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How to Write a Novel

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<h2>CHAPTER II</h2> <h3>A GOOD STORY TO TELL</h3> <h4>Where do Novelists get their Stories from?</h4> 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, [13]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? [14]Because the one has literary gifts and literary impetus, and the others—haven't. <h4>Is there a Deeper Question?</h4> 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 [15]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 [16]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. [17] <h4>What about the Newspapers?</h4> 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 [18]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: <div class="blockquot">"John Simpson and Michael Flannagan, two railroad labourers, quarrelled yesterday morning, and Flannagan killed Simpson with a coupling-pin. The murderer is in jail. He says Simpson provoked him and dared him to strike." </div> 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: <div class="blockquot">"'Taint none o' yer business how often I go to see the girl." "Ef Oi ketch yez around my Nora's house agin, Oi'll break a hole in yer shneakin' head, d'ye moind thot!" "You braggin' Irish coward, you haint got sand enough in you to come down off'n that car and say that to my face." [19]It was John Simpson, a yard switchman who spoke this taunt to a section hand. A moment more and Michael Flannagan stood on the ground beside him. There was a murderous fire in the Irishman's eyes, and in his hand he held a heavy coupling-pin. "Tut! tut! Mike. Throw away the iron and play fair. You can wallup him!" cried the rest of the gang. "He's a coward; he dassn't hit me," came the wasp-like taunt of the switchman. "Let him alone, fellers; his girl's give him the shake, and——" Those were the last words Simpson spoke. The murderous coupling-pin had descended like a scimitar and crushed his skull. An awed silence fell upon the little group as they raised the fallen man and saw that he was dead. "Ye'll be hangin' fur this, Mikey, me bye," whispered one of his horrified companions as the police dragged off the unresisting murderer. "Oi don't care," came the sullen reply, with a dry sob that belied it. Then, with a look of unutterable hatred, and a nod [20]towards the white, upturned face of his enemy, he added under his breath, "He'll niver git her now." </div> 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. <hr class="footnotes" /> <h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> <div class="footnote">[13:A] "The Art of Writing Fiction," p. 43. </div> <div class="footnote">[18:A] Shuman, "Steps into Journalism," p. 208. </div> <hr class="newchapter" /> [21] <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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