The Writing of the Short Story

The Writing of the Short Story is by Lewis Worthington Smith. A section headed Suggestions for Teachers says that in the author's classes the three stories in the volume entitled Three Hundred Dollars are first studied because of their simplicity. The same section says that students are required to mark stories with the symbols and discuss them with reference to the principles of which this little book is an exposition.

A section called The Character Interest says that we can hardly have any vital interest in a story apart from an interest in the characters. The text holds that evidently a writer who from the first has in mind the outcome of his story will subordinate the separate incidents to that main purpose and so in that controlling motive give unity to the whole plot. In its discussion of The Master of Ballantrae, the text says we come to take sides with Henry Durrie almost wholly through having found his rival, the Master.