MIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SAN DIEGO
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3 1822 01292 2720
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FLORA
KLICKMANN
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3 1822 01292 2720
Social Sciences & Humanities Library
University of California, San Diego
Please Note: This item is subject to recall.
Date Due
JUL 3 1999
CI 39 (5/97)
UCSD Lib.
The Lure of the Pen
A BOOK FOR WOULD-BE AUTHORS
By
FLORA KLICKMANN
Editor of
"The Girl's Ozvn Paper and Woman's Magazine"
WHO HAS WRITTEN "THE FLOWER-PATCH AMONG THE HILLS,'
"BETWEEN THE LARCHWOODS AND THE WEIR,"
AND OTHER WORKS
G. P. Putnam's Sons
New York and London
1920
Copyright, 1920, by
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
DEDICATED TO
MR. JAMES BOWDEN
WHO HAS FEW EQUALS, EITHER
AS A PUBLISHER, OR AS A FRIEND
PREFACE TO THE AMERICAN EDITION
In sending out this new book to the American
public, I feel I am addressing a sympathetic
audience, since other volumes that have preceded
it have been most cordially received, and have
added considerably to my long list of friends on
the Western side of the Atlantic.
At first glance it may seem as though the dif-
ference between the writings of American and
British authors is too marked to allow of a book
on Authorship proving useful to both countries — ■
but in reality the difference is only superficial,
and is largely confined to methods of newspaper
journalism, or connected with mannerisms and
topical qualities.
Fundamentally, both nations work on the same
lines and acknowledge the same governing laws
in Literature. American authors, no less than
British, derive their inspirations from European
classics.
And magazine editors and publishers in both
countries are only too grateful for good work from
either side.
viii Preface
No one can teach authors how or what to
write; but sometimes it is possible to help the
beginners to an understanding of what it is better
not to write. For the rest I hope the book explains
itself.
Flora Klickmann
Fleet Street, London.
CONTENTS
PAGE
PART ONE: THE MSS. THAT FAIL
Why they Fail . 3
Three Essentials in Training 11
PART TWO: ON KEEPING YOUR EYES OPEN
A Course in Observation 17
The Assessment of Spiritual Values 24
PART THREE: THE HELP THAT BOOKS CAN GIVE
The Bane of "Browsing" 35
Reading for Definite Data 41
Reading for Style 47
The Need for Enlarging the Vocabulary 58
The Charm of Musical Language 68
Analysing an Author's Methods 78
PART FOUR: POINTS A WRITER OUGHT TO NOTE
Practice Precedes Publication 97
The Reader must be Interested 116
Form should be Considered 130
Right Selection is Important 139
When Writing Articles 144
Suggestions for Style 156
The Ubiquitous Fragment 166
Concerning Local Colour 172
Creating Atmosphere 178
The Method of Presenting a Story 188
Fallacies in Fiction 197
Some Rules for Story-Writing 217
About the Climax 225
The Use of "Curtains" 229
On Making Verse 234
The Function of the Blue Pencil 252
PART FIVE: AUTHOR, PUBLISHER, AND PUBLIC
When Offering Goods for Sale 261
The Responsibility 286
INDEX
297
PART ONE
THE MSS. THAT FAIL
In the Business of Making Literature, the only Qual-
ity that presents itself in Abundance is entirely untrained
Mediocrity.
The Lure of the Pen
Why They Fail
IN the course of a year I read somewhere about
nine thousand stories, articles and poems.
These are exclusive of those read by others
in my office.
Of these nine thousand I purchase about six
hundred per annum. The remainder are usually
declined for one of three reasons; either,
They are not suited to the policy and the re-
quirements of the publishing house, or the periodi-
cals, for which I am purchasing. Or,
They tread ground we have already covered.
Or,
They have no marketable value.
The larger proportion of the rejected MSS.
come under the last heading. They are of the
"homing" order, warranted to return to their
starting point.
The number that I buy does not indicate the
number that I require. In normal times I could
3
4 The Lure of the Pen
use at any rate double the number that I purchase.
I never have an overstock of the right thing. I
never have more than I can publish of certain-to-
sell matter. No publisher or editor ever has.
In the business of Making Literature (and
throughout these chapters I use the word literature
in its widest sense) genius is rare. Nearly-genius
is almost as rare. The only quality that presents
itself in abundance is entirely untrained medi-
ocrity.
It may be thought that this applies equally to
all departments of the world's work; but it is not
so. While genius is scarce wherever one looks, I
know of only one other vocation where the candi-
dates expect good pay at the very start without
any sort of training, any experience, any special-
ised knowledge, or any idea of the simplest re-
quirement of the business from which they hope
to draw an income — the other vocation being
domestic service.
For example: Though thousands of paintings
and sketches are offered me in the course of the
year, I cannot recall one instance of an artist an-
nouncing that this is his, or her, first attempt at
drawing; all the work submitted, even the feeblest,
shows previous practice or training of some sort,
be it ever so elementary. Yet it is no uncommon
Why They Fail 5
thing to receive with a MS. a letter explaining,
"This is the first time I have ever tried to write
anything."
Then again, no one expects to be engaged to
play a violin solo at a concert, when she has had
no training, merely because she craves a public
appearance and applause. Yet many a girl and
woman writes to an editor: "This is my first
attempt at a poem. I do so hope you will publish
it, as I should so like to see myself in print."
And no one would expect to get a good salary
as a dressmaker by announcing that, though she
has not the most elementary knowledge of the
business, she feels convinced that she could make a
dress. Yet over and over again people have asked
me to give them a chance, explaining that, though
they were quite inexperienced, they felt they had
it in them to write.
Nevertheless, despite this prevailing idea that
we all possess heaven-sent genius, which is ready
to sprout and blossom straight away with no pre-
paratory work — an idea which gains added weight
from the fact that there are no great schools for
the student who desires to enter the literary pro-
fession, as there are for students of art and music
— some training is imperative ; and if the would-be
6 The Lure of the Pen
writer is to go far, the training must be rigorous
and very comprehensive.
But unlike most other businesses and profes-
sions, the novice must train himself; he can look
for very little help from others.
The art student gains information and experi-
ence by working with others in a studio; it gives
him some common ground for comparisons ; where
all are sketching from the same model, he is able
to see work that is better, and work that is worse,
than his own; and probably he is able to grasp
wherein the difference lies.
The music student who is one of several to
remain in the room while each in turn has a
pianoforte lesson, hears the remarks of the pro-
fessor (possibly a prominent man in his own pro-
fession) on each performance, and can learn a
large amount from the criticisms and corrections
bestowed on the others, quite apart from those
applying to her own playing.
But for the would-be author there is no college
where the leading literary lights listen patiently,
for an hour or two at a stretch, while the students
read their stories and poems and articles aloud for
criticism and correction. Here and there ardent
amateurs form themselves into small literary co-
teries for this purpose; but often these either
Why They Fail 7
develop into mutual admiration societies, or fizzle
out for lack of a guiding force.
The difficulty with literature is this: It is the
most elusive business in the world. No one can
say precisely what constitutes good
. literature
literature, because, no matter how you is «&» most
Elusive Bus-
may classify and tabulate its charac- lnessinthe
. . . . World
tenstics, some new genius is sure to
break out in a fresh place; and no one can lay
down a definite course of training that can be
relied on to meet even the average requirements
of the average case.
You can set the instrumentalist to work at
scales and studies for technique; the dressmaker
can practise stitchery and the application of scien-
tific measurement; the art student can study the
laws governing perspective, balance of design, the
juxtaposition of colour, and a dozen other topics
relative to his art.
And more than this, in most businesses (and I
include the professions) you can demonstrate to
the students, in a fairly convincing manner, when
their work is wrong. You can show the girl who
is learning dressmaking the difference between
large uneven stitches and small regular ones; the
undesirability of having a skirt two inches longer
at one side than it is at the other. You can indi-
8 The Lure of the Pen
cate to the art student when his subject is out of
drawing, or suggest a preferable choice of colours.
And though these points may only touch the
mechanical surface of things, they help the student
along the right road, and are invaluable aids to
him in his studies. True, such advice cannot make
good a lack of real genius, yet it may help to
develop nearly-genius, and that is not to be
despised.
But with literature, there is so little that is
tangible, and so much that is intangible. Beyond
the bare laws that govern the construction of the
language, only a fraction of the knowledge that is
necessary can be stated in concrete terms for the
guidance of the student. And because it is
difficult to reduce the art of writing to any set
of rules, the amateur often regards it as the one
vocation that is entirely devoid of any construc-
tive principles ; the one vocation wherein each can
do exactly as he pleases, and be a law unto
himself, no one being in a better position than
himself to say what is great and what is feeble,
since no one else can quote chapter and verse as
authority for making a pronouncement on the
merits — and more particularly the demerits — of
his work.
And yet, nearly all the English-speaking race
Why They Fail 9
want to write. The craving for "self-expression"
is one of the characteristics of this century; and
what better medium is there for this than writing 1 ?
Hence the lure of the pen.
It is partly because so many beginners do not
know where to turn for criticism, or an oppor-
tunity to measure their work with that of others,
that some send their early, crude efforts to editors,
hoping to get, at least, some opinion or word of
guidance, even though the MS. be declined. Yet
this is what an editor cannot undertake to do.
Think what an amount of work would be involved
if I were to set down my reasons for declining
each of those eight thousand and more MSS. that
I turn down annually! It could not be done, in
addition to all the other claims on one's office
time.
But though life would be too short for any
editor to write even a brief criticism on each MS.
rejected, certain defects repeat them-
selves so often that it is quite possible mss- are
. r .... Rejected
to specify some outstanding faults —
or rather, qualities which are lacking — that lead
to the downfall of one MS. after another, with
the automatic persistency of recurring decimals.
Speaking broadly, I generally find that the MS.
which is rejected because it has no marketable
io The Lure of the Pen
value betrays one or more of the following defic-
iencies in its author: —
Lack of any preliminary training.
" " specialised knowledge of the subject
dealt with.
" " modernity of thought and diction.
" " the power to reduce thought to
language.
" " cohesion and logical sequence of ideas.
" " ability to get the reader's view-point.
" " new and original ideas and themes.
" " the instinct for selection.
" " a sense of proportion.
The majority of such defects can be remedied
with study and practice ; and even though the final
result may not be a work of genius, it will be
something much more likely to be marketable than
the MS. that has neither knowledge nor training
behind it.
Three Essentials in Training
HOW am I to set about training for lit-
erary work*?" is a question that is put
to me most days in the year.
Training comes under three headings : Observa-
tion, Reading, and Writing.
The majority of beginners make the mistake of
putting writing first; but before you can commit
anything to paper, you must have something in
your head to write down. If you have but little
in your brain, your writing will be worthless.
Just as a plant requires special fertilisers if it
is to develop fine blossoms and large fruit, so the
mind requires food of exceptional
. , . P . . , "We get out
nourishment if it is to produce some- of life
thing out of the ordinary, something ^tintoit
worth reading.
It is one of the great laws of Nature that, as a
general rule, we get out of life about what we
put into it. If a farmer wants bumper crops, he
must apply manure liberally to his land; if a man
wants big returns from his business, he must
devote much time and thought and energy to it.
ii
12 The Lure of the Pen
And in the same way, if you want good stuff to
come out of your head, you must first of all put
plenty of good stuff in.
But — and this is very important — it is not sup-
posed to come out again in the same form that it
went in! This point beginners often forget.
When sweet peas are fed with sulphate of am-
monia, they don't promptly produce more sulphate
of ammonia; they utilise the chemical food to
promote much finer and altogether better flowers.
The same principle governs the application of
suitable nourishment to all forms of life — the
recipient retains its own personal characteristics,
but transmutes the food into the power to inten-
sify, enlarge, and develop those personal charac-
teristics.
In like manner, the food you give your mind
must be used to intensify and enlarge and develop
your individuality; and what you write must
reflect your individuality (not to be confused with
egoism) ; it should not be merely a paraphrase of
your reading.
All this is to explain why I put observation and
reading before writing. They are the principal
channels through which the mind is fed. And,
in the main, the value of your early literary work
will be in direct ratio to the keenness and accuracy
Three Essentials in Training 13
of your observation, and the wisdom shown in
your choice of reading.
You think this sounds like reducing writing to
a purely mechanical process, in which genius does
not count?
Not at all. It is merely that the initial stages
of training for any work involve a certain amount
of routine and repetition, until we have acquired
facility in expressing our ideas.
In any case, very few of us are suffering from
real genius. Ability, talent, cleverness, are fairly
common ; but genius is rare. If you possess genius,
you will discover it quite soon, and, what is more
important, other people will likewise discover it.
As some one has said, "Genius, like murder, will
out !" You can't hide it.
Meanwhile, it will save time and argument to
pretend that you are just an ordinary being like
the rest of us, with everything to learn; you will
progress more rapidly on these lines than if you
spend time contemplating, and admiring, what
you think is a Heaven-sent endowment that re-
quires no shaping.
PART TWO
ON KEEPING YOUR EYES OPEN
One of the drawbacks of an Advanced Civilisation is
the fact that it tends to lessen the power of Observation.
A Course in Observation
BEGIN your observation course by noting
anything and everything likely to have
a bearing on the subject of your writing,
and jot down your observations in the briefest of
notes. No matter if it seem a trifling thing, in
the early part of your training it will be well
worth your while to record even the trifles, since
this all helps to develop and focus the faculty for
observation.
One of the drawbacks of an advanced civilisa-
tion is the fact that it tends to lessen the power
of observation. The average person in this twen-
tieth century sees next to nothing of the detail of
life. We have no longer the need to cultivate
observation for self-protection and food-finding as,
in primitive times. Everything is done for us by
pressing a button or putting a penny in the slot,
till it is fast becoming too much of an effort for
us even to look (or it was, before the War) ; and
the ability to look — and to see when we look — is,
consequently, disappearing through disuse.
17 2
1 8 The Lure of the Pen
You will be surprised how much there is in this
practice of observation, once you get started.
For example: If you intend to write a story,
you will need to study the various types of people
figuring therein; the distinguishing
Human characteristics, the method of speak-
JJJJJJ**"* ing, and the mental attitude of each.
The amateur invariably states the
colour of a girl's eyes and hair, and the tint of her
complexion, with some sentences about her social
standing and her clothes, and then considers her
fully equipped for her part in the piece. Whereas,
in reality, these items are of no importance so far
as a story goes. We really do not mind whether
Dinah, in Adam Bede, had violet eyes or grey-
green; it is the soul of the woman that counts.
Neither do we trouble whether Portia wore a well-
tailored coat and skirt, or a simple muslin frock
lavishly trimmed with Valenciennes; it is her
ready wit, her resourcefulness, and her deep-lying
affection that interest us.
Next in importance to the human beings are
the circumstances involved.
Does your heroine decide to leave her million-
aire-father's palatial home and hide her identity
in slum- work and a room in a tenement"?
You will have to do a fair amount of first-hand
A Course in Observation 19
observation to get the details and general "atmo-
sphere" appertaining to a millionaire's residence
and mode of living, and contrast these with the
conditions that represent life in the squalid quar-
ters of a city.
Perhaps you will tell me that it is impossible
for you to make these observations, as you do not
know your way about any real slum,
... . . Environment
or you are not on visiting terms with and
any millionaire. That raises another stances"
important question that I hope to deal ^^ 9 wide
with later, when we come to the sub-
ject of story-writing. Here I can only say, Don't
attempt to write upon topics you are unable to
study at near range.
After all, there are unlimited subjects that are
close to everybody's hand. You may be including
a dog in your story. Is he to be a real dog, or that
dear, faithful old creature, who has been leading an
active life (in fiction) for a century or more, rescu-
ing the heir when he tumbles in a pond ; apprising
the sleeping family upstairs of the fact that the
clothes-horse by the kitchen fire has caught alight ;
tracking the burglar to his lair; re-uniting fallen-
out lovers by sitting up beseechingly on his hind
legs, and in a hundred other ways making himself
generally useful*?
20 The Lure of the Pen
I am fond of dogs, and I never grudge them
literary honours; but I sometimes wish we could
get a change of descriptive matter where they are
concerned. What are you proposing to say about
the dog? "He ran joyfully to meet his master,
wagging his tail the while'"? Something like
that? I shouldn't wonder. That is the beginning
and the end of so many amateur descriptions of a
dog; and, judging by the number of times I have
read these words, his poor tail must be nearly
wagged off by now.
Instead of being content with this, start making
careful observations, and you will soon have some-
thing else to write about. Notice how a dog talks
— with his ears; he can tell you almost anything,
once you learn to read his ears. And when you
have noted all the points you can in this direction,
and mastered this part of his language, see what
you can learn from his walk; you can estimate
a dog's temper and feelings, his sorrow, his joy,
and the state of his health, by noticing the varia-
tions in his walk. Why, any one dog can provide
you with a book full of observations.
You may say, however, that as your story is to
be a short one, you could never use up a book full
of observations if you had them.
A Course in Observation 21
Very likely ; but always remember that you need
to have a score of facts in your head for every one
you put down on paper. You must you need a
be thoroughly saturated with a sub- ra cts in
^ 1 r ■*. 1 • r your Head
ject before you can write even a brier for each
description in a telling and convinc- °™ *° n
ing manner. Therefore, never be Pa P er
afraid of making too many notes in your observa-
tion-book.
Many of these entries you will never refer tO (
again; the very act of writing them down will so
impress them on your memory that they become»a
matter-of-course to you. This in itself is valuable
training; it is one of the processes by which a
person may become "well-informed" — an essential
qualification for a good writer.
While over-elaboration of detail in your writing
is seldom desirable, apart from a text-book or a
treatise, knowledge of detail is imperative if that
writing is to conjure up situations in the reader's
mind and make them seem vividly real. In
describing scenery, for instance, you do not need
to give the name of every bit of vegetation in
sight, till your MS. looks like a botanical dic-
tionary ; but it is useful to know those names, you
may require some of them; and until your work
22 The Lure of the Pen
is actually shaping, you cannot tell exactly what
you will use and what omit.
The habit of keen observation will save you
from a legion of pitfalls. The more you train
your eyes to see, and your mind to
Keen
observation retain what you have seen, the less
will save . .
you from chance there is or your putting down
Pitfalls
inaccuracies.
I have been reading a MS. wherein the heroine
— a beautiful girl with a face like a haunting
memory (whatever that may look like) — spent a
whole afternoon lying full-length on the grass,
the first sunny day in February, revelling in the
scent of violets near by, and watching the swal-
lows skimming above her. If the writer had no
opportunity to observe the comings and goings of
swallows, she might at least have turned up an
encyclopaedia, when she would have found that
swallows do not arrive in England till well on
into April.
Then, after 249 more pages, the beautiful girl
finally died of a broken heart — obviously absurd !
In real life she would have died on the very next
page of rheumatic fever and double pneumonia,
after lying on the wet grass all that time !
Frequently, when I point out similar errors to
the novice, I get some such reply as this, "Of
A Course in Observation 23
course, that reference to swallows was only a slip
of the pen"; or, "After all, it is merely a minor
point whether she lay on the grass or walked along
the road; it doesn't really affect the story as a
whole."
True, such discrepancies may be only minor
details; but, on the other hand, they may not. I
have noticed, however, that the writer who is
inaccurate on small points is equally liable to
inaccuracy where the main features of the story
are concerned; and the writer who does not know
enough about his subject to get his details right
seldom knows enough about it to get any of it
right.
The Assessment of Spiritual
Values
THERE is one aspect of life that can only
be learnt by observation; a phase of
your training where books and lectures
can be of but little assistance to you. Important
as it is that you should note the material things
relating to your subject, it is still more important
that you should train yourself to note the psycho-
logical bearings and the spiritual values of life,
since these are often of far more vital consequence
to a story than the plot.
By "spiritual values" I do not necessarily mean
anything of a directly religious quality. I use the
term to signify the revelation of mind and heart
and soul of the various characters that a writer
presents, as distinct from a catalogue of externals ;
the reading of motives, and the recognition of the
forces that are within us, as distinguished from
the chronicling of superficial items.
So often in the world of men and women around
us it is the unseen that counts. Just below the
24
The Assessment of Spiritual Values 25
surface life is teeming with motives and aims and
ideals and personality; with problems that involve
mixed feelings, and produce paradox The Unseen
and mis judgment, and apparently ir- tkat counts
reconcilable qualities. These may show scarcely
a ripple on the outside, and yet be the real factors
that are shaping lives, and influencing the world
for better or for worse, and, incidentally, affect-
ing the whole trend of a story.
To gauge these abstract qualities and their con-
sequences accurately is the biggest task of the
writer; and according to the amount of such
insight that he brings to bear on his subject, will
be the durability of his work, since this alone is
the part that lives. Fashions and furniture,
scenery and architecture, maps and dynasties, laws
and customs, even language and the meaning of
words, all change; and the older grows the world,
the more rapid are the changes. The only things
that remain unaltered are the laws of Nature and
the longings of the soul. Hence the only writings
that last beyond the changing fashions of the
moment are those that centralise on these funda-
mental things, giving secondary place to epheme-
ral details.
If you want your work to live, it is useless to
make the main interest centre in something that
26 The Lure of the Pen
will be out-of-date and passed beyond human
memory within a very little while.
This insight as to the subtleties of life is the
quality that gives vitality to your writing. With-
out it your characters will be no more alive than
a wax figure in a draper's window, no matter how
handsomely you may clothe them in descriptive
matter. Have you ever read a story wherein the
heroine seemed about as real and alive as a saw-
dust-stuffed doll, and the hero had as much "go"
in him as a wooden horse*? I have, alas! thou-
sands of them ! And the reason for the lifelessness
was the lack in the author of all sense of "spiritual
values."
A knowledge of the inner workings of the mind
and heart and soul can only be acquired by close
and constant observation. You may remember
in Julius Cczsar, where Caesar tells Antonio that if
he were liable to fear, the man he should avoid
would be Cassius; he describes him thus: "He is
a great observer, and he looks quite through the
deeds of men." It is just this power that the
writer needs — the ability to look past the actions
themselves to the motives that prompted them.
It is so easy to record the obvious. What we
need to look for is the truth that is not obvious.
For instance, at first sight it may seem quite easy
The Assessment of Spiritual Values 27
for us to decide why a person did a certain thing.
A woman makes an irritable remark. Why did
she make that irritable remark*? Bad temper!
we promptly reply. But perhaps it wasn't bad
temper; it may have been due to ill-health — a
bad tooth can generate as much irritability in half
an hour as the worse temper going. Or it may
have been caused by insomnia; or by nerves
strained to the breaking-point with trouble and
anxiety. Or the speaker may have been vexed
with herself for some action of her own, and her
vexation found vent in this way.
If you were writing a story, the cause of her
irritability might be an important link in the chain
of events. And in scores of other directions, the
cause of an action might be infinitely more import-
ant in the working out of your plot than the
action itself.
Moreover, if you want your work to appeal
to a wide and varied audience, you must take
as your main theme something that is understood
by all conditions of people; something that makes
a universal appeal. That is why the greatest
writers make the human heart the pivot of their
stories, as a rule. Readers are primarily interested
in the doings of, and the happenings to, certain
people; and very particularly the motives that
28 The Lure of the Pen
led up to the doings and happenings, and the
reasons why certain things were said and done,
and the psychological results of the sayings and
doings.
In the main, it is not of paramount importance
to you, when you are engrossed in a story, whether
the scene is laid in Japan among
Theme decaying Buddhist temples, or in a
m^e a Devonshire village. It is the per-
Ap^Hi Sal sonality of the characters, their sor-
rows and joys, their struggles and love
affairs, and the solution of their human problems
that make the chief claim on your interest. Cer-
tainly, the scenery and "local colour" and inani-
mate surroundings may influence you favourably
or otherwise — backgrounds and the general "set-
ting" of a story are valuable, more valuable than
the amateur realises ; nevertheless, they are not the
main features, and should never be made the main
features in fiction.
'.'Once you grasp the importance of the
"spiritual values," in life itself no less than in
writing, you will understand why it is that some
books survive centuries of change and social
upheaval, and appeal to all sorts and conditions of
temperaments. When we study Shakespeare at
school, we invariably wonder in our secret heart
The Assessment of Spiritual Values 29
(even though we daren't voice such heresy!) what
on earth people can see in him. To our immature
intelligence he can be dulness itself, while his
style seems long-winded, and many of his plots
appear most feeble affairs beside our favourite
books of adventure. We are not sufficiently de-
veloped and experienced in our school days to be
able to understand and appreciate his greatness,
which lies in his amazing knowledge of the human
heart and his grasp of "spiritual values."
One of the fascinating things about life is the
way it is for ever offering us new discoveries. We
never need get to the end of anything, j^^ ls ever
There are always heights beyond ^w"^
heights, depths below depths, further »»■«»▼«*•■
recesses to penetrate, fresh things to find out. And
nowhere is this more clearly demonstrated than
when we come to the study of human nature itself.
The writer who strives to depict men and women
as they really are is always coming on new sur-
prises; he never arrives at the end of his observa-
tions. And he soon realises how infinitely more
important are the subtle workings of the heart and
mind than all the material things that crowd the
outside surface of life.
To be able to write convincingly about people,
we must know them ; to know them we must live
30 The Lure of the Pen
among them, and sympathise with them — for
there is no other way to know and understand the
to writ© human heart. It is very easy to ridi-
one^Sf ly cu ^ e people's weakness, and make
sympathy cheap sarcasm over their failings ; but
it is useless to make your observations with a
cynic's smile. The cynic really gets nowhere; he
merely robs life of much of its beauty, giving
nothing in its place.
To write about people so that we grip the hearts
of all who read, it is necessary to look beyond the
superficial weaknesses, and below the temporary
failings, to that part of humanity that still bears
the image of the Divine Creator. And you need
sympathy to accomplish this.
Would-be authors often tell me that they are
sick of their everyday routine — office work, teach-
ing, nursing, home duties, or whatever it may be
— and long to throw it all up so that they may
devote all their time to writing.
But you cannot devote all of your time to
writing! The beginner never understands this.
A great deal of an author's time is
peopTe?we taken up with the study of people,
must live anc j a general quest for material for
and Work D ^
among ^ books,
them
While you are in the early stages
The Assessment of Spiritual Values 31
of your writing, it is absolutely necessary for you
that you should be doing some sort of other work
in company with your fellow-creatures, and ex-
periencing the ordinary routine of life, else how
can you possibly get your writing properly bal-
anced and true to life*?
If you try to isolate yourself from the everyday
happenings of normal existence, avoiding the tire-
some duties and the irksome routine, merely keep-
ing your eyes on your MS., or on yourself, or on
only the things that appeal to you, how can you
ever expect your work to be in right perspective 1 ?
Under such conditions what you write would be
bound to give an incomplete, incorrect view of
life, one-sided, and out of all proper proportion,
and — the result could be nothing but a dire
failure.
Stay where you are, and make your corner of
the universe your special study.
Perhaps you think you know everything that is
to be known about people around you. But do
you, I wonder ? Do they know every-
. . , -lii How much
thing about you — your ideals and do you
1 j j Know of
inner struggles, and aims and aspira- tnose who
tions^ are Nearest
utmb • to you?
I doubt it.
Experience shows that very often the people
32 The Lure of the Pen
we know least of all are those with whom we come
into daily contact. We take them for granted. We
do not even trouble to try to understand them.
That they should have doubts and difficulties,
heart-aches and hopes and high aspirations, even
as we have, sometimes comes as a surprise to us.
Begin your observations just where you are now.
See if you can find the glint of gold that is always
somewhere below the surface in every human
being, if we can but strike the right place. Try
to sort out the reasons and the motives that are
thick in the air around you. See if you can discern
another side to a person's character than the one
you have always accepted as a matter of course.
And write down your discoveries and your ob-
servations. You will need them later on.
Here, then, is the first step in training yourself
for authoriship. It is only one step, I admit ; but
you will find it can be made to cover a good deal
of ground.
PART THREE
THE HELP THAT BOOKS CAN GIVE
Steady, quiet, consecutive reading is necessary if we
are to do steady quiet, consecutive thinking ; and, with-
out such thinking, it is impossible for writers to pro-
duce anything worth while.
The Bane of "Browsing"
WHILE a wide range of reading, and a
general all-round knowledge of stand-
ard literature are essential, if you
hope to become a writer, there are three directions
in which you can specialise with great advantage
— reading for definite data, reading for style, and
reading for the study of technique, i.e. to find out
how the author does it.
With such matters as reading for recreation we
have nothing to do here. Training for authorship
means work, regular work, stiff mental work.
Some amateurs seem to think that a course of
desultory dipping into books is a guarantee of
literary efficiency, or an indication of literary
ability.
"I am never so happy as when I am curled up
in an armchair surrounded by books" ; or "I do so
love to browse among books," girls will tell me,
when they are asking if I can find them a post in
my office, or on the staff of one of my magazines.
It is so difficult for the uninitiated to under-
35
36 The Lure of the Pen
stand that the business of writing and making
books is one that entails as much close, monoton-
ous work as any other business ; and the mere fact
that any one spends a certain amount of time in
reading a bit here and a bit there, picking up a
book for a half-hour's entertainment and throw-
ing it down the minute it ceases to stimulate the
curiosity, is no more preparation for literary work
than an occasional tinkling at a piano, trying a
few bars here and there of chance compositions,
would be any preparation for giving a pianoforte
recital or composing a sonata.
I have nothing to say against dipping into books
as a recreation — refreshing one's memory among
old friends, or looking for happy dis-
Nature's rtrj
Revenge coveries in new-comers — I have
for the
Misuse of passed hosts of pleasant half-hours
the Brain . . i r i i i ■
in this way myself when by brain was
too tired to work, and I wanted relaxation. But
such reading is not work; neither is it training in
any sort of sense — it is merely a pastime; and, as
such, must only be taken in moderation. It should
be the exception, not a habit.
If you allow yourself to get into this way of
haphazard reading, in time you lose the ability to
do any consecutive reading, and, as a natural
consequence, it would be utterly impossible for
The Bane of "Browsing" 37
you to do any consecutive thinking, — an essential
for connected writing.
The reason for this is quite clear, if you think
it over. When you persistently skim a legion of
books, or dip into them casually, and live mentally
on a diet of snippets — a form of reading that has
been the vogue of late years — you are giving
yourself mental indigestion that is wonderfully
akin to the indigestion that would follow a food
diet on similar lines. If your meals always con-
sisted of snacks taken at all sorts of odd times —
fried fish followed by rich chocolates, with a
nibble at a mince tart, a few spoonfuls of pre-
served ginger, a trifle of roast duck, some macaroni
cheese, a little salmon and cucumber, some grouse,
oyster patties, and ice-cream on top of that — your
stomach wouldn't know what to do with it all,
and I need say no more about it !
In the same way, when you read first one thing
and then another* piling poems on love scenes,
then adding a motley, disconnected selection of
scraps of information (of doubtful use in most
cases) with sensational episodes and pessimistic
outpourings, irrespective of any sort of sequence
or logical connection, your mind doesn't know
what to do with the conglomeration; for no sooner
has your thinking machine set one series of
38 The Lure of the Pen
thoughts in motion, than it has to switch off that
current and start on something else. Eventually
the brain gives up the struggle ; the thoughts cease
to work; you lose the power to remember — much
less to assimilate — what you read.
In the end, you can't read! Nature is bound
to take this course in sheer self-defence; the only
alternative would be lunacy !
You can see all this exemplified, pitifully, in
the present day. With the great rush of cheap
L books (and still cheaper education)
Wny so v r '
many t hat flooded the country at the be-
want
Books that ginning of this century, the masses
simply gorged themselves with indis-
criminate reading-matter — of a sort, (and so did
many who ought to have known better). Grad-
ually they lost the taste for straight-forward
simple stories of human life as it really is; things
had to be blood-curdling and highly sensational.
The type of reading-matter that had formerly
been associated solely with the "dime novel" and
depraved youths of the criminal class, found its
way into all sorts and conditions of bindings, and
all sorts and conditions of homes. People's minds
were getting so blunted that they simply could
not follow anything unless it was punctuated with
lurid lights ; they could not grasp anything unless
The Bane of "Browsing" 39
it was crude and bizarre and monstrous; they
could not hear anything of the Still Small Voice
that is the essence of all beauty in literature, art
or nature. Everything had to be in shouts and
shrieks to arrest their attention.
Finally, the masses lost the power to read at
all, and we are now living in an age when every-
thing must be presented in the most obvious
medium — pictures. Few people can concentrate
on reading even the day's news — it has to be given
in pictures. The picture-palace and the music-
hall revue (which is another form of spectacular
entertainment) stand for the mental stimulus
that is the utmost a large bulk of the population
are equal to to-day.
We delude ourselves by saying that we live in
such a busy age, we have not time to read. But
it is not our lack of time so much as our lack of
brain power that is the trouble; and that brain
power has been dissipated, primarily, by over-
indulgence in desultory reading that was value-
less.
All this is to explain why a course of indiscrim-
inate "browsing" is no recommendation for the
one who wishes to take up literary work. Steady,
quiet, consecutive reading is necessary if we are
to do steady, quiet, consecutive thinking; and,
40 The Lure of the Pen
without such thinking, it is impossible to write
anything worth whiles.
Let your reading extend over a wide range,
certainly — the wider the better, so long as you
can cover the ground thoroughly — for an author
should be well-read. But take care that you do
read; don't mistake "nibbling" for reading. Far
better know but one poem of Browning thoroughly
and understanding^, than have on your shelves a
complete set of his works into which you dip at
random, when the mood seizes you, with no clear
idea as to what any of it is about.
Reading for Definite Data
TURNING from reading in general to the
specialised reading I have suggested —
the first heading explains itself. Many
subjects that you write upon will require a certain
amount of preliminary reading — some a great deal
— in order that you may accumulate facts, or get
the details of climate and scenery correct, or the
mode of life prevalent at a specified time.
Such a book as Mrs. Florence Barclay's novel,
The White Ladies of Worcester — with the scene
laid in the twelfth century — must have neces-
sitated a great deal of research among the his-
torical and church records of that era, and the
reading of books bearing on that period, in order
to get all the details accurate, and to conjure up
as convincingly as the author has done, an all-
pervading feeling of the spirit of those times.
All stories dealing with a bygone period require
much preliminary reading, in order that one may
become imbued with the spirit of that particular
age, as well as familiarised with its manners and
customs and mode of speech.
41
42 The Lure of the Pen
Most amateurs seem to think that a plentiful
sprinkling of expletives about the pages, with the
introduction of a few historic names and events,
are sufficient to produce the required old-world
atmosphere. I could not possibly count the num-
ber of MSS. I have read where the rival suitor
for the hand of "Mistress Joan" says "Gadsook"
in every other sentence, while the estimable young
man who, like her father, is loyal to the king, is
hidden away in the secret-panel room.
But tricks such as these do not give the story an
authentic atmosphere. You can only get this by
systematic study of the literature relating to the
period.
And others, besides novelists, find it advantage-
ous to study historical records. I remember when
Mr. William Canton (the author of those charm-
ing studies of child life, W. V., Her Book, and
The Invisible Playmate} was engaged on the big
history of the British and Foreign Bible Society,
and was writing the account of the Society's Bible
work in Italy, not only did he read all their
official reports, and the correspondence bearing on
the subject, but, in order to get the work in its
right perspective as regards the events of the
times, he re-read Italian history for the period he
Reading for Definite Data 43
was dealing with. Thus he enabled himself to
gauge much more comprehensively the significance
of the Bible Society's work in that country when
viewed in relation, to national happenings, public
thought, and the attitude of mind of the Italian
people.
The writer of articles or books on general
subjects (as distinct from fiction) must obviously
do a good deal of research. And such
reading for definite information has Preliminary
Reading"
one value that is not always recog- helps you
nised by the amateur — it may let him the worth
know whether it is worth while to information
write the article at all !
Suppose, for example, that you have decided
to write an article on "The Evolution of the
Chimney-Pot." It is a foregone conclusion that
you think you have a certain amount of exclusive
information in your own head about chimney-
pots, else there would be no call for you to write
on this subject, since the public does not want
articles containing nothing more than what has
been published already.
You have collected some facts and information
about chimney-pots, however, that you think are
interesting and quite new. So far, good. Never-
theless, you will be wise to ascertain what has
44 The Lure of the Pen
already been written on the subject; it may throw
fresh light on your own gleanings.
First, you will probably look up the subject in
a good encyclopaedia — failing one of your own,
consult one at a public library. If there is any-
thing at all under this heading, it is just possible
there may be cross-references that will be useful,
and allusions to other works on the subject, which
it would be well for you to get hold of if you can.
