Book. Copyright^ - COPYRIGHT DEPOSHfc .CHICAGO. / A.FLANAGAN. PUBLISHER M Fun With Electricity Book and Complete Outfit For Sixty Experiments In Electricity j» j* j» RKUSINC ♦ INSTRVCTIMB 4- EDUCRTIONRL NO CHB2«ICHLS ♦ NO DRNGBR. There is "Fun" in These Experiments: Chain Lightning.— An I Whirligig.— The Baby Thuni Race with Electricity. — An Electric Frog Pond. — An Electric Din —The Magic Finger.— Paddy Long-Legs.— JumpinK Kite.— Very Shocking. — Condensed Lightning.— An Electric Fly i ; The Merry Pendulum.— An Electric Ferry-Boat.— A Funn f Pa] —A Joke on the Family Cat.— Electricity Plays Leap ' Goes Over a Bridge.— Electricity Carries a Lantern.— And 40 Others. The OUTFIT contains 20 different articles. The BOOK OF INSTRUCTION measur illustrations, 55 pages, good paper, a ad clear type. "The book reads like a "An appropriate pr girl."— "Intelligent parents will appr complete, because it contains both book and api _"X1 to the fun which a boy or girl can have with this fascinating 5 x 7h i PRICE, 50 CENTS, complete. A. FLANA(jAN, GltlGAGO Story Composition BY f SHERWIN CODY Author of "How to Write Fiction," "In the Heart of the Hills,-' etc. «> V CHICAGO: A. FLANAGAN, PUBLISH 1897 ^ # L0431 Copyright, 1897, BY A. Flanagan. PREFACE. IN the fall of 1896 I was invited to act as one of the judges in the annual Christmas story competition conducted by The Chicago Record for the school children of Chicago. After the contest was finished I contributed to the Record two articles on "Story- writing as a School Exercise," which were subsequently reprinted by the Record for the benefit of the teachers interested in its contest. With these arti- cles as a nucleus I have endeavored to prepare an exhaustive series of exercises in story-composition which will not only suggest methods of story writing, but also serve as a guide and stimulus in the collection of original material for fiction. As an exercise in school composition, the value of story- writing has never been appreciated. Not only does it call forth the most varied possible use of the English language and teach flexibility and command of expression, but it stimulates close observation and furnishes the only practi- cable opportunity for the study and discussion of human motives and passions — indeed, the whole of the emotional side of life. Human emotion, though one of the most deeply interesting and important topics of human thought, is too delicate and too complicated for any systematic study in schools; but story-writing, treated primarily as the best possible exercise in English composition, gives an incidental opportunity for a vast amount of extremely fascinating and useful instruction regarding emotion on the part of the teacher. SHERWIN CODY. CONTENTS. Introduction. I. Story Writing as an Exercise in Composition. II. The Practical Construction of a Snake Story. III. The Art of Description. IV. Plot-Construction. Imagination. V. Dialogue. VI. Characterization. VII. Sentiment. VIII. The IyOVE Story. IX. Fancy and Invention. X. The Complete Story. INTRODUCTION. 11 7TANY of the young people who tried for The Chicago Record's Christmas prizes have no doubt been asking themselves such questions as these: " Why didn't my story win a brevet of author- ship?" Or, if a brevet was won, " Why didn't my story win a prize?" Or, perhaps, if a prize was won, " Why can't I write stories for the magazines?" I had the pleasure of reading a large number of the stories submitted, successful and otherwise, and I felt that some of the older writers might very well hope some day to join the great corps of producers of fiction for the public. More important than lack of talent was lack of knowledge of the right way to begin. Of course it requires talent to do anything. It needs ability t:> keep up with your classes in school, it needs abil- ity to succeed in business, or to succeed as a day laborer. Much more does it require great talent to enable any one to write stories that will be read and cared for by the vast public. No man can teach 8 STORY- COMPOSITION. any person how to be a genins; bnt it is jnst as pos- sible to learn bow to nse tbe English language effectively as it is to learn how to play the piano or how to skate or how to play baseball. Every one wishes to use language effectively for some purpose or other, either in making a good speech or writing a good letter, or in telling a story to a company of friends about the fire. Even if we do not aspire to be story-writers, we wish to know how to speak with force on occasion; and I feel perfectly safe in saying that in no way can this command of lan- guage be gained so practically as in studying the art of short-story writing. The twelve thousand odd competitors in The Record's contest who failed even to receive a brevet of authorship may be divided into three classes. First, more than 2,000 failed because they were careless about following the rules, and their stories had to be thrown out; while of those who really were admitted to competition perhaps 2,000 more failed even to be considered because they were careless about spelling, grammar, handwriting, neatness, etc. These things are minor matters, and in some cases they might be overlooked. But if one is to master language the very first thing he needs to STORY COMPOSITION. 