Characterization in General.—I attempt no covering of the subject, desiring only to bring out the points that the general in-flow of manuscripts shows are, in practise, most in need of attention. There are already hosts of books giving detailed instructions, theories, examples, analyses and exercises. Some of them are useful and valuable in many cases. In general they seem to me likely to be dangerous, unless the student uses exceptional care, in that they are likely to encourage a tendency toward mechanics instead of art, artificiality instead of naturalness, strain and limitation instead of freedom, and copying instead of art. I am aware that tags and the "one-trait recipe" seem open to the same charge, but their saving clause is that they can teach the writer how to develop himself rather than how to turn out finished work by rule. Also the present need of them in practise is appalling, and perhaps that need would not be so great if writers had been trained by more naturalistic methods.
The only sound and comprehensive rule for characterization is:
Study people, first as subjects, second as recipients of the knowledge you have gained.
Year after year editors sit at their desks and almost at a single glance reject anywhere from sixty to ninety per cent. of the manuscripts that come in, and, on the whole, they make few mistakes in so doing. Some of these summarily rejected ones are so illiterate that most freshmen in college would unhesitatingly turn them down, but on the majority is the damning and almost unmistakable brand of "no individuality"—merely another manuscript plodding blindly along in the machine-like effort to turn out by machine-like methods another one "like those they've read," another stilted, unnatural attempt at producing a life-like copy of a model denaturalized, by them or their teachers, into a mechanical and artificial collection of rags, bones and hanks of hair that has never known the breath of life.
Lack of Individuality.—How can the editor tell at a glance? How in heaven's name can he help telling? He's read the same kind of thing—the same thing except for variations of theme and setting—thousands and thousands and thousands of times before until recognizing it at a glance is as easy as recognizing a trolley-car among other vehicles on his way to the office of mornings. The tracks are no plainer in one case than the other.
But maybe the author does better farther on in the story? Doubtless it has happened, but the instances constitute a negligible factor. That poor editor learned to hunt no farther only by hunting farther thousands of times, when he was new and optimistic, and finding nothing. He has learned that any writer fool enough to begin a story in so stupid a way is too much a fool all the way along to be worth listening to.
Disbelieve this ability, if you like, and let's pass on to the stories he does not discard at a glance. These he reads to varying extents, according to their ability to hold him as an editor—sometimes a cursory examination, sometimes solid parts here and there, sometimes straight through, sometimes only part way. Many things, including mistaken judgment, can stop him, but oftenest of all I believe it is the story's lack of individuality. He finds he's read it too many times before and knows that his readers have.
The sameness may be in plot, theme, style, anything or all together, but it's the sameness that stops him and kills the story. As a reader, judge for yourself from the stories that get published, after editors have discarded all but enough to fill their space—all but one to five per cent. say, of the total submitted. Is there not sufficient sameness in even these? Then judge what the discarded ninety-five or ninety-nine per cent. must be, making any reasonable allowance you please for the fallibility of editors.
Reasons for the Lack.—Much of the lack of individuality in stories is due to lack of individuality in the writers. To what degree a person can develop his individuality I do not presume to say, but lack of real individuality in his stories is curable to exactly that degree and no more.
But many of the writers whose stories show none, have individuality. Why doesn't it show in their work? Because they have been taught by present methods of teaching fiction to be artificial, not natural, or have themselves slavishly modeled themselves after some one else.
What chance has your individuality if you turn your back on it and resolutely try to copy another man's, or if you lose yourself in an endless maze of rules and regulations? Rules and regulations imposed, for the most part, by people equally lost in the maze.
No, you can't let your individuality run riot regardless of all rules, for some rules are laws of the human mind to which all of us are subject. But it does not follow that you must assassinate your individuality. It is your main asset. Without it, neither empty rules nor sound laws can build anything of themselves.
Technique? Of course you need technique, but if you make of it a golden calf and bow down in worship, you perish.
Get technique; don't let it get you. What technique should give you is tools, not rules. And not a monomaniac collector's collection of tools, collected for the sake of including all tools known to man, but only those tools so well mastered that they fit almost automatically into your hand, carrying out smoothly the guiding impulse of your brain.
But you have to learn to use them before you can acquire such skill? Yes, but remember the purpose of your learning—and don't try to learn and use more tools than you can master. Remember that an augur is an augur—that it's not a demand upon you to bore a hole in something, but only a means of making a hole when one is needed. Because a hammer is for driving nails do you have to use it when you're modeling in clay?
I dare say it is bad taste for me to criticize other books on writing fiction and other methods of teaching fiction, but, pardon me, I don't give a damn. For years I've sat and watched teachers, poorly equipped for the task and perfectly equipped for their manner of handling it, blandly do their utmost to ruin a writer by holding before his wide eyes so many rules that he finds it difficult ever to see anything else. If among them are included some rules on preserving his individuality while he's following all the other rules, what can that mean to him? If his teachers perchance present technique as tools, not rules, they load so many of them upon his trustful back that he can not walk, to say nothing of mastering the tools.
The essence of their damage lies in two things:
First, the rules they pour forth so endlessly they themselves got from some one else and accept them chiefly for that reason. Ask them the why of each of their rules and there is likely to be a considerable hiatus between their last book and the next.
Too often they seem to have been merely perpetuating an hereditary collection of rules for the sake of preserving the collection as an entity in itself, forgetting that some of the rules might be unsound and neglecting—if they ever thought about them—to give their students the foundations in human nature upon which the sound ones must rest.
Second, the whole tendency of such teaching is to make the learner look at other writers instead of within himself, to absorb other people's style and methods instead of developing his own, to copy rather than to think things out for himself, to be artificial rather than natural, cramped rather than free, to waste his time on details instead of giving it to vital things.
I should venture no such strong condemnation if I did not feel that I am merely voicing the opinion of most editors—of the men and women who are in best position to note the devastating effects upon to-day's fiction. And I am, of course, speaking of the books and teaching methods as a class. There are exceptions, naturally—though one writer, for example, tells me he has read between forty and fifty books on fiction writing, finding only one of them worth while—and practically all such books can be of use, sometimes of very great use, to the raw beginner. So can a rhetoric or a common English grammar.
