The "how to" Series

HOW TO WRITE A NOVEL

The "how to" Series

HOW TO WRITE A
NOVEL

A PRACTICAL GUIDE TO THE ART
OF FICTION

LONDON
GRANT RICHARDS
9 HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN, W.C.
1901

PREFACE

This little book is one which so well explains itself that no introductory word is needed; and I only venture to intrude a sentence or two here with a view to explain the style in which I have conveyed my ideas. I desired to be plain and practical, and therefore chose the direct and epistolary form as being most suitable for the purpose in hand.

CONTENTS

HOW TO WRITE A NOVEL

CHAPTER I

THE OBJECT IN VIEW

I am setting myself a task which some people would call very ambitious; others would call it by a name not quite so polite; and a considerable number would say it was positively absurd, accompanying their criticism with derisive laughter. Having discussed the possibility of teaching the art of writing fiction with a good many different kinds of people, I know quite intimately the opinions which are likely to be expressed about this little book; and although I do not intend to burden the reader with an account of their respective merits, I do intend to make my own position as clear as possible. First of all, I will examine the results of a recent symposium on the general question.[1:A] When asked as to the practicability of a School of Fiction, Messrs Robert Barr, G. Manville Fenn, M. Betham Edwards, Arthur Morrison, G. B. Burgin, C. J. C. Hyne, and "Mr" John Oliver Hobbes declared against it; Miss Mary L. Pendered and Miss Clementina Black—with certain reservations—spoke in favour of such an institution. True, these names do not include all representatives of the high places in Fiction, but they are quite respectable enough for my purpose. It will be seen that the vote is adverse to the object I have in view. Why? Well, here are a few reasons. Mr Morrison affirms that writing as a trade is far too pleasant an idea; John Oliver Hobbes is of opinion that it is impossible to teach anyone how to produce a work of imagination; and Mr G. B. Burgin asserts that genius is its own teacher—a remark characterised by unwitting modesty. Now, with the spirit of these convictions I am not disposed to quarrel. This is an age which imagines that everything can be crammed into the limits of an academical curriculum; and there are actually some people who would not hesitate to endow a chair of "Ideas and Imagination." We need to be reminded occasionally that there are incommunicable elements in all art.

An Inevitable Comparison

But the question arises: If there be an art of literature, why cannot its principles be taught and practised as well as those of any other art? We have schools of Painting, Sculpture, and Music—why not a school of Fiction? Let it be supposed that a would-be artist has conceived a brilliant idea which he is anxious to embody in literature or put on a canvas. In order to do so, he must observe certain well-established rules which we may call the grammar of art: for just as in literature a man may express beautiful ideas in ungrammatical language, and without any sense of relationship or development, so may the same ideas be put in a picture, and yet the art be of the crudest. Now, in what way will our would-be artist become acquainted with those rules? The answer is simple. If his genius had been of the first order he would have known them intuitively: the society of men and women, of great books and fine pictures, would have provided sufficient stimuli to bring forth the best productions of his mind. Thus Shakespeare was never taught the principles of dramatic art; Bach had an instinctive appreciation of the laws of harmony; and Turner had the same insight into laws of painting. These were artists of the front rank: they simply looked—and understood.

But if his powers belonged to the order which is called talent, he would have to do one of two things: either stumble upon these rules one by one and learn them by experience—or be taught them in their true order by others, in which case an Institute of Literary Art would already exist in an embryonic stage. Why should it not be developed into a matured school? Is it that the dignity of genius forbids it, or that pupilage is half a disgrace? True genius never shuns the marks of the learner. Even Shakespeare grew in the understanding of art and in his power of handling its elements. Professor Dowden says: "In the 'Two Gentlemen of Verona,' Porteus, the fickle, is set over against Valentine the faithful; Sylvia, the bright and intellectual, is set over against Julia, the ardent and tender; Launce, the humorist, is set over against Speed, the wit. This indicates a certain want of confidence on the part of the poet; he fears the weight of too much liberty. He cannot yet feel that his structure is secure without a mechanism to support the structure. He endeavours to attain unity of effect less by the inspiration of a common life than by the disposition of parts. In the early plays structure determines function; in the later plays organisation is preceded by life."[5:A]

