CHAPTER XIX

THE ART OF STORY-TELLING

This is an age of story-telling, and every day our printingpresses toss off into public circulation thousands of new stories. These are of every sort imaginable, and vary in length from the child's simplest tale to the longest novel. Most of them are like certain insects called ephemeras, which live but a day. I hope that you who study this book are not spending the precious hours of your youth over ephemeral fiction. For one who tries to read many new novels will have no time for older ones. A safe rule, especially for the young, is to read no novel less than ten years old. By that time, public opinion will have decided whether it is worth reading at all.

When you have given some serious thought as to what makes a good story, you will no longer be satisfied to waste time on the reading of poor ones. It would pay you far better, beyond a doubt, to try your own hand at story-making than to read and read constantly amid the mass of weak fiction which too often finds its way into even the best of homes.

A form of story which naturally appeals to very young children, long before they learn to read, is drama, or story in action. The dramatic instinct is natural to most children. It is a common amusement of four- or five-year-olds to "play stories" and to act out in pantomime ideas gained from pictures or elsewhere. I fear you who read these lines may have grown beyond the age where you love to "have scenes," and I am almost sorry if this is so. For, if you had not begun to read stories at six years of age, you would probably have gone on much longer with your early habits

of acting or dramatizing your play. So pray remember to help your little brothers and sisters in their "action stories," and do not feel too old to take a part. Is it not delightful to recall that Dickens, who will always rank as prince among story-makers, used to spend endless hours in acting stories with his own and other children? Those of you who go to college will probably study the drama there, and will find it a subject full of intense interest. Shakspere, our greatest writer of English, wrote chiefly in the form of drama, and today interest in the drama is everywhere rapidly increasing.

The action of a story, or the part that might be played as drama, forms a sort of skeleton or strong framework, which holds all closely together; but this skeleton must have flesh and blood and the breath of life in order to be a vital, or living, creation. It is not yet time for you to study all the points that go to make a living and enduring story, but a few of these you may consider with profit.

The two most important qualities in a good story are (1) its plot, or plan, and (2) its characters. In every good story there must be a gradually unfolding series of events, or happenings, certain of which grow naturally and easily out of others. The great art of story-telling lies in making a plot which shall hold the reader's keen interest with increasing power until a crisis, or climax, or dénouement, is reached. I give you this long French word because it has a shade of meaning all its own. The Century dictionary explains it by quoting these lines:

The end, the climax, the culmination, the surprise, the discovery, are all slightly different in meaning from that ingenious loosening of the knot of intrigue which the word dénouement implies.

Saturday Review, Number 1474.

If the plot has held the reader in a state of suspense, the crisis, or climax, satisfies his curiosity and restores him to a calm and

comfortable state of mind. Here is a figure which illustrates the plot in a short story:

с

b

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From a to b complication increases, and from b to c the tangle of events is quickly untied.

In the long and intricate story, called the novel, you will find a plot somewhat like the following figure:

From a to b is the introduction of characters and starting of the plot; from b to c, is a constantly increasing complication of events, so that at c you have the point of greatest complication or suspense, and hence of most intense interest; from c to d is a gradual unraveling of the knots that were being tied from a to c; at d you have the climax or catastrophe and perhaps also the end; from d to e is the gradual close and winding up of any loose threads, so that the reader may not be left dissatisfied or uncomfortable about any point in the complication.

d

e

In drama, plot is the most important thing of all; but in stories of any sort plot is not more important than the development of clear and consistent characters. In creating characters, no other novelist has equalled Charles Dickens. Here is what Andrew Lang, a noted British writer, says of him :

Here is one practical reason for reading Dickens. Next to Shakespeare, Dickens supplies most of the current quotations, allusions, and illustrations in the language. Not to know and understand them is perpetually to be missing the point in conversation and in reading. Dickens is the source of these innumerable allusions and quotations because, after Shakespeare and in company with Scott, he has been the

most creative of all writers in the language. He is the father of the greatest number of delightful personages in fiction and the inventor of the greatest number of comic situations. They are all alive and all, I hope and believe, immortal. In any case not to know them and their adventures is to be grossly ignorant and exceedingly unfortunate. In The Atlantic Monthly.

From this you can easily see why you will do better to read Dickens and Scott for fiction than the new stories which are being printed every day, which have not yet had the all-important test of time. For you must know that the greatest praise for any work of man, whether of architecture, music, sculpture, painting, or literature, is that it be recognized as a classic. Time and time alone decides what shall receive this name; and the consent of the best minds for many years, or even for ages, is needed to decide certainly what shall be forever called great.

Perhaps you will be a little surprised when I tell you that if you can write a good original plot, it will actually be worth its weight in gold! In this day of modern drama, every novel of strong and striking plot is dramatized almost as soon as it is published. This is because the popular appetite for new plays is never satisfied. Hence large prices are paid merely for good plots. Do you fancy it is easy to make a good plot? If so, try making one and then decide. Certainly, if you are possessed of the fertile imagination which delights in invention of plots, of characters, and of striking situations, then your talent cannot long be hidden from view; for you will of your own accord find time and place wherein to express the mind-life that is working in you.

I do not quote a story for you today, as I prefer to have you think about the stories in your readers with which you are already familiar. I should like you to consider these with reference to the figures above given, and decide for yourselves whether or not the lines correctly represent the growth of the plots in these stories.

EXERCISES

I Mental: 1 Study "The Heir of Linne" (Chapter XVII), and decide whether it has the complication necessary to a plot, or whether it is merely a succession of interesting incidents.

2 What is the single subject of thought from beginning to end?

II Mental: Think over all the books you have read within the past year and decide (1) which one had for you, on the whole, most interest; (2) whether that interest was due chiefly to the plot, or to the characters, or to both combined.

III Written and Oral: (1) Select, with the approval of your teacher, some one story, short or long, and gradually as you have opportunity read this with care. (2) Later outline the plot as fully as possible. (3) Read your outline in class.

IV Mental: If you have at hand a copy of Longfellow's poems, study the introduction to each of the following poems (from five to ten lines) and decide as to each one whether the following questions are answered: (1) who, or what; (2) where, or how; (3) when; (4) why, or what for: —

V Written: Find, in a magazine or elsewhere, a picture which will answer the questions who, where, when, and why.