iscussion of but one of the various forms that literature takes, and it
will be first in order to see what are the elements that go to the
making of a narrative having literary quality. A story may be true or
false, but we shall here be concerned primarily with fiction, and with
fiction of no great length. In writing of this sort the first essential
is that something shall happen; a story without a succession of
incidents of some kind is inconceivable. We may then settle upon
_incident_ as a first element. As a mere matter of possibility a story
may be written without any interest other than that of incident, but a
story dealing with men will not have much interest for thoughtful
readers unless it also includes some showing of _character_. Further, as
the lives of all men and women are more or less conditioned by their
surroundings and circumstance, any story will require more or less
_description_. Incidents are of but little moment, character showing may
have but slight interest, description is purposeless, unless the
happenings of the story develop in the characters _feelings_ toward
which we assume some attitude of sympathy or opposition. Including this
fourth element of the story, we shall then have _incident_,
_description_, _character_, _mood_, as the first elements of the
narrative form.

=2. A Succession of Incidents Required.=--A series of unconnected
happenings may be interesting merely from the unexpectedness--or the
hurry and movement of the events, but ordinarily a story gains greatly
in its appeal to the reader through having its separate incidents
developed in some sort of organic unity. The handling of incidents for a
definite effect gives what we call plot. A plot should work steadily
forward to the end or denouement, and should yet conceal that end in
order that interest may be maintained to the close. Evidently a writer
who from the first has in mind the outcome of his story will subordinate
the separate incidents to that main purpose and so in that controlling
motive give unity to the whole plot. Further, the interest in the plot
will be put on a higher plane, if in the transition from incident to
incident there is seen, not chance simply, but some relation of cause
and effect. When the unfolding of the plot is thus orderly in its
development, the reader feels his kindling interest going forward to the
outcome with a keener relish because of the quickening of thought, as
well as of emotion, in pieci