Definition--General Atmospheric Value of Fiction--Tone of
Story--Preparation of Reader for Climax--Examples--The Story of Atmosphere--Short
Story--Setting--Slight Dramatic Value of Type.
Atmosphere--as the term is used by the writer of fiction--is a most indefinite
word; it may be well to preface discussion of what it stands for by a
definition. And in defining it is often conducive to clearness to state what a
thing is not before stating what it is. In the first place, atmosphere is not
setting, although the setting of a story may aid in producing its atmosphere.
The frozen wastes of a sub-arctic region or the man-made squalor of a slum may
operate powerfully to produce on a reader of a story placed therein an
impression of desolation or of misery, but that impression will derive from
something other than the setting, and will merely be reinforced thereby. If a
slum story is essentially cheerful and light-hearted in content, its reader
will not be oppressed by the setting, however truthfully touched in, unless the
writer deliberately makes his people seem miraculous in point of their capacity
to avoid the contagion of their surroundings. The young girl in "The Dawn
of a To-Morrow" is an instance of what is meant by the qualification.
Atmosphere is not setting, nor is it anything at all that is in a story. It is
not the quality of the environment; it is not the general quality of the people
or their acts; it is not the quality of the theme or plot. What is it? It is
the general emotional impression made on a reader by the whole story. It is
nothing that is in a story; it is the emotional effect produced by the story on
a reader. Just as a scene, an event, or a person, unless very commonplace, will
have some emotional effect on an observer, any story that is told so as to
create the illusion of reality will have some emotional effect on a reader. As
Stevenson said to Balfour: "I'll give you an example--'The Merry Men,'
There I began with the feeling of one of those islands on the west coast of
Scotland, and I gradually developed the story to express the sentiment with
which the coast affected me."
A distinction should be noted here. "The Merry Men" is a strict story
of atmosphere; its author, as he implicitly states, started with an emotional
effect, or "sentiment," and devised only such persons and action as
would deepen on a reader the emotional impression initiated in this case by the
setting. But, as has been stated, any story told so as to create the illusion
of reality will have some totality of emotional effect on a reader, apart from
its specific emotional effects in various parts, unless the fiction is very
commonplace. That is to say, the strict story of atmosphere, which has been
touched on briefly in discussing story-types, subordinates its action and its
people to its totality of emotional effect; in the normal story, whether it
stresses personality or event, atmosphere, or totality of emotional effect on a
reader, is a subordinate consideration, resulting from the necessity that an
observer of persons and events be affected thereby in some general way. At
least it is true that the writer of a story of complication of incident or of
character cannot permit any consideration of atmosphere to interfere with the
events in the first case or the persons in the other. Whatever totality of
emotional effect may reside in his work will be inherent in the conception, as
it would be inherent in such a spectacle for an observer, if the story should
happen in actuality.
The sensible--because the most profitable--way for the writer of fiction to fit
the matter of atmosphere into his general artistic philosophy is to disregard
it entirely, except where it constitutes a primary consideration, that is,
except in relation to the strict story of atmosphere. The reason for this
cavalier treatment of the matter has been brought out. If any story is told so
as to create the illusion of reality, some general emotional effect will be
produced on its reader, will be inherent in the conception, as it would be
inherent in the spectacle, if actual. It all comes down to this: by telling his
story justly as a course of events involving real people in a definite
environment, the writer will produce on a reader whatever totality of emotional
effect is inherent in the conception. If there is no totality of emotional
effect inherent therein the writer cannot produce it except by changing the
whole conception and writing a different story. In the case of the strict story
of atmosphere the writer's attitude is different. He sets out, not with a
story, but with an emotional effect, and devises people and events and setting
to produce it.
The point can be made clearer by more specific discussion. Assume that a writer
has conceived a story with a definite plot, involving definite people, set in a
New England village. Anybody who knows New England or has read Alice Brown or
Mary E. Wilkins Freeman can testify that such a story, justly told, will have a
definite and peculiar atmospheric value. But its atmosphere, its totality of
emotional effect on a reader will be inherent in its setting and people,
perhaps even in its events. The story itself will determine its atmosphere,
which can be only the peculiar impression that a New England village, its
people and their lives, produce on an observer. By choosing to write such a
story, or by choosing to write any definite story, a writer debars himself from
creating any atmosphere not involved in the story selected for writing. On the
other hand, if a writer desires to put together a story of atmosphere, he
starts with an emotional effect as the basic conception, and then casts about
for a setting, people, and incidents that will produce such emotional effect.
It all depends upon what the writer starts with. If he starts with an emotional
effect, he may narrate any course of events, and draw any sort of people, and
place the tale in any sort of setting, provided only that events, people, and
setting be such as to produce the desired atmosphere or effect. But if the
writer starts with a definite story, the only atmosphere he can create thereby
is the atmosphere inherent in the conception.
