an
that of mere word-selection--to precipitate reality in words, one
sometimes manifested by works the diction of which is not particularly
dynamic. It is the method of Stevenson and Kipling, among others, and to
the author who can employ it no degree of novelty in the physical
conditions of a story is a deterrent. He can show the thing like a
painting or a stage scene, and his reader runs breathlessly with him,
caught up in the race of events. The method demands the highest
imaginative powers in the author, that he may actually see the matter he
is depicting, in detail and in the mass, and the highest executive
powers, that he may fix its living image with his pen.

This method to present the bizarre event with all the color and body of
reality--of course it may be employed in depicting the commonplace as
well, though expression of the commonplace should not be too
heightened--is the method of the severe literary artist, because it is
compatible with the most perfect unity and the greatest brevity. To
arouse emotion in a reader the writer must have something more than mere
color in his work, but to make a reader see anything it is only
necessary always to search for the right word, which is the word both
exact and dynamic. Yet if this is the sole condition, it is a doubly
hard one. The perfectly exact word is so elusive, and, when discovered,
it is so often lacking in the requisite force. Exactness is not enough;
the needful word is the one that not only will fit the author's vision,
but give it life; and it is here that figurative language finds its
office. "I saw a fleet," is exact. "I saw a hundred sail," is equally
exact, and much more vivid.

Vivid, direct writing, which does not depend on connection with his own
experience to hold the reader, is the most practicable narrative method
for use in the short story or novel of incident, that is, in the typical
fiction, where interest centers in the course of events. In other words,
it is the typical narrative method; the method of coaxing the reader
into believing the strange by showing it in juxtaposition with the
familiar is a variation from type. Narration consists in stating what
happened. If what happened was commonplace, the reader need only be told
it; if what happened was strange, the reader must be coaxed or forced to
believe it, and the writer must either coax him or narrate with such
vividness and power that the word will have the body and reality of the
f