Los Angeles herald., 1910-12-11
'The Confessions of Best Seller

I regularly every day have tried show
| ing chapters as l have written them
| to members of my family or to friends,
| but one gets only the coolest sort of
| comfort out of this experience. Even
| where you deal with a frank, sound,
critical judgment, manuscript in the
rough makes poor impression on the
reader. II you sketch a scenario, in
the manner of the playwright, 1T is
likely to meet with disapproval. for
after all, it's all in the way you do 1t.
A story which, roughly outlined in a
page or two, seems utterly hopeless,
may make really fine novel when the
author has developed it, and put vital
ity into his characters, and given
cumulative power to his incidents, and
all that. No hint of the complete
book can be given by preliminary
description. No one can see what the
author sees, and a really fine scheme
may crumble at word from critic
to whom the author has imperfectly
described his project. Your best friend
is likely to shake his head over your
most promising idea and tell you he
can't see 1t.
"I repeat that authorship is a lonely
trade. Other professional and business
men meet and discuss their affairs;
but the novelist is-if he be a person
being who broods and who must keep
his troubles to himself. I have heard
that a distinguished American novelist
used to send his incomplete manuscript
around to his friends when he got
stuck, to invite suggestions as to how
best to work out the conclusion; but
this argues a lack of invention and re-
sourcefulness.
"There may be geniuses who can be-
gin a story and let it take its own
course, but that path seems to me be-
set by dragons. In my own small af-
fairs I must see the end before l be-
gin writing. 1 have sometimes written
last chapter first. There must be
some high point of interest toward
which the story teller aims. In this the
novel is comparable to the play, in
which there is so great insistence upon
the high dramatic moment at which
the action eliminates. In a play like
Clyde Fitch's The City the mechanism
is perfectly apparent - one horror is
built upon another to the breaking
point. The same method may be fol-
lowed in certain kinds of novels-chiefly
in stories that blend romance and ad-
venture where little time is spent upon
character In my tale, The House of
a Thousand Candles 1 followed uncon-
sciously the method of the theater. The
crowning surprise of that story marked
the elimination of its interest-it was
third act and became so naturally
when a play was made of 1t. But when
l found that 1 had been laying plants
for third acts in my stories dropped
the method.
IT have never tried to write play
have literally never written one line of
scenario. The two forms are wholly
different I believe there is no very
striking instance of a novelist winning
any great success as a playwright.
More than this, 1t has been found a
difficult matter to make play of one
of the great novels. The method of a
novelist OF true vocation, who takes a
large stage and fills it with characters
and makes his story a real criticism of
life, is too leisurely for the stage, where
the fewer the characters and the swifter
the action the better. l have seen Col
onel Newcombe done in England by a
great actor but the play was a series
of tableaux. Vanity Fair Jared rather
better at the hands Of Mrs. F'iske, but