Copyright, 1923
By The Bobbs-Merrill Company
Printed in the United States of America
PRESS OF
BRAUNWORTH & CO.
BOOK MANUFACTURERS
BROOKLYN, N. Y.
This book is dedicated to the one hundred and sixteen
authors who wrote it and to every author who may profit
from their writing.
Authors Whose Replies to the Questionnaire Make Up
the Body of This Book:
Bill Adams
Samuel Hopkins Adams
Paul L. Anderson
William Ashley Anderson
H. C. Bailey
Edwin Balmer
Ralph Henry Barbour
Frederick Orin Bartlett
Nalbro Bartley
Konrad Bercovici
Ferdinand Berthoud
H. H. Birney, Jr.
Farnham Bishop
Algernon Blackwood
Max Bonter
Katharine Holland Brown
F. R. Buckley
Prosper Buranelli
Thompson Burtis
George M. A. Cain
Robert V. Carr
George L. Catton
Robert W. Chambers
Roy P. Churchill
Carl Clausen
Courtney Ryley Cooper
Arthur Crabb
Mary Stewart Cutting
Elmer Davis
William Harper Dean
Harris Dickson
Captain Dingle
Louis Dodge
Phyllis Duganne
J. Allan Dunn
Walter A. Dyer
Walter Prichard Eaton
Charles Victor Fischer
E. O. Foster
Arthur O. Friel
J. U. Giesy
George Gilbert
Kenneth Gilbert
Louise Closser Hale
Holworthy Hall
Richard Matthews Hallet
William H. Hamby
A. Judson Hanna
Joseph Mills Hanson
E. E. Harriman
Nevil G. Henshaw
Joseph Hergesheimer
Robert Hichens
R. de S. Horn
Clyde B. Hough
Emerson Hough
A. S. M. Hutchinson
Inez Haynes Irwin
Will Irwin
Charles Tenney Jackson
Frederick J. Jackson
Mary Johnston
John Joseph
Lloyd Kohler
Harold Lamb
Sinclair Lewis
Hapsburg Liebe
Romaine H. Lowdermilk
Eugene P. Lyle, Jr.
Rose Macaulay
Crittenden Marriott
Homer I. McEldowney
Ray McGillivray
Helen Topping Miller
Thomas Samson Miller
Anne Shannon Monroe
L. M. Montgomery
Frederick Moore
Talbot Mundy
Kathleen Norris
Anne O'Hagan
Grant Overton
Sir Gilbert Parker
Hugh Pendexter
Clay Perry
Michael J. Phillips
Walter B. Pitkin
E. S. Pladwell
Lucia Mead Priest
Eugene Manlove Rhodes
Frank C. Robertson
Ruth Sawyer
Chester L. Saxby
Barry Scobee
R. T. M. Scott
Robert Simpson
Arthur D. Howden Smith
Theodore Seixas Solomons
Raymond S. Spears
Norman Springer
Julian Street
T. S. Stribling
Booth Tarkington
W. C. Tuttle
Lucille Van Slyke
Atreus von Schrader
T. Von Ziekursch
Henry Kitchell Webster
G. A. Wells
William Wells
Ben Ames Williams
Honore Willsie
H. C. Witwer
William Almon Wolff
Edgar Young
FICTION WRITERS ON FICTION WRITING
[pg 1]
FICTION WRITERS
ON FICTION WRITING
HOW THIS BOOK CAME INTO BEING
Since this book is not only written for the most part by
others than myself and since, for a second reason, its coming
into being is the result of an accident, not of any inspiration
on my part, there is no reason why I should not
state frankly my opinion of its practical value and exceptional
interest.
The mere statement of that value is its own proof:—There
have been hosts of books, classes and correspondence
courses claiming to teach the writing of fiction, but in all
but a handful of cases these teachers have been eminently
unqualified for the work. The majority have no sound
right to speak at all, lacking sufficient accomplishment or
even experience of their own and showing in their attempt
the lack of ability as critic or teacher often evidenced by
those who are themselves unable to create. Of the remainder
a very few have proved any considerable ability as creators
of fiction and these, as a group, are inclined to proceed
on the dangerous principle that what is good for one
case, their own, is therefore good for all other cases. Another
few, with some editorial experience (though generally
almost none) and, therefore, at least some understanding
of the general field, are mostly barren of accomplishment
as creators and so unable to enter satisfactorily
into the inner problems of those who do create. Still another
few, while versed in the academic requirements of
[pg 2]
literature are unfamiliar with both the actual magazine
and book field and the actual work of creating. All of
them are sadly handicapped in their undertaking by an
obsession for reducing the art of writing to a performance
almost altogether governed by general formulas and ironclad
rules for universal application.
But here is a book written not by an author of negligible
standing, an editor who can not create, a college professor
speaking from the outside, or any other theorist whatsoever,
but by the successful writers themselves, each telling
in detail his own processes of creation. No one else in the
world can bring us so quickly to the real heart of the matter
or come so close to speaking the final word. While the
words of any one of them are of value, the contrasted and
collective cases of one hundred and sixteen of them are
beyond estimate of value. For either the beginner or the
established writer. Even for each of these one hundred and
sixteen themselves.
As to the accident that brought the book into being, my
own justification for venturing to act as collector and
summarizer, and the reason for choice of the particular
lines of investigation:
Having been a magazine editor for twenty years (Adventure,
Romance, Delineator, Smart Set, Transatlantic
Tales, Watson's, Chautauquan), I had become more and
more rebellious against present methods of teaching fiction
writing, for year by year their fruits poured across
my desk by the thousands—stories often technically correct
but machine-like, artificial, lacking in real individuality.
American fiction as a whole is characterized by this
result of the curse of formula and, until that curse is removed,
American fiction can never attain the place to
which native ability entitles it.
Many who attempt to write can never succeed. Some
succeed despite all obstacles. But in between are a great
number with varying degree of ability, many of them appearing
in books or magazines, some of them attaining a
[pg 3]
fair degree of real success, some of them failing of print,
but no one of them who could not do far better if he would
shake himself free from the influence of machine-like
methods and give opportunity to whatever of individuality
may lie within him. A long procession of possibilities unrealized,
regrettable because of the loss to American fiction,
pathetic if one looks behind the manuscripts at vain struggles
and hopes unfulfilled.
The only chance for remedy seemed a direct attack upon
the school of formula and rule itself, followed by whatever
could be done in a constructive way. A lone editor could
accomplish little by himself, but he could accomplish even
less than that if he didn't try. He was not the only editor
grumbling over the situation and among experienced
writers were many in agreement as to the evils of too much
formula; perhaps, once the challenge were definitely
made—
As equipment, besides editorial experience, I had been
"a contributor of fiction to our leading magazines" sufficiently
to appreciate creative problems from the other
side of the editorial desk, and at two universities and elsewhere
had absorbed sufficient of the academic for foundation
and background. There had been, too, sufficient rebellion
against general editorial precepts and precedents to
keep me from falling so deep into the editorial rut that I
couldn't at least see over the edges. Most of all, I was sick
and tired of seeing the formula-worshippers doing all they
could to increase the flood of fiction that, however perfect
by formula and however skilfully polished, is inevitably
and forever hack.
So I wrote a book in protest and in the hope that it
might to some degree serve those who were willing to turn
from formalism to individual expression if only they could
find some small guide-posts along the way. In Fundamentals
of Fiction Writing I tried to give them, instead of
rules, an understanding of the facts of human nature upon
which art and its rules must be based, so that they might
[pg 4]
see their own way and walk upon their own feet. To drive
home the point it was necessary to show them beyond
chance of doubt that rules applied without understanding
were unsafe guides. The simplest and most effective way
of proving this was to show them that the writers who had
actually succeeded did not blindly follow general rules but
chose among them each according to his own needs and
bent, and that what was one writer's meat was another
writer's poison.
So, to prove that rules must be subject to individuality,
I sent out a questionnaire to writers, planning to use the
answers as an appendix to Fundamentals. Some questions
were added to gather further data on facts of human
nature, and still others were suggested by writers (William
Ashley Anderson and L. Patrick Greene) with whom
I consulted, answers to these last questions being sought as
data of interest to writers in general.
The answerers, of course, had not seen my book, though
the body of it was already in the publisher's hands, and
in the questionnaire I took pains that there should be no
hint of any points I hoped to see established. While the
effort to keep the wording of the questions from tending
in any way against entirely uninfluenced answers made
some of them less definite and more banal than I should
have liked, there was more than compensation in the resulting
wealth of data that had not been even hoped for.
When the answers began coming in, it became at once
apparent that here was material far too valuable to be
tucked away in the appendix of any book. The questionnaire
had gone to only those writers who had contributed
to my own magazine, Adventure, some of them beginners,
some of them established writers appearing in all our magazines
and between book-covers. It was then sent to a
general list of authors and their answers were added to
those first received.
The result is a broadly representative list of authors almost
perfect for the purpose. It includes the tyro and
[pg 5]
the writer of life-long experience, those little known along
with our best and our most popular. There are those who
write avowedly for money returns alone; those who make
literary excellence their single goal. They come to authorship
by various roads from all walks in life, from England
as well as America. They run the whole gamut of difference
in schooling, method, aim, ability, experience and
success.
The value of their symposium to the beginner is beyond
easy calculation. If there is an experienced writer who
can not find profit as well as interest in these ideas and
methods of his fellow craftsmen, considered both individually
and collectively, I can not at the moment guess his
identity. If other editors can learn from it as much as I
have, they will find it difficult to name any other one
thing from which they have learned so much of value in so
short a time. If literary critics will bring to it a consideration
of fundamentals and of facts, that their general type
is none too prone to exercise, there will be a gain both to
them and to the standards of criticism and valuation they
so largely control. To readers of fiction it is the opening
up of a fascinating world hitherto seen only in detached
glimpses. And if the average writer of text-books or
teacher of class expounding the art of writing fiction will
let go of formulas and theories handed to him by others
and consider the actual laboratory facts of what he is trying
to teach, the gain to American fiction will be tremendous.
If my summaries and discussions of the answers group
by group leave much to be desired, I plead the difficulty
of exactness in dealing with matters of infinite variations
and subtle shadings, the impossibility of covering even
sketchily all the points that arise, the limitation imposed
on entirely free discussion of material furnished one
through courtesy and good will, and the fact that in any
case my comments are of extremely minor importance in
comparison with the answers themselves.
[pg 6]
The answers have in most cases been given in full. What
cutting was necessary in places has been done, I think, with
as little bias as is shown in the questions. Where specific
teachers, books, authors and so on were mentioned, there
have been some omissions, nearly always of those unfavorably
mentioned. If specific instances seem ill-chosen for
either cutting or exceptions, I can plead only good intent
and the best judgment I could summon. I have been editing
copy for more than twenty years and have found few
cases offering greater difficulties to consistency and intelligent
handling. The specific difficulty mentioned is,
naturally, far from being the only one.
My sincere thanks go to the authors whose kindness furnished
the material for this book. While some of them
were personal friends or acquaintances, there were others
upon whom I had no shadow of claim and who responded
only through an innate spirit of helpfulness—helpfulness
not just to the asker but to the host of aspiring writers who
they knew would profit from the information experienced
writers could give. My thanks, too, for the good will of
those authors who were prevented from answering by circumstances
beyond their control. I have dealt with writers
most of my life and, as in any other group of people, there
are disagreeable, trying, ridiculous and even criminal exceptions,
but as a whole I have found them very kindly,
human folk. Perhaps it is because the material of their
life-work is human nature, or because their natural bent is
such as to make them choose that life-work. It would, I
think, be a vastly kinder, gentler world if all who live in it
were equally ready with the helping and friendly hand.
[pg 7]
QUESTIONNAIRE
Answers to Which Constitute the Body of This Book
I. What is the genesis of a story with you—does it
grow from an incident, a character, a trait of character, a
situation, setting, a title, or what? That is, what do you
mean by an idea for a story?
II. Do you map it out in advance, or do you start with,
say, a character or situation, and let the story tell itself as
you write? Do you write it in pieces to be joined together,
or straightaway as a whole? Is the ending clearly in mind
when you begin? To what extent do you revise?
III. When you read a story to what extent does your
imagination reproduce the story-world of the author—do
you actually see in your imagination all the characters,
action and setting just as if you were looking at an actual
scene? Do you actually hear all sounds described, mentioned
and inferred, just as if they were real sounds? Do
you taste the flavors in a story, so really that your mouth
literally waters to a pleasant one? How real does your
imagination make the smells in a story you read? Does
your imagination reproduce the sense of touch—of rough
or smooth contact, hard or gentle impact or pressure, etc.?
Does your imagination make you feel actual physical pain
corresponding, though in a slighter degree, to pain presented
in a story? Of course you get an intelligent idea
from any such mention, but in which of the above cases
does your imagination produce the same results on your
senses as do the actual stimuli themselves?
If you can really "see things with your eyes shut," what
limitations? Are the pictures you see colored or more in
black and white? Are details distinct or blurred?
[pg 8]
If you studied geometry, did it give you more trouble
than other mathematics?
Is your response limited to the exact degree to which
the author describes and makes vivid, or will the mere concept
set you to reproducing just as vividly?
Do you have stock pictures for, say, a village church or
a cowboy, or does each case produce its individual vision?
Is there any difference in behavior of your imagination
when you are reading stories and when writing them?
Have you ever considered these matters as "tools of your
trade"? If so, to what extent and how do you use them?
IV. When you write do you center your mind on the
story itself or do you constantly have your readers in
mind? In revising?
V. Have you had a class-room or correspondence course
on writing fiction? Books on it? To what extent did this
help in the elementary stages? Beyond the elementary
stages?
VI. How much of your craft have you learned from
reading current authors? The classics?
VII. What is your general feeling on the value of
technique?
VIII. What is most interesting and important to you in
your writing—plot, structure, style, material, setting, character,
color, etc.?
IX. What are two or three of the most valuable suggestions
you could give to a beginner? To a practised writer?
X. What is the elemental hold of fiction on the human
mind?
XI. Do you prefer writing in the first person or the
third? Why?
XII. Do you lose ideas because your imagination travels
faster than your means of recording? Which affords
least check—pencil, typewriter or stenographer?
[pg 9]
QUESTION I
What is the genesis of a story with you—does
it grow from an incident, a character,
a trait of character, a situation, setting, a
title, or what? That is, what do you mean
by an idea for a story?
Answers
Bill Adams: Usually three words with a bit of a slideway
to them, thus, "There was once a ship"—or "The
sun of morning shone upon the water"—
I don't know how it grows, or whether it grows—it sort
of occurs, as it were.
Samuel Hopkins Adams: Genesis—usually from an
incident, sometimes from a single phrase which illuminates
a character; never from a title. In my entire experience I
have found so-called "true stories" available only once or
twice, and then in greatly modified form. Life is dramatic,
but it isn't fictional until interpreted and arranged
by the fictional mind.
Paul L. Anderson: The genesis of a story with me
may be any of the things you mention, or something else,
entirely different; a newspaper item, a picture, a story
some one else has told (I mean I get a suggestion from another
yarn, not that I take some one else's story and tell it
as my own). For example, the genesis of one prehistoric
animal story, was a picture in Henry Fairfield Osborn's
book, The Origin and Evolution of Life; of another, a
group in the American Museum of Natural History; of
one story, the fact that a man will do more and suffer
more for his loved ones than for himself. The genesis of
the best story, by far, that I ever wrote, which has been
consistently rejected by magazine after magazine because
[pg 10]
it is too gruesome, was this: lying in bed one morning,
on the borderland of waking, I dreamed I heard some one
say these words: "Far above us in the darkness I heard a
trap-door shut with a clang." The memory of those words
carried over into waking, and the story grew from that.
The genesis of another yarn was a trip I once made in my
flivver, which involved crossing a railroad track laid along
a side-hill. Etc., etc. "All's fish that comes to the net."
William Ashley Anderson: No definite principle can
be laid down as to the inspiration of a story. It may be
based on an actual occurrence; a striking tradition; a
strange custom. Or an argument may suggest a point to
be proved by a story. An extraordinary character, an unusual
scene, an atmosphere even (fog, storm, scorching
heat). I think one of the basic principles is the desire to
tell something unusual about things that are commonplace,
or to tell something commonplace about things that are
extraordinary.
H. C. Bailey: Nearly always in my mind a story begins
with a character or characters. This holds good
though the main interest of the story may be incident or
the surprise of its plot. Making the story is with me the
process of providing these people with things to do and say
which will express them. I never began with a title (they
are my plague), or a setting. Once or twice with a situation.
Occasionally with a sentence which came into my
mind from heaven knows where.
Edwin Balmer: The genesis of a story is decided, I
think, by the writer's age and experience. As a story is
usually the writer's reaction to that which at the time is
of most interest to him, it used to be that a story started
with me with a situation. I started writing when I was
eighteen when I was in college, and I then caught at a
situation which established suspense. That struck me as
the best start for a story. Gradually, situation became less
the whole thing and a definite increase in concern for the
characters came. I never started with a title, but sometimes
[pg 11]
with a setting, or rather, a setting creating a situation—such
as the Alps suggesting a mountain-climbing
story. Now though I never really start with a character,
the situation does not mean much to me until it has a character
in it.
Ralph Henry Barbour: An idea for a story is anything
upon which a story may be built, and story ideas
come from as many sources as do ideas of any other sort.
The inspiration that provides the idea may be generated
by an incident, a person, a situation, a locality, even, I
think, by a condition of mind, or by two or more of these
in combination. To me a title does not very often suggest
an idea for a story; it merely suggests the idea to write a
story; there's a difference! In my case the genesis of a
story is more frequently a situation. After that a character,
an incident, a locality, in the order given.
Frederick Orin Bartlett: A story may grow from any
of the sources you suggest—even from that mysterious "or
what?" Something serves as a spark to fire the dry kindling
of your imagination. The two essentials are that the
spark shall be hot enough and that you shall have kindling.
Nalbro Bartley: It, the genesis of a story, could
spring from any of the suggested things—an idea for a
story to my mind suggests a theme such as capital versus
labor, love versus money, etc.
Konrad Bercovici: I will be hanged if I know what
the genesis of a story is. I only know I do not sleep well
a few nights before I write one. And after a headache or
two a story comes. As a boy, it broke my heart never to
be able to see the actual breaking through of a plant. I
always found it broken through in the morning,—if you
get what I mean.
And then pictures begin to rise before me. Pictures of
things I have seen and others that I wanted to see. And
then the men and women in my stories walk through those
pictures and stay where they like and see what they want
and I stand by and watch them and agree most of the time
[pg 12]
with each one of them and sometimes say what I would
say under similar circumstances. But, like "Mr. Saber" of
If Winter Comes, I can see his point of view. When the
whole thing has come to an end in my mind, I sit down
and write.
Ferdinand Berthoud: I usually pick on an incident
from some actual happening to myself or to one of my old-time
friends. Then tack on other incidents of which I
have heard. Once or twice a story has come from a peculiar
expression or the manner or speaking of some man I
have known. Or some man's way of looking at life.
H. H. Birney, Jr.: Ideas. Some situation or idea possessing
possible dramatic value will come to me; I will lie
awake the best part of a night or two nights thinking it
over, and put it on paper the next day. Sometimes the
whole story seems to unfold itself instantaneously before
me; again I will work it out detail after detail mentally.
Some ideas for stories have come from remarks of friends,
from some anecdote, or an experience that was personal
and of which the dramatic value was unrecognized at the
time.
Farnham Bishop: The wedding of a newly-discovered
fact to something already in mind, followed by the swift
begetting, birth and growth of a story. Example: "Carranza
to Blockade Mazatlan. Mexican Navy to be sent
through Panama Canal, against Stronghold of Revolution"
(newspaper head-line, sometime in summer of 1920). That,
plus British naval officer's book (which I had recently
read) containing description of the Scooter or C. M. B.,
developed within ten minutes into fairly complete mental
outline of The Rest Cure.
Algernon Blackwood: The genesis of a story with me
is invariably—an emotion, caused in my particular case by
something in nature rather than in human nature: a scrap
of color in the sky, a flower, a sound of wind or water;
briefly, an emotion produced by beauty.
Max Bonter: Anything that stirs my emotions is likely
[pg 13]
to furnish the idea for a story. It may be an incident, a
character, a trait of character, a situation, a setting, a title.
It may be any one of them, a combination of several of
them, or all of them. An idea embodying all of them, of
course, would really be more than an idea; it would be
practically the story itself—either a true story in which I
had figured, or one that I had heard related—and would
require at my hands little else besides an amalgamation of
the attributes specified.
Pure fiction, in my case, seems to have its inception in
a contrast, or in a sudden break of continuity—something
irregular or freakish that draws a quick focus of the mental
faculties and demands of them why, how? My mind
immediately struggles to paint the significance of the contrast,
or to splice the broken threads of circumstance into a
tissue of normality. In other words, it is my mind's tendency
to give balance to unbalanced or opposing conditions
or things.
For example: In a quiet little community of soft-spoken,
well-civilized males I find an old barbarian—the boss
stevedore of a freight dock—who chews, swears, drinks,
and lives with a common-law wife. Their little household
is practically in a state of ostracism. My emotions are
aroused; my sympathies enlisted in an endeavor to place in
a better light this old pariah whose chief fault seems to be
the carelessness wherewith he persists in being human. I
bring the opposing standards together and after the clash
the stevedore's chief detractor—a prominent church-goer—is
found to be a sly old rake; whereas the dockman's
tough hide covers a heart that had kept him true even to
an unsanctified union.
That is what I would call an "idea" for a story. Around
it I would build plot, detail, incident, characterization, etc.
Katharine Holland Brown: Once in a long while a
story begins as a situation: as a tangle, a conflict, to be unwound,
fought out. But almost always the story arrives
as a whole—without any planning whatever, the story is
[pg 14]
suddenly there, a big blurry mass of pictures and incidents
and action, that must be splattered down in black and
white as fast as you can possibly write. It goes racing by
like a runaway movie film and the best you can do is to
snatch at the most significant moments, before they escape.
Therefore the idea for a story is not an idea; it is
the story itself. (With a serial, which must have a succession
of ascending climaxes, a rough outline is made and
followed, after the big scenes and the principal action are
jotted down.)
