Short Story Writing | Page 5

life course, one character. The novel, on the other hand, starts

with a conception of character, a man, a woman, a human heart, which
under certain circumstances works out a definite result, makes a
world.... Lastly it develops a group of characters, who together make a
complete community, instead of tracing the life course of one."[9]
To prove that these various requirements are recognized and observed
by masters of the art, I would ask you to consider the following list,
which The Critic selected from nearly five hundred submitted in
competition for a prize which it offered for a list of the best twelve
American short stories:
"The Man Without a Country," Edward Everett Hale.
"The Luck of Roaring Camp," Bret Harte.
"The Great Stone Face," Nathaniel Hawthorne.
"The Snow Image," Nathaniel Hawthorne.
"The Gold Bug," Edgar Allan Poe.
"The Murders in the Rue Morgue," Edgar Allan Poe.
"The Lady, or the Tiger?" Frank R. Stockton.
"The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," Washington Irving.
"Rip Van Winkle," Washington Irving.
"Marse Chan," Thomas Nelson Page.
"Marjorie Daw," Thomas Bailey Aldrich.
"The Revolt of Mother," Mary E. Wilkins.[10]
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 2: "The Short Story," by Frederick Wedmore. Nineteenth
Century, Mar., '98.]

[Footnote 3: "How to Write Short Stories." An interview with F.
Hopkinson Smith in the Boston Herald. Current Literature. June, '96.]
[Footnote 4: Robert Barr in "How to Write a Short Story; A
Symposium." The Bookman. Mar., '97.]
[Footnote 5: "The Philosophy of the Short-story," by Brander Matthews.
Lippincott's. Oct, '85.]
[Footnote 6: "Magazine Fiction and How Not to Write It," by Frederick
M. Bird. Lippincott's. Nov., '94.]
[Footnote 7: "The Art of Fiction," by Gilbert Parker. The Critic,
Dec.,'98.]
[Footnote 8: In many respects the art of the short story and the novel
are so closely allied that I have been able to reenforce my observations
with magazine articles which were meant to apply primarily to the
novel.--THE AUTHOR.]
[Footnote 9: "How to Write Fiction." Published anonymously by
Bellaires & Co., London.
Part I, Chapter I.]
[Footnote 10: "The Best Twelve American Stories." The Critic. Apr. 10,
'97.]

II
SHORT STORIES CLASSIFIED
The treatment demanded by any particular story depends more upon its
class than upon the tale itself; a story which recounts an actual
occurrence is much less exacting than one which attempts to depict
manners; and, in general, the more the writer relies on his art, the more

difficult is his task. It is therefore both possible and profitable to
separate short stories into definite groups and to consider them
collectively rather than as units. This classification is based chiefly
upon the necessity of a plot, the purpose or aim of the narrative, and the
skill and care required for its successful treatment. It is crude and
arbitrary from a literary standpoint, for a good short story is capable of
being listed under several different classes, but it serves our practical
purpose. Each story is placed according to its dominant class; and the
classes are arranged progressively from the simplest to the most
difficult of treatment. The examples are presented only as definite
illustrations; there is no attempt to classify all short stories, or all the
stories of any particular author.
I. THE TALE is the relation, in an interesting and literary form, of
some simple incident or stirring fact. It has no plot in the sense that
there is any problem to unravel, or any change in the relation of the
characters; it usually contains action, but chiefly accidents or odd
happenings, which depend on their intrinsic interest, without regard to
their influence on the lives of the actors.
(a) It is often a genuine True Story, jealously observant of facts, and
embellished only to the extent that the author has endeavored to make
his style vivid and picturesque. Such stories are a result of the tendency
of the modern newspaper to present its news in good literary form. The
best illustrations are the occasional contributions of Ray Stannard
Baker to McClure's Magazine.
(b) It may, however, be an Imaginative Tale, which could easily happen,
but which is the work of the author's imagination. It is a straightforward
narration of possible events; if it passes the bounds of probability, or
attempts the utterly impossible, it becomes a Story of Ingenuity. (See
Class VIII.) It has no love element and no plot; and its workmanship is
loose. The best examples are the stories of adventure found in the better
class of boys' and children's papers.
II. THE MORAL STORY, in spite of the beautiful examples left us by
Hawthorne, is usually too baldly didactic to attain or hold a high place
in literature. Its avowed purpose is to preach, and, as ordinarily written,

preach it does in the most determined way. Its plot is usually just
sufficient to introduce the moral. It