Then you will also remember that Ruskin has
written "A Chapter on Chimneys" in his Poetry
of Architecture, with some delightful illustrations.
And in the course of your explorations, some one
may be able to direct you to other works on the
subject, one book so often leads on to another.
In this way you find you are absorbing quite a
large amount of interesting information.
Yet presently you may make the very import-
ant discovery that what you were intending to
say has already been said by others, and possibly
said in a better and more authoritative manner
than you could pretend to at present!
On the other hand, you may still consider that
you have exclusive information; in that case do
your best with it, and you will find your reading
has given you a quickened interest and wider
grasp of your subject. But if, in absolute honesty
Reading for Definite Data 45
to yourself, you know you have nothing new to
contribute to the information that has already
been published, then do not attempt to offer your
article for publication. Write it up, by all means,
as a journalistic exercise for your own improve-
ment; it will be helpful if you try how far you
can seize, and sum up concisely, the important
points that you came across in your various read-
ings on the subject. But don't attempt to pass
off writing of this description as original matter.
Such methods never get you far.
Even though the Editor may not have studied
chimney-pots in detail, and does not recognise
that your "copy" is practically a rechauffe of
other people's writings, some of the readers will
know that it contains nothing original, and will
lose no time in telling him so. There is one
cheery thing about the public, no matter how busy
it may be with its own personal affairs, and pre-
occupied with a war, or labour troubles, a Presi-
dential election, or little trifles like that, it most
faithfully keeps an Editor informed if anything
printed in his pages does not meet with its entire
approval !
And when an Editor finds he has been taken
in with stale material, he naturally marks that
contributor for future remembrance.
4.6 The Lure of the Pen
It is well to bear in mind that one of the most
valuable assets in a writer's outfit is a reputation
for absolute reliability. Smart practice, trickery,
clever dodges, may get a hearing once, even twice
— but they have no future whatever.
Let it become a recognised thing that whatever
you offer for publication is new matter resulting
from your own personal knowledge and investiga-
tion, and matter that is sure to interest a section
of the general public ; that you have verified every
detail, and have ascertained, to the best of your
ability, that the subject has not been dealt with
in this particular way before ; — then you are sure
of a place somewhere in a mild atmosphere, if
not actually in the sun !
Also, common sense should tell you that you
are checking the development of your own ability,
when you let yourself down (no less than the
publisher) by trying to pass off other people's
brain-work as your own. It doesn't pay either
way.
Reading for Style
READING for the improvement of style
will involve various types of litera-
ture. In order to know what you
should read, you need to know in
which particular direction you are weakest. In
the main, however, I find that all amateurs re-
quire to cultivate —
1. A simple, clear, direct mode of expression.
2. Modern language and idiom — in the best
sense.
3. A wide vocabulary.
4. An ear for musical, rhythmic sentences.
And equally they need to avoid —
1. Other people's mannerisms.
2. Long paragraphs and involved sentences.
3. Pedantry and a display of personal learning.
4. Hackneyed phrases.
5. Modern slang.
You may not be able to detect any correspond-
ing weaknesses in your own writings; but, if you
have had no special training in literary work, I
can safely assure you they are there — some of
47
48 The Lure of tHe Pen
them, possibly all of them! In any case, no
particular harm will result if you assume that
your writing will stand a little improvement
under each of these headings, and start to work
accordingly.
In the first chapter I mentioned a lack of
modernity in style as a frequent defect in the
MSS. declined by publishers; unless
Beginner y ou handled stories and articles all
uses° sim- da } r lon & as an editor does, you
pie, Modem W ould never credit how widespread
English r
is the failing.
It is a curious fact that only a very small pro-
portion of people can write as they actually
speak; those who do so usually belong to the
poorest of the uneducated classes, or they are
experienced literary craftsmen.
The large majority of people are so self-con-
scious when they take pen in hand to write a
story or an article, that they cannot be natural.
They do not realise that they should write as
ordinary human beings ; they invariably feel they
should write as famous authors; and they
promptly drop the language they use as ordinary
human beings in every-day life, and adopt an
artificial, stilted style which they seem to think
the correct thing for an author.
Reading for Style 49
And this artificial phraseology is invariably-
archaic or Early Victorian, because the books
people see labelled "good literature" or "the
classics" are chiefly by dead-and-gone writers,
who wrote in a style that sometimes sounds old-
fashioned in these days, even though their English
was excellent.
Our mode of speech and of writing in this
twentieth century is not precisely that of Shake-
speare or Milton, even though the
fundamentals are the same. We live E^ry
Generation
in a nervous, hurrying age, and our showa
Special
language is more nervous, more terse character-
istics of
than it was even twenty years ago. speech
We "speed up" our sentences, just as
we "speed up" our stories and our articles. We
have not time for lengthy introductions that
arrive nowhere, and for ornate perorations that
are superfluous. "Labour-saving" and "conserva-
tion of energy" are prominent watchwords of this
present age, and are being applied to our language
no less than to our work.
In order to get through all we must get through
in a day (or, at any rate, all that we imagine we
must get through!) it has become an unwritten
law that the same thing must not be done twice
over; more than this, we try to find the shortest
50 The Lure of the Pen
cut to everywhere. As one result, we do not use
two words where one will suffice; only the undis-
ciplined, untrained mind employs a string of
adjectives where one will convey the same idea,
or repeats practically the same thing several times
in succession.
Of course, all this curtailment can be — and
often is — carried to excess, till only a few essen-
tial words are left in a sentence, and these are
clipped of half their syllables; we find much of
this in the newspapers and the periodicals of an
inferior class. And it could be pushed so far, till
at length we got to communicate with one another
by nothing more than a series of grunts and snaps
and snarls!
But I am not dealing with the forms of speech
used by the illiterate or the half-educated; I am
referring to the language used by the
Modernity
of style is most intelligent 01 the educated
classes, and I want the amateur to
remember that this is not necessarily the language
of Shakespeare, even though the same words be
employed. There is a subtle difference in the
placement of words, in the turn of phrases, in
the strength and even the meaning of words, in
the shaping of sentences, and that difference is
what, for want of a better word, I term "mod-
Reading for Style 51
ernity," and it is a quality that the amateur
requires to cultivate.
This lack of modernity is noticeable in amateurs
of all types. It is a marked feature in the writ-
ings of teachers and those who have had a univer-
sity education, or purely academic training; and
equally it is conspicuous in the MSS. of the one
who leads a very quiet, retired existence, or has a
restricted view of life.
At first sight it may seem strange to the 'varsity
girl, who considers herself the last word in mod-
ernity, that I classify her early literary attempts
with those of a middle-aged invalid, let us say,
who knows very little of the world at large.
But those who concentrate exclusively on one
idea, or have their outlook narrowed to one par-
ticular groove — whether that groove be church-
work, or housekeeping, or hockey, or reading for
a degree — drop into an antiquated mode of ex-
pression, as a rule, the moment they start to write
anything apart from a letter to an intimate. The
role of author looms large before them. The
mind instantly suggests the style of those authors
they have been in the habit of reading — and more
particularly those they would like other people to
think they were in the habit of reading — the
f$2 The Lure of the Pen
books that are accepted classics, and, consequently,
must be beyond all question.
It matters not whether amateurs are shaping
themselves according to Cowper and Miss Edge-
worth, or striving to live up to the Elizabethan
giants, they arrive at an old-fashioned style for
which there is no more call in the world of to-day
than there is for a crinoline or a Roman toga.
And this, despite the greatness of their models.
Here are a few sentences taken at random from
the pile of MSS. waiting attention here in my
office : —
Instances of
Antiquated "Let us ponder awhile at the shrine
of Nature." This is from an article
on "A Country Walk," written by a High School
teacher. Now, would she have said that, per-
sonally, either to a friend or to a class, if they
were going out for a country walk? Of course
not ! You see at once how antiquated and stilted
it is when you subject it to the test of natural,
present-day requirements.
In another MS. I read, "King Sol was seeking
his couch in the west." Why not have said,
"The sun was setting"?
"He was her senior by some two summers,"
writes a would-be novelist, in describing hero and
heroine. Why "some" two summers, I wonder?
Reading for Style 53
And would it not be more straightforward to say,
"He was two years older than she'"?
"They were of respectable parentage, though
poor and hard-working withal." Needless to say
this occurs in a story of rustic life. Why is it that
the amateur so often describes the cottager in this
"poor but pious" strain?
"We saw ahead of us her home — to wit, a rose-
grown, yellow-washed cottage." And a very
pretty home it was, no doubt; but why spoil it
by the introduction of "to wit"?
"He was indeed a meet lover for such an up-
to-date girl." The word "meet" is not merely
antiquated and unsuited to a story of present-day
life; it seems particularly out of place when used
in close connection with so modern a term as "up-
to-date." The two expressions are centuries
apart, and both should not have been included in
the same sentence.
One MS. says, "I would fain tell you of the
devious ways in which the poor girl strove to earn
an honest livelihood and keep penury at bay; but,
alas! dear reader, space does not avail." "On the
whole, one is thankful that it didn't avail, all
things considered!
In a letter accompanying another MS. the
author explains, "You won't find any slang in
54 The Lure of the Pen
my writing. I revel in the rich sonority of the
English language." That is all right; but some
people confuse "rich sonority" with artificiality.
A word may be richness itself if rightly applied,
but if used in a wrong connection, or employed in
an affected or unnatural manner, it will lose all
its richness and become merely old-fashioned, or
else absurd.
I have not the space to spare for further in-
stances, but I notice one phrase that is curiously
popular with the beginner, who frequently lets
you know the name of some character in these
words, "Mary Jones, for such was her name "
etc. I cannot understand what is the charm of
that expression, "for such was her name"; but it
is one of the amateurs' many stand-bys.
Common sense will tell you that the surest way
to gain a good modern style is to read good
modern stuff,
for a Begin with a special study of the
Editorials in the best type of news-
papers. This is reading that I strongly advocate
for the amateur in order to counteract archaic
tendencies; though I wish emphatically to point
out that by the "Leading Articles" I do not mean
the average "Woman's Gossip," or whatever other
name is given to the column of inanities that is
Reading for Style 55
devoted to feminine topics; for in some news-
papers this is about as futile and feeble, and as
badly written as it is possible for a newspaper
column to be.
Unfortunately, the average person does not
read the best part of the newspaper. He, and
more particularly she, reads the headlines, skims
the news, and runs the eye over anything that
specially appeals, looks down the Births, Mar-
riages and Deaths, and not much more. But this
will not improve anyone's English.
Take a paper like the Spectator. Here you
have modern journalistic writing at its best. Read
the Leading Articles carefully each week. Read
also the paragraphs summarising the news on the
opening pages.
Read aloud, if you can; this will help to
impress phrases and sentences on your mind-
Observe how clear and concise and straightfor-
ward is the style. Of course, the articles will
vary; they are not all written by the same pen;
but those that follow immediately after the news
paragraphs are always worth the student's atten-
tion. You will notice that the writer has some-
thing definite to say, and he says it plainly, in a
way that is instantly understood. The words
used will be to the point; there will be a good
56 The Lure of the Pen
choice of language, yet never an unnecessary
piling on of words. You may, or may not, agree
with everything that is said; but that is not of
paramount importance at the moment, as in this
case you are reading in order to acquire a clear,
easy style of writing rather than to gain special
information. Nevertheless, you will be enlarging
your mental outlook considerably.
In the same way, study the Editorials in any of
the daily or weekly papers of high standing and
reputation, avoiding the papers of the "sensational
snippet" order. You will soon get to recognise
whether the style is good or poor.
The British Weekly (London) is celebrated for
its literary quality. It will be a gain if you read
regularly the article on the front page, and "The
Correspondence of Claudius Clear," which is a
feature every week.
This is to start you on a course of reading that
will give modernity to your style, and help to rid
you of the antiquated expressions and manner-
isms that are so noticeable in amateur work.
Mere "newspaper reading" may seem to you
a disappointing beginning to the programme.
"The newspaper is read by everybody every day,"
you may tell me, "and what has it done for their
style?'
Reading for Style 57
But I am not advocating that type of "news-
paper reading." This isn't a question of reading
some murder case, or imbibing the exhilarating
information that, some one met Mrs. Blank on
Fifth Avenue the other day, and she looked sweet
in a pale blue hat.
Leave all that part of the paper severely alone.
Study the Editorials as you would study a book,
since the writings of first-class journalists are
excellent models for the amateur, a fact that is
curiously overlooked by the student. Read a
fixed amount each day, instead of relying on a
haphazard picking up of a paper and a careless
glance over its contents. Then, as a useful exer-
cise, take the subject-matter of a paragraph, or
an article, and see how you would have treated
it; try if you can improve on it (after all, most
things in this world can be improved upon if the
right person does the improving). You will be
surprised to find how interesting a study this will
become in a very little while.
Do not misunderstand me: I am not advocat-
ing newspaper reading in place of classical works,
but as a necessary and valuable addition to a
writer's literary studies.
The Need for Enlarging the
Vocabulary
EQUAL in importance to the cultivation of
a modern style in writing, is the necessity
for having a wide selection of words at
your command, and a keen sense of their value.
Some people think the chief thing in writing is to
have ideas in one's head. Ideas are essential, but
they are not evejrything. Your brain may be
crammed full of the most wonderful ideas, but
they will' be useless if they get no farther than
your brain.
It is one thing to see things yourself, and quite
another to be able to make an absent person see
them.
It is one thing to receive impressions in your
own mind from your surroundings, or as the prod-
uct of imagination, and quite another to record
those impressions in black and white.
Tens of thousands of people are conscious of
vivid mental pictures, for one who is able to
reproduce them in such a form that they become
vivid pictures to others. And one reason for the
58
Need for Enlarging Vocabulary 59
inability of the majority to express their thoughts
in writing is the paucity of their vocabulary, and
their lack of the power to put words together in
a convincing and accurate manner.
Girls often write to me, "I think such wonder-
ful things in my brain; I'm sure I could write a
book, if only people would give me a little en-
couragement," or, "if only I had time."
But if they had all the encouragement and all
the time in the world, they could not transfer
those wonderful thoughts from their brain to
paper unless they had practice, the right words at
their command, and the experience that comes
from hard regular working at the subject.
What people do not realise is this: won-
derful thoughts are surging through thousands of
brains. They are fairly common inside people's
heads; the difficulty is in getting them out of the
head — as most of us soon find out when we start
to write! I shall refer to this later on.
If you wish to write down your thoughts —
no matter whether they are concerned with the
emotions, or religion, or nature, or cookery — you
must employ words; and the more subtle, or
elevated, or complex the subject-matter of your
thoughts, the greater need will there be for a
wide choice of words, in order to express exactly
60 The Lure of the Pen
the various grades and shades of meaning that
will be involved.
If your vocabulary be small — i.e. if you only
know the average words used by the average
person — there is every chance that your writings
will be flat and colourless, and no more interest-
ing, or exciting, or instructive, or entertaining
than the ordinary conversation of the average
person.
Hence the necessity for enlarging your vocab-
ulary, so that you have the utmost variety to
choose from in the way of suitable words, expres-
sive words, and beautiful words, (this last the
modern amateur is apt to overlook).
The smallness of the vocabulary used by the
average person to-day is partly due to the mass of
feeble reading-matter with which the
Average country was flooded in the years im-
Ferson'B
vocabulary mediately preceding the War.
In addition to this, life had
become very easy for the majority of folk in
recent times ; money was supposed to be life's sole
requisite. Work of all kinds was "put out" as
much as possible; we shirked physical labour;
lessons were made as easy as they could be ; games
were played for us by professionals while we
looked on; effort of every sort was distasteful to
Need for Enlarging Vocabulary 61
us. It has been said, that as a nation we were
becoming flabby and inert, and were fast drifting
into an exceedingly lazy, commonplace mental
attitude. We boasted that we couldn't think
(even though with many this was merely a pose) ;
we seemed quite proud of ourselves when we
proclaimed our indifference to all serious reading,
and our inability to understand anything.
That pre-War period, given over to money-
worship, not only curtailed our choice of words
by its all-pervading tendency to mind-laziness,
but it had its vulgarising effect upon our
language, just as it had upon our dress, our mode
of living, and our amusements.
Not only did we cease to take the trouble to
speak correctly, but we almost ceased to be lucid !
We made one word — slang or other- Tho d nu
wise — do duty in scores of places JfB^gSL
where its introduction was either slan *
senseless or idiotic, rather than exert our minds
to find the correct word for each occasion. Many
people appeared to think that the use of slang
was not only "smart," but quite clever; whereas
nothing more surely indicates a poor order of
intelligence.
My chief objection to a constant use of slang
is not because it is outside the pale of classical
62 The Lure of the Pen
English, but because it is so ineffective and feeble.
As a rule, slang words and phrases are, in the
main, pointless and weak, for the simple reason
that we use one word for every occasion when
it happens to be the craze; and before long it
comes to means nothing at all, even if it chanced
to mean anything at the start — which it seldom
does.
Our grandmothers objected to their own set
using slang on the ground that it was "unlady-
like." The modern girl smiles at the term.
"Who desires to be 'ladylike"?" inquires the
advanced young person of to-day. Yet our
grandmothers were right fundamentally; with
their generation, the word "lady" implied a
woman of education, intelligence, and refinement.
The user of slang is the person who lacks these
qualifications; she has neither the wit nor the
knowledge to employ a better and more expres-
sive selection of words.
Slang indicates, not advanced ideas, but ignor-
ance — any parrot can repeat an expression, it
takes a clever person always to use
indicates the right word.
Ignorance
Many people who constantly em-
ploy any word that happens to be current, do not
really know what they are saying, neither do they
Need for Enlarging Vocabulary 63
attach any weight to their words; they merely
repeat some inanity, because they have not the
brains to say anything more intelligent, or they
are too indolent to use what brains they have.
Notice how a set of big schoolgirls will, at one
time, use the word "putrid," let us say, and apply
it to everything, from a broken shoe-lace to
examinations. And women will call everything
"dinkie," or "ducky," or something equally en-
lightening and artistic, working the word all day
long until it is ousted by another senseless
expression.
What power of comparison has a girl, such as
one I met recently, who, in the course of ten
minutes described a hat as "awf'ly niffy," a man
as "awf'ly sweet," a mountain as "awf'ly rip-
pin', and another girl as an "awful cat'"?
What does it all amount to, this perversion of
legitimate words or introduction of meaningless
ones'? Nothing — actually nothing. That is the
pity of it. If these "ornaments of conversation"
enabled one to grasp a point better, to see things
more clearly, or to arrive at a conclusion more
rapidly, I, for one, would gladly welcome them,
as I welcome anything that will save time and
labour. But, unfortunately, they only tend to
64 The Lure of the Pen
dwarf the intelligence and to lessen the value of
our speech.
I have enlarged on the undesirability of slang,
because many amateurs think it will give bril-
liance, or smartness, or up-to-date-ness to their
work. But it doesn't. It obscures rather than
brightens ; it tends to monotony instead of smart-
ness. The beginner will be wise to avoid it,
unless it is required legitimately in recording the
conversation of a slangy person.
To enlarge your selection of words, you must
read books of the essay type rather than fiction,
„ ,. as these usually give the widest range
Some Books J ° °
tuat win f English. Two authors stand out
Enlarg-e
your above all others in this connection —
Vocabulary
Ruskin and R. L. Stevenson. Both
men had an extraordinary instinct for the right
word on all occasions — the word that expressed
exactly the idea each wished to convey.
Read some of Stevenson's essays slowly and
carefully. Don't gobble them! You want to
impress the words, and the connection in which
they are used, on your mind. It is an effort to
most of us to read slowly in these hustling times;
yet nothing but deliberate, careful reading will
serve to teach the correct use of words and their
approximate values. And I need not remind you
Need for Enlarging Vocabulary 65
to look up in a dictionary the meaning of any
word that is new to you.
Ruskin's Sesame and Lilies you will have read
many times, I hope; if not, get it as soon as ever
you can. His Poetry of Architecture will make
a useful study; also Queen of the Air and Prae-
terita (his own biography). His larger works,
while containing innumerable passages of great
beauty, are so often overweighted with technical
details and principles of art (some quite out-of-
date now) that they become tedious at times.
Yet there is so much in all of his writings to
enlarge your working-list of words, that you will
benefit by reading any of his books.
Among present-day writers I particularly rec-
ommend Sir A. Quiller-Couch, Dr. Charles W.
Eliot; Dr. A. C. Benson, Dr. Edmund Gosse,
Coulson Kernahan, and Augustine Birrell, whose
volumes of essays will not only enlarge your
vocabulary, but will prove particularly instruc-
tive in suggesting the right placing of words, and
in giving you a correct feeling for their value.
Of course this does not exhaust the list of
authors with commendable vocabularies; but it
gives you something to start on.
Notice that the writers I have suggested do
not necessarily use extraordinary words, or un-
66
The Lure of the Pen
It is the
Value of a
"Word,
not Its
Untisuality,
that Counts
common words, or very long-syllabled words, or
ponderous and learned words. One great charm
of their writings lies in the fact that
they invariably use the word that is
exactly right, the word that conveys
better than any other word the
thought or sensation they wished to
convey. Sometimes it is an unusual word; some-
times it is a familiar word used in an unfamiliar
connection; but in most cases you feel that the
word used could not have been bettered — it sums
up precisely, and conveys to your mind instantly-,
the thought that was in the author's mind.
Many amateurs fall into the error of thinking
that an uncommon word, or a long word, or a
word with an imposing sound, gives style to their
writings, and they despise the simple words, con-
sidering them common-place. I heard an old
clergyman in a small country church explain to
the congregation, in the course of a sermon, that
the words "mixed multitude" meant "an hetero-
geneous conglomeration"; but I think his rustic
audience understood the simple Bible words
better than they did his explanatory notes.
I remember seeing an examination paper,
wherein a student had paraphrased the line —
"The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea,"
Need for Enlarging Vocabulary 67
as, "The bellowing cattle are meandering tardily
over the neglected, unfilled meadow land."
This is an instance of the wrong word being
used in nearly every case; and as a complete
sentence it would have been difficult to construct
anything, on the same lines, that conveyed less
the feeling Gray wished to convey when he wrote
the poem !
Good writing is not dependent upon long or
ornate or unusual words; it is the outcome of a
constant use of the right word — the word that
best conveys the author's idea.
If there be a choice between a complex word
and a simple word, use the simple one.
Remember that the object of writing is not
the covering of so much blank paper, nor the
stringing together of syllables; it is the transfer-
ence from the author's brain to other people's
brains of certain thoughts and situations and
sensations. And the best writing is that which
conveys, by the simplest and most direct means,
the clearest reproduction of the author's ideas.
The Charm of Musical Language
THERE is a very special and distinct
charm about literature that is musical
to the ear — words that are euphonious,
phrases that are rhythmic, sentences that rise and
fall with definite cadence.
Unfortunately, the twentieth century, so far,
has been primarily concerned with the making
of noise rather than music. Even before the War,
we lived in a welter of hideous jarring sound, to
which every single department of life has added
its quota. Outdoors the vehicles honk and rattle
and roar; in business life the clack and whirr of
machinery drowns all else; in the home doors
are banged, voices are raised to a raucous pitch,
children are permitted to shout and clatter about
at all times and seasons — indeed,, it is the excep-
tion rather than the rule, nowadays, to find a
quiet-mannered, well-ordered household.
When Strauss put together his sound monstros-
ities, which he misnamed music, he was only
echoing the general noise-chaos that had taken
possession of the universe, permeating art and
68
Charm of Musical Language 69
literature no less than everyday life. The night-
mares of the cubists and futurists were merely
undisciplined blatancy and harshness rendered in
colour instead of in sound, and were further de-
monstrations of the crudity to which a nation is
bound to revert when it wilfully discards the
finer things of the soul in a mad pursuit of money.
The sounds produced by a people are invari-
ably a direct indication of the degree of their
refinement; the greater the blare and
sound-
clamour attendant upon their doings, Renneaana
and the more harsh and uncultivated
their speaking voices, the less their innate refine-
ment.
Bearing all this in mind, it is easy to under-
stand why so much of our modern literature
became tainted with the same sound-harshness
that had smitten life as a whole. Some writers
would not take the trouble to be musical; some
maintained that there was no necessity to be
melodious; some regarded beauty of sound as
synonymous with weakness; others — and these
were in the majority — had lost all sense of word-
music and the captivating quality of rhythm.
And yet few things make a greater or a more
general appeal to the reader.
There is no doubt but what the idea that rough, '
70 The Lure of the Pen
unpolished work stood for strength, while care-
fully-finished work implied weakness, was due to
the fact that several of our great
The
Dang-ers thinkers adopted the "rough-hewn"
"Rougii- method. Such men as Carlyle and
MeThod Browning were sometimes irritatingly
discordant and unshapely in style —
occasionally giving the idea, as a first impression,
that their words were shovelled together irrespec-
tive of sound or sense.
Said the lesser lights, "This seems a very easy
way to do it! And they are undoubtedly great
men. Why shouldn't we do likewise 1 ? It must
save a deal of trouble !"
But there is one difficulty that we lesser lights
are always up against: whereas genius, in its own
line, can do anything it likes, in any way it likes,
and the result will be of value to the world, those
of us who are not in the front rank of greatness
cannot work regardless of all laws and traditions;
or, if we do, our work is not worth much. It was
not that Carlyle and Browning were permitted
to write regardless of laws and traditions because
they were great; certainly not. They were great
because they could write regardless of laws and
traditions, and yet write what was of value to
the world. So few of us can do that.
Charm of Musical Language 71
Parenthetically, I am not saying that Brown-
ing was never musical; the lyrics in Paracelsus,
for instance, are beautiful; but often he went to
the other extreme.
It no more follows that beautiful language is
weak, than that uncouth language is strong. The
rough and often clumsy phraseology sometimes
used by the two men I have named was their
weakness ; and the fact that the world was willing
to accept the way they often said things, for the
sake of what they had to say, is an immense
tribute to the worth of their ideas.
There are invariably two ways of saying the
same thing, and, all else being equal, it is more
advantageous to say what we have
° J To use
to say in a pleasant rather than an Pleasing-
Language
unpleasant manner. We know the is Good
wisdom of this in everyday life;
equally it is the best policy in writing.
I could name books that are moderately thin
in subject-matter and yet have had a large sale,
and this, primarily, because of the charm of their
style and the music of their language.
While there should be ideas behind all that is
written, if those ideas are presented in language
that captivates the ear, the book has a double
chance, since it will appeal through two channels
72 The Lure of the Pen
instead of only one — the ear as well as the mind.
It must never be forgotten that the object of
our reading is sometimes — very often, indeed —
recreation and recuperation. We are not always
seeking information; the mind is not always
equal to profound or involved thought; but it is
always susceptible to beauty and harmony (or
it should be, if we keep it in a healthy condition,
and do not damage it with injurious mental
food). And whether we are seeking information
or recreation, there is a great fascination in read-
ing matter that has rhythm, melody, and balance
in its sentences.
I consider that the power to write on these
lines is very largely a matter of training.
Though, obviously, some ears are more keenly
alive than others to the comparative values of
sound, and some are born with a certain instinct
for good expression, there is no doubt but what
practice will do much to induce a graceful, melo-
dious style of writing, and study will help us
to detect these qualities in the works of others.
With regard to training: I strongly
Write to to ° J
verse if advise those who aim for a good
you want . ...
to write prose style to practise writing verse.
When you start, you will probably
find that your early attempts are nothing more
Charm of Musical Language 73
than a series of lines with jingling rhymes at stated
intervals.
Nevertheless, even such productions as these
are of definite use in your training. You have
had to find words that rhymed. You have had
to compress your ideas within a set limit; this in
itself is a check on the long-winded wandering
tendencies of the amateur. You have had to
consider the respective weight of syllables —
which is worth an accent, and which is not, and
so on. In short, you have had to give some dis-
criminating thought to what you were writing,
and how you were writing it, and that is what
the beginner so seldom does. He more often sits
down and goes on and on and on — words, words,
words — with no feeling for their respective
values, or the proportion of the sentences and
incidents as a whole.
Viscount Morley, in his Recollections, writes:
"At Cheltenham College, I tried my hand at a
prize poem on Cassandra; it did not come near
the prize, and I was left with the master's singu-
lar consolation, for an aspiring poet, that my
verse showed many of the elements of a sound
prose style."
But the master's consolation was not so singu-
lar after all. It is quite possible for one to write
74 The Lure of the Pen
verse that may be excellent training for prose
writing, and yet that is not poetry in the most
exclusive sense of the word.
In addition to writing verse, I urge all students
who wish to cultivate a sense of music in their
Kead writing to read good poetry, and,
poetry whenever possible, to read it aloud.
Aloud to r
cultivate a When reading aloud, the ear helps
Sense of
Musical as well as the eye; whereas, when
reading silently, the eye is apt to
run on faster than the ear is able — mentally —
to take in the sounds; and you are bound to miss
some of the finer shades of movement and
melody. When you say the words aloud, the
sound and the beat of the syllables are more
likely to be impressed upon your mind.
You cannot do better than Tennyson to begin
with — one of the most musical of our poets. Read
"The Lotos-Eaters," the lyrics in "The Princess,"
"The Lady of Shallott," "Come into the Garden,
Maud." In "The Idylls," and "In Memoriam,"
are many exquisite passages. Read "Guinevere,"
and "The Passing of Arthur," for example, not-
ing the lines that are conspicuous for their charm
of wording, or balance, or sound.
Turning to other writers: I select a few in-
stances at random, and am only naming well-
Charm of Musical Language 75
known poems that are within the reach of most
students : —
Christina Rossetti : The chant of the mourners,
at the end of "The Prince's Progress," beginning
"Too late for love," is worth reading many times.
Jean Ingelow has, in a marked degree, a musi-
cal quality in her verse which compensates in
some measure for its slightness. Her habit of
repeating a word often gives a lilt and a cadence
to her lines that is very pleasing, as for instance
in "Echo and the Ferry," and "Songs of Seven."
As an example by another poet, this repetition
of a word is used with delightful effect in
"Sherwood," by Alfred Noyes.
Other poems you might read are: "The For-
saken Merman," Matthew Arnold; "The Cloud,"
Shelley; "Kubla Khan," Coleridge; "The Burial
of Moses," Mrs. Alexander; and "The Reces-
sional," Kipling. "The Forest of Wild Thyme,"
Alfred Noyes, contains much in the way of music.
After you have studied these — and they will
give you a good start — search for yourself. To
make your own discoveries in literature is a valu-
able part of your training.
The student will find it very helpful to have
at hand one or two small volumes of selected
poems by various authors. Such anthologies often
76 The Lure of the Pen
give, in a compact form, some of the choicest
of the writers' verses; and this saves the novice's
time in wading through some work
Anthologies tnat may b e indifferent in search of
are J
valuable the best. Moreover, a little volume
Text-Books
can be slipped into the pocket, and
will provide reading for odd moments.
Do not content yourself with a mere reading
of the poems. Try to decide wherein lies the
charm (or the reverse) of each. Explain, if you
can, why, for instance, the following, by Swin-
burne : —
"Yea, surely the sea like a harper laid hand on the
shore as a lyre,"
appeals to one more than Longfellow's lines: —
"The night is calm and cloudless,
And still as still can be,
And the stars come forth to listen
To the music of the sea."
Compare poems by various writers dealing with
somewhat similar themes ; note wherein the differ-
ence lies both in thought and workmanship. Mrs.
Browning's "Sonnets from the Portuguese" could
be studied side by side with Christina Rossetti's
"Monna Innominata" ; Longfellow's "The Herons
Charm of Musical Language 77
of Elmwood" with Bryant's "Lines to a Water-
fowl"; Christina Rossetti's "The Prince's Prog-
ress" with Tennyson's "The Day Dream."
Such exercises will enlarge your ideas as well
as your vocabulary; they will help to give you
facility in expressing yourself, and also that
genuine polish which is the result of close famil-
iarity with good writing.
Analysing an Author's Methods
IT is not possible to suggest any definite course
of reading for the study of technique (or
methods of authorship). The ground is too
wide to be covered by any prescribed set of books.
In order to understand, even a little bit, "how
the author does it," you need to study each book
separately, as you read it — deciding, if you can,
what was the author's central idea in writing it;
disentangling the essential framework of the
story from the less important accessories; analys-
ing the plot; assigning to the various characters
their degree of importance; accounting for the
introduction of minor episodes; noting how the
author has obtained a fair proportion of light and
shade, and secured sufficient contrast to ensure a
well-balanced story; and how all the main hap-
penings combine to carry one forward, slowly it
may be, but surely, to the climax the author has
in view.
These are a few of the points you should
observe. Now look at them in detail, and at the
same time apply them to your own work.
78
Analysing an Author's Methods 79
Every author of any standing has one central
idea at the back of his mind when he sets out
to write a novel; this is the pivot on
One Cen-
which the plot turns — it may be trai idea
called the keynote of the book, undents
Sometimes the author's "idea" is
obvious or avowed, as in the case of much of
Dickens's works, and Uncle Tom's Cabin. Some-
times it is so deftly concealed that you may not
realise a book is giving expression to any one
special idea, so absorbing is the general interest.
One great advantage of this keynote is the way
it gives cohesion to a story as a whole, a motive
for the plot, a bed-rock reason for the story's
existence.
The central idea which is invariably behind a
well-written story must not be confused with the
"moral" that adorned all the praiseworthy books
of our grandmothers' day. The idea may be a
very demoralising one, and anything but a whole-
some pill administered in a little jam, as was the
"moral" of by-gone story-books. But the point
I want you to notice is this: every author who is
an experienced worker starts out with a definite
object in mind — good or bad, or merely dull, as
the case may be; he does not sit down and write
haphazard incidents with nothing more in view
80 The Lure of the Pen
than the stringing together of conversations and
happenings that arrive nowhere, and illustrate
nothing in particular, and reach no climax other
than a wedding.
Possibly it will come as a surprise to many
amateurs when I tell them that the inevitable
uniting of the lovers (or their dis-
A Wedding- ° v
need not be uniting, as the case may be) in the
the Chief
Aim of a last chapter, is not necessarily the
chief object of an experienced writer;
often it is merely incidental.
The average beginner — more especially the
feminine beginner — has but one aim when she
embarks on fiction, viz., the marrying of her hero
and heroine. That the wedding bells ringing on
the last page may be an episode of secondary im-
portance, so far as a book is concerned, seldom
occurs to her. The result is the monotonous
character of thousands of the MSS. offered for
publication; and the weary reams of paper that
are covered with pointless, backboneless fiction,
that amounts, all told, to nothing more than the
engagement (or the estrangement) of two colour-
less, nondescript individuals!
Sometimes the author aims to show you either
the inhabitants and manners and customs and
scenery of some definite locality ! or one particular
Analysing an Author's Methods 81
class of society; or the virtues or failings of an
individual type; or the beauty of an abstract
virtue; or the pitiful side of poverty;
The Ideas
or vice decorated with gloss and behind
Books
glamour. are as
-r» i i • i i Varied as
But whatever the idea may be, Human
one of some sort lies behind every a ure
novel of recognised standing.
Begin your study of a book, therefore, by look-
ing for its central idea; then observe how this
permeates the whole, and how the author utilises
his characters and his incidents to demonstrate
the idea.
Some writers explain themselves in the title
they give to a book. The Egoist tells you at once
what to expect. But whether the motif of a
book be obvious or not at first apparent, it is im-
portant so far as the staying quality of a story
is concerned. And it is not until you have studied
standard authors, with this particular matter in
mind, that you realise how much more important
it is that a book should have a keynote, than that
the hero should be handsome, or that the heroine
should be dressed in some soft clinging material
that suits her surpassing loveliness to perfection.
Having decided what is the central idea behind
the book you are studying (I am not suggesting
6
82 The Lure of the Pen
any particular book; choose any work of recog-
nised merit by a dead or a modern writer and it
Loot for will serve), next try to find the frame-
wo^oT 16 " work °f the stoi r — the P lot if y° u
tue story jj^ e ^ t hough the framework is not al-
ways tne plot.
Each complete story is composed of an essen-
tial skeleton, with a certain amount of secondary
matter added to it to take away from its bareness.
It is well to notice that with the greatest writers
the framework is usually something fairly solid
and substantial that will stand the addition of
other matter; and it often deals with some great
human truth that is world-old. It is not much
good to have a framework composed of trivialities.
