arousing interest is the
criterion and determinant, and implies perfection of form and essential
worth of substance. The writer of fiction must never lose sight of the
fact, nor of the resulting necessity that all his work be interesting.
The fortunate thing is that fiction deals with so universal a thing as
life; it need not repel the ignorant and uneducated in order to attract
the abler mind.

The twin elements of fictional interest are the story and its people,
and here becomes apparent the essential weakness of the story of mere
incident. It cannot evoke interest as deep as that called forth by the
story having closer relation to character. The range of character
required by the story of incident is narrow; there are a thousand
pregnant human qualities which the story of incident cannot first
develop by action and then utilize to hold a reader's interest, but
which the writer of the more leisurely and inclusive tale of everyday
life can common can be truly vivified only by showing the person in
acts displaying his essential traits, and the less dependence the action
of a story has upon character, the less real to a reader will be the
persons involved. The story of complication of incident, of mere
structural ingenuity of plot, is superficially interesting, but it lacks
the deeper appeal of the story which develops its people adequately. At
any rate, it is true that a reader can love or hate characters, beside
being interested in them; he can only be interested in an event. The
people of a story are not to be neglected as sources of interest. They
are harder to display than mere events, but they are infinitely more
compelling. A bare series of events may interest, but the interest and
appeal of what happens will be doubled if the observer is a friend of
the persons affected, that is, if he knows them. The same is true in the
case of a story. Its reader stands in the position of observer of events
and people. The only trouble is that some stories have little action
significant in relation to character, and when that is the case the
writer loses one means to make his people real for a reader. The point
to remember in searching for an interesting story is that the people are
as influential an element as the events.

CHAPTER III

CONCEPTIVE TECHNIQUE: STORY TYPES

Conception and Execution--Utility to Know Types--Novel and
Romance--Short Story--The Three Types--Emphasis--Three
Elements of Any Story-