While, therefore, it might be easy to formulate a cut-and-dried method of
procedure, which should be calculated to produce the best results by the
most efficient means, no such formula would truly represent the present
writer's actual practice. If I ever attempted to map out my successive
steps beforehand, I never adhered to the forecast or reached the
anticipated goal. The characters develop unexpected traits, and these
traits become the parents of incidents that had not been contemplated. The
characters themselves, on the other hand, cannot be kept to any
preconceived characteristics; they are, in their turn, modified by the
exigencies of the plot.
In two or three cases I have tried to make portraits of real persons whom
I have known; but these persons have always been more lifeless than the
others, and most lifeless in precisely those features that most nearly
reproduced life. The best results in this direction are realized by those
characters that come to their birth simultaneously with the general scheme
of the proposed events; though I remember that one of the most lifelike of
my personages (Madge, in the novel "Garth") was not even thought of until
the story of which she is the heroine had been for some time under
consideration.
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