Chapter 3

=32. Fine Writing.=--Fine writing is especially to be avoided in visualization, since the tone of artificiality is immediately destructive of the reader's confidence in the sincerity of the writer. It betrays the author's purpose of producing an effect. The appearance of truth free from any semblance of over-statement is a first requisite.

=33.= In any visualization harmony of detail is of prime importance. Even in describing something actually seen it will sometimes be necessary to leave out items really present, but not of a kind to contribute to the general effect. The saying that "Truth is stranger than fiction" should read that fiction may not be as strange as truth. Harmony of mood is important, as well as harmony of detail, in the thing described. If the picture is a quiet one, exclamatory excitement on the part of the writer, however affecting the scene may be supposed to be, will prevent its becoming real to the reader. These things are, then, to be borne in mind with regard to the elements of a visualization: the details presented must be so far true to common knowledge and experience as to gain ready belief, they must have unity in fact and in effect, and they must also be sufficiently individual to appeal to the mind with something of the sense of novelty.

REFERENCE TABLE OF SYMBOLS

Exp. = Explanatory matter.

_F_1_ = Statement of fact from which no inference is drawn.

_F_2_ = Statement of fact from which an inference is drawn.

_F_2a_ = Statement of fact with inference mainly logical.

_F_2b_ = Statement of fact with inference mainly emotional.

_In._ = Statement of incident, secondary symbols as with _F_.

_As_1_ = Anticipatory suggestion, a foretelling of something to happen, leaving the reader in doubt as to how it is to be brought about.

_As_2_ = Anticipatory suggestion, a foreshowing of something definite to happen, exciting the reader's curiosity to know what it is and how it is to be brought about.

_As_3_ = Anticipatory suggestion, a foreshadowing of something to be expected in the way of character development and consequent happening.

_V_1_ = Description in which the mere idea of the thing described is presented.

_V_2_ = A kindling hint by which the mind is enabled to piece together a visualization of the object.

_V_3_ = Visualization of so vivid a kind as to possess the mind completely. This becomes

_Vb_3_ when it pleasurably affects the sensibilities.

_A_1_ = Audition in the way of simple idea of the thing to be heard.

_A_2_ = Audition as a reviving of the sense of sound.

_S_1_ = Sensation, the mere presentation of the idea of an appeal to one of the other senses.

_S_2_ = Sensation, a subjective reviving of the sensation itself.

_x_ used to indicate that a subjective excitation of some one of the senses has motor effects, as in the shiver at the thought of a file upon the teeth.

_m_1_ = Mood "effect," from which we learn the feeling of the writer without experiencing it ourselves.

_m_2_ = Mood "effect" from which we sympathetically experience the feeling of the writer.

_m_3_ = Mood "effect," a revelation of the feeling of a character in the story.

_c_1_ = Direct statement of character.

_c_1a_ = Direct statement of character that does not reveal the author's attitude toward the character.

_c_1b_ = Direct statement in which we are made aware of the author's attitude toward the character, but are not affected by it.

_c_1c_ = Direct statement of character sympathetically influencing us to the author's attitude toward the character.

_c_2_ = Character "effect," characterization of a group or community of people.

_c_3_ = Character "effect," class or type characterization of the individual.

_c_4_ = Character "effect" in the way of individualization.

_d_ = Degree, added to symbol for mood effect to indicate intensity of the feeling.

_k_ = Kind, used to indicate that the inference concerns itself with character and not intensity.

_/_ = A symbol employed (see section 26) to indicate that one inference is drawn as an ultimate conclusion from another more immediate inference.

SUBJECTS FOR DAILY THEMES

Subjects for visualization and the reviving of other sensations.

1. A sunset sky. 2. A group in the park. 3. A spring freshet. 4. The man at the threshing machine. 5. The city across the river: night. 6. Moonlight among the hills. 7. A city street. 8. The college campus. 9. Eleanor's rose garden. 10. The witch of Endor (1 Sam. xxviii: 6-25). 11. Mt. Pelee in eruption. 12. The woods at night. 13. David playing before Saul. 14. A ferny water course among the trees. 15. A bluebird in the orchard. 16. The violinist. 17. In time of apple blossoms. 18. The scent of new-mown hay. 19. Barbara at the piano. 20. The first watermelon. 21. Sailing with the wind. 22. Dawn in the mountains. 23. The wind among the pines. 24. The blacksmith and the forge.

