NOTHING IS USEFUL WHICH IS NOT HONEST There was a salt-marsh that bounded part of the mill-pond, on the edge of which, at high water, we used to stand to fish for minnows. By much trampling we had made it a mere quagmire. My proposal was to build a wharf there, fit for us to stand upon, and I showed my comrades a large heap of stones, which were intended for a new house near the marsh, and which would very well suit our purpose. Accordingly, in the evening, when the workmen were gone, I assembled a number of my playfellows, and working with them diligently like so many emmets, sometimes two or three to a stone, we brought them all away and built our little wharf. The next morning the workmen were surprised at missing the stones, which were found in our wharf. Inquiry was made after the removers. We were discovered and complained of. Several of us were corrected by our fathers; and, though I pleaded the usefulness of the work, mine convinced me that nothing was useful which was not honest. - FRANKLIN, Autobiography. Not only does each event appear in the order in which it happened, but the important thing about the whole story is what the boys did, and not how they looked; the narrative is clearly a record of happenings, in this case, of real happenings, and time and action are the heart of it. And this is true always of pure narration. SECTION 60 The Elements of Narration Every narrative, whether real or seeming real, has four elements: "(1) the plot—that is, what happened; (2) the characters—that is, the persons to whom it happened; (3) the situation—that is, the place where and the time when it happened; (4) the purpose- or the reason why the author tells us that it happened. Corresponding to these four elements are four test questions, which we shall do well, for a while, to ask ourselves in regard to every narrative we write or read: (1) What? (2) Who? (3) Where and when? (4) Why?"1 These four elements of narration it will be worth while to consider separately, as a knowledge of them is essential to the writing of a good narrative or the telling of a good story. To know how to tell a good story, or how to write a good narrative, is to know how to make the best use of those personal experiences which you tell about, or write about, in talk or in friendly letter, nearly every day of your life. SECTION 61 The Purpose Although the purpose of a narrative is likely to be the last thing to be understood by the reader, it is ordinarily the first thing to be understood by the writer.2 The purpose, as has already been said, is the reason why the author tells us that the thing he recounts happened; the purpose is the author's chief motive for telling his story. It is the purpose, indeed, that determines what sort of plot shall be put into a narrative, what kind of characters shall be concerned in the plot, and, if the time and the place of the narrative are not determined by the plot itself, where and when the plot shall be represented as taking place. 1 Fletcher and Carpenter, Introduction to Theme-Writing, chap. iv. 2 Mr. Bates, however, thinks not. "Sometimes he [the author] is aware of the central purpose first," writes Mr. Bates, "especially in fiction written with a declared motive; but this does not appear to be the natural order in the case of fiction really imaginative. An author must of course have a comprehension of the central motive before he begins to write, but he deduces it from his plot rather than forms a plot to embody the idea."ARLO BATES, Talks on Writing English, chap. xvi. The purpose of a narrative may range anywhere between the two extremes of mere amusement and instruction. Thus, Franklin's purpose in telling of his first entry into Philadelphia (Exercise 17) was quite different from Stevenson's purpose in narrating the imaginary defence of the roundhouse (Exercise 64). Franklin, though he desired to make his narrative as entertaining as he could, desired primarily to give information about an incident in his own life, while Stevenson, though he chose to give a bit of information about seafaring life of the eighteenth century, desired above all things else to entertain his readers with experiences out of the run of ordinary everyday life. Franklin wrote a kind of history; Stevenson wrote an out-and-out fiction. The purpose of each author was perfectly legitimate, but the two narratives, determined in content and style by the two different purposes, are as different as the real and the seeming real always are. Whatever your purpose in writing a narrative, then, whether it be to instruct or merely to amuse, or partly to instruct and partly to amuse, you will do well to fix your purpose as clearly in your mind as you can, and that too before you set about the work of writing. Think how, with your purpose, you can best handle the material at your command, which, even for the simplest narrative, is often so abundant as to confuse memory groups such hosts of associations about real events, and imagination conjures up as many about fancied events. Exercise 67 1. What is the purpose of each of the selections in Exercises 6566? Of An Ice-Quake (Exercise 20)? Of The Slide (Exercise 42)? 2. State the purpose of any one of the following works: Bunyan, Pilgrim's Progress; Carroll, Alice in Wonderland; Defoe, Robinson Crusoe; Goldsmith, Vicar of Wakefield; Hughes, Tom Brown's Schooldays; Longfellow, Evangeline; Prescott, Conquest of Mexico; Ruskin, Sesame and Lilies; Shakspere, Merchant of Venice; Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin; Trevelyan, Life of Macaulay. 3. What is the purpose of Scott's Lochinvar? Of Browning's Incident of the French Camp? Of Whittier's Snow-Bound? Exercise 68 Name some narrative, not named here, whose purpose is merely to amuse. Name another whose purpose is to instruct. Name another whose purpose is to amuse and at the same time to represent human nature. Name some narrative whose purpose is to instruct by giving a simple record of facts. Find a chapter in your school history whose purpose is to narrate the events leading up to some greater event. Do you think of any story written to teach a moral? SECTION 62 The Plot The plot—that is, what happened is the most impor tant part of a narrative. Without a plot there can be no story. The trouble with I'll tell you a story About Mother Morey I'll tell you another And now my story's done, is that nothing happens. This is of course the point of the nonsense, and as nonsense verses the lines are good enough. But nevertheless the lines tell no story. Now, if you are to tell a story, you must have a story to tell you must have a plot. This plot may be as simple as the plot in Four-and-twenty sailors or as complicated as the plot in a book like Dickens' David Copperfield, but plot of some sort there must be. Between a simple and a complicated plot, however, there is an important structural difference. In a simple plot, for instance, the details are commonly brought in one after another in the order of time, as in Franklin's little story in Section 59. Chronicle histories, most biographies, most short stories,1 and now and then a fiction of some length 2 follow this time order, and have simple plots. Pure narration invariably follows the time order. But narration as it is ordinarily written, running more or less into description and explanation, and even into argument, frequently departs from the strict time order, and often enough a complicated plot is the result. In a complicated plot two or more sets of characters are brought into the narrative in such a way that the events in which one set of characters is concerned take place at the same time that the events in which some other set of characters is concerned take place. These events, though they happen at the same time, cannot be told at the same time. The author must keep each set of characters distinct until such time as their interests meet and mingle. Thus, in George Eliot's Silas Marner, the first two chapters tell about Marner at Lantern Yard and Raveloe, the third chapter gives the conversation between Godfrey and Dunstan, the fourth relates the hunt and the robbery, the fifth 1 Irving's Rip Van Winkle is an example. Mention others. |