EXPOSITION AND PREPARATION

A STORY must do more than relate the vital incidents of the plot; there is another element, purely expository, the object of which is to make the circumstances of the story intelligible to the reader. He must know who are the characters, something of their history, and their relations past and present to one another, as well as other antecedent and coincident matters. This information may be much or little as occasion may demand. The means whereby it is introduced into the story constitutes a problem in technical, a problem dependent in large part upon the choice of the point of view. 
As our introduction to the subject let us, then, select a story written from the point of view of the actor-narrator and examine the initial exposition. The story is Stevenson's, The Merry Men, of which I quote the second paragraph:
I was far from being a native of these parts, springing, as I did, from an unmixed lowland stock. But an uncle of mine, George Darnaway, 
after a poor, rough youth, and some years at sea, had married a young wife in the islands; Mary Maclean she was called, the last of her family; and when she died in giving birth to a daughter, Aros, the sea-girt farm, had remained in his possession. It brought him in nothing but the means of life, as I was well aware; but he was a man whom ill-fortune had pursued; he feared, cumbered as he was with the young child, to make a fresh adventure upon life; and remained at Aros, biting his nails at destiny. Years passed over his head in that isolation, and brought neither help nor contentment. Meantime our family was dying out in the lowlands; there is little luck for any of that race; and perhaps my father was the luckiest of all, for not only was he one of the last to die, but he left a son to his name and a little money to support it. I was a student at Edinburgh University, living well enough at my own charges, but without kith or kin; when some news of me found its way to Uncle Gordon on the Ross of Grisapol; and he, as he was a man who held blood thicker than water, wrote to me the day he heard of my existence, and taught me to count Aros as my home. Thus it was that I came to spend my vacations in that part of the country, so far from all society and comfort, between the cod-fish and the moor-cocks; and thus it was that now, when I had done with my classes, was returning thither with so light a heart that July day. —(The Merry Men. )
There is no attempt here to disguise the purpose of the paragraph, which is frankly inform
hag, and though somewhat more interesting than the cast of characters on a playbill, or a description of stage setting, serves much the same purpose. We learn who the hero is, somewhat of his history, and his reason for being at Aros; we learn, too, of his relatives and their history; the character of the place, and the time of year. All this the author considers necessary to our proper appreciation of what he has later to tell. What of the fitness of the narrator to be our informant? With his own history he is, naturally, sufficiently familiar But can we suppose him to know so much of his uncle and cousin? What means had he of learning the facts he gives? We read that he had spent several vacations on the island, and by reason of his kinship we may suppose him familiar with the superficial facts of his uncle's history. But he states, also, that his uncle feared to adventure and so remained "biting his nails at destiny. " This, if we accept it without criticism, we must attribute to the hero's powers of observation, or to confidences his uncle may have made. There is, indeed, nothing in the statement difficult of acceptance, and the reader passes over it without question. Yet it serves to define a difficulty of exposition in a story told by one of the participants. The information must be such as lies reasonably within the knowledge of the narrator. He must
not know too much, or the story illusion, which we gladly accept if we may, will be incomplete. At no point may the actor-narrator introduce exposition other than that which comes naturally within the circle of his observation. 
For our second instance let us select a story told by the author-omniscient. These three expository paragraphs follow immediately upon the opening dialogue of Kipling's Without Benefit of Clergy:
The man did not move. He was sitting on a low red-lacquered couch in a room furnished only with a blue and white floor-cloth, some rugs, and a very complete collection of native cushions. At his feet sat a woman of sixteen, and she was all but all the world in his eyes. By every rule and law she should have been otherwise, for he was an Englishman, and . . she a Mussulman's daughter bought two years before from her mother, who, being left without money, would have sold Ameera shrieking to the Prince of Darkness if the price had been sufficient. 
