Excerpt from The Art of Story-Writing The present volume is based on actual experience in teaching the art of story-writing to several thousand pupils, both in the classroom and by correspondence. The standards of the text and its methods of approach are doubtless modified by the editorial and the story-writing practice of the authors, but always the chief thing in their minds has been to guide the student in the most effective and direct way to actual fictional narration. For this reason, much insistence upon theory has been avoided - one of the author's works, "Writing the Short-Story," covers that ground quite fully. The practical method consists in four important steps: 1. The introduction of generally-approved examples of the various fictional forms gives both teacher and pupil a concrete basis for starting the study of each form, and furnishes a standard in the text for both criticism and wholesome imitation though - imitation must not be carried to the extreme. 2. The development of principles of structure is almost entirely inductive, and therefore appeals to the commonsense of the pupil instead of setting up a series of arbitrary rules. 3. The Questions and Exercises give opportunity for research, reading, and plenty of written and oral narration, besides being so framed as to stimulate original thought and invention. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.