainy and their faith. The type of mind that considers the villainy of a single fictional character an attack on a religion as a whole can be given consideration only within the bounds of reason.
Readers are sensitive, too, on the subject of race. We have a saying in the office that the only safe villain is an atheist American. Since 1917 atheist Germans can be used; in fact, they are being used until the monotony of it is wearing. A Swede as villain is taken by some as sure sign of malignant persecution of the Swedes, an English hero proves anti-Irish propaganda, of late even Mexicans and Spaniards begin to protest against a fellow countryman's being used as villain, thus robbing authors of a time-honored resource.
Even local pride rallies to the attack if fiction happens to paint its locality in unpleasing colors.
Write your story according to its just demands, but avoid needlessly trampling upon the toes of any of your readers. Sore toes are not conducive to the imposition of successful illusions.
Positive vs. Negative Plots.—Lack of consideration of this fundamental question leads many writers into losing, unconsciously and often needlessly, one strong, elemental hold upon the sympathies of their readers.
Human beings like a hero better than a villain. They enjoy success more than failure, construction better than destruction. Consequently they derive more pleasure from following to success the fortunes of a hero, with whom they sympathize or identify themselves, than from following to failure the fortunes of a villain, who stands always for the opposition. Both appeals are strong, but the point is that the first is essentially the stronger.
Analyze a little further the reader's reactions to a negative plot. The villain is the central character, the course of whose fortunes forms the thread of the story. The reader, of course, knows this from the start. He knows, too, from experience with fiction, that this villain is almost surely doomed to failure and possibly death and that the interest of the story lies in watching him be hunted down, defeat his own ends or get caught in a net. A strong interest, assuredly, but inherently second in strength and lure to that of a positive plot. In the first place, the reader knows that he is going to a funeral, real or metaphorical. Some people like that above all other things, but most do not. Vengeance is strong in appeal, but at best vengeance is only an attempted and inadequate compensation for loss of success or perfection. Second, the reader can give only divided interest and allegiance. He generally prefers that right should triumph, so he arrays his sympathies against the villain, but fiction experience has firmly fixed in him the habit of arraying himself with the central character, in this case the villain. The usual result is that his interest has to straddle—divide; he is at war with himself throughout the story. If the villain succeeds, the reader's moral sense is hurt. If the villain fails, the reader's primal sympathy with the central character of a narrative is hurt. He can't have an unrestrained good time no matter what happens. And his fundamental purpose in reading fiction is to have a good time.
Fiction with only positive plots would be monotonous and the negative plot gives a needed relief, but when you turn to it remember you are under the handicap of a weakened hold upon your readers.
Restraint at the Wrong Time.—Have you ever considered how often the reader is robbed of his vicarious enjoyment by being hurried on when he'd really like to stop and revel or gloat? For example, take the villain. After a career of hellish atrocities and maddening injuries to others, often causing years of suffering, he is paid back during the few seconds required to make a quick neat bullet-hole through his forehead or to plunge him over a cliff. I confess myself un-Christian enough to long for a more proportionate punishment. So do all other readers I have questioned.
Take the lost-treasure story for another bald, extreme example. After pursuing the treasure through a whole story of obstacles and strain you finally get it. The author tells you you have it and promptly drops the curtain. You don't get a chance to run the doubloons through your fingers, to finger the jewels, to sit on the bar silver, to review happily all the pleasant things you can do with it. Yet if you really found a treasure, in those first moments of final attainment all the long struggle for it might become as nothing and, in looking back, these might be the moments most vivid and colorful. Generally when story people find the treasure they don't seem to care a hang. In real life there would be drunkenness or delirium of joy. Edwin Lefèvre first called my attention to this cruelty by authors, vowing to write a treasure story in which the reader would have a real chance to gloat. If he does so, I've an idea most of us will get particular enjoyment therefrom.
And the love-story. The monotony of what is technically and vulgarly known as "the clinch at the end" is sound reason for not always carrying the reader quite that far along the path of true love, and yet, in spite of all our sophistication, don't most of us down in our hearts enjoy that satisfying culmination of the events we've been following with so much interest? Wasn't it what we wished to happen? Why, then, should we enjoy leaving before it does happen, carrying with us only a hint or an inference that it would happen at all? To be sure, we can imagine the scene to suit each his own particular fancy instead of having to accept the author's, and, however individual the story may have been, the "clinch" is comparatively a standardized performance with fewer enticements of novelty, and yet—most human beings are human beings.