It was a contract entered into with a light heart; but even before the girl had reached her bloom she came to fill the greater portion of John Holden's life. For her, and the withered hag her mother, he had taken a little house overlooking the great redwalled city, and found— when the marigolds had sprung up by the well in the courtyard and Ameera had established
herself according to her own ideas of comfort, and her mother had ceased grumbling at the inadequacy of the cooking-places, the distance from the daily market, and at matters of housekeeping in general—that the house was to him his home. Anyone could enter his bachelor's bungalow by day or night, and the life that he led there was an unlovely one. In the house in the city his feet only could pass beyond the outer courtyard to the women's rooms; and when the big wooden gate was bolted behind him he was king in his own territory with Ameera for queen. And there was going to be added to this kingdom a third person whose arrival Holden felt inclined to resent. It interfered with his perfect happiness. It disarranged the orderly peace of the house that was his own. But Ameera was wild with delight at the thought of it and her mother not less so. The love of a man, and particularly a white man, was at best an inconstant affair, but it might, both women argued, be held fast by a baby's hands. "And then, " Ameera would always say, " then he will never care for the white ment-log. I hate them all—I hate them all. "
"He will go back to his own people in time, " said the mother; "but by the blessing of God that time is yet afar off. "
We learn from this several things: the present relations of the characters, the incidents leading to this relationship, the place, and something of the man's nature. As the point of view is that of the omniscient author, we accept without
demur all that he tells us. He is supposed to know these things. Our later criticism must be directed to the manner of the exposition, and its effect upon the action into which it has been incorporated. For the moment we shall ignore these points and consider as a third instance the point of view of the author-observant, who professes ignorance of circumstances antecedent to the story. What he tells us must be in dialogue and description, elements of the action itself. How may we separate from these the purely expository element? But our illustration must precede the discussion. The passage is from The Love of Romance, of E. Nesbit's dever volume, The Literary Sense:
She opened the window, at which no light shone. All the other windows were darkly shuttered. The night was still: only a faint breath moved among the restless aspen leaves. The ivy round the window whispered hoarsely as the casement, swung back too swiftly, rested against it. She had a large linen sheet in her hands. Without hurry and without delayings she knotted one corner of it to the iron staple of the window. She tied the knot firmly, and further secured it with string. She let the white bulk of the sheet fall between the ivy and the night, then she climbed on to the window-ledge, and crouched there on her knees. There was a heart-sick pause before she grasped the long twist of the sheet as it hung—let her knees slip from the
supporting stone and swung suddenly by her hands. Her elbows and wrists were grazed against the rough edge of the window-ledgethe sheet twisted at her weight, and jarred her shoulder heavily against the house wall. Her arms seemed to be tearing themselves from their sockets. But she clenched her teeth, felt with her feet for the twisted ivy stems on the side of the house, found foothold, and the moment of almost unbearable agony was over. She went down helped by feet and hands, and by ivy and sheet, almost exactly as she had planned to do. She had not known it would hurt so much—that was all. Her feet felt the soft mould of the border: a stout geranium snapped under her tread. She crept around the house, in the house's shadow—found the gardener's ladder— and so on to the high brick wall. From this she dropped, deftly enough, into the suburban lane: dropped, too, into the arms of a man who was waiting there. She hid her face in his neck, trembling, and said, "Oh, Harry—I wish I hadn't!" Then she began to cry helplessly. The man, receiving her embrace with what seemed in the circumstances a singularly moderated enthusiasm, led her with one arm still lightly about her shoulders down the lane: at the corner he stood still, and said in a low voice
"Hush—stop crying at once! I've something to say to you. "
She tore herself from his arm and gasped. "It's not Harry, " she said. "Oh, how dare youl" She had been brave till she had dropped
into his arms. Then the need for bravery had seemed over. Now her tears were dried swiftly and suddenly by the blaze of anger and courage in her eyes. 
"Don't be unreasonable, " he said, and even at that moment of disappointment and rage his voice pleased her. "I had to get you away somehow. I couldn't risk an explanation right under your aunt's windows. Harry's sprained his knee—cricket. He couldn't come. "
A sharp resentment stirred in her against the lover who could play cricket on the very day of an elopement. 
"He told you to come? Oh, how could he betray me!"
