n beings--an office chiefly performed by the
secondary events--and to make due preparation for each successive
primary event, that the reader may fully understand its import. The
second necessity, that the story be told plausibly, requires that the
events be ordered naturally as well as climactically, be told in
accordance with the canons of life as well as of art. The difficult task
of the writer is to picture his single phase of life so deftly and with
so little apparent forcing of his matter that the whole will be endowed
with the significant simplicity of art and yet have the naturalness of
life. Of course it is hard, and of course it takes long and patient
practice to conquer the secret. That is why the writer who has full
command of technique is so rare.

The story itself largely determines the order of its primary events, for
their succession is the story. But the secondary events are as largely
subject to the control of the writer, who may devise, adapt, and order
them almost at will, and in just and natural ordering of them lies much
of the secret of verisimilitude. They are the mortar that binds the
stones of the edifice, and by slighting them many a fine initial
conception has been rendered feeble in execution. They need not be
elaborately treated; in fact, the technique to be acquired is to relate
them in due subordination to events intrinsically more important, though
giving them an easy and natural flow and succession. But the minor
events must be ordered justly, that the story may march becomingly from
major event to major event, and therefore the writer must struggle with
their ordering. No rules capable of statement regulate the matter; the
writer can only be told its importance and urged not to consider his
story fully developed and ready for writing simply because he has
determined the order of its main events.

Perhaps the whole philosophy of the ordering of events, major and minor,
can be stated broadly to be that in ordering the more important events
of a story the writer must regard chiefly the necessities of climax,
that is, of art, while in ordering the secondary events he must regard
chiefly the necessity to be natural, that is, to achieve verisimilitude.
Art is life raised to a higher power, and the struggle of the artist is
to present his phase of life as simply and pungently as can be done
without entirely severing the relation between his conception and life
itself.

One function of the