A Model Lesson in Novel-Writing

When certain grumpy folk ask: "How do you propose to draw up your lessons on 'The way to find Local Colour'; 'Plotting'; 'How to manage a Love-Scene,' and so forth?" it is expected that a writer like myself will be greatly disconcerted. Not at all. It so happens that a distinguished critic, now deceased, once delivered himself on the possibility of teaching literary art, and I propose to quote a paragraph or two from his article. "The morning finds the master in his working arm-chair; and seated about the room which is generally the study, but is now the studio, are some half-dozen pupils. The subject for the hour is narrative-construction, and the master holds in his hand a small MS. which, as he slowly reads it aloud, proves to be a somewhat elaborate synopsis of the story of one of his own published or projected novels. The reading over, students are free to state objections, or to ask questions. One remarks that the dénouement is brought about by a mere accident, and therefore seems to lack the inevitableness which, the master has always taught, is essential to organic unity. The criticism is recognised as intelligent, but the master shows that the accident has not the purely fortuitous character which renders it obnoxious to the general objection. While it is technically an accident, it is in reality hardly accidental, but an occurrence which fits naturally into an opening provided by a given set of circumstances, the circumstances having been brought about by a course of action which is vitally characteristic of the person whose fate is involved. Then the master himself will ask a question. 'The students,' he says, 'will have noticed that a character who takes no important part in the action until the story is more than half told, makes an insignificant and unnoticeable appearance in a very early chapter, where he seems a purposeless and irrelevant intrusion.' They have paper before them, and he gives them twenty minutes in which to state their opinion as to whether this premature appearance is, or is not, justified by the canons of narrative art, giving, of course, the reasons upon which that opinion has been formed. The papers are handed in to be reported upon next morning, and the lesson is at an end."[7:A]

This is James Ashcroft Noble's idea of handling a theme in fiction; one of a large and varied number. To me it is a feasible plan emanating from a man who was the sanest of literary advisers. If it be objected that Mr Noble was only a critic and not a novelist, perhaps a word from Sir Walter Besant may add the needful element of authority. "I can conceive of a lecturer dissecting a work, or a series of works, showing how the thing sprang first from a central figure in a central group; how there arose about this group, scenery, the setting of the fable; how the atmosphere became presently charged with the presence of mankind, other characters attaching themselves to the group; how situations, scenes, conversations, led up little by little to the full development of this central idea. I can also conceive of a School of Fiction in which the students should be made to practise observation, description, dialogue, and dramatic effects. The student, in fact, would be taught how to use his tools." A reading-class for the artistic study of great writers could not be other than helpful. One lesson might be devoted to the way in which the best authors foreshadowed crises and important turns in events. An example may be found in "Julius Cæsar," where, in the second scene, the soothsayer says:

—a solitary voice in strange contrast with those by whom he is surrounded, and preparing us for the dark deed upon which the play is based. Or the text-book might be a modern novel—Hardy's "Well-Beloved" for instance—a work full of delicate literary craftsmanship. The storm which overtook Pierston and Miss Bencomb is prepared for—first by the conversation of two men who pass them on the road, and one of whom casually remarks that the weather seems likely to change; then Pierston himself observes "the evening—louring"; finally, and most suddenly, the rain descends in perfect fury.