The above are crude illustrations, but they illustrate an important principle in the business of pleasing a reader. The usual failure to take advantage of the opportunity is only another one of the thousand losses of advantage resulting from not training writers to habitual weighing of the reader's reactions, particularly his elemental reactions. Proportionate space and emphasis in a story must be determined primarily by relation to plot, but the object of plot is interest and if you can, without much or any loss in general proportion, give the reader somewhat more play at this or that point for the natural reactions he wishes to exercise, why not pleasure him instead of suppressing him?
It is not a question of pleasant versus unpleasant reactions, but of whatever the reader happens to feel. It may be horror or some other unhappy emotion for which he desires more time and space. The important thing is to give him what he desires.
Talking Down to the Reader.—Naturally no reader likes it and illusion suffers in consequence. Don't be a schoolmaster or an encyclopedia to him. If it's necessary to give him information, weave it gently and unobtrusively into the story. Don't tell him things he is almost sure to know already. Treat him as an equal; don't speak down to him from a superior height. It seems bad taste, as well as a loss in effectiveness, to ask a reader's interest in your characters and then sneer at them yourself. If you are asking him to join you in the sneering, he may prefer a more kindly and courteous attitude and be irritated at you and your invitation.
General Irritations and a General Recipe.—Most of the points covered in the last five chapters have general application to the reader's likes and dislikes.
Note this:
On most points bearing on the writing of fiction, a well-thought-out violation of the general rule or custom can often increase effectiveness. Old methods and formulas, however sound as a general rule, lose in effect through endless repetition. They have become usual, have worn down their original hold, the reader knows what to expect. Give him something different and he is grateful. Merely to be on the lookout for such opportunities is good for you in that it keeps you from falling into the hopeless rut of routine and slavery to rules.
First-Person Narratives.—Do readers prefer them? I think nobody knows—nor will know until somebody takes a national census on the point. Why not decide the question solely according to the demands of the particular story and your own bent of ability, since readers are divided on the point? Some are irritated by too much "I" and by a point of view limited strictly to one angle; others like the unity and sharp definiteness of such a point of view and freedom from the author's God-like ability to know so much of what goes on in the minds of all the characters.
Fooling the Reader.—Making a fool of a person is not likely to win his sympathy. There is a world of difference between legitimate surprise and deliberately making a reader create and live in an illusion and then showing him he's a fool for having trusted you to guide him aright. The story that, at the very end, proves to have been all a dream (which the author led the reader into believing a reality) is an example of this kind of vaudeville horseplay.
Two Setting Appeals.—Some readers get the greater enjoyment from settings and material with which they are familiar, others from those as far removed as possible from their daily life. In the first case the appeal is probably that of realism mixed with the joys of self-conceit and pride of knowledge, in the second, probably of novelty and of the freedom from the imagination-fettering, homely, routine details that is so characteristic of most classic and some modern tragedy. Here again there is no comprehensive laboratory knowledge, and the reader's reaction should not be made the deciding factor when there is any doubt as to the author's comparative ability or the demands of the particular story itself.
In the case of the "costume" or "doublet and hose" story, as in some other kinds of unfamiliar setting, there is also the appeal of pageantry.
Temporary factors play their part in influencing readers' reactions. When the tide of war fiction began to ebb there was a noticeable reader reaction toward anything that would take one's thoughts away from the Great War. The magazines suddenly shut their doors against stories of the war, but the mere absence of these was not enough: there arose a noticeable demand for fiction that would carry one clear out of these modern times into past eras of greater simplicity and less wholesale horror. War itself was not tabooed, but it must be war of the old-fashioned kind.
CHAPTER XI
PLOT AND STRUCTURE
Throughout all nature, throughout the universe so far as we know it, there is a basic tendency toward unity and growth. The tendency is of course present in the human mind. That is why the human mind demands plot and structure in fiction. In nature's higher manifestations of plant and animal the demand for unity progresses into a demand for organic structure, an assemblage of parts whose respective offices and limitations are determined by their relation to the whole and which therefore, in addition to their intrinsic value, assume a relative value that outranks the intrinsic. Add to the tendencies of unity and growth a tendency toward limit of growth, or perfection. Fiction plot is the result of these three universal demands, and bearing them in mind is a sound foundation from which to consider all problems in connection with plot.