But suppose the framework be something like
this —
Worthy John Jones becomes engaged to good
Mary Smith; they quarrel, and become disen-
gaged. J. J. falls a temporary prey to the siren-
ical wiles of Elsienoria Brown ; M. S. lends a
temporary ear to the insidious suggestions of
Adolphus Robinson. Elsienoria Brown inadvertent-
ly listens to the innocent prattle of a little orphan
child, and forthwith mends her wicked ways and
dies of consumption ; Adolphus Robinson is con-
demned to penal servitude for life after absconding
with the Smith family plate. J. J. and M. S. are
Analysing an Author's Methods 83
finally restored to each other through the kind
offices of the same innocent orphan child.
It may take you a little thought and time to
detach this framework from the author's wealth
of additional incidents or secondary matter.
There may be talk about the lovely old Tudor
mansion, Mary's home; the life history of each
of Mary's ancestors, whose portraits hang in the
long gallery; the eccentricities of Mary's grand-
father; the Spartan temperament of Mary's
mother, with details about the perfection of her
servants, and the thoroughness of her spring-
cleaning activities; digressions as to non-success-
ful aspirants for Mary's hand prior to the advent
of John; Mary's work among the poor; Mary's
love of Nature, and her exquisite taste in garden
planning; Mary's patience with a gouty father;
the sordid history of the late parents of the
prattling orphan child whom Mary recently
adopted; Mary's stay in Cairo (after the quarrel),
and her meeting there with Adolphus; details of
Cairo natives; measurements of the pyramids; a
nocturne on moonlight over the desert; a disserta-
tion on flies; prices and descriptions of bazaar
curios; sidelights on hotel visitors, their tongues,
their flirtations, and their fancy-work
84 The Lure of the Pen
And much more concerning Mary.
Then there will be Elsienoria; her stage career;
her intrigues; her eyes; her interest in bull-terriers
and bridge; a descriptive catalogue of her jewels,
and the furnishings of her palatial yacht; and
a vignette of her poor old mother taking in wash-
ing in Milwaukee.
In like manner there will be copious data con-
cerning John, and ditto concerning Adolphus,
with all sorts of entanglements to be straightened
out, and a legion of simple happenings that lead
to confusions.
It is from a mass of incidents such as these that
you will have to eliminate the framework, the
part that cannot be dispensed with without the
rest falling to pieces. Practice in analysing
stories will soon make the framework of each
clear to you.
The characters should be studied individually,
in order to find out why the author brought them
Assess the on the scene ; what position each oc-
eaciT cupies in relation to the whole; who
Sfthe * 6 ' are t ^ ie most i m P 0I "tant folk, and who
story are brought in merely to render some
useful but unimportant service to the story.
Then note how the author keeps the circum-
stances that surround each character directly pro-
Analysing an Author's Methods 85
portionate to his or her place in the story. The
great deeds are invariably performed by the hero
— not by some odd man who appears only in one
chapter and is never heard of again. The most
striking personality is never assigned to some
woman who only has a minor part given her,
and who vanishes in the course of a dozen pages,
with no further explanation.
In this way assess the value of each character
to the story as a whole.
Next study the matter that seems non-essential
to you, and decide, if you can, why each episode
was introduced.
The Use of
At first glance you may think that secondary
Matter
much of it could be done without,
and would make no difference whatever to the
story, beyond shortening it, if it were omitted
altogether.
This is perfectly true of poor work. The un-
skilled writer will pad out a MS. with all manner
of stuff that has no direct bearing on the plot.
There will be conversations that reveal nothing,
that throw no lights on the characteristics or the
motives of anybody, and are obviously introduced
merely to fill up a few pages. There will be
incidents that in no way affect the movement of
the story, that add no particular excitement or
86 The Lure of the Pen
interest, and carry you no nearer to the climax
than you were in the previous chapter.
But the good craftsman wastes no space on
unnecessary talk, even though certain scenes and
episodes may be of less importance than others.
He knows that secondary matter, such as descrip-
tive passages, dialogues, interludes and digres-
sions are necessary in order to "dress" the frame-
work and give it something more than bare bones;
they are also needed to give variety and balance
to a book. Some incidents that may not appear
to be vital to the story, are introduced to break
what would otherwise have been a monotonous
series of events ; or they are put in for the purpose
of giving brightness and a picturesque element as
a contrast to some sorrowful or gloomy occur-
rence.
If the book be written by a master, each char-
acter, each conversation, each incident, each
descriptive passage, each soliloquy is introduced
Minor f or a specific purpose ; nothing is hap-
can 3 ]!)© 9 hazard, nothing is merely a fill-up.
made to Moreover, the expert novelist is
serve Two , x
Purposes no t content to put his secondary
matter to one minor use only; he frequently
makes it contribute something to the main issues
Analysing an Author's Methods 87
of the story — and in this case it serves a double
purpose.
For instance, take the imaginary story I sketched
out just now. Let us suppose that, half-way
through the story, there occurs a stormy chap-
ter, in which John and Mary quarrel and part
in a scene that is red-hot with temper and
emotion. It will be desirable to secure a de-
cided contrast in the next chapter, to give every
one — readers as well as lovers — time to cool
down a little; besides, you do not follow one
emotional scene with another that is equally over-
wrought, or they weaken each other. The author
would, therefore, aim for something entirely
different in the chapter following the one that
ended with John violently slamming the hall
door, and Mary drowning the best drawing-room
cushion in tears.
We will assume that the author transports
Mary to Cairo for change of air; and, in order to
restore the atmosphere to normal, he decides on
an interlude, entitled "Moonlight Over the
Desert"; this will serve as a soothing contrast to
the preceding upset.
But he will not necessarily describe the moon-
light himself. If he makes Mary describe it in
a letter to a friend, or to her father who remained
88 The Lure of the Pen
at home, he will be killing two birds with one
stone; he will be administering a pleasant seda-
tive, after the turmoil of the lovers' quarrel;
also he will be showing you how Mary's tempera-
ment responds to the beauties of Nature, and how
appreciative she is of all that is good and pure
and lovely. In this way he will be helping you
to understand Mary better, and thus the "Moon-
light Over the Desert" chapter will be contribut-
ing definitely to the main trend of the book.
Then, again, the author may wish to bring the
reader back to the everyday happenings in a light
and whimsical manner, and he may give you a
scene showing the various ladies who are staying
at the same hotel with Mary in Cairo, retailing
their conversation, with the usual oddities and
humours and irresponsibilities that are to be
found in the small-talk of a mixed collection of
women at an hotel. In this way he can introduce
brightness and a light touch among more sombre
chapters. But in all probability he will make the
conversation serve a second purpose; Mary may,
on this occasion, hear the name of Adolphus
Robinson for the first time, little realising that
he is to play an important part in her life later
on; or an American visitor may chance to give
Analysing an Author's Methods 89
details of her old charwoman in Milwaukee,
Elsienoria's mother, little knowing that Elsie-
noria is the evil star in Mary's horizon, etc.
These are indications of the way an exper-
ienced author can make every incident in the story
dovetail with something else, as well as serve an
"atmospheric" purpose, i.e., to change the air
from grave to gay, or from mirth to tragedy. He
never writes merely for the sake of covering
paper, or bridging time; whereas the amateur
only too often introduces digressions and irrele-
vant matter with very little reason or apparent
connection, apart from a desire to cover paper,
or, perhaps, because the episode came into his
mind at that moment, and he thought it was
interesting in itself, or that it would help to
lengthen the story.
Notice, too, how the clever author keeps his
eye on the climax; how ingeniously he will make
everything lead towards that climax;
Never lose
and how he puts on pace as he gets sig-ht of
the Climax
nearer and nearer the goal, instead of
hurrying on events at a terrific rate at the begin-
ning, then getting suddenly becalmed part-way
through, and making the tragedy painfully long-
drawn-out at the end — as is the method of many
amateurs !
90 THe Lure of the Pen
You may tell me that all this does not apply
to you personally, as you are not so ambitious as
The Main to try your hand at a book; you only
Rules apply ,
to oil write short stories.
ISe^pective The same rules apply to all stories,
of Lengtn whether 3,000 or 100,000 words in
length, the difference being that with a short story
greater condensation is necessary. Instead of
devoting a chapter to some contrasting episode,
you would give a paragraph to it; and instead
of having a dozen or so secondary characters, you
would be content with only two or three besides
the hero and heroine, and this in itself would
reduce your number of minor episodes and your
descriptive matter.
Whatever the length of your story, it is well to
remember that there should be one main idea at
the back of all (apart from the wedding); also
a framework, to which is added a certain amount
of secondary matter that is well-balanced and
introduced with a definite object in view; the
characters must bear a fixed relation to the whole ;
and there must be a climax, concealed from the
reader, so far as possible, till the last moment,
but ever-present in the writer's mind as the goal
towards which every incident, indeed every para-
graph, in the story trends.
Analysing an Author's Methods 91
You will find it very useful to study the short
stories of Rudyard Kipling, Sir James Barrie,
and Mrs. Flora Annie Steel.
Studying fiction in this way is exceedingly in-
teresting, and wonderfully instructive. Obvious-
ly every author has his own individ- Tlu ,
ual methods, and no two work in "* C Sw2pi
exactly the same way. But if you Kannlllff
examine these main features, which are common
to most, you begin to realise something of the
careful planning and forethought that go to the
making of a story that is to grip its readers, and
live beyond its first publication flush.
Perhaps you may be inclined to think that the
bestowal of such minute care on the details of a
book would tend to make it artificial and stilted;
there are those who argue that the rough, slap-
dash style is the only method by which we can
catch the fine frenzy of genius in its unadulter-
ated form! But all Art calls for attention to
detail; anything that is to last must be the prod-
uct of painstaking thought. Life itself is a
mass of detail carefully planned by the Master-
Mind. If you study your own life, you will be
amazed to find, as you look back upon the past,
how every happening seems to be part of a won-
derful mosaic, that nothing really stands quite
92 The Lure of the Pen
alone with no bearing whatever on after events.
That the slap-dash method is much easier than
the careful, thoughtful working-out of a story, I
admit. But it does not wear — why*? because
there is really no body in the work; it is all on
the surface, and therefore quickly evaporates.
That which costs you next to nothing to produce,
will result in next to nothing.
Of course, you can elaborate your work, and
add a multitude of details all apparently bearing
on the story, till the readers (and also the main
features of the story) are lost in a mass of small-
talk and unimportant events. But the secret of
all good art is to know what to take and what
to leave; and the genius of a writer is evidenced
in the way he knows just what incidents to put
down in order to gain the object he has in view,
and what to omit as redundant, or unnecessary
to the direct working out of his theme.
I am not analysing any novel to give you
concrete examples of the points I have named.
Tne My object in writing these chapters
Application | s not go muc h to set down f acts fo r
you to memorise, as to help you to find out things
for yourself.
Our own discoveries are among the few things
of life that we manage to remember.
Analysing an Author's Methods 93
Having dissected a novel, and made notes on
the way it was constructed, turn to your own
work (whether a long or a short story), and see
what you have to show in the way of a main idea,
a good framework, a purpose for each character,
a reason for each incident, well-balanced sec-
ondary matter, with a steady crescendo and accel-
erando leading to a good climax.
I need not point out the application. It is for
you to make your own stories profit by your study
of the methods of the great writers.
PART FOUR
POINTS A WRITER OUGHT TO NOTE
Beautiful and striking thoughts are a common every-
day occurrence ; the uncommon occurrence is to find the
person who can reduce those thoughts to writing in such
a manner as to convey, exactly to another mind the
ideas that were in his own.
Practice Precedes Publication
WHEN you sit down pen in hand with
the intention of writing something —
Write !
This may seem unnecessary advice
to lead off with; but it is surprising how much
time one can spend in not writing, when one is
supposed to be engaged in literary work (no one
knows this better than I do) . It is so easy to gaze
out of the window in pleasant meditation, letting
the thoughts wander about in a half-awake, half-
dreaming state of mind.
Girls often sit and think all kinds of romantic
things, weaving one strand of thought with
another, letting the mind run on indefinitely into
space and roam about aimlessly among pleasant
sensations. Such girls sometimes think this an
indication that they have the ability to write a
novel; whereas it is doubtful whether they could
draft a possible plot for the simplest of stories;
their brain is not sufficiently disciplined to con-
secutive thought.
Others are possessed of high, noble impulses;
97 7
98 The Lure of the Pen
or they feel a sudden overwhelming sense of the
beautiful in life; or a desire to attain to some
lofty ideal; and forthwith they conclude this
indicates a poetic gift of unusual calibre. All
such experiences are good, they are also plentiful
(fortunately, for the uplifting of human nature) ;
but they do not imply the ability to write good
poetry, even though they prove exceedingly
useful to a poet.
Most beginners think that the main essential
for a writer is a fair-sized stock of beautiful or
striking thoughts; but it is quite as
Beautiful important to know how to write
do not ' down those thoughts. As a matter
BeaSSu? of ^ct, beautiful and striking
writing thoughts are of common, everyday
occurrence; the uncommon occur-
rence is to find the person who can reduce those
thoughts to writing in such a manner as to con-
vey, exactly, to another mind the ideas that were
in his own.
"But how ought I to start with writing*?' the
novice sometimes asks. "There seems so much
to say, yet it is difficult to know where to begin."
When a student commences the study of Art
he does not begin with the painting of some big,
involved subject, such as "A Scene from Ham-
Practice Precedes Publication 99
let." He spends some years working at little bits
and making studies. He practises on a profile,
or a hand, or the branches of a tree; he will
sketch and re-sketch a child's head, or one figure;
he will work away at a few rose-petals or an apple
— always endeavouring to render small pieces of
work well, rather than large pieces indifferently.
When a great artist starts work on an Academy
picture, he does not commence at one side of the
canvas and work right across to the other side
till the picture is finished. He does not necessar-
ily begin his masterpiece by painting on the can-
vas at all. As a rule, he makes a rough-out of his
idea (more than one, very often), merely block-
ing in the figures, arranging and re-arranging the
position of the main items, then assigning the
details to their proper places, till he gets all pro-
perly balanced, and to his liking.
Then he dissects the picture-that-is-to-be,
making separate studies of the figures, sometimes
making several drawings of an arm, or a piece of
drapery, or a bit of foreground, expending infinite
care and work on fragments, and making dozens
of sketches before a stroke is put on the canvas
itself.
Thus you see both the novice and the master
ioo The Lure of the Pen
specialise on detail before they tackle a piece of
work as a whole.
Some of the "studies" made by famous artists
for their important pictures are positive gems,
and help us to understand something of the im-
mense amount of thought and preparation that
go to the making of any work of art that is to
live.
The student who is training for authorship
must work on the same lines. All too often the
amateur starts by putting down the first sen-
tence of a story or an article, and then writes
straight on to the very end, without any pre-
liminary rough-out or separate study of detail;
and the result is a shapeless mass of words, lack-'
ing balance and variety, and either without any
climax, or with two or three too many.
When offering a MS. for publication, the
writer will often tell me — as though it were some-
"it simply thing to be proud of — "I merely sat
down, and without any previous
thought, wrote the whole of this story from be-
ginning to end. It simply came."
One can only reply: "It reads like it!"
I have before me a letter and MS. from a
would-be contributor, who writes: "I just dashed
this off as it first came into my head. I do so
Practice Precedes Publication 101
love scribbling, and I simply can't help jotting
things down when the fit takes me."
This is very well to a limited extent. There
are times when all authors just dash things off
when the fit takes them; but, if they have any
sense (and no one succeeds as a writer if they
have not) they do not regard the dashed-off
scribble as the final product, and rush with it to
a publisher. Much ability may be evidenced in
a hurried "jot-down" of this type; and if written
by a master hand, it may be useful as an object
lesson, showing how a clever author makes his
preliminary studies; but as a finished piece of
work it is of little value, for the simple reason
that it is not finished.
Of course, the greater the writer the less re-
vision will his dashed-off-scribble need, because
experience and practice have taught him to know
almost by instinct what to put down and what
to omit. Nevertheless, he is certain to go over
it again, making alterations and additions, before
sending it out to the reading public.
Before you can hope to write anything worth
publication (much less worth payment), you will
require considerable practice in actual writing.
Directly a beginner puts on paper a little study
in observation, or collects some facts from various
102 The Lure of the Pen
already-published books, or induces twelve or
sixteen lines of equal lengths to rhyme alter-
nately (rhymes sometimes omitted, however, in
which case the lines are styled "blank verse"),
that beginner invariably sends along the MS. to
an editor, and is surprised, or grieved — according
to temperament — when it is not accepted.
Few would-be authors realise that what may
be good as a study or an exercise, is not neces-
sarily of the slightest use to the general public.
And, after all, the final test of our work is its
use to the public. If the public will not take it,
it may just as well remain unwritten (unless we
are willing to regard it as practice only), for it
is certain our acquaintances will not listen while
we read our "declined" MSS. aloud to them!
"But why shouldn't the public buy my first
attempt?" some one will ask.
The public seldom is willing to
attempts" pay some one else for what it can do
rar«iyany quite as well itself. And most people
tSlub* have made first attempts at writing.
Rare indeed is the person who has
not laboured out an essay, or dreamed a wonder-
ful love story, or put together a few verses. In
the main, all first attempts bear a strong family
likeness one to the other, and though the general
Practice Precedes Publication 103
public may not stop to analyse its own motives,
the truth is, it will not buy immature work as
a rule, because it feels it can produce writing
equally immature.
For this reason (among other things) first
attempts have rarely any market value — unless
you have been dead at least fifty years and have
acquired fame in the interval !
Of course there is always the remote chance
that a genius may arise, whose first attempt
eclipses everything else on the market; but as I
have said before, we need not worry about that
exceptional person, since some one has estimated
that not more than two are born in any genera-
tion. And even these two have to be divided
between a number of arts and sciences; they are
not devoted exclusively to literature !
The average writer whose books have made his
name famous, had to write much by way of prac-
tice, before any of it found a paying market. And
we humbler folk must not be above doing
likewise.
Begin to train yourself in writing by making
studies, in words, just as the art student makes
them in line or wash. Make studies of character,
of scenery, of temperament, of dialogue — of any-
thing that comes to your notice and interests you.
104 The Lure of the Pen
To make a character study of someone you
know intimately, or with whom you are in daily
contact, is a useful exercise — but I don't advise
you to read it to them afterwards, that is if you
feel you have been quite frank in your writing,
and you value their friendship!
Aim to make each study a little word-picture,
embodying some idea, or reproducing some trait,
or conversation, or incident. But do not be in
too great a hurry to embark on a lengthy or
involved piece of work.
Practise various styles of writing — serious, con-
versational, gay, didactic, colloquial, etc.; and
^ « , see that the style corresponds with
The Style J r
of writing- y 0ur subiect-matter.
should Vary J J
According- Watch good authors with this lat-
subject- ter point in view. For example, the
Matter , r . . . T ^. ,. , ,,,-,
style of writing in Kipling s Bar-
rack Room Ballads" is not the style he used when
writing "The Recessional."
Often several styles of writing are necessary
in one story, if we are introducing contrasts in
characters or in scenes. And though we may
think that one style is peculiarly our own, it is
most desirable that we should write just as
readily in any style. This gives variety and
colour to our work; also it reduces the risk of our
Practice Precedes Publication 105
acquiring mannerisms, which are generally tire-
some to other people, though we are blandly un-
conscious of them ourselves.
But be sure that you do not appear to force
an effect; do not make an effort to be light-hearted,
for instance, or overdo the sombre tone one would
use at a funeral. Sincerity should underlie all
your writings; they should carry the conviction
with them that what you say happened, actually
did happen, and was not invented by you merely
to heighten the gaiety or deepen the gloom, as
the case may be.
In order to make your style sincere and con-
vincing, you must study life itself, not take your
models from other people's books. If you are
to write in a joyous style that will infect others
with your cheeriness, you must enjoy much of life
(if not all of it) yourself, and be able to enter
into other people's enjoyment. If you are to
make your readers feel the grief that surrounded
the funeral of which you write in your story, you
must have shared in sorrow and sympathised with
others in theirs.
Once you enter into the very spirit of each
happening, you will find your style will soon
shape itself according to the situation. You will
use the right words and expressions just as you
106 The Lure of the Pen
would were you facing the situation in real life,
without having to stop to think out what is best
suited to the occasion.
But the beginner has to learn to be natural
when writing; that is one of his hardest tasks, I
often think; and he sometimes needs considerable
practice before he acquires the power to write
exactly as he thinks and speaks, and convey pre-
cisely what he himself feels. Therefore practise
your pen particularly in this direction if you find
it an effort to be natural on paper.
All beginners need to practise condensation;
our tendency while we are inexperienced is to be
diffuse, and to over-load our subject
The Need J
for con- with unimportant explanations or
densation. .
irrelevant side-issues.
It will help you if, after a finished piece of
writing has been put aside for a few days, you
go over it with a fresh mind, and delete every-
thing — single words or whole sentences — that can
be omitted without lessening the force or the pic-
turesque quality of your writing, or blurring your
meaning.
For example: — If the hero's grandfather has
no bearing on the development of the story (and
you are not seeking to prove hereditary tenden-
cies), spare us his biography.
Practice Precedes Publication 107
Do not tell the reader, "It is impossible to
describe the scene," if you straightway proceed to
describe it.
It is waste of space to write, "It was a dull,
gloomy, cheerless November day"; one takes it
for granted that a gloomy November day is dull,
likewise cheerless.
If the colour of the heroine's eyes and the tint
of her hair are immaterial to her career, omit such
hackneyed data. Of course these matters may be
important — if the lady is the villainess, for in-
stance. I have noticed that it seems essential the
wicked female should have red hair and green
eyes, while the angel has violet (or grey) eyes,
with long sweeping lashes — in novels, at any
rate. I cannot be so certain about real life, for
I have never met an out-and-out villainess in the
flesh; though I have known several really nice
girls, who were a joy to their aged and decrepit
parents, and who married the right man into the
bargain — and all this on mere mouse-coloured
hair, nondescript eyebrows, and complexions
verging on sallow!
If, after consideration, you are bound to admit
that it will make no difference to the working
out of the story, nor to its general interest, if you
omit some such trivial description, or a word or a
io8 The Lure of the Pen
phrase, take it out; its deletion will probably
improve the MS. In such a matter, however, it
is very difficult for us to judge our own work.
As a useful exercise in the art of condensation,
practise describing incidents as forcefully as you
The Quest can, using the fewest possible sen-
Big-nt tences. This will also train you to
select the word that best describes
your idea. You will soon realise that the one
right word (and there is always one right word
for every occasion) carries more conviction with
it .than half-a-dozen words when neither is ex-
actly "it."
The able writer is not the one who uses many
words, but he who invariably uses the exact word.
It is safe to say that, as a general rule, the
more you increase your adjectives, and qualifying
or explanatory phrases, the more you decrease the
strength and vividness of your writing.
The student should practise sketching out
plots. This is a very fascinating occupation, and
Making all seems to go easily here — until you
examine them! Then you may be
less elated.
When you have completed the plot to your
own satisfaction, look at it carefully in order
to discover if you have, by any chance, used an
Practice Precedes Publication 109
idea or a theme that has been used by some one
else before you. This is a painful process, for, as
a rule, one's most admired plot crumbles to
nothing under this test! If you are quite honest
about it, you will be obliged to confess — until
you have had a fair amount of practice — that
your plots are nothing more than other people's
plots re-shuffled.
Do not delude yourself by saying that you will
"treat it differently." Perhaps you will; but you
will stand more chance of success if you deter-
mine to get a new plot that has not been used
before, and treat that differently.
The lack of any new idea or originality in the
plot is the cause of thousands of MSS. being
turned down each year. Many amateurs seem to
think that the plot is of next to no importance,
whereas it is the foundation upon which you raise
the superstructure; if there is no strength in the
foundation, the upper part is likely to be tottery.
Until you start to scheme out plots, you have
no idea how much there can be (but
v learning 1
often is not!) in this part of an au- •»*
Cleverness
thor's business. must not be
_ . . . Obtrusive
Do not regard your writing as a
medium for the exhibition of your own cleverness.
Never try to show off your own learning or to
no The Lure of the Pen
impress the reader with your own brilliancy.
Early amateur efforts often bristle with quota-
tions, foreign words, stilted phrases, pedantic
remarks, or references to classical personages.
The reason for this is clear; when the amateur
writes he invariably sees himself as the chief
object of interest in the foreground, rather than
his subject-matter. Almost unconsciously the back
of his mind is filled with the thought, "What
will the public think of me when they read
this?" Consequently he does all in his power
to impress the public, and his relations and friends
(and by no means forgetting his enemies) with
his attainments and unusual knowledge.
We are all of us like this when we start. But
as we gain experience — not merely experience in
writing, but that wide experience of the world
and human nature, which is such a valuable asset
to the writer — we come to realise that the public
pay very little heed to a writer personally (until
he or she becomes over-poweringly famous) ; it
is the subject-matter of a book that they trouble
about, and the way that subject-matter is treated.
Readers do not care in the least if an author can
read Hafiz in the original (unless he is actually
writing about Persian poetry, of course) ; but
they do care if he has written a bright, absorbing
Practice Precedes Publication in
story that holds their interest from first to last,
or a helpful illuminating article on some topic
that appeals to them. Therefore, why make a
special opportunity to drag in Hafiz, or some one
equally irrelevant, when he is but vaguely related
to the subject in hand, or possibly is quite super-
fluous?
Do not think I mean by this that a knowledge
of languages and the classics is immaterial or
unnecessary for the writer. Quite the reverse.
The more knowledge we acquire of everything
worth knowing (and standard literature is the
great storehouse of knowledge ) the better
equipped we are for work, and the greater our
chance of success.
But remember this: the really well-informed
man does not use his learning for show purposes.
Knowledge should not be employed
for superficial ornamentation. It informed
Man does
must be so woven into the strands of not use his
, ,./• , . , learning-
our everyday life, that it becomes as for show
much a part of us as the food we eat
and the air we breathe. Our reading should not
be made to advertise our intellectual standing.
We do not read Plato and Shakespeare and
Dante that we may be able to quote them, and
thus let others know we are familiar with them.
112 The Lure of the Pen
We read them in order to get a wider outlook on
life; to see things from more than one point of
view; to look into minds that are bigger than our
own; to learn great facts and problems of life
that might not otherwise come our way, yet are
necessary for us to know, if we are to see human
nature in right perspective. In short, we study
great authors in order to arrive at a better under-
standing of our neighbour; some take us farther
than this, and help us to a better understanding
of God and His Universe. If we are reading the
classics with any lesser aim, we are missing a
great deal.
The knowledge we absorb from such reading
should work out to something far greater than a
few quotations! It should affect our thoughts
and our life itself (which obvously includes our
writing), because it has helped us to clearer, alto-
gether larger ideas of this world of ours and the
people who are in it.
Such knowledge will make its mark on our
writing in every direction, giving it depth and
breadth — i.e., we shall see below the surface in-
stead of only recording the obvious; and take big
views instead of indulging in puerilities and
pettiness.
Likewise it should make us more tolerant and
Practice Precedes Publication 113
sympathetic and large-minded, knowing that life
is not always what it seems.
And it may help us to accuracy — a virtue of
priceless worth to the writer.
Of course, the knowledge acquired from the
reading of great books does not take the place of
the knowledge we gain by mixing with living
people; we need the one as much as the other.
But it is a wonderful help in enlarging our power
of thinking, and the scope of our thoughts; and
it opens our eyes to much in the world around
us that we might otherwise miss.
So much by way of precept. Now for an
example of the type of writing that is overloaded
with learning.
Some years ago, when I was assistant-editor of
the Windsor Magazine, a girl, who had taken
her B.A., came to me with an urgent request that
I would help her to a start in journalism. If
only I would give her the smallest opening, she
was sure she would get on; she was willing to
try her hand at anything, if only — etc.
At the moment we were proposing to publish
an article on the nearly extinct London "Cabby."
I had already arranged with some typical cabmen
to be at a certain cab-shelter on a given day, to
be interviewed. As this girl was so keen to try
8
114 The Lure of the Pen
her hand at writing up a given subject, I asked
her if she would care to tackle the "Cabmen"
article, explaining that we wanted a simple
straightforward account of their work and ex-
periences, the various drawbacks of the profes-
sion, any curiosities in the way of passengers they
had come across, and similar particulars calculat-
ed to arouse public interest in the men.
She was charmed with the idea, and grateful
for the chance to get a start. And she said she
quite understood the simple, chatty style of
article I wanted.
A week later the article arrived. And oh, how
that girl had slaved over it, too; it seemed to me
she had tried to include in it everything she knew !
It started with an eight-line Greek quotation. It
gave historical details of the city of London;
there were references to Roman charioteers and
the Olympic games, extracts from Chaucer and
other authors equally respectable. Indeed, there
seemed to be something of everything in the
article — excepting information about the cabmen.
What little she had written about them, poor
men, was swamped by the display of her own
knowledge.
Yet it was difficult to make her understand
that there was something incongruous in the as-
Practice Precedes Publication 115
sociation of broken-down old cabmen with a
Greek extract; that the one topic created a false
atmosphere for the other; while equally it was
unsuitable to introduce Greek into a general mag-
azine, seeing that the larger proportion of the
grown-ups among the reading public had forgot-
ten all the Greek they ever knew.
Unpractised journalists are apt to overload
their articles with data that has no immediate
connection with the subject in hand, even though
it may be distantly related. Such inclusions
often weaken the whole, as they confuse rather
than enlighten the reader.
One other caution is necessary. Avoid quot-
ing from other people's writings. With some
amateurs this amounts to a most irritating mania.
Now and then, an apt quotation may serve to
enforce a point, but the beginner should be spar-
ing in their use.
Remember that people, as a rule, do not care
to pay for what they have already read elsewhere !
Also, a publisher only reckons to purchase ori-
ginal matter (apart from books that are avowed-
ly compilations).
In any case, you are not gaining practice in
original writing if you are merely copying out
what some one else has written.
The Reader Must Be Interested
THE first essential in any publication is
that it shall interest people, especially
the people who, it is hoped, will buy it.
Every book does not appeal to the same type of
reader; but every book should appeal to some type
of reader, and it should interest that type of
reader, or it will prove a failure.
This does not necessarily mean that it must
keep the reader wrought up to a high pitch of
excitement, or squirming with laughter, or bathed
in tears — though a judicious mixture of these
things may contribute much to the success of your
work. It means that what you propose to tell
people must be something they will want to hear;
and when you start to tell it to them, you must
tell it in such a way that they will be keen for
you to continue.
Beginners often think the main point is their
own interest in what they write. It is certainly
desirable that we ourselves should be interested in
what we write, otherwise the chances are it will
not be worth reading; but it is still more import-
116
The Reader Must Be Interested 117
ant that what we write should interest othef
people. I have known a book to sell well,
though the author was thoroughly bored when
writing it; but I have never known a book to sell
well if the public were thoroughly bored when
trying to read it!
And this necessity for interesting the reader
applies to every class of writing. It is useless to
write a scientific treatise in such a
If your
dull way that the student is not writing-a
do not Grip,
sufficiently attracted to read the «iey wm
. . no * Sell
second chapter; it is useless to write
a religious article in such a stereotyped, conven-
tional manner that nobody gets beyond the second
paragraph, and everybody is quite willing to take
the rest as read; it is useless to write such vague
insipid verse that the reader does not even take
the trouble to find out what it is all about; and
it is useless to write feeble fiction that lands the
reader nowhere in particular, at the end of sev-
eral chapters.
If you cannot grip, and then hold, the reader's
attention, your writings will not be read.
And if they are not read, they will not sell.
You may think this last remark a backv/ard
way of putting it, and that a book must sell
before it can be read. But several people read
n8 The Lure of the Pen
it before a copy is actually sold, and often a good
deal depends on the verdict of these people. It
is read by the publisher, or his editor (sometimes
several of them) ; if they decide that it does not
interest them, and that it is not likely to interest
the public — where are you 1 ?
Even if you determine, after your MS. has been
declined by a few dozen publishers, to pay for
its publication yourself, and in this way get it
into print, there are the reviewers to be thought
of; should they be of the same opinion as the
publishers who declined it, and find it so lacking
in interest that they never trouble to finish it,
and ignore it entirely in their review columns —
that, again, is unfortunate for you!
Among other people who may read it, there
are the publisher's travellers. If it fails to in-
terest them they can hardly grow so enthusiastic
over it, when displaying it to the bookseller, as
they do over another book that kept them sitting
up all night to finish it!
More than this, a keen, intelligent bookseller
reads many of the books on his counter, in order
that he may know what to recommend his cus-
tomers when they ask him for a book of a definite
type. Indeed, he is often supplied with "advance
copies" by the publisher. If he finds a volume
The Reader Must Be Interested 119
engrossing, you may rely on his introducing it to
his customers ; and if the purchasers of the earliest
copies are captivated by it, they will certainly
talk about it and urge their acquaintances to read
it, and send it to their friends on dates when gifts
are due.
Thus you see a book really must be read before
it has a chance of any sale.
Beginners often think the all-important thing
is to get their MS. set up in type; that once it is
published the public will buy it and read it as a
matter of course. But the public won't, unless it
interests them. And no matter how much money
an author may be able to expend on the produc-
tion of a book, it will bring him little satisfaction
if that book does not sell, and he sees the major
portion of the edition eventually cleared out as
a "remainder," or dumped in stacks on his door-
step, when the publisher can give it shelf-room
no longer.
To interest people you must write on subjects
of which they know something, or
subjects which in some way make an personal
appeal to them. You seldom sue- m ust°be
ceed in interesting them if you write JJJomrt**
of things quite outside their usual
range of thought or ideals or aspirations. To
120 The Lure of the Pen
ensure some attention from your audience, it is
imperative that this matter of personal outlook be
taken into account.
A subject may be of enthralling interest to
you, but if it is not in any way likely to interest
your readers from a personal standpoint — if it
has no connection with their spiritual or material
life, if it makes no appeal to them on the score
of beauty, if they cannot by any stretch of imag-
ination see themselves in a leading part — then it
is risky to make that the subject of an early
article or book. When you are well-established,
and recognised as a capable writer, you can take
your chance with any exotic subject you please;
but I do not advise it at the beginning of your
career.
This does not mean that out-of-the-way sub-
jects should never be chosen. Obviously life
would be deadly monotonous if we were always
trotting round the same circle. Novelty is most
desirable; monotony is fatal to success. But it
must be novelty that is linked in some way with
the reader's life.
Let us suppose you are absorbed in the study of
a certain new germ — a germ that is responsible
for much mortality among tadpoles. Not only
have you discovered the existence of this germ,
The Reader Must Be Interested 121
but you have taken its name and address, inspect-
ed its birth certificate, secured its photograph,
insisted on knowing its age and where the family
go to school, ascertained its average food ration,
noted its climatic preferences, and many other
useful facts. All this would be very interesting
to persons who are rearing frogs; but as such
people are few in number, it would scarcely
attract the bulk of the reading public, hence you
could not expect a book on the subject to have a
large sale; nor would an article be likely to find
a resting place in a magazine or newspaper that
aimed to attract the general public. The subject
would have no interest for the majority of people,
because once we have left our unscientific youth
behind, tadpoles are generally as remote from our
life as the North Pole.
But, suppose you suddenly discover that these
same germs are communicated by tadpoles to
water-cress, and therefore directly responsible for
hay fever or whooping-cough (or something
equally conclusive) ; you will find the general
public all attention in an instant, since water-
cress and whooping-cough make a personal claim
on most of us. And in that case your writings
would find a market at once.
122 The Lure of the Pen
The same ruling applies to fiction. Study any
successful novelist, and you will see how his
knowledge of the things that appeal
A Novel . ......
mustiiave to men and women guided him in
somewhere tne choice of a subject, and his man-
in its Com- £ a.' ' j.
position ner of presenting it.
Some beginners think a peculiar
plot, or a bizarre background, or an eccentric
subject is more likely to command attention than
familiar topics; but that depends entirely on what
there is in it likely to appeal to the reader and
rivet his attention. Mere eccentricity or pecu-
liarity will not in itself ensure the reader's per-
manent interest; behind the externals there must
be something with more "grit" in it.
While newness of idea is much to be desired,
and a breaking-away from hackneyed scenes and
types should be aimed for, there must be a strong
underlying link to connect the unusual idea with
the reader's sympathies and mental attitude. You
may lay the scene of your story in the Stone Age,
or make your hero and heroine some never-heard-
of-before dwellers in the moon; but unless you
can interweave some fundamental human trait,
or some soul longing that will make such a story
understandable to ordinary humanity, it will not
interest average readers, since they know very
The Reader Must Be Interested 123
little about the tastes and manners and customs
of the folks who lived in the Stone Age; neither
are they likely to be at all convinced, nor parti-
cularly excited, because you tell them certain cir-
cumstances about beings, said to be in the moon,
who could never possibly come their way.
