Hello. So we’re going back to Henry James’s notebooks. I should have said that this is the edition edited by Leon Edel and Lyle H. Powers called The Complete Notebooks of Henry James. We can see in these notebooks Henry James at work and the different stages that he goes through. After that first initial noting down of an idea the morning after a dinner party — for that, I gave the example of his initial note for The Turn of the Screw — there isn’t a developing note for The Turn of the Screw, so we’re going to have to look elsewhere for that. What he does, though, is to talk over with himself and with his good angel, who he calls mon bon or mon ange, the idea. He wants to examine the alternative ways in which its possibilities might be developed, or how it might condense into specificity. James asks whether the potential of the story will be better fulfilled, say, by having the characters be or do this or that, or having the story told from this or that point of view. He tries out possibilities on the page for himself. He talks to himself and his good angel, his muse. He sometimes discusses endings, but more often he’s trying to establish strong contrasts within the story. If she, the wife, is this kind of person, then he, the husband, to emphasise this, will need to be that kind of person. Those are the kind of discussions he has, and it’s fascinating to see him being so practical and calculating, you might say, about it. He’s also very often admitting puzzlement. So here’s one note: What is wanting is a full roundness for the action, the completeness of the drama quality. I see the action up to a certain point. But what can be the solution, the denouement? So he’s asking himself out loud, what’s a good ending for this story? And he doesn’t know. And sometimes, if he doesn’t know, he doesn’t write the story. The piece I’ve just read out from the notebook refers to a story James did write, which he called The Old Things and then it was published as a novella, The Spoils of Poynton. And this is how this note starts: There comes back to me the memory of a little idea I took up a year or two ago, to the extent of writing a few pages — pages which I have just rummaged out of my desk: the idea suggested to me by one Mrs Anstruther-Thompson, whom I sat next to at a Xmas dinner at Lady Lindsay’s. She told me an anecdote that I noted at the time, in another book (than this) and have just hunted up. So here we see James going back to an old notebook, revisiting it and trying to have some improved ideas about what he wrote down at the time. We’re going to turn to another note for the tone of discovery. Here he goes: I interrupt myself, because suddenly, in my imagination the clearing process takes place — the little click that often occurs when I begin to straighten things out pen in hand, really tackle them, sit down and look at them in the face. I catch hold of the slip of a tail of my action — I see my little drama. There are 4 persons — 2 men and 2 women — not 1 woman and 2 men. You can see he’s deciding on his cast. James is actually expanding who he’s going to put on the page, and this is making his story a real possibility that he can write. The revelation about her husband’s behaviour is made to the heroine by the 2d woman, not by the man who loves her. This is a calculated act on the 2d woman’s part — she being in love with the 2d man. And then he says: This sounds awfully crude, but it isn’t, as I see it all. It is a subject, and I can make it do for the English Illustrated. He’s already thinking of his market. I needn’t take time with expatiating on it here — but only begin it, in good faith — and it will go. So this is James in his next stage. After the initial note, he has the Subject. This is kind of Sketching Out, and then he moves on, if necessary, to what he called the Divine Scenario, which is more like a full plotting of the story. And I’m not going to read you out a full one of those. These scenarios, ones for novels, occasionally go on for 30 or 40 pages. I remember that when I picked up The Complete Notebooks of Henry James, it was from a remainder bookshop in Oxford, and there was a stack of them because clearly they hadn’t sold elsewhere. And I was shocked at how informal he was in talking to himself about his ideas. I thought there would have to be some sort of distance. I don’t know why. I was learning. I was 18, 19. But I thought that there would be almost a technical language, but just talking to yourself in your notes in whatever language that you’re comfortable with. “Oh, this is rubbish. I can’t be doing with this. I’m going to have to scrap the whole thing and go back to the beginning. But maybe if I have two characters as my main character instead of one, and they’re very different from each other, maybe that will solve my problems.” That kind of chat on the page — it can be a technical way of plotting better. It can be a way of you helping yourself turn an idea into a full-fledged story. Thank you for listening. Please like, share and subscribe, and I’ll see you soon. Thanks for reading A Writer's Diary! This post is public so feel free to share it. Get full access to A Writer's Diary at awritersdiary.substack.com/subscribe