Subjects for presentation of mood.

1. Uncle Dick hears the news. 2. Balboa catches sight of the Pacific. 3. Silas explains himself. 4. Napoleon looking back at Moscow. 5. Congressman Norris is refused the floor of the convention. 6. Johnnie is told that he may go to the circus. 7. Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga. 8. Bamba, king of an island in the south seas, sees the first ship of the white man. 9. Alfred meets a Hallowe'en obstacle.

Subjects for visualization and presentation of facts as "effects."

1. A deserted house. 2. In the second-hand store. 3. The railroad wreck. 4. The beggar at the door. 5. Representative Dongan reads a letter from "The Corners." 6. A woman at the station. 7. Mrs. Humphrey's kitchen. 8. The trail of war.

Subjects for character studies.

1. The village oracle. 2. The landlord of the Lion Inn. 3. The old stage-driver. 4. The conductor. 5. An old-fashioned music-master. 6. A pirate captain. 7. A country beau. 8. Deacon Bradley. 9. The school bully. 10. The female suffragist. 11. One of the four hundred. 12. A disciple of Mrs. Eddy. 13. "The man with the hoe." 14. The scissors grinder. 15. Captain Doty of the police. 16. A candidate for office.

THE COMPLETE STORY

The invention of situations and plots can hardly be a matter of class-room instruction. If stories come to one, it is well. Study of the detailed means of making them living for the reader will then be worth while. The student should be encouraged to invent plots of his own, but as a simplification of this difficulty, to the end that some exercise in the writing of a complete story may be had, plots of some successful published stories are here given with suggestions regarding methods of treatment.

I

Scene, a saloon where both men and women are drinking. One of them, a girl, thinks she sees at the window the face of Christ with his tender eyes. She leaves and will not permit the others to go with her.

At a little distance she comes upon the stranger waiting for her. He tells her that when she wakes it will be to a new life and she will be his, bidding her go to a house he points out and remain for the night. She obeys, and the man passes into the shadow.

Introductory sentence in the original, giving the atmosphere of the story: "This was the story the mystic told." Concluding sentence in the original, connecting it with our sense of unfathomable mysteries: "And this the listener gravely asked, 'One was chosen, the others left. Were the others less in need of grace?'"

Divisions of the story. 1. Visualizing description of the saloon and of the street outside through which the stranger passes.

2. Appearance of the face at the pane and its effect on the young girl (_m_3_ "effect"). This is the difficult part of the story, and the reader can be made to believe in it only through sympathy with the girl's feeling.

3. The talk of her companions and her answers (_m_3_).

4. Her search for the stranger in the night (_m_3_).

5. His talk to her when she finds him.

This story in the original contains a little less than two thousand words. It will be seen at once that unless handled in such fashion as to appeal vividly to the imagination, a story with this for its theme will seem weak and unreal. It must be made as suggestive as possible or it will fail. It preaches, but it must avoid the air of preaching. Consider carefully how you would present the stranger--whether first at the window or before--so as to affect the reader with a sense of something more than human in him.

II

Scene of the story is the prairie desert of the West in time of drouth. A party of men, including two who are not yet through their work in an eastern college, are riding in search of water, having had none for two days. Water is found, but shortly afterwards one of the two young men is missing. The talk of the others reveals the absent one's unselfishness and friendly devotion to his chum. Soon he is seen riding up excitedly and beckoning. The others follow him to a rough eminence, where he stops and listens, imploring them to tell him whether they can hear a voice calling. When they hear it too, he is assured that he has not lost his reason from the thirst, and together they begin a search which results in their discerning a cavern in the side of an embankment where a man lies on a couch moaning for water. As they try to enter, he warns them away with the cry of "smallpox."

The story is told to a group of friends gathered together of an evening, and the narrator draws from among his books a copy of Shakespeare found in the cavern by one of the men, bearing on its fly leaf, in addition to the owner's name, the word _Brasenose_, the name of one of the colleges at Oxford. The pathos of the story is in this last touch, an Oxford student dying so loathsome a death in a strange and desert land, and dying so heroically.

