THE WRITING OF THE
SHORT STORY
BY
DRAKE UNIVERSITY, DES MOINES, IOWA
D. C. HEATH & CO., PUBLISHERS
BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO
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.
In the author's classes the three stories in the volume entitled"Three Hundred Dollars" are first studied because of theirsimplicity, and these are followed by parts of "The BonnieBrier Bush," and then by the stories from Bret Harte. Mrs.Phelps Ward's "Loveliness" is especially valuable for illustratingmethods and devices for making a simple theme dramaticallyinteresting. Students are required to mark stories withthe symbols and discuss them with reference to the principlesof which this little book is an exposition, but no recitation onthe book itself is required. Perhaps one-third of the time in theclass-room is spent in discussion of the short themes written bythe class, and when convenient these are placed on the boardbefore the class for that purpose. In the theme work followingthe suggested subjects the effort is made to confine instructionand practice to one thing at a time, but at the conclusion of thework of the term each member of the class is required to handin a complete original story.
1. Elements of the Story.—This little volume is meantto be a discussion of but one of the various forms thatliterature takes, and it will be first in order to see what arethe elements that go to the making of a narrative havingliterary quality. A story may be true or false, but weshall here be concerned primarily with fiction, and withfiction of no great length. In writing of this sort the firstessential is that something shall happen; a story withouta succession of incidents of some kind is inconceivable.We may then settle upon incident as a first element. Asa mere matter of possibility a story may be written withoutany interest other than that of incident, but a story dealingwith men will not have much interest for thoughtful readersunless it also includes some showing of character. Further,as the lives of all men and women are more or less conditionedby their surroundings and circumstance, any storywill require more or less description. Incidents are of butlittle moment, character showing may have but slight interest,description is purposeless, unless the happenings ofthe story develop in the characters feelings toward whichwe assume some attitude of sympathy or opposition. Includingthis fourth element of the story, we shall then have[2]incident, description, character, mood, as the first elementsof the narrative form.
2. A Succession of Incidents Required.—A series ofunconnected happenings may be interesting merely fromthe unexpectedness—or the hurry and movement of theevents, but ordinarily a story gains greatly in its appeal tothe reader through having its separate incidents developedin some sort of organic unity. The handling of incidentsfor a definite effect gives w