9 know about words is how to spell them, and next lie must know how to put them together correctly — that is, grammatically. Some persons find bad spelling a natural weakness, and even some good writers do not spell well. But bad grammar will spoil even the best composition, and if one wishes to write the English language effectively he must first learn to write it grammatically. These ele- mentary matters are taught in all the schools, and must be presupposed before we can even talk about the construction of short stories as such. The next class may include some 6,000 or 7,000 stories, well-spelled and grammatically writ- ten, which were thrown out because the writers did not get started on the right track, did not know what a story ought to be, or how to begin it, or attempted something a thousand times too difficult. This is by far the largest class always, and it is pre-eminently the class that will profit most by a little direction and help. There were thousands of stories that began " Willie's Christmas," "Frankie's Christmas," " Jennie's Christmas," " Tommie's Christmas," " Billy's Christmas," and so on through the whole list of common names, and then the list all over again. These stories showed no 10 STORY COMPOSITION. lack of talent, no lack of natural ability; but they were not interesting. First of all, a story must have some interest for somebody. The art of short-story writing is first the art of interesting people, and any young competitor who succeeded in saying anything interesting succeeded in getting his story considered for a prize. Next to the Frankie-Johnnie- Willie-Tom mie class of stories was the class about poor boys who had a hard time and were helped on Christmas day by rich boys or girls. This seems more prom- ising, but, after all, it does not interest, because the same story has been told in one form or another so many thousand times. It is better than the commonplace details of how we went to grand- pa's, or how Teddie hung up his stocking and Santa Claus came down the chimney and filled it. The story of the poor little boy or girl who was lucky on Christmas day would be a good story if it were not so old. We want to be told of some- thing we have not heard about before, and some- thing a little different from the things we ourselves do every day. Those who wrote about the little newsboy or the little matchgirl came nearer being interesting, yet this class of stories was so old that STORY COMPOSITION. 11 it did not really seem fresh even to a staid old judge who had not read children's stories since he was a boy. But none of these writers can be said to have got on the right track. They all thought they could make up a story out of nothing. Now, there are two ways of finding material for a story, for it must be found — hunted up in some way. Gne is to steal it from some other story. Children are not the only ones who do that sort of thing, and in the world of letters it is called plagiarism. When a story is written out as a story it belongs absolutely and wholly to the man or woman or boy or girl who wrote it, and to try to make up another story out of the same idea, or even in the same manner, is universally considered theft pure and simple. But you may take a story that some one has told you and that has never been written out as a story, for when you tell it the telling is all your own. Or you may take an incident from history, for in turning an historical incident into a story you must invent conversation (which sel- dom or never is reported in history) , and the set- ting and construction of the story as a story are the author's own. Unless the author has added 12 STORY COMPOSITION. something of real, vital interest out of his own knowledge, a story cannot be said to be his. But for all that, though a story must be origi- nal, the idea of it must be hunted up. It cannot be evolved out of the point of one's pen, so to speak. To find a good idea for a story requires a great deal of hard work, and patient waiting and thinking things over. But by thinking long enough and hard enough almost any one can find one or two ideas that will be really interesting to some one else. The third class is composed of a thousand or two stories that might have been good if the writers had known how to tell them properly. The central idea in each was original and strange, and it evidently had interested the author, but some- how he failed to understand how it interested him, or why; and so he failed to get the really interest- ing thing into the story. An old novelist once said to me that Oliver Wendell Holmes' simile seemed to him best: A story in the mind is like a quart of molasses — it is a good story in the mind, a quart- ful; but when you try to turn it out it sticks to the sides and makes only a pint. STORY COMPOSITION. 