Even though a few people may at first be at-
tracted by some eccentricity on your part (and,
after all, if we only shriek loud
J Mere
enough, some one is certain to turn Eccentricity
will not
round and look at us), there is no hold ***
Public
lasting quality in such methods of
catching attention.
A troupe of pierrots at the seaside may get
themselves up in a garb bizarre enough to give
points to the cubists ; but unless they also provide
a fair programme, they will not retain an
audience. After the first glance at their pecu-
liarities, the public will stroll farther along
the parade to the much plainer-looking com-
pany, if that company provide a better enter-
tainment.
There must be "body" in the goods you offer
the public, apart from qualities that are only
superficial, such as a weird or unusual setting.
In some cases an author's strong appeal to
124 The Lure of the Pen
human interest has even borne him aloft over
actual defects.
Wiy Fame
has The verses of Ann and Jane Tay-
sometimes
overlooked lor could never be called poetry; yet
^^ ftf cots
most of the incidents recorded touch
a sympathetic chord in every child's life, and
each "moral" emphasises exactly the claims of
justice that are recognised with surprising clear-
ness by even the youngest; hence the poems have
a personal interest for any normal, healthy-
minded child. And, in consequence, they have
lived for over a hundred years.
In certain of his books Ruskin wrote much
about pictures — pictures that could only interest
a small proportion of the general public, because
so few are able to go and see the pictures in the
Continental churches and galleries. Moreover,
some of his art criticism is considered worthless
by many artists. Yet Ruskin has been, and still
is, universally read. Why 1 ?
Because, in addition to his erroneous estimate
of certain artists, and his prejudices against
others, artd his remarks about unfamiliar pictures
many of his readers have never seen, he contin-
ually touched on matters in which we all have a
very personal interest — our duty to God, our rela-
tions to our fellow-men, the inner workings of
The Reader Must Be Interested 125
our mind, the problems of the soul, the beauties
and messages of Nature, and scores of other topics
that are of the keenest interest to every thought-
ful person. Ruskin himself complained that
people did not read him for what he had to say,
but for the way in which he said it. Yet he was
not quite correct in this. People read him for
something besides his style; they often read him
for the side issues, the comments by the way, the
little vignettes and pen-pictures of scenery, the
great truths embodied in a few sentences — mat-
ters that strike home to us all, even when the
main purport of a book may appeal only to a
few.
Having recognised the need for interesting the
reader, decide next the means by which you hope
to do this.
x . . r Decide the
It may be a merry Jingle ot non- Means by
sense rhymes that you intend shall Zm
please by their very absurdity; or it f n ^\ a e r°st
may be the voicing of some tragedy
haunting many human lives that you rely on to
touch the human heart ; or the description of some
scene of beauty that you feel will be the main
attraction of your writing; or perhaps it is the
unselfishness of the hero, the strong courage of
126 The Lure of the Pen
the heroine, or the ingenuity of the villain that is
to be its outstanding feature.
Whatever it may be — keep it well in view, and
always work up to it. The trouble with so many
amateurs is their tendency to forget, before they
are half-way through their MS., the ideas with
which they started!
The class of reader whom you hope to attract
is another point to be taken into consideration.
The literature that appeals to the
Settle on
vour factory girl is not the type calculated
Audience
to enthuse the business man; the
book that delights the Nature lover might be
voted "insufferably dull" by the woman who likes
to fancy herself indispensable to smart society.
While we do not, as a rule, write only for one
small section of society, there are certain divis-
ions, nevertheless, that must be recognised; and
the beginner who is not sufficiently versed in his
craft to be able to work in broad sweeps on a
big canvas that can be seen and understood by all,
is wise to observe definite limitations, and work
within a clearly-marked area.
You must decide whether a story is for the
schoolgirl or her mother; whether you are writing
for those who crave sensation, or for those
who like quiet, thoughtful, restrained reading;
The Reader Must Be Interested 127
whether your article is for the student who
already knows something about the matter, or
for the general reader whom you wish to interest
in your theme.
Having settled who are to be your readers — do
not let them slip your memory while you address
several other conflicting audiences from time to
time. Writers of books for children are especial
sinners in this respect, frequently introducing
passages that are quite outside the child's pur-
view, and obviously better suited to adults.
Your object in writing should be definitely
settled before you start on your MS. Is it to
instruct, or to help, or to entertain?
Be sure
Is it to provide excitement, or to act of your
, . . , Object
as a soothing restorative to tired
nerves and brain? Is it to expose some social
wrong, or to enlist sympathy for suffering and
misfortune? Is it to make people smile, or to
make them weep? Is it to induce a light-hearted
and care-free frame of mind, or to make the
reader think? Is it to pander to a vicious taste,
or to foster clean ideals?
Inexperienced writers often seem to think there
is no need for any defined purpose in their work,
unless they are issuing an appeal for charity, or
writing an article that is to combat some special
128 The Lure of the Pen
evil. Yet everything we write should have a
purpose. Unfortunately, we have dropped into
a habit of ticketing a work "a book with a pur-
pose" when it deals particularly with religious or
social propaganda; whereas every book should
be a book with a purpose, or it will not be worth
the paper it is written upon. You must have
some reason for what you write, or some object
which you keep in view, if yon are to make any
impression on the reader.
Many of you who are beginners will probably
explain that your object in writing is solely to
entertain (and a very good object it is). In that
case, see to it that your writing is entertaining.
Don't let it be flat and colourless and tepid for
pages at a stretch.
But you must remember that every book should
be entertaining. This is as much a primary
necessity as that every book should be grammat-
ical. It is another way of saying that every
book must interest people. Yet how few
amateurs stop to consider whether what they
write is- really entertaining"?
Ask yourself, after your MS. is completed, "If
I saw this in print, should I be so impressed with
it that I should write off at once to my friends
and urge them to buy it, and mention it to all
The Reader Must Be Interested 129
my acquaintances as something well worth their
getting and reading 4 ?" If not — why not?
If you can criticise your own work dispassion-
ately in this way, it will help you to detect some
of your own weak points. But, unfortunately, so
few of us can look dispassionately upon the chil-
dren of our own brain !
Form Should Be Considered
FORM which plays a very important part
in the construction of literature, means
shape and order; it means also definite
restrictions.
Though we do not realise it at first, these re-
strictions are particularly desirable. Without
them, we might go writing on and on, till no one
could follow us in our meanderings, the brain
would be worn-out with the attempt. Yet these
same restrictions are what the novice most resents,
or at any rate is inclined to flout.
Nevertheless, you must abide by certain rules
if your work is to be readable and profitable.
You may regard all rules as arbitrary. I know
how inclined one is, when only just beginning to
feel one's feet, to kick down every
Established r . .
Rules sort of prop and barrier and sign-post
save our j i j • i • • i
wasting and ledge, in order to run not, with-
£x^er£nents out ^ et or hindrance, over all the
earth. But we cannot do this when
we are only learning to walk, without tumbling
down and acquiring bruises; and then we lose a
130
Form Should Be Considered 131
certain amount of time in picking ourselves up
and getting our bearings again.
While the thought of starting out on brand-new
adventure, without any one's advice or dictation,
is very enticing, the wise person is he who first
of all avails himself of the discoveries already
made by other folk (a time-saving policy to say
the least of it). Then, when he has assimilated
as much as he can of what others before him have
found out, he can experiment on his own, and
start on a voyage of discovery into truly unknown
lands. But it is sheer waste of energy to go
pioneering over land that has already been
thoroughly investigated, and mapped out, by men
and women who have gone before us.
And although we may consider the limitations
of Form in Art as quite superfluous in our own
particular case, it is well to get thoroughly
acquainted with them, bearing in mind the fact
that thousands of writers for centuries past have
been handling the subject, experimenting along
these same lines, often asking the same questions
that we are asking. And all whose opinions were
worth anything came to the same conclusion, viz:
— that strict attention to Form is necessary in
all creative work, if that work is to have lasting
value.
132 The Lure of the Pen
Therefore you might as well accept this at the
outset, at any rate until you have reached the
stage where you can do exactly as you please and
still command the attention of an admiring
universe.
All the master-minds seem to agree that a story,
whether long or short, should consist of three
The Three- main parts. Indeed most of the art-
products of the brain are constructed
on a three-part basis. Experience has shown that
this form is the most satisfying to the mind — and
remember, one of the essentials of a work of art
is that it shall satisfy the mind with that sense
of fitness and completeness and appropriateness,
so very hard to define exactly in words, and yet
so necessary to our enjoyment of anything.
A painting has foreground, middle distance
and background. A musical composition, if short,
has generally a first part in one key, a second part
in the minor or a related key, and a third part
that is often an amplification of the first part
with additional matter that brings it to a satis-
factory conclusion. If the composition be lengthy,
such as a sonata or symphony, its First Move-
ment, Slow Movement and Finale are labeled for
all to understand.
The three-volume novel of our grandmothers'
Form Should Be Considered 133
day was a recognition of the desirability of de-
finite division. And although we do not now
spread our stories over so much paper, nor trim
them with such wide margins and three sets of
covers, the three parts are still there, and in many
cases the author still marks them plainly for the
reader, by dividing his work into specified sec-
tions.
Sometimes we find a 4th Act, and a 5th, in a
play, just as we sometimes have four movements
in a sonata; but in most cases the extra act is
really only an episode, not a main division in
itself, and usually belongs to the second part.
Broadly speaking, the divisions of a story may
be ticketed —
1. Starting things.
2. Developing; things. Divisions
A 1 • , • , • of a Story
3. Accomplishing things.
The first part is devoted to introducing the
characters; starting them to work, according to
some pre-arranged scheme in the author's mind;
laying in the background, and generally "getting
acquainted."
In the second part, the scheme or plot is de-
veloped; complications and side issues, contrast-
ing episodes and by-play may be introduced. This
is the place for the author to exercise all his in-
134 The Lure of the Pen
genuity in seeming to wander farther and farther
from the solution of the problem of the story,
while in reality he is ever drawing the reader
towards it.
The third part is concerned with the actual
solution of the problem, and shows how all the
previous happenings helped to bring about the
climax with which the story should end.
The three parts may, or may not, be about
equal in length; but if one is longer than the
other, it should be the middle part.
length ' r
must be Jt [ s never well to introduce delays
Taken
into con- in the first part, nor are they desir-
sideration
able in the last part.
To be complex or episodical at the start is un-
wise; the reader likes to get well under way
moderately early, to know who everybody is and
what they are after. When your story is fairly
launched, you can lengthen it with diversions,
descriptions, dialogues, and episodes, and, granted
they are interesting and have a direct bearing on
the story, the reader will not complain.
But once you reach the third part, and start to
gather up the scattered characters and far-flung
incidents, in order to unite them all into one con-
vincing conclusion, you must not dally, nor divert
the reader's attention from the main issue.
Form Should Be Considered 135
You will see from the foregoing that it is nec-
essary to fix the length of your story before you
start to work — otherwise you will not get it
properly balanced. I do not mean that you must
tie yourself down to an exact number of words
for each part, any more than for the whole; but
you should settle, before you start, an approxi-
mate estimate of the amount of space you will
allow to each part, and then see that you keep
somewhere near it.
For instance, the probability is that, unless you
keep an eye on yourself, you will overdo the
detail in the first part. So many novices start
writing their story before they have half thought
it out in all its bearings; the result is that all
sorts of new ideas come to them, and fresh de-
velopments, and different aspects of the plot; and
they add to their original plan, work in fresh
characters, amplify those that are already there,
till all sense of proportion is gone. Or they may
have a special liking for one particular character
(invariably it is the one who, they secretly think,
represents their own tastes and aspirations), and
they will overdo this one with detail, and unduly
spin out that portion of the book.
Then again, when we are fresh, and only start-
ing a work, we are more inclined to stroll leisurely
136 The Lure of the Pen
among voluminous particulars, and write all that
comes into our head, than we are when we have
written forty thousand words, and are wishing we
could get the rest of it out of our brain, and down
on the paper, with less physical, as well as less
mental, effort!
Therefore, when you eventually revise your
MS. as a whole, overhaul the first section very
thoroughly, cutting it down ruthlessly if you
find you have been unduly diffuse.
Nowadays a story that drags at the outset is
doomed.
But fiction is not the only class of writing
ruled by Form; articles, essays, verse are all
subject to a certain order of presen-
Form as
Applied tation, and certain restrictions, which
to Articles . . .
no writer can ignore without lessen-
ing the effectiveness of his work — and in the
main the threefold basis applies to all.
When writing an essay or an article, it is use-
ful to make your divisions as follows —
1. State your theme and your reasons for its
choice. (In other words: make it quite clear to
your readers what you are going to write about,
and why you decided to write about it.)
2. Say what you have to say about it.
3. Give the conclusions to be drawn therefrom.
Form Should Be Considered 137
Here, as in the case of fiction, it is desirable to
get right into your subject quickly, never "side-
tracking" the readers' mind on to a subsidiary
topic until they have a firm hold of your main
theme. Ruskin was particularly tiresome in the
way he would turn off at a tangent, and start
talking about some minor matter, before the
reader had grasped what subject he was proposing
to deal with.
After you have turned your theme inside out,
in the second part, and told all the points about
it that you think will be new to your reader,
make your third part a climax, in that it works
up to a definite conclusion.
It does not matter what the subject of your
article, broadly speaking it should be built on
these lines, since this is the form in which the
human mind seems best able to take in informa-
tion. You cannot expect people to follow your
descriptions, your arguments, or your objections,
if they do not know what you are talking about ;
hence the need for a very clear presentation of
your subject at the beginning.
And, in order to leave your reader in a satisfied
frame of mind, i.e. with a sense of certainty that
things were brought to their logical conclusion —
also an essential in a work of art — the third
138 The Lure of the Pen
section must be primarily occupied with the
reasons for, or the outcome of, or the deductions
to be drawn from, that which has gone before.
This leaves the middle section of the article for
digressions, side issues, or any other form of
amplification.
Once the student recognises how desirable are
the laws of Form, how they give shape and pro-
portion and cohesion to matter that would other-
wise be void and hopeless, he will realise how
impossible it is to do good work without prelim-
inary thought, and careful planning. And he
will also understand how it is that MSS. which
are merely "dashed off" without any preparatory
work, those that "just came of their own accord,"
as the authors sometimes boast, invariably fail to
arouse a spark of enthusiasm in the soul of an
editor.
Right Selection Is Important
THE mere fact that the sun never sets on
the British Empire does not necessitate
our including the whole of it in one MS.
Yet some beginners seem most industriously anx-
ious to do this.
Amateurs may be divided roughly into two
classes: those who tell too little, and those who
tell too much. The majority come under the lat-
ter heading. The literary artist is he who knows
exactly what to select from the mass of material
before him (in order to make the reader see what
he himself sees) ; and what to discard as non-
essential.
I am inclined to think that the instinct for
selection is largely born, not made. It is one of
the channels through which genius betrays itself.
Very few great artists can explain why they chose
one particular set of items for their canvas, or
their book, and ignored others; or why that partic-
ular set conveys a sense of beauty to the observer,
when another set would make no such appeal.
Yet the sense or instinct can be cultivated to
139
140 The Lure of the Pen
some extent, and the first step is to recognise the
necessity for careful selection. Few beginners
give a thought to the matter. They imagine that
all they have to do, when they set out to tell a
story, or describe some incident or scene, is to
say all they can about it — the more the better.
CC I never spare myself where detail is con-
cerned," a would-be contributor wrote when
offering a magazine article. Unfortunately she
did not spare me either; there were fifty-seven
pages of close, nearly illegible writing, describing
the tombs of some long-dead unknowns in an out-
of-the-way Continental church.
To enumerate every single item is not Art; it
is cataloguing.
Slight themes require but few details.
Look your subject well over before you write a
line; decide what are its outstanding features,
which are its most prominent char-
Training 1 x
Yourself acteristics, and what it is absolutely
In the
Matter of necessary to say about it, in order to
give a clear presentment. At the
same time, note what is irrelevant to the main
purport of your writing, and what is compara-
tively unimportant.
After all, the mind can only take in a certain
amount of detail, a certain number of facts; and
Right Selection Is Important 141
as it cannot absorb everything, a limit has to be
placed somewhere. Common sense tells us that
since something must be left out, it is well to
omit the colourless, unimportant data that never
will be missed!
In every scene there are always definite points
that arrest the attention and give character to
the whole, and many other points that really do
not make very much difference one way or the
other. The artist (whether he be making word-
pictures or colour-pictures) selects those points
that give the most character to the scene, those
incidents which convey the most comprehensive
idea of the place and the people and their doings,
in the fewest words.
If you are writing a story, it is seldom necessary
to describe every thing appertaining to, and every
one connected with, the heroine, for example —
at any rate, not on her first appearance. Her
home, her relations, her dress, can often be dealt
with in a few sentences; but those sentences must
contain just the facts that give the key to the
whole situation.
Probably it will not throw any vivid light on
the lady if you state that her drawing-room was
upholstered in old rose, and she herself devoted to
chocolate; because the virtuous no less than the
142 The Lure of the Pen
wicked, the most advanced feminist as well as
the silliest bundle of vanity, might all have equal
leanings toward old rose and be addicted to
chocolate. But if you state, either that she was
reading a first edition of Dante, or cutting out
flannelette undergarments for the sewing meeting,
or powdering her chalky nose in public — the
reader will have some sort of clue as to your
heroine's personality. An instinct for selection
will tell you which item will characterise a
person most accurately.
In the same way some incidents will directly
affect the whole trend of a story, others leave
the main issues untouched. Select the incidents
that matter, and leave those that merely mark
time without taking the reader any further.
But while it is desirable to record outstanding
features, it is not wise, as a rule, to emphasise
mere peculiarities, as this only tends
Caricature
is not char. to stamp one's writing as unnatural,
acterisation . .
exaggerated, or caricature. Far bet-
ter seize on general topical characteristics, only
select those that are prominent, colourful, and
vigorous, rather than neutral, insipid traits or
happenings.
People reading Kipling's story, "The Cat that
walked by itself," invariably exclaim, "That's
Right Selection Is Important 143
just like our cat!" Yet in all probability Kip-
ling's cat was not at all like either of their cats.
He merely chose the typical characteristics com-
mon to all cats, and each person immediately
sees his own individual pussy in the picture.
A lack of an instinct for selection is one of the
commonest failings in amateurs, and is respon-
sible for the rejection of an endless stream of
MSS. For this reason it is desirable that the
beginner should pay special heed to the subject,
and note to what extent he is making actual
selection, or whether he is merely jotting down
all and sundry in haphazard unconcern.
When Writing Articles
THERE are two main difficulties in writ-
ing an article; one is to get a good
beginning, the other is to get a good
ending. It you know your subject well (and it
is useless to write on a subject you do not know
well), it is wonderful how the middle portion
takes care of itself in comparison with the care
that has to be bestowed on the entrance and exit.
I have seen amateurs write and write and re-
write their opening paragraphs (with intervals
of perplexed pen-nibbling in between), crossing
out a sentence as soon as they put it down, inter-
polating fresh ideas that ran off at a tangent,
suddenly jumping back a hundred years or so in
their anxiety to start at the very beginning of the
subject — and finally tearing up their by-now-
unreadable MS., and commencing all over again.
Here are two methods by which you may more
easily get under way — and the great thing is to
get under way, and write so??iething, then you
at least have a concrete MS. to pull to pieces and
re-arrange and hammer into shape. It is the
144
When Writing Articles 145
blank paper, or the page you have crossed out
and then torn up in despair, that is so irritatingly
non-productive !
Decide, before you write a line, the exact point
in the life-story of your subject at which you will
start. Remember that it is impos-
sible to say everything about it, or y0 urchron-
give the whole of its history; there- sSi^-
fore settle quickly what can safely £° in *~~ a . nd
^ J J Stick to it
be left out concerning its antecedents
and early childhood without detriment to the
subject as a whole.
Once you have made up your mind as to the
precise chronological starting point, stick to it
(half the initial trouble of getting into your sub-
ject will be over if you do) ; and do not in the
course of a few paragraphs hark back to some
previous happening or era, because you have
suddenly remembered something that might be
made to bear on the subject.
The way anxious writers will endeavour to tell
every mortal thing that can be told regarding the
most distant prehistoric family connections of
their subject, is on a par with a certain type of
chairman at a meeting, who will persist in dilat-
ing on the sayings and doings of his great-grand-
father instead of dealing with the topic in hand.
10
146 The Lure of the Pen
If I ask the untrained amateur to write me an
article on "The Use of Pigeons in War," the
chances are all in favour of his starting with the
Ark, and talking for several paragraphs round
the Dove with the olive branch. By a natural
and easy transition, he would presently be quot-
ing, "Oh for the wings of a dove !" Pliny's doves
would have an innings, the London pigeons of
St. Paul's have honourable mention, the ornitho-
logical significance of the botanical term A qui-
legia might be touched upon, with other equally
irrelevant or far-fetched allusions to the Columbce
as a whole; and all this before any really service-
able information is forthcoming under the head-
ing specified.
This is no exaggerated picture; it is the type
of article frequently submitted, and is due to a
writer's lack of an instinct for selection, and his
determination to leave nothing unsaid. In the
end, he of course leaves a great deal unsaid,
because the inevitable limitations of an article
make it impossible to give so much past history
and still find room to say what should be said
about the present-day aspect. The space is gone
before the writer has barely got there !
And because of this tendency to expend too
When Writing Articles 147
much ink at the beginning on details that are too
far removed from the central point of interest to
be worth recording, I will give another hint that
may occasionally prove useful.
When in doubt where to start, be- ™*™j?
gin in the middle ; i. e. attack the sub- ^^ e inthe
ject where the interest seems to focus;
or launch out without any preliminary whatever,
into the very heart of the matter. It is quite pos-
sible it may prove to be the beginning !
The desirability of shaping an article accord-
ing to the definite rules of form was dealt with'
on page 136. A careful planning of the form
beforehand will help the writer to keep his
article properly balanced, and to avoid over-
weighting it unduly with unimportant data at the
outset.
With regard to the wind-up of an article, here
again the writer has much in common with the
speaker, and happy is he who knows
instinctively just when to leave off. ™ e * y0Xl
SO few do! Pinished-
Leave off
Failing an instinctive perception
of the right ending, or the desirable climax, the
writer can deliberately plan one and then work
up to it. And it is well to plan it fairly early,
148 The Lure of the Pen
in order to make the whole of the article gravitate
toward this finale.
In writing, as in so many other things, it is
the final impression that counts. The reader's
attitude of mind, when he comes to
Tii^i* 116 tne en d °f tne l ast P a g e ? I s a pOWer-
Impression £ u j f actor m settling your success as
that Counts ° J
a writer. If you end lamely, with
non-effective sentences, or with pointless inde-
cision — if, in short, the reader does not feel he
has got somewhere or achieved something by read-
ing the article, he will not be remarkably keen
on anything else you may write.
The beginner seldom pauses to inquire: What
is my object in writing this article*? If I were to
put the question to a number of would-be authors,
and they replied truthfully, they would say, "To
see myself in print," or, "To make money"; yet
I cannot reiterate too often that what we write
must have more in the way of backbone than this.
The reason that thousands of MSS. are returned
to the senders every year is because those senders
had no other object in view, apart from money-
making or getting into print.
Decide therefore on a more useful object —
useful, that is, from the reader's point of view.
The reader does not care one iota whether you are
When Writing Articles 149
going to make money, or whether you now see
yourself in print for the first time. The point he
is concerned with is what he himself gets out of
his reading — whether he has been amused and
entertained, or has gained information, or a new
light on an old subject, or a spiritual uplift, or
useful facts, or some fresh interest, or a soothing
narcotic for an anxious brain.
And you must have some such object in mind,
when you plan the shortest article, no less than
when you scheme out a novel.
In writing the article on "The Use of Pigeons
in War" your object might be the giving of in-
formation that would be fresh to the public (and
we never need trouble to tell them that which they
know already) ; information calculated to increase
their knowledge of the ways in which we waged
the great war for the world's freedom, and also
to give them a new interest in these wonderful
birds. Bearing all this in mind, it will be seen
at once that the preamble about the Ark would
be quite unnecessary, since it would convey no
new information whatever.
Mere recapitulation of ancient well-known
facts is never desirable, outside a text-book.
Topicality has often much to do with the ac-
ceptance of an article; but the beginner seldom
150 The Lure of the Pen
takes this point into consideration. The finest
article one could write would be turned down if
the subject were out of date — and
Keep an J
Eye on twenty-four hours make all the dif-
Topicallty
ference. We move at such express
speed, and events hurry past at such a rapid rate,
that the article an editor would jump at to-day
may be useless to him to-morrow; the book that
would be marketable this season may be unsale-
able next.
Of course this does not apply to every MS.,
but it does to a good many, and particularly in
regard to articles for periodicals. If you think
your subject will have special interest for the
public at the moment — send it at once, and if it
is the burning question of the day, send it to a
newspaper rather than to a magazine, remember-
ing that magazines have to go to press some weeks
before the date of publication. If a magazine
editor receives your MS. January 1st, the very
earliest he could get it into his magazine would
probably be April, and the chances are he would
have everything planned and set up until May.
In the Girls' Own Paper and Woman's Magazine,
for instance, the final sheet of the September
number has to be passed for press the first week
in June.
When Writing Articles 151
Bearing these facts in mind, you will realise
that it is useless to send an article on a Christ-
massy subject to an editor in November. His
Christmas number was probably put together in
August, and by November it is travelling by
train or steamer, bullock-wagon or native carrier,
to distant parts of the world.
And I must mention another fault common
with beginners. It is useless to offer articles that
are nothing more than a reckaujfe of
Articles
encyclopedic facts. Any schoolboy that ax© not
Wanted
can string together text-book infor-
mation, and compile facts from other people's
works.
If your article is on an old-established theory,
or some well-known theme, you must contribute
some new personal experience, if it is to be of any
worth. Readers will not pay for books or articles
that contain nothing but what they could write
themselves, given the time and the works of
reference.
Then, again, it is useless to choose a subject
merely because it appeals to you personally; if
there is no likelihood of its appealing to the ma-
jority of the readers, it is valueless to an editor.
The business of writing is like every other
business in that self-effacement may contribute
152 The Lure of the Pen
much to success. The good business man does
not spend his time talking about his
Study the r to
Readers' own tastes and achievements and
Preference
noiesstkan preferences; he keeps an eye on what
your Own . . . in
interests his customers and talks
about that.
The good writer does not write merely to air
his own likes and dislikes and grievances, or to
impress people with his own attainments and
good fortune; he keeps his eye on what interests
his readers (who are his customers) and follows
this up in some degree in his writings.
This need not mean any relinquishing of per-
sonal ideals, or pandering to cheap tastes. The
readers' ideals may be as high — or even higher —
than yours ; their tastes may be quite as refined —
but they are not necessarily the same as yours.
Therefore, study what will interest them to read
rather than what it will interest you that they
should read. Think it out, and you will find
there may be a world of difference between the
two.
Writers are often told to study the type of
articles appearing in the magazine in which they
are anxious to see their own work published.
This is very sound advice. The unsuitabilities
that are offered at times are past counting. A
When Writing Articles 153
man wrote recently to the editor of a prominent
Missionary Monthly: "I notice you have no chess
columns in your paper. I could
Send
supply one regularly, and I assure suitable
you it would help your circulation to lately
considerably." For the Woman's
Magazine I have been offered murder stories of
the most lurid and revolting character; articles
on "Seal-hunting in the Arctic as a Sport," "Cu-
riosities in Kite-Flying," "The Making of Modern
Motor Roads," and others equally outside the
range of women's activities even in these days of
wide-flung doors.
Avoid offering articles on subjects that have
already been dealt with in a periodical. Unless
you have unique and valuable infor-
J ^ Editors do
mation to add to that already given, not want
Repeat-
Space cannot be spared to repeat mat- subjects
ter. Moreover, the public does not
want to pay twice for the same thing — and that
is what it would amount to.
It is no recommendation to write to an editor,
"I see you have an article on 'Glow-worms as a
Hat-Trimming' in your last issue ; I am therefore
sending you another article on the same subject."
Unless you have some new and really informing
data to contribute, the probability is that you
154 The Lure of the Pen
would only be covering the same ground as the
previous writer.
Neither are you likely to get your MS.
accepted if you write, "I have read the article on
'Glow-worms' in your last issue, and disagree
with many of the statements made therein. Far
from glow-worms being things of elusive beauty
and suggestive of fairyland, as your contributor
calls them. I regard them as noxious pests. I
have written my views in detail, and hope you
will be able to publish the article in your next
issue to counteract the wrong impression that the
other one conveyed."
Now, an editor to a large extent identifies him-
self with the views expressed in the pages of the
paper he edits. And had he not approved of the
statements made, he would not have been inclined
to print them in an ordinary non-controversial
paper. Is it likely, then, that he would want
another contribution calmly informing his readers
that the previous article was entirely wrong and
unreliable *?
Most editors are overdone with the usual "How
to — " articles. The public has by
Tue subject now Deen to \d "How to" do every-
of "How
«o " thing under the sun, I am inclined
to think; but if you feel it laid upon your soul to
When Writing Articles 155
impart still further instruction — try to find a fresh
form of title.
Do not choose too big a subject. "Heaven,"
"Human Nature," "Eternity," and kindred
themes are beyond the powers of any mortal —
much less the beginner.
Get right away from hackneyed phrases and
allusions. So many MSS. are peppered through-
out with such expressions as "all sorts and con-
ditions"; "common or garden"; "let us return to
our muttons"; "tell it not in Gath"; "but we
must not anticipate."
If you feel drawn to write an essay on "Friend-
ship," it is not necessary to start with David and
Jonathan; they have already been mentioned —
more than once, in fact — in this connection.
Neither is it desirable, when writing about Jeru-
salem to quote, "a city that is set on a hill cannot
be hid."
Variety is always pleasing, and editors do like
to come upon something, occasionally, that they
have not read more than a dozen times before.
Suggestions for Style
IF you are writing with the object of giving
information, avoid the indefinite style. Either
make a clear, decided statement (if you are
competent to do so), or leave the matter alone.
You not only weaken the force of your statements,
and smudge your meaning, by beating about the
bush and walking round your subject, but you cast
doubts in the reader's mind as to whether you are
fully qualified to write about it at all.
Here is an extract from an article sent to me on
"The Cultivation of Broad Beans." Speaking of
blight, the writer says: "I would not presume to
dictate to the experienced gardener, who doubt'
less has his own method of dealing with the black
blight that is so common on these plants; but for
the benefit of the novice I would say that, per-
sonally, I always find it a good plan to nip off
the tops of the beans so soon as the black fly
appears. And, failing a better plan, the amateur
might try this."
Articles written in this strain are fairly com-
mon, and are often the outcome of modesty on
156
Suggestions for Style 157
the part of a writer who does not wish to appear
too dogmatic, or "to take too much upon him-
self." But from the utility point of view they
are poor stuff, and are suffering as much from
"blight" as the unfortunate beans, since each
statement seems to be disparaged in some way
by the over-diffident author !
Either the remedy suggested for the black fly
is a remedy, or it isn't. If it is a remedy, then
it is as applicable to the bean owned by the ex-
perienced gardener as to the one owned by the
novice. In short — if it be advantageous to nip
off the tops of blighted broad beans, the writer
should have said so in simple English, without
apologising for his temerity in making the state-
ment, and thereby discounting all he says.
Aim at writing with accuracy, clearness and
precision. Ambiguity should never be allowed to
pass. Any sentence that you feel to
be in the slightest degree uncertain, Amibig-uity
or obscure, as to meaning should be Sowed* be
reworded so as to leave no doubt to pass
whatever as to your meaning.
If, on re-reading your article, you are not quite
sure what you meant when you wrote any pas-
sage, take it out altogether. Do not leave it in to
puzzle the reader, even though you add a foot-
158 The Lure of the Pen
note — as Ruskin did — explaining that you have
no idea what you meant when you wrote it.
In order to avoid an ambiguous style, two
things are necessary : the ability to think clearly
and concisely, and the ability to write down ex-
actly what one thinks.
The choice of words should be influenced by the
subject of your writing. A dignified subject calls
The subject for dignified language. A racy sub-
shouia ject calls for racy language; and so
Regulate
the Choice Oil.
If your theme be a lofty one, do
not "let down" the train of lofty thought it
should engender, by introducing some word or
phrase that induces a much lower — or a different
— plane of thought and ideas. It is a backward
policy, to say the least of it, to weaken, or oblit-
erate, by ill-chosen language, the ideas you set out
to foster in the reader. It is no extenuation to
plead that the jarring phrase is particularly ex-
pressive; if it actually counteracts the ideas you
seek to convey, it cannot be expressing your mean-
ing.
The beginner often gets himself tied up in a
knot with negatives ; and even if he steer clear of
uctual error, he is apt to overdo himself with
iouble negatives. It is better to make a direct
Suggestions for Style 159
statement in the affirmative if possible, than to
involve it in negatives.
Instead of saying "a not uncommon fault," it
is clearer at first sight if you say "a common
fault," or "a fairly common fault." I know it
does not always follow that the exact reverse
fulfils the purpose of the double negative ; a fault
may be "not uncommon" and yet not exactly
common. Nevertheless it is always possible to
get the precise shade of meaning in the affirma-
tive; and until a writer is quite fluent, it is better
not to risk confusing the reader's mind by the
introduction of too many negatives.
In the praiseworthy desire to use fine English,
the beginner is very apt to get a sentence such a
mixed-up maze of words that there The Tendency
seems little hope of the meaning ever in^Jvea
getting out alive at the other end! sentences
I take this from a MS. just to hand: —
"Not that her parents would have entirely
agreed with the supposition that there might have
been that in his character which, had he not felt
himself unequal to the task which affected him
not a little in its apparent issue, even though
actually simple in its ultimate object, it would
have been possible for him to utilise to such an
extent that he might not have entirely disappoint-
160 The Lure of the Pen
ed their none too sanguine estimate of his ability."
I admit that all amateurs do not rise to such
cloud-wrapped heights; but many are nearly as
bad!
Then, again, I have known the idea the author
had in view when he started a paragraph, to get
lost half-way through! This is due to the fact
that the mind has not been trained to sustain
consecutive thinking, but is permitted to veer
round to all points of the compass like a weather-
cock.
If you enunciate a problem, see that you give
the solution. If you start to elucidate some
theory (or the reader is led to believe
"Every J
why hatk a that you are going to elucidate it J,
do not forget all about it, and switch
off to something else.
If you have no solution to offer, it is wiser and
more satisfactory, as a general rule, not to put
forward a problem at the close. A sense of in-
completeness — or of something still awaiting ful-
filment — is as disastrous to the success of an
article as it is to the success of a book.
Beware of labouring a thought. If your point
is only a slight one, do not reiterate it in various
forms or over-embellish it.
If no big idea lies behind your
Suggestions for Style 161
sentences, no amount of impressive, ornate lan-
guage will make your writing great.
People sometimes think that a fanciful style of
writing will hide defects; whereas, on the con-
trary, it often emphasises them.
Avoid using many quotation marks and italics ;
they make a page look fidgety. Also they indi-
cate weakness. If your remarks are not strong
enough to stand alone, without words or phrases
being propped up by quotes or underlinings, they
are no better when so decorated.
A lavish use of extracts from other people's
writings is undesirable. As I have said elsewhere,
neither the publisher nor the reader is keen to pay
for what they can read — and probably have al-
ready read — elsewhere.
A pedantic style of phraseology, and a desire
to let other people see how much one knows, are
amateur failings.
Some beginners go to the other extreme, and
adopt a slangy, purposely-ungrammatical style,
with the beginnings and finals of words clipped
away, and a cultivated slovenliness that they
imagine gives a picturesque quality, or an ultra
up-to-dateness, to their writing.
But no good work is ever built on such founda-
tions. The first thing to aim for is clarity, and
11
162 The Lure of the Pen
the ability to express yourself in an easy, natural
and concise manner, always using the fewest and
the best words for the purpose, and employing
them according to modern methods.
Amateurs often lean towards the improbable
— calling it imaginative work — partly because
they fancy they are less hampered by
Miities, rules and restrictions than it they
SSXt! ta ke everyday, mundane subjects,
^timr" "^^ — P ara d° x though it may seem —
the improbable must be bounded by
probability in its own sphere; and imagination
must be kept within definite limits and work ac-
cording to definite forms — else it is no better than
the gibberings of an unhinged mind.