"My dear girl, what was he to do? He couldn't leave you to wait out here alone—perhaps for hours. "
"I shouldn't have waited long, " she said sharply; "you came to tell me: now you've told me—you'd better go. "
"Look here, " he said with gentle calm, "I do wish you'd try not to be quite so silly. I'm Harry's doctor—and a middle-aged man. Let me help you. There must be some better way out of your troubles than a midnight flight and a despairingly defiant note on the pin-cushion. "
"I didn't, " she said. "I put it on the mantelpiece. Please go. I decline to discuss anything with you. "
"Ah, don't!" he said; "I knew you must be a very romantic person, or you wouldn't be here; and I knew you must be rather sill—well, rather young, or you wouldn't have fallen in love with
Harry. But I did not think, after the brave and practical manner in which you kept your appointment, I did not think that you'd try to behave like the heroine of a family novelette. Come, sit down on this heap of stones—there's nobody about. There's a light in your house now. You can't go back yet. Here, let me put my. Inverness about you. Keep it up around your chin, and then if anybody sees you they won't know who you are. I can't leave you alone here. You know what a lot of robberies there have been in the neighborhood lately; there may be rough characters about. Come now, let's see what's to be done. You know you can't get back unless I help you. "
"I don't want you to help me; and I won't go back, " she said. 
But she sat down and pulled the cloak up round her face. 
"Now, " he said, "as I understand the case —it's this. You live rather a dull life with two tyrannical aunts—and the passion for romance. . . . "
"They're not tyrannical—only one's always ill and the other's always nursing her. She makes her get up and read to her in the night. That's her light you saw—"
"Well, I pass the aunts. Anyhow, you met Harry—somehow—"
"It was at the Choral Society. And then they stopped my going—because he walked home with me one wet night. "
"And you have never seen each other since?" "Of course we have. "
"And communicated by some means more romantic than the post?"
"It wasn't romantic. It was tennis-balls. " "Tennis-balls?"
"You cut a slit and squeeze it and put a note in, and it shuts up and no one notices it. It wasn't romantic at all. And I don't know why I should tell you anything about it. "
"And then I suppose there were glances in church, and stolen meetings in the passionate hush of the rose-scented garden. "
" There's nothing in the garden but geraniums, " she said, "and we always talked over the wall— he used to stand on their chicken house, and I used to turn our dog kennel up on end and stand on that. You have no right to know anything about it, but it was not in the least romantic. "
"No—that sees itself! May I ask whether it was you or he who proposed this elopement?"
But for one or two touches which intimate the girl's secret thoughts, the point of view here is strictly observant and unobtrusive. Virtually we have the lines of a play, the description serving as the stage business. From the dialogue and descriptive touches we must not only follow the story action, but also grasp the present situation, and learn from what it has developed. This we have no difficulty in doing. We learn of the elopement and the manner of courtship which preceded. We gather something of the characters of those concerned, and our interest is
aroused in the man who extorts all this information from the girl. The dialogue serves the double purpose of exposition and narration. If it does all this without seeming at any moment forced or unnatural, it is good dialogue, and we take anintellectual pleasure in observing the author's dexterity. 
Dialogue, to serve this dual purpose, must have recourse to various expedients so that talk relating antecedent events may be elicited in a natural manner. Not every young lady can be prevailed upon to tell the details of her courtship. Anger is the device employed, a device hoary in stage-craft, which, dependent upon tricks of this kind, has developed many. Other expedients by which dialogue may be turned to the exposition of antecedent events will readily occur to Everyone. A lawyer may rehearse his client's position and thus acquaint us with important facts; a letter may be introduced into the story, or a newspaper clipping, or a passage from Who's Who ;a palmist may tell the life of his visitor, and from the visitor's conduct we may judge the information to be exact. In The Rise of Silas Lapham, Mr. Howells introduces a reporter who asks the hero the important facts of his career for newspaper publication. In The Scarlet Letter, from the talk of the Puritans gathered about Hester Prynne in the pillory
we learn of her offence and other relevant circumstances. The merit of these devices is that, while they serve to inform us, we yet feel the story to be progressing. This we do not feel when the author steps aside from his story to tell us what we need to know. 