In the light of results, the fundamental point these books most fail to make is that most of their contents should be read—not memorized or swallowed—for stimulus and suggestion only, and that the student must see to it that no rules turn him aside from his main business of developing and using his own individuality.
I am painfully aware that in this book I, too, have given rules as rules, but I have tried to give the foundations of a sufficient number of them to lead the student into the habit of looking for foundations himself and working out his own destiny. For the foundations I ask consideration, for my rules none at all except as danger-signs erected from twenty years' experience to point out the errors most common in actual practise.
I am still more keenly aware that in many instances I fail to meet possible objections and justified exceptions. Often it is because I fail to think of them at the time or never thought of them, but often it is because there is a limit to available space and because too many aspects and too much detail breed confusion. Literature is the communication, between human beings, of human nature and human experience. Who can give complete rules for a process and content so infinitely various? Bear in mind first, last and always, that this book does not attempt to be a complete treatise on writing fiction. Its purpose is to emphasize those points and points of view that, from years of examining the actual manuscripts submitted to magazines, seem most to need emphasis, and, second, to raise against the present fashion in teaching methods a small flag of revolt under which I believe most editors and most discriminating readers will be content to stand, no matter how great may be their disagreement with me on specific points.
Unfamiliarity with Things Taught.—Last week I borrowed three books on the writing of fiction and ran through their pages. One was by a university professor who gave a most interesting picture of the editorial world, of its offices, their occupants, customs, rules, policies, points of view. The title-page stated that he had formerly been with a publishing house—probably for the sake of the experience, during a summer vacation. I became fascinated, almost wishing I could live in that world myself. I never have.
I realize that, for those entirely unfamiliar with the inside of the editorial world, his picture of it was sufficiently near the truth to be of decided practical value. Yet his almost glib generalities and his choices for particularization made me shudder for the misapprehensions that might arise from them. He was like the European traveler who spends a month or two in the United States and then describes and explains it to the world. Any conscientious editor of long experience would, I think, hesitate before attempting to present in a chapter or two of a text-book for earnest students a complete and final exposition of the editorial field. It is too complex, too various, too changeable.
And if these teachers venture to expound so much and so finally from so small a knowledge of what may be called the mere machinery of the editorial world, it seems logical to conclude that they may have equally insufficient basis when they attempt to explain what kind of fiction the editors want and how to manufacture it.
Evils of Models and Examples.—But what struck me most forcibly in those three books was the vast amount of space given to models and examples. Stories were constantly being laid upon the operating table, in whole or part, and dissected and analyzed. The pages were strewn with dismembered parts, ticketed and labeled, to be sure, and filed in most orderly fashion, but the panorama as a whole was enough to ruin a writer forever if it did not drive him mad. Oh yes, I know we must take a clock apart before we can learn how to make a clock, but an artist should live in a studio, not an operating-room. The use of examples and models is a valuable adjunct of teaching, but it is not teaching. As far as I can learn from cursory glances from time to time, through inquiry and through noting results in submitted manuscripts, dissected models and examples form the backbone of teaching method. Use them, by all means, but only sufficiently to show the student how to do his own analyzing when he feels the need. And teach him general principles to make him keen to the need when it is there. Teach him to work; don't litter his mind with the work you've done on a third person's work.
The mechanical method of teaching is perfectly adapted to those students who by no possibility can be anything but mechanical writers, working by rule of thumb, building a structure by foot-rule and pouring in its contents from a graduated beaker. But is producing such writers worth while or even justifiable? Even if your purpose is the broader, industrial one of adding to the general earning capacity of the nation? Of course, if you are merely writing a text-book that will sell—
It is upon the writers who are not doomed by their own limitations to be merely mechanics that the curse of mechanical teaching falls. The genius and the really strong individualist will escape, but what of him with moderate or even considerable gifts? He goes into the bed of Procrustes. He is lopped here, stretched there; he is badgered and blinded with examples and precedents, kept from natural development and natural expression by the study of rules for growth and by listening to other people express themselves, prevented from being himself and giving rein to his own individuality by the constant study of individualities not his own. If only you could sit for a year at some editorial desk and see these poor maimed fellows come in endless line with their pathetic, lifeless wares! Well-made stories, so much so that they are almost exactly like all other well-made stories, but in them here and there a still unsmothered spark that might have been a flame. And after the procession has filed up to you for a while it is not the properly built stories they lay on your desk that you see, but those countless other stories that will never be laid on any desk. It is like looking out over the world of children who can never be born, the better children, the dream children, who could make the world so much better if only they were here. If you could sit for a year at some editorial desk, you would join with me in saying, "Damn such teaching methods!"
Individuality and Naturalness First.—You who are learning to write—and writers are always learning if they are worthy of their name—put this little rule at the head of all your list of rules and let no rule that follows seem to you one-half so well worth clinging to: EXPRESS YOUR NATURAL SELF NATURALLY.
Believe me, it is worth clinging to, even at the cost of aches and bruises. As for all the other rules, accept only those grounded solidly in human nature and take for your guides, not the rules, but their foundations. If you find yourself drifting into the stilted dialect so many feel must be assumed on entering the printed page, tear up what you have written and say your say in your own words. Maybe the result will be sad indeed; there are always many things to learn. But in your learning you will find no secret of technique, no trick of the trade, that is not second in importance to the prime necessity of developing and expressing your own individuality. If they hold before your eyes some story by De Maupassant, Stevenson, Kipling, O. Henry, look by all means and study what you see, but be sure that your strongest reaction is, "Yes, these are deft uses of tools, masterly handlings of thought, and I will be awake to similar opportunities in my own work, but the fact remains that what I have seen is only De Maupassant using his tools, Stevenson using his, and the others each his own. I am not De Maupassant or Stevenson or Kipling or O. Henry or anybody else except myself. I can't possibly ever be any of them, and if I try to be any of them I can't be even myself. Perhaps their tools and devices are not the ones best adapted to my case, though they may prove valuable. Now I'll go back to my work."
And if they ask you to look at many other workmen, refuse utterly. Do your own looking. You probably know far better than they what it is you need to look for; if you don't know where to look for it, then ask. You'll probably be looking enough without any one's driving you to it. And, always, when you look, carry away with you only what you can absorb. Undigested food of this kind will kill you.
