Stories from our pages over the last 150 years.
An address on "Short Story Writing," by Bruce Hutchison, successful Victoria author and columnist, attracted an unusually large attendance to the October meeting of the Victoria and Islands branch of the Canadian Authors' Association, held at the Empress Hotel last evening.
"All the agents are looking for new writers and new stories. Don't be discouraged if your stories are rejected by one magazine. Keep on trying," was one of the comments he made in the course of a talk that was crowded with much sound, practical advice about the writing and marketing of short stories.
The modern story had to have much more excitement than was found in the classical examples of short stories. Quoting Arthur S. Hoffman, Mr. Hutchison emphasized the necessity of unity.
A short story should be about one person, one phase of his character, should sustain one mood, and stress one incident.
De Maupassant's The Piece of String was used as an example of a great short story.
An author should conceive a short story as a series of scenes joined together by the least possible words, and there should be as little interference as possible with the main theme of the story.
The opening scene of the story was the most important as in it should be brought forward most of the important facts: the setting, the theme, the main characters; each subsequent scene carrying on the development of character and plot. ...
The draft, after a lapse of some days, should be subjected to rigid inspection and revision, tested at all points on the basis of whether or not every part advanced the central theme and supplemented interest in the central character.
-- The Daily Colonist
