clearer symptom of the disease I wish to diagnose than these many
"practical" textbooks, with their over-emphasis upon technique and
their under-estimate of all else that makes literature.) The story
_must_ begin, it appears, with action or with dialogue. A mother packs
her son's trunk while she gives him unheeded advice mingled with
questions about shirts and socks; a corrupt and infuriated director
pounds on the mahogany table at his board meeting, and curses the
honest fool (hero of the story) who has got in his way; or, "'Where
did Mary Worden get that curious gown?' inquired Mrs. Van Deming,
glancing across the sparkling glass and silver of the hotel terrace."
Any one of these will serve as instance of the break-neck beginning
which Kipling made obligatory. Once started, the narrative must move,
move, move furiously, each action and every speech pointing directly
toward the unknown climax. A pause is a confession of weakness. This
Poe taught for a special kind of story; and this a later generation,
with a servility which would have amazed that sturdy fighter,
requires of all narrative. Then the climax, which must neatly,
quickly, and definitely end the action for all time, either by a
solution you have been urged to hope for by the wily author in
every preceding paragraph, or in a way which is logically correct
but never, never suspected. O. Henry is responsible for the vogue
of the latter of these two alternatives,--and the strain of living
up to his inventiveness has been frightful. Finally comes a last
suspiration, usually in the advertising pages. Sometimes it is a
beautiful descriptive sentence charged with sentiment, sometimes a
smart epigram, according to the style of story, or the "line"
expected of the author. Try this, as the advertisements say, on
your favorite magazine. This formula, with variations which
readers can supply for themselves or draw from textbooks on the
short story, is not a wholly bad method of writing fiction. It is,