The Teachable and the Unteachable

I hope my position is now beginning to be tolerably clear to the reader. I address myself to the man or woman of talent—those people who have writing ability, but who need instruction in the manipulation of characters, the formation of plots, and a host of other points with which I shall deal hereafter. As to what is teachable, and not teachable, in writing novels, perhaps I may be permitted to use a close analogy. Style, per se, is absolutely unteachable simply because it is the man himself; you cannot teach personality. Can Dickens, Thackeray, and George Meredith be reduced to an academic schedule? Never. Every soul of man is an individual entity and cannot be reproduced. But although style is incommunicable, the writing of easy, graceful English can be taught in any class-room—that is to say, the structure of sentences and paragraphs, the logical sequence of thought, and the secret of forceful expression are capable of exact scientific treatment.

In like manner, although no school could turn out novelists to order—a supply of Stevensons annually, and a brace of Hardys every two years—there is yet enough common material in all art-work to be mapped out in a course of lessons. I shall show that the two great requisites of novel-writing are (1) a good story to tell, and (2) ability to tell it effectively. Briefly stated, my position is this: no teaching can produce "good stories to tell," but it can increase the power of "the telling," and change it from crude and ineffective methods to those which reach the apex of developed art. Of course there are dangers to be avoided, and the chief of them is that mechanical correctness, "so praiseworthy and so intolerable," as Lowell says in his essay on Lessing. But this need not be an insurmountable difficulty. A truly educated man never labours to speak correctly; being educated, grammatical language follows as a necessary consequence. The same is true of the artist: when he has learned the secrets of literature, he puts away all thoughts of rule and law—nay, in time, his very ideas assume artistic form.

FOOTNOTES:

CHAPTER II

A GOOD STORY TO TELL

Where do Novelists get their Stories from?

I said a moment ago that no teaching could impart a story. If you cannot invent one for yourself, by observation of life and sympathetic insight into human nature, you may depend upon it that you are not called to be a writer of novels. Then where, it may be asked, do novelists get their stories? Well, they hardly know themselves; they say the ideas "come." For instance, here is the way Mr Baring Gould describes the advent of "Mehalah." "One day in Essex, a friend, a captain in the coastguard, invited me to accompany him on a cruise among the creeks in the estuary of the Maldon river—the Blackwater. I went out, and we spent the day running among mud flats and low holms, covered with coarse grass and wild lavender, and startling wild-fowl. We stopped at a ruined farm built on arches above this marsh to eat some lunch; no glass was in the windows, and the raw wind howled in and swept around us. That night I was laid up with a heavy cold. I tossed in bed and was in the marshes in imagination, listening to the wind and the lap of the tide; and 'Mehalah' naturally rose out of it all, a tragic gloomy tale."[13:A]

Exactly. "Mehalah" rose; that is enough! If ideas, plots of stories, and new groupings of character do not "rise" in your mind, it is simply because you lack the power to originate them spontaneously. Take the somewhat fabulous story of Newton and the apple. Many a man before Sir Isaac had seen an apple fall, but not one of them used that observation as he did. In the same way there are scores of men who have the same experiences and live the same kind of life, but it occurs to only one among their number to gather up these experiences into an interesting narrative. Why should it "occur" to one and not the others? Because the one has literary gifts and literary impetus, and the others—haven't.

Is there a Deeper Question?

Having dealt with that side of the subject, I should like to say that all novelists have their own methods of obtaining raw material for stories. By raw material I mean those facts of life which give birth to narrative ideas. It is said of Thomas Hardy that he never rides in an omnibus or railway carriage without mentally inventing the history of every traveller. One has to beware of fables in writing of such men, but I have no reason to doubt the statement just made. I do not make it with the intention of advocating anybody to go and do likewise, but as illustrating one way of studying human nature and developing the imaginative faculty.