Nevertheless the greater number of good stories do not rely solely upon dialogue and description for exposition. Though they employ it to a considerable degree, they depend chiefly upon direct exposition. The feeling which prompts this choice is, doubtless, that the obviousness and conciseness of direct exposition is less hazardous than the indirect or dramatic style. Nothing is so bad as dialogue forced into an unnatural channel for the story's purposes. The illusion to be satisfactory must be complete. Authors employ, therefore, a variety of means to make the story clear: they may sketch briefly antecedent events; they may read the thoughts of the characters, which, if turned to the past, serve as exposition; for the setting forth of present relations, they employ dialogue. If all these means are utilized, the point of view of the author-omniscient (or that of the actornarrator) is inevitable. 
Before we take up further aspects of this topic let us turn for a moment to the passages quoted from Stevenson and Kipling and note their place
in the story. Neither comes at the very beginning. Stevenson introduces The Merry Men with a brief narrative paragraph which serves to get the story under way. Kipling begins with a fairly long scene in dialogue, which serves in part an expository purpose. Then he pauses to explain the situation. My own feeling is that Kipling's explanation is unduly long, coming as it does sharp upon an interesting passage in dialogue. In The Merry Men the difficulty is not so great, for our interest in the story as aroused by the first paragraph, is tepid, so that the author's digression—this, too, in the hero's own words—seems not much to matter. The keener the interest aroused at the outset, the greater the contrast with the expository matter following. 
It is for this reason that many authors preface the story with the exposition. Thus Maupassant's The Coward:
He was known in society as "the handsome Signolles. " His name was Viscount Gontran Joseph de Signolles. 
An orphan and the possessor of a sufficient fortune, he cut a dash, as they say. He had style and presence, sufficient fluency of speech to make people think him clever, a certain natural grace, an air of nobility and pride, a gallant mustache and a gentle eye, which the women like. 
He Was in great demand in the salons, much
sought after by fair dancers; and he aroused in his own sex that smiling animosity which they always feel for men of an energetic figure. He had been suspected of several love affairs well adapted to cause a young bachelor to be much esteemed. He passed a happy, unconcerned life, in a comfort of mind which was almost complete. He was known to be a skillful fencer, and with the pistol even more adept. 
"If I ever fight a duel, " he would say, "I shall choose the pistol. With that weapon I am sure of killing my man "
The exposition here is brief but adequate to its purpose, and every detail is vital to the story. 
Our discussion has so far had to do with exposition only of present and retrospective significance. Still more important is that exposition which anticipates the action to come, so that in the heat of the story the action need not pause for explanations essential to dearness. The passage from The Cowardillustrates this function of exposition admirably. We learn of Signolles that he was gallant and wished to cut a figure before women; that though expert with sword and pistol, he had never fought a duel. All this is vital to the story, for it explains whatis to come. From this introduction the experienced reader anticipates much of the action, for he has learned to observe all details which an author sees fit to give him. If the author
knows his business and selects as he should, no detail will be without its reasonable implication. We guess, therefore, that Signolles will fight a duel over a woman. From his expressed desire to employ pistols in such a contingency so that he may be "sure of his man, " we suspect him to be somewhat of a braggart, and despite his marksmanship doomed to disaster. The manner of his failure constitutes the story; yet knowing so much as we do, our interest is in no sense weakened; rather is it enhanced by anticipation. 
In Ripling's story also we have this foreknowledge, though less explicit. The remark of Ameera that Holden will return to his own people in time, we feel prophetic of the end. Conscious of Holden's genuine passion for the girl, we surmise that only some tragic event can force the issue. What that is, we read to see. 
How great is this necessity of an accurate preparation for events to come may be well illustrated by a passage from Stevenson upon the uncertain artistry of Scott. In Guy Mannering, one of Scott's hastily constructed tales, occurs the incident which Stevenson quotes:
"I remember the tune well, " he says, "though I cannot guess what should at present so strongly recall it to my memory. " He took his flageolet from his pocket and played a simple melody, 
Apparently the tune awoke the corresponding associations of a , damsel. . . . She immediately took up the song:
"'Are these the links of Forth, ' she said; 'Or are they the crooks of Dee, 
Or the bonny woods of Warroch Head That I so fain would see?"