13 STORY=WRITING AS AN EXERCISE IN COriPOSITION. If the teachers in the public schools knew how to manage short-story writing as a regular exercise in English for their pupils, there is no doubt that it would prove the most effective and practical method for teaching not only a command of good English and a knowledge of grammar, punctuation and the significance of words, but what is of more value than a command of language, namely, a command of one's thoughts. To understand and command our feelings, and to know what will interest and touch other people, are two pieces of knowledge that are never taught in the schools, but which would be of infinite value to every one of us if we could learn them. Now, the study of short-story writing as a school exercise will help children to information on both these matters. Of course in- struction as to our personal feelings cannot be given in the school, but the effort to write stories will make the writers think about themselves, and the teacher has an admirable opportunity to correct false sentiment, morbidity and so forth when he or she revises the stories the children have written. 14 STORY COMPOSITION. Besides, in a school exercise there is not much chance for sentimentality, and children are accus- tomed to write about seemingly delicate topics in a sane way, and consequently they are much more likely to treat them so in the practical experiences of life. Then as to the art of interesting people: School compositions are not calculated to excite much interest in any one. They are, and are meant to be, mere dry exercises in the collocation of words. But a story is equally good as an exer- cise on the mechanical side of writing and as a study in the art of interesting. Short story writing is the only practical means we know for getting directly at this general need in school education. PRACTICAL DIRECTIONS. Undoubtedly teachers would be only too glad to inaugurate a weekly exercise in story-writing with their classes in place of the usual composition if they only knew how to go about giving instruc- tion. # There are many textbooks on essay-writing which aid the teacher in giving instruction by the usual school-composition methods, but the new way of fiction has never been explored, no rules or direc- tions have been laid down, and desultory attempts STORY COMPOSITION. 15 have proved — let us be frank, and say — decided failures. The present writer has given long and careful study to the subject from the point of view of writ- ing himself, and he has experimented with a num- ber of pupils. The directions he gives he believes will prove practical in the results to be attained, and they are confessedly only experimental, and need testing in the class-room. If teachers would co-operate in this attempt to render the study of English more interesting and effective in our schools, no doubt an important step might be gained. WHERE TO BEGIN. As in every other study, short-story waiting must be learned by starting at the beginning — that is, with simple narrations. To start off on an analysis of sentiment, or the portrayal of a compli- cated character, or the description of a delicate scene, is sure to end in wreck. We cannot learn French by studying the verbs before we have mas- tered the nouns, nor can we begin on algebra before we know arithmetic. The great majority of fail- ures to make any progress with story-writing as 16 STORY COMPOSITION. an exercise comes from attempting too difficult subjects. THE FIRST EXERCISE. A skillful teacher will commence by asking her class to write a simple account of some inci- dent. She will say to her pupils: "Did you ever have a burglar in your house?" Why, yes! Some little tot is all excitement to tell the story of the burglar. Let that pupil write out the best ac- count of the story just as it happened, and send it to be corrected. It will be discovered that some details are elaborated to weariness, others are passed over very slightingly which we wish most to know about. The teacher's own interest will be her sure and infallible guide in judging of this first elemen- tary point. But the mass of children will never have lived in a house where a burglar has entered, and to ask those children to write a burglary story would be quite fatal to the end we have in mind — namely, to have each one describe a real incident in a way to interest. Perhaps some of the children have been in a runaway. For those who have had that experience, that is the subject to write about. STORY COMPOSITION. 17 Others, perhaps, have been present at a skating or swimming catastrophe. Let snch describe that. Others may have been in a train wreck; some have seen dangerons Indians; or have heard their par- ents or grandparents or a friend tell some exciting adventnre of the kind. No child bnt will have some interesting story in his mind, either of his own experience or an experience that has been told him by word of month. Under no circnmstances shonld a child be asked or enconraged to rewrite a story he has read. To do that defeats the whole end of story writing as a useful exercise. NEVER COPY. To many teachers it may appear that the best way of teaching their pupils to write a good story is to read them a story by Hans Christian Ander- sen or some other master. By listening to that a child may learn what a really good story is. But no mistake could be greater than this. The child's first impulse is to imitate. If he models his own story on one that has been read to him, and that is a finished work of art, he merely copies the mech- anical features and fails to think for himself. To rouse his mind to some original conception is the 18 STORY COMPOSITION. chief aim. Model compositions are almost un- known in school rhetorics, and model