F. R. Buckley: The genesis of a story with me is likely
to be anything. Occasionally a character; more often a
title; more often still, a good basic situation, up to and
from which the story can lead; most frequently, an ending.
Story I liked best, Archangel in Steel, deduced from setting
and period: Florence, XVI century; connoted an age
of plotting and intrigue; since plots were villainous, hero
must be anti-plotter. History supplied the conspiracies;
the story consisted of the hero's counter-actions.
Prosper Buranelli: My first idea is always an incident
or a situation, sometimes several to be combined. Or
a generic situation in some phase of life—such as an opera
singer's being at the mercy of the orchestra conductor.
Thompson Burtis: I have had stories come to me as a
result of all the things mentioned in your question, except
a title. And I'm about to try to construct a story around
a title. The most usual starting-points for stories with me
are either incidents or characters. In a large percentage
of cases I start with an incident and then work my main
character into it with regard to his particular traits.
George M. A. Cain: A story almost always takes its
genesis with me from a situation, sometimes suggested by
an incident, character, trait, setting, title, anything. Unless
any other feature can shape itself readily into a situation
for me, there is no story. But the situation may not
mean the beginning of the story as told. I may write the
whole story to get that situation.
[pg 15]
Robert V. Carr: The question involves, at least to my
understanding, chemistry, heredity, environment, psychological
wounds, tricks of memory, and a thousand and one
mysteries. No doubt there will be writers who will cleverly
announce that they know exactly where they secure
their ideas, but it is beyond me. The writers of motion-picture
scenarios should be able to tell you in a few
words where they get their ideas. For my part I do not
know the true genesis of any idea.
George L. Catton: A story with me may grow from,
to begin with, the merest trifle. Sometimes I start with a
character only; other times perhaps it is a title, or a peculiar
characteristic of a character, a situation or a setting.
But the big start for me, the start I always try to get, is a
theme. It's a poor story I'll write if I can't put down the
title before I write a word. I never wrote a story yet that
didn't have a theme, and I never will. A story without a
theme is a story without a soul, and is just about as much
use as a man in the same predicament. An idea for a story
with me, then, is a theme.
Robert W. Chambers: From an incident.
Roy P. Churchill: Most of my story ideas come from
what I call a "condition" for want of better expression.
That is, affairs of life in a certain setting, with certain characters,
assume a "condition" which makes for the unusual.
Carl Clausen: An idea for a story always means to me
an incident.
Courtney Ryley Cooper: A story always starts with
me at the finish—I write the rest of my story to a climax.
In other words, I get the big punch of a story, and build
up the rest of the structure to fit it. In a mystery story, I
always get the explanation of a thing, then fit my incidents
to this.
Arthur Crabb: It seems to me that a story may grow
from an incident or a character, or even a trait of character
or situation, which it seems to me are other ways of
saying the first two.
[pg 16]
Mary Stewart Cutting: The genesis of a story with
me usually grows from some small incident or the reverse
of the incident. But in an autobiographical story the
character is the main theme.
Elmer Davis: The genesis of a story, with me, is a
situation—invariably the same. I see financial obligations
falling due. My salary is fixed; my credit distended to
the bursting point. No way to meet the bills but by writing
fiction.... Whereupon I grab anything that looks as if
it might start a story; usually a character in a situation.
William Harper Dean: The genesis of a story with me
sometimes is a single word, the title, which strikes the motif
of the story; sometimes a character, sometimes a situation,
or a setting. But most frequently the beginning is the climax,
from which I work backward through the middle and
to the beginning.
Harris Dickson: Any of these, or a combination. More
usually, perhaps, it is a story, or an incident that I hear or
see. For instance, The Trapping of Judge Pinkham,
in The Saturday Evening Post, is approximately true, and
happened not long ago at the very place described. Real
incidents, however, generally begin "up in the air" and
end the same way. Better beginnings and climaxes must
be worked out.
It is quite rare with me that I deliberately devise a story
out of the whole cloth.
I live in the South. It is a country that has attracted
the attention of much enthusiastic ignorance on the part of
philanthropists, and many attacks. Sometimes I do a
story for the purpose of showing some particular phase of
life that is not understood at the North, and try to make it
so convincing as to silence these long-distance reformers
who haven't an idea as to how we live, and why. For this
purpose I believe temperately-stated truth, rubbed in with
humor, is the most effective vehicle.
Captain Dingle: In general my story comes from a
vision of a character and a situation. Sometimes only the
[pg 17]
situation. Then I make a character to fit it—usually out
of material I know.
Louis Dodge: With me, the genesis of a story is usually
a character, perhaps coupled with a characteristic
action. I like to imagine what the logical destiny of that
character would be. And so I try to work it out.
Phyllis Duganne: Ideas for short stories usually come
to me through something I actually see or hear about;
sometimes a person is interesting or romantic enough so
that I begin to make up things that might happen to him—and
discover I have a plot on my hands. Or sometimes a
situation is a good beginning or ending for a story, and I
try to evolve the rest. Sometimes I do and sometimes I
don't—I suppose every one has loads of fascinating situations
that he can not quite whip about into story form.
Sometimes it is just a romantic spot—a house that should
have a story about it. And once in a great while I just discover
myself with a perfectly formed story on my hands,
not there one minute and utterly there the next. That's
real magic—and doesn't happen so often as I wish it did.
J. Allan Dunn: It varies. I am, of course, deliberately
setting aside such stories as are suggested by the
needs of editors, expressed by themselves. But I think the
genesis of many stories is hard to trace. They are evolved
in the brain cortex by that comprehensive and all too liberal
phrase "subconsciousness." I mean by that process
that every writer is perforce somewhat of a dramatist,
somewhat of an artist, and that his mind, inclined and,
later, trained to observe, does this continually until an idea
is born. Not necessarily, not probably is this idea complete.
Occasionally a short story that works out delightfully
is thus conceived and will project itself into the conscious
mind upon the proper stimulus—perhaps after a
walk or during it, perhaps while hearing music.
Sometimes I read a story that a man has written down
as news, the skeleton of a yarn that needs flesh about it, a
heart and soul added.
[pg 18]
Very often I endeavor to work out some particular trait
or character, with its weakness and strength. Sometimes a
character I know suggests the story. But I believe the
genesis is born very much as is the theme of a musician,
the desire of an artist to portray a certain mood or key, the
inspiration of a poet.
I believe that the story-teller's profession is one of the
most ancient. I believe it may well have antedated the
artist—as animated in the cave-carver or the painter of
skins. That it may have prefaced the musician in the
drum-beater or the blower of a conch. I think there was
always a tale-teller about the fires of the wildest, earliest
tribes, one who stimulated their imaginations, touched their
pride, bolstered their bravery. There are such to-day in
almost every wild tribe that I have met. And, as the modern
musician, the modern artist, have evoluted from their
primitive forebears, so I think that the spark, the flicker of
story-telling, has come down in the cell together with the
ear for music, the eye for color and proportion. Add to
that your technique—use of action, color, suspense, opposing
forces, laughter, tears, tragedy and the results of experience
and observation—and your story appears.
I do not mean to say we are all genuises but that the
story-teller, as the poet, is made, that the impulse is engendered
with his ego.
Walter A. Dyer: Formerly I used to try to manufacture
a plot as the starting point for a story, but always
found it very difficult, my mind usually being ready to
stop with a situation. Sometimes such a situation would
make a story, sometimes it wouldn't. I have found it comparatively
easy to get color into the settings and to do the
thing up in some sort of style, but my mind isn't inventive
in the field of complete and more or less intricate plots.
Of late I have had better success in beginning with character.
And I have heard that others have reached the same
conclusion. First visualize a real person or persons, with
distinctive and out-of-the-ordinary characteristics (consistent
[pg 19]
and plausible, of course), and get them to function
like human beings. Then throw them into the situations
and settings that come easiest and see what will happen.
Sometimes a real story grows out of it, and when it does it
is likely to be a better story than one in which lay figures
are fitted into a ready-made plot. This, however, does not
apply to the requirements of all editors.
Walter Prichard Eaton: A story comes in a dozen
different ways. Sometimes a title waits two years or more
for a plot to plot it. Sometimes a character comes and
grows. Sometimes a situation. I find I am most successful
when it is a character, however, which comes first, and
dictates the rest. The hardest unit is to start with a general
thesis (problem) and then get a plot and people to
seem natural.
Charles Victor Fischer: I am writing a story that has
to do with Little Rock, Arkansas. Sitting at the eats this
evening (two hours ago), I had Little Rock buzzing round
in my up-stairs. My sister spoke of an old black mule she'd
seen during the afternoon; how sorry she was for the poor
animal—skin and bone were the only things he didn't have
anything "else but." On top of that my father pipes up
about a diamond ring theft.
See the point? I'm thinking about Little Rock. (I was
there about two years ago, shortly after I came out of the
Navy.) And whenever I think of Little Rock I think of
coons. The mule—the diamond ring. And all of a sudden
I had a story.
E. O. Foster: The genesis of a story with me generally
grows from an incident which I have observed, around
which I weave a plot taking the characters from people
whom I have known.
Arthur O. Friel: It differs. It may be any one of
these things. Sometimes hits me suddenly, like an electric
spark forming contact, and the wheels begin to buzz. If I
keep them buzzing, I have a story.
J. U. Giesy: Genesis with me is generally either from
[pg 20]
an incident heard or read, or from a title which suggests a
parallel or divergent train of thought.
George Gilbert: All depends upon the story; some grow
out of single incidents or characters; some out of several.
Kenneth Gilbert: My stories seem to spring from three
sources: (1) A strange and interesting fact or incident that
apparently has never been touched upon. One story had
its genesis in a piece of newspaper miscellany, which stated
that Marconi was experimenting with wireless apparatus
that would keep out eavesdroppers. That was new, so far
as fiction was concerned. Using it as the basis of a plot, I
wove around it color from my own store of wireless knowledge,
decided on the title, and proceeded to transcribe it.
(2) An interesting character. One of my animal stories
illustrates this point. It was about a raccoon, which I
selected because he is a highly interesting animal; very
intelligent, and with traits that approach the human at
times. Moreover, he had not been "written out," as would
seem to be the case of the dog. I had written stories about
nearly all of the menagerie except procyon lotors; therefore,
why not a 'coon story? The setting I supplied from
life; the incident from study and experience, and the "atmosphere"—a
vital component of an animal story—took
care of itself. (3) A title. A snappy title always suggests
a story, and while I have utilized this method several
times, I prefer a plot germ in other form.
Holworthy Hall: To date I have written perhaps two
hundred short stories. The basic ideas arrived approximately
as follows: From titles, not over ten—notably The
Six Best Cellars, Henry of Navarre, Ohio, You Get What
You Want, etc. From a situation, at least one hundred and
fifty. From characters or traits of character, the balance.
Incidentally I have never yet written a story in which the
basic idea was not fundamentally serious and a part of my
personal philosophy; nor would I have any interest in
writing a story in which the basic idea did not seem to see
or partake of a certain universality of thought or conduct.
[pg 21]
R. M. Hallet: As to (I) I think the characters and the
action reciprocally contribute to the growth of the story.
Hardly anything but action will really illustrate character,
it seems to me. The further you develop the characters,
the better glimpses you get of the plot; and if you
have an idea for a plot, that will usually thicken character
for you. As to which comes first, it's probably the old
problem of the hen and the egg. Either might, logically.
William H. Hamby: There is no rule with me. Sometimes
I start a story with a character, and, all things considered,
that makes the best story. Sometimes the plot
comes first; again a situation or an incident will start the
mind to weaving a story. The series of stories, The Adventures
of a Misfit, which one of my friends assures me
were the worst stories I ever wrote, was suggested merely
by a name. Red Foam, which other of my friends claim is
the best story I have written so far, was written from a
motif—I had a strong feeling that I wanted to visualize
that frothy shallowness of judgment which is so easily mislead
by a little palaver.
Joseph Mills Hanson: The genesis with me is usually
an incident, situation or setting. I always have in mind a
lot of provocative events in the history of the Northwest or
elsewhere, and hang my stories on to them. I try to make
my characters appropriate to the time, the place, the atmosphere,
the special problem that has to be solved.
E. E. Harriman: I usually think of an incident, a
situation, and roll it over like a snowball until it accumulates
enough to make it a story.
Nevil G. Henshaw: I've no fixed rule, although, in a
long piece of work, I try to present a certain section with
its corresponding inhabitants and industries. With short
stories I either work from a single plot idea, or propound
a certain phase of human character and set out to prove it
by means of the story—(as in Madame Justice I endeavored
to give certain conditions under which a mother
would kill her well-beloved son).
[pg 22]
Joseph Hergesheimer: It grows from the emotion
caused by a place or an individual.
Robert Hichens: Usually some big situation arising
from the clash of two characters.
R. de S. Horn: The genesis of a story with me is generally
an incident, a situation, or a character or trait of
character, with the incident predominant. I have some
settings tucked away in my note-book, but I expect they
will be used only when I've got a situation, character or
incident idea to go with them. The title is the last thing I
write usually, and it generally comes hardest. However
sometimes I stumble on it in the middle of the story.
Every idea that suggests a story possibility I immediately
enter in my note-book.
Clyde B. Hough: My story ideas generally grow out
of a phrase or a sentence and this phrase or sentence most
often takes its place in the story, either as the core, the
hinging base or the climax. This sort of plot germ is generated
in various ways. Sometimes by a scene, sometimes
by a spoken word and sometimes by a man's action.
Emerson Hough: Some big motive or period. Not a
Peeping Tom incident.
A. S. M. Hutchinson: Character entirely.
Inez Haynes Irwin: It is very difficult for me to tell
you what I mean by the idea for a story. There is so much
to say that I would like to answer this question in a book.
That idea may come from anywhere or grow from anything.
It may be as you suggest "an incident, a character,
a trait of character, a situation, a setting, a title." It may
come through a conversation, by analogy, out of the very
air itself. In my experience a single scene has suddenly
amplified to a whole story, a whole novel has suddenly
diminished to a story. Parts of stories, quite disconnected,
have suddenly sprung together and made one complete
story. I have had the experience of having two or three
stories develop in successive instants from a single germ;
sometimes I have waited years before writing because I
[pg 23]
could not decide which one of them was the best. Mere
ideas that I have carried in my mind for years have suddenly
developed into stories. Mere phrases and titles have
spawned stories. Interiors, empty houses, geographical
situations have exploded stories. Stories, full grown, have
sprung without any warning into my consciousness; and
apparently with no spiritual or psychological raison d'etre.
I have even had stories, all complete, hurtle out at me
from life itself. Reading the stories of other authors sometimes
brings stories into my mind; their first paragraphs
are occasionally exceedingly stimulating. Certain ideas
have always been highly stimulating to me—uninhabited
islands, ghosts, fourth dimension, murder, they have engendered
numberless stories. In brief stories come in every
way and through every medium. Everything on earth,
under the earth and above the earth is fish to the creative
artist's net.
I would like to illustrate every one of the above statements
but it would make the answer to your first question
interminable.
Will Irwin: The genesis of a story is with me usually
a situation. To give an example from a piece of fiction
which I have recently finished, a friend with much
experience of the underworld mentioned in conversation a
case where a convict just released struck his girl who was
waiting for him at the door of the prison. Speculation on
what circumstances might lead to such an act gave me my
story. Sometimes, however, the story grows from contemplation
of an interesting character and speculation as to
what he would do if placed in unusual or dramatic circumstances.
Charles Tenney Jackson: The genesis of a story with
me is more likely to spring from a single incident, a situation—perhaps
even a phrase—one might say, a mental
gleam that seems unique—and then appears to gather to
itself the characters which lead on to a plot that slowly
evolves. But always the urge of it is the first suggestion.
[pg 24]
Frederick J. Jackson: With me stories grow from incidents,
characters, situations, settings and titles.
Give me a good title: I don't ask more. For example,
six years ago, in New York, one popped into my mind from
a clear sky. Down she went in my note-book. Last spring
I felt the urge to work. Not an idea in the world. Out
came the old note-book. I thought about it for a day, then
batted out the story that the title suggested. The title and
nothing more to start things moving.
For one story—the skipper who could always cross
Humboldt Bar when other master mariners were helplessly
bar-bound.
Give me a good parody or take-off on a well-known
phrase or quotation and I seem to ask nothing more.
The first story of one series evolved from the character I
conceived. The genesis of one story was a vivid picture
that occurred to me of an outlaw coming over a hill to the
cemetery outside a western town and finding four fresh
graves. Three of them were occupied, the fourth empty,
significantly so, since the other three were filled by the
outlaw's pals on their last raid. A pleasing picture, and I
made it more so by placing three sticks of wood at the
heads of the filled graves, pieces split from a wooden box.
The sticks were upright in the fresh earth. The top of
each stick had a slit in it, and into each slit was placed
an epitaph. The three epitaphs were the knaves of hearts,
diamonds and clubs. In town the outlaw learns that the
sheriff is carrying the knave of spades and an earnest intention
to place it at the head of the fourth grave. This
much just came to me. The rest of the story is a matter of
mechanics.
Setting? The origin of the idea for one tale was a
matter of setting, the kelp-beds along the coast south of
Cape Mendocino. Small vessels—fishing-boats—sometimes
put into the kelp for shelter from high seas and gales. The
heavy kelp has much the effect of oil on breaking seas.
With this in mind, the story was a matter of mechanics.
[pg 25]
A steamer leaving Eureka for San Francisco, a run of
twenty hours, and then disappearing for eleven days, given
up for lost. She had lost her propeller, her deckload, her
boats and all loose deck-gear. All this came ashore north
of Cape Mendocino—sure sign she had gone down, with a
southwest gale raging. But her skipper had managed to
get her into the kelp—he knew the kelp—and there piled
all his cargo forward until the propeller shaft was above
water. He shipped a new propeller right there in the
open sea. The vessel lay against a background of cliff,
the country back of it is deserted, isolated; steamers passing
there were at least fifteen miles out to sea to get
around Blunt's Reef; there was no wireless aboard.
Therefore she remained undiscovered, given up for lost,
until one morning, battered, smashed, burning her lumber
cargo for fuel, she limped into San Francisco Bay.
Fine! An editor wanted a series about the character—the
nervy, never-at-a-loss young skipper. The skipper
was pure accident. I had given no thought at all to
characterization. The story, the situations, his grasping a
slim chance for life when his older officers could see no
chance at all, were what I thought made the story. But
upon close analysis it was he who made the story.
In the story I had unconsciously used the same combination
of characters as in another series—the young sea captain,
the ship owner and his daughter.
More stories wanted. Not an idea in the world. But a
lot of promised money will make ideas come. I squared
off at the Underwood and started in with the ship owner.
Conjured up a pleasing picture of him seated in his private
office with wrath oozing from every one of his pores.
What will make a ship owner mad? Loss of money was
the answer. How could he lose money? By one of his
steamers being bar-bound. So the largest steamer of the
fleet is bar-bound in Gray's Harbor—has been for three
weeks. Empty, she went over the bar all right. With a
couple of million feet of lumber aboard she couldn't get
[pg 26]
out. "Martin" to the rescue. He gets her over the bar—all
this is deliberately manufactured with not a single
idea one paragraph ahead of my fingers on the keys. Then,
with the steamer at sea, ideas come galloping. It is very
seldom that I start a yarn with not even a title to work
on, not an idea in the world as to what is going to happen.
But I finished up with a real story which brought a bigger
check than any I had received up to that time for any
story.
The third of the series came easier. In The Saturday
Evening Post I read a story by Byron Morgan called The
Elephant Parade, a tale of motor-trucks. Into my mind
popped the idea of using caterpillar tractors in a sea story.
By this time I had "Martin" firmly in hand, well-trained.
The fourth story went over nicely. But in the fifth one I
made the mistake of bringing some war stuff in. Editor
said nix. I got disgusted with "Martin" right there and
left him flat.
Now in your question you have omitted the word
"theme," which might be included. For instance one was
the growth of something that can not be called a definite
idea. It was hazy, vague, when I started it. All I had in
mind was the traits of blondes (feminine) as I have known
them, especially movie blondes. My working title on the
story was The Cussedness of Blondes. I changed that to
Press Agents' Paradise, and wound up with A Million Dollars'
Worth. The working title changed as I got into the
thing and began to see sunshine ahead. The only thing I
had in mind with which to end the story was a beautiful
double-cross on the part of the blonde girl. I ended it that
way. I had many a laugh at the situations I had conjured
up and slapped into the story. Laughing at my own stuff.
Read it and weep.
Mary Johnston: Sometimes one, sometimes another.
But usually a character or a situation, or an idea that
seems to have ethical or evolutionary value. To see the
idea for a story means to see the story.
[pg 27]
John Joseph: The genesis of a story? The idea for a
"red-blooded" story comes from my own experience. That
is, things I have actually seen. Such stories are, as a matter
of fact, fictionized facts. Some stories are based on a
peculiarity of human nature. That is, they arise from a
study of human nature.
Lloyd Kohler: Of course, the idea for a story may
spring from almost anything. With me, however, the idea
for the story usually springs from an incident in actual
life. Quite often, too, the story grows from a very brief
newspaper article. Incidents from my own life and the
sharp brief stories of the daily press have furnished all the
ideas for my stuff.
Harold Lamb: The genesis of a story is most often
some happening that comes into the fancy, followed by the
impulse to draw character in connection with that happening.
Sinclair Lewis: Varies. Usually from a character.
Hapsburg Liebe: My best stories grow from a character;
then a situation to fit in with the character. I have
had most of my failures, I think, from inventing a situation
and sticking doll-like characters in it.
Romaine H. Lowdermilk: With me, the good stories
originate around a character. As the characters are supposed
to seem real and be interesting to the reader I feel
that they, as the actors, are more vital than their doings.
When I have my characters in mind I choose one upon
whom to center interest and one for humor unless I can
combine the two. Around this character (or characters) I
work out action that I think true to their natures and the
setting to which they are native. It takes considerable
thought to think up a series of incidents leading to some
definite end or some theme, but then that's the writer's
business. He's got it to do! Given a character you can
make yourself acquainted with, you can write a story
around him, and the more commonplace the character the
more likely you are to hit on a story that reads true to life
[pg 28]
among a majority of readers. Sometimes I write from situation,
setting or incident, but usually go back to the beginning
and find the character who, when properly used,
seems to work out most of the story himself. The title is
my stumbling-block. I never find a title until after the
story is done, and then only after great effort and generally
at the suggestion of some of my family who act as
"critics" on the completed work.
