The Order of Events

The order in which events occur will assist in establishing the order in which to relate them. If you are telling about only one person, you may choose to follow the time order of the events as they actually happened; but if you are telling about two or more persons who were doing different things at the same time, you will need to tell first what one did and then what another did. You must, however, make it clear to the reader that, though you have told one event after the other, they really happened at the same time.
In the selection below notice how the italicized portions indicate the relation in time that the different events bear to one another.
At the beach yesterday a fat woman and her three children caused a great commotion. They had rigged themselves out in hired suits which might be described as an average fit, for that of the mother was as much too small as those of the children were too large. They trotted gingerly out into the surf, wholly unconscious that the crowd of beach loungers had, for the time, turned their attention from each other to the quartet in the water.  By degrees the four worked out farther and farther until a wave larger than usual washed the smallest child entirely off his feet, and caused the mother to scream lustily for help. The people on the beach started up, and two or three men hastened to the rescue, but their progress was impeded by the crowd of frightened girls and women   who were scrambling and splashing towards the shore. The mother’s frantic efforts to reach the little boy were rendered ineffectual by the two girls,   who at the moment of the first alarm had been strangled   by the salt water and were now clinging desperately to her arms and attempting to climb up to her shoulders. Meanwhile, the lifeboat man was rowing rapidly towards the scene, but it seemed to the onlookers who had rushed to the platform railing that he would never arrive. At the same time a young man,   who had started from the diving raft some time before, was swimming towards shore with powerful strokes. He now reached the spot, caught hold of the boy, and lifted him into the lifeboat, which had at last arrived.
Such expressions as meanwhile, in the meantime, during, at last, while, etc., are regularly used to denote the kind of time relations now under discussion. They should be used when they avoid confusion, but often a direct transition from one set of actions to another can be made without their use. Notice also the use of the relative clause to indicate time relations.
In directing attention continuously toward that which deserves greatest emphasis, the orderly arrangement of events within a story needs to be considered. It is a frequent stumbling-block. Some say that the chronological order is likely to
make a story move slowly; that it may necessitate beginning too far back and admitting much irrelevant detail; that a story can rarely be told in the order in which it happened. Others assert that the chronological is the natural order, and that it is a means of avoiding otherwise necessary interruptions in the narrative. There is a measure of truth in both assertions. Much depends on the story, much on the skill of the writer. It is taken for granted that a writer who knows his business will not load a story with pointless detail. There is, of course, a certain amount of antecedent action which must be explained in almost every story. Yet one need not tell all this antecedent action as it is supposed to have happened, nor does one need to mass it all at the beginning. It may be distributed throughout the story, yet not interfere at all with chronological order. Of course, it would be awkward to lead one up to a point and then to turn deliberately to say, "It must be ex- plained that just four months before, while Jack was in the hayfield. . . ." Such action may be explained within the story in a conversational passage, in a revery, by an 
incidental reference, by intimation, or by narrative amplification.
If there is much antecedent action to be told, the task will naturally be somewhat more difficult. In The Revolt of Mother, Mrs. Freeman had to show the inconveniences that Sarah Penn had long endured at the hands of her husband. She might have marshaled these all at the beginning and then have
reviewed them. She chose a more artistic way. She began the story with the immediate provocation and let that lead to a review of the past in the accusation of the husband. Where the past concerns the main character alone, and records his own failures and successes, revery may take the place of conversation, as in Markheim. In these cases the antecedent action is made not to interrupt, but to forward the movement chronologically. In Marjorie Daw, the letters mention incidentally the trip that Edward Delaney and John Flemming had expected to take, and tell of Flemming's accident and its cause. The curio dealer intimates certain things about Markheim's past life. The first sentence of The Cask of Amontillado is but an intimation of preceding action. It does not enter into details. Several times in The Outcasts of Poker Flat, there is a direct reference to something that happened before the opening of the story. Yet these references are in the nature of narrative amplifications which may refer either backward or forward without disturbing the movement in any way. In The Man Who Would Be King, a strict chronological order is followed, and the antecedent action is related as it happened before the story proper begins. It could not have been arranged differently, since the antecedent action here but introduces the man who is to be the narrator of his own experiences.
Thus, in several ways, antecedent action may be handled. There is another difficulty, — that of
arranging events which happen at the same time. In Mrs. Knollys, there is a good example of a direct violation of chronological order. The last sentence of the second division speaks of Mrs. Knollys' return to England. The first sentence of division three shows the German scientist just after he had found out his distressing blunder. Three paragraphs later, Mrs. Knollys is said to be living in the little cottage in Surrey. The break here seems unavoidable, unless these three paragraphs had been omitted. In such case, however, one would have felt only reproach for the coldness of the scientist. There would have been a note of harsh- ness in a story otherwise sweet. The --4ory is better as it is, in spite of the interruption. Athough there are many times when the nature of the story will make such violation advisable, the chronological order may be followed in most cases satisfactorily.
          
THE ORDER OF EVENTS
This problem is a stumbling block. Not one beginner in twenty solves it, nor does more than one story in five. Why is this? Chiefly because, in arranging events, the writer must look away from his plot for a while and puthimself in the reader's place. He may construct his story, insofar as the choice and qualification of its material are concerned, with an eye to nothing save the material itself. For this labor he is sufficiently equipped if he understands his people, times, and places, and recognizes a dramatic complication when he sees or imagines one. But the instant he begins the narrative, he is confronted with a radically different task; he must now communicate with his public, and in such fashion that the latter gets not only the facts but their dramatic effect. This effect is produced by a delicate and exceedingly difficult mingling of revelations and concealments; for, as with humor and music, its peculiar quality depends upon what the audience receives from moment to moment. In the language of rhetoric, it is a matter of order and suspense.
Now, the art of suspense is as different from pure plotting as speech is different from thought. This must be emphasized today as never before, inasmuch as the contrary has been stoutly alleged by not a few authorities. Certain philosophers and literary folk tell us that a story is bound to be no better and no worse than the idea which the author has to express; and hence that, once you clear up your plot and know just what effect you wish it to produce, it will narrate itself.' This theory shoots
very close to the truth, and it is not easily refuted in debate; but a little editorial experience quickly discloses its one small yet fatal exaggeration. Everybody who has read MSS. knows that the so-called `story-sense' and the knack of story-telling are two distinct gifts, almost as independent as the eyes are independent of the ears. Some writers conjure up delightful plots but cannot narrate them effectively, although they have all the details well in hand and write a flowing narrative style. Others, on the contrary, devise weak plots and seem to have little feeling for character and complication; but give them a plot, and they dash off a capital story. There is a well known story writer of to-day whose greatest successes have been built upon plots given to him by obliging editors and whose desperate efforts at originality usually gain him admittance only to third-rate magazines. And three of the most ingenious plot-makers and smoothest writers among my own students have always had difficulty in 'getting it over the footlights', while others much less gifted in fantasy and in command of words have readily produced salable stories.