A similar process of reasoning from elemental beginnings would, if relentlessly applied to the laws, traditions and superstitions of art, do more than anything else to free it from chaff, artificialities and misconceptions that have attached themselves to it.
There is even advantage in considering examples from nature for the sake of clearer understanding of the nature and requirements of plot. You already know what plot is, but see whether comparison with the following will not crystallize your concept of it to a degree that will make you largely independent of rules and regulations:
A river-system, a river and its network of tributaries, is like a plot. A unity with growth in a single general direction with its mouth as climax or limit of growth; many elements combining smoothly and perfectly into one.
The tap-root and subsidiary roots of many plants furnish a similar illustration. A tree's framework is an inverted example.
A rope of vines or, more clearly, a man-made piece of rope in the process of making with the loose strands gathered at one end into a closely knit main line.
A snow-slide forced by the terrain to converge all its material into a narrow gap at the foot of the slope.
It would be, I think, a pity if all trees and all river-systems were made in strict accordance with one pattern, as the rules so largely demand of plot-building. Yet either tree or river-system would be no longer such—and a sad spectacle indeed—if it were cut into bits, were large where it should be small or were otherwise changed from its essential nature.
Structure.—It has been said that the short story is far more exacting than the novel in demand for strict unification and rigid enforcement of relative values. That is true in practise and I am not sure that it isn't true in theory. Perhaps the novel escapes through mere laziness or inability of writer and reader to create and receive so large a unit perfectly constructed in all its many details. Perhaps, on the other hand, the novel is a more natural expression by the writer and a more natural and desired form for the reader. Perhaps, if we draw the distinction between novel and romance, only the latter should be held to the strict requirements of short-story structure.
To take the form of strictest requirements, I have found only one rule that seems in practise to produce satisfactory results:
The short story has one main point and only one. It may be the climax of a course of events, an aspect of life, a psychological impasse, what you will. But there must be only one of it. Every other element in the story, every scrap of material, every bit of color, every human trait, everything in the story, must be subsidiary to the main point. No elements are even admitted to the story unless they serve in developing the main point. When admitted they get space and emphasis only in proportion to that service. No one of them is valuable in itself; their values are wholly relative, not intrinsic. (Of course, there is no reason for not abandoning this principle on occasion if you are sure you can better satisfy your readers by so doing.)
Violations of Unity.—Compelling your reader to follow alternately two sets of characters in two sets of scenes is dangerous, since it violates unity unless the reader is kept keenly conscious of their inevitable convergence upon one point. Hopping back and forth in the time of the action is in most cases fatal to unity. Shifting the point of view is objected to on grounds of violated unity—telling your story first from the angle from which events are seen by one character, then from the angle of another character or from that of the author.
Do not leave loose strands dangling along your rope, like a minor character who vanishes without needed explanation, or a line of endeavor suddenly abandoned without a word.
Too many characters are not only an obstacle to clearness but greatly increase the difficulty of unification.
Do not attempt to include too much material, color, life-history or anything else. If your story refuses to unify satisfactorily it may be because you are using more elements than you are able to handle. Even if you can handle all you have, be sure that the expanse of your canvass is not greater than the reader can look at conveniently and without missing some of it. In a general way it is well to tuck it in at the edges, so to speak, and enclose it in a fairly definite picture-frame.
Holding Reader to Correct Plot Line.—It is not sufficient to select and assemble the proper elements according to their relative values. The assignment of proper relative space and emphasis must be managed with such nicety that the reader can not mistake their common direction. He may be kept from knowledge of the goal, but he must know and feel that everything in the story, carrying him along with it, is sweeping along in one single general direction. If he is on a tributary flowing southwest he must know that it is a tributary, not the main stream, that it flows southwest and that the main stream, while it may flow southwest, south or south-east, will hardly flow north.
A reader tends to anticipate, to cast ahead. Make sure that, while you hold from him sufficient to make any desired surprise effective, he does not waste his attention-strength by casting ahead over false trails leading away from your general direction. In other words, keep him in hand from start to finish, being sure his feet follow your path in your direction.
To instill a sense of plot, one must either go into endless rules, exceptions, diagrams and analyses or else present only the fundamentals and commoner guide-posts, leaving the writer to develop his own ability. There has been too much of the former method and I shall not attempt to add further initiative-killing rules, particularly as I believe that the majority of fiction rules can often be violated with good results.