Eugene P. Lyle, Jr.: The genesis of a story, with me,
may be any bit of mental detritus lodged in the flow of
thought long enough to collect about it enough flotsam to
round into a missile to throw at an editor. The "bit" may
be any of those you have listed, but I like best an idea, or a
theme. Given an idea, I like to try to translate it into life—i.
e., fiction. Ideas, though, are scarce. But whatever
the story germ is, it has to bite hard, else the story is not
likely to be much.
Rose Macaulay: I usually start from some idea I have
in my head about the world or life or people and illustrate
it with the particular plot and character that seem to suit
it.
Crittenden Marriott: The climax; I always start with
it—and write up to it. I begin anywhere, and half
the time I have to begin again and perhaps again till I
find a beginning that lets the story run smoothly. I
keep the false beginnings and work some of them into the
story.
Homer I. McEldowney: The idea of a story with me
has been of varied origin—a name, a situation, a character,
or a plot. I have only written four yarns thus far, and I
have used four different methods. Perhaps the next will
be still different. And I wonder, when the various methods
have been exhausted, if I'll be, too—at the end of my
rope!
Ray McGillivray: Two people at cross-purposes, two
or more opposed forces, or a person and a conflicting force,
usually give a yarn of mine initial impulse—at least of
[pg 29]
consideration. I sketch a plan or synopsis, then dictate it
straight through from beginning to end. My steno hands
me a result which—because of her garbling, my smoke-clouded
diction and incomplete ideas—resembles a finished
story somewhat less than a plate of steak and Idaho baked
potatoes with pan gravy resembles a fat man. I chew away
at the script, and return to the girl a mess of pages upon
which there is more pencilling than ink. Being human and
slightly myopic, she does not turn out a final draft—yet.
The third typing finishes a script, though—unless it be
part of a novel, or an editor asks rewriting done. Given
the right sort of quarrel, dilemma or unconscious conflict
between interesting persons or forces, however, I believe
that setting, incidents of development, and atmosphere
traipse right into the yarn without being paged.
Helen Topping Miller: My stories usually begin with
titles. Often I carry a title in my mind for years before I
am able to find the story to go with it. Occasionally I begin
a story with only a character, but I must have my title
before I can write. Having got my characters I devise the
"conflict" which is to develop those characters, and then
build the plot around that.
Thomas Samson Miller: There are stories which have
their genesis in an author's rage at an inhumanity or injustice.
We writers all start out being missionaries, I
think, and only slack up when we discover that readers delighted
in the jam—the story—and missed the pill. I have
to be moved by a strong desire to expose some wrong to get
across a really strong story. But my commercial success
(if I may claim success) falls along adventure stories for
young men and boys. In such stories incident is of the
first importance. The incident has to dovetail into a plot,
all the action flowing to a logical climax. The second importance
is a hero—a manufactured hero, whose best traits
only are shown, for character is complex—the admirable
traits always associated with less admirable.
Anne Shannon Monroe: I believe a story almost always
[pg 30]
grows with me from a character; a certain kind of a
person who always gets into trouble—or out—because he
does certain sorts of things.
L. M. Montgomery: The genesis of my stories is very
varied. Sometimes the character suggests the story. For
instance, in my first book, Anne of Green Gables, the whole
story was modeled around the character of "Anne" and
arranged to suit her. Most of my books are similar in
origin. The characters seem to grow in my mind, much
after the oft-quoted "Topsy" manner, and when they are
fully incubated I arrange a setting for them, choosing incidents
and surroundings which will harmonize with and
develop them.
With short stories it is different. There I generally
start with an idea—some incident which I elaborate and
invent characters to suit, thus reversing the process I employ
in book-writing. A very small germ will sometimes
blossom out quite amazingly. One of my most successful
short stories owed its origin to the fact that one day I
heard a lady—a refined person usually of irreproachable
language—use a point-blank "cuss-word" in a moment of
great provocation. Again, the fact that I heard of a man
forbidding his son to play the violin because he thought it
was wicked furnished the idea for the best short story I
ever wrote.
Frederick Moore: The genesis of a story with me may
be any of the things mentioned, but generally I find it is
some incident upon which a plot may be built. And frequently
the plot in its final form has no bearing whatever
on the original incident which gave birth to the plot.
Talbot Mundy: With me, the genesis of a story is too
often the need for money; or at any rate, the need for
money generally has too much to do with it. I disagree
totally from the accepted theory that it does a writer good
to be "hard up." It is true that I wrote some of my best
stories when I was frightfully "broke"—The Soul of a
Regiment for instance; but the idea of selling that story
[pg 31]
never entered into the conception or construction of it; had
nothing to do with it, in fact. It was an idea and an incident
that took hold of me and thrilled me while I wrote it.
It was based on a tale that my father told me one Sunday
morning at breakfast when I was about eight years old.
He told it to me all wrong, but contrived to put across the
spirit of the thing, and it seems that that part stuck.
Ideas, I am afraid, are no good unless pinned down in
the very beginning to a character and one main incident.
I can live in a world of ideas; in fact, I generally do,
dreaming along without much reference to "hard" facts.
I see pretty clearly the necessity to make ideas concrete by
turning them into persons, things and incidents. A plot
is otherwise a mere conundrum without much interest to
the reader, however appealing to the writer it may be.
Thus, an idea for a story (in my case) may be an incident,
a trait of character, a situation, setting, title or almost
anything; and the temptation, which I fall for much too
often, is to go dancing along with the idea, letting it will-o'-the-wisp
me all over the place. Whereas the true process
is to pin that idea down and make it so concrete that
the reader doesn't recognize it as an idea, but does recognize
a sort of familiar friend—concrete as a sidewalk. This
is a counsel of perfection; but it's the nearest I can get,
after a dozen years of trying, to an answer to your question.
Be concrete. Get away from the abstract by making
it concrete. With that proviso, anything whatever is an
idea for a story.
Kathleen Norris: The genesis of a story with me is
usually a situation; the feeling that such and such a relationship
between persons of such and such ideals or ideas
would make for human interest. A servant girl who holds
a baby above a flood all night—a boy who hates his father's
second wife, etc., etc.
Anne O'Hagan: The stories that I have taken the
most pleasure in writing and that have seemed to me the
most successful have grown out of speculation upon a character
[pg 32]
in a situation. If I may use an illustration, Wings
of Healing, a short serial published last year in McCall's,
grew out of speculation upon a character, proud, resentful,
out-of-joint with the world, returned to the environment
which had embittered her, brought back face to face with
all that she thought she most hated in the world. Of
course, being a professional writer I have written many
stories without any such genesis, stories based on an incident
or even a setting. But with me, this is not my serious
method of trying to write a good story.
Grant Overton: With me, a story may begin with a
background, an incident, a character, a situation or a title.
My idea of a story is simply something arising in the first
place from any one of these sources. I should not say that
a trait of character was sufficient for me in the beginning.
My first novel arose from a particular background; my
second novel was originated by an unusual situation, which
I heard of; my third novel (in point of writing) was suggested
by a place; my fourth novel arose from a character,
Walt Whitman. The only two short stories I ever did that
are of any account whatever, were both inspired by houses
with "atmosphere."
Sir Gilbert Parker: Character always.
Hugh Pendexter: Dramatic situation. A flashlight
picture of a climax with no explanation. Then technique
of going back and building up to it.
Clay Perry: To me it has been a character, a situation,
an incident, a title, striking enough to set imagination
at work.
Michael J. Phillips: Out of nowhere at all an idea
comes into my head. It may consist of a novel association
of two apparently unrelated ideas; it may be a picturesque
phrase or it may be an out-of-the-ordinary incident. I
think to myself: "That might make a story."
Immediately the other side of me pops its head out and
says: "You poor boob, there's nothing in that at all but
grief and hard work and disappointment. There isn't a
[pg 33]
story there and if there is, you can't write it. That isn't
your style at all, so forget it."
Consciously I forget it. But the next day as I am walking
to the office—most ideas come while I am hiking,—the
first half of my mind says apologetically: "Of course we
know that was a fool idea we had yesterday and there's
nothing to it and we can't do anything with it, and we
don't intend to, but—If it was any good and we expected to
use it and if we had enough talent to make a readable story
out of it, here is a little incident which would tag along
with it."
Then the germ and the incident are rudely thrust back
into limbo. This sort of thing happens for about three or
four days, the story taking form until I know the story and
the finish and most of the incidents before I consciously
accept it and start to polish it off in my mind. The story
is complete, or practically so, before I set it down on paper.
The only story which didn't come to me that way hit me
all of a heap and convinced both sides of my mind at once,
taking the citadel by storm. It was the real, authoritative
goods, and I knew it, and glowed over it. I have rewritten
it twice, and it's still unsold. While others, which were
dragged on to my door-step by my unwilling brain working
under compulsion, but which I wrote more or less easily,
with my tongue in my cheek, have been pronounced
good by hard-headed gents who pay money for fiction.
Walter B. Pitkin: A story may grow from anything
with me. Most commonly, though, from a big critical situation,
then from a setting (atmosphere); less often from
a character trait; and still less from a complete character
in real life.
The four best stories I have written, judging quality
exclusively by the approval of editors and readers, grew
out of a combination of an idea and an odd situation.
A story idea sometimes starts with a title; but I find
that the title never carries me very far, though it may start
something going.
[pg 34]
E. S. Pladwell: I can not answer. Sometimes it just
grows out of random thoughts. Again, it comes from
stories I have heard, or personal experiences. An idea for
a story grows out of a setting, a character and a climax.
The three combined make the finished job.
Lucia Mead Priest: I should say that the genesis of
what stories I have written have never been twice alike.
A situation, a phase of character, a setting, some other
fellow's adventure or one of my own, have furnished the
kernel around which the matter has concreted.
Now and then it has meant immediate germination but
more often the corm has been tucked away on a mental
shelf to ripen or desiccate.
I do not know whether that is the usual process of a
mentality or the working of an irregular one.
Eugene Manlove Rhodes: How would a given character
react to a given situation? Answer is a story. Character,
situation.
Frank C. Robertson: The world is full of interesting
situations and unusual characters. I think I always carry
around some of these somewhere in the back of my head.
Every once in a while one of the unusual characters will
accidentally get into one of these interesting situations and
the story begins to crawl. These two, character and situation,
always seem to come simultaneously and demand to
be written about.
Ruth Sawyer: Generally from an incident or character.
Primarily it is the human appeal which decides.
Chester L. Saxby: A story with me grows out of any
kind of seed, but most frequently from an incident or a
situation. The character is essentially a part of that incident.
The character is the shaper of the idea in my mind;
without him and apart from him it does not exist. But the
dramatic possibility of the idea is the thing.
Barry Scobee: It may be any one of these, or from an
idea that pops into my mind as I read or watch a movie,
but mostly the genesis starts with a situation or a condition.
[pg 35]
By situation I mean, of course, the position a character
is in. By condition I mean a dramatic, novel, puzzling
or pathetic theme or phase of life, somebody or
group of somebodies. To illustrate, the remote, isolated
big-ranch people of southwest Texas. They are in a condition
from which rises the dramatic or novel. After all is
said, an idea for a story, with me, is a situation—even if
it be the mental situation brought about by a man's own
state of mind. It is that more than character or the other
things.
R. T. M. Scott: To some extent the genesis of a story
comes to me from all the things which you mention. More
particularly it comes to me from a character or a title. All
my "Smith" stories are from character with the exception
of the first of the series. One came from the title out of the
"nowhere." There is one source, however, which you have
not mentioned and which has had significant results for me.
I refer to dreams. If I can get to my typewriter before the
atmosphere of a dream has vanished the story is sold. A
case of this kind occurred with Such Bluff as Dreams Are
Made Of, the first of the "Smith" series. I crawled out
of bed to my typewriter and wrote the thing straightaway
without an alteration. It sold at once and, as soon as it
appeared in print, Cassel's Magazine of London wanted it
and I was asked to cable my reply. I dreamed both of the
dreams described in this story. Selling dreams is clear
profit.
Robert Simpson: The idea for a story has, with me, no
specific method of birth. It may be derived from any of
the sources you refer to, or it may, as sometimes happens,
spring out of nowhere, practically complete from introduction
to climax. Most frequently, however, and particularly
with short stories, I merely sit down and write. A
sentence of some sort finds its way on to the paper, then
another and another, and ultimately a story begins to take
shape. A number of these "germ sentences" may have to
be removed from the finished product, but most of them
[pg 36]
remain. When I have evolved a story idea by this method,
I go just so far and no farther until I have decided on a
climax. If I can't create a climax that satisfies me, I allow
the idea to rest for a while, and usually, when I am not
consciously thinking about it at all, a fitting climax comes
along and the story is written. With book-length stuff,
however, I generally begin with four things—a character
who sounds a decided key-note, the setting, and, however
vaguely, a conception of the beginning and the end. Until
I have these ingredients fairly well fixed in my mind, I
don't attempt to "write them into existence." Generally
speaking, the principal character is suggested to me first
by name. I can't write about anybody whose name doesn't
"fit."
Arthur D. Howden Smith: Sometimes a situation;
sometimes a character or group of characters.
Theodore Seixas Solomons: "Story germ," though a
trite expression, hits it with me as to what a yarn grows
from. But it may be a situation or a very odd trait of
character in what would otherwise be a not uncommon situation.
Sometimes an incident, if it seems a germinal one;
rarely or never a setting or title.
Raymond S. Spears: Generally speaking, I have a
personal interest in some subject or other. I begin to collect
information about it, as pearls, trapping, Mississippi
River, shanty-boaters, etc. Perhaps a news clipping starts
me off, or a book, or a fiction story. After a while, perhaps
I have a hundred, a thousand clippings, books, etc.
Then I go to the scene; thus I went to Muscatine, Iowa, on
a motorcycle to spend half a day in a button factory, and a
few days around that button-making town, buttons and
pearls going together! Then I went on into the Bad Lands
of western South Dakota, and spent a month on the
prairies in homestead country. Later I rolled thousands of
miles in homestead countries, to get "the big viewpoint."
Sometimes the story comes ready made in the material.
Sometimes it comes divested of environment—atmosphere—and
[pg 37]
I have to dress it up in a desert, then a river, then a
green timber environment, or facts, to find which fits.
Often a story idea appears as a character of certain tendencies,
and this character I bring up by hand, sometimes
for years.
I gather my material of all kinds, and each group of material
has characters, plots, ideas, themes, etc., wandering
and wallowing around in the wilderness, and gradually a
group of all sorts of things that go to make up a story is
precipitated by conditions, and if I'm in too much of a
hurry, I write too soon; the way through is invisible, and I
run into a blind cañon.
Norman Springer: In all of these ways, incident, title,
etc., but most often (say four times out of five) I visualize
a character, and the story grows about him. (This
character, by the way, is never dragged out of real life,
and I don't try to make him a type. He is—at least while
the yarn is in the making—a distinct individual, with individual
characteristics. Though I do find that, as the
story progresses, he acquires little habits of mind and
manner of people I know or have known. If I don't guard
against it, the character in the last story is likely to carry
over and intrude his personality into the next story, where
he isn't wanted.)
The genesis of the story is something like this: I think
of the character. I try him in this situation and that.
Perhaps he fits, and the plot grows naturally to its completion.
Perhaps he doesn't fit, or the material is only
half a story—then I shove the whole matter into the back
of my mind. Weeks or months later additional situations,
or maybe new incidents, occur to mind. Out trots the
character from his seclusion, bringing his story with him.
Stories that come via the title route are nearly always
of the "fate" variety.
If the plot is imagined first, and then the characters, I
find that the latter are likely to be wooden and lifeless, and
the story very hard to write.
[pg 38]
Julian Street: Sometimes a situation. Practically
always, however, the situation grows out of character. Never
a title. That's always cheap, I think. The more I work
and (I hope) ripen, the more I believe that the basis of
most good stories is character. Character makes plot.
T. S. Stribling: I have derived stories from incidents,
characters, tales told me by traveling companions, but my
longer and more serious stories are nearly always something
rather larger than a "setting"; I would say a social
condition. I like to select a people whose form of life has
the possibility of great drama. Then I enjoy studying
that people, seeing how they live, get as nearly at their
psychology as I can—customs, habits. Then I take their
country and pick out spots where I will have a scenic background
that best suits the mood of the story I propose to
write.
For example just at this moment I am interested in
Venezuela. I lived down there a year, I learned enough
Spanish to talk and read intelligibly, and I expect to read
Venezuelan books, histories, etc., for about three years more
before I do a novel I have in mind on the country. Naturally,
this sort of work must be planned for years in advance,
and usually while I am working up a big story, I
can get a bunch of smaller ones on the same theme. Otherwise
I would starve between drinks.
Booth Tarkington: I shall have to leave this pretty
indefinite. The answer differs with every story.
W. C. Tuttle: Usually the title is the last thing to be
printed on my manuscript, and I pride myself on the fact
that I have only had one title changed in seven or eight
years of writing.
It may sound queer to you, but it is a fact that a certain
character bothers me until I write a story around that
character. Crazy, eh? Still it is a fact. Somehow I can
see and feel that personality and a strong urge comes to
me to put him in print. The strange part of it is that I worry
about that mythical character until I put him on paper.
[pg 39]
Lucille Van Slyke: Story genesis with me is usually
some very insignificant object that I see in a half-light—or
blurred—or far off when I am not thinking about writing
at all.
Example: Listening to a second-rate opera company
give Lohengrin my eyes note very idly that one fat chorus
lady has very shabby black street shoes. My eyes travel—her
face is deadly serious. Somewhere the back of my
brain clicks off a story somebody told me about Henrietta
Crossman's early struggles—how she nursed her infant son
between acts while she played "Rosalind"—on the way
out of the theater I hear a laughing feminine voice say
"Chiffon is warmer and stronger than you think—" These
things I scribbled in my plot-book when I reached home.
But it was at least two years before I wrote the story these
things suggested—but the impetus was undoubtedly a pair
of shabby shoes—and the story was about a fragile, gay
little chorus lady, the very antithesis of the fat lady with
the shoes. (Nor were shoes ever mentioned in that story!)
Example: I pass a brownstone house, very swanky one.
On the basement window-sill is a battered tin luncheon-tray
with a soiled napkin, a wilted salad and some scraggly bits
of lamb. I am on my way for a holiday, in an I-shall-never-write-again
mood. But the little old nervous ganglia
that serve as brains begin "What a rotten lunch—must
have been for the dressmaker—and maybe the dressmaker
was a dear—a princess in disguise effect"—and I find
myself humming an old hymn, Oh, happy day—"Felicia
Day would be a good name," saith my tune. So I jot it
down in the back of my commutation-book and forget it.
It's three years later that I write a book around that
luncheon tray.
The funny part of all this is that I didn't know until
your letter arrived that in almost every instance of either
short story, serial or book I saw a definite object in the
beginning. I tried to bunk myself into believing that I
didn't, that a person or a character did it or a plot, but it's
[pg 40]
a thing—usually in half-light—so I see it rather blurry.
Why?
Atreus von Schrader: A story may grow from anything;
an incident, a character or trait, a setting, a title, a
situation. It is my own experience that more stories develop
from situations than any other course. I wonder if
this would be true of a writer of character stories? By
"situation" I mean a preconceived inter-relation of the
dramatis personæ.
T. Von Ziekursch: Genesis of a story.—I have little
idea where the ideas for stories come from. They merely
seem to be dreams in which the characters become clearer
and clearer until I live through the incident with them in
an existence that is very real. I always have regrets when
a story is finished; then the characters seem to fade out
like old friends, gradually becoming hazier until they are
lost. In my animal stories I believe incidents that I have
seen and animals that I have studied form the stem about
which I build the branchings. Perhaps the same thing
occurs with the human characters.
Henry Kitchell Webster: My theory of the genesis of
a story is a dynamic one. The motive power behind any
story is furnished by the setting up in some life, or group
of lives, of a condition of strain or disequilibrium, and the
story itself is the sequence of events by which equilibrium
is sought to be established. I never started a story from a
title, but I fancy I have started at least once from each of
the other items of your list.
G. A. Wells: Story ideas occur to me in flashes. As a
rule it is no more than an idea, very brief and not, in most
cases, sharply drawn. Most ideas come to me while reading
the work of others, whether of fiction or fact, and it
may be peculiar that the idea as it occurs is never similar
to the story or article as a whole or any part of it that I
chance to be reading at the time. To name a case in point,
I distinctly remember that the idea for one story came to
me while reading the third book of Dryden's translation of
[pg 41]
Virgil's Æneid. The idea hit me so hard that I dropped
everything else and began the story at once. I don't attempt
to explain it. I have never deliberately set about to
invent a story idea. That is beyond my mental capacity.
Ideas occur to me unwilled or not at all. But, given the
idea, I will with confidence contract to work it out in any
manner suggested.
William Wells: Anything gives me the idea for a
story; my head is full of them all the time.
Ben Ames Williams: It is quite impossible to answer
generally any such question as this. Some of my stories
grow out of incidents observed or imagined; some are
transcribed almost literally from experiences related to
me; some grow up around a character, or an apt title, or a
trait of character; some are built up as a play is built up,
to put forward a definite dramatic situation; some put in
the form of fiction a philosophic or religious idea which
has appealed to me; some are merely whimsical studies in
contrast. The only general statement I can make is that
George Polti's book on dramatic situations has been of
great help to me, not so much in suggesting stories as in
assisting me to see more clearly what effect I want to produce.
Honore Willsie: I always start with some bit of
human philosophy that I want to get over.
H. C. Witwer: I'm afraid I must answer this one
rather generally. That is, I mean the genesis of a story
with me grows from not one, but all the elements you mention,
viz., character, situation, setting, title. Sometimes I
hit upon a good title and write around that; sometimes I
spend days on the proper title after the yarn is finished.
