short story, the advice is unsound, for the
dramatic short story may and usually does involve much diversity and
contrast in its three elements of people, events, and setting. The only
sense in which it can be said to be a unity is that it is verbally
coherent, a single story. The single story may involve radically
different people, happenings, and scenes.

The positive evil tendency in telling the short story writer to seek to
invest his work with "unity" is that if he follows the advice his
material will be restricted, and he will write stories too simple really
to interest, apart from the appeal of their characters. And this point
of interest brings up another aspect of this book which I would mention.

The last chapter states a general theory or philosophy of fiction which
it will prove most profitable for the writer of fiction to grasp,
however imperfectly I may have stated it. The theory is not profound, in
the sense that it is mysterious, being merely the theory which is
implied in the content and aim of the art of fiction itself. The content
of fiction is man and what he may possibly or even conceivably
experience; the aim of fiction is to interest, in Stevenson's words,
"the one excuse and breath of art--charm." How much is implied in the
content and aim of fiction I have tried to show in my closing pages, but
the theory there stated is the guiding principle of the whole book, and
any value it may have derives from such unforced handling of the
subject. Apart from the merit of my own work, one thing at least is
certain. If commentators on the art of fiction generally would deal
less in "isms" and seek less to display their profundity and critical
acumen, the actual writer of fiction might read them with some profit.
As it is, the greatest single danger threatening the practitioner of the
art is that his eagerness for all that pertains even remotely to his
trade may lead him to take seriously the empty thunders of the schools
and to forget that his business is to interest and captivate Mr. and
Mrs. Smith, simply that.

To sum up, my desire has been to write a book that would be of some
practical use, at least practically suggestive to the writer of fiction;
therefore the only natural way to approach technique has been adopted,
and I have indulged in analysis only when the analysis would be useful
in itself or would serve to clear away misconception. In other words,
the book has been written strictly for the w