Plots and Personalities; A New Method of Testing and Training the Creative Imagination

by Edwin Emery Slosson

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1922 edition. ...of details that have become unessential and hence an embarrassment to the reader. We unconsciously fill in all necessary details in a description as our eyes fill up the blank space covered by the blind spot in our retina. The bottom half of a line of type may be cut off but we read the line without difficulty. If a letter or even a word has been left out of a sentence we supply the omission mentally without observing it unless we are proof-readers--and sometimes they do too. A skilful artist may leave out a finger or two, even an eye, without causing us any annoyance. A Japanese artist with a few strokes of the brush will give us a picture--or rather incite our imaginations to paint one on the almost bare paper. So too the author may reduce his descriptions of scenery and personal appearance to a few brief hints, provided he selects the most important. Kipling is a master hand at this; so was Poe. "The Pit and the Pendulum" is one of the most vivid stories in the language, yet how little we are told of the environment and circumstances! A good test of your pictorial imagination is whether you can read a play with any enjoyment. Are the stage-directions sufficient to give you a picture of the scene and characters or do you have to see the play or have the setting described as a novelist does it? But because the author thinks best to cut down description to the lowest point, do not assume that he sees no more than he gives. No, be sure he has the complete picture before his mind's eye in more detail than you can see in it. So having the entire scene before him he can pick out just those particular points that will best serve to carry the impression of the whole over to the reader. If it is a room that he must convey he may know...

60 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2012

About the author

Edwin Emery Slosson (1865 – 1929) was an American magazine editor, author, journalist and chemist. He was the first head of Science Service, and a notable popularizer of science.