A chance remark of an individual, quaint, funny, philosophic,
etc., may furnish a story and so with the other ingredients
above. I would say, though, that the majority of
times the first thing I get to work on is a situation. Next
title. After that, I go to it!
William Almon Wolff: If I go back I can find that
[pg 42]
stories have grown out of all the things you mention. But
the actual making of the story never begins until one or
more persons are in my mind. I have to deal with people,
and the real planning and building of the story nearly
always begins with speculation as to what this person or
that would do in a certain situation. Here is a concrete
example:
My friend, Robert Rudd Whiting, gave me, years ago,
this, as an idea for a story. Repairs to a post road in Connecticut
made him, for several days, take a detour; a little,
lonely sort of road. And he used to pass an old house,
where two old ladies sat, looking out eagerly at all the
bustling life that had so suddenly come along their road.
Bob had tried to write the story, and failed. The idea
fascinated me, too. My notion was to try to work something
out and do it with Bob—I know, of course, that, if
only he kept on, he could do the story, and do it better
than I could ever hope to do it. But the war came along,
and it took Bob. He was killed in action as truly as any
man who died in France, although the records don't show
that. So I felt that I was doubly obliged to write that
story. But it eluded me until, at last, I saw in my mind
exactly the right man, troubled, oppressed, sick of heart
and mind and body, lured from the great road, with its
rushing motors, by the peace of the little road.
From that moment I was on the way to doing the story.
What ailed that man? What had gone wrong? What
would he find when he came to the house and the two old
ladies? And wouldn't the little road, in the end, if he followed
it so far as it went, take him back, refreshed and
strengthened, to the road and the life he had abandoned?
Edgar Young: A story usually starts, in my case, with
an idea—some truth that I wish to prove, some fact that I
wish to demonstrate, or some effect I wish to show. This,
to my estimation, is what a story writer means when he
speaks of "an idea" for a story.
[pg 43]
Summary
Answering, 113. By a rough system of tabulating, allowing
two points for a subject when it is usually or always
the genesis of a story, and one point when it is sometimes
or rarely the genesis, we get the following general
view:
Character, 73; character and action, 4; character and
situation, 10; situation, 73; incident, 69; titles, 19; setting,
19; purpose, 14; phrase, 11; "just born," 5; emotion, 4;
miscellaneous, 26; varying as to genesis, 57; don't know, 4.
The miscellaneous include such as: contrast, condition of
mind, problem, motive, period, tales, a name, a view of life,
news, period.
These statistics from the data given can serve merely to
give a general survey and to indicate, at least approximately,
the relative frequency of use. That character, situation
and incident should head the list was rather to be
expected, though hardly in that order. That titles should
rank next seems surprising.
The interest in these data is chiefly for the beginner.
Probably the best place to get an idea for a story is wherever
you can get it and be satisfied with it, but this data
may show the beginner sources not previously considered.
Perhaps the best service to him is the demonstration that
creative minds do not all work alike and that general rules
are to be regarded with suspicion until found really
applicable to the particular case.
Aside from service, these data may be of some passing
interest to writers, critics and editors in general.
[pg 44]
QUESTION II
Do you map it out in advance, or do you
start with, say, a character or situation,
and let the story tell itself as you write?
Do you write it in pieces to be joined together,
or straightaway as a whole? Is the ending clearly in mind when you begin?To what extent do you revise?
Answers
Bill Adams: It writes itself—nothing to do with me.
I never read stories—or very, very, very rarely. Most
stories, though not quite so poisonous as my own, are indigestible.
Never have the slightest idea what the end, and
rarely what the next paragraph will be. Revise a great
deal afterward, in small ways.
Samuel Hopkins Adams: As a rule the story is pretty
well worked out in advance; always in the case of a novel.
It does happen, however, that a character upon which a
story is built will take the bit in his or her teeth and run
away with the whole show—even to the extent of ditching
it! I have had a short story turn out disconcertingly different
from my original intention because one of the characters
got out of control. After I write passages, particularly
bits of dialogue before going at the story as a whole,
I always revise and rewrite; sometimes I wholly recast a
story.
Paul L. Anderson: A story is mapped out in advance,
often to the very language, the actual words to be put
down on paper. Revision is chiefly a matter of improving
the wording, though it sometimes takes the form of shifting
the action around; sometimes even of rebuilding the
whole yarn, from start to finish.
[pg 45]
William Ashley Anderson: No, I don't deliberately
map out a story; though, generally, the theme of the story
is in mind when I start, and the chief problem is to hit on
the best point of departure. The ending is not clearly in
mind when I start, though I am inclined to think that, as a
rule, this is a distinct defect, because without an ending
clearly in mind a story must start off without limits and
the author can have no measure by which to judge the
value of his characters. This applies particularly to the
short story. In longer stories the characters must develop
logically; and there should be no limits whatever for a
novel.
My usual method is to write a story as the ideas present
themselves or the characters move in their relation to the
general theme. Then I rewrite, pruning freely. After
that I often rewrite again.
On the other hand I have written very clear, sharp
stories at one writing; and very vague stories after several
rewritings.
But I firmly believe that no story is so good that it
won't be improved by a second writing; and there are innumerable
evidences in literature to sustain this.
Often a story changes while I am writing it. Starting
with a vague idea, a strong idea may suddenly obtrude itself.
Many times the "kick" in a story has come into mind
when the story was already half done.
Thackeray noted the fact that when a man starts to set
his ideas on paper he is surprised at how much more he
knows than he thought he knew. This, I think, is characteristic
of an experienced writer, while the opposite holds
true of a novice.
H. C. Bailey: I always plan the whole thing before I
begin to write, in considerable detail; every chapter of a
book, every phase of a short story and often the key
phrases of dialogue and narrative are in my private synopsis.
But I hardly ever find that it all goes according to
plan. Characters won't do as they are told. They turn
[pg 46]
out to be different from what I had imagined. Minor people
become important. And so the characters work out
their plots sometimes in ways of their own. I always work
straight on from beginning to end. Once the manuscript
is finished I only revise details, but the writing itself is a
process of revision and rewriting page by page and line by
line.
Edwin Balmer: Sometimes I map out the whole story
in advance and I usually try to, but I think the best stories
are those where I have merely started with a general idea
and with a fairly definite conception of the outcome and
then have followed the "hunches" which seemed of themselves
to work through the story. I usually write straightaway
as a whole until about two-thirds through a short
story, when I fully revise at least once and then write to
the end.
Ralph Henry Barbour: I do not "map out" a story in
advance. I might fare better if I did so. I don't know,
and I probably never shall know since it is something I am
apparently incapable of doing. My start is made with a
situation or with certain characters. Sometimes with even
less. Whatever the start is, the characters at once take
matters into their own hands, and while I may sometimes
use a feebly restraining rein they generally end by taking
the bits into their teeth. The end is clearly in my mind
when I begin. That is, to return to metaphor, the goal is
known to me. What isn't known is the road that is to lead
to the goal, nor what is to happen on the way. Infrequently
I find that I have arrived at a destination other
than the one toward which I started. But that occurs only
infrequently for the reason that, given my characters, I
can usually tell how they are going to behave; or, rather,
where, having behaved—or misbehaved—they are going to
fetch up. From this it may be gathered that I let the story
tell itself to a great extent. I do not write a story in
pieces, but take it as it comes. I revise very little. Almost
not at all. Perhaps my stuff would be better if I revised
[pg 47]
more. But I don't like revising. Something is going to be
lost when that is begun. It is better, I think, to revise before
you write.
Frederick Orin Bartlett: I never map out anything.
For me nothing is more dangerous. My story as a whole is
clearly in mind, but the details work themselves out as I
write. That is true of my ending; I must know, of course,
in a general way where I am going or I have no story, but
that is as far as I commit myself except very rarely when
the last sentence bobs into my head all made. Even then I
may not know the preceding sentence or paragraph.
Nalbro Bartley: I write a story straightaway as a
whole—the ending clearly in mind when I start. I always
have it mapped in advance—and then, having started, I
let the characters take the action in their own hands while
I keep the characters in mine. It is like building a house
with a plan—so many rooms, porches, etc.,—and letting
the people who are to live in it furnish it as they please
and live their own life as a family unit.
Ferdinand Berthoud: I map the story out wholly in
my mind—practically see it finished as an artist sees a
picture—before I begin to write. However, one or other of
my characters is often likely to say some fool thing I
hadn't previously thought of and slightly to change the
trend of the yarn.
In writing I do the first two or three thousand words,
then go for a long walk next morning and think up the
exact wording of the next slab of misery. All I have to do
then is practically to copy the stuff down.
Yes, I have the ending and the exact last words before I
do a thing. Am ashamed to say I revise very little. Always
keep my finished typed copy just two or three pages
behind the original draft.
H. H. Birney, Jr.: Story is loosely mapped out in advance
and written straight through—frequently at a single
sitting. I do very little revision—little compared to what
I understand some authors do. At times I will type a
[pg 48]
copy, single-space and carelessly, from my original pen
and ink draft, do some revision as I proceed, and then
prepare my final, double-spaced copy from this.
Farnham Bishop: Many of my stories start with
things, rather than human beings: out-of-the-way ships,
guns, primitive locomotives, what not. But as Kipling
points out:
"Things never yet created things,
Once, on a time, there was a man."
Therefore I must create the man who creates or uses the
thing. Also his opponent or opponents, and the other people
who more or less "go with the situation." Try to humanize
every one of them, even if he only walks on to
speak a line or carry a spear.
My usual written outline is a neatly typed list of all
names of people, ships and places. Make this before I begin
writing the story, to avoid being held up later. Spend
a great deal of time trying to pick effective names. Finding
the right one helps me visualize the character. Pick
them out of the phone book, old histories, etc.
Almost invariably have the ending in mind before I begin.
In fact, often begin by setting aside a strong ending
and then work up to it. Brodeur and I wrote our first
story about the fall of Knossos. All we did was to fake up
a plausible explanation of why the durned place fell. As
for revision, I write the whole yarn, read it, pencil it full
of corrections, and then type a fair copy with carbon, revising
it again in the process.
Algernon Blackwood: An emotion produces its own
setting, usually bringing with it a character who shall interpret
it. The emotion dramatizes itself. The end alone
is clearly in my mind. I never begin to write until this is
so. Then I write fragments, scenes, fragments of the psychology,
fitting them in later. Occasionally, however,
when the emotion is strong, the story writes itself straightaway.
Revision is endless. Often the story, when finished,
is put aside and forgotten. The revision that comes
[pg 49]
weeks later, on reading over the tale as though it had been
written by some one else, is the most helpful of all.
Max Bonter: Formerly I used to sit down and begin
writing at random, letting the story tell itself as I wrote.
I have at last decided that it is a most pernicious practise.
If, when I begin writing, I haven't a fairly clear idea of
what I am going to write, how can I bestow on each phase
or angle of my subject an appropriate measure of importance?
How can I obey the law of proportion?
The result of such procedure was nearly always a lopsided
story. As a theme gradually developed under my
hand and neared its objective, I discovered that the text
was full of clots and excrescences that had no part in the
climax and had to be cut out. My straightaway rush
therefore availed me little, because it was succeeded by
hash, slash and revision. It was too much like stumbling
into a story.
Mathematics being the foundation of everything, including
chemistry, which is Life, and correspondingly of creativeness,
which is a phase of life, should, it seems to me,
enter directly into the building of a story. It is a vast
field for an untechnical brain like mine to browse in, but I
hope to get something out of it before I quit. In the meantime
I am striving to organize a simple but effective
scheme of work, somewhat as follows:
1. Be sure an idea is worth developing, from a "human
interest" standpoint.
2. Develop the climax first.
3. Start off the characters like a bunch of obstacle
racers and bring them to the climax as quickly, but as
logically, as possible.
4. Write tersely at first, expanding where advisable—rather
than write voluminously and chop out.
5. Write nothing that won't put at least a grain of
weight into the final wallop.
Katharine Holland Brown: The story tells itself as it
is being written: or rather, it is fairly visible as a whole
[pg 50]
before I begin to write at all. The climax and ending are
usually written first. The rest is written down in very
concise fragments, just as these fragments present themselves.
The story isn't written consecutively the first
time. Only the high lights. Then, of course, it has to be
rewritten, sometimes three or four times; sometimes only
once.
F. R. Buckley: I combine mapping ahead and letting
a character move the story. Method depends on mode of
conception (see above). Roughly speaking, the average
story is planned thus—I conceive either the beginning, the
middle, or the end, to start with. If the end, then I work
backward and decide what shall be the high spot of the
middle: and, from that, backward and figure out just
where and with what attention-gripping incident I can
start the story. These three high points established, I take
the main character and start him from the beginning toward
the middle. He decides very largely how he gets
there—his character does, I mean. And when he's reached
the middle, I start him off again in the general direction
of the end. I always have these three high points established
before I begin. I write straightforward; revise little,
except for redundancies and literals, except in the case of
long stories and complicated shorts. Then I go very carefully
over the thing for errors of fact or probability: e. g.,
I examine each situation to see whether it could have been
resolved in any simpler way than I have resolved it;
whether I have made my characters make a wide detour
when they could, and would, have cut across lots, as it
were. Since, however, the character of the hero or principal
character dictates the minutiæ of action, I rarely
(have never done so yet) find a mistake of this kind.
This is the great advantage of having a strong character to
dictate action, of course.
Prosper Buranelli: I have everything but small details
in my mind when I begin writing.
Thompson Burtis: My stories are all mapped out in
[pg 51]
advance—the exact ending is in sight. Even some of the
dialogue is in mind when I start. I write straightaway as a
whole. I revise very little. Most rewritten pages are the
result of my believing that the original page, after the
inked-in corrections, was too messy. Due to the completeness
with which I have blocked out the story in advance,
there is no necessity for me to do any important revision.
I may occasionally overlook some important point in the
story and have to put it in, but in no case have I ever made
a radical change in a character or description after the
first draft. What you get from me is the story as I originally
wrote it, with perhaps one or two pages rewritten to
make them neater.
George M. A. Cain: Advance mapping with me is of
the vaguest character. Everything shapes itself toward
or from the situation originally conceived. I write straightaway,
but very rarely without a clear notion of a possible
ending, having found that to do otherwise is to introduce
useless or troublesome incidents and make heavy revisions
necessary. My greatest difficulty is in getting a story
started to suit me. Here is done almost all my revising,
and I frequently write a dozen beginnings before suiting
myself. Once started, I write straight on, unless I find,
in the development of my hitherto vague ideas of the plot,
that I can get my results better by change. In that case,
I simply chuck out whatever I wish to replace, or insert
the needed new incident. I have rarely found that I improved
a story by revising it as a whole. Unless I am trying
to please a new editor by nice copy, I usually submit
the first and only complete draught of the story, with an
occasional alteration of a word in pencil. Typing is the
bane of my existence.
Robert V. Carr: Blind groper. Feeling my way
through a strange country.
George L. Catton: It all depends on the length
whether I map it out first or not. If it is one of those little
fellows, the ones that I am best at, the story is all "there"
[pg 52]
waiting to be written down, start—finish. If it is a long
one I let it write itself. That is, I get the best start I can
think of and go ahead. Then when I reach the right
starting-place I begin all over again. Occasionally, in a
long story, the ending, in a general and vague way, may be
in sight, but it very seldom ends as I planned at the start—something
better turns up before I get to the end. I write
it straightaway as a whole, go back often and make revisions,
and often rewrite the whole thing after it is all
finished.
Robert W. Chambers: Map it out in advance. Write
it straightaway as a whole. Ending clearly in mind from
the start. Revise murderously.
Roy P. Churchill: I have a working plan to begin
with, end in view, characters named, setting selected; then
write straight along as a whole. Often the working plan is
radically changed, but never abandoned completely. The
plan is not detailed painstakingly, but left open on purpose
to change as the feel of the story develops. Revision
with me is a second writing of the story, nothing less. This
is where I proportion the coloring of the story and get the
tones blended.
Carl Clausen: I always have the ending in mind. I
write slowly, revise very little.
Courtney Ryley Cooper: My story is as clear as a bell
before I ever start to write, characters outlined, action
ready, ending clear and often I write the finish of my
story first. I revise very little—when I have to revise I
am worried to death about the yarn as I feel there is something
fundamentally wrong about it that I can't put my
finger on. My story is usually written in my head before
I ever touch a finger to the typewriter. I often will spend
six months framing a story. The actual writing of it is
the smallest part of the job.
Arthur Crabb: I certainly do map out in advance.
No hard and fast rules can be laid down. It is undoubtedly
true that every writer may do one thing with one
[pg 53]
story and one with another. I think that most of mine are
thought out completely before I start; any changes after
the first draft are minor.
Mary Stewart Cutting: I do map it out in advance
but not in detail. I write it straightaway as a whole. The
middle part of a story is the least definite and has to be
worked out. The ending is so clearly in mind when I begin
that I have to write the last sentence of the story. A story,
to me, is like a musical theme. It has to end on the same
keynote on which it was begun. But if my mind vividly
depicts some part of the story not in the proper sequence,
I write it out in full as I see it and interpolate it where
it belongs. I revise after the first writing, I revise before
the final typewriting—mostly as regards minor sentences.
But sometimes after it has gone to typewriter my mind
will see where sentences should be inserted, usually to make
the action clearer.
Elmer Davis: If I mapped it out in advance, I would
sell more. Starting (usually) with a character in a situation,
I map out six or eight chapters. By that time old
Native Indolence is getting in its heavy work; the ideas are
coming hard, bright thoughts and lines for the early chapters
slip away while I am trying to think out and diagram
the catastrophe; so I fall to writing, always easier than
thinking. Write till I get stuck; then sit down and think
some more; which of course usually entails considerable
revision of the earlier chapters. Not much of the latter
part.
William Harper Dean: Most frequently I have the
ending in mind and work definitely to develop plot sequence
which will enable me logically and directly to reach
that end. I do not map out—such a practise would throw
too many restrictions about the sweep of my imagination;
I want full elasticity to that. Revise? Ah, there's the
whole story! I revise and rebuild, strengthening here,
eliminating there. Recently I started out with an idea for
a short story and when I finished revising and rebuilding
[pg 54]
I had written a serial which sold at once for a most satisfactory
price.
Harris Dickson: After I get some crude idea of a
story I put down on a big sheet everything I can think of,
generally without logical arrangement. This may be developed
in a sort of scenario form. From this No. 2 sheet I
begin to write, in longhand, in shorthand or a combination.
You will note that sheets 1, 2 and 3 show progressive stages
of the same material. The value of the big sheet, to me,
lies in the fact that I can visualize an entire story at one
glance, without having to search through a mass of tiny
scraps. And it is so easy to rewrite in one column while
looking at the other.
When I get my material pretty well in hand it is dictated
to a dictaphone, from which the typist gives it back,
with lines far apart and a wide margin. This is then
scratched up, rearranged, and redictated.
Frequently a story pretty well tells itself, and sometimes
the ending is clearly in mind. Sometimes not. Sometimes
one kind makes the better yarn, sometimes the other. I've
done a good story in three days, and struggled for three
months over a bad one.
Captain Dingle: The story is pictured as a whole,
with one ending clearly in view before a word is written.
I do not—can not—plan a story or map it out; it has to
write itself or it fails; and sometimes the ending I saw
first has to give place to one more fitting to the developed
story. I do not revise, except to correct noted errors of
spelling and grammar (which are apt to slip anyhow, since
I know damn little about 'em). Whenever I have revised a
story it has proved a failure. The stuff, such as it is, must
come spontaneously.
Louis Dodge: In the main I see my story to the end
before I write it—or at least I try to do this. But largely
I let the development—the secondary episodes—suggest
themselves, or grow, as they will. I go straight through
with a manuscript, and then I revise and revise and revise.
[pg 55]
I mean I write it entirely two or three or more times.
This, perhaps, shows a lack of clear-mindedness, or of definite
theories; but it is the best I can do.
Phyllis Duganne: I used to let stories tell themselves
as I wrote them, but I've come to the conclusion that it
saves more time to sit down with a pencil and paper and
make a row of nice neat Roman numerals and letters and
letters in parentheses, and make a diagram of the plot.
That's mainly because, once I start writing, I can write on
and on without getting anywhere in my story, and wasting
loads of time and good paper. I write it as a whole with
the general idea of the ending clearly in mind; I never
know precisely where or how the tale will end. Sometimes
I think I do, but the characters are likely to be ornery and
not do at all what I wanted them to do. And if I make
them follow a rigid plan, the story doesn't sound true.
Revising depends. Sometimes hardly at all; sometimes I
find that I have gone off on a tangent and have to cut out
pages. Most frequently I find that I have to go through a
story, individualizing and characterizing my people more.
I know what they are like, but frequently I find on reading
the story that I have kept most of my knowledge to
myself.
J. Allan Dunn: Here is a hard question, how does the
story grow? When it comes into your mind it has various
stages of completion. Preferably I would let my story tell
itself. No matter how carefully I may have outlined, gone
over and over each next chapter, the thing amplifies when
one sits down at the typewriter. The characters change,
the situations demand things not thought of, you see a better
way, the yeast ferments and rises unevenly. Seldom
is my ending clearly in mind. An editor desiring certain
breaks for serial publication will cause me to plan more
carefully. Sometimes certain parts of a story obtrude
themselves but not to such an extent with me as to make
me break the straightaway development of the tale in due
order. I may reach them with delight, look forward to
[pg 56]
them, find them in the forefront of my mind whenever I
think of the yarn outside of working hours.
And what are working hours? You carry your story as
a cow packs its cud. At least, I do. And I go over and
over and over it, consciously and subconsciously. I take
my next chapter to bed with me and automatically employ
every spare minute, on the street even, to revolving the
next phase of the plot. Sometimes details will blur, but
the main plot extends itself far ahead. I like to try to
plan a story with a purpose, but I decidedly prefer to try
so to create my characters that they are alive and have certain
wills of their own. As a rule I revise once—direct on
the typed copy. And most of the errors are in typing. If
I polish too much I am apt to overdo it, I find.
