As a rule, fancies are capable of being arranged in
but a few familiar patterns, so that it seems hardly
worth while to make the arrangement. But he who
looks at things thus will never be a writer of stories.
Nay, even of the slowly unfolding tale of his own
existence he may weary, for the combinations therein
have all occurred before; it is in a hackneyed old
story that he is living, and you, and I. Yet to act
on this knowledge is to make a bad affair of our little
life: we must try our best to take it seriously.
And so of story-writing. As Mr. Stevenson says,
a man must view “his very trifling enterprise
with a gravity that would befit the cares of empire,
and think the smallest improvement worth accomplishing
at any expense of time and industry. The book,
the statue, the sonata, must be gone upon with the
unreasoning good faith and the unflagging spirit of
children at their play.”
That is true, that is the worst of it. The man,
the writer, over whom the irresistible desire to mock
at himself, his work, his puppets and their fortunes
has power, will never be a novelist. The novelist
must “make believe very much”; he must
be in earnest with his characters. But how to
be in earnest, how to keep the note of disbelief and
derision “out of the memorial”?
Ah, there is the difficulty, but it is a difficulty
of which many authors appear to be insensible.
Perhaps they suffer from no such temptations.
CHAPTER XV: THE SUPERNATURAL IN FICTION
It is a truism that the supernatural in fiction should,
as a general rule, be left in the vague. In
the creepiest tale I ever read, the horror lay in
this—there was no ghost! You
may describe a ghost with all the most hideous features
that fancy can suggest—saucer eyes, red
staring hair, a forked tail, and what you please—but
the reader only laughs. It is wiser to make
as if you were going to describe the spectre, and
then break off, exclaiming, “But no! No
pen can describe, no memory, thank Heaven, can recall,
the horror of that hour!” So writers, as a
rule, prefer to leave their terror (usually styled
“The Thing”) entirely in the dark, and
to the frightened fancy of the student. Thus,
on the whole, the treatment of the supernaturally terrible
in fiction is achieved in two ways, either by actual
description, or by adroit suggestion, the author saying,
like cabmen, “I leave it to yourself, sir.”
There are dangers in both methods; the description,
if attempted, is usually overdone and incredible:
the suggestion is apt to prepare us too anxiously
for something that never becomes real, and to leave
us disappointed.
Examples of both methods may be selected from poetry
and prose. The examples in verse are rare enough;
the first and best that occurs in the way of suggestion
is, of course, the mysterious lady in “Christabel.”
“She was most beautiful to
see,
Like a lady of a far countree.”
Copyrights
Adventures Among Books from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.