stories are as useless for elementary instruction. As soon as pupils have come to years of sufficient thought- fulness, when they really can analyze for them- selves, there is no better way than the use of models. The most up-to-date rhetorics are based on this method. Stevenson learned his wonderful style by "playing the sedulous ape," as he himself phrases it. But this is an advanced; method, not one for elementary use. THE RIGHT KIND OF ILLUSTRATIONS. Practical illustrations of course are the chief means of teaching, and practical illustrations alone will prove helpful in story-writing. But these must be drawn from the pupils themselves. Stories that have been written may be read aloud in the class, just as a declamation is given. The children will then feel instinctively whether the story is a good one or not, and instinctively the apter pupils will improve their method. Human nature will work out its own salvation, even with school child- ren in writing stories, if only it is given a perfectly open field, where its intuitions can be freely brought STORY COMPOSITION. 19 into play. If a particularly good story — I mean particular good material for a story — comes out in the exercises, after the original treatment has been read to the class they may be asked to rewrite the story, each one in his own way, and these various drafts may be read aloud by the teacher or the pupils who wrote them, so that the varying treat- ment may be compared by the pupils. PERSPECTIVE. The first exercise will be the simple narration of an incident, an adventure, an accident, a tale. Besides correcting it for sentence structure, the best choice of words, gracefulness of description, etc., the teacher will concentrate her attention on what I may call perspective. This depends directly on a sense for what is really interesting and what is not, and not a few teachers will have to study this mat- ter in the compositions of their pupils with some pains. The interesting item should be expanded in proportion to its interest, the uninteresting de- tail should be suppressed or condensed in propor- tion to its lack of interest. The art of narration consists almost wholly in giving the right amount of elaboration to each detail or center of interest. 20 STORY COMPOSITION. It is to story-writing what perspective is to drawing. To learn this perspective in fiction there is one very practical way. When the story has been read aloud certain portions will drag. Onr instinct always in- forms us of this. Let such passages be immediately cut out, however important they may seem to the progress of the story or however finely they are written. Cut them out. After these have been taken away the story will be found to be so much too short. To lengthen it, consider carefully what details can be elaborated with interest. You feel that you can give a little more space to this item, and a little more to that, and be perfectly interest- ing. Sometimes you fail in your attempt to rewrite. Read your story over and submit it to the same process again. Cut out the passages that drag and elaborate those that interest. When the interest is carried through unbroken from beginning to end you know that you have attained the true propor- tion, the genuine perspective. CONDUCTING A LESSON. The management of the first exercises should be as follows: Teacher will announce the story- writing a week in advance, asking pupils to send STORY COMPOSITION. 21 in a story as a preparation for that lesson hour, The subjects will not be left to the discretion of the children, however, but should be assigned be- forehand in this manner: The teacher will ask: Who had a burglary or robbery in his family? Hands will go up. The names are taken, and this subject assigned to these. Then she will ask: Who has been in a skating accident, or a runaway, or a train wreck, etc. Those who raise their hands for each of these will be assigned their peculiar topics. Those who remain without assignments will have to be questioned to find what peculiar experience each has had, or what tale he has heard from his grandfather or mother, etc. Then, if the exercise is on Monday, the stories may be sent in on Friday, and this will give the teacher time to glance them over in advance and pick out the most interesting. One or two may be analyzed carefully, in order to criticise them in the class after they have been read aloud by the pupils who write them. The reading and discussion of these stories form the work of the first lesson. For the second lesson the pupils will be asked to rewrite any single one of those that have been read aloud, not, of course, their own. These will be brought to the class for 22 STORY COMPOSITION. the second exercise, and will be exchanged among the pupils, and picked pupils will be asked to read and criticise — that is, point out bad use of lan- guage, bad grammar and bad narration (or what is uninteresting and drags, as well as what might be expanded). By this time the first draft of stories will have been corrected, and may be returned to the writers to be rewritten. The third exercise will be per- formed by the class itself, various pupils being called on to read, first the original draft of the story, mentioning after the reading the point to be corrected as marked by the teacher, and then the corrected draft, while comments are invited from the class as in the case of any other school exer- cise. Of course, only the practical points I have indicated should be discussed. Indiscriminate con- versation on all topics of life may be a temptation, but one to be avoided strictly. The detailed cor- rection of the rewritten drafts, if the teacher finds it occupies too much of her own time, might very profitably be done by higher classes or especially advanced pupils as a most excellent part of their own study. STORY COMPOSITION. 