'A good rule for writers: do not explain over-much’
'A good rule for writers: do not explain over-much’ (Somerset Maugham: A Writer’s Notebook). Like most of what he had to say about the craft of writing, this was good advice, although he didn’t always follow it himself. Even in his best stories he was inclined to tell you quite a lot about his characters before showing them in action or letting us hear them speak. Breaking his own rule worked well for him, because one of the charms of his writing rests in the knowledgeable man-of-the-world tone. You always feel that he is giving you the low-down on human nature.
Still, leaving things out is usually a good idea. Hemingway insisted that you could leave anything out of a story so long as you knew what you were omitting, and that the story would be stronger as a result. Many of his are; his characters come across more vividly precisely because he catches them in a dramatic moment, and has chosen to tell you nothing about their pasts. Yet you feel he could have given you their biographies if he had cared to do so.
Kipling is the great omitter among English writers of short stories. We know that, in his mature years at least, the first draft of a story was usually much longer than the final one. He would write his story, then put it away, then go over it with a brush and a pot of Indian ink, expunging whatever seemed superfluous. He would often do this three or four times. Sometimes this makes the tale difficult to understand; it is not always clear just what is happening. That is the case with that puzzling tale ‘Mrs Bathurst’. Yet the effect would be less if we knew more about the characters, as we might well have done if Kipling had been content with his first draft.
I suppose that of all Henry James’s work nothing has been more widely appreciated than The Turn of the Screw. Its power lies in the author’s reticence or self- denial, his refusal to explain. The reader is left in doubt. Are these ghosts real, or are they figments of the governess’s over-active imagination? It is a story of the corruption of the innocent, a favourite Jamesian theme. But who is the corrupter? He doesn’t explain.
Maugham’s rule is even more applicable in the theatre than in the novel. There are many ways in which the novelist may choose to go about his work. He has scope, he can be leisurely in exposition. He can, if he chooses, share his characters’ problems and uncertainties with his readers, inviting them to ponder on perplexities and the appropriate course of action. Nobody, not even Stendhal, did this better than Trollope. But dramatists have to work differently. They can’t tell, must show and, as Maugham recommended, eschew explanation.
Chekhov’s plays puzzled audiences when first performed here. So much, it seemed, had been left out that they were all at sea. The characters presented themselves in the most natural way. They came into a room and talked, and what they said sometimes appeared to have no connection with the conversation which they had interrupted. The audience didn’t know if they were expected to laugh or cry. Were they watching a comedy or a tragedy? They couldn’t be sure. Nevertheless they responded. Everything and everyone might be strange. Bits seemed to be missing. Indeed something was missing: what conventional dramatists called the exposition. Instead, Chekhov plunged you straight into a situation and invited you to participate, feeling your way to understanding.
Leaving things out strengthens a play, story or novel. Hemingway insisted that you had to know what you had left out. This is doubtless good advice, but true only up to a point. We often write more than we know we have done. Speaking the other day to a young actor about to start rehearsing a short play of mine, I said, ‘If I’ve written it well enough, you will find things in it I didn’t know were there.’ Since he is both intelligent and talented, I hope he may do so. But that will be possible only if I have indeed written the part well enough. Avoiding explanation you leave much to be discovered, by actor, audience or reader. The more transparent the words seem to be, the more there is hidden. For the author, every work is a voyage of exploration. You hope it will be that for reader and audience too, and for the actors also in the case of a play.