Beginners frequently choose the moon, the
stars, or the ether as the background for their
imaginary characters; or they revel in after-death
scenes that are supposed to represent the next
world — either of suffering or of happiness. And
a favourite ending is something like this, "Sud-
denly I awoke, and lo, it was only a dream," etc.
Avoid all these hackneyed themes, and obvious
tricks.
It takes a Dante to lead us convincingly
through the mazes of an unknown world.
Perhaps you feel that you are a Dante? Pos-
Suggestions for Style 163
sibly you are: greatness must make a start some-
where. But in that case, there will be no need
for you to strain after effect ; genius can be evinced
in the treatment of the simplest subjects.
Therefore experiment at the outset with every-
day themes, and perfect your style in this direc-
tion before embarking on a very ambitious pro-
gramme: we must learn to walk before we can
run. The airman does not start turning somer-
saults the first time he goes aloft (or, if he does,
that is the last time- we hear of him, poor fellow).
It is a mistake to think that the undisciplined
wanderings of an untrained mind betoken im-
aginative genius. It is the way one handles the
commonplace that reveals the true artist; and
style plays an important part in this, though it
is by no means everything !
The question of imaginative work is big enough
to deserve a volume to itself: much has already
been written on the subject, and much remains to
be said — too much to make it possible to do it
justice in a book of this description. But I men-
tion it here, in passing, to warn the beginner
against spending much time on work that is not
imaginative but merely impossible, until thor-
oughly grounded in the rudiments of his craft.
164 The Lure of the Pen
Literature seldom gains by peculiarities of style
or marked mannerisms, even though these are to
be found in the works of certain
Peculiarity
is not writers who are of unquestionable
Originality
ability. Such devices tend to become
monotonous, and as a rule the public will only
tolerate them when the subject matter of a book
is so good that it is worth while to plough through
the writer's mannerisms to get at it — i.e. man-
nerisms are put up with only when the writer is
great in spite of them : no one is great because of
his mannerisms; they are only superficial disturb-
ances.
I am not saying this to discourage any attempt
at originality of style; real originality is usually
most desirable; what I am anxious to impress on
the beginner is the fact that mere peculiarity is
not originality.
Nor will it benefit anyone's work to copy the
mannerisms of great writers — since these are often
their defects.
It must also be remembered that many manner-
isms are nothing more than fashions of the mo-
ment, just as most slang is; and in
Mannerisms
ar© soon these rapid times they quickly be-
OutofDate r i 1 1
come out or date, whereupon they
give a book an antiquated touch. And few things
Suggestions for Style 165
are more difficult to survive than an atmosphere
that is merely old-fashioned and nothing more.
It will be quite time enough, when you are
expert at writing clear, understandable English,
to decide whether your genius can best find ex-
pression in long and complicated sentences as
used by Henry James, or in such cynical scintil-
lations as those favoured by Bernard Shaw, or
in the paradoxical methods of G. K. Chesterton,
or what you will. No limit need be set once a
person has ideas to give the world, and can write
them down in simple, direct, well-chosen lan-
guage.
The Ubiquitous Fragment
AMATEURS often think it is much easier
to write a "fragment" than to write a
complete anything. The one who hesi-
tates as to whether he has the ability to write a
long story, is quite sure he is capable of writing a
fragmentary bit of fiction — one of those vague
scraps with neither beginning nor ending that are
always tumbling into the editor's letter-box — and
he feels that all vagueness, and lack of finish, and
the fact that the MS. gets nowhere, are sanctioned
because he adds, as a sub-title some such qualifica-
tion as "An Episode," or "A Character Study,"
or "A Glimpse."
In the same way a writer who is too diffident to
attempt a volume of essays, will feel perfect con-
fidence in sending out a MS. labelled "A
Reverie," or "A Meditation," even though it be
nothing more than a rambling collection of plati-
tudes on the sunset.
In most cases it is a distrust of his own powers
that inclines the amateur to embark on writing of
this type.
166
The Ubiquitous Fragment 167
Fragments may be exceedingly beautiful; they
are really most acceptable in this hurrying age
when life often seems too crowded . _
A Fragment
with work-a-day cares to leave us ma y be
Incomplete,
much leisure for sustained reading, but it
But they must embody the funda- not be
mental principles of Form; and they
must be constructed with even more attention to
artistic presentment, (or the means used to cap-
tivate the reader), than would be necessary for
a lengthier work.
Also, though they are but fragmentary, they
must appear to be portions of a desirable whole,
sections of a well-finished piece of work. Their
apparent incompleteness should seem due to the
author having insufficient time — not insufficient
knowledge — to finish them.
What is set down must not only be good work
in itself, but it must suggest other good work as
a completion.
You have probably seen some reproduction of
a fragmentary pencil or pen-and-ink sketch, by
an experienced artist, showing only a portion of
a figure or a building; yet so suggestive that the
onlooker instinctively fills in the remainder,, and
constructs out of the artist's unfinished drawing
a picture complete and beautiful.
168 The Lure of the Pen
I have several such sketches before me on my
study wall. One shows a corner of a quadrangle
in the precincts of a cathedral. In the background
there is a Gothic west window, a buttress, and
a piece of a tower; while a flight of steps in a
corner of the quadrangle, a bit of old-world stone-
work around a doorway and window, a fragment
of roof and a cluster of chimneys, with half a
dozen lines indicating an ancient flagged walk,
comprise the remainder. Only a few inches of
paper and a few pen-strokes — nevertheless in-
stinctively the mind runs on, and sees the whole
of the cathedral in the shadowy background; the
side of the quadrangle past the old doorway; even
the street beyond with its cobble stones and
market women. Indeed, you can visualise all the
life of the quaint sleepy, French town if you
look long enough at the little fragment; not be-
cause it is all indicated by the artist and left in
an incomplete state, but because what he did put
down is so vital, so suggestive, so fraught with
possibilities, that the mind fills in all the blanks,
and fills them in with beauty corresponding with
the specimen he has shown us.
And while we are studying the sketch, it may
be noticed that though this is but an unfinished
fragment, it is perfectly balanced, and shapely
The Ubiquitous Fragment 169
and proportionate as it stands. The patch of
light on the flagged path is balanced by the
shadow in the doorway. The flight of crumbling
stone steps, the most conspicuous feature in the
foreground, has been drawn with the utmost pains
in every detail. Even the cathedral window
looming in the background has its exquisite
tracery carefully drawn, no scamping the work
because it was only the background of an in-
complete sketch.
In the same way, a fragmentary word picture
should be properly constructed, and absolutely
accurate in detail (so far as that detail goes),
well proportioned, carefully balanced, containing
distinct charm in itself. The background may
be only lightly indicated, but even so, it should
contain possibilities — (the cathedral may be in
misty shadow, but you must be able to see enough
of it to know that it is a cathedral, and a great
cathedral at that).
The central idea must be placed well in the
foreground, it should be clearly stated, and be
something worth calling an idea.
The points you mention, but leave unamplified
should be something more than windowless, blank
walls, or blind alleys leading nowhere; they
should open up fresh vistas of thought, and send
170 The Lure of the Pen
the reader's mind out and beyond the limits of
your sentences.
Your word-picture must be satisfying in itself,
even though one realises that it is but a small
part of a much larger whole that might have
been written, had time and space permitted.
Certain literary fragments extant are probably
portions of large works the authors had in view
but did not finish; Coleridge's "Kubla Khan,"
for instance. The type of fragment I am talking
about in this chapter, however, is actually
finished, so far as the author's handling is con-
cerned; but unfinished in detail and setting, or
with only a vignetted background.
Some writers have set down a few lines with
neither introduction nor development plot, yet
such is the force and the revealing quality of the
sentences they put down, and the accuracy of
their sense of selection, that they have conveyed
as much, and suggested as much, to the mind of
the reader as if they had written pages. The fol-
lowing verse of William Allingham is an example
Here is a volume of suggestion in seven lines.
Four ducks on a pond,
A grass bank beyond,
A blue sky of spring,
White clouds on the wing : —
The Ubiquitous Fragment 171
What a little thing
To remember for years —
To remember with tears !
Tennyson wrote some beautiful fragments.
"Flower in a Crannied Wall" contains a world
of thought, and could easily furnish a theme for
a row of ponderous books; "Break, break, break,"
has poignant possibilities.
William Sharp, as "Fiona Macleod," wrote
some charming prose fragments; but behind each
you will invariably find a complete idea, and an
idea that suggests others.
Practise writing fragments by all means, but
see that they are shapely, and suggestive of
greater space and a bigger outlook than can be
measured by the number of sentences. Above all,
let each embody some idea — and let there be no
uncertainty as to the whereabouts of that idea,
no ambiguity as to what you are driving at.
To produce a good fragment you must do
some intensive thinking, because you have not
space to spread yourself out. This will be a gain
to all your writing. The rambling, formless habit
of thinking is the bane of the amateur, and the
type of MSS. resulting therefrom is the bane of
the editor.
Concerning Local Colour
LOCAL colour can be a powerful factor in
enhancing the charm of a story or article.
It may be introduced as the background
against which the scene is laid ; or as a sidelight on
the scenery, customs, and types of people peculiar
to a district. Anything can be utilised that con-
jures up in the reader's mind the idiosyncrasies of
a definite locality — only it must be something that
vjill conjure up the scene.
One advantage of local colour is the oppor-
tunity it gives the writer of a double hold on the
reader's interest — he may captivate by the setting
of his theme no less than by the theme itself.
Also it enables him more effectually to take the
reader "out of himeslf," and place him in a new
environment — an essential point if that reader is
to become absorbed in what he is reading.
Mere verbatim description of scenery is not the
best way to work in local colour; it is liable to
become guide-booky. Neither is a catalogue of
the beauty spots of a locality any better. Usually
the most advantageous method is a judicious, illu-
172
Concerning Local Colour 173
minating touch here and there, revealing outstand-
ing characteristics, and emphasising the material
things that give "colour," i.e., variety and vivid
distinction, to a scene.
They may be topographical characteristics or
they may be personal characteristics.
Beginners think that local colour is primarily
a matter of hills and hedgerows, sunbonnets and
smocks — the picturesque element that we look for
in the countryside. But conversation can give
local colour to a story without a single descriptive
sentence. Pett Ridge can transport you in an
instant to the heart of Hoxton or the Walworth
Road, by means of some bit of cockney dialect.
W. W. Jacobs will give a salty, far-sea- faring
flavour to the most untravelled public-house in
Poplar, in merely recounting a trifling difference
of opinion between some of the customers !
Local colour has justified the existence of more
than one book that is thin both in literary quality
and in plot ; The Lady of the Lake is an instance.
But I do not advocate a writer aiming for success
on similar lines.
Some words and expressions open up a much
wider vista to the mind's eye than do others. Con-
sider your descriptive passages critically, and see
if, by a different choice of words, you can, in the
174 The Lure of the Pen
same length of sentence, give the reader a larger
outlook.
Some British writers appreciate to the full the
artistic value of local colour (Rudyard Kipling
and Mrs. F. A. Steel can make one
writera feel as well as see India ; Blackmore's
Haoiaiinsr 1 * books breathe Devonshire; Lafcadio
or local Hearn— if one can call him British!
Colour
— envelops one in the Oriental odour
of Japanese temples; Shan F. Bullock's stories are
Ireland herself) ; but many ignore its possibilities
and set the scene with a nondescript society back-
ground, or an equally non-commital rural haze.
American writers make rather more use of local
colour. And the reason is clear : no other country
presents so great a variety in the way of climate,
scenery, and human types as does the United
States. An American author need only sit down
and write of what he sees immediately around
him, and, so long as he keeps away from such
modern items as the ubiquitous commercial travel-
ler and advertisement signs, and devotes his atten-
tion to natural objects and local paraphernalia
(human and otherwise), he is certain to be record-
ing what is novelty to a large proportion of his
fellow-countrymen. Moreover Americans are
more given to dealing with things in a straight-
Concerning Local Colour 175
forward, unconventional manner than are the
British writers, writing of what they actually
know and see around them, unhampered by classi-
cal traditions and age-old literary usages. Hence,
there is often a freshness, a vividly-alive quality in
their descriptions, that can only be obtained by
writing with a subject red-hot in the mind.
The author who merely rushes into the country
for a few days, or spends a couple of weeks on the
Continent, or sprints through the European ports
of China, to obtain local colour, for a story, usually
gets about as "stagey" and artificial a result as
does the home-keeping, middle-class girl, who has
her heroine presented at the Court of St. James,
and draws the local colour from the Society
columns of a daily paper!
You must know your "locality" well yourself
if you are to make the local colour real to your
readers ; second-hand or hastily collected data are
no good.
The would-be author will do well to study
typically-American authors, with a view to ob-
serving their use of local colour — particularly
those who wrote some of their best work before
the motor-car and telephone exercised their level-
ling and linking-up influences.
To name one or two: Mary E. Wilkins and
176 The Lure of the Pen
Sarah Orne Jewett have specialised on New Eng-
land village life; Charles Egbert Craddock (Miss
Murfree) on the Great Smoky Mountains of
Tennessee; George Cable on Louisiana; James
Lane Allen on Kentucky; Amelie Rives, in her
earlier books, on Virginia; etc.
And it is worth while noting that such writers
give, not only pictures of the scenery about them,
but also an insight into the native character. Thus
both Mary E. Wilkins and Sarah Orne Jewett de-
picted the rigid pride of the New Englanders, as
well as the poor but picturesque quality of the
soil. George Cable showed the temperament of
the Southerner as well as the tropical glamour of
the Southern States. Owen Wister has made us
love the large-hearted, child-like, primitive cow-
boy, as well as feel the vastness and the very air
of the plains and the mountains of Wyoming.
Such work is local colour at its best, since it
gives us the human traits as well as the scenic con-
ditions predominating in a locality, and enables
us to form a mental picture of the people and the
place as a whole.
Closely allied to this, is that most fascinating
study — the effect of climate, scenery, and general
environment on character. But as that subject is
outside the purview of this book, I merely suggest
Concerning Local Colour 177
it to the student as something well worth follow-
ing up, if there be an opportunity for first-hand
observation.
For the novelist who specialises on tempera-
mental delineation, it has wide possibilities.
12
Creating Atmosphere
HAVE you ever seen a landscape painting
that was one expanse of correctness in
detail, and yet seemed either utterly
dead, or to walk out of the canvas at every point
and hit you violently in the eye? Such a paint-
ing often has a bright-red tiled roof — every tile
visible and in its proper place; a violently blue
sky decorated here and there with solid masses
of apparently unmeltable snow; grass an acute
green; trees emphatic as to outline, every branch
clearly defined in its appointed place; sheep stand-
ing out like pure-white snowflakes on the acute
grass ; the smoke from the cottage chimney a thick
grey mass suggesting a heavy bale of wool; each
brick, each window frame, each paling emphasised
with careful exactness.
The amateur who produces a painting after this
style is usually very pleased with it, and attributes
any adverse criticism, that a competent artist may
pass upon it, to professional jealousy!
"What is wrong with it?" I have heard a
student ask, when a master has condemned such a
178
Creating Atmosphere 179
canvas. "It was all there, every detail, exactly
as I have painted it."
Yes, it may have been all there, but something
else was there which the artist omitted to include,
and the something else was "atmosphere." The
artist may put in every twig and tile, every plant
and pane of glass ; but if he omit the play of light,
the glamour of haze, the mystery of shadow, the
marvellous suggestiveness of the undefined, his
painting will be lifeless and wooden, or altogether
unbalanced, no matter how accurate the drawing.
Equally, the author needs atmosphere if his
writing is to rise above the dead level of the un-
inspired; but while one can define to some extent
(though not entirely) what is atmosphere in a
painting, it is next to impossible to give an exact
definition of atmosphere in writing. It is an
elusive quality difficult to describe off-hand. So
intangible is it that you can seldom put your finger
on a passage and say, "Here it is!" yet all the
while you may be fully conscious of there being
— back of the writing — something more than plot,
or purpose.
The atmosphere of a book may appertain to
matters moral or material ; it may affect the mind
or the emotions; it may be beneficial or baneful;
it may give colour or glamour, light or shade; it
180 The Lure of the Pen
may be mysterious or mesmeric. But whatever its
trend, in the main it lies in suggestiveness rather
than in definite statement. Like its prototype,
"atmosphere" in writing is an unseen environ-
ment, yet it permeates and influences the whole,
giving it character and even vitality.
In writing it is possible to suggest a great deal
that could not be described in detail within the
limits imposed on you by the length
"Atmos- r J \ °
piiere» is of your book and the consideration of
Invaluable .
as a Time balance. Moreover, the things sug-
gested may be of secondary import-
ance beside the main action of the story, and yet
be very useful in furthering the idea you have in
mind, or in helping to convey a particular impres-
sion.
In such cases the introduction of atmosphere
may do much for you. While you give only a
hint here and there, or a few sidelights in passing,
you may yet manage to convey to the readers a
"feeling" that carries them beyond the cut-and-
dried facts you may be handling, or lifts them
above the mere working-out of a plot. It is the
haze that may hide, and yet indicate, a something
in the distance, just beyond the range of sight —
and the suggestion of something still beyond is
always alluring; the infinite within us rebels
Creating Atmosphere 181
against finite limitations, and welcomes anything
that points to further ideas, further possibilities.
Thus atmosphere is invaluable as a time saver.
Life is too short (and the publisher too chary of
his paper and printing bill) to allow any of us,
save the truly famous, to describe minutely the
whole background of our writing, spiritual, men-
tal, or material. If we can, by a few expressive
words, or phrases, create an atmosphere that shall
reproduce in the reader's mind the train of
thought, or the scene, that was in our own mind
as we wrote, we shall, obviously, be spared the
making of many sentences, and the covering of
much paper with descriptive matter and soul
analyses, that might otherwise overweight our
main theme.
Atmosphere usually suggests some abstract
quality rather than a concrete item. We say that a
work has an outdoor atmosphere or an
old-world atmosphere or a healthy at- QuaSt^s
mosphere; or we may merely say "it smarted 7
has atmosphere," meaning a subtle
over- (or under-) current that clothes the frame-
work of the narrative with a glamour or a spiritual
quality that will help to reinforce, or mellow, or
illuminate the author's picture. But we do not say
a book has a millionaire atmosphere, or a detective
182 The Lure of the Pen
atmosphere, even though the book be about these
people. They correspond with the solid objects in
the landscape, and are quite distinct from the at-
mospheric effects that can do so much to enhance
the charm, or subdue the sordidness, of these solid
objects.
It does not necessarily follow that the atmos-
phere of a book is a wholesome one. There are
some writers who create a positively poisonous
atmosphere for the mind; but, fortunately, the
trend of humanity is in the direction of clean
thought and wholesome living, even though our
progress be slow and we encounter set-backs; and
vicious books are seldom long-livers, while those
the public call for again and again are invariably
books with a healthy atmosphere.
The student might make a special note of this !
Atmosphere in a well-written book is often so
unobtrusive that the reader fails to recognise it as
a specific element in the make-up of the story
that did not get there by accident. It is so easy
to fall into the error of thinking that this or that
characteristic or ingredient is due to the author's
style, or temperament, or genius; certainly it may
be due to either or all of these things, but if it is
worth anything it is also due to a well-thought-
out scheme on the part of the writer.
Creating Atmosphere 183
In other words, atmosphere only gets into a
work if it is put there. It does not merely "hap-
pen along," and if you want your writing to be
imbued with atmosphere, you must supply it; it
won't come of itself. And before you can supply
it, you must first think out what you want that
atmosphere to be and then decide how best you can
secure it.
It may have to do with spiritual aspects of life
— high ideals, faith, healthy thought, right living.
Ruskin's Sesame and Lilies comes
under this head, even though the P here»
subject-matter is not religious accord- wide 8 *
ing to our ordinary use of the word, g^^stion
From beginning to end one is think-
ing on a higher plane than that of material con-
sideration; one's thoughts are continually branch-
ing out beyond the actual purport of the book
as set forth by the author.
An old-world atmosphere has a special charm
for many readers. We find it in Cranford, Jane
Austen's books, and many others of a bygone
period — though it should be noticed that in these
cases the authors did not purposely incorporate
it in their work. They put atmosphere, certaiuly ;
but it has only become an "old-world" atmosphere
by the courtesy of Father Time: in their own
184 The Lure of the Pen
day, these books were quite up-to-date produc-
tions. Certain modern books have an old-world
atmosphere — The Broad Highway and Our Ad-
mirable Betty, by Jeffery Farnol ; When Knight-
hood was in Flower, by Charles Major (and many
others will occur to the mind) ; but in each case
the old-world atmosphere had to be put there very
carefully by the author.
The hysterical atmosphere needs no description.
We know too well the type of book that keeps its
characters (and aims to keep its readers), from
the first chapter to the last, keyed up to an un-
natural pitch of emotionalism, with copious details
about everybody's soulful feelings and tempera-
ments and lingerie. Books with this atmosphere
were constantly striving to get their heads above
water in the years of this century preceding the
war. They are interesting from one, and only
one, point of view: they indicate the diseased
mentality that has always come to the surface in
periods of the world's history prior to some great
human upheaval.
A pessimistic atmosphere is fairly common —
especially does it seem to find favour with young
writers. One of the best examples of a book with
a really pessimistic atmosphere is the Rubdiydt
of Omar Khayyam.
Creating Atmosphere 185
Atmosphere has sometimes transformed the com-
monplace into something rare and delightful. Our
Village, by Miss Mitford, is an instance. Here
you have the most ordinary of everyday events
described in such a way that they are invested
with a halo of charm.
To create the atmosphere you desire, you must
be thoroughly imbued with it yourself — you can-
not manufacture it out of nothing. It To create an
must so possess you while you are a*********
at your work that it is liable to tinge all you
write. You will never make other people sense
what you do not sense yourself.
For instance, it would not be possible for an
out-and-out pagan to write a book with a sym-
pathetic evangelical atmosphere, any more than
the Kaiser could write a book imbued with the
spirit of true Democracy.
Then you must insinuate your atmosphere at
times and seasons when it will make the most im-
pression on the reader without interfering with, or
hindering, the development of the story; remem-
bering that it is always better to suggest the at-
mosphere than to put it in with heavy strokes.
You may wish to make a story the very breath
of the out-doors. But in order to do this, it would
not be necessary to stop all the characters in what-
1 86 The Lure of the Pen
ever they were saying or doing, while you describe
scenery and sunsets, or explain to the reader how
"out-doory" everything and everybody is! This
would easily spoil the continuity and flow of the
whole, by switching the reader's mind off the plot
and on to another train of thought. Instead, you
would make the whole book out-doory without
any pointed explanation — "setting the stage" in
the open air as much as possible, emphasising the
features of the landscape rather than boudoir de-
corations, mentioning the sound of the soughing
trees or the surging sea, rather than the tune the
gramophone was playing; introducing the scent of
the larches in the spring sunshine rather than the
odour of tuberoses and stephanotis in a ballroom.
In each case the one would suggest freedom in
the open air, while the other would suggest con-
ventionalities indoors.
In some such way, you would rely on touches
in passing to produce the desired effect, always
bearing in mind the importance of getting these
touches as telling as possible.
Such allusions (often merely hinted at, rather
than spoken) should be equal in effectiveness to
long paragraphs of detailed description ; therefore,
choose carefully the means by which you hope to
secure your end. Your touches must be so true
Creating Atmosphere 187
and so sure that they instantly convey to the
reader's mind your own mental atmosphere.
In this, as much as in any other phase of writ-
ing, you need an instinct for the essentials, i.e.
a feeling that tells you instantly what will con-
tribute most surely to the making of the atmos-
phere you desire, and what is relatively unim-
portant.
Atmosphere is the element in your work that
can least of all be faked without detection — or
cribbed from other writers.
It must permeate the whole of your story
whether long or short, and be something beyond
the mere words you write down. The readersi
must feel, when they finally close the book, that
they have got more from you than what you
actually said ; that you led their thoughts in direc-
tions that carried them off the highway of the
obvious, giving them visions of things that were
unrecorded.
The Method of Presenting a
Story
THE method of presenting the story
needs a little consideration.
The most common, and the most de-
sirable as a rule, is the narrative, told in a third
person ; i.e. the writer relates a story about certain
people, but does not himself pose as a character
involved in the story. Beginners will do well to
adhere to this type of story, until they have at-
tained to a certain amount of fluency with their
ideas.
Another popular method is the narrative told
in the first person, i.e. the writer relates a story
about certain people, in which he also
Writing' in
the rirst plays a more or less important part.
Person
If well written, this form makes a
pleasant change from the story written in the third
person; but it necessitates a certain amount of
experience on the part of the writer, if it is to be
saved from dulness.
Moreover, its limitations are hampering to the
beginner. If you are writing in the third person,
1 88
Method of Presenting a Story 189
you, as the author, are allowed (by that special
concession granted to makers of fiction) to know
everything that every character in your story
thinks or does. You may relate in one paragraph
what the hero was thinking and doing in San
Francisco, and in the next what the heroine was
thinking and doing at the same moment in New
York.
But if you are writing in the first person, you
have not the same licence to roam all over the
universe, penetrating the deepest recesses of
people's lives and laying bare their secret thoughts
to the glare of day. You are supposed to stick to
your own part and mind your own business. If
you manage to find out other people's business as
the story proceeds, there must be some sort of
circumstantial evidence as to how you found it
out; it will not be enough merely to state that it is
so, as you could do were you writing in the third
person.
For instance, in a MS. I pick up from the pile
on my table I read:
"He paused when he reached the drawing-
room door and glared at her, livid with rage.
She returned his look with one of haughty
indifference. Then he left the house, and as he
190 The Lure of the Pen
walked along the cheerless streets, he clenched
his fists and hissed between his teeth, 'You shall
suffer for this.' She, meanwhile, rang the bell
for tea and resumed the novel upon which she
had been engaged when he arrived."
Told in the third person, it is easy to let the
reader know what he and she were thinking and
saying and doing at the same moment. But sup-
posing you were writing all this in the first person
with yourself as the heroine, it would not be so
easy to convey the same information to the reader.
You could wirte:
"He paused when he reached the drawing-
door and glared at me, livid with rage. I re-
turned his look with one of haughty indiffer-
ence. Then he left the house, and I rang the
bell for tea and resumed the novel upon which
I had been engaged when he arrived."
But if you wished to let the reader know how
the bad-tempered creature clenched and hissed,
you would have to get at it by some round-about
means — your dearest friend might call at the
moment and tell you that she had just passed
him in the cheerless street clenching and hissing;
or some other such device could be employed.
Method of Presenting a Story 191
But all this involves extra thought and care in
the contsruction of the story.
Amateurs are much given to story-writing in
the first person; it seems such an easy method
(when they know nothing about it) ;
1 . • 1 i 1 1 A Stum-
they invariably see themselves in a biing--ijiock
leading part, and make the hero or ^mateox
heroine do and be all they themselves
would like to do and be. But they never go far
before they trip up against this block of stumbling
— the impossibility of the first person singular
"I" being in two places at the same time, and
seeing inside people's hearts and brains, to say
nothing of their locked cupboards and secret
drawers.
Also, the beginner is apt to forget the role he
is supposed to be playing when he puts himself
into a story, and he lapses, at intervals, into the
third person.
Sometimes, in order to dodge the difficulties, an
author will write one part in the form of a diary,
thus enabling a character to talk about herself (it
is usually a feminine character who keeps a
diary!). Then, when the limitations of the first
person singular hamper the progress of the story,
the diary is dropped for a time, while the author
192 The Lure of the Pen
revels in the all-embracing freedom of writing in
the third person.
This is a weak method, however, and plainly a
subterfuge; being practically an announcement
that the author could not or would not take the
trouble to work the story through in correct form.
It is also bad from an artistic standpoint; it does
not hang together well; past and present tenses
are apt to get mixed ; it produces an unsatisfactory
feeling in the mind of the reader, who so often
is in doubt as to whether the author is writing
as a character in the story or merely as the author
— and anything that leaves a confused, unsatis-
factory feeling in the reader's mind is poor art.
A story written entirely in the form of a diary
is sometimes attempted. And closely allied to
this is the story written as a series of
Writing 1 a ,
Story in the letters.
a°DiLy f Both methods are popular with
amateurs. Most people regard a
diary as the simplest type of writing, requiring
neither style nor sequence, nor even the thinnest
thread of connection running through the whole,
unless the author so desires. Moreover, though
every one does not feel competent to write a book
or even a short story, we all feel competent to
keep a diary — most of us have kept one at some
Method of Presenting a Story 193
time in our career. What can be easier therefore
than to write a story in diary form 1 ? And we
proceed to write our story as we wrote our own
diary, with this difference that we put into the
fiction diary the sort of happenings we used to
deplore the lack of, when we wrote down our own
daily experiences.
Until we have given some study to the subject
we do not recognise that, while a series of some-
what disconnected sentences and brief entries may
be very useful as records for future reference, like-
wise may be moderately serviceable as safety-
valves for overwrought, self-centred tempera-
ments, they are seldom of interest to any one save
the writer, and if put forward as recreational
reading, may easily prove uninteresting in the
extreme, even with the addition of a love episode !
A story in diary form needs to be written by an
experienced pen if it is to resemble a genuine
diary, and yet hold the reader's interest through-
out, and culminate in a good climax.
A story told in a series of letters can easily be
the dullest thing imaginable. What is an excel-
lent letter seldom makes an excellent
A Story
chapter in a novel. A letter, if it is to toiatn
seem a real letter, should be discur-
sive ; and this is the very thing the amateur needs
13
194 The Lure of the Pen
to guard against when writing a story, if that story
is to show force and action; he is prone to be too
discursive as it is. In any case, unless it is re-
markably well done, the reader chafes at the delay
inevitably caused by the irrelevant small talk that
is the hallmark of most letters.
Some writers have managed to handle the
"letter-form" in an interesting manner, by relying
on descriptive narrative, rather than any striking
plot, to hold the reader. The Lady of the Decora-
tion by Frances Little, is a good example.
Dialect should be approached with caution. It
is so easy to be tedious and unintelligible in this
direction.
The
introduction Remember that you are writing in
of Dialect
what is almost a fresh language to
most people, when you employ a dialect that is
purely local; hence you are imposing an extra
mental strain on the reader; and in order to com-
pensate for the additional demand you make on
his brain, you must give him something above
the average in interest. No one, in these days of
hustle, is going to take the trouble to wade through
a species of unknown tongue, and wrestle with
weird spelling and unfamiliar idiom, unless there
is something remarkably worth while to be got
out of it. And for one who will spare the time
Method of Presenting a Story 195
to fathom the mysteries of the dialect, there are
thousands who will give it up.
If it be necessary to write in a particular dialect,
avoid so far as possible the use of expressions that
in no way explain themselves, and
j. . -11 The Object
crowding the pages with the more of writing-
obscure colloquialisms of the dis- not to Befog
trict. The object of writing a book ™ 6 n * eader ' 8
is not to befog the reader's mind.
One knows that dialect is sometimes imperative
in order to create the right atmosphere and to
state things as they actually occurred. In such
cases it is usually best to use it only in small
quantities — as where a native strolls across very
few pages, and is on view for only a short while.
Yet you must see that your dialect is correct.
Merely to write a few words phonetically, and put
a "z" in place of an "s" (as is sometimes done,
for instance, when making a native of Somerset
speak), is not convincing.
To write a story throughout in dialect calls
for exceptional skill; and, as a rule, it can only
be done successfully by those who have known
a dialect from childhood, or at any rate have
spent some years in its company. The names
of Sir James Barrie and S. R. Crockett naturally
come to one's mind in this connection.
196 The Lure of the Pen
The beginner will be wise to write his early
experiments in plain English and in the third
person. Fiction that is free from
"An Honest r
Tale speeds confusion of style, mixed methods,
best toeing-
plainly and uncertainty of handling always
Told"
does the best. The story that is re-
lated in a clear direct manner is most popular with
the public — likewise, it is the most difficult to
write well, though few beginners believe this: it
looks so very simple !
Fallacies in Fiction
I HAVE come to the conclusion that the con-
trariness of human nature is largely respon-
sible for the rejection of many of the MSS.
that never get into print; but not the contrariness
of the editor (as the unsuccessful writer generally
thinks when he sees his MS. back once more in
the bosom of his family).
Most of us, at one period or another, feel we
could shine much more brilliantly in some other
environment than the one in which we find our-
selves. It has been described as "a divine discon-
tent." There is plenty of discontent about it, I
allow; but I am not so sure that it is divine.
While it may be, and often is, the expression of
a real need for a little more growing space, it is
sometimes the outcome of mere restlessness, or a
lazy, selfish desire to escape the irksome things
that are in our own surroundings, vainly imagin-
ing that we can find some pathway in life where
there are no disagreeables to be faced.
But whatever the motive may be, there is a
universal idea among the inexperienced that some
197
198 The Lure of the Pen
other person's job is preferable to their own; some
one else's circumstances more interesting and ro-
mantic and dramatic and enthralling than theirs
could ever be. And the result is — much wasted
opportunity.
Now the sum-total of this, in regard to story-
writing, is the fact that fully 80 per cent, of the
fiction submitted to editors deals with
Amateur situations of which the writer has
has rirst^ practically no first-hand knowledge;
kS>wi e and as a natural consequence it is un-
of his convincing and often incorrect.
Subject °
The schoolgirl who has never
travelled beyond Folkestone or Boulogne, and
whose knowledge of fearsome weapons is limited
to a hockey-stick, riots one across the Continent
on a "Prisoner of Zenda" chase, directly she starts
to write.
The girl of twenty, living a quiet, useful life in
some small provincial town, in close attendance
upon a kindly invalid aunt, devotes the secret
midnight candle to writing the life-story of a
heartless butterfly of a faithless wife: while the
kindly invalid aunt is surreptitiously writing de-
corous mid-Victorian stories of very, very mild
wickedness coming to a politely bad end, and
oppressively good virtue arriving at the top (with
Fallacies in Fiction 199
more moral advice than plot, or anything else).
The niece imagines she is writing just the type of
story that the public craves; and the aunt is under
the delusion that hers is just the sort of literature
that is wanted for distribution among factory
girls.
The maiden of high degree writes of the lily-
white beauty of the girl in the grimy garret. The
democratic daughter of the colonies invariably
sprinkles a few titles about her MS.
Before the war, the anaemic young man in a city
office, who spent most of the year in a crowded
suburb and his short vacation at some crowded
seashore resort, persistently wrote of the exploits
of a marvellous detective who ran Sleuth-hound
Bill to earth in Gory Gulch. Since 1914, he (the
young man) has sent me many MSS. — from
France, Salonika, Egypt, India, and Flanders — ■
and these are generally love stories, and seldom
bear a trace of battle-smoke or high adventure.
(I am speaking of amateur work, remember.)
I have nothing to say against a desire for new
horizons; it is a legitimate part of our develop-
ment. And I can understand that for a certain
type of weakly and rather starved personality
there is a slight compensation for the lack of
change they crave, in putting down on paper their
200 The Lure of the Pen
longings and ideals, and in writing romance in
which they secretly see themselves in the leading
part.
But this is not saleable matter; neither is it
particularly readable matter, as a general rule
(though there are occasional exceptions, of
course). Because in such cases the writers are
invariably dealing with situations the inwardness
of which they know really nothing. Or else all
their knowledge has been obtained from the writ-
ings of others; they are merely repeating other
people's ideas and other people's descriptions.
You cannot write convincingly on topics about
which you know little. You can cover reams of
paper — amateurs are doing it every
your Topio d av f the vear ! — with descriptions
from your
own of people, and houses, and scenes, and
Environment
walks of life with which you have
only a hearsay acquaintance; but such writing is
scarcely likely to be worth printing and paying
for.
If the schoolgirl, instead of wasting her time
on something that reads like a washedout rechauffe
of The Scarlet Pimpernel, would try her hand at a
story of schoolgirl life, she might produce some-
thing really bright and alive, even though it lacked
the symmetry and finish that years of practice
Fallacies in Fiction 201
bring to a writer. And though the MS. did not
find a market at the time, on account of imma-
turity of style, it might prove valuable later on
when the writer had gained experience. It would
give her data she had forgotten in the intervening
years.
And the girl who spends her ink on the philan-
derings of the faithless wife (a species, by the
way, that she has probably never set eyes on, hav-
ing been brought up like most of the rest of us
in a decent circle of sane relations and friends)
might, perhaps, have done some charming pictures
of domestic life, as did the authors of Cranford
and Little Women in their day.
