Short Story Writing | Page 9

Dramatic Effect when it deals with a single crisis, conveys a single impression, is presented chiefly by the actors themselves, and culminates in a single, perfect climax. It may, or may not, be capable of easy dramatization. It is less artificial than the story of pure Dramatic Form, but is just as free from padding and irrelevant matter, and just as vivid in effect. It allows of greater art and finish, for the writer has wider freedom in his method of presentation. Examples: Poe's "'Thou Art the Man!'" and "Berenice;" James' "The Lesson of the Master" and "A Passionate Pilgrim;" Wilkins' "A New England Nun" and "Amanda and Love;" Stevenson's "The Isle of the Voices;" and Irving's "The Widow and Her Son" and "Rip Van Winkle." But, indeed, every good short story belongs in this class, which is not so much a certain type of the short story, as the "honor class" to which each story seeks admittance.
Every story cited in this book, unless otherwise located, can be found in one of the appended published collections of short stories:
George Ade: "Fables in Slang."
John Kendrick Bangs: "The Bicyclers;" "Ghosts I Have Met;" "The Houseboat on the Styx;" "Mantel-Piece Minstrels, and Other Stories;" "Paste Jewels;" "The Pursuit of the Houseboat;" "The Water-Ghost and Others."
J. M. Barrie: "An Auld Licht Manse;" "Auld Licht Idyls."
George Washington Cable: "Old Creole Days;" "Strange True Stories of Louisiana."
Samuel L. Clemens (Mark Twain): "Merry Tales;" "The Stolen White Elephant."
Richard Harding Davis: "Cinderella and Others;" "The Exiles and Other Stories;" "Gallegher, and Other Stories;" "The Lion and the Unicorn;" "Van Bibber and Others."
Charles Dickens: "Christmas Books;" "Christmas Stories;" "Sketches by Boz."
A. Conan Doyle: "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes;" "The Captain of the Pole Star;" "The Exploits of Brigadier Gerard;" "Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes;" "My Friend the Murderer;" "Round the Red Lamp."
Maria Edgeworth: "Popular Tales."
Alice French (Octave Thanet): "A Book of True Lovers;" "The Missionary Sheriff;" "Stories of a Western Town."
H. Rider Haggard: "Allan's Wife."
Joel Chandler Harris: "Daddy Jake, the Runaway;" "Nights with Uncle Remus;" "Tales of Home Folks in Peace and War."
Bret Harte: "Colonel Starbottle's Client;" "In the Hollow of the Hills;" "The Luck of Roaring Camp;" "Mrs. Skagg's Husbands;" "Tales of the Argonauts;" "Thankful Blossom;" "The Story of a Mine."
Nathaniel Hawthorne: "Mosses from an Old Manse;" "Twice Told Tales."
Anthony Hope: "The Dolly Dialogues."
William Dean Howells: "A Fearful Responsibility and Other Stories;" "The Mouse-Trap and Other Farces;" "The Sleeping Car and Other Farces."
Washington Irving: "The Sketch Book;" "Tales of a Traveler."
Henry James: "The Aspern Papers;" "The Author of Beltraffio;" "The Lesson of the Master;" "A London Life;" "A Passionate Pilgrim;" "The Real Thing."
Rudyard Kipling: "The Day's Work;" "In Black and White;" "Indian Tales;" "The Jungle Book;" "Life's Handicap;" "Many Inventions;" "The Phantom 'Rickshaw;" "Plain Tales from the Hills;" "The Second Jungle Book;" "Soldiers Three and Military Tales;" "Soldier Stories;" "Under the Deodars."
Brander Matthews: "Outlines in Local Color;" "Tales of Fantasy and Fact;" "Vignettes of Manhattan."
Guy de Maupassant: "The Odd Number."
Thomas Nelson Page: "The Burial of the Guns;" "In Ole Virginia."
Scribner's series: "Short Stories by American Authors."
Robert Louis Stevenson: "The Island Nights' Entertainments;" "The Merry Men;" "New Arabian Nights."
Frank R. Stockton: "Amos Kilbright;" "The Lady, or the Tiger?" "Rudder Grange;" "A Story Teller's Pack."
John Watson (Ian Maclaren): "Auld Lang Syne;" "Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush."
Mary E. Wilkins: "A Humble Romance;" "The Love of Parson Lord;" "A New England Nun;" "The Pot of Gold;" "Silence;" "Young Lucretia."

III
THE PLOT
The plot is the nucleus of the story, the bare thought or incident upon which the narrative is to be builded. When a child says, "Grandma, tell me the story of how the whale swallowed Jonah," he gives the plot of the story that he desires; and the grandmother proceeds to elaborate that primal idea to suit the taste of her auditor. In like manner, before you put pen to paper, you must have in mind some interesting idea which you wish to express in narrative form; the absence of such an idea means that you have no plot, no story to tell, and therefore have no business to be writing. If you undertake to tell a short story, go about it in a workmanlike manner: don't begin scribbling pretty phrases, and trust to Providence to introduce the proper story, but yourself provide the basic facts. If you do not begin correctly, it is useless for you to begin at all.
A plot implies action--that is, something must happen; at the conclusion of the story the characters must be differently situated, and usually differently related one to another, from what they were at the beginning. The event need not be tragic, or even serious; but it must be of sufficient importance, novelty and interest to justify its relation in narrative form. In general the plot of a short story involves an incident or a minor