Page:How to write a Short Story.djvu/29

 METHOD OF NARRATION

that you have your plot well in mind, you must decide how your story is to be told. You must not go about writing it in a haphazard, hit-and-miss fashion, just because you have an idea.

First of all, as I say, you must decide on the method of narration. And right here let me set down a few “don'ts.”

Don't write in the first person till the conceit of being a mainstay of a story is a thing of the past. If you persist in being one of the characters, just study yourself. You will find that in the story you are either a conceited ass or a person of impossible intelligence. Telling a story in the first person is open to serious objections. Either you must keep in the background and only guess at what is going on around you, or else you must