THE WRITING OF THE
SHORT STORY
BY
LEWIS WORTHINGTON SMITH, A.M.
DRAKE UNIVERSITY, DES MOINES, IOWA
D. C. HEATH & CO., PUBLISHERS
BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO
Copyright, 1902,
By D. C. Heath & Co.
It is a pleasure
to be permitted to associate
with this little book
the name of my friend
Professor L. A. Sherman
of the University of Nebraska.
FOREWORD
The Writing of the Short Story by Lewis Worthington Smith is a captivating exploration into the art and craft of creating compelling narratives in a condensed form. This book serves as a comprehensive guide, offering aspiring writers and enthusiasts a treasure trove of knowledge, insights, and practical advice on mastering the complexities of the short story.
Lewis Worthington Smith, a seasoned author and distinguished writing instructor, brings his wealth of experience and passion for storytelling to the forefront of this remarkable work. With each chapter, he unveils the intricacies of crafting memorable characters, establishing evocative settings, and constructing powerful plots within the constraints of brevity. Smith's expertise shines through his articulate prose as he escorts readers through the labyrinth of short story writing, shedding light on the techniques, nuances, and subtleties necessary for success.
One of the greatest strengths of this book lies in Smith's ability to demystify the creative process. As readers delve into the pages, they will discover a treasure trove of practical exercises, writing prompts, and engaging examples that elucidate the principles discussed. Smith's approachable style and genuine desire to nurture talent make this book an invaluable resource for both beginners and seasoned writers alike.
Moreover, Smith's thorough exploration of various literary techniques encourages readers to experiment and expand their creative boundaries. He adeptly delves into the significance of plot structure, character development, dialogue, and point of view, empowering writers to harness these elements to craft compelling narratives that resonate with readers.
The Writing of the Short Story is not merely a theoretical treatise; it is a roadmap to success for writers seeking to make their mark in the world of short fiction. Through its pages, Smith emphasizes the importance of honing one's storytelling skills, fostering an authentic voice, and embracing the art of revision. He guides readers toward navigating the challenges that arise in the writing process and instills the confidence necessary to overcome these obstacles.
As a reader, you are about to embark on a journey that will not only transform your understanding of short story writing but will also inspire you to embrace the medium's unique potential. Whether you are an aspiring writer looking to refine your skills, a reader curious about the creative process, or a teacher seeking to impart knowledge to your students, The Writing of the Short Story will undoubtedly be an indispensable companion on your literary odyssey.
In closing, I am honored to introduce you to Lewis Worthington Smith's The Writing of the Short Story. Within these pages, you will find a wellspring of wisdom, guidance, and inspiration that will undoubtedly ignite your passion for storytelling and propel your journey towards becoming a master of the short story form. Embrace the knowledge presented here, let your imagination run wild, and set forth on the exhilarating path of crafting captivating tales.
Happy writing!
Olivia Salter
04/23/2023
SUGGESTIONS FOR TEACHERS
In the author's classes the three stories in the volume entitled
"Three Hundred Dollars" are first studied because of their
simplicity, and these are followed by parts of "The Bonnie
Brier Bush," and then by the stories from Bret Harte. Mrs.
Phelps Ward's "Loveliness" is especially valuable for illustrating
methods and devices for making a simple theme dramatically
interesting. Students are required to mark stories with
the symbols and discuss them with reference to the principles
of which this little book is an exposition, but no recitation on
the book itself is required. Perhaps one-third of the time in the
class-room is spent in discussion of the short themes written by
the class, and when convenient these are placed on the board
before the class for that purpose. In the theme work following
the suggested subjects the effort is made to confine instruction
and practice to one thing at a time, but at the conclusion of the
work of the term each member of the class is required to hand
in a complete original story.
WRITING OF THE SHORT STORY
Narrative Forms
1. Elements of the Story.—This little volume is meant
to be a discussion of but one of the various forms that
literature takes, and it will be first in order to see what are
the elements that go to the making of a narrative having
literary quality. A story may be true or false, but we
shall here be concerned primarily with fiction, and with
fiction of no great length. In writing of this sort the first
essential is that something shall happen; a story without
a succession of incidents of some kind is inconceivable.
We may then settle upon incident as a first element. As
a mere matter of possibility a story may be written without
any interest other than that of incident, but a story dealing
with men will not have much interest for thoughtful readers
unless it also includes some showing of character. Further,
as the lives of all men and women are more or less conditioned
by their surroundings and circumstance, any story
will require more or less description. Incidents are of but
little moment, character showing may have but slight interest,
description is purposeless, unless the happenings of
the story develop in the characters feelings toward which
we assume some attitude of sympathy or opposition. Including
this fourth element of the story, we shall then have incident, description, character, mood, as the first elements
of the narrative form.
