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I will assume that the beginner has come to the tremendous decision of writing a novel —not a mere serial, not something that can be cut up into instalments, but a novel, a volume, an affair that will be printed on hundreds of pages, bound in cloth, sold at six shillings, and passed and repassed over the counters of Mudies’ and Smiths’. And the beginner says, “How ought I to begin?” There are numerous slightly different ways of beginning, including several quite good ones. But I shall prescribe one definite course, since I am persuaded that the aspirant prefers a single recipe or course to a choice of them.

Nearly all that I have previously said concerning the composition of short stories and serials may be said of the composition of the novel; and, equally, much of what I shall say about the novel will apply to the short story and the serial.

Selection of subject, as the reader will remember, is the most important thing in writing fiction. Here I may remark that the beginner with a genuine vocation will probably decide to write a novel long before a theme occurs to him. It is the vague desire to write a story, not a particular desire to write a particular story, which characterises the genuine novelist. Many people who have hit on an “idea” are moved to write merely by their chance possession of that idea, and not at all by a fundamental instinct.

The beginner should proceed through the following stages:—

(I) He will invent and elaborate the plot. Now the action, as I have before explained, should spring out of the characters, and the characters should spring out of the general environment Therefore the first dim indefinable efforts of the imagination will be concerned with the environment. By the environment I mean the place or places where the action is to pass, the general class and sort of people involved, and the broad effect of landscape and other surroundings. The mind must ponder on these things until they begin to take shape. Then follows the conjuring-up of one or two (probably not more than three at the outside) appropriate principal characters. And at length, when these have shown themselves, the nature of the action must be considered and evolved. Of course it may well happen that the first naked hint of the proposed book will be a hint of an action or a situation, or of a character, entirely separate from any notion of general environment. This is quite normal and correct, but the beginner must take care to carry that hint backward to a suitable environment first, and not forward into a detailed action until the environment and characters are more or less defined. Having arrived at a broad notion of his scheme, the beginner should write it out with all the literary skill at his command, and submit it to a friend for perusal and criticism. Let there be no diffidence or false modesty in pursuing this very advisable course. The preliminary sketch will perhaps extend to two or three thousand words.

(2) The act of writing it will tend to make it clearer and to expose hidden weaknesses, and the next stage will be to cure the weaknesses, to bring the strong parts into relief, and to amplify throughout. The process of amplification will consist of inventing subsidiary characters, choosing precise environments for various leading episodes, settling the leading episodes, and devising minor episodes. By this time the principal characters and scenes should exist with some completeness in the mind. The whole book should now be planned out into chapters according to the main divisions into which the action naturally falls. The beginner must concentrate his powers specially upon the closing scenes of the tale, the solution of problems, the final effects on character. He must permit himself no shirking; he must grapple firmly with the difficulties which are certain to arise, and not leave them till he has devised a satisfactory way out of each of them. Time and energy spent here are well spent. A day over the plot before the actual writing has begun may save ten days later on. In the result, the beginner must have a list of chapters with brief particulars of the episodes in each, showing where the various characters enter the story and disappear from it, where descriptions are. to occur, and so on. This catalogue of the contents of chapters need have no literary finish whatever; but it should be clear and fairly full, especially towards and at the climax.

(3) He may now commence upon the actual writing of the book. Let him bear in mind that it is unwise to begin with descriptions or explanations. He should plunge into the action, and at once present some of the principal characters dramatically, postponing explanatory matter until the reader’s attention has been arrested. In regard to the writing, he must spare no pains on it; he must polish every detail, however minute, in succession, and leave nothing unfinished behind him. He will probably begin his task in a glow of enthusiasm, and he must proceed with it in a spirit of absolute thoroughness and warm ardour until this first glow begins to cool. He may feel a diminution of his own interest at the end of the first or second chapter; in any event the reaction is sure to occur fairly soon. When it does occur, let him stop. Even if he has only written four or five thousand words he will find that in writing them he has acquired a much firmer grasp of the characters and the action than he had before, and for the first time he will really perceive what the book is going to look like, and what its atmosphere will be. On the other hand, he will also perceive for the first time the true immensity of the whole task in front of him, and he will be appalled by it.

(4) Therefore I recommend that from this the first point of his discouragement, he should proceed with the book in a rough and hasty draft, leaving minor difficulties for future effort and seeking only to accomplish the whole story, somehow or other, and rather helter-skelter, as quickly as he can. Of such a draft he ought to be able to write at least five thousand words a day, finishing it in a fortnight or three weeks. The book now exists; it is clumsy, imperfect, “scamped,” very weak in many places; but as an organic whole it emphatically exists; and by the standard of his first chapter the beginner can accurately estimate what he has done and what remains to do. Conceive the business of writing a novel as the carrying upstairs of a mass of human life from the ground-floor of the daily commonplace to the higher region of imaginative beauty. Well, the beginner has now lugged the vast mass halfway upstairs to an intermediate landing, and it cannot tumble back again; it is safe where it lies, and it may be carried up the remaining stairs in pieces, piece by piece, slowly, at leisure. Moreover, something complete has been achieved, a definite position reached.

(5) The beginner may now congratulate himself on the fact that more than half his work is done. He will return to his first chapter. Perhaps he will leave it as it stands; more probably he will decide that by rewriting it he can improve it out of all knowledge. And so, chapter by chapter, deliberately, using time like a spendthrift, he will rewrite the entire book. The hasty draft, in addition to performing the functions of a draft, will serve to keep him in touch with the story as a whole, and by its bulk and completeness will afford him always an ocular proof of what he can do when he tries; such a proof is very sustaining in periods of depression and apparently hopeless difficulty. Let me add that, during the final writing, the beginner should frequently read and read again the finished portions, and also the remaining part of the draft.

I shall now deal with various details of composition.