How Mr Wilkie Collins Writes His Books.

Evening Star, Issue 7420, 16 January 1888, Page 3

How Mr Wilkie Collins Writes His Books.

The ' Manchester Guardian' prints a letter written by Mr Wilkie Collins to a lady who had asked him to tell her how he writes his books. He says that all his novels are produced by the same literary method ; and he illustrates this method by a description of how he wrote ' The Woman in White':—" My first proceeding is to get my central idea—the pivot on which the story turns. The central idea of ' The Woman in White' is the idea of a conspiracy in private life, in which circumstances are so handled as to rob a woman of her identity bj confounding her with another woman, sufficiently like her in personal appearance to answer the wicked purpose. The destruction of her identity represents a first division of the story; the recovery of her identity marks a second division. My central idea also suggests some of my chief characters. A clever devil must conduct the conspiracy. Male devil ? or female devil ? The sort of wickedness wanted seems to be a man's wickedness. Perhaps a foreign man. Count Fosco faintly shows himself to me before I know his name. I let him wait, and begin to think about the two women. They must be both innocent, and both interesting. Lady Glyde dawns on me as one of the innocent victims. I try to discover the other—and fail. I try what a walk will do for me—and fail. I devote the cveniDg to a rew effort—and fail. Experience now tells me to tako no more trouble about it, and leave trint othfr woman to come of her own accord. The next morning, before I have been awake in my bed for more than ten minutes, my perverse brains set to work without consulting me. Poor Anne Catheriek comes into the room and says ' Try me.'" The writer has got his idea ; he has got three of his characters. What is there to do now ? The next proceeding is to begin building up the story. " Here my favorite three efforts must be encountered. First effort: To begin at the beginning. Second effort: To keep the story always advancing, without paving the smallest attention to the serial division in parts or to the book publication in volumes. Third effort : To decide on the end. All this is done as my father used to paint skies in his famous sea-pieces, at one heat. As yet f do not enter into details ; I merely set up my landmarks. In doing this the main situations of the story present themselves, and at the same time I see my characters in all sorts of new aspects. These discoveries lead me nearer and nearer to finding the right end. The end being decided on, I go back again to the beginning, and look at it with a new eye. and fail to be satisfied with it. I have yielded to the worst temptation that besets a novelist—the temptation to begin with a striking incident, without counting the cost in the shape of explanation Ihat must and will follow. These pests of fiction, to reader and writer alike, can only be eradicated in ono way. I have already mentioned the way—to begin at the beginning. In the case of 'The Woman in White ' I get back (as I vainly believe) to the true starting point of the story. lam now at liberty to set the new novel going, having, let me repeat, no more than an outline of story and characters before me, and leaving the details in each case to the spur of the moment." At the beginning of the second week a disheartening discovery reveals itsely. He has not found the right beginning of ' The Woman in White' yet. " The Rcene of my opening chapters is in Cumberland. Miss Fairlie (afterwards Lady Clyde); MrFarlie, with his irritablenerves and his art treasures; Miss Halcomlie (discovered suddenly, like Anne Catheriek), are all waiting the arrival of the young drawing master. Walter Hartright. No ; this won't do. The person to be first introduced is Anne Catheriek. She must be already a familar figure to the reader, when the reader accompanies me to Cumberland. This is what must be done, hut I don't see how to do it; no new idea comes to me. I and my manuscript have quarrelled, and don't speak to each other. One evening I happen to read of a lunatics who has escaped from an asylum—a paragraph of a few lines only, in a newspaper. Instantly the idea comes to me of Walter Hartright's midnight meeting with Anne Catheriek, escaped from the asylum. ' The Woman in White' begins again, and nobody will ever be half as much interested in it now as I am. From that moment I have done with my miseries. For the next six months the pen goes on ; it is work, hard work ; but the harder tl e better, for this excellent reason : the work is its own exceeding great reward." The last difficulty occurred after the story bad been finished and part of it set in proof for serial publication in ' All th« Year Round.' "Neither I nor any friend whom I consulted could find the right title. Literally at the eleventh hour I thought of' The Woman in White.' In various quarters this was declared to be a vile melodramatic title that would ruin the book. Among the very few friends who encouraged me the first and foremost was Charles Dickens. ' Are you too disappointed ?' I said to him. ' Nothing of the sort, Wilkie ! A better title there cannot be.'" His correspondent's question upon the subject of literary style, Mr Wilkie Collins answers as follows : "The day's writing having been finished, with such corrections of words and such rebalancing of sentences as occur to me at the time, is subjected to a first revision on the nexb day, and is then handed to my copyist. The copyist's manuscript undergoes a second and third revision, and is then sent to the printer. The proof passes through a fourth process of correction, and is sent back to have the new alterations embodied in a revise. When this reaches me it is looked over once more before it goes back to press. When the serial publication of the novel is reprinted in book-form the book proofs undergo a sixth revision. Then at last I have done with the hard labor of writing good English, and (I don't expect you to believe this) I am always sorry for it."