"By heaven!" said Bertram, "it is the very ballad. "
On this quotation two remarks fall to be made. First, as an instance of modern feeling for romance, this fainous touch of the flageolet and the old song is selected by Miss Braddon for omission. Miss Braddon's idea of a story, like Mrs. Todger's idea of a wooden leg, were something strange to have expounded. As a matter of personal experience, Meg's appearance to old Mr. Bertram on the road, the ruins of Derncleugh, the scene of the flageolet, and the Domin. ie's recognition of Harry are the four strong notes that continue to ring in the mind after the book is laid aside. The second point is still more curious. The reader will observe a mark of excision in the passage as quoted by me. Well, here is how it runs in the original. "a damsel, who, dose behind a fine spring about half-way down the descent, and which had once supplied the castle with water, was engaged in bleaching linen. " A man who gave in such copy would be discharged from the staff of a daily paper. Scott has forgotten to prepare
the reader for the presence of the "damsel"; he has forgotten to mention the spring and its relation to the ruin; and now, face to face with his omission, instead of trying back and starting fair, crams all this matter, tail foremost, into a single shambling sentence. It is not merely bad English or bad style; it is abominably bad narrative besides. 
In the artistry exhibited in this important matter writers vary widely. Some are even too well aware of the necessity for preparation, and give over many hints. Thus in De Morgan's novel, Somehow Good, so great stress is laid upon the heroine's love for swimming that we expect nothing short of a shipwreck or a second deluge. The discriminating reader treasures every hint granted him, but he resents overemphasis as an insult to his intelligence. 
Poe's Cask of Amontillado is an excellent, though somewhat obvious, illustration of careful artistry in exposition, both retrospective and anticipatory. I shall call attention to a number of passages, though the reader should examine them in their context. The introductory paragraph explains the motive of the story—revenge. We are promised revenge of which the victim shall not fail to know the source, but for which the doer shall go unpunished. This is the pronouncement of the story's theme. Then we are
told that Fortunato had one weakness: he prided himself upon his connoisseurship in wine. We expect, from this, poison, but hope for something more novel and exciting. 
At the beginning of the action we find Fortunato under the influence of wine, and from this suspect him an easy prey to his enemy, a suspicion made certain when Montressor says: "I was so pleased to see him that I thought I should never have done wringing his hand. " Knowing Montressor's secret purpose, we understand his pleasure to spring from some evil design. A little later Fortunato offers to accompany Montressor to the latter's wine-cellars for the purpose of testing the wine. The sinister stratagem emerges more clearly as Montressor describes the unhealthful atmosphere of the cellars, which cannot but be dangerous to one with a cough. Later:
"Come, we will go back; your health is precious. You are rich, respected, admired, beloved; you are happy, as onceI was. You are a man to be missed "
Again:
"Enough, " he said, "the cough is a mere nothing; it will not kill me. I shall not die of a cough. "
"True—true, " I replied. 
There are other obvious hints, but one more citation will suffice:
"Then you are not of the brotherhood. " "How?"
"You are not of the masons. "
"Yes, yes, " I said, "yes, yes. "
"You? Impossible! A mason?"
"A mason, " I replied. 
"A sign, " he said. 
"It is this, " I answered, producing a trowel from beneath the folds of my roquelaire. 
The surprise of this is admirable, though it intimates the catastrophe perhaps too clearly. 
In classifying all these touches as exposition we are, it may be objected, doing violence to the term. Many are integral parts of the action, and do more than forecast incidents to come; they interest of themselves. It is not a valid criticism. Exposition, as in The Coward, may simply inform us of things we should know; or it may come as dialogue and action, and serve a double purpose—narrative and expository. Yet expository in the main it is, for it makes the reader's knowledge of impending events greater than that of the actors in the story. 