Non-Conformist Plot and Structure.—No rule for fiction has a sound basis unless it is grounded on some such elemental in human nature as an instinctive desire for growth, unity, completeness, a rounded-out whole, symmetry, rhythm, contrast, and so forth. But even an elemental desire can be led to the point of temporary satiety, even contrast itself. Monotony is undoubtedly monotonous.
Consider the reader. Fed year after year with the results of the same rules, with the same literary devices, the same general plots and endings, the same signs along the way, isn't his appetite for standard food sure to be dulled at intervals? He is far wiser and more sophisticated in fiction than you probably think; if he goes right on eating standard food it is often because he finds a scarcity of other kinds. Why not study the condition of his appetite, estimating from how much of certain kinds of food he has had to eat and for how long, and then make a business of feeding him a new kind until he tires of it in turn? A most unliterary suggestion? Perhaps, but I should not wholly relish the task of proving it such.
There are, at least, certain fashions in fiction and even in "literature" that change and change back with the years. The costume story reigns, sinks into oblivion, reigns again. The author chats himself into his stories, keeps out of them, enters once more to chat again. Romance and realism alternate in favor. The critics permit it, though sneering perhaps at each change, just as they are inclined to sneer at both change and permanence themselves.
Why not other changes? For example, more changes from the rules of plot? Many fairly radical changes, indeed, could be made without violation of the really fundamental rules.
Here is the story of an interesting laboratory experiment on the reactions of readers. During the war our managing editor was stationed in one of the largest officers' training camps. He made a business of watching the reactions of his comrades to magazine fiction and of course to our own magazine in particular. It happened that an author asked me to decide a question for him. He was writing a novelette around an historical character and found himself on the horns of a dilemma. Either he must do extreme violence to the facts of that famous person's life, particularly as to sequence of events, or else abandon any attempt at a real fiction plot. I suggested that he abandon the attempt at plot and structure and make the story practically a mere running narrative.
In the training camp the results of that experiment were startling and very suggestive. Among all the stories in books and magazines that structureless novelette reported by far the most comment and praise. The most valuable point was that the readers were sufficiently analytical to know, and state, exactly why they liked it: "Different from other stories." "Couldn't tell what was going to happen." "Couldn't predict the end after reading a third of the way." "Like real life."
Many of them had read numerous other stories by the same author, Hugh Pendexter, dealing with similar material and times, but all these stories had conformed to the laws of plot and structure. Practically none of the readers was sufficiently familiar with the historical character's life to know the material in advance.
Another laboratory experiment. One day in the office some one suggested we hadn't had a "desert island" story for a long while and ought to get one. All agreed, but of course with no enthusiasm; all of us could tell that story in its essentials before it was even written. Then some one wished they'd write "desert island" stories that were different. All seven of us fell to outlining the kind we'd like personally. All seven agreed. All wanted the usual "props" left out and all wanted the castaways to have a real and a realistic struggle for existence—"no self-sacrificing fish," as one put it. There were to be no practical specialists like engineers, sailors, carpenters and botanists in the party. Just every-day people like ourselves.
Then we figured that, if this was the kind of story all of us craved, there were probably many readers, just as sophisticated or "fed up" as we, who also would welcome this departure. We presented the problem to J. Allan Dunn, asking whether he cared to write a "desert island" novelette without any of the usual material therefor, no savages, volcanoes, women, cocoanuts, socialism, rival party, tropical vegetation, fierce beasts, animals waiting for domestication, no specialists in the party, no supplies to draw from, nothing, not even a pen-knife or watch-crystal. Each of us wrote out a list of the things he knew or could do that might be useful in the circumstances—unspecialized and, mostly, meager lists.
He accepted, after justified hesitation. We modified our terms to permit him wild dogs and wild boars for excitement, meat and leather, but it was understood that action, interest and whatever plot proved possible were to be drawn from the barehanded struggle with nature for existence.
The conditions and circumstances were given to our readers along with the published story. It won a stronger response from them than had any other story we'd published for several years. This from the audience of a magazine devoted primarily to action stories of which the usual "desert island" story is a fairly representative type, though it must be admitted that this audience has been recruited from among those who prefer more nourishing meat along with the action, insist upon a sound basis of fact or probability and are too sophisticated not to have tired of the usual hack melodrama.
