Explore "The Writing of Fiction" by Edith Wharton on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The predicament-the situation-must still be borne in mind if the novelist approaches his task in another way, and sees his tale as situation illustrating character instead of the reverse.
Even the novel of character and manners can never be without situation, that is, without some sort of climax caused by the contending forces engaged. The conflict, the shock of forces, is latent in every attempt to detach a fragment of human experience and transpose it in terms of art, that is, of completion.