Divisions of the story. 1. Visualization of the desert and the men. The scent of water. Drinking from the muddied stream.

2. One of the young men starts off alone in a delirium of pain (_m_3_). He returns suffering from the fear that he has lost his reason (_m_3_).

3. The discovery of the cave (_V_3_ and _F_2b_). The delirious talk of the sick man. His sudden joy in the unexpected presence of human beings (_V_3_ and _m_3_). His final "G'way! G'way! Smallpox!"

4. The narrator of the story shows the copy of Shakespeare and the inscription on the fly leaf.

The story in the original contains about three thousand words. It is important that the suffering of the men be developed at some length in a convincing fashion. It serves as a preparation for the more terrible suffering of the one man who moans for water as he tears the foul smallpox sores. This should be presented in as visualizing a way as possible and with as full showing of mood as may be. The conclusion in division 4 must be altogether different in tone from the preceding. Narrator and listeners are in a world of ease and comfort, and their interest in the story is an interest in something pathetically remote.

SITUATIONS TO BE DEVELOPED INTO PLOTS

(Adapted from published stories not original)

1. Rome in the early centuries after Christ. Three persons are involved, one man and two women, one of whom has just pledged troth to the man. The man and the other woman are devotees of a mystic faith, whose priest residing in a dark cavern in the hills calls now one, now another devotee to pass through the "void" to eternal fellowship with God.

2. Oklahoma at the time of the opening of the strip for settlement. A man and his wife and two children come from Kansas to find land in the strip on the day of the run. They have failed in Kansas and are almost out of money. The husband, who is to make the run for the strip on horseback when the signal guns are fired, falls sick.

3. A lumber camp. In addition to the men, a man and his wife who cook and take care of the camp, and a half-witted chore boy. The chore boy tries to take care of the men and keep them from drinking. A number of the men go off to a neighboring town for a spree, and the chore boy goes with them.

4. Some place in the region of the mountain whites of the Carolinas and Tennessee. A beautiful girl with a tinge of negro blood that does not show in nature, intellectual endowment, or appearance. A mountain white to whom she is betrothed. A young man from the North visiting the family with whom she is staying is attracted by her. The contrast of the life of the mountain whites to which her betrothal if fulfilled dooms her, and that of the world of taste and culture which her nature demands.

QUESTIONS ON "A DOCTOR OF THE OLD SCHOOL," FROM THE "BONNIE BRIER BUSH"

I

1. _a._ What has been accomplished in your sympathies by this? 2. _b._ Has this been through direct statement of things calling for your sympathies, or through "effects"? _c._ Is the method cumulative and gradual, or direct and insistent? _d._ Would you say that the method here is objective or subjective? _e._ What symbols do you find that you have employed largely, and for what purpose have the devices for which two of these stand been employed? _f._ Would you say that the author puts much or little meaning into his words? Is the style diffuse and thin, or does it accomplish much with few words? Indicate a paragraph or page that justifies your conclusion and say how. _g._ Are the inferences which you are made to draw logical or emotional, and do they seem to you delicate and subtle or simple and direct? Indicate some of them in confirmation of your conclusion.

II

1. _a._ Do you see any change in the method of presenting MacLure here? _b._ How is it an advance in the development of the story or not? _c._ Was Part I. preparation for this or not, and if so, how? _d._ Does this have a definite climax and denouement, and if so, where?

III

1. _a._ How does this make an advance upon the preceding in the revelation of MacLure? _b._ Does it in any way get nearer to elemental human feeling? _c._ Does it anywhere appeal directly to sensation? _d._ Do you find in this any feeling for the mystery of existence? Does it seem to be an integral part of the story, coming from its essential emotion and free from obtrusive moralizing, or not? _e._ Is there any increase in intensity of feeling in this or not, and if so, how is it indicated in the symbols you have employed? _f._ Has MacLure now been presented to us with full showing of his distinguishing characteristics or not? and do we find in him a vital human nature?

