Plot

The short-story is a form of fiction intended to present a word-picture of a single event of human experience in an artistic setting. This setting must consist of plausible, influential circumstances, striking occurrences, and remarkable incidents so deftly massed as to emphasize the laugh, the tear, or the thrill which the event holds.

Human life is composed of a series of closely related events, the result of environment modified by inherent tendencies and individual characteristics. As they ordinarily occur, these events are so frequently the result of the same or a similar chain of circumstances, occurrences, and incidents, as to attract little more than passing notice; yet they hold the real heart-interest of life, because they are the medium through which human character is made manifest. No event of life is unimportant.

The chief aim of fiction is to provide a suitable, artistic setting for these every day events, and thus make them both attractive and entertaining.

The simple narration of an event, disconnected from its antecedents, while it may possess a passing interest, is not entertaining because of its commonplaces. It is not a story in the sense to be considered here.

To be a story, it must entertain; to entertain, it must possess heart-interest; to possess heart-interest, it must include the antecedent circumstances, occurrences, and incidents necessary to emphasize the laugh, the thrill, or the tear which the event holds. These circumstances occurrences, and incidents must be consistently and logically arranged with a view to holding the attention of the reader until the point, or climax—the laugh, thrill, or tear—is reached. Such an arrangement of the antecedents of an event is popularly called the plot of the story.

The plot of a story, then, is the chain of closely connected, more or less complicated, circumstances, occurrences, and incidents leading up to an event. Whatever the nature of its antecedents, the event itself must hold a laugh, a thrill, or a tear. It is, therefore, self-evident that the more intricately involved the links of the chain, the more interesting and entertaining the story will be; and the more hearty the laugh, the more touching the thrill, or the larger the tear, the more satisfying the climax. The essentials of a good plot, then, are action and complications. These hold the chief elements of the heart-interest ; humor, pathos, and suspense.

Any event of life may be worked into an entertaining story by simply supplying the necessary action and complications to give it heart-interest.

If such event does not already hold a laugh, a thrill, or a tear, one or the other must be supplied from the factory (imagination) of the writer, and the same source must be drawn upon for the proper setting.

Now, supposing you are riding along a country road; on your right is a wide common, on your left an old field inclosed with a rail fence; here and there, about the field, are patches of blackberry canes, high grass and weeds fill the fence corners; at the further side a farm house nestles in a grove, while just beyond the house rises a hill covered with a dense forest. You take note of all. this, and while you are doing so, a man is seen coming across the common. He walks briskly, crosses the road some rods in front of you and jumps the fence. Here is a scene, here is an event with action, but it is commonplace, a mere fact devoid of interest. But suppose that the moment the man is over the fence he begins a series of gyrations and contortions which would put a blush on the cheek of a jumping-jack; your interest is at once aroused, and the question, why does he do it? arises in your mind. A moment later it is all clear: the man alighted in a nest of yellow-jackets, and you have the laugh for which you were looking.

Suppose, however, that the man alights safely, and continues his walk directly toward the house, and disappears among the trees surrounding it. A moment later you are startled by a pistol-shot immediately followed by the agonized scream of a woman. Your interest is now thoroughly aroused, and you are filled with an unconquerable desire to know what is going on at that house. Your mind at once associates the man who jumped the fence with the trouble there, and you have had your thrill directly connected with this simple event.

Again, suppose that the time is seven-thirty or eight o'clock in the evening; the stars are shining brightly, and the moon, just rising over the top of the hill, is flooding the valley with silvery light. The man jumps the fence, crosses the field and disappears among the trees. All is quiet, not even the bay of a watch-dog breaks the stillness. You ride on unaffected by the incident. Next morning when you open your paper, the first thing you see is a scare head that tells you that the daughter of a prominent farmer has mysteriously disappeared. She was to have been married in the near future to a rising young business man of the town. Parents of the girl prostrated, and the affianced husband frantic with grief.

Again the man who jumped the fence the previous evening occupies the foremost place in your solution of the mystery. You saw him disappear in the grove which surrounds the house at the very hour which the paper says the girl disappeared. Here is your tear, corresponding in size with the depth of your sympathy with the bereaved ones. Here also is a mystery offering itself for solution, and all connected with the man who jumped the fence. So we might go on indefinitely.

Now, the interest of a plot developed from either of these suppositions would depend on the intricacy of the complications introduced; while the real satisfaction of the story would come from the amount and quality of the humor or pathos allowable by the theme selected, and from the unique solution of the tangles. Care must be taken neither to over- or under-do the matter of humor or pathos. The characters of your people, if true to life, will take care of this matter, and will also aid you materially in the solution of the complications.

Suppose we use the last supposition; in this case, the mystery to be solved, or the chief complication, is the sudden disappearance of the girl and the question of her present condition, and the following questions very naturally arise, viz.: Did she deliberately leave her home, or was she kidnapped? If the former, why did she do it? What circumstances led up to her disappearance? Where_is she now? If the latter, who did it ? What was the motive ? Where is she now and how situated ? Whichever proposition we take, the interest centers in what happened to the girl, and is the first question to be settled, because it is for this that the story is to be written, and every step in the plot must lead in this direction.

Now, beginning with the disappearance of the girl, think through the story to the solution of the mystery, which you have already settled in your mind, supplying, fresh from your factory (imagination), every circumstance, occurrence, and incident necessary to make a perfect chain, every link of which shall exactly fit the place for which it is intended. Then take pencil and paper and, beginning with the circumstance which announces the mystery, set down in regular sequence each circumstance, occurrence, and incident leading up to the solution. Make the mention of each as brief as possible; not more than a line or two at most. This outline, when complete, will be your field-notes of the story, and the number of items in it will roughly correspond to the number of paragraphs. The climax should solve all problems and carry the chief laugh, tear, or thrill.

Your plot is now ready. Roll up your sleeves, loosen your necktie, and sail in. In presenting each item of the plot, make it perfectly clear and distinct, and as forcible as language can express it, but above all else, maintain its coherency. It must glide into the succeeding item without a jar or break.