III. PLOT

"Plot" is here used as a name for those more elabo¬rate stories which introduce a variety of incidents, with characters playing their separate and related parts through a series of shifting situations. Such stories are usually fictitious; that is, they are invented, as a whole, out of incidents and characters more or less truthful.

17. Action.—The thing that chiefly distinguishes a plot is the complicated character of its action. In it, widely different facts and events are related to each other in a significant way. An incident has but one time and place, and the sequence of events is so simple as almost to look after itself. But in the story with a plot, it may be that events bearing upon each other take place at different times, or at different places at the same time, or that many apparently unrelated facts must be selected and brought together to prepare for a given situation. The arrangement becomes a problem of some difficulty. It is usually best to begin at the end and plan the story backwards. In this way the various incidents can be more easily adjusted and proportioned. There will be less danger of inserting useless matter, or leaving out necessary matter. If, for example, a char¬acter in a story is to be represented as nourishing a grudge, at a certain crisis, against some other character, we must decide how far the cause of the ill feeling must be explained. Our conclusion will depend upon the degree of importance with which the one situation bears upon the other, and that cannot be determined without intelligent planning that looks before and after. What goes into the introduction and what goes into the conclusion should similarly be considered while the other details are being planned. When all these matters have been satisfactorily settled we are ready to set pen to paper for the actual writing of the story.

x8. Character.—Character is not an absolutely neces¬sary element in a plot. A series of actions may be carried through to an interesting conclusion with almost nothing depending upon the personal traits, or the touches of individuality—the character, as we say—of the several actors. But character enters into many stories of plot, as it does, indeed, into many incidents as well, and the stories, of whatever kind, are the better for it. In the best stories, indeed, it might almost be said that everything, the plot itself, turns upon character. Our first concern, then, in constructing such a story, is to see that there is a vital relation between the per¬sonality of the actors and the actions in which they take part—that they determine each other. If they do not, everything will seem to take place by chance, and the reader will miss the sense of cause and effect which makes a series of actions, in real life or in fiction, significant. Of course, accidents happen in real life. A merchant, for instance, may return to his desk after office hours for a forgotten letter, and discover a trusted clerk falsifying the cash account. For the purpose of a story, however, it is much better that he should observe this clerk misrepresenting an article which he is trying to 'sell to a customer, and reason from his want of principle in this respect that he would bear watching in others. Because Patrick quarrelled with the cook in the morning is no reason why a mad dog should bite him in the afternoon; but if he should refuse, in his anger, to remove the tub of suds, and then in the evening should walk into it by mistake, we should feel that Patrick's adversities bore some sort of relation to his character. If char¬acter is to be introduced at all, it should affect in some measure the action and interaction that make up the plot of the story. The portrayal of character, furthermore, is as a rule more effective for the reader when the traits reveal themselves in action and speech than when long descriptions and explanations are resorted to. Actions speak louder than words as well in stories as in life, and more than that, they convey their message in decidedly shorter space. We may describe a boy through a dozen paragraphs and the reader will not feel so well acquainted with him nor so much inter¬ested in him as if he comes charging into the break¬fast-room shouting, "What a jolly good day to go skating!" Appeals like this, to the eye and the ear, even though they come through the imagination, are ten times as strong as appeals to the mere under¬standing. Action and speech are the only true re vealers of character, and action and pithy conversa¬tion are, first and last, the life of a story. Setting.—In the long story with a plot there is ample space, and almost a necessity, for the use of a third element—the background, or setting. We shall help our reader to catch the spirit of an action if we make him realize the scene in which it is sup¬posed to take place. Very often we wish the reader to get a vivid impression of actuality, as if he were seeing the action take place before his eyes. The scene should then be individual and definite, so far as it is described, and if names are given too, so much the more vivid the effect. But sometimes the story is fanciful or unreal, or so general that one wishes to think of it as true in spirit rather than actual in fact. In that case a vague or even fanciful scene is the appropriate background.

Just how the scene is to be presented is a matter of descriptive detail and belongs to our next chapter. It is to be noted, however, that the narrative form gives us freedom to introduce the descriptive details either together, or bit by bit, in the course of the story —whichever way seems to suit best our purpose at the t. me. It is evident, too, that characters themselves may be part of the background. The inhabitants of a Cape Cod town or the habitu6s of a race-track are fostered by their environment and in turn help to express it; the reader feels the harmony that exists between them. On all accounts, then, the background is well worth attention —to lend vividness and reality to the action, to help the portrayal of character, or finally for its own sake. As a rest from the excitement of many deeds and words, as an opportunity to let the mean¬ing of it all sink in, a little descriptive touch, a casual glance at street or lawn or sea or sky, may give to a story a tenfold depth and tone