e need not emphasize nor even bring
out any phase of their spiritual natures not material to the story. That
is to say, the writer of a story, in order to give it the seeming of
life, should make every effort and employ all means to invest each
character with a definite physical presence or illusion of actuality,
but he should not try to displace the inner nature of each person in
like detail.

[N] It will be instructive to realize why direct statement of a
character's outstanding moral quality is less effective than skillful
description of his person, though both the statement and the description
are fundamentally descriptive writing. One may say that a moral
attribute cannot be described, can merely be stated, but that is a
statement of the condition rather than of the cause. The root of the
matter is that the appearance of a person is the resultant of a
combination of details; by stating the significant details in proper
relation the writer can force a reader to perceive for himself the
totality of the person's appearance. But a quality of soul is unified
and undetailed. It is ineffective to say that a person is cruel simply
for the same reason that it is ineffective to say that he is handsome.
It follows that any breaking up of a quality of soul into its elements,
if possible, will increase the effectiveness of the statement. Thus,
cruelty may result from essential virility of soul in combination with
insensitiveness, and so forth.

[O] To accomplish this subordinate and strictly unnecessary
characterization the writer must employ the same three means of speech,
direct statement, and action. But the action will constitute only a
secondary event or events in the story, and must not bulk too large at
the expense of the primary events.

CHAPTER XI

ATMOSPHERE

Definition--General Atmospheric Value of Fiction--Tone of
Story--Preparation of Reader for Climax--Examples--The
Story of Atmosphere--Short Story--Setting--Slight Dramatic
Value of Type.

Atmosphere--as the term is used by the writer of fiction--is a most
indefinite word; it may be well to preface discussion of what it stands
for by a definition. And in defining it is often conducive to clearness
to state what a thing is not before stating what it is.

In the first place, atmosphere is not setting, although the setting of a
story may aid in producing its atmosphere. The frozen wastes of a
sub-arctic region or the man-made squalor