Talks on Writing English

In less artistic fiction there is still something of this method. There are many transiently popular novels where in the closing chapter the autumn rain still falls dismally upon a lonely grave, or the summer sun – the June sun – and the obliging dicky-birds decorate the wedding of the long-persecuted but at last triumphant heroine, transcendently lovely in white satin.

In really serious work the matter has become more intricate. Nature must be used without the appearance of design. It is recognized that no man can command the weather, and the trick of seeming to manage the elements is no longer tolerated. Art must conceal art. Even contrasts have been used until it is necessary to be very cautious in employing them. The villains no longer steal through smiling gardens whose snowy lilies, all abloom, and sending up perfume like incense from censers of silver, seem to rebuke the wicked. The thing sought now is the appearance of naturalness. Simplicity and directness are the prime qualities to be kept in mind. Set a story carefully, but above all things be sure that it does not appear that pains have been taken. The finest art is that which works with apparent frankness, seeming to display its methods without disguise, yet in reality producing its effects by a skill which is utterly beyond perception.

One of the faults most common with beginners is self-consciousness. The inexperienced writer is apt to show that he is not sure how what he writes will be received. Cultivate the attitude of being conscious of nothing but the story to be told. Above all, do not seem to apologize. In fiction as elsewhere apologies are apt to breed contempt. The writer who seems to plead to be excused inevitably suggests that there is need of excuse. Tell a story or leave it, but never take the middle course of telling it with apologies, direct or indirect. Often the self-conscious author shows that he secretly fears that he will be thought to lack cleverness if he allows himself so to be imposed upon by his characters as to think them real. If they are not real to him he should not be telling their history. The slightest appearance of doubt on his part ruins all illusion and the story along with it.

On the other hand, it is a mistake to expect the reader to share an emotion simply from being told that it is felt by the writer. Every phrase like “I felt,” “I was amused,” “I was enraged,” and so on, which is not amply supported by the narrative, weakens the effect. It is generally enough to destroy the entire flavor of any ordinary witticism to tell the reader that it is droll. It sometimes will do to say that the characters of the tale thought a thing funny, but even this is a somewhat dangerous expedient. If a thing does not strike the reader as amusing, it is of little use to inform him that it is his duty to find it so. An author has no business to put himself in the attitude of a verger who leads pilgrims from one historic spot to another, saying in effect at each, “Here it is necessary that you feel yourselves thrilled!”

When everything else has been said, the essential thing in regard to Narration is that it shall be interesting. It is the old question of Force. “Tediousness,” observes Dr. Johnson, with his usual sententiousness, “is the most fatal of faults.” He might have added that it is a fault so serious that it overcomes all excellences. Macaulay inquires, “Where lies the secret of being amusing? and how is it that art, eloquence, and diligence may all be employed in making a book dull?” Dullness is less easily forgiven in narrative than in any other form of composition. The avowed aim of a story is to entertain; and if it fail of this, its merits count for nothing. The specific methods by which interest may be secured or increased must be studied with the realization that the very existence of narrative depends upon them.

The first point is to be interested one’s self. In other words, the first great secret is earnestness.

The second is closely allied to it. It is to be perfectly straightforward. This secret is sincerity.

The first of these calls for the telling of a thing as if the writer really cares for it, as if it is something which seems to him richly worth relating; while the second insists that he shall treat his readers with every appearance of frankness. He shall appear to conceal nothing which it is for the interest of the tale for him to tell, and he shall try to take no advantage by telling that of which he is not himself completely persuaded, nothing which does not seem to him a vital portion of the history, real or fictitious, which he set out to relate. Hawthorne, when asked the secret of his style, said: “It is the desire to tell the simple truth as honestly and as vividly as one can.” Many entire books on rhetoric have less wisdom in them than is in this single sentence.

Making a somewhat different division of the subject, we may say that interest in Narration comes from three sources: the plot, the incident, and the development of character. The story which depends upon plot alone goes by quickly. Only while it has novelty can it command attention, and it is scarcely to be read a second time. The tale which depends upon incident alone – if there be such – would be not unlike a book of anecdotes, too fragmentary to be effective as a whole. That in which the drawing of character is the chief feature is likely to be heavy and sure to be restricted to a limited audience. In the masterpiece, plot, incident, and character-drawing are combined. The great novelists have never essentially varied in their methods, and in the work of Cervantes, Fielding, Thackeray, Hawthorne, and the rest, style, character, and story are all integral parts of the whole.

