volved would receive first should be stated first,
and the less striking details should follow in the order of their
impressiveness. Thus, in describing a skating scene, the observant
character should be made to see the interweaving skaters and to hear the
peculiar whinnying ring of the skates before he sees individuals. It is
all a matter of visualizing, or, better, visualizing and living the
story in the shoes of the character from whose viewpoint it is told. The
writer who will live each story thus in imagination, and will state the
successive impressions the character would naturally receive while
moving through such a chain of events in real life, will do far better
work than one who strives to carry in his head a body of rules and
precepts and to write with observance of them. Technique cannot be
discussed without directly stating principles, but the business of
actual writing is natural, not mechanical and artificial. The writer
becomes artificial precisely when he forgets he is writing a story and
begins to daub in descriptive matter without relation to the characters
or the events. The thing to do is to get inside the skin of the
character from whose viewpoint the particular story or particular part
of the story is told, to see with his eyes, hear with his ears, smell,
taste, and feel with his nerves, and to state no impression as received
by him that the course of events would not allow him to receive. A
horse-thief fleeing from a posse will have no eye for the beauties of a
landscape. If the writer desires to show the scene for the sake of its
contrast with such an event, he must do so lightly and quickly. A reader
will be mounted with the pursued man, and his eyes will be ahead.

As to the matter of contrast between event and setting, no rules can be
stated. All that can be said is that sometimes it is a useful device.
But the main purpose of descriptive matter in the normal story is to
give it concreteness, and generally the purpose will be realized best by
stating the sense-impressions which would be received in actuality by
the characters. A story will gain much in naturalness and plausibility
thereby, for the same reason that narration in the first person or from
the viewpoint of a single character is the most natural and plausible
way to write, if the particular story permits.

One other thing may be useful to note. In describing a person, the
writer should strive to state his unique quality as an indiv