Though it is true that a writer may and should disregard the matter of
atmosphere in writing a story which he has conceived as a definite course of
events involving definite people, since any atmospheric possibilities of the
fiction will be inherent in the conception and will be realized by telling it
justly as to people, events, and setting, nevertheless a qualification must be
stated. No story is conceived as definitely as it is written; the writer first
grasps the plot or main situation, perhaps also the characters, and then
expands the outline into a congruous presentation of a phase of life by filling
in details as to environment, people, and events. This filling-in process may
and should be performed partly at least before writing, but even if the writer
postpones it until he is wrestling with the problem of execution, he must
remember one thing. Any story has a general tone, largely determined by its
climax or main situation. This tone or key of a story is not its atmosphere
strictly, perhaps, but the dividing line between the two matters is very faint.
The atmosphere of a story is its general emotional effect upon a reader, and
its tone is very nearly the same thing, being the result of its writer's having
justly performed his selective task by transcribing only such matters as
harmonize with the main situation, tragic or comic. And a writer must regard
the matter of the tone of a story in developing and writing it, if it is to
have the significant simplicity and unity which alone can give the fiction
maximum power and effect.
The practical problem can be stated most simply thus: a reader's intelligence
and sensibilities must be prepared for the crisis, climax, or main situation by
incorporating in the story only such matters of environment, personality, or
event as harmonize with the emotional character of the main situation. The
necessity is most stringent, of course, in the case of the short story, but it
is a consideration to be borne in mind in writing any type of fiction. It is
merely another aspect of the general question of preparation, which has been
touched upon before. The situations of a story must be prepared in a mechanical
sense, that is, the writer must prepare to place his people where each
situation demands that they be placed; the people themselves must be developed
and individualized, that the situations may have full dramatic value; and the
mind and heart of a reader of the story must be prepared for the climax, which
is the whole story in little.
If the main situation of any story is essentially tragic, it will never do not
to hint the fact until the climax is reached, when a reader will be
overwhelmed, rather than upborne and stimulated, by the torrent of battle,
murder, or sudden death. The opening scene of "Macbeth" presages the
lurid character of the whole play, and serves to key reader or spectator for
murder. Likewise, in the case of a story essentially light and happy in
content, the purpose of the writer is to develop and present one of life's many
attractive phases, and that purpose will be defeated or at least hampered if
woebegone people and unpleasant situations are given place in the fiction.
Considerations of contrast may lead the writer to incorporate in his story
matter out of keeping with its general tone and main situation, but the effort
is really to emphasize the general tone by striking a few discordant notes.
Contrast is too delicate a matter to be discussed with any profit; whether or
not the device shall be employed in any story is a problem that only the
artistic sense of the writer of the particular story can answer.
It is very easy to say that a story should be told so as to prepare a reader
for the climax, that he may accept it, yet, in a sense, the thing can be
achieved only by adequate practice of the whole art of fiction. The general
necessity is to make the whole course of events seem real and actual; the more
specific necessity is to give a reader a definite clue to the nature of the
story, that he may not be shocked into disbelief by the climax. This must be
done unobtrusively, as every other technical device must be employed, under
penalty of failing in its office.
A quotation showing effective employment of the device will not be useless.
Stevenson's short story "Thrawn Janet" leads up to an encounter with
the devil, and the author loses no time in preparing a reader for the entrance
of his satanic majesty. The story begins thus:
"The Reverend Murdoch Soulis was long minister of the moorland parish of
Balweary, in the vale of Dule. A severe, bleak-faced old man, dreadful to his
hearers, he dwelt in the last years of his life, without relative or servant or
any human company, in the small and lonely manse under the Hanging Shaw. In
spite of the iron composure of his features, his eye was wild, scared, and
uncertain; and when he dwelt, in private admonitions, on the future of the
impenitent, it seemed as if the eye pierced through the storms of time to the
terrors of eternity. Many young persons, coming to prepare themselves against
the season of the Holy Communion, were dreadfully affected by his talk. He had
a sermon on 1st Peter, v. and 8th, 'The devil as a roaring lion,' on the Sunday
after every seventeenth of August, and he was accustomed to surpass himself
upon that text both by the appalling nature of the matter and the terror of his
bearing in the pulpit. The children were frightened into fits, and the old
looked more than usually oracular, and were, all that day, full of those hints
that Hamlet deprecated. The manse itself, where it stood by the water of Dule
among some thick trees, with the Shaw overhanging it on the one side, and on
the other many cold, moorish hill-tops rising towards the sky, had begun, at a
very early period of Mr. Soulis' ministry, to be avoided in the dusk hours by
all who valued themselves upon their prudence; and guidmen sitting at the
clachan alehouse shook their heads together at the thought of passing late by
that uncanny neighborhood."
