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 scenery is magnificent, nor that the sun is shining its brightest, nor that every sentence your lovers utter is bubbling with sentiment. If you can't get this happiness into your love story, you have failed. Tear it up and write it all over.

Did you ever study Hope's “Dolly Dialogues”? If so, you have found that, although there is no direct information given or scenes described, you are in full possession of all the necessary facts, gleaned through the words and actions of the characters. Yet the stories start abruptly and go forward in a natural sequence of events.

It is the best practice in the world to write a story without the use of any method of presenting ideas except direct discourse.

There are times, of course, when a description of the setting of your story is absolutely necessary. Suppose you wished to say that a man who had been away for years from a girl he loved was approaching her house, a great stone structure high on a hill. You might follow the beginner's example, thus: