n of the scarlet letter,--a scene which would have been
only an incident in George Eliot's _denouement_. It will be seen from
this that any story which is extended in its implications may offer a
novelist materials for any one of several plot-structures, according
to whichever section of the entire story happens most to interest his
mind.

It will be seen, also, that much of the entire story must, in any
case, remain unwritten. A plot is not only, as Stevenson stated, a
simplification of life; it is also a further simplification of the
train of events which, in simplifying life, the novelist has first
imagined. The entire story, with all its implications, is selected
from life; and the plot is then selected from the entire story. Often
a novelist may suggest as much through deliberately omitting from his
plot certain events in his imagined story as he could suggest by
representing them. Perhaps the most powerful character in George
Meredith's "Evan Harrington" is the great Mel, whose death is
announced in the very first sentence of the novel. Hawthorne, in "The
Marble Faun," never clears away the mystery of Miriam's shadowy
pursuer, nor tells us what became of Hilda when she disappeared for a
time from the sight and knowledge of her friends.

=Where to Begin a Story.=--After the novelist has selected from his
entire story the materials he means to represent, and has patterned
these materials into a plot, he enjoys considerable liberty in regard
to the point at which he may commence his narrative. He may begin at
the beginning of one or another of his main strands of causation, as
Scott usually does; or he may adopt the Homeric device, commended by
Horace, of plunging into the midst of his plot and working his way
back only afterward to its beginning. In the first chapter of
"Pendennis," the hero is seventeen years old; the second chapter
narrates the marriage of his father and mother, and his own birth and
boyhood; and at the outset of the third chapter he is only sixteen
years of age.

=Logical Sequence and Chronological Succession.=--It is obvious that,
so long as the novelist represents his events in logical sequence, it
is not at all necessary that he should present them in chronological
succession. Stories may be told backward through time as well as
forward. Thackeray often begins a chapter with an event that happened
one day, and ends it with an event that happened several days before;
he works his way backwa