23 II. THE PRACTICAL CONSTRUCTION OF A SNAKE STORY. In the preceding article we gave general direc- tions for writing ont a simple narrative of an inci- dent or adventure. But when it comes to the actual doing, difficulties arise. We nearly all have had experiences which strike us as good material, but when written out they seem scrappy and insuf- ficient. It is no easy thing to produce a thoroughly readable narrative. To illustrate the practical process, let us take some incidents from an actual experience, and exhibit the process of building up a story. MATERIAL FOR A SNAKE STORY. On the plains west of the Missouri river rat- tlesnakes were once plentiful, if indeed they are not abundant now. I have heard a friend tell of walking out with his father when a boy to look at some grass they were intending to cut for hay. It was very high, nearly up to his boy's chin, and as they walked through it a rattlesnake was running about in a very lively manner, circling about them. 24 STORY COMPOSITION. Once it brushed past Him, and he felt its whole length against his shoe, by no means a comfortable sensation. At another time he was sleeping in a bedroom on a side of the frame house in which they lived that was being enlarged. It was sum- mer and very warm. One side of the bedroom had been taken bodily out and moved back a dozen feet or more, and the sides boarded up, making a room of twice the original size, of which the floor of only the old part of the room was intact. Moreover, on account of the heat a window-sash had been taken out of the window-frame and leaned against the wall under the window. Between this window, with its sash on the floor, and the bed there was only a narrow passage, perhaps three feet wide. One morning he woke up rather late and heard the clatter of knives and forks in the dining-room, and knew that the family were eating breakfast without him. So he jumped out of bed and hurried to dress. He hadn't proceeded very far when he heard a hiss and looking down he saw a young rattlesnake slowly crawling out from behind the window-sash, and holding its head up, looking all about. It shot its tongue out in a very uncanny way and started slowly for the door which stood STORY COMPOSITION. 25 ajar at the Head of the bed. That boy jumped on to the bed and called lustily for his mother, inform- ing her that there was a snake there. " Oh, no, " she said, "it is only a worm." He insisted that it was not a worm and presently she came to prove to him that it was. She opened the door and found herself face to face with a rattlesnake two or three feet long, that seemed trying to climb the door- post. You may be sure she retreated with some haste, and the hired man was called in to kill the reptile. After that my young friend was not accused of mistaking worms for snakes. BUILDING UP THE INTEREST. This is an incident, but it is rather a tame one. In order to make a good narrative out of it some- thing must be added, and that something may be taken from another incident. In the next house lived a young fellow of seventeen with his father and mother. They had a large herd of cattle which he looked after. One day when his mother and sister were the only persons at home, he came limping into the house and informed them that he had been bitten in the ankle, through his boot, by a rattlesnake. He was deathly white, and his 26 STORY COMPOSITION. mother, who was very fond of him, since he was the youngest of a large family and the only one of the boys left at home, was as much frightened as he. She pulled off his boot and stocking immedi- ately and gave him a large glass of whiskey and hot water, but her fear increasing every moment, she seized the ankle and sucked the poison out. By that act alone could the boy's life have been saved. In a few days he was all right again. Still another story, told by a friend who had lived in the Alleghany mountains: He and other young people were accustomed to pick blueberries on the sides of the mountain, which was infested with very large rattlesnakes. One day a boy and his sister were climbing up the mountain when they came upon a big snake, which the girl acci- dentally stepped on. The creature was roused in a minute and ready to bite, but was prevented from doing so by the boy's stepping on to its head, where for his own safety after saving his sister he was obliged to stand for an hour until help could be summoned to kill the snake. ONE STORY OUT OF THREE INCIDENTS. Out of these three narratives one good story STORY COMPOSITION. 