It will be necessary to speak of observation a good many times in the course of these remarks, and one might as well say what the word really means. Does it mean "seeing things"? A great deal more than that. It is very easy to "see things" and yet not observe at all. If you want ideas for stories, or characters with which to form a longer narrative, you must not only use your eyes but your mind. What is wanted is observation with inference; or, to be more correct, with imagination. Make sure that you know the traits of character that are typically human; those which are the same in a Boer, a Hindu, or a Chinaman. It is not difficult to mark the special points of each of these as distinct from the Englishman; but your first duty is to know human nature per se. How is that knowledge to be obtained? do you say! Well, begin with yourself; there is ample scope in that direction. And when you are tired of looking within—look without. Enter a tram-car and listen to the people talking. Who talks the loudest? What kind of woman is it who always gives the conductor most trouble? The man who sits at the far end of the car in a shabby coat, and who is regarding his boots with a fixed, anxious stare—what is he thinking about? and what is his history? Then a baby begins to yell, and its mother cannot soothe it. One old man smiles benignly on the struggling infant, but the old man next to him looks "daggers." And why?

To see character in action there is no finer vantage-point than the top of a London omnibus. Watch the way in which people walk; notice their forms of salutation when they meet; and study the expressions on their faces. Tragedy and comedy are everywhere, and you have not to go beneath the surface of life in order to find them. It sounds prosaic enough to speak of studying human nature at a railway station, but such places are brimful of event. I know more than one novelist who has found his "motif" by quietly watching the crowd on a platform from behind a waiting-room window. Wherever humanity congregates there should the student be. Not that he should restrict his observations to men and women in groups or masses—he must cover all the ground by including individuals who are to be specially considered. The logician's terms come in handy at this point: extensive and intensive—such must be the methods of a beginner's analysis of his fellow-creatures.

What about the Newspapers?

The daily press is the great mirror of human events. When we open the paper at our breakfast table we find a literal record of the previous day's joy and sorrow—marriages and murders, failures and successes, news from afar and news from the next street—they all find a place. The would-be novel writer should be a diligent student of the newspaper. In no other sphere will he discover such a plenitude of raw material. Some of the cases tried at the Courts contain elements of dramatic quality far beyond those he has ever imagined; and here and there may be found in miniature the outlines of a splendid plot. Of course everything depends on the reader's mind. If you cannot read between the lines—that is the end of the matter, and your novel will remain unwritten; but if you can—some day you may expect to succeed.

I once came across a practical illustration of the manner in which a newspaper paragraph was treated imaginatively. The result is rather crude and unfinished, but most likely it was never intended to stand as a finished production, occurring as it does, in an American book on American journalism.[18:A]

Here is the paragraph:

Now the question arises: What was the quarrel about? We don't know; so an originating cause must be invented. The inventor whose illustration I am about to give conceived the story thus:

This is enough to give the beginner an idea of the way in which stories and plots sometimes "occur" to writers of fiction. It is, however, only one of a thousand ways, and my advice to the novice is this: Keep your eyes and ears open; observe and inquire, read and reflect; look at life and the things of life from your own point of view; and just as a financier manipulates events for the sake of money, so ought you to turn all your experiences into the mould of fiction. If, after this, you don't succeed, it is evident you have made a mistake. Be courageous enough to acknowledge the fact, and leave the writing of novels to others.

FOOTNOTES:

CHAPTER III

HOW TO BEGIN

You have now obtained your story—in its bare outlines, at least. The next question is, How are you to make a start? Well, that is an important question, and it cannot be evaded.

Clarence Rook, in a waggish moment, said two things were necessary in order to write a novel:

• (1) Writing Materials,
• (2) A Month;

but he seems to have thought that the month should be a month's imprisonment for attempting such an indiscretion. In these pages, however, we are serious folk, and having thanked Mr Rook for his pleasantry, we return to the point before us.

First of all, What kind of a novel is yours to be? Historical? If so, have you read all the authorities? Do you feel the throb of the life of that period about which you are going to write? Are its chief personages living beings in your imagination? and have you learned all the details respecting customs, manners, language, and dress? If not, you are very far from being ready to make a start, even though the "story" itself is quite clear to you.

