ARTHUR S. HOFFMAN. _Adventure._ THE RIDGEWAY COMPANY, Publishers, Spring and Macdougal Streets, New York City. THE AMERICAN MAGAZINE In buying a story for _The American Magazine_ I have four leading questions in mind: 1. Is it interesting? 2. Is it true? 3. Does it add to our store of knowledge of human nature? 4. Is there a lift to it? Not all four requirements are always met in the stories I take but they are the main guide-posts. Let me take these questions in their order and be more detailed and explicit concerning each one. If a story isn’t interesting, or has a very limited field of interest, no matter how well written it is, I cannot use it in _The American Magazine_. And the interest must not be sporadic, it must be cumulative in its effect. A story should grip the reader’s attention at the beginning and hold it steadily all the way through. Good progressive writing is far more effective than that which contains a number of thrills linked together by long, arid paragraphs. In asking myself--is it true?--I do not intend to convey the meaning that I am looking for stories of real happenings. As a matter of fact, I am of the opinion that fiction doesn’t dare be as wild and exciting as real life. As Byron wisely said, “Truth is always strange--stranger than fiction.” Consequently I look for stories that _ring_ true, the characters in which have their counterparts in everyday life or are so vividly created by the writer that they are accepted by the reader as natural, even if unusual, human beings. In the making of a plot I want sanity enthroned, the believable things of life depicted; not cock and bull fakes, which although they may create momentary excitement will cause the reader to lay the story down and say, “It’s all right, but it’s highly colored and far-fetched.” I would infinitely rather have less excitement, fewer dramatic pyrotechnics and have the reader slap his knee and exclaim, “Can you beat that for the real thing!” I want him to corroborate and testify to the convincingness and obvious truth of the story out of his own experiences and observations or through the instinctive acceptance of it by his imagination. I hope, however, from the foregoing words writers will not run away with the idea that so long as the characters are lifelike a story will get across. The ideal story for this magazine is one that has a convincing plot as well as convincing characters. But I would rather sacrifice plot to characterization any day of the week. If a story comes into the office slender of plot but brimful of human wisdom and accurate character work, I buy it. As a matter of fact, some of the most successful stories I have published have been of this type. I do not, however, buy a story that is strong on plot if the characters are overdrawn or unnatural and it has an atmosphere of unreality.