27 might be woven. Naturally, the writer takes for the foundation his own experience, because he has in his mind's eye all the details, and can set them down somewhat as I have described the experience of the snake in the bedroom. Now, the boy who was bitten and whose mother sucked the poison out, might have been bitten in the bedroom. Our narrative goes very well up to the point of the appearance of the snake, but it is necessary that something interesting should happen at this point, and we effect this by simply putting the second story on to the end of the first. To make it still more interesting we bring in also a part of the third story. Two children are in the bedroom, — two little brothers, let us say. One of them in dressing, perhaps fooling when he should be put- ting his clothes on, steps on the snake as it crawls out from behind the sash, and is saved from being bitten only by his brother's putting his foot on the snake's head. The children call for help and the mother comes. The snake is killed, and then it is discovered that the brave little fellow has been bit- ten, and will die unless something effective is done at once. The mother sucks out the poison. 28 STORY COMPOSITION. HOW TO WRITE THE STORY OUT. Here we Have the material for a good story, a simple narrative of adventure, and the story is now blocked out. The next point is the method of tell- ing it. First, how should it begin? Observe the order in which we set down the facts in the little account of a personal experience. The story is located on the plains west of the Mis- souri river. There " rattlesnakes were plentiful." Next comes a little incident to show how plentiful they are, and how little people seem to mind them. THE OPENING PARAGRAPH. The good story-writer always begins with the thing that makes the story. In this case it is a rattlesnake. And almost in the same sentence he contrives to give the reader some idea of the place and the conditions. It helps to make a vivid picture in the mind. A snake story might be located in India, or Vermont, or South America. But the place alters the character of the story not a little. Perhaps we might open our tale thus : "On the plains west of the Missouri river rat- tlesnakes are abundant. They live in squirrels' holes in the prairie, and come out at all times STORY COMPOSITION. 29 when they find it warm enongh and crawl abont in the grass, curl up under doorsteps, secrete them- selves in bedrooms ; — in fact, you never know where a rattlesnake may not turn up. Men think noth- ing of walking through the tall grass and feeling a hard, scaly body rubbing against the thick leather of their shoes, as familiarly as a purring cat." This paragraph also illustrates the art of amplifying, and shows how important it is that the writer should know by personal experience the subject he chooses. In speaking of rattlesnakes, the keystone of our story, we mention a number of interesting facts, incidentally, all going to show the general prevalence of the snakes. We wish to make the introductory paragraph long enough to impress the reader with the fact that snakes are common on the plains. To get this clearly in mind, his thoughts must be kept on the subject a certain length of time, — the length of time that it takes him to read this paragraph. The time is also well utilized in giving facts of useful informa- tion about the habits of the snakes. THE REMAINDER o£ THE STORY. Next come the details of the bedroom and the 30 STORY COMPOSITION. location. Every important fact is set down. It was summer, and very warm: that explains the window sash being out. The room had been enlarged and only the floor of the original portion was intact: that explains how the snake got in. The artistic narrator does not say these things; but he sets down all his facts in the right place, so that his readers can put two and two together for themselves and understand the circumstances. The way in which the facts are set down in the paragraph we have given in some detail in the beginning of this article will show how the imagin- ary circumstances should be described, which are to follow the discovery of the snake, crawling out from behind the sash. It was easy to put down the right details in the part of the story the writer himself had experienced; he simply describes as he remembers, as he actually saw. Beginning with an actual incident gets the mind into the right habit, and it is not so difficult to fill out the imagin- ary picture. A person with a good imagination can see the two children instead of one, the scuffle while they are dressing, the stepping on the snake and the angry hiss which follows, perhaps the slip- ping and falling of the child who has stepped on STORY COMPOSITION. 31 the snake, and the quick wit of the other boy in putting his foot on the head of the reptile. Just how he was bitten it is not necessary to say. In the excitement nobody knows. But when it is all over the bite is discovered. The writing of a good narrative consists in filling out all the little details of this incident, put- ting down realistically everything that should have happened. It is doubtless the hardest thing in the whole art of story-writing, though it seems the easiest. 