These two experiments are at least suggestive. You can doubtless recall from your own experience stories that registered strongly on you because of variance from the usual types. Generally, if the story succeeds, the variance is attributed to genius or unusual gifts; as a matter of fact it is in most cases due either to accident or to a mere common-sense study of readers and what can be expected to have dulled their appetites.
Ending a Story.—Variance from type in the ending is of particular value. It must, of course, be an ending logically belonging to the story, but surprise, or at least change, is entirely possible.
Yet is there any escape from the "happy ever after" ending of a love-story? I suppose and hope so, but have my doubts except as to the rarest instances. A love-story without at least the suggestion of marriage or its substitute as ending seems considered almost as desolate as a love-story without either love or story. Renunciation is a reversal of "happy ever after" rather than a variation, and not generally popular. Death is very grudgingly accepted as a substitute. I've made earnest effort to secure variants—parties decide to be friends instead, one party proves to love a third party or grows weary of the second, parties quarrel and omit making up, death of either or of all hands, anything for a change. No results except a death-rate well under one per cent.
Perhaps it is because writers believe editors will not accept variants from the "happy ever after." I suspect their belief is well founded, but I wonder whether in this case the editorial attitude is not solidly based on a downright insistence from human-being readers.
Unhappy endings? The minority like them, the majority do not. I can venture nothing more except that the size of the minority increases if the line is drawn not between "unhappy" and "happy" but between endings that leave the reader depressed and those that leave him uplifted. Through the latter, with their appeal of pathos or high tragedy, there is decided opportunity for comparative variation from the usual.
At the end of a story I think most readers rather resent loose strands of plot left untied, like minor characters of whose future no glimpse is afforded or some minor enterprise that has run through the plot only to have its fate a mystery at the end. Skill, particularly in unifying severely to the central point, can make the reader forget the disappearance of minor strands at the very end, but it is well to remember that most readers have a healthy sense of legitimate curiosity.
Beginning a Story.—At the first word of your story the reader knows nothing concerning it except what title, illustrations and contents-page may have told him. Generally he doesn't know whether it is laid in Africa, Alaska or New York City, or whether it is of to-day, 1890 or 1700. The more quickly you tell him, the more quickly can you draw him into your illusion. If you wait, you almost certainly confuse and irritate him. Story after story comes in to editors that leaves the reader groping and unable to settle down until long after it is under way; often he doesn't learn where he is until he has wandered through several pages. Even a paragraph is too long a wait—and waste. You need not make a business of placarding date and place, but there are a myriad ways of introducing him quickly to both. Failure to do this is so common and so extremely injurious to the story's effectiveness that it affords a most striking example of the disastrous effects of giving more attention to rules than to common sense and of not drilling into the very bones of writers the necessity of watching and measuring their stories constantly from the point of view of readers.
Another common and bad mistake is to present any but a main character first, preferably the main character. Indeed, in the short story perfect unification almost demands that he be first on the stage. But there is a common-sense reason aside from that of unity and centralization. Long experience with fiction has taught readers that the first character to appear is nearly always the main character, therefore whatever character gets the initial spot-light is promptly seized upon by them as the main one. If he isn't, they have to let go of the story illusion they are already building and start building a new one around a new center and feel rather foolish or cheated and irritated. As in the case of not setting time and scene, the writer has failed to hold them to the correct plot line—even to start them on it. Of what avail is knowledge of technique, or the present method of teaching technique, if it fails to impress such horse-sense points as these? Sufficient skill can introduce the central character when and how it pleases, but most writers lack it.
In the case of the drama there is no harm in minor characters appearing first. Stage custom has established this, not the other, as the custom. Also, the stage, being better able to study its patrons at first-hand, has realized the catastrophe of letting them stray from the correct plot line and guards against it by giving out programs in advance as keys to caste (with characters listed in order of appearance), scene, time and sometimes even more; the rise of the curtain instantly gives the audience its bearings in a general way, and star, scene, time and even plot are frequently known before entering the theater. Writers of fiction could profit tremendously by careful study of the necessarily practical technique—or common sense—of the theater.
CHAPTER XII
CHARACTER
For broadest popularity possibly the prime single requisite in fiction is action plot, but, if so, character drawing is at least a close second. Human nature's interest in human nature is undying and intense. By the tests of the somewhat indefinite thing we call literature, character probably ranks first. Action, on the other hand, seems the more primitive and the more fundamental; early man undoubtedly acted first and thought later; when he learned to analyze his fellows it was for purposes of action.