Here Stevenson loses no time in keying his reader to the general pitch of the
story. It is a task that the writer of any story must undertake. The general
nature of the tale should be suggested as soon as possible, and the story
should not be allowed to falsify its introductory hints, but should reaffirm
them constantly, until all the divergent strands of the fiction are knotted
together in the climax, which will need no interpretation. Take another
instance from Stevenson, the beginning of "Markheim," where Markheim
murders the dealer in curios.
"'Yes,' said the dealer, 'our windfalls are of various kinds. Some
customers are ignorant, and then I touch a dividend of my superior knowledge.
Some are dishonest,' and here he held up the candle, so that the light fell
strongly on his visitor, 'and in that case,' he continued, 'I profit by my
virtue.'
"Markheim had but just entered from the daylight streets, and his eyes had
not grown familiar with the mingled shine and darkness of the shop. At these
pointed words, and before the near presence of the flame, he blinked painfully
and looked aside."
A little farther on:
"The dealer once more chuckled; and then, changing to his usual business
voice, though still with a note of irony, 'You can give, as usual, a clear
account of how you came into the possession of the object?' he continued.
'Still your uncle's cabinet? A remarkable collector, sir!'
"And the little pale, round-shouldered dealer stood almost on tiptoe,
looking over the top of his gold spectacles, and nodding his head with every
mark of disbelief. Markheim returned his gaze with one of infinite pity, and a
touch of horror."
Note how strongly and withal how naturally the whole of this, and particularly
the last sentence, suggests that Markheim has come into the shop to do murder.
The story is keyed to tragedy at once, its reader with it. His mind is prepared
in advance, that the significant event, when it is related, may be accepted
without question.
As stated, this matter of keying the story and its reader to the pitch of the
main situation or climax is not precisely the matter of atmosphere, but it has
close affiliations therewith. It is even more important to the writer of
fiction. Any atmospheric value in a story will be brought out by telling it
justly as a course of events involving real people in a definite environment,
and preparation of a reader for the main situation of a story is a part of just
and adequate narration. The writer's hints of the character of what is to come
must be unforced and natural, but they must be effective.
It is obvious, of course, that the more tense or strange the main situation of
a story, the greater the necessity that a reader be prepared for it. If the
main situation consists in commonplace characters doing some commonplace thing,
a reader will accept the spectacle without artificial preparation, but if the
main situation is highly dramatic, the normally placid course of a reader's
thought and feeling must be agitated and stimulated in advance, or he will not
rise with the climax. In other words, the fiction will not have verisimilitude
emotionally. A story is both a physical spectacle and an emotional progression;
the author must write both for the reader's eye and for his soul. If any story
touches emotional heights, its reader must be stimulated thereto by proper
preparation.
It remains to consider the matter of atmosphere, as the term is used with
relation to the strict story of atmosphere, which emphasizes the emotional
value of the whole for a reader rather than the significance of the events or
characters.
The intrinsic difficulty to blend such diverse matters as people, events, and
setting or environment into an even emotional unity requires that the strict
story of atmosphere be a short story. Even if it is not a short story in point
of actual length, it will be a short story in point of structure, that is, it
will lead relatively few characters through little diversity of setting to a
single main situation, or perhaps even to no main situation, in a dramatic
sense. As noted in discussing story types, the progression of the particular
atmosphere to the point of highest intensity gives the strict story of
atmosphere much of its story-character. The human element is incidental and
subordinate. However, the task of keeping people, events, and setting true to a
fixed emotional tone is so difficult that a writer cannot sustain the effort
for long. Many novels or relatively lengthy stories have high atmospheric
value; Hardy's Wessex novels possess the quality, as does much of Joseph
Conrad's work, "Almayer's Folly," for instance; but it is generally
true that the intrinsic difficulty of the story of atmosphere tends to confine
it within brief limits. It is certainly true that only the skilled hand can
compass the feat of writing it at all.
I have stated that the setting of a story is not its atmosphere, and that is
true. Nevertheless the setting is most often what determines the emotional
effect of the whole. A hundred instances might be cited--"The Merry
Men," "The Fall of the House of Usher," "Almayer's
Folly," "The Return of the Native." This results from the fact
that setting or environment is much more potent to produce a relatively
definite emotional effect on an observer than either a person or an event, the
two other elements of a story. A murder may produce a very definite feeling of
horror in an observer or reader, but the emotion, while definite, is not linked
inevitably to murder alone. Many other spectacles will horrify. Likewise, a
person may produce a feeling of disgust in an observer or reader, but so will
an infinite number of other persons, all radically different from each other
and the first. But the emotional effect of the west coast of Scotland is
special and peculiar to that setting; there is no single word in the language
characterizing it. That is why Stevenson had to write "The Merry Men"
to state it, just as Poe had to write "The Fall of the House of
Usher" to state the specific emotional effect of that particular house,
and Hardy had to write "The Return of the Native" to state the
emotional value of his Wessex moors.
