Show HOW NOVELS ARE MADE the process ol of alow I 1 ideas idea are arc picked Up Situations As fir far as the authors know the process of composition is much the same always though a few indulge in eccentric hab habits its they pick up ideas as they go on and in his new letters we learn how mr thackeray selected notions for or Pen pendennis dennis from his bis daily life even while that worl work was coming coining out in monthly ri numbers timbers nor do any authors know killow exactly what they are going to say when they sit down to write all pens though the pen makers are arc unaware of 0 it have familiar spirits resident in them which whisper ideas to the author as lie ile goes on lie ile never dreamed of these ideas till lie he had the magical pen in his hand the pen murmurs them and lie accepts them and often like thackeray when lie made becky admire adinaro rawdon for tl beating lt 9 lord 1 lie ii onders at ii his is own 1 1 1 cleverness it is not his own it is given to him from without ho he feels and that is why lie can never explain how it is done or it if this theory or of the lutin of the pen bo be scouted we suppose that the brain gets heated excited borne above itself and so when the brain arain cools down t the I 1 e all author thor becomes a commonplace mortal mort t il and forgets how hour lie got at into fairy ind therefore they aliey never can explain how their works ire are written though perhaps they could often trace back if they cared the steps of the association of ideas apparently novelists sometimes begin with a set of characters and think over them till they begin to move and let act as the table moves if people sit round ij it with their fingers on it in that way perhaps vanity fair was invented chaek thackeray eray had a becky in iglus TAs T As mind awl and lie he composed emmy out of a collection of living models then their perhaps lie he set to work wondering how these ladies would act and react on each cadi others fortunes then their more queer characters old sir pitt old miss crawley the notorious lord and so on insisted on joining the dance but there is no puzzle to be explained no astonishing situation to be accounted for as in novels of the i typo type of Gabor iaus another mode of birth we may conjecture was that of bleak house dickens seems to have said to himself now let us have a fling at some national abuse and lie found that great palpable the court of chancery before him so the story had to set get forth the evils of chancery as displayed in the sorrows rows of a set of worthy ruined people then leigh laig h I 1 hunt came in tho the aut authors bors way and promptly mr harold Skim polo was devised and joined the dance and so on en probably cheap novela norel 4 of murder and mystery are written by devising a etian fc ge situation and working back from that to invent dayi ways in which it might have happened you introduce a gentleman who finds the he fire smoking dreadfully at breakfast ho he examines the chimney and finds in it the body head dow downward of a lovely girl of 18 how in the world did she get there you work back till you have invented a plausible theory of the whimsical circum E tance and that theory is your novel Gabo gaboriau often worked back as far as the ri revolution or the edict of nantes if not the crusades before bea ore lie he could get room to turn round in and no wonder for if you will introduce a duke shooting all the company in a suburban pot house his hia motives if honorable must be as remote as ilia intentions of the young lover in the story an any y novelist can tell us its things like this about liis his art just as theophile gautier told some one that aliat he wrote in red black and green inks to divert and cheer ids his labors labois when you reach the sixth slip you shall try the red ink he lie would say to himself and found it a great comfort as indeed it I 1 is but theophile did not get liis style from his colored inks nor shakespeare his hamlet from the history of Ha hamablet Hamb tablet lct 11 probably the common steadfast dai auywa a ce as milton says of the period s screamed that shakespeare was a thief and that any one could plagiarize the history of hamblet but the dunce never did so himself hirn elf nor did his friends and only learned people like dr furnival know even the names of these moral and virulent obscurities london news |