nforced by the writer's choice and
handling of people and events. But that is about all that can be said. A
specific story of atmosphere might be taken and examined in detail with
profit, if space were available; yet the devices employed by its writer
would not completely exhaust the resources of atmospheric writing, and
abstract statement of them here will not cover the whole technique.
Poe's technique in "The Fall of the House of Usher" is not identical
with Stevenson's in "The Merry Men," nor with Conrad's in "Almayer's
Folly."

Fortunately, the strict technique is not of great practical importance.
Any story will gain in power by possession of an atmospheric quality,
but that quality will be present if the basic conception is not trivial
and feeble, and if the story is told adequately as to its three elements
of setting, personality, and event. Any emotional value inherent in the
thing will then be felt by a reader, as he would feel the emotional
value of the spectacle, if real. Any story that is lived vicariously by
its writer in the person of the character from whose viewpoint it is
told, and is written justly as a course of events involving real people
in a definite environment, will have all the effect on a reader
attainable by the particular conception. And as to the strict story of
atmosphere, it will be hopeless for the writer of fiction to attempt it
until he can handle the less artificial and less difficult forms with
some approach to real facility and adequacy.

One specific point of the technique of writing the strict story of
atmosphere should be noted, for it is important. The emotional effect is
usually initiated and determined by the setting, natural or artificial,
as a tropical island or a house. Characters and events must be
subservient to the particular emotional value. It results that there can
be no real dramatic opposition of characters and traits in the strict
story of atmosphere, for the moral nature of an individual has no
affiliation with the emotional quality of a countryside or any other
setting. Development of strict traits of character, which are essential
to drama, will not serve to deepen for a reader the emotional suggestion
of a setting. The writer of the strict story of atmosphere must seek to
invest his people with such traits as will reinforce the emotional
suggestion of the setting, and these traits cannot be strictly of
character. Rather they will be attributes of appearance, a