Of course the biographer has the advantage of you in one important particular.  He knows how his story is coming out In a way, he’s betting on a certainty.  Now you, as I judge, don’t know how your story is coming out, and if it doesn’t come out, all you have to do is to say that is the way you meant it to be.  You cut off so many square feet of reality, and let it go at that.  Now that is very convenient for you, but from the reader’s point of view, it’s unsatisfactory.  It mixes him up, and he feels a grudge against you whenever he thinks how much better he might have spent his time than in following a plot that came to nothing.  You see you are running up against that same law of supply and demand.  There are so many failures in the world that the market is overstocked with them.  There is a demand for successes.

When I was in an old house which I took on the foreclosure of a mortgage the other day, I came upon a little old novel, of a hundred years ago.  It was the sentimental kind that you despise.  It was called “Alonzo and Melissa,” which was enough to condemn it in your eyes.  But the preface seemed to me to have some sense.

The author says:  “It is believed that this story contains no indecorous stimulants, nor is it filled with inexplicated incidents imperceptible to the understanding.  When anxieties have been excited by involved and doubtful events, they are afterwards elucidated by their consequences.  In this the writer believes that he has generally copied Nature.”

I have a feeling that those inexplicated incidents in your novel might have been elucidated by their consequences if you had chosen a person whose actions were of the kind to have some important consequences.  In tying up to an inconsequential person you lost that chance.

I don’t mean to discourage you, because I believe you have it in you to make a novel that would be as interesting as half the biographies that are written.  But you must learn a trick from the successful biographers, and not invest in second-rate realities.  The best is none too good.  You have to exercise judgment in your initial investment.

Now, if I were going to build a realistic novel, and had as much skill in detail as you have, and as much intellectual capital to invest, I would go right down to the business centre, so to speak, and invest in a really valuable piece of reality; and then I would develop it.  The first investment might seem pretty steep, but it would pay in the end.  If you could get a big man, enthusiastic over a big cause, in conflict with big forces, and bring in a lot of worth-while people to back him up, and then bring the whole thing to some big conclusion, you would have a novel that would be as real as the biographies I have been reading, and as interesting.  I think it would be worth trying.

Respectfully yours,

R.S.  LANDMANN.

P.S.  If you don’t feel that you can afford to make such a heavy investment as I have suggested, why don’t you put your material into a short story?