1. What order accomplishes. At least four things are accomplished by the arrangement of episodes:
Transitions are smoothed.
Characters and situations are clarified.
The natural climactic sequence of the plot events is made evident and sometimes intensified.
The single effect of the story is sharpened (`the theme is rounded off').
2.First general law of order. Throughout his work, the student should keep in mind the principle of simplicity, which, with reference to our present topic, may be thus stated:
Alter the historical order no more than is necessary.
And the corollary is: First, discover the historical order and test its narrative values. The beginner, indeed, will generally do well to adhere to it in the first complete draft of each story. He should not trust his judgment in imagining the effect of the sequence.
3.The special problems of order. With respect to the material of the story, there arise three special problems of order:
The opening event.
The closing event.
c. The distribution of events throughout the plot
action.
In solving each of these problems, all four of the above
named improvements are accomplished, in varying
degrees.
a.The opening event. The opening event has two functions; it must awaken the reader's interest in the story and it must also carry him quickly into the latter.
Either function alone is easily discharged, but to handle
both at once demands considerable skill and frequently much experimenting. Many a story which finishes
strong begins with dull episodes. Witness that delicious satire of Mrs. Wharton's, Xingu,' which starts
off thus:
Mrs. Ballinger is one of the ladies who pursue Culture in bands, as though it were dangerous to meet alone. To this end she had founded the Lunch Club, an association composed of herself and several other indomitable huntresses of erudition. The Lunch Club, after three or four winters of lunching and debate, had acquired such local distinction that the entertainment of distinguished strangers became one of its accepted functions; in recognition of which it duly extended to the celebrated 'Osric Dane', on the day of her arrival in Hillbridge, an invitation to be present at the next meeting.
A Lunch Club hardly piques the jaded reader's curiosity. But for the stinging characterization of Mrs. Ballinger, he might yawn and pass on to the next article. That clever hit, though, at the get-wise-quick lady stirs him; and he will be dull indeed if he does not wonder what is going to happen to her. Mrs. Wharton's device is perfect, as usual, and we may profitably scrutinize it.
In these hundred words Mrs. Wharton has (1) precisely anticipated the single effect of her story (mildly satirical merriment); (2) outlined the setting; (3) designated and slightly described two of the leading characters, and (4) reported one of the events of the complication. The only thing that has not been broached is the outcome of the comedy; and to omit this is no fault. For the opening does not have to tell the story, but should only coax the reader into it pleasantly; and this can be accomplished in most cases by the factors above named. Furthermore, there is always the danger that, in forecasting the finish, you may betray the action and rob it of all tension and surprise, as Kipling all but does in At the Pit's Mouth,when he begins thus:
Once upon a time, there was a Man and his Wife, and a Tertium Quid.
All three were unwise, but the Wife was the unwisest. The man should have looked after his Wife, who should have avoided the Tertium Quid, who, again, should have married a wife of his own, after clean and open flirtation, to which nobody can possibly object, round Jakko or Observatory Hill. .
The eternal 'triangle' and its eternal tragedy are too palpable; and, though the outcome is not quite stated, you have only three guesses about it, and each is too, too easy.
Now, bearing in mind the two functions of the opening and the ideals of our genre we may distinguish ten ways
of getting a start. I list them in the order of their general excellence.' (The fifth alone is, as we shall see, often better than its rank.) A story may open with:
1. Which reveals in some measure the setting, the characters, and the theme or the single effect.
Direct action: - 2. Which reveals character only.
Which reveals the setting only.
Which reveals only the theme or the single effect.
A philosophical overture. (Anticipatory generalizations without action.)
Which reveals setting, characters, and the theme or single effect.
Which reveals character only.
Which reveals the setting only.
Which reveals only the theme or single effect.
Pure description. (No action and no anticipatory generalizations.)
For simplicity, I omit from this list six types, namely all those which reveal some two of the three story factors, such as character and setting, or setting and theme. There are three two-phase openings with direct action,
The student must be warned against supposing that he falls short of perfection whenever he is unable to begin a story in the better of these manners. It may be that his plot and his single effect necessitate indirect action or the concealment of character up to some point in the midst of the story. Not every story can have the best beginning, any more than it can have the strongest climax. Both start and finish depend more or less upon the episodes that start and finish. Usually at least four or five openings are possible; and the author must discover and choose the best of these.
and three with indirect. Naturally each is better than any one-phase opening of its own type of action. And the student will readily grasp the nature and merits of each, as soon as he has mastered the ten fundamental types.
Illustrations.
The opening of Xingu, already quoted and analyzed.
Love of Life, by London:
They limped painfully down the bank, and once the foremost of the two men staggered among the rough- strewn rocks. They were tired and weak, and their faces had the drawn expression of patience which comes of hardship long endured. They were heavily burdened with blanket packs which were strapped to their shoulders. Head-straps, passing across the forehead, helped support these packs. Each man carried a rifle. They walked in a stooped posture, the shoulders well forward, the head still farther forward, and the eyes bent upon the ground.
"I wish we had just about two of them cartridges that's layin' in that cache of ourn," said the second man.
His voice was utterly and drearily expressionless. He spoke without enthusiasm; and the first man, limping into the milky stream that foamed over the rocks, vouchsafed no reply.
Where are the men? What is their predicament? What is going to befall them? And what is the theme? You cannot know until much farther along in the tale. But the picture of the men excites your interest and promises to lead swiftly into the adventure. In the very
next instant the accident happens which makes the
story.
3.The Pursuit of the Piano, by Howells:
Hamilton Gaites sat breakfasting by the window of a restaurant looking out on Park Square, in Boston, at a table which he had chosen after rejecting one on the Boylston Street side of the place because it was too
noisy, and another in the little open space, among evergreens in tubs, between the front and rear, because it was too chilly. The wind was east, but at his Park Street window it tempered the summer morning air without being a draught; and he poured out his coffee with a content in his circumstance and provision which he was apt to feel when he had taken all possible pains, even though the result was not perfect. . . . (The balance of the paragraph describes Gaites' food.)
