The Simplicity of a short story plot is necessary and advantageous

the Simplicity of a short story plot is necessary and advantageous

plot, in the Short-story, is simple and may be exceedingly slight. The Short- story deals with a simplification of life; hence, complexity is foreign to its nature. Brevity and unity of impression both seem practically impossible to the complex plot. Yet one rather naturally associates complexity with any idea of plot whatsoever; one thinks it essential. A thousand threads are inextricably woven into the pattern of life. Thus, in imitation, the makers of the novel and the drama have used various threads; they have bound together in one climax several groups of characters, several conflicting actions. Yet the narrower, more restricted plot of the Short-story is still a design and involves an entanglement of threads. A trolling line may become so tied up in itself that an hour must be spent in its disentanglement. So it is, also, in the field of narrative. A simple group of characters, comprising with incident but a single action, may be knotted together in climax; each part itself acts as a thread. The result is a plot not at all inferior to that of the larger forms. Simplicity, instead of becoming a weakness, has become, indeed, the strength of the Short- story plot. Where many threads are entangled, one's mind becomes distracted. Impressions flicker for a moment and are gone. One starts along one path, and, behold, one finds oneself hurrying along another. In the Short- story, however, there can be no hesitation, no turning aside into new byways. The effect is single and more powerful than that of the complex plot. A tree with a long tap-root goes deep into the soil, and gains greater power than does a tree whose roots branch and rebranch near the surface. A plot concentrated on one action is sure to strike deep into one's mind. Yet, one says, the simple plot is, at least, less natural than the broad plot, for it works with events in isolation. One must remember, however, that the novelist sits down and thinks out the ramifications of life, arranges innumerable complications in the quiet of his study, disposes his characters in arbitrary ways. A man's life is, of course, filled with these complications; „put, after all, a man usually settles only one question at a time. He does things_ with a single motive without taking into consideration hoW his action is going to affect his own life and other lives, perhaps years after. He may not live for the present moment, but he certainly lives inthe present moment. He is a little like gunpowder: he goes off of a sudden — at a single thwack of a hammer. The Short-story writer takes for granted that incidents and episodes connected, to be sure, yet each separate, make up the chain of man's existence. The attitudes of the two plot-builders are essentially different. Each attitude is correct in its own way. The one regards man as a creature caught hand and foot inthe meshes of society; the other sees him as an individual working out through quick motive andact his own destiny and that of society in general. Both views are equally true; but the latter seems indeed the more lifelike, for it represents a man's life in stages each with its own climax.