32 STORY COMPOSITION. III. THE ART OF DESCRIPTION. The art of short story writing is more the art of thinking than of nsing words. A person with a very small command of langnage may write a good story if his thoughts supply him the right thing to say. The study of this art in the schools would do more to cultivate accurate, truthful, every day observation than any other study that could be in- vented. Sometimes, for the purpose of cultivating observation, an exercise is assigned requiring the pupil to describe everything he saw on the way to school, in order to ascertain which of the pupils saw the most. This is excellent as far as it goes, but it is very limited in its application. It is generally assumed that story-writing is an exercise of the imagination and not particularly of the observing powers. But this is an error. The secret of good description is to give details which have actually been observed by the writer. The real picture may be incomplete and he may call in his imagination to assist in filling it out; but first hand observation must be exhausted first. Indeed, where one memory picture is incomplete, another can often be pieced STORY COMPOSITION. 33 on with great success, as in the case of the narrative of a snake story in the preceding chapter. OBSERVATION THE BASIS FOR DESCRIPTION. The advantage in the matter of interest of a description direct from nature over one constructed purely from general hearsay — in other words, out of the imagination, — lies in the fact that if the most ordinary person really observes he will see and in- clude in his description something novel and inter esting, whereas the so-called imaginary description will be quite bare. Take the following, for in- stance, the opening paragraph of an otherwise very good story: TWO ILLUSTRATIONS. "Among the mountains of the far north, where the dark Norwegian pines lift their dusky arms to heaven and stand like sentinels to defend the in- habitants of the valley, where the lovely Friga and the hammer-throwing Thor hold divine sway, lies the estate of Hakou, the great earl of Sogne." Compare with the preceding this paragraph from Bret Harte's "The Luck of Roaring Camp," a description of an assemblage of men evidently made from actual observation: 34 STORY COMPOSITION. " The assemblage numbered about a hundred men. One or two of these were actual fugitives from justice, some were criminal, and all were reck- less. Physically, they exhibited no indications of their past lives and character. The greatest scamp had a Raphael face, with a profusion of blond hair; Oakhurst, a gambler, had the melancholy air and intellectual abstraction of a Hamlet; the coolest and most courageous man was scarcely over frve feet in height, with a soft voice and an embarrassed, timid manner. The term * roughs/ applied to them, was a distinction rather than a definition." The man merely with an imagination would have described the hard faces, the rough manners, the cold, reckless eyes of this assemblage of miners. Bret Harte, from having actually seen that of which he was writing, is able to make his descrip- tion interesting by the strangeness what he says. A VERY SIMPLE DESCRIPTION. If the pupil should complain that Bret Harte uses figures of speech in his description which are rather hard of execution, certainly the following very simple description, which is also excellent, is within the range of all: STORY COMPOSITION. 35 " The trapper's household outfit consisted of a table, standing against the side of the wall; a crude but comfortable bench, made of half a log, that stood before the table, and a bunk high up in a corner, serving for his bed, in which a thick layer of pine boughs formed a mattress.' Beneath this bunk lay various traps, bundles of furs, and other articles. On the opposite wall stood a hollowed out log which formed a serviceable washbasin. Over this, pans and other kitchen utensils were hung, neatly washed, for he was clean in his ways, indicating a clean character." This little description, actually written by a young girl, lacks the vigorous command of lan- guage and imagery of Bret Harte's description of the company of miners; but it is good because the writer confines herself to facts, and the slight awk- wardness of phrasing is passed over in the in- terest of the simple picture. DESCRIPTION AN EXERCISE IN THE USE OF ADJECTIVES. FIRE. The writing of descriptions is an exercise in the use of adjectives, and one that should be fol- lowed out repeated!}/ and persistently, never al- 36 STQRY COMPOSITION. lowing the pupil to lapse into vague fineries. The first subject for description that suggests itself is fire. Nothing is more wonderful or more beautiful than fire, and every one has seen it. Some have seen the burning of immense buildings, with the great sheets and tongues of flames lapping up to heaven against an inky black sky; they will re- member the crackling of timbers, the charred but still glowing rafters as they break and fall, the sud- den pouring out of smoke through a window that has fallen in, the glowing sticks and cinders on the ground below. But those who have not seen a great building burn, have at least watched the glowing coals in an open grate, with its little tongues of flame that burn a full foot above the coals, as if they had run away and were being chased by a big old father flame; the blue light hovering softly over the coals themselves; and then the fall- ing of the coal into gray ashes, the gradual dying out of the heat and the glow, and at last the cold hearth, with only one faint gleam coming out the dark background. SUBJECTS FOR DESCRIPTION. Other common and easy subjects for descrip- STORY COMPOSITION. 