ion. Thus, in this chapter I shall have occasion to
state that the important event should be emphasized, and that vividness
in narration is a means to that end, but how to narrate vividly is a
question of rhetoric generally, and it is not my purpose to discuss it.
Moreover, it is emphatically true that the capacity to narrate vividly
cannot be attained by the mere study of examples, the only way in which
the matter can be studied. The writer can only strive constantly in his
work to write with definition and force. It is all a matter of practice,
whether or not the capacity must be inborn. But the principle of fiction
technique, that the important event should be emphasized in some way,
whether by vividness or expansion, is subject to direct statement and to
assimulation from the direct statement. Therefore statement of the
principle is all that a work on fiction technique need attempt. The rest
lies with the writer himself.[I]

The first chapter on the executive technique of narration took up the
two preliminary problems of the mode of narration and of manner or
style; this second chapter has to do with certain other matters that
must be considered in writing a story, viewed as a chain of events.
Character, atmosphere, and dialogue will receive separate treatment, and
for discussion of the strict technique of expression the reader is
referred to works on rhetoric, except that in discussing the technique
of description in the next chapter I shall have occasion to touch upon
nicety of expression.

METHOD

The method of narration is necessarily influenced somewhat by the style
the writer of a story strives first to find and then to maintain, but
the style does not entirely determine the method, or the method the
style. The matters are distinct, though mutually influential.

There are two kinds of lives, or at least two kinds of incidents, the
humdrum and the bizarre. Likewise and consequently there are two kinds
of stories to be told, the humdrum and the bizarre. Each may be
fashioned into something worth while. Whether the matter of a story is
worth while depends on the significance of the phase of life involved;
whether the story itself is worth while depends on its plausibility or
verisimilitude, which depends on the way it is constructed and told.

The humdrum story, that deals with the more common actualities of life,
the little details that are significant only in combination or in
relation to certain charact