A writer need not confine himself to his own experiences for confession stories; he may obtain valuable material for them from others.  Not infrequently his name is attached to these articles accompanied by the statement that the confession was “transcribed,” “taken down,” or “recorded” by the writer.

Conditions of life in classes of society with which the reader is not familiar may be brought home to him through the medium of the confession story.  It may be made the means of arousing interest in questions about which the average reader cares little.  The average man or woman, for example, is probably little concerned with the problem of the poorly paid college professor, but hundreds of thousands doubtless read with interest the leading article in an issue of the Saturday Evening Post entitled, “The Pressure on the Professor.”  This was a confession story, which did not give the author’s own experiences but appeared as “Transcribed by Walter E. Weyl.”  This article was obviously written with the purpose, skillfully concealed, of calling attention to the hard lot of the underpaid professor.

Constructive criticism of existing conditions may be successfully embodied in the form of a confession article that describes the evils as they have been experienced by one individual.  If the article is to be entirely effective and just, the experience of the one person described must be fairly typical of that of others in the same situation.  In order to show that these experiences are characteristic, the writer may find it advantageous to introduce facts and figures tending to prove that his own case is not an isolated example.  In the confession article mentioned above, “The Pressure on the Professor,” the assistant professor who makes the confession, in order to demonstrate that his own case is typical, cites statistics collected by a colleague at Stanford University giving the financial status of 112 assistant professors in various American universities.

Confessions that show how faults and personal difficulties have been overcome prove helpful to readers laboring under similar troubles.  Here again, what is related should be typical rather than exceptional.

EXAMPLES OF THE CONFESSION STORY.  That an intimate account of the financial difficulties of a young couple as told by the wife, may not only make an interesting story but may serve as a warning to others, is shown in the confession story below.  Signed “F.B.,” and illustrated with a pen and ink sketch of the couple at work over their accounts, it was printed in Every Week, a popular illustrated periodical formerly published by the Crowell Publishing Company, New York.

    THE THINGS WE LEARNED TO DO WITHOUT