SUCCESS IN FICTION.

Lyttelton Times, Volume LXXII, Issue 8904, 21 September 1889, Page 2

SUCCESS IN FICTION.

What makes a successful novel ? Is ™ the plot or the characters? Is it became you write about things and people that you know ? Or is it merely because you have something to say ? In a recent number of the Forum Mrs Oliphant discusses the elements of success in fiction. She begins by admitting that she f'O' u n t in the least know what those elcmeuis are. « They do not belong, so far as I am aware, to any category of things that can be classified and calculated upon.” Yet there are certain things which must obviously influence the result. INEXPLICABLE SUCCESSES. One of the references in the following passage seems to point to “ The Chavelcy Novels,” of which a great deal was heard some dozen years ago: — This absence of any certainty in respect, not perhaps of literary excellence, which is a fine essence not always perceptible to the uncritical reader, but of power to touch the public mind, is the explanation, no doubt, of the many mistakes which have been made by publishers, who have sometimes been known to bandy about from hand to hand and reject, one after another, works, not only of real excellence, but which on their appearance eventually obtained actual fame. 1 have seen a respectable member of that profession gnash his teeth at the popularity of a book brought out by another publisher. “lb was offered to us, but we would have nothing to say to it,” he exclaimed, with a vexation thinly veiled under a grand air of contemptuous surprise; and it would not have been in flesh and blood not to derive a certain satisfaction from his discomfiture. I have seen, on the other hand, in one notable instance, both publisher and public momentarily taken in by a literary adventurer, who, by dint of much blowing of his own trumpet, managed to secure success for the first (as was intended) of a series of works, without a single claim either of power or pleasantness, literary merit, or worth of any kind. The second, it is true, died, so to speak, before it was born; but still, for once the triumph had been obtained. In one of the latest of extraordinary successes, that of “ Called Back,” the effect was almost wonderful, because it was not that of a literary charlatan. The book was in no respect a great one, calculated to turn the head of a country: but it was by no means without merit, and was, indeed, as good as many books which have a respectable mediocre success. Why it should have rushed into An issue of hundreds of thousands ; why everybody should have asked, “ Have you read ‘ Called Back P’ ” is a mystery to which I cannot attempt to give any explanation. It was, perhaps, just the turn of the tide. A FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLE. We have one rule which may be established as a fundamental principle. It is in “ Alton Locke,” 1 think, that the poet meditates a romance of the South Sea Islands, and is jperemtorily bidden by his friend and adviser to write of what he knows and not of that which he has no means of knowing. It is an exceedingly safe rule; but even this is not without its contradictions. Anthony Trollope who, though ha has been overshadowed by greater writers, is one of the most admirable chroniclers of English life that ever existed, made his reputation by his sketches of ecclesiastical circles and of the society of a cathedral town. I remember to have myself firmly believed for many years that he was the son of a clergyman brought up in Barchester, and had naturally acquired his knowledge in that ' way. But, as a matter of fact, Barchester was as completely evolved from his imagination as if it had been Fairyland, and he had no real acquaintance at all with clerical life. If I may oite my own small experience among such names, I might add that I myself got credit for much acquaintance with the ways of English Dissenters, of which I really knew nothing at all, save in a solitary gleam of reflection from another phase of society. ON HAVING SOMETHING TO BAT. I might add, I think with still greater force, that one very distinct element of success in fiction is having something to say. To write a story because it is supposed to be the most ready and easy way of making money by writing, is a determination which, by dint of genius and good luck, may be successfully carried ont. But it ie never a likely way of success. Other writers of fiction, however, do not agree with me on this subject. Mr James Payn offers literature (if not specially fiction) as a handy profession to any newcomer. Mr Walter Besant thinks that the art may be taught, and that a great deal is to be done by notebooks and special studies. 1 respect the opinion of these gentlemen, but I do not agree with them. In every communication between the literary person and the public, the chief necessity seems to me to be that the former should have something to say—not necessarily a moral lesson, nor anything of an instructive kind, but at least his story, something that has been in him before he had ever thought of making fame or money by it. No one who has the true mettle will ever begin by thinking of the recompense. He must “ sing his sang at least" out of a full heart, having something in him which, however dimly realised, however humble, stil wants utterance, and will not be gainsaid Sometimes a man, still more often a woman, will have but one thing to say; and when that is said—which perhaps may be dona most successfully under a kind of inspiration—will go on for years on the strength of it, repeating aud watering down the one real impulse, which is of course a sad and regrettable consequence. In such a case, the " single speech” is generally an outburst of feeling, not an impulse of imagination. NO FAITH IN THE NOTE-BOOK.

I have, for my own part, no faith in the note-book. If a young writer cannot divine what is likely to be said in a draw-ing-room after dinner, or in any other congregation of the personages whose very existence is due to his imagination, no number of actual conversations put down in a note-book will help him. and he had much better give up the art of fiction at once. His business is not to report what actual people have said, which is an odious sort of eaves-dropping, however unimportant the talk may be, but to give an ideal representation of what people in certain circumstances would be likely to say, leaving out the repetitions, the pointless remarks, the meaningless digressions with which most of us actually dilute our conversation. His course of study, so far as study can benefit him iu an art which is not to be taught, should be entirely of an ideal kind. He should work out within himself the problems of humanity as they lie around him, imagining with all the fervour and simplicity of sympathetic thought how a certain group of human creatures would conduct themselves in this or thair%mergenoy, how they would be likely to think and act and speak; what effect upon the mind a sudden adversity, a sudden prosperity, would have; how a man or woman wronged would stand in the face of fate, whether courageously or miserably, overcoming or being overcome. He would examine bowmen are affected by circumstances, and with what subtle strangeness their minds work, making new paths wherever the old are blocked up. No doubt he would naturally think it out in the first place from what he himself would do, but the study would soon branch out into other lines, and—half imagination, half knowledge—would, by means of thinking what other human creatures of hia own acquaintance would do, furnish him with the true, and I think the only legitimate, aid which individual circumstances or existing characters ought to be allowed to give.