Wherever the pessimism comes from, almost invariably a little bit of it joins swiftness, realism, metaphysical curiosity, and one other element probably inherited from the novel; namely, a striking semblance of actuality. No matter how thrilling the events may be, they are usually convincing. Charles Reade had the trick of taking his facts from newspaper reports. Many of our present-day writers keep a scrap-book, and they very often build their most successful stories on actual events, making up the participants from what they imagine they must have been. The characters, then, in this kind of narrative are often more or less fictitious, being a combination of traits well-known to the author--traits of different individuals of the type displayed; while in the other kind of artistic short-story, it is the slight course of events that is made up, to fit the actual character and the actual place. [A scrap-book suggestion] Whatever else you do as a writer--even as an amateur one in school--it will surely repay you to keep a scrap-book. The very old adage that facts are stranger than fiction is indisputably true. When in your newspaper reading you run across a fine course of events that is character-revealing, or ought to be, just cut out the report and paste it in your book. Think upon the case leisurely and let the personages develop; then write up the events as simply and swiftly as you can consistent with the effect you mean to produce. Hawthorne's "Ambitious Guest" originated thus. [Other suggestions] If at present you have in mind no series of happenings, suppose you ask some acquaintance what is the strangest course of actual events he ever personally knew about. When he answers you, then question him on the actors concerned, remembering that this time you are going to write not a pure plot story but one that will express the conjunction of character and events. Keep in mind also your present limitations. You do not need to tell everything that might be told about your protagonists; you do not have to follow them from the baptismal font to the marriage altar and from the marriage altar to the grave. You may not know the facts about them connected therewith; you may know only a small portion of their lives; but ten to one you will know more incidents than it is necessary to mention. What you do tell, however, must be absolutely clear. The actual events may have been but a string of episodes in real life, but when you relate them they must appear like a full, round period. Look carefully after your connectives; on them hangs largely the success of your story. It goes without saying that you must have a climax, or highest point. Every sentence that you write before it, even the first, must lead toward it; every sentence that you write after it, even the last, must lead from it. You must ruthlessly suppress any phrase that does not add strength to your chosen scene. Be sure your story has totality. =The Necklace=