If the aunt, instead of hoping to influence fac-
tory girls of whom she knows absolutely nothing,
and whose conversation, could she but hear it,
would be an unintelligible language to her, had
turned her invalidism to practical account, and
passed on useful hints and ideas to other invalids,
she might have written something that would have
been welcomed by others similarly handicapped.
And so on, down to the city clerk, who never
can be made to realise that a type of story most
difficult to lay hands on is the one that deals, ac-
curately, with the inside of that world peopled by
202 The Lure of the Pen
the bankers and stockbrokers and money magnates.
The detective tracking Sleuth-hound Bill has the
tamest walk-over in comparison with the daring,
and tense excitement, surrounding some financial
deals.
I do not say that these writers would neces-
sarily have placed their MSS. had they written
on the lines suggested; it takes some-
wSTis thing besides the theme and back-
VniveTull g r ° und t0 make a g°° d St0r y- But
Tendency j jo say that they would have been
is to Copy J J
many degrees nearer publication, had
they dealt with types and circumstances that had
come within their personal cognisance, rather than
with those they only knew by hearsay.
The outsider would scarcely credit how rare it
is for an editor to receive a piece of really original
work; the universal tendency is to copy other
people's productions rather than trouble to dis-
cover original models.
The schoolgirl, studying water-colour drawing,
prefers to work from a "copy," showing some other
person's painting of a vase of flowers, rather than
have her own vase filled with real flowers before
her. Some one else's work saves the inexperienced
the responsibility of selection — and selection is
always a difficult point for the beginner, who finds
Fallacies in Fiction 203
it hard to decide what to include in, and what to
leave out of, a picture.
In the same way, inexperienced fiction writers
find it easier to copy other people's stories ; though,
unlike the schoolgirl and her paint-
, . . Beginners
ing-copy, they are quite unconscious are seldom
that they are doing so; they usually they'are a
imagine that what they have written JSJJJ*
is entirely original.
It is difficult to get the novice to distinguish
between writing anything down on paper, and
creating it in his own brain. So many think the
mere passing of thoughts through the brain, and
the transmitting of those thoughts to paper, are
indications of their ability to write; and that
what they write must be original.
And yet in most beginners' MSS. scarcely any
of the incidents, or situations, or plots ever came
within the writer's own purview; the majority are
hashed up from the many stories one reads nowa-
days — though the author has no idea that he is
only stringing together selected ideas that originat-
ed in other people's brains.
There are many reasons to account for this.
For one thing, the novice feels safe in using the
type of material that has already been published.
The world is wide, human nature is varied, and
204 The Lure of the Pen
it is not easy to decide what to take; therefore
the writer who plans his story on time-honoured
lines is relieved of the responsibility of selection.
Then, again, if a particular type of story has
been accepted and published, it has received a
certain hall-mark of approval, and forthwith
others tread the same path; there is less uncer-
tainty here than in breaking new ground.
There is yet another reason: to evolve any-
thing that is new and unhackneyed necessitates
our taking trouble; and some amateurs will not
take any more trouble than they can possibly help;
they do not recognise that writing stands for hard
work.
I cannot spare the space to touch on well-worn
plots, but here are a few of the sentences and
expressions that haunt amateur MSS.
rriendsw© Have you ever read a story that
before Met opened, "It was a glorious day in
June," followed by a page of blue
sky, balmy breezes, humming bees, not a leaf
stirred, and scent of roses heavy on the air*? Of
course you have. We all have. That glorious
day in June is one of the most precious perennials
of the story-writer's stock-in-trade.
You know at once that twenty summers will
have passed o'er her head, and that he is just
Fallacies in Fiction 205
round the corner waiting to come upon her all
unawares, so soon as the author can quit catalogu-
ing nature's beauties.
And have you ever read a story that opened
with "A dripping November fog enveloped the
city'"? Of course you have; and you know at
once, before you get to the next line, which
describes its denseness and the slippery pavements,
and a host of other discomforts, that you are going
to be ushered into an equally dismal city board-
ing-house, and introduced to a lovely-complex-
ioned girl whose frail appearance is only enhanced
by her deep mourning, and hear the sad story
of the pecuniary straits that necessitated her bring-
ing her widowed mother (often fractious), or it
may be a younger sister (always sunny and the
lodestar of her life), from their lovely old home
in the country, while she earned a living in town.
And, without fail, she has always imagined that
they were well provided for, till the family lawyer
(always old) broke the news after the funeral that
the place was mortgaged up to the hilt, and even
her father's life insurance had been allowed to
lapse.
You know all the rest — the dreary tramp round
in search of work, and the way she irons out her
threadbare garments to make them last as long
206 The Lure of the Pen
as they can (irrespective of the fact that the
mourning was new only a few weeks before, and
she presumably had a good stock of underwear
in her prosperous days), and a host of other har-
rowing experiences until — it comes right in the
end.
And all because the story opened with a drip-
ping November fog ! Why, I believe the average
amateur would consider it almost improper to
start a desolate orphan on a quest for work in
the metropolis in anything other than a dense
November fog!
And yet — how much more cheerful for her, poor
dear, could she but begin her career on a dry day —
and some November days in London are quite
sunny and bright — so much better for her in the
thin jacket she always wears on such occasion,
and her worn-out shoes !
It would be such a blessed thing if we need not
start with the weather, nor the number of sum-
ners that had floated over the sweet young
heroine's head (or winters, if the central figure be
an old man). But the amateur clings to these
openings.
Then take "the boudoir." After the weather
I don't think anything haunts me more persistent-
ly than the boudoir. "Lady Gwennyth was sitting
Fallacies in Fiction 207
reading a letter in her luxurious (or cosy, or
dainty) boudoir, when " etc.
Now why is it that the girl who starts out to
write fiction loves to introduce her heroine in
this wise? It is most unlikely that the amateur
knows much about a boudoir — few of us do. It
is a room that appertains solely to the rich, and
to only a small proportion of the rich at that. I
know many wealthy women and many well-born
women who haven't a boudoir, simply because the
cramped conditions of modern living seldom leave
them a room to spare for this purpose. The fact
is the boudoir proper does not really belong to
this purposeful age. It is a relic of the more
leisurely Victorian times and the ease-loving, well-
to-do Frenchwoman of pre-war days. Most
modern women have very little time to spend
in a boudoir if even they need one; nevertheless
it appears with unfailing regularity in stories
dealing with the richer ranks of life, till you
would think it was as necessary to a woman's
entourage as — an umbrella!
Why is it that the heroine has usually refused
a couple (if not more) offers of marriage, before
she is brought to our notice, with yet another offer
looming on the horizon*? In real life, as we know
208 The Lure of the Pen
it in this twentieth century, it is most unusual for
a girl to be constantly turning down offers of mar-
riage like applications for charity subscriptions
though there are exceptions here and there, cer-
tainly.
Yet I scarcely open a love-story that does not
state that the heroine had already refused "every
eligible man in her circle" ; though the reader can
seldom see why one man should have proposed to
the damsel, much less a crowd !
The heroine presented to us by the amateur is
invariably a most ordinary young person, often
quite uninteresting, and lacking the faintest streak
of distinctiveness. And then the question arises
— Why should all the eligible men in the town
have proposed to her*?
Perhaps one explanation is the fact that inex-
perienced writers have not learnt the art of de-
picting character; as they do not know how to
convey an idea of her attractiveness, they think
if they state that she was attractive that is
sufficient. But statements are not sufficient; she
must be attractive.
The youthful heroine and the aged grand-
mother may also be quoted as evergreen types that
long ago had become monotonous. Whether girls
Fallacies in Fiction 209
married in their teens as a matter of course, a
couple of generations ago, I do not know, as I was
not there; but the youthful heroine was a sine
qua non in Victorian fiction.
She is not a sine qua non now, however; any-
thing but; the seventeen-year-old bride is by no
means the rule in these times; there is practically
no limit nowadays to the age at which a woman
may receive offers of marriage.
Nevertheless, the amateur persistently follows
bygone models, and still clings to the very young
heroine; no more than eighteen summers are, at
the outside, allowed to pass over her lovely head
before she is introduced to our notice.
And certain traditions are still followed in
regard to other details. Her complexion is always
of the rose-petal order, her hair is always escap-
ing in a series of stray curls about her neck and
forehead (and, by the way, these "stray curls" of
fiction are sadly 1 responsible for many of the
untidy lank locks of to-day!). If you read as
many MSS. as I do, you would think that no
straight-haired, ordinary complexioned girl had
the least chance of a personal love-story, despite
the fact that most of the girls one knows in real
life, who have married and lived "happy ever
14
210 The Lure of the Pen
after," have been either sallow or sunburnt or
colourless, or just healthy-looking.
If you doubt whether a successful heroine can
be evolved out of a woman no longer in her teens,
and with a complexion that would not stand
pearls, remember the Hon. Jane, in The Rosary.
In addition to the youthful heroine, the aged
grandmother needs to be given a long rest. When
the young wife who married in her teens visits
her old home in company with her one-year-old
infant, it is invariably the dearest old lady who
comes forward to embrace her first grandchild;
and from her own conversation and the descrip-
tion of her general apearance, the sweet old soul
must be at least eighty ; despite all that Nature
might rule to the contrary, to say nothing of the
dressmaker !
Tradition has it that grandmothers must have
white hair, and spectacles, voluminous skirts, and
knitting in their hands as they sit in an easy-
chair with comfortably slippered feet on a has-
sock; and that is the sort of grandmother the
amateur brings on the scenes, irrespective of the
fact that the grandmother of to-day is skipping
about in girlish skirts and high-heeled shoes, with
Fallacies in Fiction 211
hair and complexion as youthful as she likes to
pay for.
Nothing in the way of fiction is more difficult to
write than a thoroughly good love story. And yet
the beginner invariably starts with a love story,
and continues with love-stories, as though there
were no other possible selection.
I do not think it is often possible to write a
good love-story until one has had some experience
of life. It is so easy to mistake neurotic imagin-
ings and over-strung emotionalism for love; and
it is still easier to fall back on the conventional
things that the conventional hero and heroine do
and say in the conventional novel, and imagine
that we are recording our own ideas and experi-
ences.
There are several reasons why the love-story
appeals to the girl who is starting out to write.
She is looking forward to a love-story of her
own, if she be a normal girl, and has already seen
herself in the part of her favourite heroine. Nat-
urally it is not surprising that love-stories are of
absorbing interest to her. And a girl usually sees
herself as the heroine of her own early love-
stories; and she invariably makes her heroine do
and say what she would like to do and say under
212 The Lure of the Pen
the circumstances, and at the same time she makes
the hero do and say what she would like her own
lover to do and say — but it does not follow that
this is true to life; or that her lover would say
the things she credits him with in her story. Very
few proposals in real life ever resemble the pro-
posals in fiction!
A girl will often introduce her heroine in a
picturesque pose against some lovely background
of hills, or woods, or garden flowers; and the hero
coming upon her suddenly is made to pause, lost
in admiration of the exquisite picture she makes.
The girl writes this because — unconsciously, per-
haps — she sees herself in the part, and likes to
think she would make a very attractive picture
that would rivet a man's attention.
But it is not true to life. In reality, the average
man seldom notices the scenic fittings under such
circumstances. He either sees the girl — or he
doesn't. Unless he is an artist looking for useful
subjects for his pictures, the background is not
often seen in conjunction with the girl. I merely
give this as an instance of the way amateurs are
apt to see themselves in an imaginary part that in
reality is at variance with "things as they are";
and their writings become artificial in consequence.
There is another reason why the love-story is
Fallacies in Fiction 213
the beginner's choice: it calls for so few charac-
ters. The simplest ingredients are — a nice, beau-
tiful girl and a strong, manly, deserving mas-
culine. Of course, you can vary the flavour by
making them rich or poor, misunderstood, down-
trodden, capricious, and what not. And you can
amplify it by introducing the bold, bad rival
(masculine) ; the superficial, fascinating butter-
fly rival (feminine); the irate forbidding parent
{his, if he is rich and she is poor; hers, if he is poor
and her mother is ambitious and money-grab-
bing) ; the designing mischief-maker (a black-
eyed brunette, or a brassy-haired blonde) ; and a
host of other well-worn familiar types. But when
all is said and done, you need have but two
characters to delineate, if you do not feel equal
to more — and there is a distinct save of brain
in this!
When you reach the climax in any other than
a love-story, you are expected to make the denoue-
ment something of a slight surprise at any rate,
if no more; and we all know that surprises — slight
or otherwise — are not altogether easy to manu-
facture for purposes of fiction. It is simple work
to go on talking and describing and making the
people talk — about nothing — for pages and pages;
but by no means simple to lead it all up to a
214 The Lure of the Pen
definite point of culmination. There must be
some sort of point to a story; and that point is
the trouble as a rule!
But with a love-story, the amateur thinks he
need not worry about hunting for a climax — every
one knows what the climax must be. "All you
have to do is to bring them along the road of life
to a suitable spot where they can fall into each
other's arms" — thus the novice argues, and pro-
ceeds to do it. Another save of brain wear and
tear !
In any other situation the dramatis persons are
bound to do at least a little talking, to explain
how the thing has worked out, or to let you know
how matters finally adjusted themselves. But not
so our happy lovers ! About the longest sentence
he is called upon to construct is, "At last!" as
he clasps her to him; while her contribution to
the duologue need only be, "Darling!" which she
whispers, resting her head on his shoulder. And
they need not say even this much: for one very
favourite method of conclusion, with inexperi-
enced authors, is to bring the hero and heroine sud-
denly face to face with some such final sentence
as, "What they said need not be recorded here:
such words are too sacred to be repeated" — a finale
that always annoyed me in my young days !
Fallacies in Fiction 215
Amateurs are generally very weak in character-
drawing, and nowhere is this more noticeable than
in love-stories. There is a time-honoured notion
that the chief requisites in the heroine are youth
and beauty, as I have already said, while the hero
must of equal necessity be clean-cut, manly and
masterful. With these ideas already fixed in his
head, the novice seldom sees any necessity for
character-delineation. He explains that the
heroine is lovely and the hero in every way a de-
sirable young man, and leaves it at that; for-
getting that the mere statement that she is
"winsome," or "wistful," or possessed of "clear
grey eyes that are the windows of her soul," does
not necessarily make her all these things. In the
majority of amateur MSS. the heroine, as she
depicts herself by word and deed, is a most colour-
less, stereotyped nonentity; and by no means the
glowing, fascinating thing of originality and
beauty that the author's adjectives would have us
believe; and the hero is frequently no more ani-
mated, no more human, than the elegant dummy
in a tailor's window.
This may be taken as a fairly safe ruling: If it
be necessary for you to label your characters with
their chief characteristics, your writing is uncon-
216 The Lure of the Pen
vincing and weak. Their actions should speak
louder than your adjectives.
One of the prominent novelists of to-day —
who is clever enough and experienced enough to
know better — has a trick of letting some one of
his characters make a semi- witty remark; after
which he adds, "And everybody laughed." This
last should be quite unnecessary. If the remark
be sufficiently laugh-at-able, it will be self-evi-
dent that people smiled; if it is not sufficiently
witty to suggest a laugh to the reader, no amount
of ticketing will raise a smile, either in the book or
out of it.
The same principle should be applied to the
presentation of one's characters. If they are to
have anything more than a mere walk-on part,
they should very quickly explain themselves. The
bald statement that the hero is a fine, manly
fellow means nothing in reality. What is import-
ant is whether his actions and speech suggest a
fine, manly character. If they do not, no amount
of descriptive matter on the part of the author
will conjure up a fine, manly fellow in the reader's
imagination.
Some Rules for Story- Writing
IN presenting a story it is essential that the
reader shall have some idea as to what it is
about. To start by keeping the reader
roaming along for a page or two among unintellig-
ible remarks, and references to unknown or unex-
plained events, is to give him strong encourage-
ment to shut up the book without troubling to go
any further.
There is something very exasperating about a
writer who gives no clue as to who anybody is or
what anything is; he is every bit as irritating as
the one who goes to the other extreme, and drags
the reader through the babyhood and school days
of the hero's parents.
These are the opening paragraphs of a MS.
offered to me. It is quite a short story, hence
there was every reason why space should not have
been wasted on unintelligible preamble.
"It happened in this way : through the lions. No,
that isn't exactly right though ; the lions didn't
really do it, would never have thought of doing such
a thing; but if I had not gone to see them, it
217
218 The Lure of the Pen
would never have happened. So, you see, they were
to some extent responsible.
"I expect you are saying to yourself, 'What was
it that happened*?' Well that is what I'm going
to write about. But first I must tell you that
one of my failings from childhood upwards has
been the habit of starting to tell my story right in the
very middle ; and then I always feel so annoyed
when, after I've been chattering away for I don't
know how long, people look at me and say, 'Per-
haps you will try and be lucid and explain what
you are talking about !' It never seems to occur
to them that it is they who are so stupid. But I
will tell you at once about 'me' and then tell you
about 'it.' I'll begin at the very beginning, and
try to tell you everything in proper orthodox style."
After much more of this description, it turns out
at last that the lions were celebrities at a dinner-
party where the narrator met the man she ulti-
mately married.
That was all!
It is foolish to keep the reader dangling in
suspense, unless the subsequent revelations are to
be sufficiently striking to warant the suspense. A
long explanatory deviation from the actual theme
is seldom satisfactory or desirable, in a short story,
even when the theme is a big one (unless it be
absolutely necessary, in order to elucidate some
Some Rules for Story- Writing 219
important detail); but it is inexcusable when the
subject is trivial and obvious.
The more "body" there is in your MS. the
more it will stand digressive or dilutive passages;
the lighter your main theme, the less can you
afford to allow the reader's interest to be dissipat-
ed over extraneous matter before you reach the
main theme.
Until you are an experienced craftsman, intro-
duce the important characters as early as possible.
The reader should know them as long as possible
if he is to take a keen personal interest in them.
It is better not to describe your characters more
than is necessary for actual identification; they
should describe themselves by their actions and
conversation, as the story proceeds.
To save the monotony of long descriptive pas-
sages, that always hamper the movement of a
story, it is often possible to make one of the char-
acters, in the course of conversation, give the in-
formation that the author is anxious to convey to
the reader. But in order to effect this, do not
fall into the error of making a character say things
that in real life there would be no reason for his
saying. You may want to convey the information
to the reader that the heroine's ancestors were
220 The Lure of the Pen
eminently respectable ; but it would be bad art to
make her remark to her own parent (or a rela-
tive) : "As you know, mother dear, grandfather
was a distinguished general."
Beginners imagine that the strength of a story
is in direct proportion to the way they crowd
together incidents, or multiply their characters.
But this entirely depends on the quality of the
incidents and the importance of the characters.
The whole is greater than a part — always has
been and always will be; and if each individual
character is weak, and each episode is feeble, no
matter how you may elaborate your story, the
whole will be weaker than each part.
It is time-saving, when writing a story, to lay
the scene in some locality you know well, even
though you change the name and preserve its
incognito. It is most useful to have a fixed plan
of the streets and lanes and buildings and railway
station in your mind when writing.
Try to distinguish between a longing to voice
your own pent-up emotions, and a desire to give
the world something that you think will interest
or instruct them. Three-quarters of the love-
Some Rules for Story-Writing 221
stories girls write are merely outlets for their own
emotions; and picture what they wish would hap-
pen in their own lives — with no thought whatever
as to whether the MS. contains anything likely to
interest the outsider.
Short sentences and short paragraphs are usually
an advantage in stories as well as in articles ; they
give crispness and brightness to the whole. Where-
as long sentences and long paragraphs are both
stodgy to read and uninteresting to look at, (and
it must not be forgotten that the look of a page
sometimes counts a good deal with the public).
I know that instances can be cited where cele-
brated people have written long sentences and
ungainly paragraphs, and yet have been read.
President Wilson, in his most famous Note to
Germany, led off with a sentence of one hundred
and seventy-one words, while there were only
twelve full-stops in the whole message. But
President Wilson, at that particular date, scored
heavily over every other writer, in that the whole
world was eagerly willing to read anything he
wrote — even though he had omitted all stops and
capital letters! — whereas the majority of us, alas,
have to persuade or coax or beguile the public into
looking at our words of wisdom, and we have to
222 The Lure of the Pen
make the reading as easy for people as we can.
Otherwise they will not bother their heads about
us!
People were willing to put up with President
Wilson's diffuse and "trailing" manner of writ-
ing, because at the moment he was the mouth-
piece of the inhabitants of the United States. Any
one who is the mouthpiece of over ninety millions
of people can cease to worry about style — some
one is sure to read him no matter how he expresses
himself.
But so long as we manage to avoid having posi-
tions of such greatness thrust upon us, we shall
do well to keep our sentences terse and short, and
our MSS. broken up into paragraphs.
There is much divergence of opinion as to how
far it is desirable to polish one's work. Personally
I think it all depends upon the work.
Question Some authors put down their ideas
of Polish, . - .
in a very rough form, and seem un-
able to realise the possibilities of those ideas and
their development, till they see them on paper.
Others are able to think in minute detail before
they put a line on paper.
Some people can never leave anything alone,
and will tinker with half a dozen fresh proofs
(if they can induce the publisher to supply them).
Some Rules for Story-Writing 223
Others are more sure of themselves, or disinclined
to alter what they have written.
The late Guy Boothby used almost to re-write
his stories, after they were set up in type; the
margins of most of the slip proofs being so cov-
ered with new matter and alterations that they had
often to be entirely reset. So expensive did this
become, that at last I decided to keep his typed
MS. in a drawer for a week or two, and then send
it back to him, asking him to do whatever re-
writing was necessary before it was set up.
Of course, writers may alter a good deal in
their first MS., before ever it gets to the publisher;
but my experience has been that the author who
worries his proof is the one who has previously
worried his MS. (and sometimes his family too) !
It is primarily a matter of mind-certainty, com-
bined with the question of temperament.
One thing is undeniable: some writers will
polish their MSS. into things of beauty; others
will polish all the individuality and life out of
theirs. In the latter case, however, I am inclined
to think there was not much individuality and
life to start with!
So far as the beginner is concerned, my advice
is Polish; most of us can stand a good deal of.
224 The Lure of the, Pen
this without losing anything worth keeping, or
coming to a bad end!
Do not waste time in waiting for something
extraordinary or sensational to turn up, in the
way of a plot, or you may have to
underway, wa it a long while. Begin with some
Start ° .
where everyday happening and invest it
you ar&
with personality.
If you can, avoid making your early MSS. love
stories. The denouement of a love story is so
obvious: try to write something on less obvious
lines ; it will be better practice for you.
Study some of the many delightful books that
have been written in other than love motifs, yet
dealing with events of ordinary life ; such as The
Golden Age, and Dream Days, by Kenneth
Graham; A Window in Thrums, by Sir James
Barrie; The Country of the pointed Firs, by Sarah
Orne Jewett; Timothy's Quest, by Kate Douglas
Wiggin.
Genius is shown in the ability to take simple
themes, and treat them greatly.
About the Climax
THE most important part of a story
should be the climax (I use the word
climax in its modern sense, meaning the
terminal point where all is brought to a conclu-
sion, the denouement, the final catastrophe). The
climax must be in the author's mind from the
very first sentence, and everything he writes should
be with this in view — i.e., his own view, not that
of the reader; it must be his aim throughout the
story to conceal the climax from the reader till the
last moment. Nothing with an obvious solution
will hold the reader's interest.
Every piece of writing should have some sort
of a conclusive ending — a satisfactory one if pos-
sible. Writers sometimes make their fiction ter-
minate in an abrupt, unsatisfactory manner, which
is no real finish, and leaves the reader wishing it
had not all ended like that, and wondering if
there is more to come.
When such defects are pointed out, the amateur
invariably replies, "But it must end like that,
because that is what actually happened." They
225 15
226 The Lure of the Pen
forget that the fact a circumstance actually hap-
pened is no guarantee that it was worth recording;
nor is the circumstance necessarily the symmetri-
cal finish to the story, — and a piece of writing
should be symmetrical, and in well-balanced de-
sign. You cannot always detach an incident from
contingent happenings, and then say it is com-
plete. The larger proportion of our actions are
linked with, and interdependent upon, other ac-
tions.
Therefore see to it that your story terminates
in a satisfactory manner. That which apparently
ends in failure to-day, may take a new lease of
life to-morrow and prove to be merely a stepping-
stone to new developments.
It is not bound to be a happy ending (though
if there be a choice, happy endings are by far the
best, in a world that has enough of sorrow in its
work-a-day life) ; but it must be an ending leaving
a sense of right completion with the reader — the
conviction that this is the logical conclusion of
the whole.
All great works of art leave behind them a
sense of fulfilment, the "something attempted,
something done," that is always the desirable
finale to the human heart and mind. We hate
to be left in a state of never-to-be-satisfied sus-
About the Climax 227
pension; and we invariably reject and condemn to
oblivion the work that deliberately leaves us thus.
Some people have an idea that it is "artistic"
to leave a story in a half-finished condition, or
with a disappointing ending, or a general feeling
of blankness. A few years ago there was a mania
for this type of story among small writers : those
who were not clever enough to produce originality
of idea, and at the same time get their work logi-
cal, symmetrical and conclusive, would seize on
some miserable, or at any rate uncomfortable,
ending — drown one of the lovers the day before
the wedding; part husband and wife irrevocably,
and possibly kill their only child in a railway
accident in the last chapter — anything in fact
that would produce what one might call a
"never-more" finale. And then a certain section
of the public (who really did not like it at all,
but feared to say so lest they should appear to
be behind the times!) would exclaim, "So
artistic !"
Yet it was anything but artistic; three-quarters
of the time it was logically and morally bad;
logically bad because it was seldom the true and
natural conclusion that one would have seen in
real life; morally bad because it is actually wrong
to manufacture and circulate gloom unnecessarily.
228 The Lure of the Pen
I repeat again I would not imply that all end-
ings must be happy; great tragedies need tragic
conclusions; suffering is as much a part of real
life as joy; a certain course of action must inevit-
ably lead to a sorrowful ending, and there is no
getting away from the unalterable truth, "The
wages of sin is death." But the type of story to
which I am alluding is seldom great or tragic : it
is not even painful; it is more often weak and
washy, and ends with unsatisfactory incompletion
because the author fancied it was brilliantly
original !
Always work steadily towards the climax,
speeding up the movement as you near the end.
Make big events come closer and closer together,
with less detail between, the nearer you are to
the conclusion.
Do not anticipate your climax, and get there too
soon, and then try to make up the book to the
required length by adding on an after-piece.
The climax should be such that it leaves in the
reader's mind a sense of absolute fitness, a certain-
ty that it was after all the one right ending — even
though it came as a great surprise.
The Use of "Curtains"
WHEN a story is presented in sections,
as in a serial or a play, it is advis-
able to make each section end — so far
as possible — in such a manner that the reader is
set longing for the next part. Thus, while the
climax is generally the solution of a problem, a
"curtain" is usually a problem needing solution
(literally, a good place for ringing down the cur-
tain, since the audience will be on tenterhooks to
know what happens next) .
This arrangement is sound business as well as
a good mental policy. It is wise to make an in-
stalment leave some final, incisive mark on the
mind of the readers, if there is to be an interval
before the story is resumed, otherwise it may be
difficult for the public to recollect what went
before, and the thread of continuity will be lost.
More than this, an editor, despite the usual
backwardness of his intelligence, realises the de-
sirability of securing readers for subsequent issues
of his periodical, no less than for the current
number. If each instalment of the serial termin-
229
230 The Lure of the Pen
ate with some mystery unsolved, or some hope-
less entanglement needing to be straightened out,
or some problem that baffles everybody (most of
all the readers), it is much more likely that people
will rush to secure the next number to see how
things turn out, than if the instalment merely ends
with the hero indulging in a tame, lengthy soli-
loquy on artichokes, and leaves nothing more ex-
citing to be settled than whether these same arti-
chokes shall, or shall snot, be cooked for the
heroine's lunch.
On more than one occasion I have had readers
write protestingly because an instalment of a
serial has left off cruelly "just when one was
frightfully anxious to know what would happen
next !" But that is the very place for an instal-
ment to end: good "curtains" are worth as much
to a serial as a good plot ; and if a story lack good
"curtains," an editor thinks twice before purchas-
ing it for serial publication, even though it has
undoubted literary merit and will make a good
volume.
Inexperienced writers overlook this necessity
for holding the reader's attention from section to
section, and sometimes offer an editor serial stories
without sufficient backbone or dramatic interest to
hold the readers' attention from the first instal-
The Use of "Curtains'' 231
ment to the second, much less for twelve or more
detachments.
Or they crowd several excitements into a couple
of chapters, and then run on uneventfully for a
dozen or so.
This does not mean that problems must crop up
mechanically at stated intervals, and the serial be
produced on a mathematical basis of one murder,
or mystery to so many words ! But it does mean
that the author must see to it that his important
incidents are fairly distributed throughout the
work as a whole, and that each chapter ends at
the psychological moment. This gives an editor a
chance to break the story at places where the
excitement runs highest.
Careful attention to balance will help the
writer to get the action fairly distributed. If the
MS. be examined as a whole, with this question
of balance in mind, the writer will be able to
detect if too much movement has been concen-
trated in one part, with undue expanses of un-
eventfulness stretching between.
No one knew better than Charles Dickens how
to keep the reader on the qui vive for the next
chapter. Joseph H. Choate says in his Memoirs :
"As Dickens' books came out they were eagerly
devoured in America. Dombey and Son came
232 The Lure of the Pen
out in numbers long before the laying of the first
Atlantic cable, and several numbers went over in
fort-nightly steamers, the most fre-
was an quent communication of that day.
"curtains" ^ n an eai "ly P ar t of the story little
Paul was brought to the verge of the
grave, the last number to hand leaving him hover-
ing between life and death, and all America was
anxious to know his fate. When the next steamer
arrived bringing decisive news, the dock was
crowded with people. The passengers imagined
some great national or international event had
happened. But it was only the eager reading
public who had hurried down to meet the steamer,
and get the first news as to whether little Paul
was alive or dead."
The late Dr. S. G. Green has told how, at the
day school he attended as a boy, "work was sus-
pended once a month on the publication of the
instalment of Pickwick Papers, which the head
master read aloud to the assembled and eager
boys. When Mr. Pickwick was released from the
Fleet Prison, a whole holiday was given, to cele-
brate the event!"
This is the type of serial story an editor yearns
for: one that will end with so dramatic a "curtain"
each month, that the public suspend all employ-
The Use of "Curtains" 233
merit in order to secure copies of the following
issue, and learn what happened next!
Even the final sentences of an instalment with
a good "curtain" can be made to do wonders in
whetting the reader's appetite for more. But it is
advisable to see how they read in connection with
the words that inevitably follow. For instance,
there was a lurid serial in a daily paper which
ended one day with the words:
" 'Cat,' she cried, Vile, odious, contemptible
cat.' To be continued to-morrow."
"But," commented Punch, "could she do any
better than that even after she had slept on it*?"
On Making Verse
MOST of us break out into verse at one
period of our life. Youth starting
out to explore a world that seems
teeming with new discoveries, generally tries to
voice his emotions in poetry — not because youth
has any special aptitude for this form of literature,
but because the poet has expressed, as no other
writer has done, the hopes and ideals, the craving
for romance and the thirst for beauty, that are
among the characteristics of our golden years.
And youth, wishing to voice his own emotions,
naturally selects the literary form in which such
emotions have already been enshrined.
Verse-writing is a very useful exercise for the
student — as I have already stated in a previous
chapter; but until we are fairly advanced, it is
well to avoid regarding our efforts too seriously.
To string together certain sets of syllables with
rhymes in couples, is an exceedingly simple mat-
ter; but to write poetry is the highest and the
most difficult form of literary art.
It is hard to convince the beginner that the
234
On Making Verse 235
verses he has put together are not poetry — even
though they may be technically correct as to make-
up, which is by no means always the case. He is
inclined to argue that he has dreamed dreams, and
seen visions, and travelled far from the prose of
life; what he writes, therefore, must be scintillat-
ing with star dust, if with nothing more heavenly.
For the making of poetry, the dreams of youth
are valuable; take care of them, they are among
the precious things of life, and they vanish with
neglect or rough handling; but something more
than dreams is needful.
If you feel you can best express yourself in
verse, make a comprehensive study of the laws
governing metrical composition. Such d
knowledge not only enables vou to Iaws
J J governing
write in a shapelv, orderlv, pleasing Metrical
r J J r ° Composition
form, but it may also help you to
ascertain what is wrong, when something you have
written seems jarring, or halting, or lacking at
any point.
To many amateurs, laws and rules suggest a
cramping influence; they feel sure they could do
far better work if unhampered by any restrictions.
In reality, however, the limitations such laws
impose are a gain to the poet, since they compel
him to sort out his ideas, to differentiate between
236 The Lure of the Pen
essentials and non-essentials, to condense his
thoughts and measure his words. And if properly-
carried out, all this should result in the reduction
of verbosity to the minimum, and a moderately
clear presentation of a subject — it does not always,
I know, but it ought to do so.
I am neither enumerating nor discussing these
laws in this volume, since excellent books on the
subject have been published. I merely wish to
point out to the student the necessity for giving
the matter attention.
Some people think the fact that the idea em-
bodied in their verse is good and ennobling, should
condone weak or faulty workmanship. But, alas !
in this callous world it doesn't, as a rule.
The ideal verse is that which presents beauti-
fully a great thought in a small compass.
A poem should centralise on some
Ideas are *
more special thought or idea. Rhapsodies,
Important r o r
t^an no matter how intense, do not con-
lUiapsodies
stitute poetry; every poem, be it ever
so short, should suggest some definite train of
thought. Haphazard statements or descriptions
are no more permissible in a poem than in a novel.
All nonsense verse, even, must have an under-
lying semblance of a sensible idea, though when
On Making Verse 237
you come to analyse it, it may turn out to be the
height of absurdity.
Not only must a poem contain a definite idea,
it must be a poetic idea, something that will lift
the reader above the prose of life.
rp ii- 1 • r Moreover
1 ry to make him see beauty if you the iaeaa
can; and to hear beauty in the music be°poetio
of your words. Poetry should be
beautiful and suggest loveliness, whenever pos-
sible.
However simple and ordinary the subject of
your verse, try to carry the reader beyond super-
ficialities, to the wonderful and the unordinary
that so often give glory to life's commonplaces.
Take a well-worn subject like the incoming
tide; how many people have been moved to write
on this topic!
I could not possibly reckon up the number of
times I have seen '"ocean's roar" rhyming with
"rocky shore." The writer who is nothing more
than a versifier is content with a description of the
sights and sounds of the beach ; but the poet looks
further than this. Read Mrs. Meynell's "Song,"
and you will better understand my meaning when
I say that the poet must endeavour to show us,
through the substance of 'things material, the
shadow of things spiritual.
238 The Lure of the Pen
SONG
By Alice Meynell
As the unhastening tide doth roll,
Dear and desired, upon the whole
Long shining strand, and floods the caves,
Your love comes filling with happy waves
The open sea-shore of my soul.
But inland from the seaward spaces,
None knows, not even you, the places
Brimmed at your coming, out of sight
— The little solitudes of delight
This tide constrains in dim embraces.
You see the happy shore, wave-rimmed,
But know not of the quiet dimmed
Rivers your coming floods and fills,
The little pools, 'mid happier hills,
My silent rivulets, over-brimmed.
What, I have secrets from you? Yes.
But, O my Sea, your love doth press
And reach in further than you know,
And fill all these ; and when you go,
There's loneliness in loneliness.
By Courtesy of
The Walter Scott Publishing Co., Ltd.
Putting on one side religious verse (which one
does not wish to dissect too brutally, since one
On Making Verse 239
recognises and respects the spirit underlying it,
despite its sometimes poor technique), amateur
verse usually falls under one of four Amateur
headings : Verse
° usually
1. Lovers' outpourings. faus
under
2. Baby prattle. these
t^x : ,. . Headings
3. Nature dissertations.
4. Stuff worth reading.
The first of these explains itself, and includes
perennial poems entitled "Blue Eyes"; "Parted";
"To Daphne" (or Muriel, or Gladys, or some
other equally nice person); "Absence"; "My
Lady"; "Twin Souls," etc. In these the follow-
ing are generally regarded as original and de-
lightful rhymes: Love and dove; mourn and for-
lorn; girl and curl; moon and June; eyes and
skies.
Without wishing to hurt any sensitive feelings,
truth compels me to state that it is rare for such
productions to have any literary value.