2. A Succession of Incidents Required.—A series of
unconnected happenings may be interesting merely from
the unexpectedness—or the hurry and movement of the
events, but ordinarily a story gains greatly in its appeal to
the reader through having its separate incidents developed
in some sort of organic unity. The handling of incidents
for a definite effect gives what we call plot. A plot
should work steadily forward to the end or dénouement,
and should yet conceal that end in order that interest may
be maintained to the close. Evidently a writer who from
the first has in mind the outcome of his story will subordinate
the separate incidents to that main purpose and so
in that controlling motive give unity to the whole plot.
Further, the interest in the plot will be put on a higher
plane, if in the transition from incident to incident there is
seen, not chance simply, but some relation of cause and
effect. When the unfolding of the plot is thus orderly in
its development, the reader feels his kindling interest going
forward to the outcome with a keener relish because of the
quickening of thought, as well as of emotion, in piecing
together the details that arouse a glow of satisfaction.
3. The Character Interest.—We can hardly have any
vital interest in a story apart from an interest in the
characters. It is because things happen to them, because
we are glad of their good fortune or apprehensive of evil
for them, that the incidents in their succession gain importance
in our emotions. We are concerned with things that
affect our lives, and secondarily with things that affect the
lives of others, since what touches the fortunes of others
is but a part of that complex web of destiny and environment in which our own lives are enmeshed. In the story
it is not so true as in the drama that, for the going out of
our sympathies toward the hero or the heroine, there
should be other contrasting characters; but a story gains
color and movement from having a variety of individualities.
Especially if the story is one of action, definite
sympathies are heightened when they are accompanied by
emotional antagonisms. In "The Master of Ballantrae,"
we come to take sides with Henry Durrie almost wholly
through having found his rival, the Master, so black
a monster. Such establishment of a common bond of
interest between us and the character with whom our
sympathies are to be engaged is a most effective means of
holding us to a personal involvement in the development
of the plot. There must not be too many characters
shown, the relations between them must not be too various
or too complexly conflicting, but where the interplay of
feeling and clashing motives is not too hard to grasp, a
variety of characters gives life and warmth of human
interest to a story.
4. Uses of Description.—Inasmuch as there are other
interests in our lives than those which are established by
our relations with our fellows, interests connected with the
material world about us, any narrative will probably have
occasion to include some description. It may be necessary
merely as an aid to our understanding of some of the
details upon which the plot turns, it may help us to realize
the personalities of the characters, and it is often useful
in creating background and atmosphere, giving us some of
the feelings of those with whom the story deals as they
look upon the beauty, or the gray dullness, of the changing
panorama of their lives. Stevenson's description of the
"old sea-dog" in "Treasure Island" is an excellent illustration
of the effectiveness of a few lines of description in
making us know something very definite in the man.
"I remember him as if it were yesterday, as he came plodding to the
inn door, his sea-chest following behind him in a handbarrow, a tall,
strong, heavy, nut-brown man; his hands ragged and scarred, with
black, broken nails, and the saber cut across one cheek, a lurid white."
5. Rossetti in "The Bride's Prelude," a story in verse,
after merely glancing at the opening of the tale, devotes
eight stanzas to description introduced for the purpose
of background and atmosphere. Two of them are given
here.
"Within the window's heaped recess
The light was counterchanged
In blent reflexes manifold
From perfume caskets of wrought gold
And gems the bride's hair could not hold
"All thrust together: and with these
A slim-curved lute, which now,
At Amelotte's sudden passing there,
Was swept in some wise unaware,
And shook to music the close air."
This helps us to enter into the life and spirit of the time
and place, to conceive imaginatively the likings, the desires,
the passions, the purposes, and the powers that shall be
potent in the story.
6. Kinds of Description.—Description is primarily of
two kinds, that which is to give accurate information, and
that which is to produce a definite impression not necessarily
involving exactness of imagery. The first of these
forms is useful simply in the way of explanation, serving
the first purpose indicated in paragraph four. The
second is useful for other purposes than that of exposition,
often appealing incidentally to our sense of the
beautiful, and requiring always nice literary skill in its
management. It should be borne in mind always that
literary description must not usurp the office of representations
of the material in the plastic arts. It should not be
employed as an end in itself, but only as subsidiary to
other ends.
