conceptions, and the artistry of any fiction lessens as the appeal of
the story for a reader diminishes. And the appeal of a story as such
must diminish with every interruption, unless its power over a reader be
very great, and in that case any break in its movement will irritate and
offend.

I have cited Stevenson's "The Ebb-Tide" a number of times already, and
the book may be instanced here. It is a tremendously powerful bit of
work, considering the nature of its matter, and its power over a reader
in large part results from its author's having confined himself strictly
to the story. The conception is significant, and the story as written is
significant because the conception is set forth whole and unmarred. The
reader's attention is not distracted by matter irrelevant to the story.
Its theme, the impossibility that a weak man should be other than weak,
however he may be circumstanced, is developed adequately, and nothing
else is developed. No book could be more wisely recommended to the
writer of fiction for study of the essential technical processes of
fiction. It shows adequate treatment of personality, adequate treatment
of events, and adequate treatment of setting, shows fictionally real
people doing fictionally real things in a fictionally real environment.
Above all, it is a story, nothing else, and is pointed to bring out its
value as a whole; that is it has the significant simplicity of a true
work of art. It is coherent as to the story it embodies, and in its
coherence lies its power. The bare conception is somewhat weak in that
it tends to arouse an intellectual rather than an emotional interest in
a reader; moreover, the conception is positively unpleasant and
depressing, in the conventional sense; but the book as written is a
powerful thing because it realizes to the full the inherent capacity of
its matter to interest and impress by telling the story adequately and
by bringing out nothing but the story.[S]

The novel, then, should be coherent as to the story it embodies, but
that is not the whole of its peculiar technique. The story itself may be
widely inclusive, may, in a way, involve a number of stories. The
novelist should not seek deliberately to combine the unrelated, but he
need not follow a single thread. He can turn aside into bypaths of
action that will bring out the natures of his people with more fullness
than the straight course of the story itself, and he can involve his
minor characters