An Experiment.—It is interesting to look back over the centuries and consider the stories that have had sufficient hold to endure. Which do you remember first and the most distinctly, "Sherlock Holmes," "Mulvaney," "Richard Feveril," "Amyas Leigh," "John Silver," "Becky Sharpe," "Old Scrooge," "Quasimodo," "Don Quixote," "Falstaff," "Hamlet," "Lady Macbeth," "Faust," etc., or the plots and action in which they were concerned? "Arthur," "Tristan," "Roland," "Siegfried," "Finn McCool," etc., or their adventures? "Aeneas," "Hector," "Ulysses," etc., or what they did?
I have made no laboratory tests on other people, so can risk no conclusions from this test beyond venturing that, as the race grew older and its literature developed, character interest tended to take first place over the more primitive action appeal. Make your own tests, allowing for the differences between stories of the last few centuries and those of long ago. After trying out yourself, try out as many other people as you can. If you do, you'll get valuable knowledge—and understanding—not likely to be found in books.
You'll get not only some useful fundamental ideas on the values and relative values of plot and character, but possibly, by contrast with others, a sound idea as to whether your real bent is for plot or for character, and, best of all, you will have done something toward forming or strengthening the laboratory habit of examining facts instead of swallowing at theories, and the habit of thinking for yourself instead of using the weakening crutch of accepting other people's theories that they in turn probably accepted from other people ad infinitum.
In any case character drawing—human nature—is one of the two most important elements in fiction. Yet the lack of it marks the majority of submitted manuscripts. In many of these cases it is an utter, total, complete, absolute lack, unless you count the crude class distinction between hero and villain. Characters are merely proper names, lucky if there is even an individualized or slightly individualized physical body to cling to, and twice lucky if said body has clothes or habits of its own. You can lift them out of one story and substitute them in another with no damage to them or to either story and with decided profit in the case of the first. It is pitiful—and maddening.
The tragedy of it is that it can easily be remedied by any writer of average human intelligence. All he needs for comparatively decent characterization is a certain very simple recipe.
A Recipe.—I don't know whose recipe it is, having heard it years ago and forgotten his name, though I think its accredited father dates back a century or so, but he should be crowned in honor and the use of his recipe made compulsory by law. Apparently not one writer in ten thousand ever even heard of it.
You can dig out that recipe for yourself by the laboratory method advocated above, if you will trace English literature back toward its beginnings. And if I give you a broad hint by suggesting a bit of thoughtful, practical consideration of the morality plays, you should have no trouble at all.
There it is, simple, elemental, effective—assign to each person in your story one single trait of character and make him show it by actions, words, thoughts.
Carry it into as much detail as possible. If I remember aright, the recipe's reputed father took as example a character whose one trait was cruelty and said that if he were made to walk in a garden he must be made to knock off the heads of flowers with his cane as he passed.
That's as far as the recipe goes, so far as I remember, but try a second elementary step—show the reaction of this single predominant trait upon the other persons in the story, in what they say to him, do to him, think of him, always, of course, in the light of their own single traits.
Third step: Assign one or more persons a second trait, a minor trait, and proceed as before.
Try it, if you are not beyond the need of fundamental suggestions as to characterization. You will not only reap a rich harvest of concrete results but will also be getting a most excellent training.
Only a few days ago I was told of a case in which it has had a thorough test. I've never read anything by the author in question, but know that he turns out a consistent and steady flow of books whose sales are enormous though treated with condescension by critics of literature. The report is that in the actual writing of his stories he does not even give names to his characters but uses the name of the predominant traits he assigns to them—Cruelty, Honesty, Vanity, and so on. When the story is finished he, or perhaps his secretary, goes through the manuscript, strikes out these names of traits and gives each character whatever name meets general requirements. Voilà! Personally, I'd give a good deal to know what would happen to his sales if he abandoned this method and the kind of characterization it produces—to know, rather, whether he would ever have had enormous sales if he had not used this recipe.
Just using the morality plays—and Pilgrim's Progress—as a sound foundation. Maybe it's funny, but maybe you could profit by it yourself. Heaven knows that plenty of writers could!
Tags.—If I could, I'd hang over almost every writer's desk a large card bearing in very black letters these words:
"Remember that yours is not the only story in the world and that it has to compete for the reader's attention with countless other stories. Your interest in it is particularized and personal; his is not. Also, you already know everything in the story; he does not. You may have failed to put on paper part of what you know; in that case he will never know it.