7. Various Moods as Incidents.—The moods in the
characters of a story and their changes are connected with
the incidents of the story, since they are in part happenings,
and with the characters, since they reveal character.
Apart from direct statement of them, we understand the
moods of the actors in the little drama which we are made
to imagine is being played before us from the things they
say, from the things they do, and from gestures, attitudes,
movements, which the author visualizes for us. If these
moods are not made clear to us or we cannot see that they
are natural, definite reactions from previous happenings in
accord with character, we do not have a sense of organic
unity in the narrative. We become confused in trying to
establish the dependence of incident and feeling upon
something preceding, and our interest flags. Everything
that happens in a well-told story gives us feelings which
we look to find in those whom the happenings affect in
the tale, feelings which should call forth some sort of
responsive action for our satisfaction. Clearly, if the
characters are cold, if we cannot find in them moods of
the kind and intensity that to us seem warranted, the story
will be a disappointment.
Literary Divisions and General Principles
8. The Conceptual and Emotional.—Theoretically all
writing is divided easily into two classes, conceptual and
emotional, the literature of thought and the literature of
feeling. In the actual attempt to classify written composition
on this basis, however, no sharp distinction can be
maintained. Even matters of fact, certainly such matters
of fact as we care to write about, are of more or less
moment to us; we cannot deal with them in a wholly
unemotional way. In our daily lives we are continually
reaching conclusions that differ from the conclusions
reached by others about the same matters of fact, and are
trying to make these matters of fact have the same value
for others that they have for us. This is true of our business
life as well as of our social and home life. It always
will be so. It is doubtless true that if our knowledge of
matters of fact embraced a knowledge of the universe, and
if the experience of each of us were just like that of his
fellow and included all possible experience, we might reach
identical conclusions. This is not true and never can be
true. It is in effect true of a small portion of the things
about which we think,—the addition of one to two makes
three for every one,—but outside of these things, writing
need not be and seldom is purely conceptual.
9. Subject-matter.—Various as are the things about
which we write and manifold as are our interests in them,
they may be classified for our purposes under four heads:
Matters of Fact, Experience, Beauty, Truth. Again, we
shall find difficulty in separating each of these from each
of the others. Some of our experiences have certainly
been revelations of matters of fact; without our experiences,
we should hardly have acquired any real sense of
the beautiful; save for them we could not have known
anything of truth. No accurate definition of these things
carefully distinguishing between them can be attempted
here. It may be assumed that what is meant by matters
of fact will be understood without definition. As we read
the story in great measure for the purpose of enlarging
our experience, this part of our possible literary material
is worth considering further. In the child we are able to
detect very early a growing curiosity. That curiosity does
not disappear when the child has grown from boy to man;
he is still asking questions of the universe, still trying to
piece the fragments of his knowledge into a law-ordered
and will-ordered whole. What he knows has been the
product of experience, what he may yet know further must
be the product of experience. This experience may not
all be personal, but even that which he gets at second hand
is so far useful in helping him toward that understanding
of the universe for which he hopes. He never will reach
that understanding, all his experience will make but a fraction
of things to be known matters of fact to him; and yet
a deathless interest in the scarcely recognized belief that the
facts and forces of which he has known have some unifying
principle makes his emotions quicken at every new
experience that may have possible significance.
10. Appeal of Experience, Beauty, and Truth.—It will
be evident, then, that experience which somehow makes
the impression of superior importance may be presented
inorganically and yet gain an interested hearing. The
method of creating this impression, whether through the
appearance of conviction in the writer or by various literary[8]
devices, need not detain us here. We shall be concerned
merely with noting that the possible relation of the
particular to the general, of this experience to the whole of
experience, makes it a thing of moment. In just what way
experience develops in us the sense of the beautiful, just
what it is in anything that makes us distinguish beauty in
it, cannot now be determined. It will be enough for us to
know that literature makes a large appeal to a sense of the
beautiful in us, a sense not fortuitous and irrational, though
varying, but normal and almost universal, dependent upon
natural laws of development. Truth is also difficult of
definition, but we may understand that when out of experience,
as through a process of reasoning, we have reached
a conclusion that is something more than a matter of fact,
a conclusion touching our emotions and having vital spiritual
interest to us, the experience, whether our own directly or
at second hand, has brought us to a truth. Truth is, perhaps,
that matter of fact of universal intelligence that
transcends the matter of fact of the finite mind.