It is from this comfortable vantage that the hero first
spies Phyllis' piano on its devious way to Lower Merritt. Hence his breakfasting there is an integral part of the
plot action. But it carries the reader a very short distance into the story. Is Gaites a fugitive murderer or a hardware drummer or a Harvard professor of astrol
ogy? Is the story going to be about the restaurant or his cantaloupe or Park Square or himself? And will it deepen into tragedy or froth up into farce? Thus far, there's
not a clue to any of these mysteries. The opening is conspicuously weaker than the preceding types.
4. The Fall of the House of Usher, by Poe.
During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country; and at length found myself, as the shades of evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher. I do not know how it was—but with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit. I say insufferable; for the feeling was unrelieved by any of that half- pleasurable, because poetic, sentiment with which the mind usually receives even the sternest natural images of the desolate or terrible. I looked upon the scene before me—upon the mere house, and the simple landscape features of the domain—upon the bleak walls—upon the vacant, eye-like windows— upon a few rank sedges—andupon a few white trunks
of decayed trees--with an utter depression of soul which I can compare to no earthly sensation more properly than to the afterdream of the reveller upon opium—the bitter lapse into everyday life—the hideous dropping off of the veil. . . .
This, it must be confessed, is not an absolutely pure specimen of a direct-action opening which reveals only
the theme or the single effect. It tells us a very little, yet a little too much about the setting of the story. Never
theless, it will serve better than most of its type, inasmuch as it develops so marvelously the emotional tone of the
story. With the very first phrase the gloom begins to
spread over the pages, and not a sentence thereafter halts it. The power of it overwhelms all else and makes us
forget the trifle we thus far know about the narrator and
Usher.
There are very few perfect openings of this fourth type, and the reason is evident: it is seldom that an
event in the direct plot action can be told without re
vealing something about the people and places participant in it. For it is these who make the event.
East is East, and West is San Francisco, according to Californians. Californians are a race of people; they are not merely inhabitants of a State. They are the Southerners of the West. Now, Chicagoans are no less loyal to their city; but when you ask them why, they stammer and speak of lake fish and the new Odd Fellows Building. But Californians go into detail.
Of course, they have in the climate an argument that is good for half an hour while you are thinking of your coal bills and heavy underwear. But as soon as they come to mistake your silence for conviction, madness comes upon them, and they picture the city of the Golden Gate as the Bagdad of the New World. So far, as a matter of opinion, no refutation is necessary. But,
dear cousins all (from Adam and Eve descended), it is a rash one who will lay his finger on the map and say: "In this town there can be no romance—what could happen here?" Yes, it is a bold and rash deed to challenge in one sentence history, romance, and Rand and McNally.
I call this a philosophical overture because it is neither action nor description nor a simple essay-like introduction, but rather a broad, generalized comment on the cosmic state of affairs which the story is to illustrate or prove. It is philosophical because generalized, and an overture because, to fill out the musical analogy, it gives us in advance the theme we are going to hear developed. It is, of course, an old device of essayists and not unknown to medieval minstrels. Poe used it perfectly several times, notably in The Man of the Crowd.But it is Kipling whom we have to thank for bringing it into vogue of late. His Plain Tales from the Hillscontains a round dozen samples, the clearest of which occur inThrown Away and On the Strength of a Likeness. And since them half a hundred authors have learned to turn the same trick neatly.
Truth to tell, it is an easy trick; or, at least, much easier than plunging headlong into the story. For any cracker-barrel orator can draw a hundred glittering generalities out of any item on the first page of the newspaper, as deftly as a magician pulls rabbits from a hat; and every story that is worth telling at all is at least as prolific as newspaper items. Furthermore, the transition from a universal proposition to the plot action follows three simple patterns, which we may name: (1) the exception, (2) the proof, and (3) the musing that finds an answer. The first appears in Kipling's A Germ-Destroyer.
As a general rule, it is inexpedient to meddle with questions of State in a land where men are paid to work them out for you.This tale is a justifiable exception.
Or you may follow this second model, from Miss Youghal's Sais by the same author:
Some people say that there is no romance in India. Those people are wrong. Our lives hold quite as much romance as is good for us. Sometimes more.
Or, thirdly, you may pursue subtler and lengthier musings; frivolous wisdom such as 0. Henry passes out in The Venturers, Psyche and the Psky-scraper,and The Green Door; or serious reflections such as Howells traces in A Circle in the Water. Here the narrator seems to be wondering or half-asserting some thought when suddenly the thought exemplifies itself in an incident.
The power of the philosophical overture cannot be denied. Being a statement of fact, or at least having the air of such, it draws the reader intoit serious mood; and this mood tends to perpetuate itself throughout the reading of the whole narrative. Only a very well managed dramatic opening attains this highly desirable result. Few indeed are the stories which, from the outset, deceive us into feeling that they are history; and, of these, nearly all either sound the depths of life, as Theyand Without Benefit of Clergy and Will of the Milldo, or else are quasi- arguments with the stories proper seemingly tacked on by way of evidence. Now, this latter class is much larger than the former. And when we ask why, we come upon the one noteworthy exception to the ranking of the ten possible openings.
When the intrinsic dramatic quality of a character and the plot in which the character figures is mediocre, the philosophical overture is usually better than a direct-action opening.
The reason for this is, in the narrowest sense of the word, technical. I mean, it is not to be found in the `pure idea' of the story, much less in the nature of the
character depicted. The philosophical overture serves in two ways: first, to reinforce the single effect which, in pure dramatic presentation, may be weak; and, secondly, to attract the reader as the simple narrative cannot do.'
6.The Descent into the Maelstrom, by Poe.
We had now reached the summit of the loftiest crag. For some minutes the old man seemed too much exhausted to speak.
"Not long ago," said he at length, "and I could have guided you on this route as well as the youngest of my sops; but, about three years past, there happened to me an event such as never happened before to mortal manor, at least, such as no man survived to tell of—and the six hours of deadly terror which I then endured have broken me up, body and soul. You suppose me a very old man—but I am not. It took less than a single day to change thosehairs from jet black to white, to weaken my limbs, and unstring my nerves, so that I tremble at the least exertion, and am frightened at a shadow. Do you know, I can scarcely look over this little cliff without getting giddy?"
The 'little cliff' upon whose edge he had so carelessly thrown himself down to rest that the weightier portion of his body hung over it, while he was only kept from falling by the tenure of his elbow on its extreme and slippery edge—this 'little cliff' arose, a sheer and unobstructed precipice of black shining rock, some fifteen or sixteen hundred feet from the world of crags beneath us. Nothing would have tempted me to be within half a dozen yards of its brink. . . . (The rest of the opening describes the Maelstrom, as seen from this cliff.)