It is perhaps not amiss to say here a word in regard to the collection of material and to what is meant by the study of nature. I have already repeated the truism that the writer must ever be on the alert for material. If he is to write stories he is to undertake the reproduction of human life, and it is above all needful that he understand human life. He cannot be too careful in his consideration of the world about him. He must be constantly examining the acts of his fellow men; constantly saying to himself: “What were the motives which led to that act? What were the feelings aroused by that experience? What the emotions in such a situation?” He must make his own inner experience the test, and from the less divine the greater. He may to a great extent judge the motives which actuate men and women in important crises from those which have moved him in circumstances seemingly trivial. A well-known New England story-teller said to me once when I praised a tale in which she had shown most vividly the remorse of a man who had committed a great crime: “It will amuse you to hear how I knew what that man’s feelings were. Once when I was a child I burned up my sister’s doll in a fit of anger. The remorse I suffered over that foolish performance was the material that I made my story out of.” There is a good illustration of the way in which the creative mind works. From the nature of its own emotions it is able to appreciate the feelings of others, and to see that in feeling there is more question of degree than of kind. His own being is the only one into which a writer can really look. What he finds in his own heart is the key by which to read the cipher which is written in the hearts of others.

Narration is the form of literature which most universally appeals to men, and it is no less that form which most affects human conduct. Men who could not be brought to give ear to a sermon may be taught by a parable or moved by a tale. It is in narrative that prose rises most surely and indisputably to the rank of a fine art, so that while the masterpieces of fiction remain it will be impossible to question the right of prose literature to claim a place beside painting, sculpture, music, and poetry. Art is the regenerator of the world, and in modern times it is in the form of fiction that it most easily and most widely reaches the hearts of men.

XVIII

ACCESSORIES OF NARRATION

The range of Narration is so wide that it is well to look a little more carefully at the means of producing effects in this especial department of composition. The subject is at once so fascinating and so complicated that it would not be difficult to make an entire course of lectures upon it, although in the end we might be brought to the humiliating consciousness that no amount of lecturing could make novelists of us. In the limits of these talks it is impossible to do more than to consider briefly the more important matters which occupy the attention of the story-teller; and those which first come to mind are the things which it is customary to name Local Color, Dialect, Dialogue, Character Drawing, and Moral Purpose.

Local color in the modern sense was invented in the present century. It is true that the writers of other times had employed the same device before, but it has been consciously sought and has been supplied with this name within recent times. It might be asked by a cynic why the quality is any better now that it is ticketed and talked about in reviews than it was in the days of Theocritus and Kalidasa and Boccaccio; but so many things have been used before modern generations were thought of that if we are not to have the privilege of regarding things as new when they have been newly named we are likely to be at a desperate loss for novelty.

By local color is now meant the bringing out of the peculiarities of the locality where the scene of a tale is laid. It is evident that there is no spot so poor as not to have characteristics which distinguish it from all others. It is the aim of many modern story-tellers to give this especial local flavor with the most faithful and often painful vividness. Indeed, there are not a few recent stories which seem to exist for no other reason than to exploit the accidental qualities of remote and hitherto undescribed places.

This is an age in which competition between periodicals has waxed warm, and to the desire of editors to procure novelties is largely due the increase of the already rather tiresomely abundant examples of local color and of dialect. An air of freshness may be imparted to a tale by laying the scene in places practically unknown in fiction. Accidents of custom and manners arrest the attention for the moment, and it is due to this fact that the great mass of stories marked by this peculiarity have succeeded. The principle is not unlike that of drawing a crowd to the theatre by new scenery. A tale which is really vital can do without local color, as a really strong play succeeds without elaborate setting.

This is not, however, the whole of the matter. A good play may be helped by novel effects of scenery and a tale good in itself may be improved by local color. Detailed description of local peculiarities may make more clear to the reader the character and the motives of the personages in a narrative. All men are influenced by their surroundings, and to be familiar with unusual social conditions is often essential to the understanding of acts or opinions which have been done or held under them. To make intelligible the story of Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale, Hawthorne was obliged to set forth something of the manners and morals of colonial days. Scott could not have made comprehendable the tale of Rob Roy without giving some idea of what life in the Highlands was like in the time of that redoubtable chieftain. The author must in any case impart to the reader whatever special information is necessary to the best effect of his fiction.

