The Philosophy of Composition

“[E]very plot, worth the name, must be elaborated to its dénouement before anything be attempted with the pen. It is only with the dénouement constantly in view that we can give a plot its indispensable air of consequence, or causation, by making the incidents, and especially the tone at all points, tend to the development of the intention.”

Poe argues that writers must create a plot the way William Godwin allegedly did in his novel Caleb Wilson: they must begin by imagining the outcome of the narrative and then work their way backward. That way, the incidents that precede the outcome will be its direct causes.

“Of the innumerable effects, or impressions, of which the heart, the intellect, or (more generally) the soul is susceptible, what one shall I, on the present occasion, select?”

For Poe, authors must choose what effect they want to produce in their readers before they begin to write. Once they have selected this effect, they must decide on the elements needed to achieve it. This idea is directly connected to Poe’s argument that the starting point of a narrative is its end, whether it’s the outcome of the plot or the effect on the reader.

“It is my design to render it manifest that no one point in its composition is referable either to accident or intuition—that the work preceded, step-by-step, to its completion with the precision and rigid consequence of a mathematical problem.”

Poe is critical of the Romantic notion that a literary work is the result of intuition or inspiration and that writers produce their work irrationally. He argues that writing requires analysis and logic like the solution to a mathematical problem. He believes that a good writer thinks both inductively and deductively.