These two services ought to be identical, but are not. Often the philosophical overture touches vividly upon some idea which bobs up in the story more or less incidentally. And, on the other hand, it sometimes reinforces the single effect without interesting the reader. In both cases the story plot is almost certain to be seriously defective. If its single effect cannot appeal to us in essay form, it is too confused or too artificial ever to appeal in any dramatic form.
Here we have the setting, the dominant character, and
the single effect consummately drawn in their first outlines. But notice how the action differs from that of
Xingu. There the events were the first of the plot which ensued; here they have only a remote, accidental connec
tion with the old fisherman's nerve-racking adventure.
He leads the visitor to the cliff and, while the latter gazes upon the awful waters below, tells the story.
For the character story and its varieties this opening
rarely succeeds. Daudet sometimes bends it to his purposes in a swift and masterly fashion, as, for example,
in The Siege of Berlin:
We were going up Avenue des Champs-Elysees with Dr. V.—, asking the shell-riddled walls and the side walks torn up by grape-shot for the story of the siege of Paris, when, just before we reached the Rondpoint de l'Etoile, the doctor stopped and, pointing to one of the great corner houses so proudly grouped about the Arc de Triomphe, said to me:
"Do you see those four closed windows up there on that balcony? In the early days of August, that terrible August of last year, so heavily laden with storms and disasters, I was called there to see a case of apoplexy. It was the apartment of Colonel Jouve, a cuirassier of the First Empire, an old enthusiast on the subject of glory and patriotism, who had come to live on the ChampsElysees, in an apartment with a balcony, at the outbreak of the war. Guess why! In order to witness the triumphant return of our troops! Poor old fellow! The news of Wissembourg reached him just as he was leaving the table. When he read the name of Napoleon at the foot of that bulletin of defeat, he fell like a log."
There is wonderful skill in this seemingly simple open
ing. Within the space of two short paragraphs it melts, like a dissolving stereopticon view, from the indirect to the
direct action. Nevertheless it is the exception that proves our rule; for, upon close analysis, you will find that
the indirect action in it, which ends with 'Guest( why!' does not depict the character trait of Jouve that counts in
the story. We are casually told before that he is a chauvinist, but not that his chauvinism sets things agoing. The instant the narrating physician has pointed out the apartment and named its former occupant he takes up the main
plot action, and so deftly that the reader perceives no change in the narrative quality. But the change is
there; so Daudet has not used the sixth opening type straight, he has bent it.
This opening is very useful in the atmosphere story, and in the adventure story. The Descent into the Madstrom
is both of these. The interested student may easii figure
out for himself its utility there.
7.ASecond-Rate Woman, by Kipling.
"Dressed! Don't tell me that woman ever dressed in her life. She stood in the middle of the room while her ayab—no, her husband—it must have been a man— threw her clothes at her. She then did her hair with her fingers, and rubbed her bonnet in the flue under the bed. I know she did, as well as if I had assisted at the orgie. Who is she?" said Mrs. Hauksbee.
"Don't!" • said Mrs. Mallowe feebly. "You make my head ache. I'm miserable today." (Then follows more about the Dowd, who is the heroine.)
This opening is weak, but not in every respect. It often does succeed in illuminating character, as in the
above specimen. But it is long-winded, devious, and hence confusing. If you must depict a person indirectly,
you have only two simple and plastic devices: let somebody state his impressions of the person, or else depict the effect the person has upon people or affairs. The former device is hard to keep within bounds; as in our illustration, when you let two women talk about a third, not even a Kipling can throttle them in time to save the
story.1The second device, on the other hand, tends to become an independent episode, readable perhaps for its own sake but leading nowhere. Of course, if you want to mislead your reader, you cannot do better than to use it. Hence in the pure surprise story and in humorous narrative (which calls for incongruity and breaks) it may be recommended.
8.A Voluntary Death, by Coppee.
I knew the poet Louis Miraz very well, in the old times in the Latin Quarter, where we used to take our meals together at a crémerie on the Rue de Seine, kept by an old Polish woman whom we nicknamed Princess Chocolawska, on account of the enormous bowl of creme and chocolate which she exposed daily in the show window of her shop. It was possible to dine there for ten sous, with 'two breads', an ordinaire' for thirty centimes, and a `small coffee'.
Some who were very nice spent a sou more for a napkin. (Then follows a description of the other habitués of the cremerie.)
This is a wasteful opening and much less effective than
)
the preceding one. In the character story the setting is almost invariably the least consequential factor. Why then should it have one of the most important paragraphs reserved for it exclusively? This question becomes doubly pertinent when, as in the present case, neither the action nor the setting which it reveals is closely connected with the chief events. Copp& advances his story in only a trifling degree; he establishes the acquaintance of the narrator with the poet hero, and nothing more. The Polish woman, the chocolate, the hoary ex- dictator, the Buddhist student, and all the rest of the scene count for
absolutely nothing in the career of Louis Miraz. Had all the good words wasted on them been spent on the
splendid bravery of Miraz, the tale would have become a
short story.
9.A Passion in the Desert, by Balzac.
"The sight was fearful!" she cried, as we left the menagerie of Monsieur Martin.
She had been watching that daring performer work with his hyenas, to speak in the style of the posters.
"How on earth," she continued, "can he have tamed his animals so as to be sure of enough of their affection to—"
"That fact, which seems to you a problem," I replied, interrupting her, "is however perfectly natural."
"Oh!" she exclaimed, while an incredulous smile flickered on her lip.
"Do you mean to say that you think beasts are entirely devoid of passions?" I asked her. "Let me tell you that we can safely give them credit for all the vices due to our state of civilization."
This type is clumsy and thoroughly antiquated. To find a skilful author dallying with it, you must go back to Balzac and Turgenieff; back to the days when nobody
counted words, and men had not yet thought of the short
story as an art having its own definite laws. The Russian novelist, in particular, exhibits the most amazing indif
ference to structure; many of his tales, such as Andrei Kolosoffand The Jew, exceed the crudity of a modern
tyro in their openings. The wretchedest hack-writers know better today than to squander words in letting
some imaginary person tell your reader that you are going to tell a story about a certain subject. It is this and no more that Balzac's opening accomplishes.
Weak as it is, though, it often combines successfully with the philosophical overture. That is to say, if the
indirect action takes the form of a discussion which not
only reveals the theme or single effect but also generalizes broadly and argumentatively about it, the opening may be
very lively. Again we turn to Daudet for an exceedingly perfect and ingeniously unobtrusive specimen: the be
ginning of his pretty fable-story, The Goat of M. Seguin. To M. Pierre Gringoire, Lyrical Poet, at Paris.
