has taken to himself the privilege to know all facts and motives may be
led into depicting events or analyzing character for his own pleasure,
rather than because the story demands it. If a story demands space,
space it must have, but the essence of literary power and artistry is to
write with the utmost brevity and pungency compatible with adequate
expression. The story must be told; every essential phase must be
brought out; but unsignificant words can only do their bit toward
spoiling the desired effect. The adoption of a too inclusive mode of
narration may lead the writer astray; conversely, the mode of narration
most nearly suited to the necessities of his story will aid in holding
his pen to the line. If the story is of action, unconcerned with motives
save by implication, and the writer tells it in the first person, or in
the third person from the viewpoint of a single character, he will be
led to confine himself to the depiction of the panorama of events, which
is the work in hand. Yet, if the story requires that the reader be given
a direct view of the spiritual workings of large numbers of characters,
the writer must tell it in the third person and assume universal
knowledge as to event and spirit. A mode of narration must be
deliberately selected for each new story with due regard to its
idiosyncrasies, and to make the choice correctly cannot fail to be of
great advantage.

It is often stated that having settled upon what is most narrowly termed
a mode of narration and most broadly a viewpoint the writer should be
sedulous not to depart from it. The writer of the short story should not
alter the narrative point of view, for obvious reasons. The short story
is short; it depends for its power upon dramatic effect; and in writing
it there is no occasion or excuse for any shifting of outlook. The short
story is artistically the strictest form of prose fiction, that is, it
is most strictly subject to the conventions of the art of fiction, of
which maintenance of the point of view is one. But the novel is a much
looser form, and unless the particular story is uniquely uniform in
texture, as the frank tale of adventure, shifting the point of view
often will prove necessary.

If the author of a novel has chosen to write with knowledge of the inner
workings of more than one of the characters, but not with knowledge of
all, so that he relates from the viewpoint of several characters, rather
than the viewpoint of some