Many different substances, as distinct to
the practised eye as stone and wood, go to the making of a novel, and
it is necessary to see them for what they are. So only is it possible
to use them aright, and to find, when the volume is closed, that a
complete, coherent, appraisable book remains in the mind.
And what are these different substances, and how is a mere reader to
learn their right use? They are the various forms of narrative, the
forms in which a story may be told; and while they are many, they are
not indeed so very many, though their modifications and their
commixtures are infinite. They are not recondite; we know them well
and use them freely, but to use them is easier than to perceive their
demands and their qualities. These we gradually discern by using them
consciously and questioningly--by reading, I mean, and reading
critically, the books in which they appear. Let us very carefully
follow the methods of the novelists whose effects are incontestable,
noticing exactly the manner in which the scenes and figures in their
books are presented. The scenes and figures, as I have said, we shape,
we detach, without the smallest difficulty; and if we pause over them
for long enough to see by what arts and devices, on the author's part,
we have been enabled to shape them so strikingly--to see precisely how
this episode has been given relief, that character made intelligible
and vivid--we at once begin to stumble on many discoveries about the
making of a novel.
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