"Remember that your reader has met many people in real life, forgotten all about most of them, including their names, and that in the great number of stories he has read he has met a far greater number of fictitious people who, along with their names, fail in even greater proportion than have the real people to register upon his attention, interest and memory. You are merely adding a few more to his hundreds of thousands. The competition is heavy. You can make no headway against it if your story-persons are only names, almost none if they are only mildly individualized and characterized, little enough even, if they are drawn fairly strongly.
"Remember, too, that when you introduce him to more than two or three new people they have to compete, also, among themselves—that he is likely to have difficulty even in straightening them out in his mind and connecting the right name with each character. If you wish your people to get and hold his attention and to have any place in his memory, you must strive with all your might to mark each character, to individualize each character, by every means within your reach. If you have not a natural gift for character drawing, use elementary methods."
The particular elementary, and very effective, method I have in mind is to hang on to each character one or more of what in the writing of plays are called, I believe, tags. It can be called, if you like, advertising your characters. Most of them need it. Or might be likened to the use of motifs in opera. Or you might find in it even an approximation to the conditions of real life.
Put a strongly individualized label on each of your characters and make the readers keep looking at it. This character continually introduces his speeches with "Well now"; that one is always nervously hitching up his trousers at the knees; John Jones is so interested in golf that he is perpetually dragging it into conversation; Myrtle is always tittering; Brown is conspicuously careful of his personal appearance, while his brother George wears anything that comes handy and Sister Isabel has almost a monomania for red; Judson habitually looks into the eyes of people with an intent gaze that is hard to meet; Henry in appearance and manner suggests a sheep; the peculiar blackness of Maude's eyes is her most marked and impressive feature.
Never let a character remain long on the stage without presenting his tag. It individualizes more strongly than a name. It is a most useful guide-post to the reader. It strongly reinforces character-drawing and may even serve as a cheap substitute, a substitute at any price being preferable to nothing. Also, it becomes an asset in itself, an element of appeal that runs the range from farce to tragedy and you can mix or alternate these or other appeals with strong results. Its effect is cumulative. There is for its intrinsic value a sound grounding in fundamental human nature—a reader's unconscious pride and vanity in "detecting" it as characteristic, in being able to forecast its coming, his interest and consequent like or dislike for tags in real life, his comfort in having mental tasks made easy.
Of course, if you've drawn real character for the persons in your story, make their tags consistent with character—or, rarely, in deliberate and evident contrast. Equally, of course, a tag, like any other good thing, must be handled with judgment and not allowed to run riot.
Results from Tags and High-Point Characterization.—Study the following fiction characters that have made a big and lasting "hit," so much so that they have been carried through a series of books: "Sherlock Holmes," "Captain Kettle," "Don Q.," "Brigadier Gerard," "Tartarin," "D'Artagnan," "Athos," "Porthos," "Aramis," "Mulvaney," "Ortheris," "Learoyd," "Allen Quatermain," "Wallingford"; consider also some characters of Dickens. Some of these are well-drawn and well rounded out, but others reduce to the bare bones of the "one-trait recipe" and the use of tags, really very elementary creations. Yet all are made vivid and individualized by means of tags and strongly emphasized traits of character. While the tags, for the most part, are handled with at least a fair degree of skill, the characterization in some cases, though of course not limited to a single trait, is incomplete, very elementary and not very well done. Yet all have gained a strong popular success, not just from the stories in which they appear, but as characters.
It is clear from the above that while the "one-trait recipe" and the use of tags do not necessarily spell literature they are by no means incompatible with it. They are merely first steps toward really good character depiction. Their importance in any teaching of fiction is due chiefly to the lamentable fact that most writers do not take or even see them.
Even advanced writers can often profit from consideration of their values. For example, in a certain successful series of novelettes and novels told in the first person but centering on another character, the narrator was almost entirely lacking in tags and salient character traits and didn't even have a name, or a past, or a body, or, often, clothes until well along in the series. He was consistently drawn, so far as he went, but almost colorless and with little grip on interest and memory, though having a prominent place in the plot and not thus subordinated for the sake of relative values and unity around the central character. The central character was strongly drawn, tags and all, and the series as a whole had so many other merits that the colorlessness of the fictitious narrator could not wreck it, but its improvement was very marked when he was developed and brought to his proper place in the lime-light by the tags and salient traits needed in addition to the general filling in.