IV

1. _a._ Do you think a death-bed scene a good subject for literary presentation or not? Why? _b._ Would you call it a difficult thing to present or not? _c._ Do you find anything objectionable here? _d._ Has the interest of the whole story depended upon incident or upon showing of character? _e._ Does this Part IV. serve in any particular way to round out our knowledge of MacLure, and if so, in what way? _f._ What is the especially appealing thing in the portrait of MacLure? And what in the fortune and circumstance of his life? _g._ Does this appeal touch in any fashion upon our sense of a something inscrutable governing our lives? _h._ Which of the different sorts of subject-matter (see section 9) seem to you to be the more largely employed here? So far as it is concerned with experience, is it a reviving of what we have experienced or an addition to our knowledge of life? Is there in it a truth that you could formulate into a law of life, or is the truth so much a matter of emotion as merely to touch the sensibilities and so give us a wider vision?

QUESTIONS ON "LOVELINESS," BY ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS-WARD

(_Atlantic Monthly_, August, 1899)

1. _a._ Do you detect in this story any purpose beyond that of recounting a series of happenings? If so, what? _b._ If you were to write the story, would you think it prospectively a difficult thing to arouse interest in a dog? _c._ Has that been done here or not? _d._ If so, what are some of the author's devices and how successfully employed?

2. _a._ What is the artistic purpose of the first two paragraphs? Why does the author delay so long in telling us that she is writing of a dog? _b._ Does she let her own feeling for the girl and dog appear or not? If so, is it obtrusive or not? Effective or not, as your markings indicate? _c._ Are there any incidents in the story that a reader might for any reason be unwilling to accept? _d._ If so, how is the handling such as to disguise the difficulty or not, as the case may be?

3. _a._ What devices are employed to make us interested in Adah? _b._ Are we made to feel that her dependence upon the dog is natural and deserving of sympathy or not, and if so, how? _c._ Are the incidents so managed as to maintain interest in the expectation of the denouement or not? _d._ Does the story seem to have sufficient unity of purpose and plan or not?

4. _a._ What symbols do you notice that you have employed most largely? _b._ Is the story written in the way of direct statement or of suggestion? _c._ For what frequent purpose would you say that the writer employs _F_2_? _M_3_? _M_2_? _d._ Can you say in what the art of the story especially consists? _e._ What would you probably have thought of the story were its art less delicate and sure?

GENERAL OUTLINE QUESTIONS FOR STUDY OF STORIES IN CURRENT MAGAZINES, ETC.

1. _a._ Upon what is the interest of the story especially dependent? _b._ Are the incidents presented rapidly and coherently, or slowly and disconnectedly? _c._ Is there a clearly defined plot or not? _d._ Does the plot have a climax of entanglement, or does it fail in developing this feature of the story interest?

2. _a._ How is character presented? _b._ Are the characters well chosen for their reactions among themselves? _c._ Are the things they do and say continually consistent or not? _d._ Are they sufficiently individualized to escape the appearance of the conventional and to hold interest?

3. _a._ Does the story state facts and happenings merely, or does it get hold of vital sensations and revive them? _b._ If so, in what ways does it seem to do that? _c._ In general does it seem to you subjective or objective in method?

4. _a._ How much of the interest of the story is in the development of the plot and how much in the stirring of vital sensations, including sympathetic moods? _b._ Does the development of the story center about any idea or attitude toward life? _c._ What excellences and what faults do you find in the story?

SOME STORIES AVAILABLE FOR STUDY

"Five Hundred Dollars," "The Village Convict," and "Eli," all in a volume under the title of the first, Heman White Chaplin, Little, Brown & Co., $1.00.

"Loveliness," Elizabeth Stuart Phelps-Ward, _Atlantic Monthly_, August, 1899.

"The Flail of Time," Helen Choate Prince, _Atlantic Monthly_, August, 1899.

"A Christmas Carol," Dickens, Cassel's National Library, 10 cents.

"Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush," Ian MacLaren, David C. Cook, Elgin and Chicago, paper, 5 cents.

"The Luck of Roaring Camp," "Tennessee's Partner," Bret Harte, Houghton, Mifflin & Co., $1.00, _Overland Monthly_, September, 1902.

"Bonaventure" (Chapters XVI-XVIII), George W. Cable, copyrighted, but obtainable in a cheap reprint.

"The Game and the Nation," Owen Wister, _Harper's Monthly_, May, 1900.

Nettleton's "Specimens of the Short Story," Henry Holt & Co., 50 cents.