Being "Literary."—Don't try to be "literary" until you know what being "literary" really means. Most writers do not know. I'm not sure that I know, but certainly I know a few things it is and a few things it is not.
It is not being queer for the sake of queerness. It is not using large and learned words. It is not getting as far away as possible from the language of life. It is not thinking, feeling or talking artificially instead of naturally. It is not the copying of others. It is not either wallowing in strong emotions or daintily avoiding them.
It is telling things as you see or feel them. It is using the words that accomplish this with least lost motion, words so natural and familiar you are sure they are exact to the case. It is the preserving, developing and expressing of your own individuality.
Style? Be yourself and your style will be born of itself. Be anything else and, instead of style, you will attain only an acrobatic performance. There are enough acrobats already, and enough people who are not themselves.
I should like to add, with some bitterness, that a knowledge of plain English grammar, even for writers who consider themselves "arrived," is an almost necessary step toward being "literary."
When you read a story you live more or less in its story world. There are printed words on the page and they cause your imagination (I do not use the word in the sense of "fancy" but to indicate the mental power that chooses and discards among certain things to construct certain other things) to build from your own experience a set of mental images or impressions. The story's world becomes real to you in proportion as the story's words succeed in making you reproduce it in your mind.
Variation in Visualization.—But the success of the story's words in doing this is dependent not only on the skill and power of their stimulus but also on the ability of your imagination to respond. Success is dependent not only on the writer but on the reader.
Readers vary tremendously in the fundamental ability of their imaginations to respond, both as to quality and degree. It is surprising that this fact is so little known, for its careful consideration is of the utmost importance to success in writing fiction. While my questionings have been only casual, I have not yet found either a writer or an editor who took this variation as a serious factor in his work or who had even discovered the existence of the variation. Wherefore my gratitude is the deeper to Professor Joseph Villiers Denney for having brought it to my attention in a college class a quarter of a century ago.
If you have not already investigated, make the experiment upon your friends. Ask your friends what they see when they read a story and you will find amazing variations. Some visualize clearly everything mentioned or suggested—see the characters, actions and scene in full detail just as on a stage or in real life. Others see things and movement, but without colors in their pictures. Some see people but without faces. Some see things only if, and only as fully as, described by the author. Some see fully even if the author fails to describe. Some make their own images partly different from even definite ones painted by the author, often because he fails to impress his images first. (In the setting of a story, for example, haven't you, if you visualize readily, had to change your picture of the scene's geography or pick up the whole setting and twist it around to make north come where you had had east?) Remember this when you are the author, and save your readers this violence to the illusion. Some have a stock imagination-picture that does service for a concept in almost any circumstances. Some see practically nothing—can not shut their eyes and see the very room in which they are sitting or even the faces of their nearest and dearest.
I knew a high-school valedictorian who easily mastered every subject until she came to solid geometry. In that study she could not even make a start, was totally helpless—simply because she was constitutionally incapable of looking at the two-dimension page and seeing, in her imagination, the third dimension. She got raw potatoes, cut them up to represent the three-dimension figures and had no further trouble. Another woman overcame the same difficulty by the same vegetable route. I know an artist, very successfully designing stage-settings, who can not "tell how things will look" unless he looks at them, or pictures or models of them, with his physical eye.
Yet most writers attempt to reach all these types of imagination without giving the matter a thought! Generally they calmly take it for granted that every one of their readers has exactly the same qualities and limitations of imaginative visualization as themselves! What rich opportunities are lost! Here is a matter in which you should not, without very careful consideration, write things merely as you see them, at least when it comes to revision, unless your way of seeing them happens to be the way that is most effective with most people.
Each author has his individual qualities in this respect. When he paints his word pictures he tends to use only as many strokes of his brush as make a complete and satisfying picture for him. But how complete or satisfying will that picture be to the majority of readers who may not even approximate his qualities of imaginative visualization? The words he has set down give him the picture, but will they give it to others? He can not test out the visualization of the entire population, but he can at least assign himself a fairly definite place in the relative scale, scrutinize his word pictures from the point of view of those of different powers and probably revise his painting methods so that his stories will gain surprisingly in popular appeal, either by additional touches or by changing the relative proportion of the various kinds of stimulus.
A certain writer of western stories found that his work made a strong appeal to those it interested at all, but that the size of his audience was far less than seemed justly merited. Apparently all the elements of good fiction were present. But, if he had considered his readers' psychology in other respects, he certainly had not done so as to visualization. He himself could reread his words and from them see his story world in full. So could I, for we both happened to have the type of imagination that visualizes readily and fills gaps when needed. But many readers haven't this type and, as finally became apparent, these were largely the ones who had failed to become part of his normal audience. For he had not drawn any visual pictures for those who need them. To them his story people were merely names and dispositions, without clothes or bodily appearance, that did dim things in unseen places. The author had deemed it waste of words to describe things that were—to him—seen of themselves. It was difficult to get him to "pad" his stories with visualizing descriptions, but when he began adding them his audience began to grow.
Variation in Other Imaginative Powers.—You will find that probably a minority have imaginations that reproduce not only visual impressions but those of the other senses. Some can hear the sounds of a story—not merely have an intelligent concept of sounds mentioned, but actually hear them almost as clearly as if they were actual physical sounds. Some can taste via their imaginations, with such vividness that their mouths water. Some can smell the odors in a story they read. Some can reproduce the impressions that register through the sense of touch—smoothness, friction, impact, pressure.
I hope to have for a later volume some statistics that will give some idea of the relative frequency of the reproduction of the senses. In any case, the great opportunity for loss or gain of hold on readers offered through visual imagination is considerably multiplied by the cases of the four other senses. The field as a whole is so important it is almost incredible that it does not play a main part in all teaching of fiction writing. Appeal to the senses may possibly be included, though I've not chanced on it in my cursory glances at text-books, but, as previously stated, up to this writing I've happened to find no writer who has even considered the variation in sense-imagination among readers.
