The Art of Writing & Speaking the English Language by Sherwin Cody (ereader for comics .TXT) 📕

But where is the difficulty?

Almost invariably the trouble will be found to be in some false phrase, for one alone is enough to spoil a whole production. It is as if a single flat or sharp note is introduced into a symphony, producing a discord which rings through the mind during the whole performance.

To detect the fault, go over the work with the utmost care, weighing each item of the description, and asking the question, Is that an absolutely necessary and true element of the picture I had in mind? Nine times out of ten the writer will discover some sentence or phrase which may be called a “glittering generality,” or that is a weak repetition of what has already been well said, or that is simply “fine” language—sentimentality of some sort. Let him ruthlessly cut away that paragraph, sentence, or phrase, and then re-read. It is almost startling to observe how the removal or addition of a single phrase will change the effect of a description covering many pages.

But often a long composition will lack harmony of structure, a fault very different from any we have mentioned, Hitherto we have spoken of definite faults that must be cut out. It is as often necessary to make additions.

In the first place, each paragraph must be balanced within itself. The language must be fluent and varied, and each thought or suggestion must flow easily and smoothly into the next, unless abruptness is used for a definite purpose. Likewise each successive stage of a description or dialogue must have its relative as well as its intrinsic value. The writer must study carefully the proportions of the parts, and nicely adjust and harmonize each to the other. Every paragraph, every sentence, every phrase and word, should have its own distinct and clear meaning, and the writer should never allow himself to be in doubt as to the need or value of this or that.

To secure harmony of style and structure is a matter of personal judgment and study. Though rules for it cannot be given, it will be found to be a natural result of following all the principles of grammar, rhetoric, and composition. But the hard work involved in securing this proportion and harmony of structure can never be avoided or evaded without disastrous consequences. Toil, toil, toil! That should be every writer's motto if he aspires to success, even in the simplest forms of writing.

The ambitious writer will not learn harmony of style from any single short selection, however perfect such a composition may be in itself. It requires persistent reading, as well as very thoughtful reading, of the masters of perfect style. Two such masters are especially to be recommended,—Irving and Hawthorne. And among their works, the best for such study are “The Sketchbook,” especially Rip Van Winkle and Legend of Sleepy Hollow, by Irving, and “The Scarlet Letter” and such short stories as “The Great Stone Face,” by Hawthorne. To these may be added Thackeray's “Vanity Fair,” Scott's “Ivanhoe,” and Lamb's “Essays of Elia.” These books should be read and re-read many times; and whenever any composition is to be tested, it may conveniently be compared as to style to some part of one or other of these books.

In conclusion we would say that the study of too many masterpieces is an error. It means that none of them are fully absorbed or mastered. The selections here given,* together with the volumes recommended above, may of course be judiciously supplemented if occasion requires; but as a rule, these will be found ample. Each type should be studied and mastered, one type after another. It would be a mistake to omit any one, even if it is a type that does not particularly interest the student, and is one he thinks he will never wish to use in its purity: mastery of it will enrich any other style that may be chosen: If it is found useful for shaping no more than a single sentence, it is to be remembered that that sentence may shape the destinies of a life.

*A fuller collection of the masterpieces of style than the present volume contains may be found in “The Best English Essays,” edited by Sherwin Cody.

So far we have given our attention to style, the effective use of words.

We will now consider some of those general principles of thought end expression which are essential to distinctively literary composition; and first the relation between imagination and reality, or actuality.

In real life a thousand currents cross each other, and counter cross, and cross again. Life is a maze of endless continuity, to which, nevertheless, we desire to find some key. Literature offers us a picture of life to which there is a key, and by some analogy it suggests explanations of real life. It is of far more value to be true to the principles of life than to the outer facts. The outer facts are fragmentary and uncertain, mere passing suggestions, signs in the darkness. The principles of life are a clew of thread which may guide the human judgment through many dark and difficult places. It is to these that the artistic writer must be true.

