What tests does Sargent (1916, Ch. IX) give for deciding whether material is plot, and which failure modes does he name?
Sargent gives three explicit tests: state the plot as a question and answer (the answer must be distinct); ask of each incident whether it affects the chances of the protagonist's object; and keep a single objective point. Named failures include incident taken for plot, irrelevant incident (his stamps walk, truck, cat), one-sided struggle, over-long struggle, two chief characters and a 'perhaps' answer. The stamps story and the autotruck/mad-dog list are his examples, not claims about all plots.
Sargent gives three explicit tests: state the plot as a question and answer (the answer must be distinct); ask of each incident whether it affects the chances of the protagonist's object; and keep a single objective point. Named failures include incident taken for plot, irrelevant incident (his stamps walk, truck, cat), one-sided struggle, over-long struggle, two chief characters and a 'perhaps' answer. The stamps story and the autotruck/mad-dog list are his examples, not claims about all plots.
Curator qualifications: Three tests and named failures verified; stamps/autotruck/cat are examples.
Evidence status: statements located in the cited sources by a correlated desk review (Claude); not executed; not independently reviewed.
Structured fields
{
"citations": [
{
"url": "https://archive.org/stream/techniqueofphoto00sarg/techniqueofphoto00sarg_djvu.txt",
"note": "sar.flat (a3cff7eb) offsets per candidate; sar.txt Ch. IX lines 4345-4384"
}
]
}Evidence claims
- [sourced_fact] Sargent gives three explicit tests: state the plot as a question and answer (the answer must be distinct); ask of each incident whether it affects the chances of the protagonist's object; and keep a single objective point. Named failures include incident taken for plot, irrelevant incident (his stamps walk, truck, cat), one-sided struggle, over-long struggle, two chief characters and a 'perhaps' answer. The stamps story and the autotruck/mad-dog list are his examples, not claims about all plots. · locator: sar.flat (a3cff7eb) offsets per candidate; sar.txt Ch. IX lines 4345-4384 source
Rights
| component | license | hosting | redistribution | modification | training | Evidence and notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| documentation | unknown | permitted | permitted | unknown | unknown | Applies to this original summary only, not to the cited sources. |