The comment which it seems fair to make in this connection is that here is to be applied the rule which should govern the management of all details in narration, – namely, that everything shall be kept subordinate to the central purpose of the work. So long as particular description aids in bringing out more clearly the main idea of the whole, so long as it is used as a means and not as an end, so long as the setting is kept subordinate to the story, so long it is good. The moment what is called local color is allowed to dominate a story, it must injure the permanent effect. The literary mechanic who is writing stories simply to sell them will usually find it easy to dispose of studies of local peculiarities which are piquant, whether they are true or not. There is nothing to object to in this, but this work is not to be confounded with legitimate Narration, and it is not to be looked upon as permanent literature. Local color is accidental rather than essential. It depends upon circumstances which belong to a place rather than to human nature. It follows that it is not in itself of permanent interest, and that work depending upon it for interest must go by as soon as the novelty is passed. The work of Miss Wilkins, Miss Jewett, Miss Brown, and the rest, has attracted attention through the fidelity with which it presented peculiarities of New England rural life. The claim to permanent value in each, however, rests on other and higher grounds. In so far as they are true to the fundamental and essential characteristics of humanity, in so far as they deal with the constant emotions of men and women as men and women, and not as eccentric types evolved by peculiarities and environment, they have permanent value – and no farther.

Closely allied with local color, and indeed in many cases hardly to be distinguished from it, is dialect. We are all familiar with a certain strange appearance which has of late years come over the pages of the magazines, a sort of epidemic of which the most prominent characteristics are the misspelling of words and a plentiful spattering of apostrophes, as if the secret of literary art lay in eccentric and intermittent orthography. We have been instructed that these startling productions were dialect stories, and whether we have professed to like them or not has depended largely upon our daring to say what we thought. There are, it is true, dialect stories which we must all admire and enjoy, – many of them in spite of their strange language rather than because of it, – but none the less is the multiplicity of tales in dialect a visitation not unlike the Egyptian plague of swarming flies or of sprawling frogs.

The object of the use of dialect is of course to produce what might be called a personal local color. To personages who belong to nationalities other than his own a writer often gives phrases in their own tongue or conforming to the idiom of their own language in order to convey a lively impression of their being foreigners. To produce a vivid sense of the fact that his characters are Creoles of New Orleans and to suggest all the romantic flavor of life among them, George Cable used dialect in that delightful book, “Old Creole Days;” to make the reader realize the especial local and race peculiarities of one character or another Thomas Nelson Page used one negro dialect in “Marse Chan” and Joel Chandler Harris another in “Uncle Remus.” In these and similar cases the dialect used is really, as far as the general reader is concerned, an unknown tongue. Its correctness or incorrectness cannot be judged by the general public to which these tales are addressed, and its use must therefore be flavor rather than accuracy, impression rather than information, picturesqueness rather than literalness.

The proper use of dialect is often a great aid in characterization. Some figures it is all but impossible to individualize without this means. There are figures in Scott which would not be at all the same thing if stripped of their dialect; while in each of the stories mentioned above there are instances of the same thing. It is to be remembered, however, that this is a subsidiary purpose. In other words it is a detail of fiction. Dialect is written for the sake of the story, and woe to that author who produces a story for the sake of a dialect. The tales of the “Soldiers Three,” the “Window in Thrums,” “Old Creole Days,” succeed for other qualities than the dialect, and the dialect is good because it helps to make effective something better. It is even not improbable that with a large body of readers these and kindred books succeed only in spite of their dialect, since even at its best this perversion of language is apt to be in itself somewhat irritating even if not perplexing.

Actually to reproduce a dialect as it is spoken is a feat so difficult that it is worse than idle to attempt it outside of works on philology. Dialectic peculiarities are always largely matters of accent, of voice quality, and of inflection. The sounds of vowels and consonants may be indicated, but it is all but impossible to set down the rising and falling of the voice which is the most characteristic quality of these forms of speech. Printed words cannot reproduce that species of intoning which has so large a share in making unintelligible to foreigners the speech of London cabmen and porters. Indeed, it is to be doubted whether any written dialect is to be regarded as a very exact reproduction of the genuine thing, – a statement which would probably be regarded with contemptuous anger by the devotees of the dialect story, if any still survive. Certainly it is true that dialect does not have to be genuine to be successful. The dialect of the “Biglow Papers” was never spoken on the face of the earth. It is none the worse for that, so far as I can see. It has the effect for which it was intended, and nothing more could reasonably be asked. Mr. Lowell made it with the most careful patience, and apparently believed in it with beautiful faith. He set nothing down, or rather he tried to set nothing down, which he had not heard from the lips of Yankee rustics; but in the first place no one man ever used all those distorted words and phrases, belonging sometimes to different localities; and in the second, letters cannot reproduce the peculiar sounds and accents of rural New England. Yet this dialect has imposed for a quarter of a century upon no inconsiderable portion of the American reading public, and it will probably continue to impose upon English readers until the end of time.

