by inference from action in order to give the plot
an adequate, concrete, specific presentment.

(4) Having grasped the plot, the essence of the story, and all
its implications, and having realized the individual people who
alone can present it convincingly, scrutinize closely the events
of the story, as they first were conceived, to discover whether
their rearrangement or entire change may not result in a
combination presenting the plot more adequately and more
forcefully than the combination that first suggested the plot.

(5) Having blocked out the fiction thus, consider and determine
from whose viewpoint it may best be told.

CONSTRUCTIVE TECHNIQUE

(1) Arrange the significant events of the story in sequence with
a due but not forced regard to the necessities of climax, that
is, increasing tensity of the plot-struggle.

(2) Consider how best to link together the major happenings, and
endeavor to devise and manipulate the minor events so that they
may serve a double purpose, first, to lead from major event to
major event, second, to develop the characters; remember that a
story is a physical presentment of a spiritual thing, the
plot-struggle, and that personality should function in the small
as well as in the great events.

(3) Determine precisely the ending toward which to work, and let
it coincide with the termination of the plot-struggle.

(4) Apportion the length of the story among its several
happenings, those main events which give physical presentment to
the plot and so incidentally develop or exhibit character, and
those minor events which only develop character or merely aid
the physical progress of the story.

EXECUTIVE TECHNIQUE

(1) Determine the style or manner of writing for which the story
calls, and maintain it when once pitched upon.

(2) Write vividly only where emphasis is called for by the
event; do not be afraid to narrate in general terms where the
story does not call for detail; and think less of the word than
of the thing you visualize. Let the story flow before your eye
and sound in your ear as to an actual observer or listener;
transcribe only what he would see, hear, smell or think under
the influence of the particular circumstances.

(3) Avoid all artificialities, in description, in the speech of
characters, even in their