11. Literary Principles and Qualities.—There are some
fundamental principles of literary presentation which we
may briefly review here. All our study of science, and in
a less obvious fashion, of all the physical, social, and
artistic world about us, is more or less an attempt to
classify, simplify, and unify facts whose relations we do
not see at a glance. We must observe and learn the facts
first, but they will be of no great utility to us as unrelated
items of knowledge. The need of establishing some sort
of law and order in our understanding of the mass of
phenomena of which we must take cognizance is so
insistent that we early acquire the habit of attempting to
hold in mind any new fact through its relation to some[9]
other fact or facts. In other words, we can retain the
knowledge we acquire only by making one fact do duty
for a great many other facts included in it. Our writing
must not violate what is at once a necessity and a pleasure
of the mind. Unity, simplicity, coherence, harmony, or
congruity, must all be sought as essential qualities of any
writing. We must also indicate our sense of the relative
values of the things with which we deal by a proper selection
of details for presentation, a careful subordination of
the less important to the more important through the proportion
of space and attention given to each, and through
other devices for securing emphasis. Let us keep in mind
value, selection, subordination, proportion, emphasis, as a
second group of terms for principles involved in writing.
We may also wish to give our subject further elements of
appeal through what may be suggested beyond the telling,
through the melody and rhythm of the words, or through
a quickening of the sense of the beautiful. Suggestion,
melody, rhythm, beauty, are to be included, then, in a
third group of qualities that may contribute to the effectiveness
of what we write.
12. Conceptual Writing.—Of the literary qualities that
have just been discussed, only the first group is perhaps
essential to what has been designated as conceptual writing.
Here we may place expository writing on subjects wholly
matter of fact, mathematical discussions, scientific treatises
largely, though not necessarily, and other writing of like
character. As unity is the quality of importance here, we
may well consider the units of discourse. Our first unit is
that of the whole composition, the second that of the paragraph,
and the third that of the sentence. Which of these
is the prime unit, as the dollar is the prime unit of our[10]
medium of exchange, may not be evident at once; but if
we examine the writing of clear thinkers carefully, without
attempting to settle the matter in any doctrinaire fashion,
we shall find that the paragraph, and not the sentence, is
the more unified whole. I turn to Cardinal Newman, and
in the middle of a paragraph find the sentence, "This
should be carefully observed," a sentence meaningless
when taken from the context. As a part of the paragraph
it has a function, but it is certainly as a unit of detail and
not as a prime unit. A writer like Carlyle makes these
lesser units more important, but they are still subordinate
to their use in the paragraph. In all our writing we shall
do much for the unity, simplicity, and coherence of our
work by seeing to it that our paragraphs are properly
arranged and that each fulfills this function of a prime unit
in the composition.
13. The Sense of Value.—When, in addition to statement
of mere matters of fact, an author wishes to impress
his readers with his own sense of the importance and the
value of what he has to say, or of some special phase of
his subject, he will employ the principles of the second
group spoken of in a preceding paragraph. They cannot
be ignored, indeed, in explanation of the simplest matters
of fact, but a writer who means to convince and persuade
will make more use of them. His personality will express
itself in the selection of details and in the emphasis he
places upon one detail or another. Among the literary
forms which, besides being conceptual, are also concerned
with persuasion, we find the oration, the essay, a great deal
of business correspondence, and much of what we read in
magazines and newspapers.
14. Writing having Artistic Quality.—When in addition
to expressing matters of fact or truth, appealing perhaps
to experience, we wish to arouse some sense of the beautiful
and the artistic, we shall give our writing some or all of
the qualities of the third group. Evidently, writing of this
sort is in many respects the most difficult, since the writer
must have regard for unity and the related principles, as
well as for the qualities which peculiarly distinguish it.
Experience, beauty, and truth are all available as subject-matter,
and all the principles governing literary composition
are concerned. Here we shall find the poem, the
drama, the oration in some of its forms, most essays of the
better sort, the greater part of good critical writing, literary
description, and all narrative forms except the matter-of-fact
historical writing of unliterary scholars.
15. Two Things Requisite in Writing.—It is to be borne
in mind that the foregoing classifications are by no means
absolute. Gardiner in his "Forms of Prose Literature" says
very truly that the "essential elements, not only of literature,
but of all the fine arts, are: first, an organic unity of
conception; and second, the pervasive personality of the
artist." It is true that much of our writing does not aspire
to literary character, but in very little of our writing of any
sort can we afford to neglect the first of these elements,
and in very little of it do we care to leave the second out
of account. Even in exposition of the simpler sort we may
give to our writing the distinction of a more luminous style
and the stronger appeal of a warmer personal interest, if
we shape it into organic unity and make evident in it "the
pervasive personality of the artist."
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