I recall a statement in Professor Denney's thesis class to the effect that analysis would show the most popular poets, like Burns and Longfellow, to be as a rule strongly marked by their imagination appeal to all or most of the five senses. Is there any reason why a similarly broad appeal in the case of prose would not reap like results? The case would seem to be stated thus: The more fully you reach a reader, the more fully you reach him.
Suppose your imagination sees and hears, but does not smell, taste or touch. Look at one of your own stories. Have you given comparatively few pictures or stimuli to your readers' visual and auditory imagination, perhaps taking it for granted that all readers would supply them fully and satisfactorily, as you do? Or have you, simply absorbed in your own personal equation, failed to put into your story any considerable number of stimuli to smell, taste and touch imaginations? In either case, consider how greatly you have weakened your story.
As people progress in culture there is a strong tendency more and more to consider physical action in fiction crude. This is unfortunate—and unthinking.
Action Considered Unliterary.—The cause, I think, is twofold. First, most of the crudest published fiction relies to a great extent on action. It is natural and illogical to construct the following syllogism:
All crude fiction is action.
Crudity is poor art.
Therefore action is poor art.
Second, as a race develops in civilization and culture it nearly always tends to lose vigor, drifts further and further away from physical action and more and more into ease, inactivity and softness. It also tends more and more to nicety and detail and away from the elemental. Physical action is elemental and inclined to sweep nicety and detail aside. Naturally both critics and writers come to consider action crude, something behind and beneath them. Consequently, as a rule, only the lower-grade writers use much action. Consequently action stories as a whole sink to a still lower level. Consequently readers feel still more justified in considering action crude. But is it?
False Culture.—Things would be vastly simplified and improved if all who think they know what really constitutes good literature really did know. Nine out of ten have for sole standard the opinions of others. The "others" are fallible, many of them distinctly unreliable. The nine are, of course, unable to tell whose or which opinions are worth while. None of them does any real thinking of his own and most of them do not even make the attempt. There are nine of them who do not to one who does think and does know. The resulting standard is painful. Also artificial and unsound.
A sad feature is that their methods tend to unify their opinions and thus give them the preponderating influence in shaping the opinions of all the people who don't pretend to know. Professional critics being comparatively few, each critic sways many sheep. Also, the sheep have been referred, rightly enough, to the Atlantic as the "most literary magazine in America." They accept its standard without discrimination or understanding. If a piece of fiction is different, in any way, from the fiction of the Atlantic, they therefore consider it unliterary. Worst of all, many of those who judge by Atlantic standards have a bare bowing acquaintance with that most excellent magazine.
Now the Atlantic, for all its scope and splendid humanness, in some respects savors of the library rather than of the rough world at large. Critics, being human, and being generally compelled to do a lot of criticizing, weary of the everlasting fundamentals and seek relief in attention to the niceties and curlycues, these being, also, more plentifully at hand. The sheep herded by the critics and by the Atlantic "habit" naturally come to look down, way down, upon the action story.
Also, popular demand for action in fiction continues strong. It is a cardinal tenet of the unliterary literary person's belief that anything popular is therefore low. I shall not be surprised if some day all fiction that interests in any way is condemned because the popular demand is for fiction that interests.
Still another factor is at work. In clinging blindly to the classics as standards and models many fail to discriminate either in recognizing just which qualities in a classic entitle it to lasting place or in allowing for the difference between the time in which it was written and our own times. Some of its qualities stand forever, but in many cases other qualities lack that permanence of appeal and are very distinctly tuned to its own era. Is the verbosity of a century or two ago, or the sentimentality of the early Victorian period, in key with the spirit and genius of this century? How could it be when our whole civilization has rushed us into a hundred fold greater speed and intensity, surrounded us with a million incentives to practical activity and hurry? Railroads, steamships, trolleys, autos, modern newspapers, motion-pictures, telephones, telegraphs, wireless, electricity and machinery in general, these have geared us to a far faster pace. We can no longer travel naturally in stage-coaches. The Vicar of Wakefield, allowing it its excellencies, is no longer geared to living man. Therefore, in that respect, it is not a classic, not permanent, should not be even a subconscious model.
And in the choosing of books to be labeled classics the natural inadaptability of the old generation to the new, together with the tendency to limit "literature" to products refined away from elementals instead of merely away from crudities, has still further cast action into disrepute.
All in all, the action story has a pretty hard time of it nowadays if it dares plead any claim to being literature.
Fundamental Tests.—Yet, if the test of literature be its permanent appeal to human beings, regardless of changing times, the action story fares at least as well as the best.
To be permanent an appeal must reach the only things that are permanent and universal in human beings, the only permanent and universal things are the elementary, fundamental ones, and "action" meets that test at least as well as anything else. Undoubtedly the race was acting before it was psychologizing or even talking.
If proof of this fundamental and everlasting hold is needed, witness the wide-spread, undying demand for action stories. Also note the fact that most of the classics that have lived longest are crammed full of action—Homer, Virgil, any of the epics or sagas. No, they don't live because of that alone, but could they have lived without it?
If you think that, for all their culture, the most sophisticated and literary specimens among us have really grown beyond the reach of the action appeal, you are much mistaken. Try them, when no one is looking, with a good action story, even one unsanctified as a classic. Scratch the skin and you'll find red corpuscles in even the most anemic blood. Somewhere deep in each of them is the impulse to do, and the admiration for doing. As children they gave it natural outlet; has the leopard changed his spots? Neither restraint nor veneer, neither pose nor inactive living, can eradicate this thing the child was born with.
I've particular reason to speak on that point. Adventure was founded with the primary purpose of meeting this action demand on the part of the more cultured classes, the people whose normal reading is of the "highbrow" variety but who habitually turn at odd moments to stories of action, who accept "trashy" stories if no better offer, but prefer stories sufficiently well done to stand the test of their sophistication. The fact that the magazine's secondary appeal is to those of less literary sophistication and franker interest in the elementals in no way invalidates the primary aim or seems to limit its success. It is difficult to say which of these classes is naturally the more given to writing letters to magazines, but it is difficult to say which of them is the more heavily represented in my correspondence basket.