Walter A. Dyer: Partly answered above. I find it
necessary to have some fairly clear conception of the destination
of my story movement, or I find I have gone off
at half-cock and the result is disappointing. The details,
as a rule, come as I write. I try to have a telling ending
in mind. Then I write the thing straight through and try
to brace up the weak spots in revision. I sometimes have
to change important portions of the story to get it right,
but usually it is a matter of polishing. Each story seems
to present its own particular problem as to the matter of
revision. I have no rule.
Walter Prichard Eaton: I always like to know, before
I write, around just where I am going and coming out.
It is almost essential to me. Otherwise I would write far
too much. Often the story in detail, sometimes in actual
plot, etc., changes itself as I go along. Then I have to
stop and look ahead and see a new finish.
E. O. Foster: Owing to newspaper training, I mull
over a story in my mind until I have it fairly complete
before I begin to write. Then I write the story with the
beginning of the plot and ending clearly in my mind, after
which by means of "inserts" and "adds" I enlarge it.
Arthur O. Friel: I let the story tell itself. Straightaway
[pg 57]
as a whole. Ending not clearly in mind. Revise
comparatively little. Sometimes I rewrite a section, but
usually not. My main revision is with the idea of compression
and compactness.
In writing, I don't lay out my story and get it all nicely
framed up before starting to write. I start with a general
idea which comes to me from God-knows-where, and soon
I'm marching along with my characters without any very
clear idea of where we're all going to wind up. We get
into swamps and cut our way through the bush and
clamber up on to a hill and maybe find something on the
other side; one thing leads to another, and eventually we
make a good finish. Then we review our course, see where we
went up a box-canyon which got us nowhere, and delete that
place from the record of our trip; that's our "revision."
This, of course, is all wrong from the view-point of folks
who love to systematize everything; but it's my way of
traveling through a story, and I get there just the same.
I have tried, on a number of occasions in the past, to make
my characters and events fit a more-or-less definite idea of
mine as to what they were to do, but it didn't work; they
just took matters into their own hands and did all kinds of
things I never meant them to, and all I could do was to
trail along; and, darn 'em, they made a far better yarn of
it than I'd ever have made if I'd clubbed them into submission.
So now I've learned to let them do as they will,
after I've brought them together in a certain place and
started them on their way.
J. U. Giesy: Taking the germ, the "seed" of mental
possibilities, I, as it were, plant it and proceed to cultivate
it many times for months, letting it grow subconsciously,
save for intervals when I water it by objective examination
and conscious reviewing. In this way I "rough it in"—gain
a general outline of the plot and action from first to
last, with the ending always indicated at least. I then write
it, filling in details on the main framework as I go along.
George Gilbert: Never map out, unless a little on
[pg 58]
novelettes and serials. Ending always in view. Never revise
plot; sometimes revise diction materially, always some.
Kenneth Gilbert: All the mapping in advance is done
in my mind, and I write the story straightaway. Of
course, the tale develops and fills out as I write. I write
carefully, and I find that I have but little revising to do;
usually none at all. Newspaper training, whereby the first
draft must be the last, may account for this care in preparing
the manuscript. I always have a good general idea
of the ending in my mind before I begin, and I have never
been able to understand how others can go along without
knowing what the next paragraph will be, unless they are
willing to rewrite the story several times. I have always
proceeded on the assumption that a good short story is "a
dramatic tale objectively told." How may it be "objectively
told" without the object in mind?
Holworthy Hall: I plan a story in advance only in so
far as the development of the main situation is concerned.
The ending, however, must be clearly in mind. I usually
take as much time to write the first two paragraphs as to
write all the rest of the first draft. Ordinarily I complete
a first draft in a day or two—and a revision in ten days;
but the time taken in revision is generally for style, and
not for treatment. That is because, in the first draft, the
sequence must be right, or I make it right before going
ahead. I ought to say here that by a "day" I mean a
working day of ten to sixteen hours.
Richard Matthews Hallet: I have to have a pretty
definite scheme, a sequence of events with a denouement
very clearly in mind, before doing much writing. This
probably comes from being a cripple in the art. Scott certainly
didn't. He wrote The Bride of Lammermoor when
he was so nearly out of his head with pain that when the
proofs came in he read them, he asserts, as if they were the
work of another hand altogether. William de Morgan, to
give a late instance, said he let the story drip off his pen-point.
If I did this, it would drool, not drip.
[pg 59]
I revise a great deal, three or four times, often, of next
door to complete rewriting. Too much probably. Take a
warning from Balzac's Unknown Masterpiece.
William H. Hamby: If the story is based on character, I
let it work itself out. If it is to be a plot story made up
largely of action, I outline it ahead.
Joseph Mills Hanson: I usually map a story in advance
and write it straightaway as a whole, but revise it a
great deal after finishing and on reading it over, chiefly to
improve the style and polish it up. I have the ending
pretty well in mind at the start, though it often changes
considerably in detail by the time I reach it.
E. E. Harriman: I start my central character out and
make him live the story. Follow him all the way through
and get so darned anxious about him that I can hardly
knock off work to eat. The end is oftenest clearly defined
before I begin, but at times turns out differently, as the
gaul-darned central figure takes the story out of my hands
and does as he pleases. I revise from one to four times.
Nevil G. Henshaw: I generally have the story pretty
well in mind before I start it, and write it straight through
to the preconceived climax. Details, of course, shift about
throughout, often changing the story materially, but usually
the ending is clearly in my mind. I make one draft in
ink very slowly and carefully, correcting as I go, and then
do the final revising when typing on a visible machine. I
always cut, but seldom if ever add.
Joseph Hergesheimer: It is planned wholly emotionally
and partly in detail, and written straightaway. I revise
interminably.
Robert Hichens: I do not map a book out in advance,
except to some extent in my head. I have the end in my
mind when I begin. This, I consider, is essential. I write
straight on from the beginning to the end. Naturally I
have to revise some passages. I usually write slowly and
carefully and try to set down my exact meaning as I write,
therefore I do not have to revise very much.
[pg 60]
R. de S. Horn: I invariably map my story out in advance,
although I don't always go to the trouble of writing
out the plot diagramatically. Generally I have had the
story in the back of my head for weeks or months. It
starts with the story germ, and at odd times I find myself
thinking about it unconsciously. Ideas, incidents and complications
begin to collect around it and before I know it
almost I feel that I have got a complete story. Then I sit
down and write it at a single sitting if possible, without
trying to exercise any great amount of word selection or
any other consideration of technique. What I'm after in
this first script is to get my story or rather expanded plot
down on paper where I can look it over. I write in longhand
and don't worry about fine considerations of sentence
or paragraph structure. The ending is always in my
mind before I begin, though I frequently change it before
I am through with the final draft. But at any rate I have
an ending which at that time seems to me to be the desirable
ending. I find that in this first draft I usually write
about three thousand or four thousand words.
Then I revise—and revise—and revise. I study my
characters, dialogues, incidents, everything, with a view
toward the demands of unity and consistency and, most of
all, dramatic effect. I type my second draft because I
find it necessary to be able to read exactly at the same
rate as the reader if I am going to get my reader's impressions
and reactions. I finish one revision, type it and
start another one. My story mounts up to six, seven, nine
thousand words. I sail into it, looking for non-essentials.
I cut it down to five thousand or so. Then in my final
drafts I bring it to the proper length; it is always easier
to write in than to cut out. My revisions number as high
as a dozen sometimes. In fact the enthusiasm with which
I started the first draft has greatly abated before I finish
and I grow very tired of the thing; so much so that I sometimes
set the thing away to cool before making my final
draft. But I believe that it is this cold critical attitude
[pg 61]
toward the end that really does more for the story than
anything else. In other words I believe that the story-writing
ability is mainly the ability to recognize some germ
as having the story possibility, then the imagination to expand
it, and lastly the will to work at it until it is improved
to the readable state. Germ recognition ten per
cent., imagination ten per cent. and hard work eighty per
cent.
Clyde B. Hough: I do map out my stories ahead. One
of the first things that I must have after the plot germ has
reached maturity is the climax. After that, and of second
importance only, is the title. All that I need to know
then is the high lights, the points along the way on which
the story makes its various turns. Then I sit down and
write the beginning, say the first typewritten page, three
or four times. Next I dictate straightaway from the title
to the climax, creating the minor situations and the action
as I go. Thus you see the ending is clearly in mind when
I begin. "To what extent do I revise?" Always twice.
Mostly three times and often four. The first revision is
devoted strictly to cutting, compressing.
Emerson Hough: I see it clear in advance and revise
but little.
A. S. M. Hutchinson: I start with the character, and
he or she, and the friends they assemble, do the rest.
Straightaway from the first word to the last.
What I would call the ultimate goal is, when I start, at
the end of a long passage. It is the characters' business
(they having suggested it) somehow to get there.
My second novel I rewrote almost entirely. Normally, I
revise scarcely at all.
Inez Haynes Irwin: I map out a story as carefully as
possible in advance. The beginning and ending and the
thread of the psychological development are ordinarily
perfectly clear when I start. It is the middle or developing
portion which is most difficult for me to write. It is
difficult because it is always vague in my mind. I work
[pg 62]
my stories out on paper and make several versions. I
write my first ten pages three or four times and the whole
story at least twice before it goes to the stenographer.
Will Irwin: I can not begin writing on a story until I
see its framework pretty clearly in mind. Getting that
framework ready involves several days of beating my
brains in agony. Recently I have found it helpful to try
to write out from time to time a synopsis. Especially must
I see the end—know toward what I am working. The incidents
which develop the situation, I invent as I write.
Usually, I begin at the beginning and write straight
through. However, I sometimes find after a few days that
I have begun in the wrong place. That happened to my
latest story. Having finished a scene with which I intended
originally to lead off, I realized that I had begun
too far along in the action. Getting in the background of
previous events made the writing awkward, clogged the
action. I went back therefore and began with a previous
event. Then I patched these two fragments together, and
proceeded to the next scene. As concerns the main structure
and method of a story, usually I revise very little.
When the first draft is finished, I spend two or three days
in "tightening up" the English and enriching the conversations
and descriptions. I am impatient of rewriting—probably
a lingering trace of old newspaper habits.
However, I am married to a fiction writer, who reads my
first drafts. Quoting "Merton of the Movies," "she is
more than a wife, she is a pal and, I may add, my severest
critic." Once or twice, when I have told my story awkwardly,
she has sent me back to my desk to write it all over
again from another angle of approach.
Charles Tenney Jackson: As for "mapping out a
story in advance," that is done as far as may be. A very
good thing, indeed, but not indispensable. Very often the
ending is not in sight. And I revise but little. I start a
story with a lead pencil, write a few hundred words, and
invariably turn to the typewriter to go on with it. That
[pg 63]
first hurried dig may be ignored entirely thereafter, but
the thread of this beginning is in my mind all through.
Very often I set down the incidents, numbering them in
order as they seem to fit in, and this stamps the scheme in
mind for work, although I rarely turn to it. In fact, the
yarn goes on to succeeding impressions, keeping always the
first idea that was its genesis.
Frederick J. Jackson: Do I map it out in advance?
Often. Just as often I don't. If I map out a story in advance,
have a regular skeleton laid out, the story is apt to
be stilted. I'd rather have just a hazy idea of what I'm
leading up to, or, better still, a definite climax, nothing
more.
When I can just ramble on and write snappy stuff that
interests myself it will be a good yarn. If it interests me,
it will interest the editor. I'm rather cold-blooded about
my own stuff. I have a jaundiced eye when I look at it. I
like a story about a character like "Mr. Conway."
I never write a story in pieces to be joined together. Always
straightaway. Make one continuous first draft—slow
work at times—and then copy it over. Typing over my
original draft is about the total extent of my revision, except
for a word here and there.
About the ending clearly in mind. I wrote about a
dozen stories—most of them had the same plot—the old
"perfect crime" that proves decidedly imperfect—and in
every one of these I always had the ending clearly in mind.
That's all I had to work on. I'd build up a story to fit
the climax. A different method here from that which I
usually employ.
Mary Johnston: I usually see it in advance, see the
whole more or less completely. I do not mean, of course, in
full detail. Usually it is written straight through from beginning
to end. The type of ending is in mind from the
first. Not necessarily the detail. In revision I excise a
good deal.
John Joseph: The story begins always with a character;
[pg 64]
then a plot is conceived to "fit" that character.
After the main plot is outlined (always mentally) situations
or episodes, and dialogue to fit, are studied out in
the rough. The typewriter now comes into play and the
story is written "straightaway," with the ending always
in sight. It runs to five thousand words perhaps. Frequently
I roll the paper back and write between the lines.
I pay some attention to phraseology, but am not particular.
At page ten, perhaps, an idea comes which belongs on
page five, so I turn back and jot it down between the lines
with a pencil. When the first draft is finished there are
always several pages that are a perfect mess of scribbling
between the lines, so I rewrite these pages and renumber
on through to the end. I have then perhaps a six-thousand-word
story. I begin then at page one and rewrite the entire
story, paying pretty careful attention to the phrasing.
This copy will be nearly as badly scribbled and double-lined
as the first, so it has all to be written again. This
time very careful attention is paid to phrasing. Certain
episodes may be rewritten many times, independently. (A
recent page was written fifteen times—and then it didn't
suit me.) With the third draft the story is complete except
for a more careful typing and an occasional minor change.
Lloyd Kohler: Until recently I always mapped a
piece, as a carpenter puts up a house. Then, when I was
sure that I had the whole story well in mind, the actual
writing was begun. This, in my mind, is the only reasonable
way for the beginner to proceed, who has his hands
full without worrying along as to how it will all end. It
should be understood that I only plan the main trend of
the story—the situations—in advance; the smaller details,
most of the conversation, etc., must be left for the actual
writing of the story. The reason for this is easily seen:
If everything, even the smaller details, were figured out in
advance the result would likely be a fearfully dull story—Heaven
knows it's hard enough to keep a breath of real
life in them, anyway.
[pg 65]
But although I'm strong for mapping a story out in advance,
I'll confess that there are even drawbacks to this
method. The writer who said that he wrote the first word
of a story and trusted to the Lord for the next withheld,
consciously or not, the real reason for his use of this
method. The reason, or at least one of the reasons, was
that the fellow who writes half or two-thirds of a story
without knowing what the end will be has at least the big
advantage that he can be assured his interest in his story is
not going to flag before it is finished. And as long as the
writer's first enthusiasm in a story can be kept fresh and
vigorous, the story will not likely be dull. I want to admit,
right here, that regardless of the good points, the author
who is bold enough to follow this method is flirting with
danger.
I always start at the beginning of a story and plug away
until the last word is written. May the Lord help me if I
ever attempt to write a story in pieces to be finally joined
together—it's hard enough to keep something akin to artistic
proportion without doing the thing up in bits and
then splicing the pieces.
Now the ending of the story is different. Although I
know, generally speaking, how the story is going to end before
it is ever begun, I rarely know just exactly what the
ending is going to be until it is reached. That sounds like
a paradox, but it isn't, and I know you'll understand what
I'm getting at.
I don't do a great deal of revising—even though I am
well aware that I am far from being a master hand at fiction
writing. I believe that there is a danger of revising
being carried so far as to take the life out of a story. Personally,
I'd much rather see a few grammatical mistakes
than a dreadfully dull story.
Harold Lamb: Usually the story is thought out fully
in advance (and as often changed from beginning to end
in the telling). The telling of it is straightaway, with an
ending tucked away somewhere in the back of the brain.
[pg 66]
As to revision, very, very little, except of wording and
often an accident altered after story is finished.
Sinclair Lewis: Map it out in advance. Straightaway
as a whole. I revise enormously—five or six times with
great care.
Hapsburg Liebe: I try to map it out in advance, but
I never write it as it has been mapped out, unless I'm
working to one of those darned mechanical things called a
surprise climax—and even then I often have to change
everything but the climax. Usually I begin to write when
I have my situation. When I've finished this, the rest is
apt to come naturally. A lot of my stories have fallen
flat at the end, however, with this method. But if I mull
the story over in my head too long before I begin to write
it, it dies. How much do I revise? In the case of any of
my best stories, I know the thing by memory when it is
finished. I revise that much—over and over and over.
I've wondered if I wasn't in too big a hurry in the first
writing; it sets, perhaps, like cement.
Romaine H. Lowdermilk: I map out in advance. The
ending is in sight. But...! The map constantly changes
as I go along. The ending advances or retreats or dissolves
and changes completely as new angles creep in.
But I must have the map and the definite goal before I
start. I can, and sometimes do, "let the story tell itself as
I write," but the result is appalling. I must set a goal and
make each paragraph and each incident carry the action
along toward that definite end. I do, sometimes, write the
last two pages, and a few pages here and there in the body,
or work out a choice incident, or one that presents the most
difficulties in the way of brief expression, before beginning.
It is like collecting material. I get it together and
fit it in where it seems best suited. Anyway, when I get
the whole thing down on paper, all jumbled as it may be,
I rewrite—on the typewriter—trying to use my brain as I
go along, and then view the result. Usually I mark, cut
and interline every page, using a system of proof-reading
[pg 67]
all my own, then—rewrite. I do this three or four times.
Then comes the final draft. How careful I am to get this
exactly right! No erasures, no vague sentences, no misspelling,
no "wrong" words. Then, when it is done I read
it over. Alas! There is a mistake on every page and gross
writing everywhere. I check, mark and interline that
lovely last copy until it looks like all the rest. Then I
flop the carbon copy over and make a new draft using the
backs of the second sheets for the carbon so as to preserve
both versions in case an editor suggests changes. And I
usually find the first version the better! Upon reading
this final and hard-boiled edition I am no better satisfied
with it than with any of the others and could go on cutting
and revising forever, but I call it quits and lay it in the
laps of the gods of the editorial offices. Most of my stories
so far have been sent back for some change before final
acceptance. I certainly do appreciate that and I take
great pleasure in the revising. For then, and then only, do
I know how the story is striking the editors and, when I
know that, I can revise like a bear-cat. At last I am on
solid ground, whereas before I have been groping on quicksand.
I like to revise and when I know exactly what an
editor wants I have always been able to deliver the goods.
It is not only inspirational, but I work with a surety I do
not feel when fighting along with the preliminaries.
Eugene P. Lyle, Jr.: Lord, yes—I have to map it out
in advance. Then there's a rough draft. This may be
pretty fully written out in parts, and other parts be
sketchy, which have to be filled out later. There may be
pieces—merely notes—which are later joined into the
whole. The ending is nearly always in my mind when I
begin—at least some ending, though this may be later
changed as the actual writing develops the story. I revise
and revise and revise.
Rose Macaulay: I map it roughly out in advance,
altering as I go along.
Crittenden Marriot: I revise as I write; that is, I go
[pg 68]
back from any place and rework till I catch up again. Finally,
I go over the whole thing once, have it typed and go
over it again.
Homer I. McEldowney: I map out my story before I
actually begin writing—doping out a skeleton, complete,
and with the conclusion determined. Then when I write,
I write it as a whole. My revision is of diction and mechanical
make-up, not plot.
Ray McGillivray: With slight modifications—usually
the requirements of taste or demand of the market I wish
to please—I have the struggle, main developing incidents,
plan for character portrayal, and the climax in mind—or
in a note-book—before I begin. A few times I have started
with a situation and handful of characters, giving both factors
free rein in naming their own destiny. Invariably
such a story shoots off at a tangent—and is laid to rest,
after much travel, in an old steamer trunk, my potter's
field for rejects.
Helen Topping Miller: My stories work themselves
out. Sometimes I know what the denouement is to be,
oftener it works itself out very differently from what I
had intended. I write the story as a whole, and very seldom
revise my original version very much.
Anne Shannon Monroe: The story is pretty well in
my mind from beginning to end before I begin to write
it, but it always follows out little by-paths in coming to its
end, of which I had no knowledge: I am as interested as
any reader could be to see how it is going to work its way
through. I follow the story, try to keep up with it, but
never dictate to it, never interfere. After it's well started
my hands are off. I revise four and five times,—sometimes
more: the longer I write, the more I revise.
L. M. Montgomery: I map everything out in advance.
When I have developed plot, characters and incidents in
my mind I write out a "skeleton" of the story or book. In
the case of a book, I divide it into so many "sections"—usually
eight or nine—representing the outstanding periods
[pg 69]
in the story. In each section I write down what characters
are necessary, what they do, what their setting is,
and quite a bit of what they say. When the skeleton is
complete I begin the actual writing, and so thoroughly
have I become saturated with the story during the making
of the skeleton that I feel as if I were merely describing
and setting down something that I have actually seen happening,
and the clothing of the dry bones with flesh goes
on rapidly and easily. This does not, however, prevent
changes taking place as I write. Sometimes an incident I
had thought was going to be very minor assumes major
proportions or vice versa. Sometimes, too, characters grow
or dwindle contrary to my first intentions. But on the
whole I follow my plan pretty closely and the ending is
very often written out quite fully in the last "section"
before a single word of the first chapter is written. I revise
very extensively and the "notes" with which my completed
manuscript is peppered are surely and swiftly
bringing down my typist's gray hairs with sorrow to the
grave. But these revisions deal only with descriptions and
conversation. Characters, plot and incidents are never
changed.
Frederick Moore: I map it out in advance, but I rarely
follow the first planning. However, the ending is most
vital—and it is only now and then that I use the end I
started with; for instance, I once plotted a short story
which I expected would not run more than three thousand
words—and wound up with a novel a year later which
totaled one hundred thousand words. I revise to the extent
that I feel a story is never done. I had eight drafts
of the novel referred to above by the time I thought it fit
to submit to an editor. Six drafts on a short story gets the
job into workmanlike condition—but the editor sees only
the few pages of complete story.
Talbot Mundy: I hardly ever map out in advance.
My right hand hardly ever knows what the left is doing.
But I'm not convinced that this is good. Just as an artist
[pg 70]
usually maps out his canvas in advance, without actually
seeing the finished picture, so I believe that it will usually
pay the writer to fix at least certain definite landmarks
for his guidance.
Order is heaven's first law.
I write the story straightaway as a whole. The end is
never in view (or almost never) when I first begin. But
I am beginning to believe that (for me at any rate) that is
an important formula—Visualize the end of the story first.
