an any Anglicised Latin equivalents. The writer of fiction
should realize the fact, and should make his people use strictly English
words when caught in a pregnant situation. A lawyer, in discussing a
case, properly may be made to employ the word deceased, for instance,
but when informed that his wife has died suddenly, "Dead?" he should be
made to say, "Dead?" That is very obvious, of course, but it will serve
for an illustration.[L]

The question of character intrudes here. All speech should be
characteristic of the person uttering it, but the necessity that the
word should fit the moment is more stringent than the necessity that the
word should fit the person, provided that the moment is so tense that
its force might be expected to strip any husk of mannerisms from the
persons involved. Indeed, the more strikingly individual the casual
speech of a character, the greater will be the effect of making him
utter in a crisis the broken and disjointed English words that come to
the lips of all of us when our loves or our pocketbooks are threatened.

After stating the necessity to make dialogue accord with situation, and
after pointing out the three resources of the writer to this end, a word
of caution may not be out of place. In all human probability the writer
will have for the significant situations of his story a much keener
feeling and appreciation than any reader. There is some danger that the
writer's feeling for his own situations will lead him to make his people
talk a thought too brokenly for acceptance by a reader without the same
keen appreciation of all the emotional and dramatic values of the
situations of the story. The danger cannot be overcome by toning down
the dialogue; the writer must force a reader to feel the power of all
the situations of the story. In other words, dialogue in tense
situations must meet the fact of situation, and each situation itself
must be built up for a reader by proper development and adequate writing
of the whole story. The art of fiction is a whole, as a story is a
whole, and perfect handling of one element alone of his story, as the
dialogue, will avail the writer nothing.

In transcribing speech, the less the writer thinks about the style or
manner in which he has chosen to tell the story the better. The first
consideration is to be natural, that is, to write as some real person
would talk, and, if possible, to write as some particular person would
talk. But the general to