The latter, I suppose, depends upon where you attempt to draw a hard and fast line between the two classes. Professional men of all classes form a large part of the audience—physicians, lawyers, educators, scientists, engineers, statesmen, ministers and priests; letters from those of undoubted culture in the ordinary sense of that word are very strongly in evidence; more than once the definite, concrete statement has been volunteered that "I read only two magazines—Atlantic and Adventure." Yet, personally, I find it not always easy to say that this general class has a keener sense for what seem to me the essential literary values. More articulate and with better opportunity for comparisons, yes; but with point of view more obscured by their sophistication. However, there is no doubt as to the common action appeal to both extremes of the audience, and nearly a dozen years have eradicated my last doubt of action response beneath even the heaviest veneer of culture.
Its audience is about eighty-five per cent. men, but other action magazines, aimed at both sexes, have audiences nearly equally divided as to sex. Eliminate sex appeal, the love element, and, even with women, action appeal will take first place.
What Is Fiction Elementally?—Elementally a story is a narrative. A narrative implies events, is a record of action, not a treatise, a laboratory record or a post-mortem.
The Rightful Place of Action in Literature.—In addition to its claim to place in the best literature because of its fundamental and permanent appeal and in addition to its being the essence of narrative, there is one thing more to be said.
In its crudest expression you may consign it to what depths you please, but in its essence, in its potentialities, I challenge you to deny it the highest rank of all as material of fiction. For action is the crystallization of psychology. It is the ultimate, final expression of character, of all a character has thought, felt and said, of all a character is or can be. Physical action. It need not be exciting and adventurous. It may be expressed negatively, through repression. But psychology, character, morals, what you will, none of these has been really born into the world, has borne recognizable fruit, until it has in some manner acted physically, or taken physical shape through action.
It follows that, in literature at its best, action must be the perfect, logical, inevitable and complete result and register of all psychology of the characters in relation to all circumstances and conditions of the story. No other element of literature has so difficult a test to meet, for, aside from its own demands, it must be the final and exact expression of everything else in the story.
Yet the action story is sweepingly condemned as a type!
The Place of Action in Practise.—Nothing can make more plain the undiscriminating contempt for action as fiction material than the actual practise of most writers. Action being in its crude form the simplest material as well as the most natural, the majority of writers begin with it. Generally, as they gain in skill they develop, at about equal rate, the idea that all action is crude and that real progress lies in abandoning it as rapidly as possible. In many cases the result is merely the absence of fairly good action stories and the creation of very sad but very "literary" productions. In nearly all cases the cause of the change is due to failure to understand action's potentialities and rightful place, and the result of that lack of understanding is generally failure to produce the real literature intended.
By all means try to rise above the crude "Diamond Dick" type of action story, but be sure you can substitute something better, aside from improved technique. Better a story of rather crude but convincing action than a miserable mess of half-baked psychology and falsely glittering "literary finish" whose chief proof of literary quality must be its freedom from physical action. If you sincerely intend to do real literature, get firmly into your head the truth that action should be the perfect crystallization of all else in your story and then use as much or as little of it as is needed for that crystallization. If you try that, you will get an extreme test of all the literary ability you can summon, and if you succeed, you will have attained what only the comparative few are capable of attaining. Even to make a start you must rid yourself of the absurd idea that action per se is unliterary.
Popular Demand.—Since the Great War popular demand for action fiction is stronger than ever, despite the strong antipathy for material directly connected with it and despite a definite reaction in favor of quiet, peacefulness and things spiritual.
If it's popular demand you're considering, consider this: Real life, perhaps now more than ever before, consists very largely of restraints and inhibitions. Human nature is just as human as it ever was—there are just as many things in it to be restrained and inhibited. And, underneath all our civilization, we're just as tired of having to do it—probably more so, since our civilization is more civilized and therefore more exacting than its predecessors. If we can't escape from the fetters in real life, can't be free to follow our undoubted impulses, as readers we'll all the more welcome a chance for vicarious freedom.
If the theory suggested by the chapter head had not withstood the test of ten years and the judgment of a number of people whose judgment is worth having, I should not venture to present it here even in brief space, for if carried into practise it would more or less revolutionize the art of fiction. Perhaps, too, it has already been advanced, though I have never happened to run across it or to hear of it through others.
In an earlier chapter was the statement that the art process of fiction consists of three steps—Material, Artist and Reader and that the third step fails to get anything approaching due consideration in either theory or practise. This book is largely an attempt to emphasize this fact and a plea that the reader be given greater importance in the teaching of fiction writing.
While working out and testing this theory of the reader's place in creative work I was testing out also another theory which seemed to have little connection with the first and, with my perspective ruined by specialization, it was only a year or two ago the almost self-evident fact dawned upon me that the two fitted neatly into each other and constituted a complete theory of the art process. Until then each had been locked away in its own little compartment, there being no intent of building up a rounded out whole.
While the first theory dealt with neglect of the reader in the general art process, the other centered on the neglect of material as an influence on style. In other words, writers seemed too concentrated on themselves, the Artists, in the creative process and too neglectful of the two other steps, Material and Reader.
Rigidity of Style as to Material.—To present the matter briefly, all that an author has to convey to you comes to you through a single medium which we call his style and which in practise is singularly inelastic in relation to the great variety of things that must pass through it. Take Maurice Hewlitt in his earlier days when his accentuated and highly individualized style make him a good example. Through that one unchanging style had to come to you tragedy, comedy, pathos, contemplation, action, love, hate, patience, anger, romance, satire. All the gamut of human emotions in the material must be crushed into uniformity of expression before it could reach you, losing of its own essence in the process. All must be translated into the one inflexible rhythm and jingle of that one style—standardized, as it were, out of much of their individuality and strength. Such a loss is a calamity, and, I think, to a marked degree unnecessary.
In poetry the need of guarding against this loss is definitely recognized, if not as a broad principle, at least in adaptation of sound to sense and in selection of the metrical form best adapted to a given theme. Why should it not be at least equally guarded against in prose? Many of the distinguishing qualities of poetry as opposed to prose vary with different races and with the march of time. Of the universal, permanent distinguishing qualities are there any that should differentiate poetry from prose as to the importance of the Material's influence on style in transmission of Material to Reader through Artist?
That there are already in our fiction occasional and sporadic cases of this adaptation of style to material shows the soundness of the theory, for these examples are evidently not for the most part the result of studied effort but instances in which the writer's art is sufficiently developed to break through his usual style and spontaneously adapt expression to the thing expressed.