It is certainly a prime essential of drama to provide a clear
view of the main character just at the close; and I think
that principle underlies story-writing. The writer should
have in mind throughout a clear view of his main character
as he will be at the story's end. The point had not
occurred to me until I commenced this answer; but the
more I study it the more strongly it convinces. That, and
be concrete all through the piece.
Kathleen Norris: I map it out completely in advance,
even to the words, and write it almost as rapidly as I could
read it. My hard work is done while walking alone, or
while playing patience, over which game the whole story
unrolls in orderly sequence, as a rule. But frequently
after beginning a story I find a better way to do it, and I
have destroyed as much as sixty thousand words and then
gone back to my solitaire and planned it afresh.
Anne O'Hagan: I map it out more or less before I begin
to write. Not on paper, but in my mind. That is, I
have a pretty clearly defined notion of what I believe the
outcome of the experiences they will undergo will have
upon my chief characters. I never write a story in pieces
to be joined together, although once or twice, when I have
laid aside a story because it wouldn't live at all, I have
found after a time that I needed either an introductory
chapter or an interjected one to make my characters real.
I do a good deal of revision, more in verbal detail than in
arrangement.
Grant Overton: I do not map the story out in advance.
[pg 71]
I let it tell itself as I write it. I write it, beginning
at the beginning and work it out to the end. The end
may not be at all in mind when I begin. I do all my work,
practically, on the first draft and revise only once and
then very lightly. I aim to get it right the first time, even
if that means going slowly.
Sir Gilbert Parker: Character, then plot, then as a
whole, and the end is always in my mind from the first.
Constant revision.
Hugh Pendexter: Often; but never follow the outlined
plot, as it is impossible for me to vision what will
emanate from the result of the first dialogue or incident.
In book-lengths I have my background thoroughly in mind,
decide on the time of the story and have for stimulus of the
action something pivotal in the history of our country. I
write, say, fifty thousand words, then rewrite to eliminate
and interpolate according to the need of late developments;
then finish in one or two installments, and rewrite.
The ending usually is the moment when the accumulation
of conditional causes causes the hinge to turn, in other
words, the big climax. Revise very little. The story unfolds
in clear-cut pictures that are as real to me as if I
were seeing the incidents take place. Therefore, aside
from correcting mechanical errors, it has to go as written.
Clay Perry: In general I make an effort to map out
the story so that it has at least one big incident, one big
character, and usually begin to write to see what will happen
to them. I write it straightaway. Sometimes the ending
is clearly in mind, sometimes not; if the characters develop
strongly, often they furnish the ending, even when I
have one in mind, and often different from the one I had
in mind. I revise always, once, sometimes twice, and have
revised four and five times.
Michael J. Phillips: I find I have answered most of
this in the above. I can't start with a character or a situation
and wander. I have to see it through, except that perhaps
in a long story the characters rather take the bits in
[pg 72]
their teeth and give me a ride. New incidents are interjected
that way in a long story; in a short one, almost never.
I revise like this. I write the story without searching
too closely for the right word or phrase, preferring to go
over it afterward and correct and fit and cut. I read the
whole thing in the rough draft, then revise carefully.
Then write for the editor, and revise that somewhat, occasionally
to the extent of rewriting a page or two. Usually,
rewriting is cold potatoes to me—that is, after the
story is finished and ready and has been turned down,
and some one, an editor or other, suggests I do something
to it. I haven't any luck with rewriting. I want to go on
with something else. That is a closed incident, more or
less, like a yesterday's newspaper story. I note that a
good many unsuccessful writers carefully write one thing,
and then agonize over it, polishing and shining it and
changing it and anxiously trying to reach and satisfy all
objections, possible and impossible.
Thus they waste a lot of time, use up a lot of creative
faculty on a dead horse, and get nowhere in the end. I
feel that there was a good idea in the story, but I can
evolve as good a one or better to-morrow; and if I can't, I
have no place in the writing game. Ideas are the bricks
with which we build. If you have but one idea, or one idea
a year, we won't get many houses constructed.
I don't write in pieces to be joined together. I start and
go right through to the finish. I know the opening sentence,
perhaps the whole opening paragraph almost word
for word, and the closing paragraph before I touch the
typewriter.
Walter B. Pitkin: I have to map a story well in advance—though
some of the minor details shape themselves
as I sketch in the first draft. I have never written in
pieces and joined these together. And I simply can not
imagine how anybody can pick up a pen and start writing
without knowing where he is headed. (I know a few
authors who do this though.)
[pg 73]
I revise every story at least twice, clean through. And
I deliberately avoid trying to make my first draft a piece of
good writing. I treat a first draft precisely as a painter
treats his canvas and his subject-matter at the first blocking
in; it is nothing but a rough shaping-up of the major
features. All the minor details are ignored for the sake of
the deeper structure.
I see the main ending pretty clearly when I start.
E. S. Pladwell: Always mapped out in advance. Mentally,
not on paper. Sometimes I drive for a hundred
miles, thinking as the motor purrs. I write a story on the
accordeon system—write everything in sequence and then
condense. The ending must be clearly in mind. This is
my one rule. If I know where I am going, it makes little
difference what road I take.
Lucia Mead Priest: There is no hard and fast method
of working for me. I should judge by this last winter's
action that my mind does a vast amount of milling before
my thoughts are concrete enough for a writing-pad. Usually
I draft, sketchily. I have a skeleton plan of what I
hope to do.
I live much in what I am trying to create. A thought—an
action, a phrase or a word will pop out at me and I
write it down. But as a rule I write the story straightaway
as a whole even though I make patchwork of it later.
Eugene Manlove Rhodes: Map it out in advance.
Either in pieces or straightaway. Ending clearly in mind
from the start. Revise endlessly.
Frank C. Robertson: Having the genesis of the story
as above, I usually map out the rest of it in my mind in a
general way, leading characters, an inciting motive, a crisis
and a climax. I may do this in ten minutes or I may stew
over it for that many days; then I begin to write it out as
completely as I can. I never attempt to block out a story
in outline on paper. This, I read, is all wrong; but if I
make a skeleton draft of a story, a skeleton it remains until
the end. It seems to tie me down, and the story lacks the
[pg 74]
buoyancy that comes from spontaneous thinking as I go
along, with the characters living their own lives, so to
speak. I know my characters and my setting, so I have no
fear of the story becoming inconsistent. However, the
ending is usually in my mind when I start and the characters
go logically to it. When the first draft is finished
I let it cool off while I write something else, and then I go
over it again, pruning and padding as the case demands
and changing the structure when needed. The more I
write the more I find that it pays to revise, and now a
story usually gets three or four rewritings. Before I began
to sell any it only got one.
Ruth Sawyer: My stories are pretty well mapped out
before I start writing. But there is always a time in the
process of writing when the character or plot, whichever
dominates, gets a firmer control of the story than I do; and
for this reason the story is quite likely to end differently
than I originally intended.
Chester L. Saxby: I used to write on little definite
plot and seek the development as I went. That, I have
come to find, is a poor way to get results and usually
makes for wandering and uncertainty in the writing. One
does not hold a reader's mind by maundering. The blind
can't lead the blind. One does not even tell a story that
way, but rather potters. I get the plot idea strongly in
mind and lay in the detail that will give the most vivid
feeling of the point that otherwise will be merely seen, not
felt at all. That's character stuff. I do not outline; I
can not hold myself down to that. Often the story takes a
turn of its own, but I believe that changed plot development
is in my mind, too, or it would not come out. I revise
very little. It is hard for me to revise on my own criticism.
An editor is indispensable for that purpose. He
can actually jerk you out of a warped perspective into
which you've hypnotised yourself past comprehending.
Barry Scobee: Really, no. I must have the ending,
the climax, the conclusion—usually one and the same thing,
[pg 75]
with me—clearly in mind before I start to write. Once or
twice I have written the last page of my story before any
other part.
I get an idea, a situation or condition and look it over
or let it browse in my mind a month or a year, or three
years, and when I wish to use it I figure out what the logical,
or illogical, ending would naturally be, and that is my
situation. I must have it before I begin to write. I must
know what my destination is before I start on the journey,
but I do not need to know what all I shall see on the
trip. That develops as I write.
Having the conclusion in mind, I write the title—and
seldom change it afterward—then begin on my story. I
have written the first three or four hundred words of
stories as many as fifteen times, and usually three or four
times. By then I am launched and I go ahead rapidly—one
thousand eight hundred words in four hours or so.
Sometimes I get checked up. It is because interest is lagging,
due to my getting in stuff that doesn't properly support
that conclusion I have in mind, or something of that
sort. Then I go back to the point where it seems to have
got started wrong and write, and write, perhaps, until I
get on the right track again. It may be that the mistake is
because I am getting out of character, or dwelling too long
on an insignificant phase. Anyhow, I am developing a
hunch as to when the story interest is beginning to lag.
Then when I have written through—the copy pencilled
and scribbled until I can scarcely read it myself—I clean
copy. There I exercise great care, then send it to the editors.
The revising and plot arrangement and the like are
all accomplished in that first slow-going piece of work.
In clean copying I do just what is signified—clean up the
manuscript.
R. T. M. Scott: I usually let the story tell itself. Sometimes
I map it out in advance but, if I follow the map, I
have a devil of a time to sell the story. I write the story
straightaway. The quicker I write the quicker it sells.
[pg 76]
When I begin I seldom have the slightest idea of the ending.
I have almost come to the conclusion that it is better
to write a new story than to revise—except when I receive
an editorial request for certain changes.
Robert Simpson: Nowadays, when I am reasonably
satisfied that I have a story to write, I try to map it out
roughly before going ahead. As a rule, however, I have
more trouble with the first paragraph than any other part
of the story or book. For the greater part the story proper
writes itself, and I write straight through from beginning
to end, revising, chapter by chapter, as I go along. In
some instances I have to go back and revise bits of the earlier
chapters, nearly always with a view to boiling them
down. Only the roughest conception of the ending is in
mind when I begin, but I always have an eye on the possible
climax at almost every paragraph. Revision is at
once the curse and the blessing of my writing life. I don't
like it, yet I get more satisfaction out of it than from any
other angle of writing. In a recent story of mine a certain
dramatic "moment" occupied nearly three pages. When
I finished revising the "moment"—and it cost me a day
and a half to do it—it looked more like a moment and
consisted of just three lines. I can still exult over that
little bit of revision; but I always begin the job by threatening
to use an ax on the typewriter or murdering my
family or something.
Arthur D. Howden Smith: Always map it out in advance,
but sometimes alter plot as I go along. Always revise
and finish a chapter definitely before I go to the next.
Theodore Seixas Solomons: I map it out in advance,
mentally only; later recording the mentally conceived synopsis
of plot and action development, or only recording a
part. In respect to this main development—the general
architecture of the fictional structure—this is prearranged,
cold-bloodedly, though I am hot-blooded and interested
enough and enjoy enough the coming to me of the lines of
plot. But I record them mentally or on paper and thenceforward
[pg 77]
follow them cold-bloodedly. But the detail, the
filling in, and sometimes much of the general action, especially
in longer stories and novels, is a matter of creation
and determination as I proceed with the writing. Sometimes
I change considerably, but never radically, the
structure lines at certain critical junctures in a long story.
I write it straightaway, as a whole, unless I happen
(rarely) to find my mind going ahead and interesting
itself creatively in some important future part of the
story, possibly my main, or a minor, crisis. Then I do not
hesitate to skip ahead and write it while it's hot.
The end is not clearly in mind in these mental and written
synopses (the latter, by the way, are usually brief;
even for a novel, referring to plot and story movement
alone, rarely exceed a thousand words). But the theme end
always is. I know in the larger, better sense how my story
is to end simply because it has formed itself to me from
nearly the beginning of the plotting as a single entity—à
la text work insistences. It can't change at the end organically
without making of the whole a monstrosity.
Ordinarily I have a rotten memory, even for my own
cogitations. But fictionally I possess a jewel. It works
this way. I have Mr. Plot-germ—the odd character confronting
some appropriate situation, or the situation or
incidents without any special character, and I say to myself,
now how shall I get the story out of this embryo that
I know is in it? Then plot material is drawn into my mind
from somewhere in the fancy and squared and fitted into
and around my foundation and ascertained by my critical
faculties to be appropriate or inappropriate, more or less.
An idea comes and goes—useless. Another comes and looks
propitious, but not unless something else, provisionally retained,
can be modified to suit it. A lot of material comes
on to the lot, one way, one time or another, and some is
hustled off, some immediately purchased and marked, and
some left to one side, or, tentatively permitted to stay
where it may finally lodge, if other things fit into it, later.
[pg 78]
Now all this would be rather cumbersome, complicated,
and altogether impossible to such a poor memory as mine if
it were not for what seems to be my peculiar faculty for
retaining a grasp of what I have conceived directly in
proportion to its degree of promise of utility. My memory
doesn't let go of any plot or incident—nor of any detail
matter, either—that is cognized as utilizable, in other
words, that is either outright purchased and designed
surely for use, or that has been tentatively held, in the
thought that before I get my problem worked out these, or
some of them, may be the very things needed in the
structure. Though I make notes, more or less, as I say, I
find I seldom have to refer to them. I always do as a precaution,
but it almost invariably transpires that I have
forgotten nothing.
In this preconstruction of a model for the story that is to
be written I concern myself, however, only with essentials.
I do not inhibit the flow into my mind of little bits of almost-text—detail,
expressions, description and the like. I
receive these as a listener might, approvingly or disapprovingly,
and I usually retain them (but not so surely as true
plot material). But my main creative business, which is
the only thing I attempt to spur, is in finding, out of the
trial suggestions of my fancy, the right main timbers for
the structure that satisfies the possibilities of the foundation
plot-germ, grown now into something like a theme or
fiction thesis. Thus the ghost of the story is born, the better
part of it, the complete theme and spirit of it. Then
I'm ready to write it—when I feel like it, which is usually
soon after the conception, though I can go weeks or months
without losing anything of what I have prefigured. The
discarded material has mostly vanished, to be recalled with
difficulty or not at all. The material that had been more
promising, and yet discarded, remains, in proportion to
the degree of suitability it had shown. The really suitable—and
adopted—remains forever clear in my mind. Seemingly,
with the recognition by my critical or creative judgment
[pg 79]
of that suitability, I have, as it were, nailed them into
the structure, and thenceforward they remain, visually almost!
Therefore I can not forget them, for I can almost
see them.
As to revision, it is a process that takes usually twice the
time that the original consumed, and, in the case of a short
story, probably three times.
Raymond S. Spears: I have written half a million
words to get eighty thousand words completed. Revision
is generally according to my wife's ideas, or, if I don't
agree at first, we work over till both are satisfied.
I have written a seventy-thousand-word serial without
knowing what the next paragraph would contain till more
than half-way through. This, I know, is wretched and
time-wasting practise—but once in a dozen times this
method brings my best stories.
Norman Springer: I always map the story out in advance
and write straightaway from beginning to a definite
ending. Sometimes, though, when half-way through
the yarn, a new complication, or a better ending is thought
of and the whole story is changed. But there is always a
definite end in view.
Revision. I hate it, and do it—sometimes. Not nearly
to the extent that I should. I write very slowly and previse.
That is, I carefully think over each situation and
think out each paragraph before I write it down.
Julian Street: I map it out. Talk it out, and make
notes on outline. The more sharply I have it outlined in
my mind, the less trouble I am likely to have in execution.
Revision, with me, consists chiefly in polishing, eliminating
awkwardness of phrase, undesirable repetitions of the same
word, and cutting.
T. S. Stribling: No, I don't exactly map it out, "I"
don't seem to have much to do with it. I simply sit around
and presently an incident will bob up, or a character or a
scene or a bit of scenery and, if the thing strikes me as
funny or pathetic or containing human interest, I sort of
[pg 80]
accept it mentally. If I am afraid of losing it I make a
note of it—and I usually do lose the note, but not the incident.
Then I stick about and wait for more characters,
more incidents, more of everything.
All this time I have a theme I want all these incidents
and characters to illustrate, and naturally I want all my
bits arranged in a climax. And the things apparently arrange
themselves. I am sure none of my readers can ever
be so surprised at what turns up in my stories as I myself.
It is so much more exciting than reading a novel that
I almost never read one.
No, the ending is not clearly in mind. I have a vague
notion of what I want—I know the mood I want to leave
my reader in and usually when I get him in that mood I
just quit writing.
I write every story three times, once with a pencil, twice
with a typewriter. My pencil draft doesn't make any
sense at all, my first typed copy is the story roughly told
with endless unnecessary ramifications, my third copy I
send to the editors.
Booth Tarkington: The answer differs with every
story.
W. C. Tuttle: I have never mapped out a story in my
life.
I do not bother about plots nor situations. A typewriter
and some paper seem to be all I require, and I let the
story tell itself. When my lead character gets bothersome
enough to worry me I know he is ready to tell me the story.
Lucille Van Slyke: I start with character every time
on a story, but I never let the story tell itself. Nor do I
ever write in pieces, as you call it, on a short story. In
working in book-length or serial-length things I work in
chapter lengths at a time. Ending is so clearly in mind
when I begin to write that it sometimes very much hampers
me; I have a petulant feeling that I wish I didn't
know so positively how it ends. I mean that I resent having
to build up a plausible reason for an ending that is
[pg 81]
so clear for me that it's inevitable whether logical or not!
I revise much too much—short stories I write not less than
four and sometimes as many as twenty times. And every
time I am less satisfied. Always find myself wishing I
could give my situation or plot to somebody who knew
how to write—the idealized story of my beginning seems so
many miles ahead of what I can get on paper.
Atreus von Schrader: I have found by cruel experience
that unless I have my entire story clearly in mind I
am apt to make a mess of it; chiefly because some character
in the yarn picks it up and runs away with it. I
write what amounts to a very rough copy of the whole
piece, from which I rewrite the finished copy. I have
heard of many writers who never revise, their tales springing
full-fledged and polished from their minds. Can this,
if true, be explained as resulting from an unusually clear
connection between their conscious and subconscious mentalities?
T. Von Ziekursch: I simply can not map out a story
in advance. The whole thing seems to start in a haze and
work nearer until it bursts out full and ready. I can not
write them fast enough, it is always so clear. In four or
five hours a five-thousand-word story is written. Only
once has it been necessary to revise anything other than
the punctuation, and that story was a failure.
Henry Kitchell Webster: I must see my objective, in
general terms, before I can begin a story, but I am careful
not to commit myself to any predetermined mechanical
devices. These must spring, seriatim, out of the situations
which the characters themselves create. I am obliged,
sometimes, to do a great deal of revising with an ax, but I
don't do much of it with the smaller implements.
G. A. Wells: My chief pleasure is walking. I find
greater satisfaction in taking the roads and paths as I come
to them than in having previously fixed upon a route and
destination. The same way with a story. I let it choose its
own route, though I do dictate the general direction. I
[pg 82]
think most stories tell themselves anyhow. If the characters
and situations do not occur logically, automatically,
the writer should not force them. At least not too much.
It is one of the rules of mechanics never to try to force a
nut on a bolt. It strips the threads. Forcing characters
and events in a story strips it of spontaneity. When I
read a good story I am satisfied that the writer merely recorded
what happened instead of making things happen
himself.
Unless one has a good memory, however, it is a good rule
in the longer stretches to have some plan of work. At least
the principal characters and the events should be set down
on paper. New ideas are occurring and being incorporated
all the time during building. While writing a long story—fifty
thousand words or more, say—if new characters and
incidents don't pop up it is a sure sign that the story is
not moving properly.
At present I have on hand six stories that I have been
writing over a period of about three years. They run from
fifty to eighty thousand words. They are all complete in
the first draft, though none of them has ever been submitted
for the reason that I am not satisfied with them
yet. One of these stories in particular was planned carefully
from start to finish and a detailed synopsis made.
When I had written about thirty thousand words of it an
eccentric old gentleman popped in and demanded a part.
And the funny part of it is that he "belongs." I don't
understand how I planned the story without him in the beginning.
Therefore I would say that it is essential that a plot be
kept elastic. It should be like a pot of vegetable soup
simmering on the back of the stove—one never knows when
one may find an extra potato or a lump of meat to add.
Generally I write straightaway from start to finish,
though there are exceptions. More often than not the end
of a story is vague when I begin. I would rather have it
so and let the story work itself out to arrive in a neighborhood
[pg 83]
near that which was vaguely conceived. I began a
story only last night and have no idea what it's to be. My
imagination pictured a cowboy riding into a small town,
whistling. He came to that town for a purpose, but he
hasn't told me yet what it is. I am letting him go his own
gait and he is.
Revision never hurt a story. "Revise, revise, revise" is
one of the best rules ever offered writers. I don't follow
it as I should because I haven't the patience for it. I
nearly always revise twice from the first draft, however,
and at times as much as eight revisions follow the first
draft. I have a story in my desk that must have been
revised at least fifty times. The first draft ran about ten
thousand words. It now stands at about thirty-five hundred
words. This story is not intended for sale, though I
may eventually sell it if I can. I am writing it simply for
my own pleasure and practise in revision. I hope to bring
it down to two thousand words. The work I have put in
on it has done me good.
I once tried an experiment. I took my time and wrote
the first draft of a story in manuscript. It sold the first
time out. I have tried to duplicate that performance several
times since and failed each time.
William Wells: I have a very good idea of what the
outline and main incidents of the story are to be before I
set down a word and write the climax first, then build up
to it. I sketch out scenes and incidents in skeleton form,
but in no regular order, then arrange them to make a connected
whole, start at the beginning and write the story,
filling in and rounding out as I go along.
Most of the story comes to me as I write. That is, when
I sit down I haven't the slightest idea of just what words I
shall use or of many of the scenes or incidents; they just
appear. And I revise to beat the band, two or three times.
Ben Ames Williams: Save in one or two rare cases, I
have always outlined my stories in advance. The exceptions
were novelettes in which I knew in a general way
[pg 84]
what I wanted to do—a trend of character—and let this
trend develop as I went along. I write from the beginning
to the end. The end is usually as clearly in mind as
though it were already written, before I begin to write. I
revise until I can no longer discover ways to improve the
story.
Honore Willsie: I block the whole story out to the
end before I begin the actual writing. Then I write it
straight through, long hand, let it rest for a while, write it
through long hand again and turn it over to a stenographer.
