Author Mark Twain, while
best known for Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The
Adventures of Tom Sawyer, is also known for being a literary critic.
During a period of time in his life when he needed to help make ends
meet financially, he started writing reviews of other author's works for
newspapers. In 1865, he famously wrote a review titled Fenimore
Cooper's Literary Offenses. Twain maintained that there were
19 rules governing literary art in fiction and that Cooper had violated
18 of them. Let's take a look at the rules Mark Twain felt were
violated in Cooper's Deerslayer, and see how we can apply them
today.
-
A tale shall accomplish something and arrive
somewhere.
This goes back to our discussions on conflict. Without conflict
you don't have a story. A story must drive forward to resolve
the conflict or come to terms with it in some way.
-
The episodes in a tale shall be necessary parts
of the tale, and shall help to develop it. This means that
if a scene in your story is not essential and does not help tell the
story in some way, then it needs to be deleted from the story.
-
The personages in a tale shall be alive, except
in the case of corpses, and that always the reader shall be able to
tell the corpses from the others. This is one of my
favorites: don't make your characters stick figures - make them
as real and true to life as you can.
-
The personages in a tale, both dead and alive,
shall exhibit a sufficient excuse for being there. If there
is not a reason for a character to be in the story, then they don't
need to be there. Much like the scene of the story, if the
character is not essential and does not help to develop the story in
some way, then it should be eliminated.
-
When the personages of a tale deal in
conversation, the talk shall sound like human talk, and be talk such
as human beings would be likely to talk in the given circumstances,
and have a discoverable meaning, also a discoverable purpose, and a
show of relevancy, and remain in the neighborhood of the subject at
hand, and be interesting to the reader, and help out the tale, and
stop when the people cannot think of anything more to say.
The main point here is realistic dialogue. Do not
force your characters to say things that are uncharacteristic.
Keep the conversation to the point of the story and don't meander.
Remember, if your reader gets bored with the dialogue, they will stop
reading.
-
When the author describes the character of a
personage in the tale, the conduct and conversation of that personage
shall justify said description. If you describe a character
as being well-educated and slightly stiff with formality, then you can
not have the character picking booger's out of his nose during a
formal dinner and saying things like "I don't got none." However
you describe your character, their words and their actions must
support your description.
-
When a personage talks like an illustrated,
gilt-edged, tree-calf, hand-tooled, seven-dollar Friendship's Offering
in the beginning of a paragraph, he shall not talk like a negro
minstrel in the end of it. Be consistent with how
your characters talk. Dialogue is one of the ways to distinguish
your character, and it should be evident from the phrasing used as
well as the words which character is speaking. Unless the
character in question is trying to learn to speak in a different way,
such as improving their grammar, or deliberately trying to sound like
they belong on the street, then they shouldn't change they way in
which they speak throughout the course of the story.
-
Crass stupidities shall not be played upon the
reader as "the craft of the woodsman, the delicate art of the forest,"
by either the author or the people in the tale. Don't
allow your character to have more knowledge or ability than is humanly
possible. For example, it is not possible, even for the expert
woodsman, to be able to see a fly on the trunk of a tree at 300 yards.
-
The personages of a tale shall confine
themselves to possibilities and let miracles alone; or, if they
venture a miracle, the author must so plausibly set it forth as to
make it look possible and reasonable. Whatever
happens in your story, even if you are writing in the realm of
fantasy, must be realistic based on the rules of the environment.
For example, you may have invented a world where it is reasonable that
pigs can fly, pigs being the intelligent ruling class, but where
donkey's are earthbound creatures. A donkey can not suddenly
take flight because it happened upon some pixie dust.
-
The author shall make the reader feel a deep
interest in the personages of his tale and in their fate; and that he
shall make the reader love the good people in the tale and hate the
bad ones. Make your characters interesting. A
reader should feel emotion when bad things happen to the good people
as well a being upset when it appears that the bad people will
triumph. Make your characters become real for the reader.
-
The characters in a tale shall be so clearly
defined that the reader can tell beforehand what each will do in a
given emergency. Your characters should be so real to the
reader, that they can imagine how the character would act outside the
confines of the story.
In addition to these
large rules, there are some little ones. These require that the
author shall:
-
Say what he is proposing to say, not merely come
near it. Be clear about the story you are trying to
tell.
-
Use the right word, not its second cousin.
There is always the right word for what you are trying to say to give
the right flavor to the story. Find that word.
-
Eschew (to abstain
or keep away from; shun; avoid)
surplusage (an excess of words).
Don't use ten words, when one will do.
-
Not omit necessary details.
Don't leave out things that are necessary to the story.
-
Avoid slovenliness of form.
Keep your writing clean and tight.
-
Use good grammar.
-
Employ a simple and straightforward style
|
