imate result: they
differ only in their origin: and the author who aspires to a mastery
of narrative should remember that, in narrative at its best, character
and action and even setting are one and inseparable.

For the conveniences of study, however, it is well to examine the
elements of narrative one by one; and we shall therefore devote
three separate chapters to a technical consideration of plot, and
characters, and setting.

CHAPTER IV

PLOT

Robert Louis Stevenson, in his spirited essay entitled "A Humble
Remonstrance," has given very valuable advice to the writer of
narrative. In concluding his remarks he says, "And as the root of the
whole matter, let him bear in mind that his novel is not a transcript
of life, to be judged by its exactitude; but a simplification of some
side or point of life, to stand or fall by its significant simplicity.
For although, in great men, working upon great motives, what
we observe and admire is often their complexity, yet underneath
appearances the truth remains unchanged: that simplification was their
method, and that simplicity is their excellence." Indeed, as we have
already noted in passing, simplification is the method of every art.
Every artist, in his own way, simplifies life: first by selecting
essentials from the helter-skelter of details that life presents
to him, and then by arranging these essentials in accordance with
a pattern. And we have noted also that the method of the artist in
narrative is to select events which bear an essential logical relation
to each other and then to arrange them along the lines of a pattern of
causation.

Of course the prime structural necessity in narrative, as indeed in
every method of discourse, is unity. Unity in any work of art can be
attained only by a definite decision of the artist as to what he is
trying to accomplish, and by a rigorous focus of attention on his
purpose to accomplish it,--a focus of attention so rigorous as
to exclude consideration of any matter which does not contribute,
directly or indirectly, to the furtherance of his aim. The purpose of
the artist in narrative is to represent a series of events--wherein
each event stands in a causal relation, direct or indirect, to its
logical predecessor and its logical successor in the series. Obviously
the only way to attain unity of narrative is to exclude consideration
of any event which does not, directly or indirectly, contribute to
the progress of the