There are even stray rules pointing in this direction, but chiefly for dialogue where a demand for adaptation makes itself felt through the need of making a character express his emotions as a real person would express them in real life. For example, the use of short sharp sentences and simple Anglo-Saxon words in most cases of emotional stress.
But if you wish an example of what adaptation of style to material is capable of accomplishing if used as a fixed and general principle of composition, turn to Shakespeare, forgetting the non-essential fact that he is a poet.
Style in Relation to Material.—Style is the expression of material through the artist, of material as transmuted through his individuality. He is, if you like, a part of his material, but, on that basis, he divides cleanly into two parts, one of them, the artist, expressing the other, the material. What I object to is the attempt to express through a single, inelastic style all of his material, all of himself as material, or all of himself as artist. There is no one style that can even approximate perfect expression of all that is in the world.
Do tragedy, comedy, pathos, love, anger, excitement, calm speak the same language in real life? Must not human art at least approximate human life if only by a kind of symbolism? What writer, or any other human being, can approximate expression of all of himself through the intoning of any one single style? Does he go from cradle to grave in one single chord? Does he not respond to emotions, his own or other people's, as a harp to hand? And yet, God save the mark, when he comes to write he calmly tries to squeeze death and all living into a single monotone!
Is literature merely the click of a telegraph key, crushing all juice from life to reduce all life to its own inflexible code and flat rhythm? Is an author merely a funnel through which all the juice of life must emerge at the small end in a single thin stream?
Demands of Unity.—Art's demand for unity is fundamental and not to be denied, but what has been our idea of unity of style? Merely to whistle one note and call it a satisfactory expression of the author and the universe. It can not be. And to attain this one note in a story we place no limit to the violence needed to make all human emotions give up their own individuality in order to be in key. It is well enough, as far as it goes, but it is only a first crude step. It is time we took a step beyond.
Can any artistic demand for unity be based on any elemental more fundamental and indisputable than the irreconcilable difference of opposite human emotions?
Let the author mold his material to his individuality, unify it through himself, express it through his individual style. Let him mold his material into unity around what single thought or emotion he please before he passes it through his style. But let him make that style, not a single inflexible note, but a tune, a tune that sings high or low, loud or soft, in majors or minors, harmony or discord, fast or slow, expressing in delicate response the varying emotions of its song through the singer, itself a unity and an expression and in each of its parts a unity and expression of that part.
Let Your Style Respond.—If you are sincere in your work, if you really feel your material and if you are not so ridden and oppressed by rules that you can not be natural, your style will of its own accord tend to attune itself to what it expresses. Give it the chance, encourage it to do so. Let no rule of misinterpreted unity force it into one monotonous, inflexible note impervious to all the emotions of the material that strive to break through into expressions of themselves so that they themselves can reach the reader in something of the fulness and color of reality instead of in the shape of cold line drawings.
Let your tune follow the moods of what it sings about. If in your material comes tragedy after a grayness of every-day affairs, will your song ripple on in unchanged measure? Why not let the tragedy come through into the song itself? Let each mood of your material come through into your song and to your reader. If there follows a relief scene of comedy, how much of comedy will fail to reach the reader if it fails to tinge even the medium of transmission?
If you are not musician enough to compose the various elements of material into your style-tune, at least you can approximate by the use of notes you know produce the general effect and are keyed to the mood you desire to reproduce in your reader—rhythm changed to smoothness or harshness, sentence-length changed to that generally used in real life for the expression of that mood, words chosen for slowness and weight or speed and lightness, skilful use of adaptation of sound to sense, few words for speed of action, many for waiting and suspense.
The Need of Emphasizing the Relation of Style to Material.—All these things are done—a little—by a few. These few are of the real artists. It is because they are real artists that their material finds expression in their style. It is not because responsiveness of style to material is systematically taught. It should be, if American fictionists are to attain the development their natural advantages make possible to them. It is the art of artists that most deserves teaching so far as it can be taught, particularly if it is so potent that it pushes its way without encouragement and against heavy odds of hindering rules.
I have only outlined the need and the possibilities and, I fear, made a poor case of it. But some day some one else will give it full and convincing presentation—if, indeed, some one has not already done so outside my knowledge. In any case, there lies a line of development that sooner or later fiction is bound to follow.
Whether you believe it or not, give it slow consideration in your mind. Even if you decide against it in the end, the considering of it will teach you more concerning style than you are likely to get from the study of other people's rules.
Of that I am very sure. In your case you are the most important authority. Appeal to that authority and see that it gives judgment, judgment reasoned out, by you, from fundamentals. Let no rules by other people impose themselves until you have reasoned out their worth. Keep and develop your own individuality.
And the one best way to learn to write is to—write.
I hereby absolve you from all rules in this book except such rules as warn against rules.
THE END
To new writers, and to most old ones, a magazine editorial office is, among other things, a mystery, not the least mysterious of its contents being the editors. It is, of course, no more mysterious than the office of any other specialized business, and editors are merely one small class among many classes doing various kinds of specialized work. Certainly there seems no justification for the traditional awe in which editors are held by so great a majority of people. This awe is undeniably present and does more than a little to prevent more comfortable relations between writers and readers on one hand and editors on the other. Partly it is a "hangover" from a past age when editors better earned an atmosphere of awe as individual molders of public opinion, and partly it is due to people's insistence on regarding with a peculiar and undiscriminating reverence anybody or any thing connected, however remotely, with "literature."
It shouldn't be necessary to say so, but, if the testimony of one of them can be accepted by those who persist in considering them something very much above—or below—the normal, editors are just ordinary humans no different in essentials from any other people of ordinary education. As in any collection of people, there are all kinds among us, even those who breathe a rarified atmosphere and hold themselves superior to their fellows, but, heavens, think of waiters you have known! While as to barbers and policemen—
Just humans, whose job happens to be that of trying to choose from many manuscripts those the reading public will like best. If the manuscripts they handle happen to be fact articles as well as fiction, there is also the job of selecting with an idea of education, or of advancing some cause or principle advocated by the particular magazine, but even here there is also the job of pleasing the reading public. Besides that, if the editor has a plain or social conscience, the desire to leave people the better, rather than the worse, for their reading. That's all.
