How to Write a Novel Part 9

and remarks: "Many of our short stories are constructed on the principle of these verses. So few words are used, that the reader does not feel he is reading a story, but an outline." Mr Hocking has the British Public on his side, no doubt, but the great British Public is not always right, as he appears to believe.

I think if the reader will study the short stories of Guy de Maupa.s.sant and Mr Frederic Wedmore, and digest the advice given above, he will know enough to begin his work. Each experiment will enlarge his vision and discipline his pen, so that when he has accomplished something like tolerable success, he may safely attempt the larger canvas on the lines laid down in the preceding chapters.

FOOTNOTES:

[155:A] _Daily Chronicle_, June 22, 1899.

[159:A] _The International Monthly_, vol. i.

[160:A] _The Young Man._

CHAPTER XII

SUCCESS: AND SOME OF ITS MINOR CONDITIONS

The Truth about Success

There are two kinds of success in fiction--commercial and literary; and sometimes a writer is able to combine the two. Thomas Hardy is an example of the writer who produces literature and has large sales. On the other hand, there are many writers who succeed in one direction, but not in the other. The works of Marie Corelli have an amazing circulation, but they are not regarded as literature; whereas such genuine work as that of Mr Quiller Couch has to be content with sales far less extensive.

Now Thomas Hardy, Marie Corelli, and Quiller Couch have all succeeded, but in different ways. No doubt the reader would prefer to succeed in the manner of Hardy, but if he can't do it, he must be content to succeed in the best way he can. It is easy to talk about Miss Corelli's "rot" and "bosh" and "high falutin," but long columns of figures in a publisher's ledger mean something after all. They do not necessarily mean literary merit, delicate insight, or beautiful characterisation; they probably mean a keen sense of what the public likes, and a power to tickle its palate in an agreeable manner. Still, not every man or woman is able to do this, and although such a success may not rank as one of the first order, it _is_ a success which n.o.body can gainsay. Literary journals have been inst.i.tuting "inquiries" into the cases of men like Mr Silas Hocking and the Rev. E. P. Roe: why have they a circulation numbered by the million? No "inquiry" is needed. They are literary merchantmen who have studied the book-market thoroughly, and as a result they know what is wanted and supply it. Let them have their reward without mean and angry demur.

However one may try to explain the fact, it is none the less true that genuine literature often fails to pay the expenses of publication; at any rate, if it accomplishes more than that, it is infinitesimal as compared with the huge sales of inferior work. I do not know the circulation of Mr Henry Harland's "Comedies and Errors"--possibly it has been moderate--but I would rather be the author of this volume of beautiful workmans.h.i.+p than of all the works of Marie Corelli--the bags of gold notwithstanding. Of course, this is merely a personal preference with which the reader may have no sympathy; but the fact remains that, if a writer produces real literature and it does not sell, he has not therefore failed in his purpose; he may not receive many cheques from his publisher, but it is real compensation to have an audience, "fit though few."

On the general question of literary success, George Henry Lewes says: "We may lay it down, as a rule, that no work ever succeeded, even for a day, but it deserved that success; no work ever failed but under conditions which made failure inevitable. This will seem hard to men who feel that, in their case, neglect arises from prejudice or stupidity.

Yet it is true even in extreme cases; true even when the work once neglected has since been acknowledged superior to the works which for a time eclipsed it. Success, temporary or enduring, is the measure of the relation, temporary or enduring, which exists between a work and the public mind."[167:A]

Failure has a still more fruitful cause--namely, the misdirection of talent. "Men are constantly attempting, without special apt.i.tude, work for which special apt.i.tude is indispensable.

'On peut etre honnete homme et faire mal des vers.'

A man may be variously accomplished and yet be a feeble poet. He may be a real poet, yet a feeble dramatist. He may have dramatic faculty, yet be a feeble novelist. He may be a good story-teller, yet a shallow thinker and a slip-shod writer. For success in any special kind of work, it is obvious that a special talent is requisite; but obvious as this seems, when stated as a general proposition, it rarely serves to check a mistaken presumption. There are many writers endowed with a certain susceptibility to the graces and refinements of literature, which has been fostered by culture till they have mistaken it for native power; and these men being dest.i.tute of native power are forced to imitate what others have created. They can understand how a man may have musical sensibility, and yet not be a good singer; but they fail to understand, at least in their own case, how a man may have literary sensibility, yet not be a good story-teller or an effective dramatist."[168:A]

The conclusion of the whole matter is this: determine what your projected work is to do; if you are going to offer it in a popular market, give the public plenty for its money, and spice it well; if you are going to offer a sacrifice to the G.o.ddess of Art, be content if you receive no more applause than that which comes from the few wors.h.i.+ppers who surround the sacred shrine.

FOOTNOTES:

[167:A] "The Principles of Success in Literature," p. 10.

[168:A] "The Principles of Success in Literature," p. 7.

SUCCESS

Minor Conditions of Success

1. Good literature has the same value in ma.n.u.script as in typescript, but from the standpoint of author and publisher, it can hardly be said to have the same chances. Penmans.h.i.+p does not tend to improve, and some of the scrawly MSS. sent in to publishers are enough to create dismay in the stoutest heart. It is pure affectation to pretend to be above such small matters. Just as a dinner is all the more appetising because it is neatly and daintily served, so a _MS._ has better chances of being read and appreciated when set out in type-written characters.

