of persons or places. And
while each tale is unique, and any one of these mechanical elements may
largely preponderate over the others, nevertheless the normal fiction
will devote a substantial amount of space to each. If the story
permits--a proviso implied in discussing any matter of technique--it
will be well for the writer to strive to distribute and intermingle its
action, dialogue, and descriptive matter in a texture pleasing because
varied. The whole should not be built of unwieldy chunks of description,
speech, and action succeeding one another with monotonous regularity,
but descriptive touches should be intermingled with the dialogue, and
narrative matter with word-painting and the speech of characters.
Obviously this is no absolute rule, and is perhaps not ever a matter of
strict art, but it is true that a reader quickly wearies of much of the
same thing, and a story is for its reader. Moreover, a story as a whole
will gain in verisimilitude by judicious distribution of its mechanical
elements. The matter is merely another phase of the necessity to give a
fiction the seeming of life, and should not be neglected, the more so
because it is easy and a mechanical matter. The beginner can afford to
neglect no chance for success.

FOOTNOTES:

[I] In connection with the subject of vivid narration of an important
event I might illustrate the text by brief quotation. Unlike matters of
construction, matters of strict execution can be shown by pungent
quotation. The question is not whether it is possible, but whether it is
useful. Take this sentence from Stevenson's "Kidnapped": "His sword
flashed like quicksilver into the huddle of his fleeing enemies." It is
perfectly descriptive, alive as the sword was alive in the hand of Alan
Breck. But no one by reading it can learn to write like it, a capacity
to be gained only by long and arduous practice, such as Stevenson's. A
good many books on technique have more quotation than text, and while
free quotation lends a superficial weight to the whole, it is not of
much practical use to one seeking to learn how to write. His own reading
will offer him examples in plenty, and the most or even the only useful
thing a work on technique can do for him is to state the principles he
should try to follow in his own work.

[J] I once read a story in manuscript wherein a character related a
commonplace tale of woe to another, with the result that the other's
eyes "glistened with ho