of proper construction.

These considerations strongly urge the writer of fiction to master the
principles of constructing a story before he frets about the nuances of
expression, and just as strongly they impose upon a book on technique
the obligation to discuss matters of construction at length and also to
discuss them as such. The book which does not explicitly insist that
certain matters are matters of construction, therefore to be performed
before writing, is very apt to mislead. It is a defect from which too
many books on fiction technique are not free, and one that I have tried
to avoid.

How comprehensive and inclusive are the principles of construction the
first half of this book attempts to show. Here it is enough to state
that they embrace matters so different as the manipulation of possible
incidents in the interest of climax, and the preparation or building up
of the people of a story that its situations may have real dramatic
value for a reader. The writer of fiction who merely writes cannot hope
to provide by any instinct for these and the other matters of
construction, and no power in his words can fortify essential weakness
in his matter. Style, literary power, the right word in the right
place--all will resist the tooth of time, but no one will preserve a
story from the contagion of decay at the heart. Indeed, in the juster
sense, a shapely design is the necessary foundation or basis for perfect
writing, which is no mere varnish.

In this present era of magazine literature the chances are that nine out
of ten actual or prospective writers of fiction who take up a book on
technique for serious study will do so with an eye to the short story.
And since this book is for the practitioner of the art, not for the mere
reader of fiction, I have felt myself under obligation to discuss the
short story and its peculiar technique with some approach to adequacy.
Statement of the way the short story has been approached may serve to
align the reader's mind with the argument.

In the first place, the short story is yet a story, a fiction, so that
the general technique of fiction is applicable to it, with suitable
modifications here and there. In the second place, the short story is a
distinct type of fiction in that it embodies a plot or dramatic problem
and is brief enough to read at one not very prolonged sitting. It is at
once slighter and more pointed or direct than the long story of plot,
the novel or romanc