Van Deming,
glancing across the sparkling glass and silver of the hotel terrace."
Any one of these will serve as instance of the break-neck beginning
which Kipling made obligatory. Once started, the narrative must move,
move, move furiously, each action and every speech pointing directly
toward the unknown climax. A pause is a confession of weakness. This
Poe taught for a special kind of story; and this a later generation,
with a servility which would have amazed that sturdy fighter,
requires of all narrative. Then the climax, which must neatly,
quickly, and definitely end the action for all time, either by a
solution you have been urged to hope for by the wily author in
every preceding paragraph, or in a way which is logically correct
but never, never suspected. O. Henry is responsible for the vogue
of the latter of these two alternatives,--and the strain of living
up to his inventiveness has been frightful. Finally comes a last
suspiration, usually in the advertising pages. Sometimes it is a
beautiful descriptive sentence charged with sentiment, sometimes a
smart epigram, according to the style of story, or the "line"
expected of the author.
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