Our great historical novelists devour libraries before they sit down to write. One would like to know how many books Dr Conan Doyle digested before he published "The Refugees," and Stanley Weyman before he brought out his "A Gentleman of France." Do not be carried away with the alluring idea that it is easy to take up historical subjects because the characters are there to hand, and the "story" practically "made." Directly you make the attempt, you will find out your mistake. Write about the life you know best—the life of the present day. You will then avoid the necessity of keeping everything in chronological perspective—a necessity which an open-air preacher, whom I heard last week, quite forgot when he said that the sailors shouted down the hatchway to the sleeping Prophet of Nineveh: "Jonah! We're sinking! Come and help us with the pumps!"

No; before you begin, have a clear idea of what you are going to do. The type of your story will in many cases decide the kind of treatment required; but it may be well, nevertheless, to say a few words about the various kinds of novels that are written nowadays, and the differences that separate them one from another.

There is the Realistic novel, of which Mr Maugham's "Liza of Lambeth" and Mr Morrison's "A Child of the Jago" may be taken as recent examples. These authors attempt to picture life as it is; they sink their own personalities, and endeavour to write a literal account of the "personalities" of other people. Very often they succeed, but absolute realism is impossible unless a man has no objection to appearing in a Police Court. In this type of fiction, plot, action, and inter-play of characters are not important: the main purpose is a sort of literary biograph; life in action, without comment or underlying philosophy, and minus the pre-eminent factor of art.

Then there is the novel of Manners. The customs of life, the social peculiarities of certain groups of men and women, the humours and moral qualities of life—these are the chief features in the novel of manners. As a form of fiction it is earlier than the realistic novel, but both are alike in having little or no concern with plot and character development.

Next comes the novel of Incident. Here the stress is placed upon particular events—what led up to them and the consequences that followed—hence the structure of the narrative, and the powers of movement and suspense are important factors in achieving success.

A Romance is in a very important sense a novel of incident, but the "incident" is specialised in character, and usually deals with the passionate and fundamental powers of man—hate, jealousy, revenge, and scenes of violence. Or it may be "incident" which has to do with life in other worlds as imagined by the writer, and occasionally takes on the style of the supernatural.

Lastly, there is the Dramatic novel, where the chief feature is the influence of event on character, and of characters on each other.

Now, to which class is your projected novel to belong? In fiction you must walk by sight and not by faith. Never sit down to write believing that although you can't see the finish of your story, it will come out all right "in the end." It won't. You should know at the outset to which type of fiction you are to devote your energies; how, otherwise, can you observe the laws of art which govern its ideal being?

Formation of the Plot

In one sense your plot is formed already—that is to say, the very idea of your story involves a plot more or less distinct. As yet, however, you do not see clearly how things are going to work out, and it is now your business to settle the matter so far as it lies in your power to do so. Now, a plot is not made; it is a structural growth. Suppose you wish to present a domestic scene in which the folly of high temper is to be proved. Is not the plot concealed in the idea? Certainly. Hence you perhaps place a man and his wife at breakfast. They begin to talk amiably, then become quarrelsome, and finally fall into loving agreement. Or you light upon a more original plan of bringing out your point; but in any case, the plot evolves itself step by step. Wilkie Collins has left some interesting gossip behind him with reference to "The Woman in White": "My first proceeding is to get my central idea—the pivot on which the story turns. The central idea in 'The Woman in White' is the idea of a conspiracy in private life, in which circumstances are so handled as to rob a woman of her identity, by confounding her with another woman sufficiently like her in personal appearance to answer the wicked purpose. The destruction of her identity represents a first division of her story; the recovery of her identity marks a second division. My central idea next suggests some of my chief characters.

"A clever devil must conduct the conspiracy. Male devil or female devil? The sort of wickedness wanted seems to be a man's wickedness. Perhaps a foreign man. Count Fosco faintly shows himself to me before I know his name. I let him wait, and begin to think about the two women. They must be both innocent, and both interesting. Lady Glyde dawns on me as one of the innocent victims. I try to discover the other—and fail. I try what a walk will do for me—and fail. I devote the evening to a new effort—and fail. Experience tells me to take no more trouble about it, and leave that other woman to come of her own accord. The next morning before I have been awake in my bed for more than ten minutes, my perverse brains set to work without consulting me. Poor Anne Catherick comes into the room, and says 'Try me.'