If, then, in a good story, important turns of action are dearly predicted, we must at this point consider accident and coincidence, and determine what part, if any, these may play in story structure. Life abounds in accidental happenings, by which we mean turns of fate that cannot be anticipated. Nothing is accidental in a sense; that is, everything is the result of natural law, and this result is predictable to anyone fully cognizant of the causes. To the all-seeing Creator life may work itself out like a problem in mathematics, and its conclusion be ever inherent in its terms. . This is not the case, however, with human vision. Some things, it is true, we may safely predict from our knowledge of life and human relations. But how may I know my death? A the may fall from the roof of the building before which I pass and I be instantly killed. Accidents no less extraordinary occur daily, as the newspapers attest. What use may the story writer make of such accidents?
A clear understanding of the matter may best be had by an examination of the point of view of author and reader. To them, the development of the story is not, as is life, subject to accidental happenings, but is, as the whole of life to the Creator, predictable. Thus the hero of the story may not know as he rides into battle that he goes to his death; but the author and I, the reader, know this as certainly as from a ghostly premonition. The death of the hero has been predetermined, and the action so designed as to intimate clearly this denouement. 
The characters of the story are unaware of this prearrangement, but the author, and to a less degree, the reader, view events from a higher plane of understanding. For them chance does not exist; this characteristic of life has, in the story, been done away with. Thus we say the story is more logical, that is, more predictable than life. Much of our pleasure in reading lies in our appreciation of this story logic. 
The exact nature of the accidental happening —accidental, that is, from the point of view of the character—may not always be guessed from the early circumstances of the story. Sometimes it is desirable to prepare only in general terms for the event to come, its exact nature being left ambiguous and thus exciting our curiosity and interest. Often, however, the very character of the conclusion may be predicted. Thus in The Cask of Amontillado the reader guesses almost exactly the expression of Montressor's revenge. In Kipling's Without Benefit of Clergy we know early that Toto and Ameera will die of the plague. InHamletand Romeo and Juliet we do not at first know the exact means by which the hero of each shall die, though that means is dear some time before the result. The tone of the story. of which we have later to speak, determines always the character of the conclusion. The preparatory incidents intimate with varying de
grees of dearness the specific means by which the conclusion is realized. 
Coincidences are a kind of accident. Life is filled with them. It is a coincidence that I meet a friend on the street in Paris or in New Zealand. A story permits coincidences only if the result is not momentous, or if the coincidence is at the basis of the story. Let us endeavor to make the point clear. The story may grow out of the chance meeting of two characters thrown together in the haphazard fashion of life. With this we do not quarrel; the writer may, at the outset, make whatsoever assumption he choose. But suppose the story under way and everything dependent upon the meeting of two persons, the whereabouts of each unknown to the other. That they will meet is a chance in a million If I seize upon that chance I make too momentous a result hinge upon too slight a possibility. My reader is incredulous, for he feels I am forcing probabilities unduly. Smith, whom I knew in Des Moines, Iowa, a lawyer by profession, I meet in Vladivostock. The circumstance is improbable; if, in a story, much depends upon this meeting, it is, unless prepared for, incredible. But if Smith and I are both interested in Russian affairs, and fond of travel, and this is made known at the outset of the story, then the meeting is permissible, for
the reader has been led to expect something of the sort. The writer, who deals not in chance, but in the logical sequence of events, must prepare for coincidences by previous suggestion. Then, whatever they may be in life, they cease in the story to be accidents at all. 
I once read a story developed in the following terms: A young woman has broken her engagement with a young man because of a misunderstanding. She meets, on a railway journey, an old lady unknown to her, who volunteers the story of her son's broken engagement, and makes clear the honorable cause of misunderstanding. The girl is, of course, the son's former fiancee, and thus events are shaped to a happy conclusion. There are here too many chance elements involved. That the mother and girl should meet as they do is in itself improbable; that the mother should take a stranger—and this one of all possible strangers—into her confidence concerning the affairs of her son is incredible. It might occur in life, but in a story we should not believe it. The mechanism is inadequate to the story's demands; the two persons must be brought together and made to talk in some more plausible fashion. 
