er grows trite or commonplace is love."[16] "Another
offense ... is the light theme that, being analyzed, amounts to nothing.
It may be so cleverly handled that we read with pleasure--and then at
the end are disgusted with ourselves for being pleased, and enraged at
the writer for deluding us; for we thought there would be something
beneath his graceful manners and airy persiflage, and lo, there is
not."[17]

The plot of a short story should allow of expression in a single short,
fairly simple sentence; if it cannot be so compressed there is something
radically wrong with it. This may be called the "elemental" or "true"
plot. It will be in general, perhaps vague, terms, and will permit
differing treatment by different writers; yet its trend and its outcome
will be definitely fixed. This true plot, in turn, can be expressed in
yet more general terms, often as the primal truth which the story
illustrates; this may be called the "theme" of the story. Thus in "The
Ambitious Guest," the theme is "The futility of abstracted ambition;"
or, in its most general terms, "The irony of fate." The true plot is:

An unknown but ambitious youth stops at a mountain tavern and
perishes with its inmates.

In the development of a plot from this germ into the completed story,
it is often of advantage to make what may be called a "skeleton" or
"working plot." This skeleton is produced by thinking through the
story as it has been conceived, and setting down on paper in logical
order a line for every important idea. These lines will roughly
correspond to the paragraphs of the finished story, but in a
descriptive paragraph one line will not suffice, while a line may
represent a dozen paragraphs of dialogue; then, too, paragraphing is
partly logical and partly mechanical, and varies considerably with
the person.

Working Plot of "The Ambitious Guest."