A word more about that job, so that we editors may not seem quite so mysterious, inconsistent, arbitrary and other things as we do at present. Take the editor of any fiction magazine—or any magazine, for that matter. So long as he works on that particular magazine his job is, generally speaking, not to test a manuscript by its general literary or its general magazine merits, nor to choose according to his own personal tastes, but, to the best of his ability, to choose first according to its suitability to that particular magazine. If John Jones is editor of magazine B and then becomes editor of magazine C, his manuscript tests will change instantly. He will accept some stories he rejected for B and reject some others that he would gladly have taken for B. That is, if John is a good editor and has not deliberately taken up the task of making C as much like B as possible.
Each fiction magazine aims at a special type of reader, or a special group of readers. Therefore it tries to individualize itself in such manner as to get and hold the interest of that type. Its "policy" may undergo changes, but it is always a more or less individualized one. What is one magazine's meat may be another magazine's poison.
There are other reasons why the rejection of a manuscript is "not necessarily a reflection upon its merits." It may fall fairly within the individualized field of a magazine and be recognized by the editor as of entirely sufficient merit, yet be sent back. A grocer or a druggist or a delicatessen man acts exactly the same way. If one hundred cans of corn is the number a grocer is justified by sales in carrying on his inventory and he already has one hundred cans of corn, he doesn't buy any more cans. If an editor estimates that his readers' demand justifies him in buying about fifty love-stories, five tragic stories, ten business stories, etc., per year and he already has in stock the full quota of each that should be on hand at any one time, he, like the grocer, buys no more of these types.
Length, as well as type, is also a factor that an editor must consider in the light of his inventory.
Of course, there are all kinds of exceptions in applying the inventory test to manuscripts, for stories are not standardized like cans of corn nor do all magazines adhere to so rigid a basis of selection. Then, too, there is the fact that some types are, permanently or temporarily, difficult to secure and, when sufficiently well executed, are likely to be seized upon at any time. Really good humorous stories, being notoriously difficult to find, would hardly be rejected even by a magazine with its normal supply of humorous stories already in the safe.
Also, manuscripts come in waves, not only as to number but as to setting, material, theme, and so on. For six months, a year, three years, there may be, for example, an oversupply of stories of diplomatic life, rural stories, stories laid in Latin America, and a dearth of stories of golfing, stories of olden times, sea stories. By the end of a year or two the situation may be completely reversed on any or all of these types. In most cases the change from dearth to plenty or vice versa is without warning or discernible cause. After being caught by a few dearths an editor is likely to stock up with a reserve on types that have shown themselves subject to fluctuation in supply. On the other hand, he may decide that writers as a whole, in their fancy or lack of fancy for a type, are a fairly safe index to the fancy of the public in general.
In any case, many factors besides merit, recognized or unrecognized, and besides bad judgment by editors, decide the fate of manuscripts. On the other hand, most manuscripts are rejected for the all sufficient reason that they do lack sufficient merit.
Some ideas are prevalent that seem worth meeting.
A "pull" is seldom of service in gaining acceptance for manuscripts; of none at all so far as my observation extends, and I can not now recall, even from hearsay, any case in which "pull" took the place of merit. Doubtless there are such instances, but, ethics aside, progress through "pull" is not worth a writer's practical consideration. Many beginners believe they will get a better hearing for their stories if they present them in person instead of mailing them. It's an editor's business to select manuscripts according to their values, not according to his opinion of their authors, and I think most editors do so. If he is subject to personal influence, don't forget that you may make an unfavorable, instead of a favorable, impression. In any case you're taking from him time that he probably needs badly and is not likely to be happy over losing. What you have to say to him can almost always be said equally well by letter, perhaps far better. A letter takes less of his time and—he can choose his time for reading it.
I know of no fiction magazine that has a "regular staff" of writers in the sense of its having no opening for new writers. Often a magazine comes to depend for the bulk of its supply upon a comparative few who have proved themselves best able to provide that supply, but that does not mean that it hasn't a welcome for others.
The oft-heard wail that "a new writer has no chance with editors" is merely silly. Weren't all the "old" writers once new? How, pray, did they gain their first footing? In one sense, to be sure, new writers have little chance with editors for the sweet and simple reason that a majority of beginners haven't sufficient merit to earn them a chance with any competent, fair-minded judge. Some of them will never have. Some have not yet developed and are worthless to magazines until they do. If a writer can't develop unless encouraged by acceptances before he has developed, he almost surely hasn't in him the ability to develop in any circumstances.
Don't be discouraged by rejections. They are merely the usual thing. They only class your manuscript among the eighty-five to ninety-nine per cent. that every magazine turns back. Along with yours many manuscripts of successful or even famous authors are rejected, and some of these rejected stories, possibly yours among them, will be accepted by other magazines. The only disgrace is in being discouraged. If, instead of the usual printed slip, you get a note from one of the staff, be glad, for your manuscript has raised itself above the others and earned attention for its merits; your rejection is really a step forward—the big first step.
Often the beginner's discouragement is due to his trying his wares on the wrong market. Would you try to sell a lady's slippers to a civil engineer, a soldier's boots to a dainty dame of fashion, a policeman's brogans to a child? Yet that is exactly what so many of you try to do with manuscripts. I am, though an editor myself, quite incapable of saying just which magazines will buy which manuscripts, for an infinite variety of factors and circumstances are involved, but the total ignorance of magazine markets displayed by many beginners can be due to nothing but failure to give the field even a rudimentary consideration before trying to master it.
The elementary rules for the actual submission of manuscripts have been printed thousands of times, but the need for them abides:
Every manuscript should be typewritten. No matter how good handwriting may be, it imposes a heavy handicap on any manuscript, for, in comparison with other manuscripts in typewriting, its story can unfold only on leaden feet even to the most patient, kindly and self-sacrificing editor.
Double-space the typewriting. It reads more easily, allows you sufficient space to make your own alterations and corrections without messing parts of your story into illegibility, and, if the manuscript is bought, gives space for editing it as copy for the printer to follow.