Not infrequently the writer will violate the consistency of his characters to force a story conclusion. This is of like kind with accident
and coincidence, for the story turns upon a deviation from its own conditions. An example may be found in Guy Wetmore Cary11's otherwise sound story The Next Corner. The situation is this: A young diplomat who has run through his means determines upon suicide. As he returns to his apartments he meets with an odd character who demands a drink, and whom the hero, in whim, invites to eat with him in his rooms. They talk, and the guest suspects his host's purpose of suicide. All this is credible, and we accept it readily. But when the visitor produces a revolver, and, intimidating his host, ties him securely in a chair, we are unconvinced. Why should a man resolved on death be so easily cowed? It is true that he might be, but no revelation in his character hitherto has led us to expect the inconsistency when it occurs. The reason for his action is that it is necessary to the solution of the story. He must remain bound until the next morning, for he is then to receive a cablegram announcing the inheritance of a bequest which solves his difficulties, and removes all cause for suicide. The story is in many ways plausible, but the inconsistency of the character at the crucial moment—and this unprepared for—is a fatal weakness. Even the excitement induced by the incidents fails to blind us to the improbability. 
In the instance cited, that of a character change unanticipated, we call the weakness inadequate motivation; there was not sufficient cause apparent to move a man such as portrayed to the action described. Motivation thus involves the question of character-drawing as well as of adequate preparation, that is, announcement of impending action. In As You Like IiOliver, the wicked brother, undergoes a sudden transformation, makes restitution to Orlando, and wins the love of Celia. The change is inadequately motived, and the action dependent upon the change is consequently weak. Furthermore, we were unprepared by any hint for so marvellous a transformation whereby we might have been led to anticipate Oliver's change of heart, even though we disbelieved in it. 
Weak motivation, that is, action resulting from defective or inexplicable characterization, is only too common in all but the best literature. The hero must be put into hazardous situations for the creation of suspense. Therefore passing strangers conceive violent dislikes and pursue him with various menaces. He must be saved; therefore other characters inexplicably assist him This is but a variant upon the employment of accident or coincidence. To the hero it is truly an accident that he is endangered or saved, but the cause therefor springs from an
inadequate or illogical motivation of character. Yet our discussion has not touched the root of the matter. There is another element involved in the rationalization of experience which is the essence of a good story. Accident, coincidence, and weak motivation, true perhaps of life, are unsatisfactory in a story, for the reason that a cause is not assigned for each effect; and a story, being a logical structure, must be a chain of causes and effects. Not only this, but the cause must be adequate to the effect; too vital a conclusion must not depend upon too slight a cause. 
The instances of Bruce and the spider and of the horseshoe-nail which lost a kingdom are cases in point. Their moral is that great results depend logically upon trifles. This, in life, is true, but in a story the discrepancy between the immediate cause and its results should not be great. The hero stumbles over a stone in the road, and his enemy's bullet miscarries. Even though we have seen the stone and anticipated the fall, too much depends here upon a slight cause. A disaster is avoided by a triviality or, in another instance, caused thereby. This is a shock to our logical sense or to some deeper sense of justice with which the universe is not altogether in harmony. Stevenson notes somewhere a vital turn of story-action dependent
upon a mistake in time. The hands of a clock are turned back, and an otherwise unavoidable happening thus prevented. If the circumstance were trivial, the means would suffice; as it is vital, the means is inadequate. In life we are shocked when chance plays too large a part in destiny and moulds events in haphazard fashion. Our sense of justice demands that great results hinge upon commensurate causes. It is a matter of logic. If a chain of causes is established, each more vital than the last, we may from a trivial beginning evolve as momentous a conclusion as we choose. But if the intervening causes are removed and the trivial first cause brought abruptly in contrast with a catastrophic conclusion, the disharmony is offensive to us. We then enter the realm of accident, with which story writing has not to do. 
Accident and coincidence, then, if called to the writer's aid in plot solution, must be so prepared for that they are no longer, for the story, what these terms indicate. A vital development of the story must not depend upon chance, but upon forces previously set in motion. If the incident is not vital to the action, but merely contributory, accident and coincidence are less objectionable, for they have some sanction from the world without. It is when the stake is large that they are inadequate. 
