The Art and the Business of Story Writing (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1912. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... and whose effects constitute atmosphere. How futile it would have been, then, to have essayed intensifying the idea in, say, the parable of the prodigal son by descanting upon the calm and comfort of his old homestead or upon the filth of the courtyards where he devoured husks in the last days of folly Doubtless such word-painting would have a power all its own--but this very excellence would have here become a vice, for it would have muffled the still, small voice of the sermon. One might as well try to accentuate the richness of human song with an accompaniment of thunder-claps and surf tumult. Wherever atmosphere distorts or obscures the single effect, description should be as flavorless and as unsuggestive as possible. It should vanish behind the story, even as it does in all great thematic narratives turning around ethical and religious ideas. But all such stories, be it repeated, are not stories with atmosphere, either by right or in fact. Hence what we have been saying about the handling of description does not apply to them. b. Atmosphere is integrated intensively by letting the action of characters in the story be directed toward or otherwise involve such elements of the setting as are intimately connected with the tone of the latter. We saw, a moment ago, that one way of securing effective atmosphere is to characterize its effect. We have now to ask the more special question: which effect, if any, lends itself best to such characterizing? Broadly speaking, the answer runs thus: the best effect is the one to which the people of the story respond in a manner that affects the course of the story somehow. For such an effect is most closely woven into the texture of the plot itself. Good literature abounds with instances of this, but there is none superior...