Читать книгу The Lure of the Pen: A Book for Would-Be Authors - Flora Klickmann - Страница 8

Table of Contents

Begin your observation course by noting anything and everything likely to have a bearing on the subject of your writing, and jot down your observations in the briefest of notes. No matter if it seem a trifling thing, in the early part of your training it will be well worth your while to record even the trifles, since this all helps to develop and focus the faculty for observation.

One of the drawbacks of an advanced civilisation is the fact that it tends to lessen the power of observation. The average person in this twentieth century sees next to nothing of the detail of life. We have no longer the need to cultivate observation for self-protection and food-finding as in primitive times. Everything is done for us by pressing a button or putting a penny in the slot, till it is fast becoming too much of an effort for us even to look (or it was, before the War); and the ability to look—and to see when we look—is, consequently, disappearing through disuse.

You will be surprised how much there is in this practice of observation, once you get started.

Study Human Characteristics

For example: If you intend to write a story, you will need to study the various types of people figuring therein; the distinguishing characteristics, the method of speaking, and the mental attitude of each.

The amateur invariably states the colour of a girl's eyes and hair, and the tint of her complexion, with some sentences about her social standing and her clothes, and then considers her fully equipped for her part in the piece. Whereas, in reality, these items are of no importance so far as a story goes. We really do not mind whether Dinah, in Adam Bede, had violet eyes or grey-green; it is the soul of the woman that counts. Neither do we trouble whether Portia wore a well-tailored coat and skirt, or a simple muslin frock lavishly trimmed with Valenciennes; it is her ready wit, her resourcefulness, and her deep-lying affection that interest us.

Next in importance to the human beings are the circumstances involved.

Does your heroine decide to leave her millionaire-father's palatial home and hide her identity in slum-work and a room in a tenement?

You will have to do a fair amount of first-hand observation to get the details and general "atmosphere" appertaining to a millionaire's residence and mode of living, and contrast these with the conditions that represent life in the squalid quarters of a city.

Environment and Circumstances offer Wide Scope

Perhaps you will tell me that it is impossible for you to make these observations, as you do not know your way about any real slum, or you are not on visiting terms with and any millionaire. That raises another important question that I hope to deal with later, when we come to the subject of story-writing. Here I can only say, Don't attempt to write upon topics you are unable to study at near range.

After all, there are unlimited subjects that are close to everybody's hand. You may be including a dog in your story. Is he to be a real dog, or that dear, faithful old creature, who has been leading an active life (in fiction) for a century or more, rescuing the heir when he tumbles in a pond; apprising the sleeping family upstairs of the fact that the clothes-horse by the kitchen fire has caught alight; tracking the burglar to his lair; re-uniting fallen-out lovers by sitting up beseechingly on his hind legs, and in a hundred other ways making himself generally useful?

I am fond of dogs, and I never grudge them literary honours; but I sometimes wish we could get a change of descriptive matter where they are concerned. What are you proposing to say about the dog? "He ran joyfully to meet his master, wagging his tail the while"? Something like that? I shouldn't wonder. That is the beginning and the end of so many amateur descriptions of a dog; and, judging by the number of times I have read these words, his poor tail must be nearly wagged off by now.

Instead of being content with this, start making careful observations, and you will soon have something else to write about. Notice how a dog talks—with his ears; he can tell you almost anything, once you learn to read his ears. And when you have noted all the points you can in this direction, and mastered this part of his language, see what you can learn from his walk; you can estimate a dog's temper and feelings, his sorrow, his joy, and the state of his health, by noticing the variations in his walk. Why, any one dog can provide you with a book full of observations.

You may say, however, that as your story is to be a short one, you could never use up a book full of observations if you had them.

You need a Score of Facts in your Head for each one you put on Paper

Very likely; but always remember that you need to have a score of facts in your head for every one you put down on paper. You must be thoroughly saturated with a subject before you can write even a brief description in a telling and convincing manner. Therefore, never be afraid of making too many notes in your observation-book.

Many of these entries you will never refer to again; the very act of writing them down will so impress them on your memory that they become a matter-of-course to you. This in itself is valuable training; it is one of the processes by which a person may become "well-informed"—an essential qualification for a good writer.

While over-elaboration of detail in your writing is seldom desirable, apart from a text-book or a treatise, knowledge of detail is imperative if that writing is to conjure up situations in the reader's mind and make them seem vividly real. In describing scenery, for instance, you do not need to give the name of every bit of vegetation in sight, till your MS. looks like a botanical dictionary; but it is useful to know those names, you may require some of them; and until your work is actually shaping, you cannot tell exactly what you will use and what omit.

Keen Observation will save you from Pitfalls

The habit of keen observation will save you from a legion of pitfalls. The more you train your eyes to see, and your mind to retain what you have seen, the less chance there is of your putting down inaccuracies.

I have been reading a MS. wherein the heroine—a beautiful girl with a face like a haunting memory (whatever that may look like)—spent a whole afternoon lying full-length on the grass, the first sunny day in February, revelling in the scent of violets near by, and watching the swallows skimming above her. If the writer had no opportunity to observe the comings and goings of swallows, she might at least have turned up an encyclopædia, when she would have found that swallows do not arrive in England till well on into April.

Then, after 249 more pages, the beautiful girl finally died of a broken heart—obviously absurd! In real life she would have died on the very next page of rheumatic fever and double pneumonia, after lying on the wet grass all that time!

Frequently, when I point out similar errors to the novice, I get some such reply as this, "Of course, that reference to swallows was only a slip of the pen"; or, "After all, it is merely a minor point whether she lay on the grass or walked along the road; it doesn't really affect the story as a whole."

True, such discrepancies may be only minor details; but, on the other hand, they may not. I have noticed, however, that the writer who is inaccurate on small points is equally liable to inaccuracy where the main features of the story are concerned; and the writer who does not know enough about his subject to get his details right seldom knows enough about it to get any of it right.