reproduction chiefly those acts
of the character which are significant as to the trait sought to be
brought out, otherwise the story will be without point and meaning.
Viewed superficially, a story is a mere string of events that happened
to happen, a thing easy to write without forethought and calculation.
But the truth is that a story is a chain of events at least influenced
and sometimes even determined by character. If the influence of
character in the fiction is predominant, it cannot be written justly
without careful weighing and selection of the incidents that suggest
themselves to the writer.

Having conceived a plot and devised characters to enact it, or having
conceived characters and devised a plot to develop them, the writer
should outline the main course of the story, mentally or on paper. He
then should realize definitely and precisely what traits of character
are primarily significant in the story, and should prepare to develop
them so as to reinforce the effect of his people's acts upon a reader by
characteristic dialogue and description and direct statement. The writer
should consider next whether a due regard for a reader's interest
requires that he invest his people with attributes not strictly
necessary to the main events of the story, and therefore not to be
revealed by each person's part in such events. Finally, the writer
should realize that he must give each person a definite physical
presence and illusion of actuality, and should prepare to do so by
visualizing them in imagination. If all this is done at all, it is
certain that the story will be a better piece of work than if the writer
set to work with only a vague prevision of the course of events as his
material. And if it is done justly, and the writer has adequate
executive powers, the story will be worth while, at least in relation to
character.

FOOTNOTES:

[M] A great deal of close argument might be developed here. A plot is a
chain of events influencing and influenced by character, and by
character is meant not persons but traits. In some story, let us say,
the avarice of one man brings him into conflict with another, also
impelled by avarice. The conflict, of course, is not between two
disembodied attributes, but between two persons, and the writer of such
a story must individualize them. He should endeavor to give a reader an
idea of how they look, by describing them, and of how they talk, by
individualizing their speech. But h