Manual For Fiction Writers by Block, Lawrence (classic books to read .TXT) 📗

which are often little more than ideas in prose form. In the Writer's Digest contest, for example, I awarded a high prize to one entry just a few hundred words long because it was a legitimate surprise and a wholly original notion. It was also nicely developed, but there's no question that the idea was primarily responsible for the story's high placement.

Perhaps we can most effectively distinguish between idea and plot, and understand the subtle importance of the latter, by looking at a case in point. I only recently made the acquaintance in print of one William Trevor, a short-story writer of uncommon excellence whose work I recommend to you without reservation. Mr. Trevor, an Irish writer now living in Devon, not only writes involving and affecting stories but is also infintely variable in theme and subject matter. His stories do not run to type, and their only common denominator is their unflagging quality.

Having said as much, I'm going to ruin one of the best of his stories for you by telling you about it. The story in question is Last Wishes and it appears in Angels at the Ritz, a collection of a dozen of Mr. Trevor's stories currently available in paperback from Penguin.

And here's the plot:

Mrs. Abercrombie, an old woman, is both a recluse and a hypochondriac. She rarely leaves her bedroom, where she is attended by a flock of faithful servants who are devoted to her and who love their work. Her only contact outside her own household is with the doctor who makes regular visits to her bedside.

Suddenly and unexpectedly, Mrs. Abercrombie dies. The servants are threatened with the loss of their living situation, until one of their number realizes that they can go on indefinitely as long as no one knows of the woman's death. No one has seen her outside the house since her husband's death decades ago. They can bury her on the property and proceed as if she were still alive, living out their own remaining years in peace and harmony?if only they can get the doctor to countenance their deception.

That's the story's idea, its premise, and while there's a good measure of ingenuity to it, it is William Trevor's considerable ability which makes Last Wishes as good as it unquestionably is. Writing style and characterization play their role, but plotting craftsmanship is also abundantly evident.

The story begins with our introduction to life at Mrs. Abercrombie's house. We're given some background on the woman, then introduced to the servants in turn, with a paragraph or so about each to show us how ideal the Abercrombie household is for them all. Plunkett, the butler, is sleeping with Tindall, the housemaid. The two gardeners love their silent work, and the cook rejoices in having her meals appreciated after a lifetime of institutional cooking. We at once like these people and like the way they get on together. We want them to continue in this fashion forever.

Next we meet Mrs. Abercrombie, who has her breakfast, looks at her mail, recalls the circumstances of her husband's death, and quietly dies in her bed. It is a peaceful death, and we perceive it as no tragedy; for years Mrs. Abercrombie has been waiting to die that she might be reunited with her husband in heaven.

The servants are shaken by her death, especially when Plunkett reveals that Mrs. Abercrombie had been in the process of altering her will. The estate is to pass to an institution for the study of rare grasses, but Mrs. Abercrombie's solicitors just that morning had written to her about her projected change of will, by the terms of which her servants would have life tenancy on the property prior to its passing into the hands of the research institution. But the woman has died before the revised will could be prepared.

All of the servants begin to see what their lives will be like elsewhere, and the outlook for them is uniformly unpleasant. It is at this point that Plunkett conceives of burying the woman on her property and concealing her death, and he begins trying to sell this plan to the rest of the household. He starts with the rationalization that they would merely be carrying out her actual wishes and before long reaches the point of lying, telling the assembled company that Mrs. Abercrombie expressed the wish to be buried on her own land. He argues that the doctor can be gotten round, painting the picture of the doctor as an incompetent responsible for deaths in the past, virtually senile, and something of a toper. Gradually he begins to win them over, overcoming the objections of the cook, but having a hard time getting round Miss Bell, the second gardener. Eventually, with the doctor ringing the doorbell, Plunkett's rationalizations have become increasingly desperate, acrimony between him and Miss Bell has been unsheathed, and the man's excitement even leads him to a grammatical lapse, this last the first such failing which Tindall, his occasional bedmate, has known him to make.

Enter the doctor. Plunkett takes him to the bedroom, then reveals his plan?and it is at this point that we the readers realize his plan is absurd. We've accepted it wholeheartedly up to this point, but now we are hearing it as it were with the doctor's ears, and it's nonsense. Nor is the doctor the humbler Plunkett