Write on only one side of the paper. This custom is so firmly established that it's folly to violate it and almost no one does. There are plenty of reasons for the custom, but its mere existence is practical reason enough.
Leave a fairly wide margin on the left-hand side of each sheet—as a kindness to the editor in case your manuscript is bought and to the compositor who must read and set what you have written and the editor edited.
Type your name and address on the first page of your manuscript. For common-sense reasons.
Number your pages. Consecutively straight through from beginning to end. Especially if you hope for any chance of detailed criticism from the editor.
Unless your manuscript is to be returned express collect, enclose stamped, self-addressed envelope of sufficient size and strength, or at least sufficient postage. As a matter of common honesty. A surprising number of writers are not honest in this respect.
If you write to the editor when you submit a manuscript, see that the letter is enclosed with the manuscript, not sent under separate cover. If your idea in writing is to further the chances of your story, you're going about it in a poor way if you add to the editor's troubles by making him handle your case in two parts instead of one. Or by making him read your autobiography in full.
Several things will help toward a better understanding of the editorial attitude toward manuscripts. First, tell me, did you ever know a merchant to work hard day after day for the purpose of avoiding buying stock for his customers' demands? No, the editor desires to buy; he spends his time trying to get stories, not to avoid them. When he finds one that meets his needs he rejoices. A minority of magazines seek first of all for authors with "big names," because of the following they command among the reading public, but the editors of even these are inclined to pat themselves on the back when they "find" a brand-new author of merit.
Second, to balance the above, remember that your manuscript is merely one among thousands that come to an editor.
There is a wide-spread feeling that many manuscripts are rejected only because they are read, not by the editor himself, but by some assistant. There are two "schools" of manuscript-reading. One method is to let the most inexperienced readers weed out the bulk of submitted manuscripts, thus saving the more experienced readers much time. The other method reverses the process; a more experienced reader does the first sorting. The latter seems to be gaining ground; personally I believe in it strongly. My own experience may serve to illustrate the situation. For years every manuscript came to my hands first. As their number increased this became a physical impossibility. Manuscript-reading is only one of an editor's many duties, a fact that many lose sight of. At present from one to two working days per week is probably a generous estimate of the time I give to manuscript-reading. The reading is done mostly in bits—in the evenings, on trains, in days spent at home for the purpose. In the office itself I can't get time to read a dozen manuscripts a year. And much of the other kinds of work also is done outside. Many other editors are in similar case.
But in delegating the bulk of the work the most experienced editor on the staff is the one who first reads the stories from "unknowns." Except in cases of appeal, stories by our "regular" writers do not pass through his hands at all, but go first to editors of less experience and from them to me.
Some magazines have a special "fiction editor," who is often the court of final appeal, may have been chosen by the editor as superior to himself in this branch of editorial work and may or may not be the first to read manuscripts.
The thing to remember is that if the editor delegates the first reading it does not follow that he minimizes its importance and he generally takes care to put it into as capable hands as he can. Remember, also, the general rule is that a first reader is instructed to mark all doubtful cases for a second hearing; also that it's to his own personal interest to "find" every good story he can if he wishes to hold his job.
How much of a manuscript does a reader read? A sentence, a paragraph, a few pages, maybe all of it. Unfair and inefficient not to read all of each? My personal opinion is that manuscript-reading is one of the things that can be learned by experience only. But, having the experience, an editor can reject the "culls" very swiftly and with a good deal of sureness. He can tell all the hack plots at a glance, knows the kinds of opening that are never followed by a good story, can tell in a few sentences or paragraphs whether a writer has sufficient skill in handling his tools to be able to turn out an acceptable story and—has at his finger-ends all the kinds of material, setting, plot, treatment, etc., that his particular magazine does not use. If in doubt, he reads further or samples it out here and there and glances at the end. If still in doubt, he reads it all. Sometimes knowing the story to be unusable, he reads it all because the author's possibilities are worth serious consideration even if the story in hand isn't.
As to the final reading I think, from what data I chance to have, that I'm not in accord with the majority custom. When I'm familiar with a writer's work and he's fairly steady, the endorsement of the man who passed it over to me is often sufficient, since he too knows that writer's work and would have noted any let-down or doubtful points. In other cases, sometimes a few pages—with maybe a glance at the remainder—is sufficient for rejection, unless the other editor, having read it all, has voted for it or makes the point that we can help the writer revise it into suitable shape. But what I do read I read word for word page after page until I find definite cause for rejection, for I can't believe that I can judge from the reading public's point of view unless I read as I think most of the reading public reads—word for word. Maybe other editors can, but, at least in most cases, I can't.
But be sure of this—whatever their reading methods, editors are trying to find good stories, not to reject them.
Many magazines contract in advance for stories by well-known writers, buying sight unseen and trusting wholly to the writer's steadiness, conscientiousness and popular following. In some cases this is perfectly safe; in others decidedly not. It means, essentially, that the writer has left the merit system and works on a sure-thing basis, which is not good for most writers.
Do not decide that your story was rejected because an editor read it when he was tired or his liver was out of order. Editors get tired and their livers are as undependable as anybody's liver, but they know this and make allowances accordingly. In fact, it's a pretty safe rule to decide that your story was rejected for lack of merit or for unsuitability to the particular magazine. If not convinced of the former reason, keep sending your story to other magazines. Many a story has been rejected by five, ten, twenty, fifty magazines and yet found an acceptance, perhaps by a better magazine than some of those that rejected it, though the majority of manuscripts submitted probably never find a taker.
Oh, yes, the editor is fallible like everybody else including yourself. But after all he's an expert of experience in his own particular line, experience has given him a perspective you lack, and he has an understanding of his magazine's particular needs that no outsider can have. In the long run you'll make progress faster if, allowing for the fallibility of the genus editor, you decide to accept his verdict as more dependable than that of your friends or yourself. Anyhow, there's more to be gained from looking for weak places in your work than from striving to prove its excellencies by argument.
This is a rambling, hop-skip-and-jump chapter, but there are a thousand little points that bob up one after the other and choosing among them is haphazard work at best. All I've tried to do is to give you a sketchy idea of editorial offices and their working so that sending manuscripts to them will not be quite so much like sending them out into a hostile unknown.