The inability of readers to judge of the accuracy of dialect is inseparable from its use. How many are acquainted with the vernacular of “Thrums,” the patois of New Orleans Creoles, the dialect of Mexican mining camps, or the speech of the half-breeds of Canada or the West Indian islands? No danger that the general reader will measure work by reality obliges the writer of dialect to be accurate. The only restraining influence is the difficulty of making a manufactured dialect consistent and convincing. The story-teller studies dialect as it is spoken, not for the sake of being right, but because this is the surest way to obtain the appearance of being right. The only essential thing is to be convincing.

The danger in the use of dialect is not far to seek. Its literary value is that of flavor. As long as this fact is recognized it may properly be employed. The difficulty is that the great and inglorious company of imitators have written dialect for its own sake, – or perhaps for their own sake! – and thereby not only have produced things dreadful to contemplate, but have so wearied the soul of readers that it has become dangerous to use it legitimately. Dialect in literature is a condiment and not a viand; it is mustard and not beef; it is never to be employed for its own sake any more than are commas and capitals, paragraphs and periods. Almost every inexperienced writer who tries his hand at dialect – and most experienced ones – will overdo it. The French, with their instinctive literary sense, may well be studied in this connection. They understand that the value of patois is its suggestiveness, and they go in its use just so far as is necessary to impart the flavor required, and there they stop. This is the legitimate method. I have nothing to say of those disfigurements which appear in some of the periodicals, sketches which are written for the sake of exhibiting a special dialect. They do not come under the head of literature except in the sense in which the word includes the dictionary and thesaurus. They may be of interest to the student of philology, but they cannot concern the imaginative reader.

The best quality which dialect can give is an impression of individuality, of quaintness or remoteness from conventional and hackneyed experiences. It must be written with care and sobriety. The writer must remember that the day is definitely past when it was possible to produce effects simply by misspelling. It is well to keep in mind also that even the ability to write a dialect never so perfectly is not necessarily a reason for using it. The employment of local forms of language, like local color, must be subordinate to the purposes of the story. It is always a means and never legitimately an end. It is, moreover, a good deal discredited by over-use and abuse, so that it must be employed with double caution.

One more word of warning it seems well to add. The employment of dialect and of local color as a means of producing literary effect is apt to impart to work a transient character. Their effect is less likely to be permanently pleasing than that of almost any other thing legitimately among the resources of the story-teller. The principle that it is well to appeal to ordinary experiences and to ordinary tastes comes in here. The general reader soon tires of dialect unless it be very simple and is supported by all other devices within the range of art. To write dialect is likely to be at best to sacrifice permanent to temporary success. The greatest writers have usually employed it sparingly. Shakespeare almost never resorted to it; Fielding scarcely used it at all; Scott tried it much more largely, but the Scotch speech was all but universal among his people, and it has certainly been oftener a hindrance than a help to his continued success; Thackeray put little of it into his best work; Hawthorne passed it by; and even Dickens depended upon it very little, despite the temptations which his characters constantly offered. Thomas Hardy has given us the best rustics since Shakespeare with not much more than an indication of dialect. I do not wish to insist upon the point too strongly, but the principle seems to me a sound one, and it is certainly worth the consideration of any student of the art of writing fiction.

The art of writing dialogue is by no means the least difficult thing which the story-teller has to learn, and there are very many who are not able to acquire it to the end of their days. If a rule could be devised by which good and pleasing dialogue could be written, it would go far toward making it possible for every man to be his own novelist. To give to the talk of a tale the air of naturalness and ease, to make it take its place in the story and be attractive without being too clever or too formal, to give it character and consistency, to impart to it movement and vivacity, to be sure that it helps forward the narrative in which it is set, – all these difficulties must be overcome before an author can be said to write good dialogue.

The first essential in dialogue is naturalness. Some authors get on without this, but they get on in spite of lacking it and are constantly hampered by the lack. The most striking instance of this in modern fiction is probably George Meredith, a novelist who makes his way with more encumbrances than any other living man of genius. Take, for instance, this bit, chosen almost at random: —

“Have you walked far to-day?”

“Nine and a half hours. My Flibbertigibbet is too much for me at times, and I had to walk off my temper.” …

“All those hours were required?”

“Not quite so long.”

“You are training for your alpine tour.”