Moreover, when the writer finds the germ of his story in a person seen actually
or in imagination, it is more than likely that the emphasis of the completed
work will be on character, and when he finds it in an event or situation, it is
more than likely that the emphasis of the completed work will be on plot. But
when a countryside or house or stretch of sea-coast suggests a story, it can
hardly result otherwise than that the completed work will emphasize the
emotional value of the setting.
The setting of the strict story of atmosphere may determine its emotional
effect, but the emotional tendency of the setting must not be affected
adversely by the people or the events. That is why the setting is not
atmosphere, though it may determine the atmosphere. A gloomy and terrific
setting will have small emotional effect upon a reader if the people and events
of the story are not such as to deepen the impression initiated by the setting,
for the people and events cannot be emotionally neutral. If they are seemingly
real, that is, if the story is well told apart from the matter of atmosphere,
they will make some impression on a reader. Unless their impression is of a
piece with that of the setting, the unity of emotional effect will be
destroyed. And if there is no unity of emotional effect, there is no
atmosphere, in the strict sense.
Confession is good for the soul; let me say that if there is a technique of
writing so as to produce a unity of emotional effect I am unable to state it.
The matter is exceptionally delicate, and only the broadest sort of abstract
statement can be made. One can state--as I have stated--that the emotional
effect of a story of atmosphere is usually initiated by and dependent on the
setting, and that the emotional effect initiated by the setting must be
reinforced by the writer's choice and handling of people and events. But that
is about all that can be said. A specific story of atmosphere might be taken
and examined in detail with profit, if space were available; yet the devices
employed by its writer would not completely exhaust the resources of
atmospheric writing, and abstract statement of them here will not cover the
whole technique. Poe's technique in "The Fall of the House of Usher"
is not identical with Stevenson's in "The Merry Men," nor with
Conrad's in "Almayer's Folly."
Fortunately, the strict technique is not of great practical importance. Any
story will gain in power by possession of an atmospheric quality, but that
quality will be present if the basic conception is not trivial and feeble, and
if the story is told adequately as to its three elements of setting,
personality, and event. Any emotional value inherent in the thing will then be
felt by a reader, as he would feel the emotional value of the spectacle, if
real. Any story that is lived vicariously by its writer in the person of the
character from whose viewpoint it is told, and is written justly as a course of
events involving real people in a definite environment, will have all the
effect on a reader attainable by the particular conception. And as to the
strict story of atmosphere, it will be hopeless for the writer of fiction to
attempt it until he can handle the less artificial and less difficult forms
with some approach to real facility and adequacy.
One specific point of the technique of writing the strict story of atmosphere
should be noted, for it is important. The emotional effect is usually initiated
and determined by the setting, natural or artificial, as a tropical island or a
house. Characters and events must be subservient to the particular emotional
value. It results that there can be no real dramatic opposition of characters
and traits in the strict story of atmosphere, for the moral nature of an
individual has no affiliation with the emotional quality of a countryside or
any other setting. Development of strict traits of character, which are
essential to drama, will not serve to deepen for a reader the emotional
suggestion of a setting. The writer of the strict story of atmosphere must seek
to invest his people with such traits as will reinforce the emotional
suggestion of the setting, and these traits cannot be strictly of character.
Rather they will be attributes of appearance, action, mind, and soul. Insanity
is an instance of such an attribute of mind, not strictly of character. The point
is difficult to state abstractly, as is the whole of the technique of
atmosphere, but a reading of either "The Fall of the House of Usher"
or "The Merry Men" will clarify my meaning. The people of either
story are less human beings than humanized emotional abstractions, of the same
stuff of gloom or mystery as the house or sea. It is needless to state that the
whole weakness of the story of atmosphere as a fiction results from the
necessary devitalizing of its characters, for fiction primarily concerns man,
his conflicts and his loves.
FOOTNOTES:
[P] Of course, the initial conception of a story of atmosphere may limit the
writer's power to manipulate his material. Thus when Stevenson pitched upon the
emotional effect of the west coast of Scotland as that to be produced by
"The Merry Men," he debarred himself from placing his story in any
other setting, though he could pick and choose freely among possible events and
people. A general emotional effect, as of beauty, is somewhat indefinite, and
may be produced alike by stories differing widely in their three elements of
setting, people and events.
About the Author
Robert
Saunders Dowst, 1890-1959, author of The Technique of Fiction Writing. Whether you're a new writer struggling
to find your way into the story you want to tell or an experienced scribe
looking to shake things up with a few novel tips and techniques, Robert
Saunders Dowst's The Technique of Fiction Writing
can
help. Packed with practical guidelines and instructions that are sure to break
you out of your rut and breathe new life into your work, this classic guide is a must-read for
aspiring novelists and short-story writers.
