THE BUDDING NOVELIST.

Otago Witness, Issue 3961, 11 February 1930, Page 68

THE BUDDING NOVELIST.

When the would-be author sits down to begin his story he finds tiiat the first point he has to decide is how he is to tell it. He discovers that, roughly speaking, he has the choice of three ways. He can toil it in the first person or the third; or by a series of letters passing between the characters. It is a curious fact that of the three writers who have been named as the fathers of the English novel, each used a different method in his best-known work. Defoe, in “Robinson Crusoe,” wrote in the first person; Fielding, in “ Tom Jones,” used thq third; whilst Richardson, in “ Pamela,” told his story entirely by letters; which seems to prove that masterpieces can be written in either style, presuming that genius is not lacking.

Each method has its advantage and drawbacks. The use of the first person gives a personal note lacking in the others, but the writer is hampered by the fact that nothing can be related which does not come under his own purview, unless told him by someone or in some other way brought to his notice. Moreover, he writes as a rule after the events he describes, so he has to rely on his memory for the conversations which form a considerable part of the story. This to some extent destroys the illusion, as no one can remember texually a conversation which took place some time previously. The novelist who ’writes in the third person has a much freer hand. By an accepted convention the writer is

omniscient: he can recount conversations at which he could not possibly have been present; more than that, he is in the secret of his characters’ inmost thoughts. These advantages are so great that we find that most novelists choose this method.

The third method, telling a story by letters, presents peculiar difficulties and is not so often adopted. Conversations cannot be accurately reported; the development of the story is broken as each letter ends, and there is an atmosphere of artificiality which it is hard to ignore. Sir Walter Scott, in “Redgauntlet,” confessed that he felt this when he had written the first part of the book, and he abandoned his scheme of telling his tale by letters to return to his usual practice of writing in the third person.

The budding novelist must, however, be warned against any mixture of the two methods, though he may be able to quote the example of great names. In “ Vanity Fair,” for example, the omniscient author follows his characters into their private rooms and tells ns their most secret thoughts; then speaks of meeting some of his characters in the flesh, with fatal results to the conventional assumption that the author is an impersonal abstraction. Our English novelists not infrequently make similar mistakes: Conrad, in “Victory,” for instance; the French rarely. The author who still has his spurs to win

had better avoid a course which even the masters who indulge in it would find it hard to justify. —H. M. Pauli, in John o’ London's Weekly.