2. Be sure that you are sending your _MS._ to the right publisher.

Novels with a strongly developed moral purpose are not exactly the kind of thing wanted by Mr Heinemann; and if you have anything like "The Woman Who Did," don't send it to a Sunday School Publis.h.i.+ng Company.

These suppositions are no doubt absurd in the extreme, but they will serve my purpose in pointing out the careless way in which many beginners dispose of their wares. Nearly all publishers specialise in some kind of literature, and it is the novelist's duty to study these types from publishers' catalogues, providing, of course, he does not know them already. The commercial instinct is proverbially lacking in authors; if it were not we should witness less frequently the spectacle of portly MSS. being sent out haphazard to publisher after publisher.

3. Perhaps my third point ought to have come first. It relates to the obtaining of an expert's views on the matter and form of your story.

This will cost you a guinea, perhaps more, but it will save your time and hasten the possibilities of success. You can easily spend a guinea in postage and two or three more in having the MS. re-typed,--and yet the tale be ever the same--"Declined with thanks." Spare yourself many disappointments by putting your literary efforts before a competent critic, and let him point out the crudities, the digressions, and those weaknesses which betray the 'prentice hand. It will not be pleasant to see a pen line through your "glorious" pa.s.sages, or two blue pencil marks across a favourite piece of dialogue, but it is better to know your defects at once than to discover them by painful and constant rejections.

4. Be willing to learn; have no fear of hard work; do the best, and write the best that is in you; and never ape anybody, but be yourself.

APPENDICES

APPENDIX I

THE PHILOSOPHY OF COMPOSITION[175:1]

By EDGAR ALLAN POE

Charles d.i.c.kens, in a note now lying before me, alluding to an examination I once made of the mechanism of "Barnaby Rudge," says--"By the way, are you aware that G.o.dwin wrote his 'Caleb Williams' backwards?

He first involved his hero in a web of difficulties, forming the second volume, and then, for the first, cast about him for some mode of accounting for what had been done."

I cannot think this the _precise_ mode of procedure on the part of G.o.dwin--and indeed what he himself acknowledges, is not altogether in accordance with Mr. d.i.c.kens' idea--but the author of "Caleb Williams"

was too good an artist not to perceive the advantage derivable from at least a somewhat similar process. Nothing is more clear than that every plot, worth the name, must be elaborated to its _denouement_ before anything be attempted with the pen. It is only with the _denouement_ constantly in view that we can give a plot its indispensable air of consequence, or causation, by making the incidents, and especially the tone at all points, tend to the development of the intention.

There is a radical error, I think, in the usual mode of constructing a story. Either history affords a thesis--or one is suggested by an incident of the day--or, at best, the author sets himself to work in the combination of striking events to form merely the basis of his narrative--designing, generally, to fill in with description, dialogue, or authorial comment, whatever crevices of fact, or action, may, from page to page, render themselves apparent.

I prefer commencing with the consideration of an _effect_. Keeping originality _always_ in view--for he is false to himself who ventures to dispense with so obvious and so easily attainable a source of interest--I say to myself, in the first place, "Of the innumerable effects, or impressions, of which the heart, the intellect, or (more generally) the soul is susceptible, what one shall I, on the present occasion, select?" Having chosen a novel, first, and secondly a vivid effect, I consider whether it can be best wrought by incident or tone--whether by ordinary incidents and peculiar tone, or the converse, or by peculiarity both of incident and tone--afterward looking about me (or rather within) for such combinations of event, or tone, as shall best aid me in the construction of the effect.

I have often thought how interesting a magazine paper might be written by any author who would--that is to say, who could--detail, step by step, the processes by which any one of his compositions attained its ultimate point of completion. Why such a paper has never been given to the world, I am much at a loss to say--but, perhaps, the authorial vanity has had more to do with the omission than any one other cause.

Most writers--poets in especial--prefer having it understood that they compose by a species of fine frenzy--an ecstatic intuition--and would positively shudder at letting the public take a peep behind the scenes, at the elaborate and vacillating crudities of thought--at the true purposes seized only at the last moment--at the innumerable glimpses of idea that arrived not at the maturity of full view--at the fully matured fancies discarded in despair as unmanageable--at the cautious selections and rejections--at the painful erasures and interpolations--in a word, at the wheels and pinions--the tackle for scene-s.h.i.+fting--the stepladders, and demon-traps--the c.o.c.k's feathers, the red paint and the black patches, which, in ninety-nine cases out of the hundred, const.i.tute the properties of the literary _histrio_.

I am aware, on the other hand, that the case is by no means common, in which an author is at all in condition to retrace the steps by which his conclusions have been attained. In general, suggestions, having arisen pell-mell, are pursued and forgotten in a similar manner.

For my own part, I have neither sympathy with the repugnance alluded to, nor, at any time, the least difficulty in recalling to mind the progressive steps of any of my compositions; and, since the interest of an a.n.a.lysis, or reconstruction, such as I have considered a _desideratum_, is quite independent of any real or fancied interest in the thing a.n.a.lysed, it will not be regarded as a breach of decorum on my part to show the _modus operandi_ by which some one of my own works was put together. I select "The Raven" as most generally known. It is my design to render it manifest that no one point in its composition is referable either to accident or intuition--that the work proceeded, step by step, to its completion with the precision and rigid consequence of a mathematical problem.

Let us dismiss, as irrelevant to the poem, _per se_, the circ.u.mstance--or say the necessity--which, in the first place, gave rise to the intention of composing _a_ poem that should suit at once the popular and the critical taste.