gly,
if its nature permits; the chief necessity in ending a story is to end
it--and there is no proviso as to its nature. A story is a fiction with
a plot, and a plot is a chain of events with a definite and significant
ending. The writer who has discovered or devised a true plot upon which
to hang his fiction will not struggle on aimlessly after narrating the
climax, for there will be nothing more to relate. I believe that absence
of true plot is most often responsible for the story that stumbles to a
lame and inconclusive halt--not an end--rather than executive inaptitude
on the writer's part, for the climax of a true plot is a hard thing not
to feel and realize. At any rate, when the climax is reached and the
story told it must be ended, justly but finally. There is nothing more
for the reader, unless the characters are caught in another chain of
significant events. "But that is another story."

To recapitulate, a story is a progression of events, major and minor.
The story largely determines the character and order of its main
events, for they are the story itself; nevertheless the writer should
give them climactic arrangement, as far as possible. The minor events
are more subject to his control, and he should devise and order them
chiefly with an eye to verisimilitude and plausibility, not forgetting
that each should serve some definite purpose and will be the more useful
if it can be made to serve more than one.

PREPARATION

Two sorts of preparation must engage the attention of the writer of a
story. The first is purely mechanical, and is the result of the writer's
realization of the physical necessities of his story. If at some
definite point the hero is to be found in some definite place by other
characters, the writer must prepare to place him there. The necessity is
obvious, and this sort of preparation requires little discussion, except
the warning that in the complicated story it will demand close
attention. But the second sort of preparation is a much more delicate
matter, and in a sense is a great part of the art of fiction. I have
reference to the necessity that the writer individualize and vitalize
the people of his story so that the significant situations of the
fiction may have maximum effect on a reader. The problem is not so much
how to delineate character, which will be taken up later, as to plan the
whole story so that it will have body and not be a mere report.

There are three fundamental