t
to keep to the writer's viewpoint and to develop nothing not of
practical utility in the work of conception, elaboration, and execution.

Thus far the discussion has been concerned with plot as a whole; it
remains to consider the events, incidents, or situations which compose a
plot. The situations of the plot or story are what its writer must cast
into a climactic consequence, and he must have some standard to measure
each before he can determine its proper place.

The fictionally significant aspect of a plot is that it embodies a
conflict between opposing forces, that is, it is dramatic. Likewise, the
fictionally significant aspect of a situation is that it displays
opposed persons--or at least opposed forces--in conflict. The writer
manipulates his material--preferably before writing--so that two or more
persons, actuated by incompatible motives, are brought into conflict;
there is a moment of indecision; then some person bends the other or
others to his will; and the situation determines. Or the writer brings a
character or group of characters into conflict with Nature, as did Harte
in "The Outcasts of Poker Flat." Here, also, there is a period of
indecision, and then either the human force or the natural force
triumphs.

The dramatic quality of any situation inheres in the struggle between
opposing forces which each presents, and rises or falls with the
essential strength of such forces. Take two instances of conflict
between opposed motives in the same person. In some humorous story a
character may be unable to decide which of two women he wants to marry.
One can cook, let us say, and he is a gourmand; the other is pretty,
and he has leanings that way, too. The dramatic quality in such a story
will be slight, because the motives involved are relatively weak, yet it
will be present. But take the story of a French girl who is outraged by
a German soldier and gives birth to a child by him. Her quality of
patriotism can be built up to great intensity, if the writer wills, even
to the point where the reader will accept an impulse on her part to kill
her child. Her quality as a mother can be built up likewise. It would be
a most effective touch to have her hate the unborn child furiously, then
to arrange matters so that she should be unable to carry out her first
impulse to kill it and be forced to care for it, giving it opportunity
to awaken her dormant maternal instinct. Finally, love for France and
hatred for Ge