Harry Stephen Keeler
You and I have tried to dig up fiction and get at the philosophy underneath it. There is reason, system, method, philosophy, back of everything. You have thought upon and analyzed phrases which I have stayed away from, because they were not strictly in my province. Your articles are splendid for that reason. I myself have thought, figured, analyzed, and delved into but one phase of the game: the phase of plot work, so far as it involved many threads--that complex form, "web work," which word, so far as I know, is my invention, being coined as more nearly expressive than any other that I could devise....
The eccentric writing manual The Mechanics and Kinematics of Web-Work Plot Construction was originally serialized in The Author and Journalist (April-November 1928). Later Keeler took leftover issues of the magazine and rebound those pages as a booklet. The Mechanics was republished along with numerous ancillary texts by Richard Polt of the Keeler Society, to whose sedulous scholarship Spineless Books is indebted in our efforts to make this text available online.
Intro: Mechanics, Kinematics, Constraint
The Mechanics and Kinematics of Web-Work Plot Structure by Harry Stephen Keeler, Full Text
Structural Synopsis of The Voice of the Seven Sparrows, Full Text
Summary: Mechanics and Kinematics Basics The Quivering of a Well-Made Plot or How To Write Like Harry
PDF Facsimile of original series (incomplete, obtained through interlibrary loan, included here to show the original context)