You will always be the same, my poor Gringoire!
Think of it! You are offered the place of reporter on a respectable Paris newspaper, and you have the assurance to refuse! Why look at yourself, unhappy youth! Look at that worn-out doublet, those dilapidated breeches, that gaunt face which cries aloud that it is hungry! And this is where your passion for rhyme has brought you! This is the result of your ten years of loyal service among the pages of my lord Apollo! Aren't you ashamed?
Be a reporter, you idiot! Be a reporter! You will earn honest crowns, you will have your special seat at Brêbant's ; and you will be able to appear every first night with a new feather in your cap.
No? You will not? You propose to remain perfectly free to the end? Well, just listen to the story of Monsieur Seguin's goat. You will see what one gains by attempting to remain free.
Notice carefully in what respect this differs from the
opening of A Passion in the Desert. In both the action is indirect. In both all that is revealed of the story is the
theme. But in Balzac's opening the theme is merely stated in the midst of an extraneous incident, while in Daudet's it is 'played up', argued, and enlivened prettily,
h irrelevant but illustrative action. Between the two manners, the static and the dynamic, lies the whole gulf
that separates bungling from art.
This combination opening is best suited to stories having well-marked themes or strong single effects. But it .,could be used only when the entanglements of the
plot happen to make a direct action opening awkward or dull.
10. A Taste of Honey,by Mary Wilkins Freeman.
The long, low, red-painted cottage was raised above the level of the street, on an embankment separated into two terraces. Steep stone steps led up the terraces. They were covered with green, slimy moss, and little ferns and weeds sprang out of every crack. A wall of flat slate stones led from them to the front door, which was painted green, sagged on its hinges, and had a brass knocker.
The whole yard and the double banks were covered with a tall, waving crop of red-top and herds-grass and red and white clover. It was in the height of haying time.
A grassy wheel-track led round the side of the house to a barn dashed with streaks of red paint.
Off to the left stretched some waving pasture land, and a garden patch marked by bean-poles and glancing corn blades, with a long row of bee-hives showing in the midst of it.
A rusty open buggy and a lop-eared white horse stood in the drive opposite the side door of the house.
It seems incredible that a writer who could imagine the genuine pathos and tragedy of this story could stumble into it so clumsily. The opening might pass in the
loosest impressionistic sketch, which is not supposed to get anywhere—and seldom does. But, in a short story, which A Taste of Honey ought to be, all these irrelevant minutia of the landscape are so many mosquitoes buzzing
around the plot. They do not spoil the plot, but they bother the reader who wishes to reach it. I trust that
no argument is needed to condemn them. The stu who does not sense their impropriety will, I fear, n
grasp the short story. Incidentally be it said that the ability to unreel such description is no mark of literary
power. He is a dull high school graduate who cannot equal it.
THE CLOSING EVENT
b. The closing event.In comparison with the opening, the closing event is no problem at all. The variety of endings is much less, and one's choice is not supremely
important. Furthermore, the material is more plastic and may be experimented upon freely, without involving radical changes in the body of the story.
There are three types of endings:
The direct denouement.
The significant aftermath.
iii. Interpretative comment.
i.The direct denouement. This is the ideal finish of the pure dramatic story. If action and character develop
ment have advanced apace; if, in the supreme crisis, all that remains for us to learn is how the hero, being what we know him to be, meets it; then the author who tells us
more only offends us. Few are the gems which are cut
so true up to the last stroke; hence this finish is rare. It is more often approximated in the dramatic mystery story. We find it in Poe's masterpiece, Ligeia:
. . .I stirred not—but gazed upon the apparition. There was a mad disorder in my thoughts—a tumult unappeasable. Could it indeed be the living Rowena who confronted me? Could it indeed be Rowena at all—thefair-haired, the blue- eyed Lady Rowena Trevanion of Tremaine? Why,whyshould I doubt it? . . . — had she then grown taller since her malady? What inexpressible madness seized me with that thought? One bound, and I had reached her feet! Shrinking from my touch, she let fall from her head, unloosened, the ghastly cerements which had confined it and there streamed forth, into the rushing atmosphere of the chamber, huge masses of long and dishevelled hair;
it was blacker than the raven's wings of the midnight!
And now slowly opened the eyes of the figure which stood before me. "Here then, at least," I shrieked aloud,
"can I never—can I never be mistaken—these are the full, and the black, and the wild eyes—of my lost love —of the lady—of the LADY LIGEIA."
It is inconceivable that a better denouement could be fashioned. The very last word alone lifts the veil. Until it has been read, the reader's imagination is led off in a different path. Unless he has analyzed as he goes, he is quite sure that the Lady Rowena is returning to life. And, fancying this, he may suspect that the story breaks in twain clumsily; the earlier account of Ligeia seeming irrelevant to the resurrection of her successor. But, when that one key word falls under his eye, the.entire phantasmagorical welter of bewilderments and horror orders itself into a clear plot whose theme Poe has thrice sounded: 'Man doth not yield him to the angels, nor unto death utterly, save only through the weakness of his feeble will'.
Probably few plots admit of such manipulation. The dramatic form is too intense to suit most material. To be more accurate, most themes do not focus so sharply upon one instant's revelation. Their solutions are complex and require a certain elaboration.Xingu,for instance, reaches its denouement when the Lunch Club consults the encyclopaedia and learns that the topic of their learned conversation is not a religion nor a book but a river in South America. But, though the denouement is here reached, it is not finished in that act. The story demands that every member of the Lunch Club realize minutely how Mrs. Roby has hoaxed it, and that the Club `do something about it'. Inevitably all this must follow, not precede, the discovery in the encyclopaedia. Again, there are other themes which, though they may be wrought into action with the Ligeia finish, ought not to end so, inasmuch as the dramatic quality of their complication is too weak to harmonize with this
most intense of all dramatic dénouements. Low-grade magazines and Sunday Supplements reek with mechanically perfect specimens of it. Their detective stories and other tales of mystery keep the reader guessing up to the final paragraph. Nevertheless, they fall flat; and the reason is that their form exceeds their material. The shape and motion of a story is visible in each, but the stuff of life is not therein.
