Читать книгу The Selected Works of Arnold Bennett: Essays, Personal Development Books & Articles - Arnold Bennett - Страница 64

Now we have here a forcible illustration of the general truth which I emphasised in Chapter III.—that length is a primary consideration. The conditions of newspaper production make it imperative that certain features of an issue should occupy a certain space, no more and no less. And experience has proved that readers tire more quickly of an acute, thrilling interest than of a mild interest Accordingly the number of divisions and of words in a serial has become fixed. The writer of a serial, therefore, if he wishes to succeed, must start out with the idea of a number of instalments, or compartments, of a given size. Since the syndicates are the chief buyers, he will do well to aim at the syndicates, who cater principally for provincial dailies and weeklies. Assuming that he proposes to undertake a sensational serial, he must always keep uppermost in his mind a plan-like arrangement of twelve compartments of five thousand words each. The central theme of his plot must be amplified in such a manner as to fill these compartments. The aim of a serial story is not merely to divert the reader line by line and chapter by chapter, but to induce him to buy the next number of the paper. Hence the good sensational serial has a "curtain,” that is to say, an exciting, unsolved situation, at the end of every instalment The good serial is a chain of episodes leading up to one grand climax—the determination of a destiny, the explanation of a mystery, or the detection of a crime; and it is also a series of groups of episodes, each closing with a partial climax.

The aspirant must never lose sight of this mechanical substructure, which is essential. A poor plot may prove saleable if it is handled in conformity with the rules; the best plot in the world will be fatally vitiated if the rules are transgressed.

Most serials, even the serials of “old hands,” are manufactured in the wrong way. The writers begin their plots at the beginning instead of at the end. They invent the mystery first and the explanation second. I am convinced that this is wrong. Sensational serials are a comparatively easy branch of fiction (for which reason I treat them next after short stories), provided they are handled with common-sense. The device of the serial is to present to the reader a problem. The problem consists of a number of various circumstances, some of which contain the means of solving the problem and some of which do not. The latter circumstances are made prominent in the opening of the story, and the former are made prominent towards the close. Now it is surely obvious that the difficulties of contriving the plot will be simplified, and the effectiveness of the plot increased, if the writer has begun by deciding what the end of the tale is. It must be more difficult to invent a crime or other event which will exactly fit a previously-fixed set of episodes, than to begin with a crime or other event and then surround it with suitable episodes; just as it is easier to fit a stick accurately into a hole in the ground by making the hole with the stick, than by making the hole with your finger and then cutting the stick to match the hole.

Consequently, when the popular author, asked by the ecstatic interviewer how he writes his wonderful stories, states, as he sometimes does, that he first gets his heroine into the most dreadful dilemma he can conceive and then proceeds to get her out again, he shows that he is a clumsy workman who has not properly mastered his craft.