37 tion are a thunder-storm, a snow-storm, a hot day in July, a very cold day in winter, a skating party, the scampering about of the children in a large school at recess, a funeral, a wedding, a* baby-show, and so on and so on. In addition to these material pictures, which are to be drawn simply as pic- tures, without incident of any kind, the pupils as they advance may be asked to describe their feelings on various occasions, as they feel when it is believed that a brother or friend has fallen into a pond or otherwise been killed or injured; and in connection with this the fear felt at the thought of being punished for doing something wrong; or the fear felt in view of a possible failure in speaking a piece or reciting a lesson. Advanced pupils may be very greatly interested by having their minds turned toward a study of the differences in the emo- tion of fear on the various occasions. TO ACQUIRE FACILITY IN THE USE OF LANGUAGE. The first, the great difficulty, is to acquire the habit of actually examining in our minds our own real experiences of whatever kind, the habit of look- ing at a thing long enough and hard enough to see what there really is in it. Few people take the time 38 STORY COMPOSITION. or trouble to learn to concentrate their minds; and this is one of the greatest reasons why they should be taught to do so. And next to this is the question of finding suitable words, chiefly adjectives, to describe what has been observed. Thinking is more im- portant than expressing; but expressing is only less important. To get the necessary words and phrases, especially to put a record of our emotions on paper, requires long and thorough practice. In order to increase this facility the pupil should read with great care a passage from a well known writer, and then try to reproduce it in as good language as the original. The passage should be short, and should be examined with great attention. To read it over once is not enough; twenty times would not be too many even for the brightest. These pas- sages, however, should be selected with care. AN ILLUSTRATION FROM DICKENS. The writer who has the greatest facility in common, everyday description, is probably Dickens. Take the description of Scrooge at the beginning of "A Christmas Carol," and this paragraph in par- ticular: " Oh! but he was a tight-fisted hand at the STORY COMPOSITION. 39 grindstone, was Scrooge; a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner ! External heat and cold had little influence on him. No warmth could warm, no cold could chill him. No wind that blew was bitterer than he, no pelting rain less open to entreaty. Foul weather didn't know where to have him. The heaviest rain and snow and hail and sleet could boast of the advantage over him in only one respect, — they often 'came down' handsomely, and Scrooge never did." The facts at the bottom of this description are common and simple enough. Who of us has not seen a grasping old miser! But nobody ever found such a multitude of words and phrases in which to express the idea. It is not only adjectives that he uses, but all sorts of phrases and comparisons. ANOTHER FROM MACAULAY. For an entirely different kind of description, read the short passage in Macaulay's "Essay on Milton " in which he describes the Puritans. Study with care even this short paragraph: "They were, as a body, unpopular; they could not defend themselves; and the public would not take them, under its protection. They were aban- 40 STORY COMPOSITION. doned, therefore, without reserve, to the tender mercies of the satirists and dramatists. The osten- tatious simplicity of their dress, their sour aspect, their nasal twang, their stiff posture, their long graces, their Hebrew names, the Scriptural phrases which they introduced on every occasion, their .con- tempt of human learning, their detestation of polite amusements, were indeed fair game for the laughers. " NOT THE WAY TO LEARN DESCRIPTION. But the study of such passages as these will never teach the art of description. They are too difficult, too unnatural, too far away from the things the pupil has actually seen and heard with his own eyes and ears. They do, however, teach new methods of expression when the pupil has exhausted his own original stock. STORY COMPOSITION. 41 IV. PLOT=CONSTRUCTION. PAGINATION. The first thing in the study of story-writing is to train the mind to careful, habitual observation of small details. Observation comes first, imagina- tion afterward. But now we will see what is the practical way of using the imagination in building up a story. In the snake story we saw that the actual facts and pictures which we have in our memories are not enough. They must be modified, enlarged, built up. The difficulties on this head may be illustrated by the following story, one of the brevet winners in The Chicago Record's Christ- mas Competition (1896). An actual spoon, dating back seventy years, was found in a stove, and had probably come out of the kindling wood, taken from an old tree near the house, that had lately been cut down. About this single fact the young writer of this story attempted to weave an imagin- ary plot: «