The verses coming under the second heading are
frequently written by young girls, unmarried
aunts, and very new fathers ; occasionally mothers
give vent to their maternal affection in this way,
but more often they find their time fully occupied
in attending to the little ones' material needs.
Such poems (often entitled "Lullaby") are
240 The Lure of the Pen
usually characterised by an entire lack of anything
that could possibly be called an idea. They will
apostrophise the infant, and tell it how lovely it
is, begging it to go to sleep, and assuring it
that mother will keep watch the while — which no
up-to-date mother would dream of doing in these
busy, servantless days ! But as to any concrete
reason why the verses were penned, one looks for
it in vain.
I do not think such effusions serve any useful
purpose. They are not even desirable as an outlet
for the feelings, since there are better ways in
which one can work out one's affection for a
child — woolly boots, pinafores, personal attention,
and the like. Nevertheless every woman's paper
is deluged with MSS. of this type.
The Nature dissertation is a trifle better than
the preceding, because it does offer a little scope
for looking around and noting things. But the
weakness here is this: the writers do not always
look around; they as often sit at a comfortable
writing-table indoors and amalgamate other peo-
ple's observations; and the outcome is a recital of
the obvious, with oft-repeated platitudes.
The following are well-wom titles: "A Spring
Song"; "Bluebells"; "Twilight Calm"; "Sunset";
"Autumn Leaves"; occasionally they take a
On Making Verse 241
Words worthi an turn, "Lines written on the shore
at Atlantic City" or "Thoughts on seeing Strat-
ford-on-Avon for the first time" (such a poem
naturally beginning "Immortal Bard, who — "
etc.).
At best, the majority of nature poems, as writ-
ten by the untrained, contain little beyond descrip-
tive passages. This again results in a pointless
production that seldom embodies any idea worth
the space devoted to it.
You may record the fact that the sun is setting
in a blaze of colour; but there is nothing sufficient-
ly remarkable about this to warrant its publica-
tion : most people know that the sun occasionally
sets in this fashion. If the beauty of the sunset
affected you strongly, lifting you above earthly
things, and giving you a vision — dim perhaps, but
nevertheless a vision — of the Glory that shall be
revealed, then it is for you so to describe the beauty
of the sunset that you convey to your readers the
same feelings, the same uplifted sense, the same
vision of the yet greater Glory that is to be. When
you can do this, the chances are that you will
be writing poetry. But until you can do this, you
may be writing nothing better than fragments of
a rhyming guide-book.
16
242 The Lure of the Pen
You may argue that not only did you feel an
uplift when you gazed on the sunset, but you re-
experience it as you read the poem
You see
tlie Scene yOU Wrote Upon it.
de^Jibiiis: Possibly so; because to you the
does^ot 16 * lines conjure up the whole scene; i.e.
they serve to remind you of much
that is not written down. One word may be
enough to recall to your mind the overwhelming
grandeur of the sundown in every detail; but it
will not be sufficient to spread it out before the
eyes of those who did not see the actual occur-
rence; neither will it reveal to them the uplift of
the moment.
The novice so often forgets that his own mind
fills in the details of what he has seen, and makes
a perfect picture out of an imperfect description.
But the reader cannot do this; he has nothing to
help him beyond the written words. Therefore
the writer must take care to omit nothing that is
essential, nothing that will enforce the mental and
spiritual conception of a scene. And in order to
do this, he must analyse the scene, and ascertain
(if he can) what it was that aroused such deep
emotion within him. If he can tabulate these
items (sometimes it is possible to do so, some-
times it is not), then he must give them special
On Making Verse 243
emphasis in his description, no matter what else
is omitted.
Whether you are writing descriptive matter in
verse or prose, it is well to bear in mind that
memory helps you to visualise the whole scene,
whereas the reader will have no such additional
aid.
The primary object of the beginner, in writing
verse, is often to voice his own heart's longing;
whereas, if his verse is to be of inter-
est to others besides himself, it must should
voice the longings of other people. w ° ^ d _
Poetry of the "longing" kind should ^ rthan
touch on world-wide human need, not individual,
Need
merely on an individual want, if it is
to waken response in the reader. Of course the
individual want may be a world-wide human
need: it very often is; but it is not wise to trust
to chance in this particular.
Look about you, and see if your experiences are
likely to be those of your fellow-creatures. If so,
there is more probability that your work will
appeal to others than if you take no count of their
requirements and centre on your own.
The poet, among other qualifications, has the
ability to recognise what humanity wants to say
but cannot, and is able to set it down in black
244 The Lure of the Pen
and white, so that when the world reads it, it
exclaims: "Why, that is just what I think and
feel ! Only I could never put it into words !"
When Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote the
"Sonnets from the Portuguese," she was writing
of her own love for one particular man. So far
she was dealing with her own experiences; and
if that had been all, the matter might have ended
there. But because uncountable women in every
land have loved in that same way, have thought
those thoughts, and experienced those identical
emotions, though they were not able to write of
them as Mrs. Browning did, her "Sonnets" found
an echo in hearts the world over: they voiced a
great human experience, a universal human long-
ing.
One modern phase of verse-making has had a
very demoralising effect on the amateur. I refer
to the outbreak of shapeless produc-
so-caiied tions — devoid of music, beauty,
poetry rhythm, and balance, and often lack-
ing the rudiments of sense — that de-
veloped before the war, and has been with us
ever since.
The followers of this cult advocate the abolition
of all law and order: each goes gaily on his own
way, writing whatsoever he pleases, no matter how
On Making Verse 245
crude, or banal, or incoherent, or loathsome; lines
any and every length; unlimited full stops, or
none at all; just what is in his brain — and what
a state of brain it reveals ! This so-called "new
poetry" resembles nothing in the world so much
as the MSS. an editor occasionally receives from
inmates of lunatic asylums !
Literary effusions of this type are on a par
with the cubist and futurist monstrosities that
have tried to imagine themselves a new form of
pictorial art.
Unfortunately, the desire to kick over all laws
and rules, and everything that betokens restraint
and discipline, is no new one. Periodically the
world has seemed to be attacked with wholesale
madness, as history shows; and a pronounced
feature of each upheaval has been the attempt
of certain deranged imaginations to abolish that
order v/hich is Heaven's first law (and which can-
not be abolished without wide-spread ruin), and
in its place to exalt the deification of self. The
years preceding every outbreak have invariably
been marked by excesses, licence and extravagance
of all kinds; while real art, wholesome living,
serious thinking, and steady, well-regulated work,
have been at a discount.
Do not be misled by high-sounding statements,
246 The Lure of the Pen
that all the incoherency and carelessness and in-
different workmanship exhibited in recent traves-
ties of Art was a groping after better things, the
breaking of shackles that chained the free heaven-
born spirit of man to miserable mundane con-
vention.
It was nothing of the sort.
Rather, it was a form of hysteria that was the
outcome of the "soft" living, the feverish quest
of pleasure, the craving for notoriety at the least
expenditure of effort, the longing to be perpetually
in the limelight, and the absence of self-discipline
that was all too noticeable in the earlier years of
this century.
THE LIMITATIONS OF YOUTH
By Eugene Field
I'd like to be a cowboy an' ride a fiery hoss
Way out into the big and boundless West;
I'd kill the bears an' catamounts an' wolves I come across,
An' I'd pluck the bal-head eagle from his nest!
With my pistols at my side,
I would roam the prarers wide,
An' to scalp the savage Injun in his wigwam would I
ride —
If I darst; but I darsen't!
On Making Verse 247
I'd like to go to Afriky an' hunt the lions there,
An' the biggest ollyfunts you ever saw!
I would track the fierce gorilla to his equatorial lair,
An' beard the cannybull that eats folks raw !
I'd chase the pizen snakes,
An' the 'pottimus that makes
His nest down at the bottom of unfathomable lakes —
If I darst : but I darsen't !
The "new" poetry was a manifestation of the
decadence undermining pre-war Art.
Do not be deluded into thinking that the aberra-
tions of ill-trained minds that sometimes flaunt
themselves before your bewildered eyes, in some
very "thin" volume of verse, or in some freakish
periodical, are art, or even worth the paper they
are printed on. They are not. Very probably
they would never have got into print at all, but
for the fact that those who affect the cult are,
for the most part, people with more money than
discrimination, who can afford to pay for pub-
licity.
Just as a certain type of eccentricity of action
may be the precursor of mental disease, so a
certain type of eccentricity of thought may be the
forerunner of moral and spiritual disease.
Avoid unnecessary abbreviations: th' for the,
o' for of, and similar curtailments. These are
248 The Lure of the Pen
often mere mannerisms, and introduced with the
idea that they are distinctive : but they are not.
Long lines are better for descriptive
some verse than short ones.
General
=i n *s A stately metre, with well-marked
worth.
Noting- cadence, is best suited to a lofty theme.
This is illustrated in "The Valley
Song," by the late Mable Earle, which we re-
print by courtesy of the American Sunday School
Times,
A VALLEY SONG
By Mable Earle
"Because the Syrians have said, The Lord is God of
the hills, but He is not God of the valleys"
God of the heights where men walk free,
Above life's lure, beyond death's sting;
Lord of all souls that rise to Thee,
White with supreme self-offering;
Thou who hast crowned the hearts that dare,
Thou who hast nerved the hands to do,
God of the heights ! give us to share
Thy kingdom in the valleys too.
Our eyes look up to those who stand
Vicegerents of Thy stainless sway,
Heroes and saints at Thy right hand,
Thy priests and kings of glory they.
On Making Verse 249
Not ours to tread the path they trod,
Splendid and sharp, still reaching higher;
Not ours to lay before our God
The crowns they snatched from flood and fire.
Yet through the daily, dazing toil,
The crowding tasks of hand and brain,
Keep pure our lips, Lord Christ, from soil,
Keep pure our lives from sordid gain.
Come to the level of our days,
The lowly hours of dust and din,
And in the valley-lands upraise
Thy kingdom over self and sin.
Not ours the dawn-lit heights ; and yet
Up to the hills where men walk free
We lift our eyes, lest faith forget
The Light which lighted them to Thee.
God of all heroes, ours and Thine,
God of all toilers ! keep us true,
Till Love's eternal glory shine
In sunrise on the valleys too.
Short lines, irregular metre and unusual con-
struction, are best for light or whimsical subjects.
"The Limitations of Youth," by Eugene Field, is
an example.
To put it another way: when the subject is
dignified, the lines should roll along; when the
subject is light and airy, the lines should ripple
past.
250 The Lure of the Pen
The more peaceful the subject, the more need
for mellifluent treatment.
Stern or tragic subjects can stand rugged word-
ing and shape.
Verses written for children, or on childish
themes, should be simple in construction, with
rhymes near together, and lines of not more than
eight syllables as a rule. 8.6's, rhyming alter-
nately, are the easiest to memorise, and therefore
the most popular with children.
Examine the poems in Stevenson's A Child's
Garden of Verses, and note the simplicity of their
construction, the music of their rhymes, and their
clear, direct method of statement — the latter an
essential if children are to be interested.
One of the reasons for the appeal that
"Hiawatha" makes invariably to children is its
direct form of statement, with few involved sen-
tences; and its eight-syllable lines.
Eugene Field's poems on childhood themes, and
some of the passages in "The Forest of Wild
Thyme," by Alfred Noyes, are delightful ex-
amples of the possibilities of 8.6 lines with alter-
nate rhymes.
Merely to break up prose into lines of irregular
length, is not to produce poetry.
On Making Verse 251
There must not only be beauty in individual
lines and phrases, but there must be beauty of idea
and form in the verses as a whole.
At the same time, never sacrifice sense to sound.
Young writers sometimes say to me, "I see so
much, and feel so much, yet I cannot put it into
words: the thoughts are beautiful while they are
inside my brain, but there seem no words adequate
to express them ; I am baffled directly I try to put
them down on paper."
Don't despair. Every poet has felt the same:
but let it encourage you to recollect that many
have got the better of the feeling, by hard work
and sheer determination. After all you have all
the words there are, and the most famous of poets
had no more than this to work with. We some-
times forget that in the end, the greatest writer
that ever lived had to reduce everything to the
same words you and I are free to use.
You may remember that Mark Twain once
went to a well-known preacher, who had delivered
a magnificent sermon, and, after extolling it and
thanking him for it, the humourist added, "But
I have seen every word of it before, in print !"
The astonished preacher asked, indignantly,
"Where?"
"In the dictionary," replied Mark Twain.
The Function of the Blue Pencil
JUST as we all know that a king would be no
king without a crown, and the Lord Mayor
of London would be but a mere mortal man
without his mace and his gorgeous gilt coach, so no
self-respecting editor is supposed to exist apart
from a blue pencil. And I admit it is a serviceable
article, but, personally, I prefer that it should
be used by the contributor. I do not want to
have to spend time in revising a MS., to get it into
publishable shape ; neither does any other editor.
The blue pencil stands for deletion. Practi-
cally every writer needs to cut down the first
draft of a story or article. Some prune more
severely than others, but all experienced workers
reduce and condense before they finally pass a
MS. for publication.
It is not until a MS. is completed — roughly —
that one can actually tell where it is balanced, and
where it is light-weight or top-heavy. Things
expand in unexpected directions as we go along;
developments suggest themselves temptingly when
we are halfway through, and then throw the earlier
252
Function of the Blue Pencil 253
chapters quite out of proportion to the story as a
whole; matters that seemed of great moment when
we were in Chapter 2 have toned down to the
very ordinary by the time we have piled on ten
more chapters of stress and thrills and emotion.
One cannot stop to adjust it as one goes along,
because no one can say whether the re-adjustment
itself may not be out of gear by the time the finale
is reached.
Consequently, the best way is to go right on,
letting everything fall as it happens (but keeping
as near as you can to your original plan, unless
there is just cause for a departure therefrom).
When you have written "Finis," overhaul the MS.
from beginning to end, sparing neither your blue
pencil nor your feelings, if common sense, and
knowledge of your craft, tell you that certain por-
tions or sentences would be better omitted.
It is neither an easy nor a pleasing task —
especially to the novice. The early children of
our brain seem of such priceless worth, that we
regard them with a certain sense of awe. "Did I
write that beautiful passage about the moon sil-
vering the tree-tops'? Then it must belong just
where I put it. Cut it out"? Certainly not! I
consider it the most exquisite paragraph in the
whole story."
254 The Lure of the Pen
This is the way we look at our work when we
have not many published items to our name.
Later, experience and the training that comes from
practice, teach us to arm ourselves as a matter of
course with a blue pencil, ignore personal senti-
ment, and look at our MSS. with a coldly critical
eye. Then we may discover that a sentence or
paragraph, though of undoubted merit and beauty
— (we need not deny it that much!) — does not
quite fit in where we originally placed it. Pos-
sibly it is superfluous, in view of what follows
later; or redundant, in view of what went before;
or it may have lost life and colour with the passage
of time; or it may seem hackneyed, or weak,
(though we do not use such insulting words to
our own writings till we are fairly advanced).
But whatever the reason, if on examining a sen-
tence, it does not appear to serve any vital pur-
pose, take it out. If you think there is worth in
it, save it for a possible use at a later date in some
other MS., though, personally, I do not believe
in any sort of rechauffe of old matter, simply
because as time goes on we change in our style of
writing as we do in our tastes and preferences in
neckties. And what you write this year, will not
necessarily dovetail in with what you write in a
few years' time. Still, if you feel it would be
Function of the Blue Pencil 255
wasting flashes of genius to destroy it, and it
would be any comfort to you to hoard it — do so;
the main thing is to delete it from the MS. you
are revising, if there be any doubt about its value.
A beginner's MS. usually needs to be cut down
to about half its original length. Hard luck, for
the beginner, I know, considering the way he will
have laboured lovingly over every sentence.
Nevertheless, it pulls the work together if the
blue pencil be applied generously. Some articles
and stories appear to sprawl all over
the place (sprawl is not a pretty JJ 8 ?^"* 64
word, but it is expressive). The Ijijjjf^,
writer does not seem able to follow
up any idea to a logical conclusion, without inter-
polating so much irrelevant matter that the main
theme is nearly smothered by the extraneous items,
and the reader gets only a confused impression of
what it is all about.
Such work needs "pulling together," i.e. the
essential portions that should follow each other in
natural sequence need to be brought closer to-
gether; and this can only be done by clearing
away the non-essentials that separate them.
The late Phil May once showed me how he
drew his inimitable sketches, that always looked
SO simple, oh so simple ! to the uninitiated. First
256 The Lure of the Pen
he made a sketch full of detail, with everything
included, much as other people make sketches.
The way When this was finished to his satis-
made 1 ^ faction, he started to take out every
sketches* y me ^^ was not actua Uy necessary
to the understanding of the picture. Finally he
had left nothing but a few strokes — yet, such was
his genius for seeing what to delete and what to
leave, the picture had gained rather than lost in
character, force, and comprehensiveness.
The secret of the matter is this. By removing
everything that is not of vital importance to the
whole, (whether in painting or in writing), there
is less confusion of vision, less to distract the mind,
or switch it off to side issues.
This does not mean that everything is better for
being given in bare outline. Undoubtedly certain
additions and decorations and descriptions can be
made to emphasise the author's meaning, to im-
press a scene more vividly on the mind. We do
not want all our pictures to be modelled on the
lines of Phil May, clever as his work was. There
is room for endless variety. The author should
remember, however, that it is better to err on the
side of drastic deletion, rather than leave in mat-
ter that is no actual gain to the picture, and only
Function of the Blue Pencil 257
serves to distract and confuse and overload the
reader's mind.
There is a Plausible Imp who perches on the
top of every beginner's inkstand, and passes his
wicked little time assuring them all
Beware the
that they are too clever to need hedg- piauBibie
Imp
ing about by rules, that their work
cannot be improved upon, and would only be
spoilt if it were altered in any way.
Don't heed him ! The beginner's work is never
spoilt by condensation ; rather it is invariably im-
proved by cutting down. In the main, every
writer's work needs pruning, until he has had suf-
ficient practice to know what is not worth while
to put down in the first place — and one needs to
be exceptionally gifted to know this.
If, on reading your MS. after its completion,
you feel your work is so good that it needs no blue
pencil — beware ! You have not got there yet !
17
PART FIVE
AUTHOR, PUBLISHER, AND PUBLIC
Everything resolves itself down, in the publisher's
mind, to the one simple question: "Is this MS. what
the public wants?"
When Offering Goods for Sale
SUPPOSING — that when you go into the
fishmonger's, he offers you a cod that is
slightly "off"; and, while apologising for
its feebleness, begs you to take it, as he has an in-
valid daughter suffering from spinal complaint,
who needs a change at the seaside.
Or — that the assistant in the men's hosiery shop
begs you to take half a dozen extra neckties, as he
is anxious to buy the baby a much-needed pram,
and his salary depends primarily on his commis-
sions.
Or — that the sewing-machine agent, when send-
ing around circulars, adds a devout hope, as a
P.S., that you will purchase a machine, since he is
anxious to increase his subscription to foreign mis-
sions.
Or — that the incompetent dressmaker beseeches
you to take a garment that would fit nobody and
suit nobody, because she has a widowed mother to
support.
"Preposterous!" you say. "Such things would
never occur."
261
262 The Lure of the Pen
And yet this is precisely what is happening
every day of the year in the literary business !
Here are some sentences from letters accom-
panying MSS. sent to my office the week I am
writing this.
"I should esteem it a great kindness if you
could stretch a point in favour of my story, even
though it may not be quite up to your standard
(and I can see, on re-reading, that it has defects) ;
but I am anxious to make some money in order to
take a friend in whom I am deeply interested to
the seaside for a much-needed change. She is an
invalid, and " here follow copious details
about the friend.
Another writes: "I must ask you to give this
every consideration, as I devote all the money I
make by my writings to charity."
A third says frankly, "you really must accept
this story, as I need money badly."
And for a truly nauseating letter, I think the
following is as objectionable as any I have re-
ceived in this connection :
"My dear wife has recently passed away, after
years of acute and protracted suffering. My heart
was rent with sympathy for her while she lived,
and now the blank caused by her death is almost
intolerable. How I shall face life without her I
When Offering Goods for Sale 263
do not know; for she was indeed a help-meet in
every sense of the word, In order to divert my
mind from this well-nigh insurmountable sorrow,
I have written a story 'The Forged Cheque,' which
I feel is just the thing for your magazine. I ask
you to regard it leniently, remembering that it is
written with a breaking heart," etc.
Then there are other reasons advanced why the
editor should accept a MS., trie youthfulness or
the inexperience of the author being The problem
frequently mentioned. ° f Youtl1
While it is no crime to be young, it is no parti-
cular advantage when one is seeking to place a
story. Inexperience, on the other hand, might be
regarded as a distinct drawback.
But in any case, the editor does not purchase
MSS. merely because they are the writers' first
attempts. However good they may be for first
attempts, or however promising they may be con-
sidering the age of the writer, all that has practi-
cally nothing to do with the editor's decision,
unless he is running any pages in his periodical for
the exploitation of immature work or juvenile
effort. And in these days of high-priced paper
and expensive production, very few papers do this.
It is hard to make the amateur understand that
a magazine is first and foremost a business pro-
264 The Lure of the Pen
position, as much as a shop or a factory. The
editor must make it pay ; and in order to do this,
he must publish the type of matter
A Magazine
is first and that his readers are willing to pur-
foremost a
Business chase. Each magazine appeals to a
Proposition . _ . . r . it/
definite section of the public (or it
should do so, if it is to be a success). No one
magazine appeals to every human being. Some
want sensation, some want art, some want fash-
ions, and so on. And as it is impossible to include
everything in any one publication, each editor
aims to please a certain class of tastes — good, bad
or indifferent, according to the policy of his paper.
And he knows to a fraction almost, what will
suit his public, and what they will not care about.
How does he know?
It is part of his mental and business equip-
ment: the knowledge often costs him years of
study and observation; and it is one of the quali-
fications for which he is paid his salary.
And because he knows what his public will
buy, and what they do not want, he purchases
MSS. accordingly. It is immaterial to him
whether the writer needs money for charity, or to
support an aged relative, or merely to soothe a
bereaved soul: the only question he considers is
whether the public will want a certain MS. or
When Offering Goods for Sale 265
not. He is not engaged by the proprietors to aid
charity, or to minister to the necessitous; his work
is to provide goods that the public will buy — just
like any other business man. And he is unmoved,
therefore, by irrelevant appeals.
Of course he has other matters to look to as
well as the providing of goods the public will buy;
he helps to shape public opinion, for instance, and
raises, or lowers, the public taste. But so far as
the amateur is concerned, the point to remember
is the fact that an editor is in no way influenced
by the writer's need for pecuniary assistance. If
he were, his post-bag would be a hundred times
heavier than it is already, and it is quite heavy
enough as it is!
In the same way, only more so, a publisher is
concerned with the selling qualities of a MS. rather
than with the writer's private affairs.
XT . , . , A Publisher
He is running a business concern with ls not an
a view to some margin of profit. Pre- ^J^thropy
sumably he has a wife and family to
support, rent, rates and taxes to meet (in addition
to helping to pay for the war) — like any other
man. And he spends his days in the dim, fusty
airlessness of a publisher's office for the purpose
of making a living out of the books he publishes.
Therefore, he is not likely to be inclined to bring
266 The Lure of the Pen
out a book, which his business experience tells him
the public will never buy, merely because (as one
sender of a MS. recently put it) "the moral of
my essays is really beautiful, and it will do people
good to read them, if even they do not bring in
profit. Read them yourself and you will see that
I am not exaggerating."
Possibly the moral of a MS. is quite good : but
it may not be the particular brand of goodness
that the public is willing to purchase at the mo-
ment; and the publisher knows it is hopeless to
put it on the market in that case.
Equally it is useless to expect him to be in-
fluenced favourably simply because your earnings
are ear-marked for charity. At the end of the
year, should he see that the money he paid for a
certain item was a dead loss, it would be no con-
solation to him to remember that the author had
devoted the cash to a "Seaside Holiday Home for
Men on Strike" in which she was interested.
Therefore spare him all such data. The less
you add to what he has to read daily, the better.
An accompanying letter is really unnecessary —
only it is useful to affix the stamps to, for the
return of the MS. if rejected.
Profuse explanations are all beside the mark,
When Offering Goods for Sale 267
and give an amateurish, unbusiness-like look to a
communication. Whatever you may write about
yourself on your MS., in praise thereof, or in
extenuation, everything resolves itself down — in
the publisher's mind — to the one simple question :
Is this what the public wants'?
Many a beginner is convinced his MS. would
sell, if only it were printed. It is natural that we
have a certain amount of belief in our
. . , , . r , "We think
own work, more especially if we have we ca n
given much time and thought to it. v ^iu© of 8
Moreover, we possibly see points in JJ^Eui
it that no one else can ; we see what a pul)li8llor
can
we meant to put down, without in
any way realising how far our actual writing falls
short of the ideas that were in our brain. The
outcome of this partiality for our own writing, is
a certainty that people are not able to do us
justice if they do not think as highly of it as we
do.
But the publisher is better able to judge of the
selling possibilities of a work than the author; it
is his business; he is at it all day long. He has
no personal feelings involved, his main concern
being to make a book a profitable concern; and
his experience teaches him pretty accurately what
the public will buy and what it will leave on his
268 The Lure of the Pen
hands. He may occasionally make a mistake
(though it is surprising how seldom an expert
publisher does make a wrong estimate, considering
how various are the MSS. that pass through his
office) ; but when he does, he more often errs on
the side of being over-sanguine, and giving the
author the benefit of the doubt, than in the direc-
tion of turning down anything that might have
made his, and the author's, fortune.
Some writers are convinced that the style of
their MS. was too good for the editor who rejected
it, and altogether above his intel-
A Consoling-
Thought— ligence. This is a consoling thought,
no doubt; but unfortunately it does
not take one any further.
I know that instances are occasionally quoted
(always the same instances, by the way), where
books that ultimately achieved some success were
declined by several publishers before they were
finally landed. But in some of these cases the
books in question were so very much off the beaten
track as to be verging on f reakishness — and no one
living can guarantee a forecast of how the public
will receive a freak! Here and there one finds a
publisher who enjoys a gamble, and will risk a
little on such uncertainties; (sometimes he gets
his reward, more often he doesn't) ; but the ma-
When Offering Goods for Sale 269
jority prefer a safer, even though less exciting,
course !
One other matter may have contributed to the
refusals these MSS. met with — possibly they were
offered to publishers who did not handle that
particular type of work. Publishers usually spe-
cialise in fixed directions, just as magazine editors
do. No one attempts to cover the whole range of
reading; a glance at any publisher's catalogue will
show this. A MS. turned down by one, as being
useless to the section of the public in which he
is interested, may be taken by another, who reaches
a totally different class of reader.
Therefore do not despair, if your story does
not get accepted the first time of asking. There
may be a variety of reasons why that particular
publisher or editor did not want that particular
MS.
But in any case, don't sit down at the first
rebuff and say, "What's the good of anything? A
genius has no chance nowadays any more than
poor Chatterton had!" (By the way, I have
heard several desperate, would-be authors men-
tion Chatterton and liken their own predicament
to his, but not one has ever chanced to be able
to quote me a line of his work!) There is no
need to feel that the bottom has dropped out of
270 The Lure of the Pen
the universe, because your MS. has been returned.
Try elsewhere.
If it is declined by five or six different pub-
lishers, then you may safely conclude that it is
not the kind of work the public will buy at the
moment; or it may be that your writing is not
sufficiently mature. In that case, put that MS.
aside, and tackle another, something quite fresh.
I never think it is worth while to try and re-write
or re-construct the rejected MS. — at any rate, not
till you are tolerably advanced. It really takes
no more time to write something entirely new.
"If only I could get an introduction to an
editor, I am sure I could get my work taken." One
often hears this said. Yet there never was a
greater delusion than this idea that introductions
work the oracle. It would be a different matter if
an editor, or publisher, had a surfeit of good work,
and really did not know what to discard : in such
circumstances (which won't occur this side of the
millennium !) an introduction might help to secure
attention for an individual writer.
But as it is, the editor is only too anxious to
purchase good work when it comes his way; he
does not wait for any introduction. If a MS.
strays into his office that possesses the qualities he
When Offering Goods for Sale 271
is looking for, he writes the author forthwith, his
one desire being to purchase the MS.
Still, if you really feel you must be armed with
some such document, it is as well to be quite sure
that the introduction is a desirable one. Here are
two letters that reached me by the same post.
The first was from Miss Blank, a stranger, who
said —
"My friend Mr. Dash, who thinks very highly of
my work, has urged me to let you see some of it,
as he thinks it is just the sort of thing you will be
glad to have for your magazine. He is writing a
letter of introduction. I shall be glad if you will
name a time for a personal interview, as I can
better explain" — etc.
The second was from Mr. Dash, an acquaint-
ance of long standing, who said —
"There is a certain Miss Blank who is anxious
I shovld write her a letter of introduction to your-
self — which I do herewith. I know nothing what-
ever about her, save that she seems to be a first-
class nuisance. I have never seen her, haven't a
ghost of a notion if she can write : probably she
can't. But she happens to be the sister of the
fiance of the daughter of my mother-in-law's dear-
est and oldest friend ; and any man who values the
peace and happiness of his home endeavours to
propitiate his mother-in-law, especially when she
has mentioned the matter six times already. There-
fore I trust this introduction is in order."
272 The Lure of the Pen
The desirability of a personal interview with
an editor is another delusion to which the amateur
clings. As a rule nothing is gained
interviews (but a good deal of time is lost) by
desiratoi© m talking a contribution over before the
Quinary MS. is read. After all, the MS. is
the item by which the author stands
or falls. If it is good, and what the editor wants,
he will take it — and take it only too gladly; if it
is not good, or not what he wants, no amount of
preliminary conversation will secure its accept-
ance; for no matter how delightful the conversa-
tion may have been, he does not print that; it is
the MS. itself that decides the crucial question of
publication or no publication.
In some cases a preliminary letter is desirable:
it may be advisable to ascertain beforehand wheth-
er an editor is open to consider an article on
a doubtful subject. But if you wish to avoid
inducing a sense of irritation in his soul, do not
ask for a personal interview, since in all probabil-
ity, if he is as rushed as most editors are nowa-
days, he will turn down the matter forthwith,
rather than spend time on talk that may lead
nowhere.
It must always be borne in mind that these
are overworked, understaffed, hustling times in a
When Offering Goods for Sale 273
very complex age; and the newspaper and maga-
zine office feels this more keenly than any other
branch of the business world, simply because
periodicals must reflect the spirit of their day
and generation, and keep the readers in touch
with all that is going on, — and "all" is a large,
and constantly changing, order at present. This
means that the editorial offices are always more
or less in a state of tension; there is no time to
spare for interviews that may prove fruitless; the
day is seldom long enough to get in all that is
certain to be profitable to the paper.
Therefore, say what you have to say by letter
— and say it clearly and briefly. The editor
forms his judgment by what you say, and if he
wants to talk the matter over with you, he will
soon let you know.
"But I always feel I can explain myself so
much better in a conversation — no matter how
brief — than in a letter." This is a frequent plea.
The public, however, will judge you by what
you write, not by what you say; if you cannot
express yourself well in writing, you may speak
with the tongues of men and of angels yet it will
avail you nothing where the publication of your
MS. is concerned. If you cannot write about
it so that the editor can understand, the public
18
274 The Lure of the Pen
are not likely to be able to comprehend it any
better.
Women are particularly prone to ask for an
interview, and this because they instinctively rely
to some extent on the appeal of their personality
in most of their business transactions. By far
the wiser course, however, is for a woman to ex-
press herself so well in her writing that the office
simply tumbles over itself in its anxiety to make
her personal acquaintance. And I have known
this to happen on more than one occasion.
Nevertheless, men can also distinguish them-
selves when making calls. The card of a stranger,
bearing a Nebraska address, was
irrepressible brought to me one afternoon. He
urged that his business was of great
importance. Finally I saw him. He was a most
intelligent-looking American, and, like the ma-
jority of his countrymen, was not long in coming
to the point. He said he had written some poems,
and promptly placed before me a sheaf of MS.
I told him I would look at them if he would leave
them.
"Just you run your eye down these," he said.
I protested that I could not possibly do his work
justice if I skimmed it in any such manner. Then
he explained that these were not poems — the mas
When Offering Goods for Sale 275
terpieces would come later — these were press
notices of some poems he had had printed in a
Nebraska paper. I read a few; I had never even
heard of the majority of the papers that reviewed
his work; but he seemed to take himself very
seriously, one had not the heart to shatter his
illusions.
Then he produced the bales of poems. He
watched me so eagerly I was obliged to read some.
I besought him to leave the rest with me, as I
could not decide so important a matter hurriedly.
"Oh, but just read this one," he persisted. "Mr.
Blank of our city — never heard of him? You
do surprise me! — he says he considers it as fine
as anything your Percy B. Shelley ever wrote."
In a moment of abject weakness I said the poem
was fair. Then the heart of that man warmed
towards me; he told me of his hopes, his plans
and his aspirations, and I tried to sympathise with
them. I could not do less, since I owe America
much for kindness and hospitality it has shown
me on many occasions.
When at last he rose, reluctantly (he had stay-
ed an hour and a quarter), I offered him my hand.
He took it with a hearty grip.
"Well, I'm real glad to have known you," he
said. "It's been a genuine pleasure to have this
276 The Lure of the Pen
talk with you, for you are, without exception, the
most informed and intellectual person I've met
since I've been in your country." I felt immedi-
ately remorseful that I had grudged him the little
chat; he was evidently a discerning young man.
"The pleasure has been mine," I assured him,
and inquired how long he had been in England*?
"I landed at Southampton at ten o'clock this
morning," was the response. I smilingly tried to
disguise the sudden lapse of my enthusiasm. I
must have succeeded, for he next said:
"And now I guess I'll go down and fetch up
my wife. She's been waiting in the street outside
while I came up to see what you were like. I
size it she'll just enjoy making a little visit with
you."
It is only natural that an author should be keen
to know the verdict on his work, once he has sent
it out to try its fortune. But it is
cannot useless to get impatient because no
always be or
Read as news of it is forthcoming next day.
Soon as
they are Sometimes weeks elapse, sometimes
months, before a MS. can be read.
But since the publisher makes no charge for read-
ing a MS. (and the reading costs money: some
one's time has to be paid for, and it is some one
who draws a fair salary, too), he must be allowed
When Offering Goods for Sale 277
to do it at his own convenience. If he has not
asked you to send a MS., you cannot exactly
dictate how soon it should be read.
Naturally, it is read as quickly as possible ; this
is to every one's interest; but this does not mean
that it can be read the next day, or even the next
week. Other authors may have preceded you.
The amateur who sends letters of inquiry before
one has scarcely had time to open the envelope, is
doomed to have his work rejected. No office has
time to write and explain that "the matter will
be considered in due course," etc., so the MS. is
merely returned.
It seems impossible to make the average beginner
understand that his is not the only story offered,
and that things have to take their turn.
Moreover, it is as difficult to please everybody
as it was for the old man with the donkey in the
fable. If MSS. are not returned immediately, the
editor is bombarded with complaints from one set
of aggrieved authors; if he is able to read them
at once, and he returns them quickly, he is the
recipient of uncharitable letters accusing him of
having discarded the MSS. unread.
There is an interesting story of a suspicious
lady who prided herself on laying traps for the
negligent editor — pages put in the wrong order,
278 The Lure of the Pen
others upside down, and suchlike devices with
which every magazine office is familiar. At last
she succeeded in proving that the monster who sat
at the receipt of MSS. in one particular publishing
house was a consummate rascal.
"Sir," she wrote, "I have long suspected that
you basely deceive the public into believing that
you read their works, while in reality you return
them unread. But at last I have caught you hot-
handed in the very act. It will doubtless interest
you to know that I purposely gummed together
pages 96 and 97, very slightly, in the top right-
hand corner. Had you fulfilled your duty and done
the work for which your employer pays you a
salary, you would have discovered this and de-
tached the pages in question."
The editor replied:
"Dear Madam, — If you will take a sharp pen-
knife, and remove the fragment of gum between
pages 96 and 97, in the top right-hand corner, it
may interest you to discover my initials underneath."
"Should all MSS. be typed V is a ques-
tion often asked.
If y° n It is advisable to have them typed
wish, your
ms. to toe if possible, as this enables them to be
Read: . .
mate the read more quickly than if sent un-
E^sy typed. Remember that your ob-
ject in sending a MS. to a publisher, or
When Offering Goods for Sale 279
editor, is to get it read : therefore it is policy to do
all in your power to facilitate the reading.