This failure, alas, is all too easy. It is easy to tangle your heroes and villains, and to manufacture mysteries. It is as easy as inventing a cipher code or concealing a fact, and often it is nothing more. Now, the difficulty of solving a puzzle or discovering a way out of a predicament is usually out of all proportion to the importance of the puzzle or predicament. The brain power that has been spent on pigs-in-clover, charades, and jig-saw pictures might have abolished war; and the manual labor that has gone into them would have dug the Panama Canal. In real life, where it is stylish to be absurd, this disproportion of effort to result is allowed; but in art, which is little more than the passion for fitness expressing itself, it is the unpardonable sin. The mountain that brings forth a mouse is brother to the author who works up a tense, breathless perplexity and then clears it up with an episode which shows the complication to be trifling. In the world of beauty, whither he would lead us, he may affect us seriously only with serious affairs, and deeply only with deep, and romantically only with romantic. The humorist alone is privileged to toy with the incongruous.
I cannot drop this topic without urging the student to study carefully the maturer stories of 0. Henry, who surpasses all writers past and present in his mastery of the direct denouement. What a host of his complications do not solve themselves until the last fifty words! There
is The Furnished Room,with its startling, pathetic complication clearing in Mrs. Purdy's last remark: "She'd a-been called handsome, as you say, but for that mole she had a-growin' by her left eyebrow". There is Tobin's Palm, with its preposterously funny reunion of the lovers in the last ten seconds. And, finest of all, though by no means the last in the list, is The Municipal Report, with its yellow horn overcoat button the size of a fifty-cent piece clearing up a dark mystery and proving the romance of dull places. There is no exceeding the perfection of these dénouements. One must admire them with a touch of awe, even though one dislikes the slap-dash, slangy, kinetoscopic hurry of the stories. Nowhere outside of Poe and Maupassant are they equalled.
ii. The significant aftermath. This is the commonest ending and usually the most appropriate. It consists of some little event which shows precisely how the characters are taking the denouement. Sometimes it intensifies the latter, but more often only clears away the last uncertainty about it. The length depends entirely upon the particular denouement, and the importance of showing the characters' reaction to it. In Xingu the aftermath is quite elaborate, and necessarily so. It begins after Mrs. Ballinger says: "And they're shrieking over us at this moment",—and continues to the very encl.'. In Coppee's The Substitute it is swift and short. The de-
1 The long conversation in which the ladies fit together Mrs. Roby's remarks and bring them into harmony with the encyclopaedia's statements about Xingu is not aftermath, but denouement. Some readers who are over-fond of the Maupassant model feel that Mrs. Roby's previous connection with South America should have been brought out in the opening of the story, so that this long explanation might be dispensed with, at the very point where things should rush along at top speed. But analysis proves this opinion wrong. The single effect depends absolutely upon keeping the nature of Xingu hidden until the denouement.
nouement is over when Jean Frangois takes Savinien's crime upon himself and holds out his hands for the hand
cuffs, laughing at the police. After that:
To day he is at Cayenne, condemned for life as an incorrigible.
Observe how much this little sentence accomplishes. It fixes the outcome, past all misunderstanding. Omit it, and the reader might wonder whether Jean Francois was as great a hero as he led Savinien to think. The galleys are terrible places; but did the ex-convict end up there? Might he not have concealed his identity, been sentenced as a first offender, and let off with a six months' sentence? Or might he not have escaped again
from the thongs of justice? Perhaps the reader might not frame these doubts consciously; he might only be less profoundly impressed by the 'shortened version. But
this weaker effect would be due to the indecisiveness of the denouement.
iii. Interpretative Comment. This is the counterpart of the philosophical overture. Like it, it contains no action; unlike it, it need not consist of generalizations.
It may be no more than a summary and a sentiment, as in London'sThe Heathen:
And so passed Otoo, who saved me and made me a man, and who saved me in the end. We met in the maw of a hurricane and parted in the maw of a shark, with seventeen intervening years of comradeship the like of which I dare to assert have never befallen two men, the one brown and the other white. If Jehovah be from his high place watching every sparrow fall, not least in His Kingdom shall be Otoo, the one heathen of Bora Bora. And if there be no place for him in that Kingdom, then will I have none of it.
Or it may return to the opening event, as in Harris Merton Lyon's horribly true sketch of American village
life, entitled$448.00. Somewhat abridged, the opening runs thus:
In fourteen decillion B.C., . . . this stubborn planet upon which we so carelessly shuffle our feet began a series of Experiments toward an End. . . . At first she tried for trees, and got trees. Then snails, clams, jellyfish. Then, brooding over her intent, she made the jellyfish climb up out of the sea. . . . Then she watched yearningly through the morose years the light and the air beat down upon the jellyfish and irritated it. . . After three hundred million jellyfish had died in the process, she slumbered and considered the process complete. After fourteen decillion, one thousand eight hundred and seventy-six years had passed, she rested. . . . for the End of her Experiments had come. The numberless millions of jellyfishes and the superb march of countless years had produced Leander Percy Johnson.
Then follows the story of Leander's career; a story made twice horrible by the streak of humor in its telling.
The dramatic end comes when the army surgeons pull Leander, U. S. V. and fever victim, out of his storm- wrecked Chickamauga tent, dead. Then follow two
endings, the first an unnecessary aftermath, and the second the following brief interpretative comment:
And the old earth groaned and began it all over again. For Leander had returned to the jellyfish whence he came. He had gone back to fourteen decillion B.C.
A third excellent variation is a return to the philosophical overture. In this wise Howells admirably turns the close of A Circle in the Water. The story
opens, you recall, with the narrator's musing over the consequences of good and evil and over the ever- widening circles made by pebbles cast into the pool.
And, after Tedham has been restored to his daughter,
comes this ending, which integrates perfectly with the final action:
. . . So far as human vision can perceive, the trouble he made, the evil he did, is really at an end. Love, which alone can arrest the consequences of wrong, had ended it, and in certain luminous moments it seemed to us that we had glimpsed, in our witness of this experience, an infinite compassion encompassing our whole being like a sea, where every trouble of our sins and sorrows must cease at last like a circle in the water.
Were we here cataloguing all types of endings which have been used by good writers, we should have to mention, among others, two forms of the significant aftermath and two of the interpretative comment. The first pair are (a) the effect of the plot action upon a character in the story, and (its effect upon the narrator or hearer outside of the st ry. The second pair are (a) a comment by a character, and (b) one by the narrator outside of the story. ( en the narrator happens to be a character in the story, w have case (a) in both instances.) These distinctions ne d not concern us here; for they have to do with the oint of viewfrom which each particular story is told. ; The serious problems raised by the point of view will Soon be discussed. It is enough to notice in the present connection that there is one ending which is to be shuped whenever possible, namely the second type of afterMath. This occurs in its most deadly form in Turgenieff's Andrei Kolosoff:
"And what became of Varya?" asked some one. "I don't know," replied the story-teller.
