Page:The Craftsmanship of Writing.djvu/97

THE AUTHOR'S PURPOSE we will always begin with a clearly defined purpose, single, not complex; that this purpose shall receive consistent development from the first line of our work to the last; and that we shall strive for a nicely balanced relationship between our central purpose and the setting we have chosen for it.

It is well, however, to understand at the outset just what we mean by this term, The Author's Purpose. It is used in this chapter in a very broad and elastic sense. It is something far broader than a deliberate intention to teach a lesson or to preach a creed—although these of course are among the subdivisions of the author's purpose. Perhaps the most general, all-embracing definition that may be given is to call it simply the thing which the author has set his heart upon saying, the one main idea that he must get across to his audience, whether he succeeds in saying anything else or not. It comes [83]