Connecticut western news., 1877-06-08
IAN, CONN.,, FRIDAY, JUNE 8, 1877.
Plot-Making in Fiction.

P1ot-MaI1ing in Fiction.
 Harriet Martineau delares, ill her au- tobiography, that the creating of plot in fiction is task beyond human fac ulty. This power, she thinks, is the same as that of prophecy: 'that is, if all human action is'' Gas we know it to be) "the inevitable result fantecedents, all the antecedents must be thoroughly comprehended in order to discern the inevitable catastrophe. A mind which can do this must be in the nature of things prophetic mind, in the strictest sense; and no human mind is that" She goeson to assert that the only thing to be done is to derive plot from actual life, as everybody knows the best plots have been. Shakespeare's were; Scott's best plot C"The Bride of Hammer moor') was; Boccaccio's stories were undoubtedly derived from old narra- tives or from life before his eyes; and plot-making, such as it is, is often the gift of inferior writers. Dickens, she affirms, could not invent plot-nor Bulwer-nor Douglas Jerrold-nor per haps Thackeray-''while Fannie Kem- ble's forgotten Francis I.,' written in her teens, contains mines of plot, suffi- cient to furnish a groundwork for a score of fine fictions." She describes how, ill preparing one of her early economic tales, ''Berkley the Banker she sat over her materials for two days from seven in the morning until two the next morning, with an interval of only twenty minutes for dinner, and after all was obliged to have recourse to some facts of the financial crisis of 1925, and to those facts the story mainly owed it's success
 Writers ambitious for success in fic- tion will be apt to derive vast deal of comfort from these utterances. The difficulty of plot-making has doubtless kept many persons of brilliant imagina- tion from the field of novel-writing it was always a weight upon Washington Irving; it has kept writers like K Mar vel and Warner lowering on the verge of story writing in the form of the dra- matic essay it is peculiarly the deffci- ency of American novelists. But it must not be hastily assumed that, because original plots are impossible, it only remains for writer to bring to- gether facts and characters in real life in order to execute a novel. Somebody has said that to combine in Nature is to produce in art. A novel-writer, how ever much he may depend upon actual facts for his groundwork, must in one sense, after all, invent his plot-that is, he must create the grouping and the arrangements; he must, by means of his imaginative power, give freshness and vitality to the picture. A novel is not really original by the mere facts of the story, but by the treatment of them by the atmosphere, so to speak, in which they are envoloped. by the man. ner in which the characters are depic- ted and grouped, by the artistic coloring, by the light and shade-just as one painter may make the Crucitixion con- ventional and commonplace, ,and another give to the familiar incident original force and expression. These results are the highest tax upon the mental powers of writer; and the reason why infe- rior writers are often good at mere plot making is because it is purely q mechan- ical talent, a sort of puzzle-making, the faculty for which may be rare, but which is none the less far from being a high one. Mere plot, moreover, is never a satisfying quality in romance; none of the works that endure are famous for the story they have to tell, but rather for the character-painting and the man. ner in which the story is told. In al- most every instance an intricate story holds the attention of the reader only so long as the puzzle is unsolved |; the mo- ment the mystery is known, the novel It is thus obvious that writers are not going to produce successful books by adopting the idea that as original plot is impossible it is not therefore to be at tempted, and that all one has to do is to borrow from history or experience a SIOllp Ol IdClS HI OlNiVI io NoLASCI AlNb uIl acceptable romance.
 We doubt if there could be better test of a writer's real inventive power than for him to take a plot already exis- ting and replace it-holding to the mere story, but transferring it to different period, different locale, and giving diff ferent characteristics to the persons ot the story. If a writer could do this, and produce an impression of freshness if he could give to the work differ ent atmosphere, a fresh tone, an indi- viduality of its own-he would really show a high order of imagination and even invention, because he would have to perform the difficult feat of banish- ing from his mind old impressions, o1 forgetting what had been done, ano clearing his mental tablet of hues anC colors which we all know are apt to be so tenacious. It would be curious anC interesting experiment, and perhaps some of our ingenious writers may be prompted to make it.-App1eton's Jour
 nal.
 Chinese Lanterns.
 A Chinaman and his lantern are ill