Owing to the widespread interest in literature,
and the universal desire to see oneself in print, the
number of MSS. that reach the office of any
general periodical of good standing, is immense;
and the eye-strain entailed in reading is very
great. It has therefore become necessary to ask
for MSS. to be typed when possible ; though any-
thing that was clearly written, in a bold readable
hand, would never be turned down because it was
not typed. What is desired is that a MS. shall
be legible, so that it can be read with the least
amount of detriment to the eyesight. Whereas
some of the untyped work that is sent is a positive
insult. I have seen tiny, niggling writing, crossed
out and re-crossed out, till even the compositor
(who is a perfect genius for reading the utterly
illegible) could scarcely have made it out. And in
all probability, such a MS. would be not over-
clean, and would be rolled to go through the post.
"If you are unable to make use of my MS., I
shall be glad if you will kindly criti-
cise it, and tell me exactly what you Stow
think of it." *° * J
Criticise
This request is frequently made by
senders of MS. And when they receive back their
280 The Lure of the Pen
work without any comment they will write and say,
"At least you might have sent one word by way of
criticism. If you had only written 'good' or 'bad,'
I should have some idea why you declined it."
I sympathise heartily with those who want ad-
vice; I know how very difficult it is to get any
guidance or criticism that can be relied upon to
be disinterested. Nevertheless, I wish the student
could see the number of queries, and the amount of
work, and the heap of MSS. that arrive at the
office of any prosperous periodical ; he would then
begin to realise how utterly impossible it would
be for MSS. to be criticised in writing. It would
entail an extra staff, and an expensive staff at that,
since such criticism is not work, like card indexing,
that can be relegated to a junior clerk. Indeed,
the sender of the MS. would probably be highly
indignant if any one but the editor did this work !
When I explain to beginners that we have no
time to write criticisms on rejected work they
say, "But it wouldn't take a minute to write down
a few words, seeing that the MS. has already been
read."
Unfortunately, it would take a great many
minutes. In any case it takes some time (if only
a little) to sum up concisely the merits and defects
of anything. More than that, experience has
When Offering Goods for Sale 281
proved again and again that one little word of
criticism will lead to more letters from the writer.
And one has not time to read them ! The children
of our brain are very dear to us; and so sure as
any one passes an adverse criticism on them, our
feathers stand on end, and we prepare to defend
our one little chick like the most devoted hen
that ever lived.
Neither is it wise, I have found, to suggest a
little alteration with a promise of publication
attached. Two years ago I wrote to some one who
had only had one short story published, indicating
a new ending that would have improved her MS.
immensely, and made it possible for me to take it.
"My temperament requires that it shall end as
I have written it. Kindly return my MS. if you
cannot use it," replied the lady loftily.
I did so.
Last week the same MS. came back to me —
much aged and the worse for wear — with a note
that the author did not mind if I altered the ending
as I had suggested. But two years is two years.
And in the interval, while the MS. was travelling
round to every other office, the subject-matter had
got out of date.
It is never politic to be touchy if by chance
282 The Lure of the Pen
some misguided editor does offer a word of
criticism !
If you want your work published, and there
is no loss of principle involved, conform to the
publisher's requirements as gracefully as you can,
even though, in your heart of hearts, you consider
him woefully lacking in discernment.
And you can comfort yourself, meanwhile, with
the thought that when you are safely ensconced
upon Olympian heights, you will even things up
a little, and get back all of your own. I know
one proprietress of several rejected MSS. who
vows that whenever she "gets there," she will sit
on the topmost pinnacle, and make all publishers
and editors (including myself) walk up to her
on their knees, dropping curtsies all the way!
I was making for my office one day when a
sportive-looking girl stopped me on the stairs.
a popular "Just give this story to the editor will
i^uBion you, please?" she began. "Give it
right into her hands, won't you; don't let any
underling get hold of it."
I agreed.
"And — I say — just tell her from me that she's
to read it herself : , every word of it; I won't be
put off with some assistant tossing it aside half
read. I know their tricks."
When Offering Goods for Sale 283
One very popular delusion is that there is a
conspiracy among the assistants in an office to
keep MSS., and especially good MSS., from the
eye of the chief! People will resort to all sorts
of devices with the idea of ensuring MSS. reach-
ing the editor's own hands. They are marked
"personal," and "strictly private," or "please for-
ward, if away"; and I had one endorsed, "Not
to be opened by any one but the Editor."
Yet what is gained by all this, save a definite
amount of delay ? In any well-organised office,
work has to follow a certain routine; MSS. have
to be entered up by clerks as received, the stamps
sent for return postage have to be checked and
duly noted by the proper department, etc. Why
delay the handling of the MS. for a few weeks
by having it so addressed that it may follow the
editor to the North Pole, and back, before it is
opened, if the endorsements were obeyed 1 ? — which
of course they are not.
Let a MS. take its proper course. No one in
the office desires to suppress genius; on the con-
trary, great indeed is the elation of any member
of the staff who discovers something worth pub-
lishing. It is one great object of our business
lives.
284 The Lure of the Pen
If you feel you must call at an office in person,
remember that the display of a little tact is a de-
sirable accomplishment. When seek-
A little . . ,
Tact and mg a post on his paper do not start
^ow^mucii ky telling the editor that his mag-
azine is poor stuff, and will soon be
on the rocks, — as I once heard a lady tell the
editor of one of the most famous monthlies in
existence. When he inquired as to her experience,
it transpired that she had had one story — and one
only — printed, and it had appeared in a child's
magazine.
And it was another tactful caller who said, on
leaving, after having absorbed five and twenty
minutes of a busy assistant's time : "Well, perhaps
you'll explain these suggestions of mine to the
editor; though it would have been so much more
satisfactory if I could have talked to some prop-
erly qualified individual."
Occasionally, however, a caller contributes
something to the gaiety of nations, as in the case
of the lady who came to inquire after the welfare
of a MS. she had left with some one in our build-
ing only the day before. (And, incidentally, she
wanted to alter a word in it, as she had thought of
one she liked better).
I was passing through the Inquiry Office as she
When Offering Goods for Sale 285
entered, and she straightway explained to me her
mission.
"I will find out who took it," I said, "I do not
think you left it with me."
"Oh no! it wasn't you," she replied emphat-
ically. "I left it with quite a nice-looking
person!"
The Responsibility
THE responsibility attached to the busi-
ness of writing is greater than in any-
other department of work. The influ-
ence of the printed page is so far reaching, that no
writer can gauge to what extent he may be fur-
thering good (or harm), when he puts pen to
paper.
You can calculate exactly an author's cash
value by his sales : but this does not give an equally
accurate estimate of his moral value.
Who would dream of measuring the influence
of Punch, for instance, by the figures of its cir-
culation 1 ? No one can say how many people will
handle one single copy, or how many people will
find in that single copy bracing laughter and
healthy humour. The numbers printed each week
can only represent a fraction of its actual readers.
And the same applies to a good many books:
they pass from one to another, are borrowed from
libraries, borrowed from friends (often without
being returned, alas!), and by varied routes they
penetrate to out-of-the-way corners of the world
286
The Responsibility 287
where the authors would least expect to be able to
reach the inhabitants.
The most famous preacher living has not the
possibilities of power that lie in the hands of
a popular writer; and the gravity of this respon-
sibility cannot be over-estimated.
While this does not mean that we must take
ourselves too seriously, it does mean that we
must take our work seriously, and recognise that
it stands for something more than money-making,
even though money-making is not to be despised.
To the beginner this may seem a weighty sub-
ject and rather outside his orbit. But in reality
this point needs to be taken into consideraion from
the very earliest of our literary experiments. We
must induce a certain attitude of mind, and keep
definite ideals before us, if our work is to shape
in any particular direction.
And the probability is that you will have to
choose between good and ill when selecting the
theme for your first story. You will naturally
look around and study the type of fiction that
seems to be selling well, and perhaps you may
light on something peculiarly noxious, since there
is an assortment of such books being published
nowadays. The book in question may have been
designated "strong" (the word reviewers often
288 The Lure of the Pen
fall back upon, when they cannot find any adjec-
tive sufficiently truthful without being libellous,
to convey an idea of a book's malodorous quali-
ties!); or you may have heard the book lauded
by people who make a boast of being modern,
up-to-date, or advanced. And as we none of us
aim at being weak, or old-fashioned, or behind
the times, it is not surprising if the beginner feels
that he, too, had better try his hand at somehing
"strong," if he is to get a reputation for ultra-
modernity.
Quite a number of novices choose unpleasant
topics because, and only because, they fancy such
themes show advanced, untrammelled thought,
and "a knowledge of the world." They forget
that of far greater importance than the extent of
the writer's ability to defy the conventions, is
the moral effect of a book on those who read it.
I use the word "moral" in its widest sense. It
is unfortunate that we have got into the habit of
pigeon-holing literature — and espec-
views are lally fiction — in very narrow compart-
Neeaed ments. When we speak of a book as
when Char- r
acterismff "good," or "helpful," or "uplifting,"
literature to ' r ' .7
we usually mean that it contains
specific religious teaching in one form or another.
Yet a book may be very good and helpful and
The Responsibility 289
uplifting without a single sermonic sentence, or
anything approaching thereunto.
In the same way, when we say that a novel is
undesirable or immoral, we generally mean that it
deals with one particular form of evil: yet there
are books having little or nothing to do with pro-
miscuous sex relationships that are pernicious and
unhealthy in the extreme, and possibly all the
more dangerous because their immorality is not
of the kind that is definitely ticketed for all to
see, and beware of, if need be.
Everything tending to lower the tone of the
soul is immoral; everything that debases human
taste is unhealthy; everything that gloats on un-
pleasantness, for the mere pleasure of gloating, is
as devastating as poison gas; everything that
preaches a doctrine of hopelessness, that spreads
the black miasma of spiritual doubt over the mind
is bad — fiendishly bad.
But do not misunderstand me: I would not
seem to imply that only fair things should be
chronicled. There are certain facts of life that
must be faced : sin cannot be ignored — but it must
be recognised as sin, not be touched up with tinsel,
and placed in the limelight, to look as attractive
as possible.
Poverty, grime, sickness, gloom cannot be
19
290 The Lure of the Pen
banished from every horizon; but they need not
be dwelt upon exclusively without any alleviation,
to the shutting out of all else. The wave of
so-called "realism" that has swept over fiction of
recent years has been a very injurious element in
modern literature. It is bad from an artistic point
of view, since it is one-sided, unbalanced, and not
true to life itself, which invariably provides that
compensations go hand in hand with drawbacks.
Some people speak of "realism" as though the
only realities were sordidness and crime; whereas
the earth teems with lovely realities — beauty of
spirit, beauty of character, beauty of thought, no
less than beauty of form and colour.
The slum at first glance does not look a pre-
possessing subject; yet read "Angel Court": the
writer who is a real artist can find gold even here !
ANGEL-COURT
By Austin Dobson
In Angel-Court the sunless air
Grows faint and sick; to left and right
The cowering houses shrink from sight
Huddled and hopeless, eyeless, bare.
Misnamed, you say? for surely rare
Must be the angel-shapes that light
In Angel-Court!
Xhe Responsibility 291
Nay! the Eternities are there.
Death at the doorway stands to smite;
Life in its garrets leaps to light;
And Love has climbed that crumbling stair
In Angel-Court.
From "London Lyrics," by permission.
Those who acclaimed these recent books of so-
called "realism" as works of exceptional genius,
did not see that, far from being any such thing,
they were, in most cases, preliminary manifesta-
tions of a hideous malady, which has since cul-
minated in all we understand by the word Bol-
shevism.
To dilate on ugliness, coarseness, harshness,
without showing the counteracting forces at work,
and to dabble continuously in dirt without show-
ing the way to cleanliness, is not art, no matter
how accurately every detail may be portrayed:
it is merely systematised brutishness.
Even themes with a rightful motive may be
exceedingly harmful under some circumstances.
Studies of dipsomaniacs, drug-victims, and the
like, may be necessary as matters of psychologi-
cal or medical research, just as studies of any other
diseases are necessary; but they should be issued
as such, and not put forward in the guise of
292 The Lure of the Pen
fiction intended for all and sundry among the
general public.
I have enlarged on this matter, because there
has been a great tendency on the part of amateurs
lately to revel in descriptions of crudity and re-
pulsiveness, with never a thought as to the effect
of such literature on the reader. At no time is
it desirable to circulate indiscriminately, much
less as fiction, reading matter that can only induce
morbidity, neuroticism, depravity, doubt, or de-
pression. But in an age like the present, when
most of the civilised world is bowed beneath an
overwhelming weight of sorrow, shattered nerves
and physical weakness, it is positively criminal to
manufacture pessimism, gloom and horrors, and
scatter this type of literature broadcast without
any sense of the appalling responsibility attaching
thereunto.
There are three qualities which all authors
should aim to incorporate in their writings if they
_ „„. are to be a blessing rather than a
Qualities °
which. curse to humanity: these are clean-
cannot he J
Dispensed ness, healthiness and righteousness.
With i • i i • i
They may be introduced in many and
various forms ; and are often to be found in whole-
some laughter, spontaneous gaiety, good cheer,
breathless adventure, revelations of beauty, as
The Responsibility 293
well as in direct appeals to the higher nature.
Anything that will arouse sane emotions, and
divert the mind from self, is to be welcomed as
a benefaction in this world of many sorrows.
The late Charles Heber Clarke — better known
to the public as "Max Adeler" — enjoyed great
popularity at one time as a humorist. He was a
man of strong religious convictions; and there
came a day when he ceased to write his humor-
ous pleasantries, seeming inclined to regard them
as so much wasted opportunity. On one occasion
however, a clergyman whom he met while travel-
ling, on discovering his identity, grasped his hand
and said, "You have made me laugh when there
seemed nothing left to laugh about; you have
helped me to get over some of my darkest days.
I owe you more than I owe any other man in the
world."
"And when he had finished pouring out his
gratitude," said "Max Adeler," (who told me
this himself), "I began to wonder whether, after
all, one might not be doing as much good in the
world by making people smile and forget their
troubles, as by preaching at them."
To help humanity God-ward is the greatest
privilege we can aspire to; but this can be done by
other means besides the writing of hymns and
294 The Lure of the Pen
commentaries. Everything that tends to lift
humanity from the low-lands of sorrow or sor-
didness or suffering, and to point them to the
great Hope ; everything that will aid them to live
up to the best that is in them, and to strive to
recapture some long-lost Vision of the Highest,
will be helping in the great work of human re-
generation that was set on foot by the One who
came to give beauty for ashes.
While only a few are entrusted with the mes-
sage of the prophet or the seer, we all can special-
ise on whatsoever things are lovely and pure and
of good report; and we shall be of some use —
if only in a quiet way — to our day and generation
if we can help others also to think on these things.
But one point must not be overlooked — and in
saying this I am summing up most that has gone
before: If a book is to succeed, it
Goodness . ,,
does not must be well written.
Suiaess Because a certain number of highly
unpleasant books have succeeded, and
a certain number of highly moral books have
failed, beginners sometimes consider this as an
indication of public preference. What they for-
get, or do not know, is this : The nasty book suc-
ceeded, in spite of its nastiness, because it was
well and brightly written; while the moral book
The Responsibility 295
failed, in spite of its goodness, because it was
badly written and superlatively dull. If the moral
book that failed had been as well written as the
nasty book that succeeded, it would not only have
done as well as the nasty book, it would have done
a great deal better.
All but a small degenerate section of the public
prefer wholesome to vicious literature — but no-
body wants a dull book ! And the amateur writer
of good books often overlooks this latter fact.
Therefore, bear in mind that it is not sufficient
that you make a book clean and healthy and good;
you must endeavour to make cleanness as attrac-
tive as it really is, and healthiness as desirable as
it really is, and God-ordained Righteousness the
most satisfying of all the things worth seeking.
When you can do this, you will find a fair-sized
public waiting, and anxious, to buy your books.
You will not know what good you may be
doing — it is never desirable for any of us to hear
much on this score, humanity is so sadly liable to
swelled head ! But occasionally some one in the
big outside world may send you a sincere "Thank
you." When this comes you will suddenly realise,
though you cannot explain why, that there are
some things even more worth while than the
publisher's cheque.
INDEX
Abbreviations to be avoided
in verse, 247
Abstract qualities to be
gauged, 25
Alexander, Mrs., Burial of
Moses, 75
Allen, James Lane, and local
colour, 176
Allingham, Wm., poem by, 170
Allusions, hackneyed, 155
Amateurs, what they need to
cultivate and avoid, 47
Amateurs, two classes of, 139
Amateurs copying unawares,
203
Amateurs and marriage offers
in stories, 209
Amateurs' lack of first-hand
knowledge, 198
Ambiguity, avoid, 157
American writers and local
colour, 174, 175
Ancient facts undesirable ex-
cept in text-book, 149
Angel Court, Austin Dobson,
290
Anthologies, verse, 75, 76
Antiquated expressions, 52
Arnold, Matthew, 75
Article, settle object in writ-
ing it, 147
Articles that are not wanted,
151 ; big subjects to be
avoided, 155; "How to
," editors overdone
with, 154; which fail, 138;
useful divisions, 136; ruled
by form, 136; on subjects
already dealt with, 153;
study type of, in magazine
you are writing for, 152;
must be sent to editors in
time, 150; must be topical,
150; starting in the middle,
147
Artist and detail, 100
Artist's fragments, an, 167
Artistic atmosphere, 178
Artistic training and literary
first attempts, 4, 98-100
"Atmosphere," healthy and
otherwise, 181; as a time
saver, 180
Atmospheric purpose of story
writer, 89
Audience, settle on your, 126
Austen's, Jane, old-world "at-
mosphere," 184
Author's aim to help readers
God-ward, 293
Authors must have something
in their heads to write
down, 11
Authorship compared with
dressmaking, 5, 7
B
Baby prattle in amateur verse,
239 ,-
Barclay, Mrs., White Ladies
of Worcester, 41 ; The Ro-
sary, 210
Barrie, Sir J., and dialect, 195
Barrie, Sir J., short stories, 91 ;
Window in Thrums, 224
Beautiful thoughts do not
guarantee beautiful writing,
Begin in the middle, 147
297
298
Index
Be natural, 48, 106
Benson, Dr. A. C, 65
Big subjects to be avoided, 154
Birrell, Augustine, 65
Blackmore and local colour,
Blue pencil to be used by writer
rather than editor, 252
"Body," needed in writing, 123
Bolshevism in literature, 291
Booksellers as readers, 118
Books that shriek, 38
Books which survive. Why?
29
Boothby, Guy, and proof cor-
rections, 223
Boudoir stories, 206
Brain misuse, nature's revenge
for, 36
British Weekly, for style, 56
Broad Highway, The, "at-
mosphere" of, 184
Browning, Mrs. and Christina
Rossetti, 76
Browning, Mrs., "Sonnets
from the Portuguese," 244
Browning's Paracelsus, 71 ;
"rough-hewn" method, 70
Bryant and Longfellow, 76, 77
Bullock, Shan F., and local
colour, 174
By-gone models of amateurs,
209
C
Cable, George, 176
Cabmen, article on, 113
Callers on editors, 274
Canton, William, 42
Caricature is not characterisa-
tion, 142
Carlyle's "rough-hewn" meth-
od, 70
Cattloguing instead of art, 140
Causes of actions to be studied,
27
Central idea, necessary to
story, 79
Character delineation needed
in love-stories, 215
Characterisation is not carica-
ture, 142
Characters in story, values of,
84; should not be multiplied
unduly, 220; should explain
themselves, 216, 219; to be
introduced early, 219
Chatterton, 269
Cheap books, the flood of, 38
Chesterton, G. K., paradoxes
of, 165
Children, mistakes of writers
for, 127
Chimney-pot, evolution of the,
43
Chimney-pots, Ruskin's chap-
ter on, 44
Choate, Joseph H., on Dickens,
231
Choose topic from your own
environment, 200
Clarity, aim for, 161
Classics, our purpose on read-
ing them, in, 112
Clarke, Charles Heber, 293
Cleanness should be made at-
tractive, 295
Cleverness must not be obtru-
sive, 109
Climax, do not anticipate, 228
Climax in article, 147
Climax, never lose sight of, 89
Coleridge's Kubla Khan, 75,
170
Colloquialisms, avoid, 195
Condensation, need of, 106
Condensation never spoils be-
ginner's work, 257
Contrasts, incidents inserted in
stories as, 86
Copy, universal tendency to,
202
Copying unrecognised by ama-
teurs, 203
Country of the Pointed Firs,
The, 224
Craddock, Chas. Egbert, and
local colour, 176
Cranford, 184, 201
Creating an "atmosphere," 185
Index
299
Creation and copying, 203
Criticise your own work, 129
Criticism, editors have no time
for, 9
Crockett, S. R., and dialect, 195
Curtailment of sentences may
be carried to excess, 50
"Curtains" are sound business,
229
"Curtains," Dickens', 231
"Curtains" necessary for se-
rial publication, 231
Cut down your MSS., 253
Cynic really gets nowhere, 30
D
Dante, why we read, m, 112
David and Jonathan, 155
Defects overlooked by fame,
I2 4
Delav in editorial decision on
MSS., 276
Delete superfluities in your
MS., 254
Denouement as a surprise,
213, 225
Detail, knowledge of, impera-
tive, 21; study of, 100; too
much, 92, 140
Devices to reach editors, 283 _
Dialect an extra mental strain
on reader, 194; requires ex-
ceptional skill, 195
Diary form of story, 191
Dickens, Charles, an adept at
"curtains," 231
Dickens, central ideas of, 79
Diffusiveness, 106
Divine discontent, 197
Dobson, Austin, Angel Court,
290
Does the public want it? The
publisher's question, 267
Dog, the real, 19
Doll heroines, 26
Dombey and Son in U. S. A.,
231
Dream Days, Kenneth Gra-
ham, 224
Dreams of youth valuable, 235
Dressmaking and authorship,
Dull book not wanted by any-
one, 295
Dulness not necessary to good-
ness, 294
E
Earle, Mabel, Valley Song,
248
Eccentricity will not secure per-
manent interest, 122
Editorial routine, 283
Editors do not purchase MS.
because first attempt, 263 ;
have no time to criticise and
advise, 280; only buy what
pays to publish, 264; take
time to read MSS., 276; un-
moved by irrelevant appeals,
261
Emotionalism, 184
Emotions of author not always
interesting, 220
Ending, a happy one best, 226
Entertaining, every book should
be, 128
Environment and circumstances
to be studied, 19
Environment, your own, as
your subject, 200
Every generation allows spe-
cial characteristics of speech,
49 . • r
Exclusive information neces-
sary, 45
Extracts, lavish use undesir-
able, 161
Expressions, antiquated, 52
Facts, ancient, to be omitted,
150
Facts needed, 21
Fame overlooking defects, 124
Farnol, Jeffrey, and old-world
"atmosphere," 184
Feeding the brain with snip-
pets, 37
3oo
Index
Fiction, monotonous character
of MSS., 80
Fiction, "strong," 287
Field, Eugene, Limitations of
Youth, 249
"Fiona Macleod," 171
First attempts rarely accepta-
ble, 102
First attempts in literature
compared with art and mu-
sic, 4
First-hand knowledge, need of,
198
First-person limitations, 188
Forest of Wild Thyme, Alfred
Noyes, 250
Form as applied to articles, 136
Formless fragments, 167
Fragments, 166
Framework of story, 82
Freak writings cannot be fore-
casted, 268
GARDEN of Verses, a Child's,
R. L. Stevenson, 250
Genius, mistaken ideas of, 4
Genius scarce, 13
Gloom manufacture is wrong,
227
Glow-worms as a hat-trim-
ming, 153
God-ward help in literature,
293
Golden Age, Kenneth Graham,
224
Goodness does not excuse dul-
ness, 295
Gosse, Dr. Edmund, 65
Graham, Kenneth, Golden Age
and Dream Days, 224
Grandmothers in amateur fic-
tion, 210
Gray's Elegy, 67
Green, Dr. S. G., and Pickwick
Papers, 232
"Grip" needed for selling, 117
"Grit" necessary in a novel,
122
H
Hackneyed phrases, 155
Healthiness, authors should
aim at, 292
Healthiness should be made
desirable, 295
Hearn, Lafcadio, and local
colour, 174
Heroine, the rose-petal, 209
Hiawatha's appeal to children,
250
"How to " articles over-
done, 154
Human characteristics to be
studied, 18
Human heart, pivot of great
stories, 28
Hysterical "atmosphere," 184
Idea, original, lost, 160; ornate
language cannot cover lack
of, 160; starting, forgotten
by amateurs, 126 ; the cen-
tral, 79, 81
Ideas and words, 59; as varied
as human nature, 81; more
important than rhapsodies,
236
"Imaginative writing," 162
Immoral fiction, 288
Improbabilities, 162
Inaccuracy in detail fatal to
success, 23
Incidents should not be crowd-
ed, 220
Income expected without train-
ing, 4
Indefinite style to be avoided,
150
Ingelow, Jean, 75
Inner workings of mind and
heart to be studied, 26
Interest readers, the need to,
116
Interviews with editors unde-
sirable, 272
Introductions to editors useless,
270
Index
301
Invisible Playmate, 42
Involved sentences, 159
Isolation foolish for an author,
J
Jacobs, W. W., and local col-
our, 173
James, Henry, long sentences
of, 165
Jewett, Sarah Orne, 176;
Country of Pointed Firs, 224
Journalists as models for the
amateur, 57
K
Kernahan, Coulson, 65
Keynote of story, 79
Kipling, Rudyard, and local
colour, 174; short stories, 91 ;
"The Recessional," 75
Kipling's "Cat that walked by
itself," 142; varied styles,
104
Know your characters, 29
"Kubla Khan," 75, 170
LADY of the Decoration, 194
Lady of the Lake, 173
Landscape painting, 178
Language, pleasing, 71
Learning must not be obtru-
sive, 108
Leave off when finished, 147
Length of story must be con-
sidered, 134
Letters, story in the form of,
x 93 . ,.
Life ever offering new dis-
coveries, 29
Literary student at disadvan-
tage compared with students
of arithmetic, 6
Literature, an elusive business,
7 ; good, what constitutes it,
7; intangible, 8
Little, Frances, Lady of the
Decoration, 194
Little Women, 201
Local colour and American
authors, 174
Local colour subordinate to
personality, 28
Locality should be known to
story writer, 220
Longfellow, Bryant and Swin-
burne, 76, 77
Lovers' outpourings in ama-
teur verse, 239
Love-story difficult for ama-
teur, 211, 224
Love-story, need for character
delineation, 215
Love-stories outlets for girls'
emotions, 221
M
Magazine is a business pro-
position, 264
Main theme should make uni-
versal appeal, 27
Major, Charles, 184
Mannerisms not tolerated, 164
"Mark Twain" and preacher,
251
Marriage offers in amateur
stories, 207
"Max Adder's" humour help-
ful, 293
Men and women as they really
are, 29
Mental "atmosphere," convey-
ing our own, 187
Mental food needed, 12
Mental indigestion, 37
Metrical composition, laws to
be studied, 235
Meynell, Alice, "Song," 238
Minor details in stories, two
purposes of, 86
Mitford, Miss, Our Village,
185
Modern English seldom used
by amateur, 48
Modern style gained by read-
ing modern stuff, 54
Modernity of style desirable,
50
302
Index
Money-making should not
alone be object in writing,
148
Monotony fatal to success, 120
Moral books should be as well-
written as nasty ones, 295
Morley, Viscount, and prize
poem, 73
Motif important, 81
Motives that prompt actions,
26, 27
MSS., proportion of accepted, 3
MSS. rejected, reasons why,
10, 148, 197
MSS. should be typed, 278
Music and art compared with
literature, 4, 5, 6, 132
N
Nature dissertations in ama-
teur verse, 239
Nature and mind, effects of
nutriment, n
Nature's revenge for misuse of
brain, 36
Negatives, double, 159
New reliable matter will find
acceptance, 46
Newspaper leading articles for
style, 54
Notes of observations, 17, 20,
21
Novel, "grit" necessary for,
122
Novel, three-volume, 132
Novel, wedding need not be
chief aim of, 80
Novelty desirable, 120
Novice must train himself, 6
Noyes, Alfred, 75, 250
O
Object, be sure of your, 127
Observation saves from pit-
falls, 22
Observation to begin just
where you are now, 32
Obvious not the whole of the
story, the, 26
Old-fashioned style not want-
ed to-day, 52
Old-world "atmosphere," 183
Omar Khayyam, pessimistic
"atmosphere" of, 184
One-sided view of life due to
isolation, 31
Other people's brain-work not
acceptable, 46
Originality necessary, 46
Originality not peculiarity, 164
Original work is rare, 202
Our Admirable Betty, "atmos-
phere" of, 184
Our Village, Miss Mitford,
185
Out-doory "atmosphere," 185
Padding stories, 85
Painting, three-part basis of,
132 . • ,.
Peculiarity not originality,
164
Peculiarity will not secure per-
manent interest, 122
Pedantic style, avoid, 161
People, study of, needed, 30
"Personal" marking does not
carry to editor, 283
Personal outlook of readers,
Pessimism manufacture is cri-
minal, 292
Pessimistic "atmosphere," 184
Pett Ridge and local colour,
173
Phil May's methods, 255
Pickwick Papers and school
holiday, 232
Picture palaces versus read-
ing, 39
Pigeons in war, amateur arti-
cle on, 146, 149
Plato, why we read, 111, 112
Plausible imp, the, 257
Plots, making, 108
Plots, well-worn, 204
Poems for comparison, 76
Index
303
Poems should have some defi-
nite thought, 236
Poetic idea in every poem, 237
Poetry anthologies, 75, 76
Poetry leads to good prose, 72
Poetry, reading aloud, 74
Poetry, the so-called "new,"
244
Point, necessary to a story, 214
Polish, 222
Preliminary studies for perfect
work, 101
Press dates are long before
publication, 150
Proposals in fiction and real
life, 212
Psychological bearings to be
noted, 24
Publisher better judge than
author, 267; not a philan-
thropic agent, 265
Publisher's requirements must
be conformed to, 282
Publishers specialise in fixed
directions, 269
"Pull together" your MS., 255
Punch and a "curtain," 233
Punch, influence of, 286
Purpose, all writing should
have a, 128
Q
Quiller-Couch, Sir A., 65
Quotation marks, 161
R
Reader's choice, rather than
yours, for the reader, 151,
152
Reading, aloud, 55, 74; helps
you to judge the worth of
information, 43 ; loss of the
power of, 39; and nibbling,
40; necessary for historical
stories, 41
Read only what you can read
thoroughly, 40
"Realism" in fiction, 290
Reliability essential, 46
Return of MSS., 277
Reviewers, 118
Rhapsodies do not constitute
poetry, 236
"Rich sonority," 54
Righteousness, authors should
aim at, 293
Rives, Amelie, and local col-
our, 176
Rosary, The, heroine of, 210
Rossetti, Christina, 75 ; and
Mrs. Browning, and Tenny-
son, 76, 77
"Rough-hewn" method, 70
Routine in editors' offices, 283
Rubdiydt, pessimistic "atmo-
sphere" of the, 184
Rules, established, save our
wasting time, 130
Ruskin's "Chapter on Chim-
ney-Pots," 44; defects over-
looked, 124; Poetry of Archi-
tecture, Queen of the Air,
Preterita, 65; Sesame and
Lilies, 65, 183; tangents,
137
S
Schools for literature needed,
5
Scott's Lady of the Lake, 173
Secondary matter in story, 85
Seeing yourself in print should
not be alone the object in
writing, 148
Selection, instinct for, 139, 146
Self-expression, craving for, 9
Selling, the essential of book
production, 119
Sensational, the demand for,
38
Sentences should be short, 221
Serial publication necessitates
"curtains," 231
Sesame and Lilies, 183
Settle your chronological start-
ing point, 145
Shakespeare language not nec-
essary to amateur, 50
304
Index
Shakespeare and spiritual
values, 28, 29; why we read,
in, 112
Sharp, Wm., 171
Shaw, Bernard, cynical scin-
tillations of, 165
Shelley's Cloud, 75
Short sentences an advantage,
221
Short stories need same rules
as long ones, 90
Shrieking books, 38
Skimming, danger of, 36
Slang indicates ignorance, 62
Slang, monotony of, 61
Slangy style, avoid, 161
Smile, making people, 293
Snippets of reading, 37
Sonnets from the Portuguese,
Mrs. Browning, 244
Sound, refined and otherwise,
69
Spectator articles for style, 55
Speeding up our sentences, 49
Spiritual values to be noted, 24
Spiritual values and Shake-
speare, 28, 29
Stale material, 45
Start where you are, 224
Starting-point, chronological,
to be settled, 145
Steel, Mrs. F. A., 91, 174
Stevenson, R. L., Essays, 64;
Garden of Verses, 250
Story, "atmospheric" purpose
of author, 89; balance of,
135; assessing values of
characters, 85; climax nev-
er to be lost sight of, 89 ;
contrasts, examples of, 87;
cut out irrelevant particu-
lars, 136; dovetailing inci-
dents, 89; framework of, 82;
get well under way early
in, 134; historical reading
necessary for, 41 ; keynote
of, 79; length of, 134; the
minor details, 86; the three-
part basis, 132; incidents,
select those that matter, 142 ;
in form of diary, 192; in
form of letters, 193; over-
crowding with detail, 92;
"slap dash" method of writ-
ing, 92; told in clear man-
ner most popular, 196; writ-
ten in first person, limita-
tions of, 188; written in
third person usually best,
188; secondary matter in,
8 5
Stories by masters, nothing
merely a "fill-up," 86
Stories, short, need same rules
as long ones, 90
Strauss' sound monstrosities,
68
"Strong" fiction, 287
Style, avoid indefinite, 156
Style of writing should vary,
104
Subjects must be of interest
to readers, 119; not repeat-
ed by editors, 153 ; unable to
be studied should be avoid-
ed, 19
Successful books must be well-
written, 294
Swinburne and Longfellow, 76
Sympathy needed to write con-
vincingly, 29, 30
Tact necessary to contribu-
tors, 284
Taylor, Ann and Jane, 124
Tennyson and Christina Ros-
setti, 77
Tennyson's "Break, break,
break," 171; "Flower in a
Crannied Wall," 171
Tennyson's poems for reading
aloud, 74
Thinking, formless, 171
Third-person narrative usual-
ly best, 188
Thought transference, 59
Thought, beware of labouring
a, 160
Index
305
Thoughts, difficulty of writing
them down, 98
Three-part basis of story, 132
Timothy's Quest, 224
Topicality, keep an eye on,
Training for authorship im-
perative, 5
Training yourself, 140
Travellers, publishers', as
readers, 118
Typed MSS. most likely to be
read, 278
U
Ugliness is not art, 291
Uncle Tom's Cabin, central
idea of, 79
Unpleasant topics, 288
Unseen that counts, the, 24
Using two words where one
will suffice, 50
Valley SONG, by Mabel Earle,
248
Verse, abbreviations to be
avoided in, 247
Verse, amateur, 239
Verse anthologies, 75, 76
Verse-making, laws of, to be
studied, 235
Verse must voice world-wide
need, 243
Verse, worth reading, ama-
teur, 239
Verse-writing a useful exer-
cise, 234; leads to good
prose, 72
Vocabulary of average person,
60
W
Wax-Figure characters, 26
Wedding need not be chief
aim of novel, 80
Well-worn plots, 204
When Knighthood ivas in
Flower, "atmosphere" of,
184
Wholesome literature pre-
ferred by public, 295
Why, every, hath a where-
fore, 160
Why some books survive, 28,
Wiggin, Kate Douglas, 224
Wilkins, Mary E., and local
colour, 175, 176
Wilson, President, 171-word
sentence, 221
Window in Thrums, A, 224
Wister, Owen, and local col-
our, 176
Woman's Magazine offered
unsuitable subjects, 153
Woman's Magazine at press
some weeks before publica-
tion, 150
Wooden-horse heroes, 26
Word, value of a, 66
Word - picture, fragmentary,
169
Word-picture study, 104
Word-pictures, need to select
incidents for, 141
Words, greatest writers had
no more than we, 251
Words, subject should regu-
late choice, 158
Words, use simple, 67
Words, using two when one
will suffice, 50
Write as you actually speak,
48 _
Writing difficult to reduce to
set of rules, 8
Writing is hard work, 204
Writer's influence greater than
preacher's, 287
Writing a serious responsibil-
ity, 287
Writing that lasts, 25
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1
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