I do very little revising. The story is too clearly
planned before I begin to need much of that.
H. C. Witwer: I always map a story out very carefully
in advance, having all my ingredients well in hand.
I never let the story "write itself." I write it straightaway,
as a whole, with the climax always in mind when I
start. Revise once. Revising being cutting anywhere from
two thousand to five thousand words out of what must be
a short story, i. e., five to six thousand words. That's my
greatest trouble, cutting 'em. When I first began to write
fiction in 1915 I had a great deal of difficulty stretching a
story out to four thousand words. Now my first draft will
run anywhere from ten thousand to twelve thousand
words!
William Almon Wolff: To some extent I map out a
story—sometimes. I can't follow a rigidly prepared scenario,
though; all sorts of things happen, in the writing, to
upset such plans as I do have. I write a story whole, always.
As to revision my method is, I suppose, wasteful and inefficient,
but I have no choice. I really can't separate
first writing and revision, because they go on together. I
begin by writing as if there were to be no revision—good
paper, carbon, everything. Understand—I know I'm going
to revise, but if I admit that, if I try to economize by
using cheap paper, or to save the trouble of making a carbon,
I can't write a line. Well, I go on until I say to myself—"This
[pg 85]
won't do!" Then I start over—usually from
the beginning. I may have done two or six or a dozen
pages; it doesn't matter. And I may do that twenty times.
As a result what is, technically, my first draft, is a
pretty thoroughly revised story. As a rule all except the
last page or two will have been written from three to six
or seven times. And then, very often, I rewrite the whole
story, from the start, although some pages won't be
changed at all and on some there will be only a few trivial
changes.
Edgar Young: Map it out ahead, seeing the climax
very clearly, although many details that come up now and
then make changes necessary and often help and sometimes
cause a man to quit a story.
Summary
Of 110 answering there are 51 who map out a story in
advance—2 of these very carefully, 5 somewhat, 1 generally,
1 a little, the remainder habitually. Those mapping
out only in general number 32, while 46 let the story tell
itself, a few of the latter being included also among the 32.
Who is sufficiently rash to venture a general rule on the
subject? Each mind must find its own best method and
only experience can be the teacher.
There are 10 who write a story a piece here and a piece
there, one of them writing two-thirds and then revising;
51 write straightaway, 3 of these qualifying with "usually"
and 2 with "sometimes."
Having the end clearly in mind when they begin, 60, 3
qualifying with "usually," 3 with "in general," 5 with
"sometimes," 1 with "fairly definitely."
As to extent of revision 84 answer. Omitting those mentioning
the number of revisions, the remainder may be
classed: much revision, 21; some, 10; little, 9; very little,
19; none, 1. The record where number of revisions is
specifically given runs somewhat as follows: 0 to 2 times
(1); 1 time (3); 1 to 2 (1); 1 to 4 (2); 1 to 5 (1); 2
times (1); 2 or more (2); 2 to 3 (1); 2 to 4 (1); 2 to 8
[pg 86]
(11); 3 times (1); 3 to 4 (2); 3 to 15 (1); 4 to 5 (1); 4
to 20 (1); 5 to 6 (1); 6 to 8 (1); up to 12 times (1).
All the way from none to much, from 0 to 20 or possibly
more. There can be no rule. There are some who ruin
their work if they give it more than a revision for details;
some whose first draft is too crude to serve as more than
foundation for the completed structure. There is only one
sound teacher in each case—experience.
[pg 87]
QUESTION III
1. When you read a story to what extent
does your imagination reproduce the
story-world of the author—do you actually
see in your imagination all the characters,
action and setting just as if you
were looking at an actual scene? Do you
actually hear all sounds described, mentioned
and inferred, just as if they were
real sounds? Do you taste the flavors in a
story, so really that your mouth literally
waters to a pleasant one? How real does
your imagination make the smells in a
story you read? Does your imagination
reproduce the sense of touch—of rough or
smooth contact, hard or gentle impact or
pressure, etc.? Does your imagination
make you feel actual physical pain corresponding,
though in a slighter degree, to
pain presented in a story? Of course you
get an intelligent idea from any such mention,
but in which of the above cases does
your imagination produce the same results
on your senses as do the actual stimuli
themselves?
2. If you can really "see things with your
eyes shut," what limitations? Are the
pictures you see colored or more in black
and white? Are details distinct or
blurred?
3. If you studied solid geometry, did it give
you more trouble than other mathematics?
4. Is your response limited to the exact degree
to which the author describes and
makes vivid, or will the mere concept set
you to reproducing just as vividly?
5. Do you have stock pictures for, say, a village
church or a cowboy, or does each case
produce its individual vision?
6. Is there any difference in behavior of
your imagination when you are reading
stories and when writing them?
7. Have you ever considered these matters
as "tools of your trade"? If so, to what
extent and how do you use them?
This question received in the questionnaire as much space
as all the other questions combined because it was designed
to open up a field that is practically new ground.
When a student under Professor J. V. Denney at Ohio
State University twenty-five years ago, our class was much
surprised to learn that people vary tremendously in their
ability to respond to the descriptions or imagery of an
author. I, as an example, had taken it for granted that
everybody saw, in his imagination, everything mentioned
in a story, was much surprised to learn that some saw
little or nothing and still more surprised to learn that
some people had a similar ability, almost entirely lacking
in myself, to hear, taste and smell as vividly as I saw. In
the years that followed I questioned a great many writers
and found that practically none of them was aware of this
difference and that none at all had considered it a matter
that might have decided bearing upon their own writing—their
effort to convey to the reader what was present in
their own consciousness.
Until the subject was brought up in a book of my own
a year ago I had chanced never to see it mentioned in print
[pg 89]
or hear it referred to again by an author, editor or anybody
else, yet during twenty years as an editor case after
case has arisen in which ignorance of this simple phenomenon
has proved a serious stumbling-block to a writer's
progress. An author, for example, with vivid powers of
imaginative visualization deems it a waste of words to describe
what he believes every one will, on the mere mention,
see as vividly and fully as he himself does, and as a result
his stories when they reach his readers are not at all what
he thought they were. To many his story-world is a mere
land of ghosts moving in fog, without detail, color, individuality
or reality. Another writer, himself lacking
visual imagination, in the effort to put on paper a story-world
capable of giving him a sense of reality uses so many
brush-strokes that a large part of his readers, needing only
a suggestion, are bored and read no more. A third writer,
his own imagination insensitive to appeals to the senses of
hearing, taste and smell, makes no such appeals in his
writing and thereby fails to approximate full response
from many readers. Another, with an imagination particularly
sensitive to sound stimuli, gives to a story the appeal
strongest to himself, neglects visual and other appeals
and bores part of his audience with appeals that can not
reach them while he gives to others not enough stimuli to
keep them interested.
What, then, should be the general rule of procedure?
There can't be any, but since readers vary so radically and
fundamentally in ability to respond to sense appeals, any
author, new or established, who in ignorance of this fact
attempts to reach them on the theory that the responses of
all of them are identical with his own is going to fall far
short of his potential success as a writer. The following
answers from more than a hundred writers will show that
most of them are working without knowledge of this basic
variation in imagination response of readers.
The part of the questionnaire bearing on imagination
was designed to bring out (1) the differences of readers in
[pg 90]
natural ability to respond, (2) the resultant differences in
effect upon readers of the presence, degree or absence of
certain sets of stimuli in a story—in other words, the extent
to which a story is dependent for success upon the use
of such stimuli, (3) a general idea of the relative importance
of stimuli to the various senses, (4) the extent to
which the imagination differences were recognized by writers
and allowed for in their work, and (5) since there
seemed no available data on any part of the subject, the
securing of any chance information that might shed new
light.
As elsewhere in the questionnaire the desire to make the
questions entirely unprejudiced in form, so that they
would in no way tend to shape answers toward what I
wished to see established, made them less definite and
direct than they could have been made at the time—and
very much less than they could be made now that the
answers have shown the infinity of variations in imagination
responses, the many interesting points not systematically
brought out or previously considered, and the great
difficulty, for any one analyzing his reactions for the first
time, in giving clear-cut answers. The answerers, remember,
received only the bare questions without even a hint
of the explanation and purpose as fully stated here. With
such explanation the questions probably seem sufficiently
definite. They did to the several authors and editors to
whom I turned for aid in compiling them. But the answers
will show how much more definiteness would be
needed for absolutely definite results.
More definite results should be secured from a questionnaire
framed for that purpose. But the following answers,
partly because of the very fact of comparative indefiniteness
in the questions, are so richly suggestive, so stimulating
and illuminating in a hundred ways, that their value
transcends any mere tabulation of specific results. Also,
for all practical purposes, they give sufficiently definite
data for satisfactory conclusions on the points aimed at.
[pg 91]
It is to be noted that in all but the last two questions on
imagination the authors were being asked as to their reactions,
not as writers, but as readers only, though in some
cases this distinction has not been maintained.
The first two questions may be considered as one. The
third, as to solid geometry, was partly to ascertain whether
those lacking visual imagination encountered unusual difficulty
in a study demanding ability to imagine a third
dimension in a figure drawn in only two dimensions; partly,
I confess, as a check on some who might, in all good
faith, analyze their abilities incorrectly; partly to show
the importance of securing proper imagination stimuli in
order to get complete understanding.
Indeed, the answers to these questions on visual imagination,
no matter who gives them, are bound to be incorrect
in a very appreciable number of cases. Surely of all subjects
the imagination is one of those that least lend themselves
to hard and fast analysis and iron-clad definition.
Also there can be no fixed standard or basis of comparison.
Add to these difficulties the similar ones connected
with the various sense impressions. No group of answers,
however truthful in intent, could be expected to provide
absolutely reliable data, yet very practical results can be
obtained and writers, as a class dealing particularly with
the imagination, are unusually equipped to furnish valuable
analyses. If some of those who answer have failed
entirely to grasp some of the essential distinctions, others
have been unfailingly clear-sighted and have given all that
could be asked in the way of nicety of analysis.
For example, some of them, like Theodore S. Solomons,
draw the most important distinction much more satisfactorily
than I was able to do in my questionnaire even after
years of considering the general subject, and the reader is
referred to them if my statement of this distinction is not
sufficiently clear.
The chief stumbling-block to any one attempting to answer
the first two questions is the demand to draw a definite
[pg 92]
line between an actual sense impression through the
imagination and a mere intellectual concept of that sense
impression. It is not so easy and simple as it may seem.
For example, if I may illustrate from my own case, I find
that my imagination gives me very good visual impressions
but none at all from the other senses. I can, with eyes shut
or open, look at any thing, person or place I have seen and
again see in my imagination any part or detail that I am
capable of remembering intellectually in any way—can
even see what I have never seen with my eyes, though of
course no one can imagine anything that is not built of
parts familiar to him through some kind of actual experience.
But do I see things as clearly as if they were before
my physical eye? It is easy to answer either yes or no,
with long arguments to support either side. If imagination
gives me blurred pictures, I can focus on any part of
them and make it so clear it almost hurts, yet the fact remains
that most of the picture is blurred. On the other
hand, that is exactly the case with the physical eye. But
isn't the field of exact vision smaller in one case than in
the other? And so on endlessly.
But to bring out the main distinction, consider my case
as to the other senses. At the mention of the luscious taste
of a pear I at once get a highly individualized memory of
the pear taste with no possible chance of confusing it with
the taste of anything else. It may make me long for a
pear. I can see a pear, the teeth biting into it, the juice
gushing from the broken, tooth-marked flesh, and I think
of the pleasure that taste brings. But I can not taste the
pear. Not to even the faintest degree. I can almost feel
its contact to my fingers, teeth, tongue, mouth, even the
contact of the extracted juice—so much so that I'm
tempted to say I have a little touch-imagination. But I
can not taste that pear.
I am equally negative as to smells. I am so sensitive to
contact that I almost shrink from the imagined grating of
a rough surface over my clothes. But I can not really
[pg 93]
feel that grating. For touch, smell and taste I have only
intellectual concepts. (Yet with me these actual senses
themselves are all rather more than normally acute.) But
I can undoubtedly see things through the eyes of my imagination.
As to hearing, frankly I am unable to answer. I
can not persuade myself I really hear sounds with my
imagination, yet I can imagine to myself any tune I know,
note for note. Probably I have an abortive sound-imagination
that could be developed to an easily recognizable degree
by practise and concentration.
You will get from the above at least a general idea of the
necessary distinction—a far better idea than my bare questions
could give to those who answered them. You will get,
also, an idea of the difficulty in giving definite answers.
Analyze your own imagination responses, refusing to be
satisfied with snap judgments. Try out some of your
friends. And bear this distinction in mind when reading
and weighing the answers that follow. Incidentally, please
extend to me a little sympathy over my task of trying to
classify and tabulate the data from these answers and remember
that any such tabulation must be more or less
arbitrary. If you doubt it, try to tabulate them!
Another distinction that some answerers failed to make
(and thereby added to the scope and value of our data) is
that between sense impressions and emotions. Just as one
can hear a real sound without emotion, so can one hear an
imaginary sound without emotion, or feel emotion in either
case. Nor, of course, is emotion dependent upon any sense
impression, since a thought, idea or bare concept can bring
it into being. The data on emotion is of decided interest,
but is to be considered quite apart from sense impressions
through the imagination, though an investigation as to the
effect of one upon the other might prove worth while.
The fourth question concerns the actual effect on the
reader of the kind of sense stimuli the author puts into
his writing, or of the absence of stimuli. Here a distinction
must be very carefully drawn in considering the answers.
[pg 94]
The real point is not whether an author in general
or a story as a whole interests or fails to interest, but
whether, all other factors aside, the descriptions (of places,
things, people, etc.,)—the stimuli to sensory imagination—interest
and why.
The fifth question on the imagination (as to stock pictures
instead of individualized ones) is of comparatively
little importance, except as it shows that some readers will
resort to stock pictures if the author fails to paint individualized
pictures that interest them.
The sixth question proves of minor importance and the
seventh will be taken up after the answers.
As many of the answers would lose in value if their continuity
were broken, there has been no attempt to separate
them into the seven divisions. Each of the seven, however,
has been separately tabulated, though any tabulation of
them must to some degree be arbitrary.
Answers
Bill Adams: Yes—imagination's the whole thing. I
hear the sounds, feel the roughness (ice on the ropes). I
shudder when it's cold and sweat when it's hot; if the
story runs as it should.
The pictures are colored in my mind as the actual coloring
would be. Gray in the sky—dull waters; red in the
west—crimson on the wave-tops—the sails reflecting the
lights of each.
Don't talk to me about geometry or math—damnable
things, all.
Haven't any stock pictures—the world too big and numerous.
Everything keeps hopping right along.
My trade is not writing stories as yet. Therefore I've
no tools for that trade (stories).
Samuel Hopkins Adams: The people, if they are well
presented, I see definitely; they move and breathe and
change expression. Upon considering your question, I
find that I do not hear them as plainly and definitely as I
see them. Although I have an unusually acute sense of
[pg 95]
smell—perhaps because I am not a smoker—I do not react
particularly to odor-motifs in fiction; nor to taste. I certainly
do not feel physical pain reactions, nor am I specially
sensitive to imaginary contacts.
As for setting I occasionally find myself helping out my
author by imparting into his story some actual scene, more
or less vividly recalled. If I do undertake to create a mise
en scène out of his material, I am likely to find upon examination
that it is a memory-picture of some half forgotten
place.
Such pictures as I see are of full form and hue; people
more vividly featured than places.
Solid geometry was not worse than other forms of mathematical
martyrdom.
If I understood this question, the mere concept will
often give me enough to go on; but I might work out a
picture totally different from the author's intent. The
risk is his, if he will supply only frame-work!
No stock pictures. My gallery is more productive than
that.
No! let 'em go as far as they like.
Of course. There is also a difference between being
favored and perspiring!
Here you have rung in a change of venue. You have
been asking about reactions to other people's writings; abruptly
you demand details as to one's own artisanship.
Anything is a tool of my trade which I find suitable to my
purposes, and I will use it fully or in outline as fits the
special situation.
Paul L. Anderson: It depends on how well the author
has done his work. If he has done it well, I live the story
I'm reading; if not, I don't finish the story. I do not see
details clearly; the vision is broad, and I do not feel physical
pain—the pain I feel is sympathetic. The pictures I
see are in black and white, this fact, together with the
breadth of vision, being traceable to the fact that for many
years I worked at pictorial photography, where the effort
[pg 96]
was to see things broadly, without niggling detail, and to
see them without color.
Trigonometry, analytic geometry, and solid geometry
were my favorite forms of mathematics; probably because
more concrete than algebra, calculus, and analytic mechanics.
I have a stock picture for a barroom and gambling hall,
and curiously enough it doesn't in the least resemble any
barroom I ever was in, though I have a secondary stock
picture of one which does. No other stock pictures.
The imagination is more vivid in writing than in reading;
I live the story with more force.
Sure they're tools of the trade. How can you make another
man see a thing if you don't see it yourself?
William Ashley Anderson: This depends entirely upon
the power of the author to make vivid the scenes and actions
he describes. In direct proportion to the genius of
the author do I feel the force of his impressions.
The aim of writing—as of all art—is to reproduce and
idealize nature. Its aim, therefore, is to make everything
seem real. It approaches reality, but it can never attain
reality, because it is all illusion. It stirs the senses, therefore,
as illusion stirs the senses, and has the power to
make things as clear and vivid as in dreams—but never as
sharp and poignant as in reality. The impress of nature
is direct. The impress of literature is by means of metaphor.
For its effect, metaphor must depend upon awakening
the memory. For this reason, a sensitive, imaginative,
experienced person appreciates best the works of
higher genius which employ a greater variety of metaphor
than mediocre works.
It is beyond the power of art to describe a new color—though
it might not be beyond the power of the optic nerve
to receive the impression of a new color if it actually appeared
before the eye.
It is beyond the power of an author to describe a flavor
which no one has ever tasted, and which has no resemblance
[pg 97]
whatever to any known flavor—though such a flavor
is possible, and the tongue would recognize it as new. This
is evident by the fact that from childhood on many foods
come to us as distinctly new and strange in flavor. It is
beyond the power of the written word in itself to satisfy
lust; but the desire for lust is so easily aroused that the
poorest kind of writer can easily excite the dullest imagination.
It is beyond the power of print to start a vibration that
will beat against the ear-drum—and it is hopeless for a
writer to attempt to describe a sound which has no effect
upon the human ear; but a great composer can create harmonies
in his head without even humming, and can record
them accurately upon paper with a pencil without a sound
being heard. So can an author, by the use of words, arouse
memory. It is equally beyond the power of words to describe
a wholly unfamiliar odor; though smell is probably
the strongest of all senses, and has probably the greatest
power to awaken memory.
Memory, however, is so important an element in an understanding
of literature that by exciting a recollection of
things (through the employment of familiar metaphor) a
fine author can make me feel a reaction in all the senses.
I can "hear," "taste," "feel," "see," "smell" the things
he describes to such an extent that I can close my eyes and
imagine music or the sounds of wild beasts; my appetite is
stimulated (though never appeased! for here the actual
craving of the body is stronger than any illusion—though
description may inspire a disgust for food); I mentally
recoil from an unpleasant sensation; I can visualize scenes—though
not, I am sure, exactly as the author intends them
to be described; and I can imagine odors, if the metaphors
are clear.
It is as difficult to describe the exact limitations of visualization
as it is to find a standard by which to measure
all painting. Some stories bring out a single striking point
which is very vivid, with a background obscure and dim;
[pg 98]
others have an equally strong central idea, with every detail
worked out in exquisite particular; others are a confused
hodge-podge, vague, unreal, unsatisfactory.
Both plane and solid geometry were the clearest
branches of mathematics to me. The others were disproportionately
difficult.
Reading stories written by others often suggests stories
or reminiscences of my own; but in these cases I think the
authorship is defective, because with a really great writer
I get "lost" in the book.
I have no stock pictures.
There is a distinct difference between reading and
writing. The difference is comparable with attending a
well-acted drama and playing in a keenly contested ballgame.
In the case of the former you know perfectly well
the events will sweep along to a logical or at least ordained
conclusion without arousing any very violent feelings
in your own heart; but in the latter case you are taking
part in and helping to shape a drama whose limitations
are only roughly cast, and whose events are actually unknown
up to the very moment they happen.
I have never given these things much thought in connection
with my own writing.
H. C. Bailey: I should say that while the vividness
with which my mind realizes a story I read varies very
greatly, the purely physical sensations are limited. Horror,
for instance, the "blood runs cold" feeling, I get. I
see many scenes clearly and hear some sounds, like the
rattle of the arrows in the Odyssey. But I don't remember
my mouth watering over any feast in fiction, though I enjoy
them, or actually smelling physical scents. A general
feeling of physical pleasure, excitement or disgust I know.
My imagination is more interested in the physical facts
of the stories I write than of those I read. I have often
found myself cutting out stuff about the sensations of my
characters because it seemed too intimate or too trivial for
outsiders. I certainly see things which are not actual both
[pg 99]
when consciously working at them and when I am not. In
color and in action—salient features if I look for them.
This applies to both reading and writing.
If I see an imaginary thing at all it is individual. I
have always tried to give a story a sensuous appeal—I
mean to make the story suggest to the reader what it is suggesting
to the physical senses of the characters.
Solid geometry and all mathematics are a mystery to
me.
The artistic quality of an author's work is not always
the cause of a vivid reproduction of his scenes in my mind,
though of course it is potent.
I would rather not be told too much.
Edwin Balmer: I certainly follow with senses acute
the sensations in any story I read where I can feel that the
author himself felt his story. The mental type of story
makes no such impression on me, nor does the machine-made
rot which is altogether too common. I believe that a
writer can not make others really feel unless he himself
actually feels when writing.
I can see colors as well as black and white, and details
when I am thinking about them.
I studied solid geometry and liked it and therefore had
no trouble at all with it.
I have no stock pictures. I like to have a writer suggest
graphically as Kipling always did, but God spare me
from the tiresome minutiæ of the ultra realists.
Yes.
Yes.
Ralph Henry Barbour: Whether I visualize a story
while reading it depends entirely on the skill of the author.