“It’s doubtful whether I shall get to the Alps this year. I leave the Hall, and shall probably be in London with a pen to sell.”

“Willoughby knows that you leave him?”

“As much as Mont Blanc knows that he is going to be climbed by a party below. He sees a speck or two in the valley.”

“He has spoken of it.”

“He would attribute it to changes.”

    – The Egotist, viii.

This does as a matter of fact somewhat help forward the story from which it is taken, but could anybody get from it the idea that two living beings were talking together?

The great principle of the impression of truth instead of a servile imitation of truth is the secret of good talk in fiction. It is necessary to keep clear on the one hand of formality and stiffness, and on the other of stupid closeness in mere imitation. In actual talk there are inaccuracies, broken sentences, phrases of which the meaning is evident from some glance or gesture, repetitions and careless constructions, all of which would lose their force or gain undue importance if set down in print. To preserve or too closely to imitate these characteristics of genuine conversation is to give an impression of unreality, or commonplaceness and even of vulgarity. The rambling speech is often pleasantly and appropriately imitated. The inimitable Nurse in “Romeo and Juliet” stands at the head of talkers of this sort, but there are excellent specimens in the fiction of our own century. Miss Austen possessed the secret of this futile volubility to perfection, and Mrs. Stowe’s best literary work is her management of the discursive talk of Sam Lawson.

That conversation should be in keeping with the characters speaking is one of those things so obvious that it is unsafe to leave them unsaid. It is another application of the principle of the point of view. The natural tendency of the beginner is to put into the mouths of his personages not what they would say but what he would have them say. If he sufficiently realize them in his own mind there will be little danger of this. The remedy is to know his characters. The people in any book will talk consistently if they are real to the author. They will say what they wish to say and not what he wishes them to say, and that is the whole secret.

Most young writers compose pages of dialogue which seems to them clever, which, when it is written, they read over with tender admiration, generally not without a little amazement that they have done so well and a conviction that this at least imparts distinction to their book, – when as a matter of fact the whole thing is simply an amateurish mistake. It is one of the many pitfalls which egotism and inexperience dig for the unwary writer, who forgets that success can be achieved only when the end of a work is the work and not the worker. The elaborator of his own opinions into the form of talk is not writing dialogue; he is but making a weak concession to his individual vanity. His punishment is that he cannot deceive the public. Readers may not know their right hands from their left, but they know when they are bored, and they are always bored when the progress of the tale is interrupted to afford an author opportunity to display himself.

Anthony Trollope puts this matter well in his “Autobiography:” —

There is no portion of a novelist’s work in which this fault of episodes is so common as in dialogue. It is so easy to make two persons talk on any casual subject with which the writer presumes himself to be conversant! Literature, philosophy, politics, or sport may be handled in a loosely discursive style; and the writer, while indulging himself, is apt to think he is pleasing the reader. I think he can make no greater mistake. The dialogue is generally the most agreeable part of a novel; but it is only so as long as it tends in some way to the telling of the main story. It need not seem to be confined to this, but it should always have a tendency in this direction. The unconscious critical acumen of a reader is both just and severe. When a long dialogue on extraneous matter reaches his mind, he at once feels that he is being cheated into taking something that he did not bargain to accept when he took up that novel. He does not at that moment require politics or philosophy, but he wants a story. He will not, perhaps, be able to say in so many words that at some certain point the dialogue has deviated from the story; but when it does he will feel it. – Ch. xii.

Of course the matter is made more complicated by the fact that it is often the office of dialogue to indicate character rather than action. How far the writer may introduce talk simply to illustrate mental characteristics or moods is a thing to be decided by each writer for himself and learned by observation. It is not amiss for a young writer to consider carefully how far he is himself able to enjoy this in the work of others; and in any case he must learn to distinguish between what is written genuinely to illustrate mental traits and that which is really put in simply to show his own cleverness.

There are two points in the writing out of dialogue which it is well to keep in mind: first that care must be taken never to leave the reader in doubt who is speaking, and second that interspersed comments be used with skillful nicety.

In a conversation which consists of a somewhat extended succession of short speeches it is often hard for the reader to keep in mind without effort who say them, unless they are labeled; while on the other hand to come upon a constant repetition of “said he,” “said she,” “said Tom,” “said Jane,” is as irritating as bumping over a corduroy bridge in a cart without springs. It is worth the author’s while to take all possible pains to give explicit indication of the personality of the speaker wherever this is needed and equally to omit it where it is superfluous. Here is an example from a second-rate novel: —

“I’m off on Monday,” said he.