We all rose and went our various ways.
Could anything jerk the reader more violently out of the imaginary world in which Kolosoff lives? And to less purpose? The author might better have sold the space of
these three atrocious lines to a patent medicine quack for advertising purposes.
When, however, such an ending is combined with interpretative comment, it becomes much more endurable, as in Hopper's Memories in Men's Souls. At best, though, it is a makeshift, to be avoided whenever possible.
c.The distribution of events throughout the plot action.
To the casual scanner of magazines the dramatic patterns of stories seem infinitely numerous. To the hardened professional reader they reduce to a half-dozen, and some-,times even this half-dozen tends to shrink. The popular impression derives from the natural and proper blending of the plot action with the 'trimmings' in the reader's mind. The author forecasts, deceives, comments, suppresses, and bursts into description in a multitude of manners; and, the more skilful he, the more deceivingly all these touches fuse with the broad sweep of the plot. This is as it should be; for the machinery of the story should be concealed no less than are the wing lights and the thunder-drum of the theatre. But it produces the illusion of a boundless variety of narrative types.
The fact is, very few first-class stories deviate widely from the old, familiar pattern of the drama. There are three movements (corresponding to the three acts of the modern play). In the first three factors appear: (a) the setting, (b) the characters, and (c) the generating circumstances; that is, those which give rise to the ensuing complication. The second movement presents two classes of episodes: (a) the complication, and (b) the reaction of the characters to it. This reaction often bulks large. The third movement gives (a) the crucial situation (climax), and (b) the denouement (with aftermath, if one is needed). It is this pattern which orders the episodes. And you should never depart from it unless something in the single effect which you seek or in the specific texture of your plot action compels you. This is a commandment not because the pattern is as old and venerable as Aristotle, but because it is soobviously
the strongest dramatic sequence that people long ago discovered it and agreed upon it.
This pattern carries with it several implications:
Telescope the events within each movement as much as possible. That is, make each episode develop all the story factors in its movement.
If the events cannot be telescoped, depict first those which demand the greater amount of pure description, except insofar as the single effect or dramatic sequence forbids this.
Transitions are best effected by telescoping the last event of one movement with the first event of the next.
The natural order of events may be altered in only two cases: (a) when the dênouement can be concealed up to the proper instant in no other way, and (b) when the plot action is shaped by some character's learning the episodes in their false order.
Another quartet of rules might be laid down, but the learner will automatically master them as soon as he has grasped those we have given. And now a word about these.
1. We have repeatedly seen that the single effect at which the short story aims demands the employment of a minimum of material; and this fact alone is enough to warrant the first rule. In strict logic, this rule is not a rule of arrangement, but rather one for escaping the problem of arrangement. You will see this, once you consider an extreme illustration. Suppose you were able to depict adequately in one incident the setting, the generating circumstances, and the characters. Would you have to worry over the next event? Not at all. You would go straight to the complication and character trait of the second movement. And if you could also telescope these perfectly into one episode, again you would have transcended the problem. In anecdotes and adventure stories, which seldom involve much character drawing, it is not surpassingly difficult to do this, inasmuch as a mere name and a phrase will there tell enough
about the people. The opening event of Daudet's The Little Piesintegrates almost perfectly the three factors, character, setting, and complication:
That morning, which was a Sunday, Sureau, the pastry cook on Rue Turenne, called his apprentice and said to him:
"Here are Monsieur Bonnicar's little pies; go take them to him and come back at once. It seems that the Versaillais have entered Paris."
In these three short sentences Daudet marshals almost
everything which is going to count in the ensuing dramatic movement. There is only one slight omission. The pas
try cook should have warned the lad not to dally, because
M. Bonnicar was a very particular and fidgety old epicure. This would have introduced accurately, albeit indirectly,
the one other important personage. As the opening
stands, you have no hint that Bonnicar himself is going to figure in the affair; much less that his gastronomical
habits will. Nevertheless, it is a wonderfully skilful
piece of integration.
2. This is the most frequently violated rule of order.
And the violation is due largely to false teaching. Two
doctrines have been advanced by writers on narrative technique: one is that all inevitable description must be
bunched as near the opening as possible; the other is that the story must begin with action and scatter its descriptions where they will least clog the movement
of the plot. The first doctrine is based upon the assumption that the speed of the narrative should increase
steadily to the end, and that hence the slowest material, which is, of course, the more descriptive, must come
first. The second doctrine grows out of the hypothesis
that the short story should be pure dramatic narrative throughout, and therefore disencumbered of all exclusively descriptive passages.
Unfortunately, both suppositions are false; uniform acceleration of action is not an ideal at all, and pure dramatic narrative is not an exclusive ideal. The short story has two ideals, both playing incessantly upon every manipulation of its material. The correct principle of arrangement reckons equally with both of these ideals, and it consequently bids us to employ descriptive events at those points where description best intensifies both the single effect and the action; or, if impossibly both, then that one which stands in greater need of intensification.
Now, from this may be deduced several special practices the most important of which are the following:
The more completely the plot action and the single effect grow out of a single setting, a single character trait, and a single generating circumstance, the more completely should the descriptive events be massed in the opening.
The more completely the plot action and the single effect grow out of some one factor (such as the setting, or the character trait, or the complication), the more completely should the descriptive events mass around the first development of that factor.
These two rules hold not only for character stories but for all other types. To perceive this, consider three stories which differ as widely as possible from one another: A Coward, bigeia, and 0. Henry's skit, Calloway's Code. The first is the purest character drama; the second is that rarest of all, the three-phase story; and the third is the lightest sort of complication. I choose these, because the test of a rule is in extreme instances.
In the first everything grows out of the viscount's single trait, a single custom of French society, and a single encounter; hence every line of description is
packed into the first three paragraphs. And why? Because, first of all, this description must precede all the action, in order to make the latter intelligible; and, secondly, because no other description is needed, inasmuch as the single effect is here identical with the dramatic action.
