Washington standard. [volume] (Olympia, Wash. Territory) 1860-1921, 1884-11-14
LAYING OUT A STORY.


Inter Ocean.
The methods of work employed bv
Reade have only been partly told in d" 4
Terrible Temptation" Since that day
every wouldbe novelist in England
and America has kept his scrap books
on the plan of "MIr. i,olf." The fact is
that scrap-books were never as useful
to Mr.. Ieale as he had hoped they
would be / he care with which lie kept
them up WAS not abated, however. His
method of laying out novel has only
been vaguely limited at. Alphonse
Daudet begins his stories with the
climax and its participants. From that
point he works back to the opening of
the tale. Then he rewrites and de-
velop' his characters, introducing such
incidents as suggest themselves. He
writes with purpose, but he never
knows when he begins what characters
will enact the incidents leading to the
catastrophe. He works back from eff
feet to cause.
Iheophile Gautier believed in long
prefaces. 1t was an ep;gram of his
that his greatest novel would be all
reia e." Charles Reade did not APP
prove of them. He said that manv
clever story was damned by a pre-
face. His theory was that the tale
OH Int to tell itself, without prologue or
eliilogue. He kept his stories i they
ne er were roman ces in any literal
sense on the stocks for year more
HIS method of nursing the youngling
WAS peculiar. The chapters were
roughly blocked out on separate sheets
of paper. 1hen they we're numbered
an. arranged in their order or dropped
between the leaves of large scrap
book. lhen the process of fecundat on
began. An incident was added to one
chapter, a bit of description to another,
and a scrap of dialogue found place on
still another sheet.
Then the shift ng of scenes, incl
dents, dialogues and whole chapters be-
gan. The matter in chapter 5, for in
stance, found i,lace in IL ii became 7;
I was lodged at 5, and so on. The ork
was growing all the time. "Details were
evolving themselves from the mass OF
facts. a new character was suggested
is course was traced rolghly through
the chips OF this literary carpenter
shop. he was limited at, for example,
in 8; he appeared in &; he became
necessary to the story in 8, and on TO
the climax. a few important chapters
Were rou., ,hly WI tten out or dictated,
then pinned together and replaced in
the book or slowed in a pigeon-hole
Again more changes and transpositions
Finally, the sheets and scraps pinned
or gummed to it were all taken out and
gathered into stock. Then the au-
thor RAJ idly shuif.ed them over and
grasped the story rs q whole for the
first time. Some Of these outlines were
curious and often meaningless Here
is a sample, ~eproducei from memory
XXI.
shower over. Sunshine. Horse
| chestnuts. Here follows O bit of de-
scr.ption, perhaps thirty lines; then a
rafting bit of dialogue OF a page or
more). station; train; porter. More
dia!ogue). He may be even worse, but
not coward" etc.
When the story had reached this
7tage it was as good as written. Mr.
Reade then settled down to seven or
eight hours manual labor day, and in
three months the book was advertised.
Much more could be written about
the purity of his private life, his hos.
pitality, h uniform kindness to Amer.
leans, his encouraging words to young
men, his generosity toward the sui err
ing, and his boundless sympathy for the
miserable. Great as was his Literary
success he had one grief. 1t was that
he had been denied membership to q
certain club. Il was proposed by
Collins and seconded by Dickens, but
they wouldn't have me-" he often SO d.
When asked why he so lamented the
fact, the hale old man replied: "Be-
cause there wasn't q gas light in the
house. 1 do like to read by q good
| sperm candle"