-Story of Character--Character and
Action--Story of Incident--Archetypal Character--Short
Story and Fallacy of Compression--Story of Atmosphere--Other
Types.

The labors of the fiction writer are of two sorts, conceptive and
executive. In actual practice, of course, the writer may have only the
faintest glimmering of his story when he begins to write, and may
simultaneously conceive, elaborate, and express as he goes along; but
that is not the method of the conscious literary artist. An
understanding adaptation of means to ends is impossible unless the
writer has a definite purpose fixed in mind from the first moment of
execution. And in writing on technique it is necessary to assume the
natural order of the total artistic or creative process, whether the
actual practice of any writer coincides with it or not. Therefore the
body of conceptive technique first calls for treatment. Strict executive
technique and also the technique of construction--which is both
conceptive and executive--will be taken up after dealing with the matter
of story types and the matter of plot.

I need not state that there is no technique of conception, mastery of
which will yield the writer the golden secret of how to create or find a
good story. That depends strictly on personal ability, and not on any
objective knowledge of the mechanics of the art of fiction. But a
knowledge of the several fundamental types of story, and of the how and
why of the differences between them, cannot fail to aid the writer in
estimating and realizing the potentialities and deficiencies of a
particular idea. The writer who knows precisely where his story idea
will classify under analysis has a standard that will prove most useful
in the work of development. If it classifies as a story of atmosphere,
rather than of plot or of character, the writer will be led to
concentrate upon his proper task of creating the atmospheric illusion,
and will not dissipate his energies and spoil the effect of the finished
work by interpolating unnecessary touches of emphasis upon character or
incident.

Another preliminary word may not be out of place. A story is a story,
whether long or short; but the novel or lengthy romance is so much more
inclusive in matter and complicated in structure than the short
story--viewing the latter as a distinct literary type--that it is less
essential for the writer of fiction of book length to know with exact
definition the effect h