In LigeiaPoe aims at integrating setting, character, and complication; and the single effect, which is the emotion aroused by the thought of a human will triumphing over death, even through another's body, is produced equally throughout all three factors. You feel it in the person of Ligeia, and in the death chamber, and in the grewsome complications. Every touch and turn keeps you thinking vaguely that stupendous, mysterious powers are at work in the invisible environment. Now, unlike A Coward, Ligeia has several generating circumstances and several complications, all of which the reader will easily find for himself. It is therefore an extreme negative instance under rule (b). Its plot and action and single effect do not grow out of one factor, not are the factors out of which they grow simple; therefore, if our rule is sound, the descriptive events will not mass around one factor or one event, but will be distributed around many. This, of course, is precisely what we find. The story is the despair of the dramatic formalists who preach the Mau- passant pattern. More than 2,000 words at the very outset—nearly as many as in A Coward—describe minutely the beauty and learning and character of Ligeia. Between the first movement, which ends with the marriage of Rowena, and the second, which begins with her husband's first outbursts of hatred toward her, there are interpolated over six hundred words sketching the bridal chamber in the gloomy dwelling. Finally, throughout the third movement, the picturing is steady and rich, even up to the denouement.
Callotoay's Code tells us how a cub reporter deciphered a mysterious cable dispatch which the newspaper's special correspondent in the Russo-Japanese war smuggled past the press censor. The whole interest centres upon the cipher and the youngster who discovered it. Hence it is that the only description in the entire story is of Vesey, the cub, at the moment when he walks in, peruses the message which has baffled everybody else, and solves it; and of the veteran who padded the report for scare-head purposes. Unquestionably, this second touch is irrelevant; but it is very brief and inoffensive.
In conclusion, the gist of the second rule of order is this: usually some special quality of the single effect or the dramatic action fixes the order of the more important descriptive events and pure descriptions; and when it does not clearly do so, the latter properly come as early in the story as possible.
3. The rule of transitions is so familiar and lucid that discussion is not called for. Perhaps it should be noticed in passing, though, that many plots pass abruptly from movement to movement, by the very nature of their events and their direction. The student must therefore be on his guard against a false ideal. He must not strive to make the action continuous, unless he has assured himself that it is not intrinsically broken. Often the breaks will be so sharp that, in mere honesty to the public, they should be typographically symbolized. I know, some critics consider a line of asterisks in the middle of a tale most uncanonical; but so much the worse for critics and canons. They are trying the impossible, in imposing an external form upon an art which takes its shape only from ideals and ideas. Maupassant's The Necklace has four visible breaks, and yet even the formalists concede its flawlessness. A Coward has two breaks; The Horla, with its diaryform, has half a hundred; The Elixir of Father
Gaucher has six,—and, were a chronicler so minded, he might array a glittering host of splendid works against the error, drawing them from almost every master of fiction.
4. The superiority of the natural order of events ought to be apparent, but to many it is not. Young writers commonly suppose that historical inversion is an unfailing virtue; that it whets the reader's curiosity, puzzles him, and thus heightens the effect of the story. The result of this belief is a flood of stories that aren't stories; that is, much writing about undramatic, intrinsically dull happenings. The momentary illusion of story stuff is produced by twisting things or by standing them on their heads. One might count so-called detective and mystery tales by the score which ape the real kind by just such operations. They attempt it because the real kind almost always inverts events; and the aping authors fancy that, by copying the form, they may seize the substance. This peculiarity of the cheap mystery and detective story we have already dwelt upon.'
Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, a plot that is very weak when narrated in its natural order is not worth pottering over. And, if strong in that order, its strength is seldom increased by inversion. The rare exception is usually of the second kind above mentioned; it is a story of misunderstanding. In such a story, the dominant character sometimes does what he does because he supposes that something happened at a certain time; when, as a matter of fact, it happened before or after that time and under circumstances which give it a meaning unsuspected by the hero. In such a case, the story must be told partly from the hero's point of view, in order that we may sympathetically understand his behavior.
THE  ORDER  OF NARRATION
By far most stories pursue the temporal order. In a novel which involves several groups of characters not intimately related throughout, the writer sometimes finds it necessary to double back for the purpose of bringing up the rear-guard of his story. Thus in the novels of Dickens, Thackeray, and Scott, the several stories are carried singly over a period of time. This method need not much concern us here, however, for the action of a short story must, of necessity, concern itself with but a few characters, and for this reason there is little justification for more than a single centre of interest. Nevertheless, an occasional deviation
from the time order is to be found in stories which, by common consent, are regarded as excellent. The reasons for such exceptions we should note.
In Kipling's The Man Who Would Be King theinitial incidents explain the author's meeting with the chief characters of the story, who lay their plans to enter Kafirstan and depart upon their enterprise. Several years elapse before the survivor of the expedition returns to tell the story of the intervening period. This deviation from the strict order of chronology is but slight; indeed, all the story's action to the point of the survivor's narrative may be regarded as introductory merely, an introduction designed to give verisimilitude to an otherwise incredible yarn. Exposition of events precedent to the story's action, and introduced after the action has been begun, is analogous to this instance.* Interest once aroused, the exposition may turn to antecedent circumstances.
Interest, effectiveness—these are the sole justification for a deviation from the strict order of time. Notable stories there are which violate this precept, and which are yet both clear and effective. Such a one is Balzac's La Grande Breliche. In this, the story proper begins with the death of the principal character, after which
we have the beginning and the succeeding action. Balzac's purpose in departing from the time order was doubtless threefold. He wished to include the effective death-bed scene with which the story opens. Yet this in the order of occurrence comes at a considerable interval from the events which determine it. To bridge this time- gap would be difficult. Also, in the inverted order, the most striking scene is reserved for the end of the story. A third reason is the point of view adopted. Balzac endeavors to give his story plausibility by presenting a mass of circumstantial evidence concerning the methods by which he arrived at the story. He gets it piecemeal, and only after considerable effort. Not only is the reader's curiosity whetted thereby, but he is prepared to accept the story as true, for the order of incident is in accord with the method by which the author learned the story. On the other hand, the point of view and the circumstantial evidence make the story considerably longer than it need otherwise be, and, granted the ability of a Balzac, no more effective, we must believe, than if the time order had been followed, and the death-bed scene either brought close to the events preceding or omitted altogether. It is not because of the violation of the time order, but despite it, that La Grande Bretiche is a powerful story.
Conrad's story, The End of the Tether, him- wise departs from the time order so that the initialincident may be brought doser to the climax, and the time covered thus be reduced. But here the gain is doubtful. If the reader desires an instance in which confusion clearly follows upon such a deviation, he may find it in a story entitled The Denver Express,* by A. A. Hayes. Other instances less well known may be readily found.
We may then generalize to this extent: The writer, when tempted to depart from the time order, should make certain that he has cogent reasons therefor; he should exhaust his technical resources before he permits himself the liberty, assuring himself that by no device can he tell his story in chronological order with equal effect. If he does depart from it he must be doubly careful that the time relation of events is perfectly clear to the reader.