"I have now got an idea, and three of my characters. What is there to do now? My next proceeding is to begin building up the story. Here my favourite three efforts must be encountered. First effort: To begin at the beginning. Second effort: To keep the story always advancing, without paying the smallest attention to the serial division in parts, or to the book publications in volumes. Third effort: To decide on the end. All this is done as my father used to paint his skies in his famous sea-pictures—at one heat. As yet I do not enter into details; I merely set up my landmarks. In doing this, the main situations of the story present themselves in all sorts of new aspects. These discoveries lead me nearer and nearer to finding the right end. The end being decided on, I go back again to the beginning, and look at it with a new eye, and fail to be satisfied with it."

The Agonies and Joys of "Plot-Construction"

"I have yielded to the worst temptation that besets a novelist—the temptation to begin with a striking incident without counting the cost in the shape of explanations that must and will follow. These pests of fiction, to reader and writer alike, can only be eradicated in one way. I have already mentioned the way—to begin at the beginning. In the case of 'The Woman in White,' I get back, as I vainly believe, to the true starting-point of the story. I am now at liberty to set the new novel going, having, let me repeat, no more than an outline of story and characters before me, and leaving the details in each case to the spur of the moment. For a week, as well as I can remember, I work for the best part of every day, but not as happily as usual. An unpleasant sense of something wrong worries me. At the beginning of the second week a disheartening discovery reveals itself. I have not found the right beginning of 'The Woman in White' yet. The scene of my opening chapters is in Cumberland. Miss Fairlie (afterwards Lady Glyde); Mr Fairlie, with his irritable nerves and his art treasures; Miss Halcombe (discovered suddenly, like Anne Catherick), are all waiting the arrival of the young drawing-master, Walter Hartwright. No; this won't do. The person to be first introduced is Anne Catherick. She must already be a familiar figure to the reader when the reader accompanies me to Cumberland. This is what must be done, but I don't see how to do it; no new idea comes to me; I and my MS. have quarrelled, and don't speak to each other. One evening I happen to read of a lunatic who has escaped from an asylum—a paragraph of a few lines only in a newspaper. Instantly the idea comes to me of Walter Hartwright's midnight meeting with Anne Catherick escaped from the asylum. 'The Woman in White' begins again, and nobody will ever be half as much interested in it now as I am. From that moment I have done with my miseries. For the next six months the pen goes on. It is work, hard work; but the harder the better, for this excellent reason: the work is its own exceeding great reward. As an example of the gradual manner in which I reached the development of character, I may return for a moment to Fosco. The making him fat was an afterthought; his canaries and his white mice were found next; and, the most valuable discovery of all, his admiration of Miss Halcombe, took its rise in a conviction that he would not be true to nature unless there was some weak point somewhere in his character."

Care in the Use of Actual Events

I do not apologise for the lengthiness of this quotation—it is so much to the point, and is replete with instructive ideas. The beginner must beware of following actual events too closely. There is a danger of accepting actuality instead of literary possibility as the measure of value. Picturesque means fit to be put in a picture, and literatesque means fit to be put in a book. In making your plot, therefore, be quite sure you have a subject with these said possibilities in it, and that in developing them by an ordered and cumulative series of events, you are following the wise rule laid down by Aristotle: "Prefer an impossibility which seems probable, to a probability which seems impossible."

Remember always that truth is stranger than fiction. Let facts, newspaper items, things seen and heard, suggest as much as you please, but never follow literally the literal event.

Then your plot must be original. I was amused some time ago by reading the editorial notice to correspondents in an American paper. That editor meant to save the time of his contributors as well as his own, and he gave a list of the plots he did not want. The paper was one which catered for young people. Here is a selection from the list: