tory is more than a
series of incidents; it is a series of incidents significant in relation
to character. Its writer cannot set to work with an eye solely to the
physical spectacle and follow after with his pen; he must prepare his
people as well as the events, a task of cunning calculation. He must
have an eye to many other matters, but this is not the place to state
them. The matter of character is the matter significant here, because
the whole difference between tale and story is made by the presence or
absence of relation between events and personality. And it is certain
that the writer of a story cannot hope to do the best work if he
postpones until the moment of actual writing the task of moulding and
elaborating his basic idea with a view to giving it maximum effect. The
task to express perfectly, in a verbal sense, is difficult enough to
claim the undivided attention of the ablest artist, but undivided
attention cannot be given the matter of verbal expression by a writer
who shapes his substance and picks his words at one and the same time.
Either word or substance must suffer.

Accordingly, to emphasize the necessity that the writer of fiction give
full shape and development to his design before writing, I have stated
the necessity and discussed technique itself under two heads, conceptive
or constructive technique and executive technique. To have carried this
division rigorously through the whole book would have been neither
possible nor profitable, for it would have involved much repetition and
confusion, but the various items of technique are either largely
conceptive and constructive or largely executive, and the best place to
discuss each has not been difficult to determine. It was only necessary
to contemplate the actual process of conceiving, developing, and writing
a story, and to take up in their order the problems that confront a
writer of fiction. The only matter which found no natural place, so
approached, was that of characterization, which is almost equally a
matter of construction and of execution, so that discussion of it has
been broken up to some extent.

This approach to technique is the natural approach, and has been adopted
for that reason. The more naturally and easily any study can be
conducted, the greater the results that will be achieved. But there is a
more immediate reason for taking up the phases of technique in the order
in which they present themselves to a writer of fiction, th