The surprise story seems at first glance to violate the principle we have laid down: that a story is a logical structure, the conclusion of which is predictable from the initial incidents. It is not in reality such a violation. The general tenor of its conclusion must harmonize with its established tone—be tragic or humorous, pleasant or unpleasant, as the case may be. The exact terms of the conclusion are not, however, so apparent. If they are too obvious we cannot anticipate them with interest; most stories should, therefore, contain some slight element of surprise; that is, the specific terms of the conclusion should not be too accurately guessed. 
In the true surprise story the terms of the conclusion not only should be unguessed, but the unexpectedness should give pleasure. This pleasure cannot be, however, unless the reader feels the surprise to be justifiable, that is, that he has deceived himself into expecting one solution, whereas a second was equally inherent in the terms of the story. The detective story will afford a simple illustration. The writer here virtually constructs his story backward. He commits his crime in a certain fashion, constructs a chain of antecedent circumstances, and then endeavors to obscure this chain. It is as
though he first made a path to his goal, the objective of the story, and then, that the path might not be too obvious, constructed a number of blind or false paths which cross the true and perplex it. The logical sequence of incidents is, to change the figure, embedded in a mass of irrelevant happenings which serve to confuse the reader. In this maze the reader finds pleasure. As he looks back upon the story he should, however, be able to discern clearly the true sequence from which he has been legitimately seduced. He should feel that, had he been more clever, he would have arrived at the correct rather than the false solution. 
Not all writers of detective stories respect this obligation. The story is too baffling, and the reader feels at the end a distinct sense of disappointment. The game was not a fair one; he has been tricked. I recall a detective story entitled The Mystery of the Yellow Room and its sequel, The Perfume of the Lady in Black, both of which violate this requirement, and which are, therefore, not honestly constructed. In the first the criminal proves to be the chief of the detective bureau. How this criminal, long sought by the police, could in a few years enter the force, rise to be chief, and escape detection the while, defies explanation. In the second story the criminal kidnaps the prospective second husband of his own former wife, disguises himself, and, taking the place of the bridegroom, himself marries the woman. We cannot swallow so impossible a situation, and, inasmuch as the story turns upon it, we are bewildered and baffled, and in the end disgusted not with our own inability to solve the mystery, but with the author's craftsmanship He has not played the game fairly. 
The surprise should, then, be prepared for, and our momentary shock at the revelation be followed by acquiescence and pleasure. Upon reviewing the story we should detect the hints which would have sufficed to guide us had we been truly alert. These must be adequate or we shall feel ourselves to have been cheated; they must not, however, be too transparent, for the story will then fail of its purpose. It is not easy to hit upon the mean. 
Stockton's The Lady or the Tiger is the most famous example of the surprise story. In this the author builds up a series of incidents subject to two solutions. Either will be acceptable, for the story turns upon an ambiguous point of psychology. The surprise is the author's refusal to commit himself to either alternative; he leaves the nicely balanced problem to the reader. The device is excellent, but cannot often be repeated. Stockton employed it a
second time, but with less effect, in The Discourager of Hesitancy. 0. Henry employs a variant upon it in Thimble Thimble. 0. Henry has written a number of excellent surprise stories, but these fall, for the most part, under a later division of our subject, "Unity of Tone, " a chapter supplementary to many of the points here discussed. 
The importance of the principles we have formulated in this chapter the reader will best appreciate upon an examination of many stories. Let him ask himself these questions: Why does the author tell me this? Is he over explicit? Or, at the conclusion of a story: Did the writer tell me everything I should know? These questions the author endeavors to anticipate as he writes. It is required of him that he plan his story carefully, and that at the outset he know the end and the steps to it. He must explain enough, and not too much. He has, for the accomplishment of this, various resources, dependent in large part upon his point of view. The more restricted the point of view, the more difficult will be the management of the exposition. Exposition must not, last of all, be presented in too large and =assimilable lumps. For the reader may then be bored and skip, thus missing points essential to an understanding of the plot.
category:Writing techniques