secondary events of a story is to prepare the
elements of the main events. In the love story, John meets Joan that he
may subsequently make love to her. Another function of the secondary
events is to develop character. In London's "The Sea Wolf" most of the
earlier episodes and many of the later are narrated to build up the
impression of Wolf Larsen's ruthlessness.[D] It follows that any minor
event will serve a double purpose when devised and placed so that it
will forward the mechanical progress of the story and also illustrate
character. Tarkington, in "Monsieur Beaucaire," begins the story with a
scene over the card table which not only gives the barber-prince his
necessary introduction to society but also shows the stuff of which he
is made. In constructing his story before writing, the author should
select and place each incident with an eye to its serving as many
purposes as possible. The story will gain thereby in compactness and
uniformity of interest. It is golden advice to urge the writer not to
accept the secondary events of a story as they first come to mind, but
to re-arrange and re-devise until each happening performs as many
functions as the necessities of the story permit.

There is nothing particularly new and striking about the main events and
situations of many stories that not only are getting published to-day,
but are truly interesting and worth while. Their interest--and therefore
their worth--derives from their writers' management of secondary events.
By varying the nature and succession of minor events, any fundamental
plot theme, such as the "eternal triangle" of two men and a woman, may
be utilized a thousand times without essential loss of interest. As has
been stated, the naturalness and plausibility of a story depend largely
upon just selection and ordering of its secondary events, and, curiously
enough, in a very real sense the reader's interest depends on the minor
happenings. The plot must be a real plot and an interesting one, but, at
the last of it, the plot is only the skeleton. The minor events of the
story are the comely flesh that gives the conception the attraction and
interest of life. The figure may be grewsome, but it is accurate. A
thousand skulls look much alike, but no face is precisely the same as
another, even to the casual eye. The flesh makes the difference, and the
minor events of a story are its flesh.

The chief necessity in beginning a story is to begin it interestin