In the real incident the writer sees an idea which he thinks may illustrate a principle he knows of. The observed fact must illustrate the principle, but he must shape it to that end. A carver takes a block of wood and sets out to make a vase. First he cuts away all the useless parts: The writer should reject all the useless facts connected with his story and reserve only what illustrates his idea. Often, however, the carver finds his block of wood too small, or imperfect. Perfect blocks of wood are rare, and so are perfect stories in real life. The carver cuts out the imperfect part and fits in a new piece of wood. Perhaps the whole base of his vase must be made of another piece and screwed on.

It is quite usual that the whole setting of a story must come from another source. One has observed life in a thousand different phases, just as a carver has accumulated about him scores of different pieces of wood varying in shape and size to suit almost any possible need. When a carver makes a vase he takes one block for the main portion, the starting point in his work, and builds up the rest from that. The writer takes one real incident as the chief one, and perfects it artistically by adding dozens of other incidents that he has observed. The writer creates only in the sense that the wood carver creates his vase. He does not create ideas cut of nothing, any more than the carver creates the separate blocks of wood. The writer may coin his own soul into substance for his stories, but creating out of one's mind and creating out of nothing are two very different things. The writer observes himself, notices how his mind works, how it behaves under given circumstances, and that gives him material exactly the same in kind as that which he gains from observing the working of other people's mind.

But the carver in fashioning a vase thinks of the effect it will produce when it is finished, on the mind of his customer or on the mind of any person who appreciates beauty; and his whole end and aim is for this result. He cuts out what he thinks will hinder, and puts in what he thinks will help. He certainly does a great deal more than present polished specimens of the various kinds of woods he has collected. The creative writer—who intends to do something more than present polished specimens of real life—must work on the same plan. He must write for his realer, for his audience.

But just what is it to write for an audience? The essential element in it is some message a somebody. A message is of no value unless it is to somebody in particular. Shouting messages into the air when you do not know whether any one is at hand to hear would be equally foolish whether a writer gave forth his message of inspiration in that way, or a telegraph boy shouted his message in front of the telegraph off{i}ce in the hope that the man to whom the message was addressed might be passing, or that some of him friends might overhear it.

The newspaper reporter goes to see a fire, finds out all about it, writes it up, and sends it to his paper. The paper prints it for the readers, who are anxious to know what the fire was and the damage it did. The reporter does not write it up in the spirit of doing it for the pleasure there is in nor does he allow himself to do it in the manner his mood dictates. He writes so that certain people will get certain facts and ideas. The facts he had nothing to do with creating, nor did he make the desire of the people. He was simply a messenger, a purveyor.

The producer of literature, we have said, must write for an audience; but he does not go and hunt up his audience, find out its needs, and then tell to it his story. He simple writes for the audience that he knows, which others have prepared for him. To know human life, to know what people really need, is work for a genius. It resembles the building up of a daily paper, with its patronage and its study of the public pulse. But the reporter has little or nothing to do with that. Likewise the ordinary writer should not trouble himself about so large a problem, at least until he has mastered the simpler ones. Writing for an audience if one wants to get printed in a certain magazine is writing those things which one finds by experience the readers of that magazine, as represented in the editor, want to read. Or one may write with his mind on those readers of the magazine whom he knows personally. The essential point is that the effective writer must cease to think of himself when he begins to write, and turn his mental vision steadily upon the likes or needs of his possible readers, selecting some definite reader in particular if need be. At any rate, he must not write vaguely for people he does not know. If he please these he does know, he may also please many he does not know. The best he can do is to take the audience he thoroughly understands, though it be an audience of one, and write for that audience something that will be of value, in the way of amusement or information or inspiration.

We have seen how a real incident is worked over into the fundamental idea for a composition. The same principle ought to hold in the use of real persons in making the characters in, a novel, or any story where character-drawing is an important item. In a novel especially, the characters must be drawn with the greatest care. They must be made genuine personages. Yet the ill-taste of “putting your friends into a story” is only less pronounced than the bad art or drawing characters purely out of the imagination. There is no art in the slavish copying of persons in real life. Yet it is practically impossible to create genuine characters in the mind without reference to real life. The simple solution would seem to be to follow the method of the painter who uses models, though in so doing he does not make portraits. There was a time in drawing when the school of “out-of-the-headers” prevailed, but their work was often grotesque, imperfect, and sometimes utterly futile in expressing even the idea the artist had in mind. The opposite extreme in graphic art is photography. The