BOOKS THAT MAY PROFITABLY BE CONSULTED

"Education of the Central Nervous System," R. P. Halleck, The Macmillan Co.

"The Philosophy of the Short Story," Brander Matthews, Longmans, Green & Co.

"The Short Story," Yale Studies in English, Henry Holt & Co.

"Forms of Prose Literature," J. H. Gardiner, Chas. Scribner's Sons.

"Working Principles of Rhetoric," J. F. Genung, Ginn & Co.

"Outline of Psychology," E. B. Titchener, The Macmillan Co.

"Short Story Writing," C. R. Barrett, Baker & Taylor Co., $ 1.00.

Chapter XII, "A Study of Prose Fiction," Bliss Perry, Houghton, Mifflin & Co.

* * * * *

ENGLISH LITERATURE.

_The Arden Shakespeare._

The Greater Plays in their literary aspect. One play in each volume, with Introduction, Notes, Essay on Metre, and Glossary. Based on the Globe text. From 144 to 224 pages. Cloth. Price, 25 cents a volume.

This edition presents the greater plays in their literary aspect, and not merely as material for the study of philology or grammar. Verbal and textual criticism has been included only so far as may serve to help the student in his appreciation of the poetry.

Questions of date and literary history have been fully dealt with in the Introductions, but the larger space has been devoted to the interpretative rather than to the matter-of-fact order of scholarship. Aesthetic judgments are never final, but the editors have attempted to suggest points of view from which the analysis of dramatic motive and dramatic character may be profitably undertaken.

In the Notes likewise, though it is hoped that unfamiliar expressions and allusions have been adequately explained, it has been thought more important to consider the dramatic value of each scene, and the part that it plays in relation to the whole.

Each volume has a Glossary, an Essay upon Metre, and an Index. Appendices are added upon points of interest that could not be treated in the Introduction or the Notes. The text is based on that of the Globe edition. The following plays are ready:--

HAMLET.--Edited by Edmund K. Chambers, B.A.

MACBETH.--Edited by Edmund K. Chambers, B.A., Oxford.

JULIUS CAESAR.--Edited by Arthur D. Innes, M.A., Oxford.

THE MERCHANT OF VENICE.--Edited by H. L. Withers, B.A., Oxford.

TWELFTH NIGHT.--Edited by Arthur D. Innes, M.A., Oxford.

AS YOU LIKE IT.--Edited by J. C. Smith, M.A., Edinburgh.

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM.--Edited by Edmund K. Chambers, B.A.

CYMBELINE.--Edited by A. J. Wyatt, M.A., Cambridge.

THE TEMPEST.--Edited by F. S. Boas, M.A., Oxford.

KING JOHN.--Edited by G. C. Moore Smith, M.A., Cambridge.

RICHARD II.--Edited by C. H. Herford, L.H.D., Cambridge.

RICHARD III.--Edited by George Macdonald, M.A., Oxford.

HENRY V.--Edited by G. C. Moore Smith, M.A., Cambridge.

HENRY VIII.--Edited by D. Nichol Smith, M.A., Edinburgh.

CORIOLANUS.--Edited by Edmund K. Chambers, B.A., Oxford.

MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING.--Edited by J. C. Smith, M.A., Oxford.

KING LEAR.--Edited by D. Nichol Smith, M.A., Edinburgh.

_Introduction to Shakespeare._

By HIRAM CORSON, LL.D., Professor of Rhetoric and English Literature in Cornell University. Cloth. 400 pages. Introduction price, $1.00.

This work indicates some lines of Shakespearean thought which serve to introduce to the study of the plays as plays. The introductory chapter is followed by chapters on: The Shakespeare-Bacon controversy,--The Authenticity of the First Folio,--The Chronology of the Plays,--Shakespeare's Verse,--The Latin and Anglo-Saxon Elements of Shakespeare's English. The larger portion of the book is devoted to commentaries and critical chapters upon Romeo and Juliet, King John, Much Ado about Nothing, Hamlet, Macbeth, and Anthony and Cleopatra. These aim to present the points of view demanded for a proper appreciation of Shakespeare's general attitude toward things, and his resultant dramatic art, rather than the textual study of the plays.

_Introduction to Browning._