The plot-germ

The plot-germ

(a) The plot-germs likely to take on one of two forms: an impression which the author has strongly felt and wishes to transfer to his readers; or an interesting situation—by which we mean an interesting condition of affairs involving a complication and its outcome—which the writer feels could be worked up effectively. Whichever of these two forms your plot-germ, your inspiring idea, your motif, may take, the process of plot building will directly lead to the big crisis of the plot.

There will always be room for discussion as to whether a given writer of stories is chiefly an artizan or an artist. Here are some very practical words from Mr. George Allan England, a college-bred writer whose stories are in wide demand, and range from the powerfully realistic and. artistically wrought to the frankly sensational. These quotations are from a recent article in The Independent, in which Mr. England freely discusses his methods. Whether the young writer accepts his viewpoint or not, he cannot but find help in these intensely business-like records of how one story-writer gathers his material.

"My eye is ever open, also my ear, for every bit of good material coming my way. Into the notebook goes now a bit of scenery, a face, a phrase, again some new idea, a plot-germ, an odd garment, a deformity,, a beauty. The olla podrida receives all; and in good time, each bit is fished out and consumed. For example, I open the book at random and read:

"Aug. 21, '12. —Man on boat, dark Dago; hair gray, brushed back; eyes slant up, heavy lids; thick, up-curved lips, mustache waxed up, goatee, swarthy, handsome, looks like Pan.

" (He'll be the villain in some still-unwritten tale. )

" Sept. 1. Sea-view. —Dappled white and slate clouds, breeze, sun in dazzling shine, beach wet, black, green, shiny; seaweed smells. Weed, lank and wet. Haze over beach. Big surf makes lather. Sea very pale green, running to white at top of wave. Thunder of surf, mist of spray, wind from surf in face.

" (This will form part of the scene of reconciliation between M. and N. at some future date. )

" Gormin'. Any God's a-mint o' things to tell ye. Swell up on your leavin's. Make longs arms. All puckered up to a goolthrite. Double up the prunes! All of a high to go. He ain't goin' to stan' it a gret sight longer. Jillpoke. Hotter'n a skunk. Patter'n a settled minister, etc., etc.

" (Local color stuff, Maine dialect. )

"So much for the minutiae. My books contain a world of every kind of 'property, ' like that at the stage-director's hand. No situation can arise where I cannot find a character, scenery and dialect to fit the case. Now for the plots.

" Where do you get your stories?'

"Everywhere! The writer who is alive, can pick up stories right from the air. On trains and boats, from the newspapers, from the living speech of humans, from a thousand and one sources, good fiction can be culled. All you have to do is to watch for it—and grab it. And after years of work, the watching becomes second nature; you can't help it. Writers are just big tom-cats stalking plot-rats through the attics and cellars of life, or sitting at incident-holes waiting for the story-mice to pop out. It's so' easy. Sometimes a chance bit of conversation will detonate a whole story or series of stories. About two years ago I took a morning walk with a friend. We got to speculating on what would happen if all the people in the world were killed, save two. From this germ has grown a trilogy of serials. Two have already been published in the Cavalier, and the third is now in course of preparation. They are 'Darkness and Dawn, ' Beyond the Great Oblivion, ' and 'The After-glow, ' and they have kept bread and cheese on the shelf for a long time

"At the same time I employ myself and exploit my own labor. So I'm both slave and master. It's confusing Then, too, arises the matter of disassociating myself from my work. As time passes, I find the factory more and more absorbs my personality.

"The business makes one cold-blooded. From observing other people and outside events, all with an eye to fiction, one comes to observe one's own self and acts with a similar view. One begins to capitalize one's own emotions, which is shocking.

"No longer can I enjoy a sunset, an opera, a foreign town, a friendship, or a flower, with disinterested frankness. No, always the shop intrudes! The note-book ever itches to be in the hand. Alas! I leave the reader to figure it out for himself. When one's own woes and blisses, romancings, hates, loves, ambitions, passions, begin to assume the note-book stage, wherein lies any spontaneous enjoyment of life? Ask any writer, and—if he be not a `short and ugly word' fellow—see if he won't tell you that his inner shrines have really become an annex to the shop!

"There lies something fundamentally tragic in the drying of a tear with the thought: 'No matter—even this grief, too, will make good copy!'

"Perseverance, note-books, cold-bloodedness, scenarios, contracts, many hours a day in the factory, an observant eye, and some knowledge of what the public, `that big baby, ' really wants—these supply the lack of genius with most satisfactory sufficiency.

"Some day when I am very, very rich—oh, worth maybe $5, 000—I'm going to be a genius. Till then I shall remain a mechanic, sawing wood like any other, making the chips fly, capitalizing myself and everybody and everything else I can get my hands on, and in general enjoying life through the very function of trying to interpret it.

"Everything and everybody must pay toll to me and go into the note-books. "