CHAPTER XIX

NARRATION

General Rules of Structure in Narration. — In the preceding chapter on Narration we discovered certain rules that may be repeated thus:

1. Remember that a narrative deals primarily with action, movement, event.

2. Choose a subject that is simple and definite. Avoid subjects that involve many people and many incidents.

3. Make a careful outline of your narrative.

4. Give at or near the beginning some information regarding the persons acting, the time and the place of the action.

5. Keep to the subject you have chosen; omit unnecessary details and digressions.

6. Arrange your details as far as possible in chronological order. Be coherent.

7. Keep your reader in suspense regarding the outcome of events. Arrange events in the order of climax. Make your reader's interest increase as the narrative progresses.

8. Subordinate minor details to the really important major events.

9. Keep to the method and tone you have adopted. If your narrative is to be told in the first person or in the third do not change from one person to the other. Do not use the expository objective method of narration in one half and the dramatic method with dialogue in the other half.

10. Have regard for proportion. Do not pack the first half of your narrative with exciting events and then let the other half drag on wearisomely without any important action.

11. Make your conclusion an effective and real end to your narrative, so that the reader will not be left in doubt about the outcome of your tale.

Narration Aided by Description or Exposition. In order to create a vivid setting or background for events, to show how persons and places and objects look, we need the help of description. In order to portray characters and to define situations we need the help of exposition. Practice in these subjects will help greatly in narration.

Study the following example of description of the state of mind of a person in an alarming situation.

Denis breathed again. He gave them a few minutes' grace for fear of accidents, and then groped about for some means of opening the door, and slipping forth again. The inner surface was quite smooth, not a handle, not a molding, not a projection of any sort. He got his finger-nails round the edges and pulled, but the mass was immovable. He shook it, it was as firm as a rock. Denis de Beaulieu frowned and gave vent to a little noise

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less whistle. What ailed the door, he wondered. Why was it open? How came it to shut so easily and so effectually after him? There was something obscure and underhand about all this, that was little to the young man's fancy. It looked like a snare; and yet who could suppose a snare in such a quiet by-street and in a house of so prosperous and even noble an exterior? And yet snare or no snare, intentionally or unintentionally here he was, prettily trapped; and for the life of him he could see no way out of it again. The darkness began to weigh upon him. He gave ear; all was silent without, but within and close by he seemed to catch a faint sighing, a faint sobbing rustle, a little stealthy creakas though many persons were at his side, holding themselves quite still, and governing even their respiration with the extreme of slyness.

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON: The Sire de Malétroit's Door.

In the following passage note how the narrative is assisted by exposition.

The artist came in Bret Harte. He was not, like Mark Twain, born of the stuff in which he worked. His art is not that of the native life, becoming conscious of itself and finding original expression. He was a visitor from the outer world, Eastern-born and Eastern-bred. The son of a Greek professor who taught in a college at Albany, in New York, he grew up in a library, bred on literature from boyhood, where alone such breeding takes, with his brain stuffed carelessly with the best English humor and romance, and indeed, if Don Quixote, Gil Blas, The Arabian Nights, and Tales of the Genii be added, the best in the world. Still a stripling youth, he was flung into the Californian ferment, impressionable and sharp to observe, with eyes trained on contemporaneous man under the tutelage of the art of Dickens, with its long resources of comedy, sentiment, and kindliness. He had shown the literary gift from childhood; he could

meditate his experience, brood over his creatures, and love them, and his skill in language was fine to serve his ends. The relaxed moral strain of conversation about him loosed his tongue and let him have his say of the thoughts and feelings within him. The environment was crowded with artistic elements, and he began to select, with directness and simplicity, and combine and create, and without knowing it, he had found the gold that grows not dim and melts not away. His graphic power was great; the vividness of the scenes, the sharpness of the character, the telling force of the incident, the reality of the talk, the simple depth of the sentiment, make up a body of human truth, clear, picturesque, sincere, and homespun, which went at once to the heart. GEORGE EDWARD WOODBERRY: America, in Literature.*

Kinds of Narrative. Anecdote. The simplest kind of narrative is the anecdote, which relates some incident that reveals wit, or heroism, or generosity, or some other distinctive trait. The anecdote is concerned with one action only, and must be brief in order to be pointed.

The following brief anecdote is an instance of skill in the selection of details, in the arrangement of a climax, and in successful dramatic conclusion. Note the title given and the way in which the narrative leads up to the sentence which explains the title. A single word after that would have been an anti-climax. Note how concisely the description of the person and the place is given; how brief and yet how full of meaning the dialogue is; not an unnecessary detail is included.

The Query Courteous

One day a celebrated advocate was arguing before a very rude old Scotch Judge, who pointed with one forefinger to one of his own ears, and with the other to the opposite one.

"You see this, Mr. X?"

"I do, my Lord," said the advocate.

"Well, it just goes in here and comes out there," and his Lordship smiled with the hilarity of a Judge who thinks he has actually said a good thing.

"I do not doubt it, my Lord," replied the advocate. "What is there to prevent it?"

LORD BRAMPTON: Reminiscences.

Note how the following anecdote is narrated in a single sentence.

Once a dunce, void of learning but full of books, flouted a library-less scholar with these words - Salve, doctor sine libris, but the next day the scholar coming into this jeerer's study crowned with books, salvete, libri, saith he, sine doctore.

THOMAS FULLER: The Holy and Profane State.

In the following anecdote what trait is brought out by the action of the chief character? How successful is this as a bit of narrative?

King Lets Horse Drink First

The son of a leading manufacturer of Brussels, whose two brothers have been killed at the front, tells the following anecdote, which dates from the first summer of the war:

"It had been a hot day and King Albert, who had not left the trenches for hours, was suffering from thirst.