Generally, I do. If I don't, I am likely not to like the
story, and to stop reading it. Probably there are exceptions
to this. I am trying to say that whether I react to
a writer's description of scenes, sounds, flavors, odors and
so on depends on how skilfully the writer presents them to
me. Perhaps that is begging the question, but what else
[pg 100]
can I say? Certainly I have read stories in which I have
been constantly at the elbow of the character, have heard
what he heard, saw what he saw, smelled what he smelled,
felt joy or pain with him. Equally certainly I have utterly
missed doing any of these things in reading other stories. I
can not make any distinction between the effect on my
imagination of action, scene, sound, flavor, odor, touch.
There may exist a distinction, but if so I am not aware of it.
I am very susceptible to color, yet I think that the
pictures I get from reading are black and white; certainly
in very low tones. I would say I see details distinctly.
I can not recall having more trouble with solid geometry
than with other mathematics. I believe I found more
appeal there.
My response is limited to the degree in which an author
describes, yes; or, rather, to the degree to which he succeeds
in describing. A mere concept will, of course, set me
to reproducing, but I won't get as far. If the author tells
me it's a rainy day, I can picture a rainy day. But I'm
not going to bother to see the reflected light in the pools
or the glints on varnished surfaces or the gray mists in
the woods. If he's satisfied, I am, and I go ahead. I had
rather, though, have him make it a rainy day to remember
instead of just one of a thousand. Of course a writer
can overdo description, but just as certainly he can underdo
it. Something should be left to the reader's imagination,
but not everything. One writer tells us "It was raining."
Another tells us "It was raining softly, insistently.
In the Park the naked trees were clothed in a pearl-gray
mist. A hurrying cab gave back the white light from its
dripping varnished roof as from burnished silver." And
so on. From the first description I get the picture of a
rainy day; from the last, a description of that particular
rainy day. The first makes no appeal to my powers of
imagination. The second does. From the second I can go
ahead and see a hundred other details that the author
doesn't mention. Not only can, but do. He's given me the
[pg 101]
stimulus. This seems to contradict my opening statement
in this paragraph, and I'll change it. Thus: My response
is limited to the degree to which an author provides stimuli.
As a reader I do not use stock pictures.
I do not resent having many images formed for me. I
can not possibly know so well as the author what he wishes
me to see.
Yes, there is a difference in the behavior of my imagination
when writing and when reading. In reading my imagination
sort of loafs on the job. It sits back and says, "Let
the other fellow do it. I'll help, of course, but this isn't
my job." In writing it gets infernally busy and digs into
details in a way that's positively annoying and wearying.
I don't think I have ever "considered these matters as
'tools of my trade.'" Of course they must be. I mean by
that that no writer can write fiction without making an
appeal to one or more of the five senses. Being conscious
of it is different. I am not. (The query presents an idea.
Why not go in for "olfactory fiction"? Specialize on
stories concerned almost entirely with smells? I have made
a note of that.)
Frederick Orin Bartlett: When I read a good story by
some one else, I do not read it—I live it. When I see
things with my eyes shut I see them as distinctly as when
my eyes are open. In both cases they are sometimes distinct
and sometimes blurred, depending a good deal upon
my interest. A feature of my own particular way of
thinking which has always interested me is my ability in a
story to recall vividly a great many details of scenes I
thought I had forgotten. In other words my subjective
memory is more reliable and of better capacity than my
objective memory.
I don't remember anything at all about my troubles with
solid geometry. I have a notion they were just average.
I respond to an author with all he gives me and all I
have myself.
[pg 102]
I recognize considerable variation in the architecture of
my village churches but my cowboys are a good deal alike.
I resent nothing an author may do except to be dull.
When I write I leave out a great deal more than I do
when I read.
I do not consciously use any tools when I write. I depend
upon a sense of form partly instinctive and partly
cultivated—that and the emotions.
Nalbro Bartley: I seldom read fiction because I always
see the machinery of it (or think I do). But when
I read history, I let my imagination vividly picture every
incident and struggle. I often feel the actual pain or mental
suffering described.
I see mental pictures in their actual colors—with very
clear-cut details.
Solid geometry and trigonometry both helped me as a
fiction writer—I was hopeless with algebra or arithmetic.
I can't explain the former unless it was a sort of mathematical
phantasy—anyway, it taught me to construct. I
never have "stock pictures" for scenes—each one has
some minute difference as the case may warrant.
Yes, I think every reader likes to have "tribute" paid
to his imagination—he likes to have the author paint a
vivid outline but not crowd it with unnecessary detail.
When I read a story, which is seldom, it is usually a
classic or a well-established piece of fiction and I think I
am reading it because of its excellent technique and very
little because of imaginative pleasure. When I write
stories I have the unbounded egotism of the creative mind—my
people and their troubles and triumphs are so real
and so very acute that I am on mental tiptoes until they
are out of the depths and on to the heights!
No.
Konrad Bercovici: I am hard put to answer. The
more I write the less I read. I find it interferes with my
work. Reading a story carefully takes out of me quite as
much as if I were to write a story. And except in rare
[pg 103]
cases I have not found any story worth while enough to
allow it to do that to me. It is all a question of intensity, I
suppose, but my ears actually do ache after a concert. Not
because my ears are too weak, but because I listen with
such intensity. I read in the same way as I listen to music.
I never studied solid geometry or other mathematics. I
have no stock pictures for anything. I would become
crazy if I did because I hate to see the same thing twice.
My imagination never behaves properly either when reading
or writing a story. I suppose if the imagination were
an independent individual and it actually acted instead
of imagined, it would be kept in prison for the rest of its
natural life!
Tools of trade? My God, I have never considered them
such. I consider myself as belonging to the minstrel class,
born about five hundred to six hundred years too late.
Otherwise I should enjoy nothing better than traveling
from market-place to market-place and telling stories to
the assembled peasantry or at some inn. All story-tellers,—as
a matter of fact, all artists, are modern minstrels.
Just born to amuse the people who toil and work.
Ferdinand Berthoud: I read so little of other men's
work that it is hard to say. I suppose I do see the actual
happenings and actors, and not the printed words as
printed words.
Of course in my own writing I live the story and am
actually a part of it. Live in another world as I write it.
In each of my small few stories so far I am in either a
large or small part one of the actors. I see myself and
see and hear the other men—always personal friends or
men I have lived with and quarreled with. I see the grass
waving, can hear the horses' footfalls and smell the sweet
clear air. The peculiar scentless smell of the open African
veldt is always there. I feel so much a part of the thing
that when I finish my stint and come back to myself and
look at the walls of the room where I write I am in a state
of semi-collapse.
[pg 104]
No, I don't feel the actual pain in other men's stories or
my own, but more than once in describing scenes of torture
the impressions have been so vivid that they've turned my
stomach and I've had to lie down for half an hour or so to
get right again. I've seen the "remains" after torture,
so perhaps that accounts for it.
The pictures I see are in their natural colors. Details
distinct and solid—not flat as in a moving picture. What
I mean to say is that they are firm and rounded, like a
picture by Millet.
No, I have no stock pictures of cowboys and such things,
particularly village churches. In the course of years of
wandering I've seen so many places that no one is ever
uppermost in my mind.
No, there is no difference in behavior of my imagination
when reading and writing stories, because I don't read
them. Don't read a story a month, and never read a novel.
Only read trade, finance, astronomy, travel, research and
such stuff.
Incidentally I am continually having a very curious experience.
Time and again I read books in my sleep—books
I have never before seen. They are always old books,
printed a hundred years or more ago, I should say. I go
through page after page of them and they're wonderful
stuff—stuff that I'd almost give my very soul to be able to
write—but try as I will when I wake I can't remember a
single word of them. Yet the dream comes again and
again, and always a different book.
H. H. Birney, Jr.: I have read so much and so omnivorously
all my life that I can not say I "lose myself" in
any work of fiction to the extent that a description of the
agonies of a man dying of thirst would send me hunting
for a pitcher of ice-water. I am much more likely to be
emotionally stirred in reading an account that I know is
true than by some work of fiction. For instance, I feel no
shame in admitting that I broke down and cried like a
baby in reading the account of Scott's tragical expedition
[pg 105]
to the Antarctic—their final defeat by the cold when only
eleven miles from a cache of food, and the heroic self-sacrifice
of the doctor. In reading fiction I am constantly
making comparisons. Should I read of thirst I compare
the written sensations with my recollection of my own
when I went fifty-two hours without water in northern
Arizona. Does Friel write of the Amazon jungle I make
mental comparisons between his account and Algot
Lange's or others I have read. Am constantly seeking for
conviction that the author "knows what he's talking
about." That's why I await so eagerly a yarn by Thompson
Burtis or Talbot Mundy. They know! React to a
greater extent to descriptions of scenery—desert, mountain
or river—than to descriptions which cater to the
senses, taste, smell, etc. Have smelt some ungodly stinks
and eaten most unholy messes in my time—the kind that
can't be written about! Find a keener emotional reaction
in sorrow or pathos than in "love scenes." Have been in
love myself and never missed a meal, but—I stuck to the
end with my best friend when he went over the Pass with
meningitis, and then had to tell his folks about it when
they got there an hour too late.
Solid gave me more trouble than plane geometry, but I
always was a dumbbell at all mathematics. Can understand
your question, however. Intelligent reading, or writing,
is in many ways a third- if not a fourth-dimensional
business.
No. I strive to make each case a distinct, separate, individual
entity. I have known mighty few "types" of
particular occupations or pursuits.
I read largely for recreation and, lately, to get ideas as
to style. Main factor of my imagination when writing is
impatience. Do not write with particular swiftness and
usually know just what I want to say long before my pen
gets there. Once I start I want to get it over with. Creation
is to me a task, not a joy. I take my pleasure in the
finished product.
[pg 106]
As tools? Not as much as I should, but I'm getting to
use them more and more. Remember, I am one of the
"youngest of the entered apprentices."
Farnham Bishop: Depends entirely on how well the
author makes his mind meet mine. Most of 'em never
make me see anything but the printed page. Too much
description blinds my mental eyes every time. Suggested
or connoted scenes and actors, sketched in with a line or
two, are much more plain.
See better than I hear—taste too darned well if I'm
hungry and broke when somebody describes a good camp
dinner, for instance. Smells? Most odors are nothing but
empty names to me, for in real life it takes a healthy onion
or a whole garden of roses to rouse my olfactory nerves.
(Probably that's why I've never felt any desire to smoke).
Feel what I've felt in reality, when a happy bit of description
brings it back; too vivid descriptions of suffering
make me wince.
Mostly black and white, sometimes crudely colored.
Vary from mere suggestive blobs to—say, once when I was
a kid, I "saw" an extra illustration for a story in St. Nicholas,
that Reginald Birch might have drawn, and it puzzled
me no end when I failed to find that one among the
others that he did draw, when I reread the yarn. But I've
never reached that particular height since then.
Plane geometry was as far as I ever traveled along that
trail.
A good concept or connotation starts my imagination
hitting on all eight.
Usually, the stock picture, formed in early life, pops up
and has to be modified. When somebody says "soldier,"
I see a clean-shaven young man in Civil War blue, with the
little forage-cap that our army wore until 1898. Then I
have to shift his costume and make-up to suit the story, but
I can't get away from the impression made on my infant
mind back in the eighteen-nineties.
The difference between work and play. Have to force
[pg 107]
the darned thing when I'm writing, but she rambles gay
and care-free when I'm reading.
Consider these things "tools of my trade"? I do and
I've tried herein to explain how I try to use them.
Algernon Blackwood: The visualization of a story I
read depends entirely on its degree of actuality according
to the evocative power of the writer. I prefer a suggestion
that enables me to form my own pictures of scenes and
characters described, rather than to have these formed for
me in detail by the author. A description of house or room
or garden I invariably skip. With his first vital adjective
the scene flashes into my mind. His subsequent detail
bores me.
Max Bonter: An author can make me see his story-world
with a vividness strictly in proportion to the degree
of his skill. My senses register sound, smell, flavor,
touch, etc.,—although less acutely than in the world of
actuality.
As an example of vividness, let me cite Henry Leverage's
The Shell-back. I could almost swear that I got a
whiff of "Old Marlin's" unwashed hide; I saw the slime
in his eyes and the kinks in his matted old beard. I would
not consider these allusions disgusting. The author dispassionately
sketches a piece of humanity—that's all. It's
truth—and my heart rather warms to "Old Marlin" on account
of it.
I can see plenty of color with my eyes shut, although the
details of the pictures are not perfectly distinct.
When I studied mathematics my brain was not sufficiently
mature or systematic to grasp all the fundamentals
of any branch. I had not much success with geometry.
My response to an author's description is usually limited
to his degree of vividness; although it often happens that a
theme or a situation, per se, so interests me that I leave the
author's world and reproduce one of my own.
Shame on the pen-prostituting varlet who uses stock
pictures for his scenes and characters! I would almost as
[pg 108]
lief see an author plagiarize. What imagination, what regard
for the ethics of his craft must a man have who sells
his wares over and over again? Can art be as lazy, as unscrupulous
as that? To my mind, if a writer be not indefatigable
in his distinctions, discriminations and demarcations,
he is not sincere—if he be not sincere, he is not an
artist. He reminds me of the barroom cripple who fares
forth to his station on the street corner with half a dozen
lead pencils to sell; who returns to the saloon with his
pocket full of pennies, but his stock of pencils still intact.
These may be harsh words, but—must the dollar taint
everything in this world?
Writing and reading affect my imagination in two distinct
ways.
When I begin reading, my faculties are relaxed and receptive;
my muscular system is in repose. My eyes flash
the printed symbols to my brain; my brain translates
them and projects them kaleidoscopically upon the screen
of my imagination. The pictures immediately generate enthusiasm
or otherwise. If they generate enthusiasm my
faculties prime themselves and become more acute; my
muscular system acquires a certain tension. My brain is
receiving food, stimulant—in other words I'm "being entertained."
If the pictures generate no enthusiasm, however—if
they evoke only a yawn—my faculties remain
torpid. My brain is neither being fed nor entertained nor
stimulated. In other words, I'm "being bored."
Thus the function, or behavior, of my reading imagination
would seem to be largely passive—merely displaying
the author's pictures and leaving their value to be passed
upon by my reason.
The function, or behavior, of my writing imagination, is
vastly different. Before I can start, it must initiate a
fund of enthusiasm of its own. This enthusiasm must be
sufficiently keen to tune up my faculties and make them
aggressive and openly demonstrative. This enthusiasm
must stiffen my backbone and give tension to my muscles.
[pg 109]
I must be thoroughly alert to capture and express every
passing thought and idea. In other words, I must "feel in
the humor to write."
My imagination must still take the initiative. It must
proceed to throw picture after picture upon its screen—not
merely drawing them according to well-defined descriptions
as in the case of my reading self—but initiating them
for my creative self, being guided in the task only by a
hint, a haunting fancy, a lurking impression of the long
ago. Reason—the critic—stands constantly beside imagination
and ruthlessly picks flaws in its pictures, rejecting
many as unnatural, uninteresting, overdrawn, etc. Such
pictures as are passed by the critic are then translated by
brain into words that rush out of my finger tips to the
keyboard of the typewriter. That is about as near as I
can get to it.
At any rate my writing imagination must be enthusiastic,
stubborn, tireless, inventive and wholly active in its
function.
I am just beginning to consider these matters as tools
of my trade; hope to be able to use them more skilfully by
and by.
Katharine Holland Brown: The keenest impressions,
from reading stories, are gained from sight and touch and
sense of smell. Sense of touch, perhaps strongest. No
appeal to the senses in my case is as strong as that declared
to exist by many people.
Can not really "see with my eyes shut" with the vividness
that many writers describe. Instead, I get a mass-impression
instead of one in detail.
Undoubtedly the requirement of solid geometry, by universities,
was sponsored by Torquemada.
Detailed description is not essential. If the story is
vivid, the locale shapes itself without effort.
No stock pictures. Each new story has its own images.
One of the great charms of certain authors lies in their
lapidary-accuracy of detail. So, in case of the real artist,
[pg 110]
there is no question of "too many images." I can not
answer the next inquiry—have never analyzed so far.
Nor have I considered any of these matters as "tools of the
trade."
F. R. Buckley: This is a very big question: I can't
answer it more exactly than by saying that when I read or
write I have a subliminal self which feels, tastes and
smells, so that I get the effect of stimuli quite vividly
without any semblance of reaction on the actual physical
senses. This is extremely difficult to explain. I might
say that when there is a smell or a sight or a sound before
me, either in my writing or some one else's, I rather
know it, than feel it. It is rather as though (I am now
thinking of a revolver-shot in a small room) the essence of
the roar, denatured of the qualities which appeal to the
physical ear, had been poured into my consciousness by
some other channel. Until I started to answer this questionnaire
I should have said I heard the crash; of course,
I don't; I don't even—I think—imagine it. Yet the effect
of it certainly impinges on me; an exciting passage of
action will even speed up my heart, and fast action will
make me work the keys of the typewriter faster. Normally
one doesn't keep tab of reactions, but it seems to me
I've caught myself grinning with pain when somebody was
getting hurt. But the speeding-up and the grin are not, I
think, direct action—such as I should experience from
actually going through the action or watching it with my
eyes. I think they are the manifestations of the imagined
action's impact on the subconscious, duplicate me, whose
sole business it is to receive them. And this duplicate self's
control of my own person is only partial; which is why my
mouth doesn't actually water when my hero eats lemons.
I can see pictures with my eyes shut; in full color but
they are still pictures—not movies. I can't shut my eyes
and see action; but before describing it I can close them
and see the picture of its effect; see the man who's just
been shot and how he lies and how his garments hang and
[pg 111]
where his hands are and how his feet look. I have actually
seen a good many men after violent deaths. This may
help. And I can see every detail of the man who fired
the shot—his attitude, what he's doing with the revolver
now he's fired; also, I can see the room and feel it. You
know that there is a distinct feel about a room when something
abnormal's happening. A pretty gilt clock you've
always liked will look entirely different—tawdry, pitiful,
cold-hearted, if a dead man's lying in front of the fireplace.
I get all this, and I couldn't write if I didn't.
As for solid geometry, ALL mathematics were abomination
and to pick on solid geometry would be invidious.
I haven't any stock pictures at all. In reading, if the
author doesn't give me a picture, I use Shakespearean
scenery—blank space with "This is a Church" written on
it. Writing, I invent quite definite and different "sets"
and so on, for each story.
Big difference between imagination reading and writing.
Very, very rarely does reading speed heart-beat and
so on; writing, comparatively frequently.
Prosper Buranelli: The chief pleasure I get from a
story is an intellectual gratification, the perception of some
irony, the astonishment which comes from some development,
unusual with respect to current ideas, but reasonable
when submitted to clear thinking. A good story to
my mind is a piece of thinking, of rational building up. I
see in Anatole France's Procurator of Judea a rigorous
deduction of what could have happened under the circumstances.
The seeming truth of the colors and sounds of the
setting has for its purpose the heightening of the plausibility
with which the close is reasoned out. It is much like
the paleontologist who builds the idea of an animal by
reasoning on a couple of bones and a set of tracks in prehistoric
mud. I am never absorbed, save by the author's
ideation.
I can see things with my eyes shut, but don't, often. I
have an "ear mind." I hear things. My imaginings take
[pg 112]
place in words or in music. In adolescence I saw things,
but not now. Solid geometry and spherical trigonometry
trouble me. I have enough trouble constructing, in phantasy,
in two dimensions.
If the concepts are disposed in provocative arrangement,
I can supply the vestments, at least such as I need. But
the fuller and more persuasive the coloring, the more powerful
the logic of the concepts. If an author places a civilized
man among cannibals and carries him through well
analyzed mental processes to cannibalism, it will be all the
more plausible if he complete his reasoning with fully colored
and convincing pictures.
Any story which either gives or suggests stock pictures,
such as cowboys or village churches, save in most acrid
mockery, is to my mind immeasurably rotten.
In the best stories, I think, reading one and writing one
would be much alike. Reading a beautifully reasoned
story would be much like writing a beautifully reasoned
story. If you watch a very well played game of chess, it
is like playing along with the player. It is something like
playing the game yourself. You know what is in the
player's head, why he makes a move. With bad players
playing, it is merely a spectacle. You can't tell what they
are about most of the time and, when you can, you are entirely
out of sympathy with the rational processes, which,
you understand, are contemptible.
Tools of trade, presumably text-books and other forms of
instruction, I have found, are useful, but only if they give
you bases upon which to erect further meditations of your
own.
Thompson Burtis: My imagination causes me to react
to all the stimuli you mention if the writer has any vividness
at all about his writing. I taste the flavors, sniff the
odors, feel pain, etc. I will except none of the cases mentioned.
Perhaps my reaction to the description of good or
bad food is the strongest. I can get hungry at the mention
of a delightful meal, and mentally nauseated, so to
[pg 113]
speak, at a description of bad food on shipboard or something
like that.
In the pictures I see with my eyes shut most details are
blurred. Most often the pictures are black and white, but
in especially vivid cases, such as a tropic night or something
of that sort, my mental pictures are in color. The
limitations are usually in the case of scenes with which I
am totally unfamiliar, and because of the number of unfamiliar
details mentioned I am often totally at sea in an
attempt to visualize a scene or a happening.
Yes, solid geometry did.
My response is not limited to the exact degree of the
author's vividness, but it is affected by his descriptive
power. A mere concept will make me see something, but
not as much as a good description would.
Each case produces its own picture.
No difference.
Yes. I have made an effort—am making, I hope, a constantly
more persistent effort—to use them in this way:
by striving through proper word selection, even if it be
only one adjective, to make every noun, so to speak, in my
stories, mean something. I am trying to make the most
minor of my characters have a scraggly moustache, a hump
on his back, or some tiny detail which will set him apart in
the reader's mind and make him distinctive. In the same
manner, food, a room, a scene, a tool—I am trying to incorporate
some brief, flash-like description which will
make that thing vivid and give it individuality. The more
I write the more I am growing able to look at my writing
as a trade or craft and comprehend the mechanics of it,
and that attitude, I believe, will constantly tend to make a
writer consider the tiny details and put them in with deliberation
rather than inspiration as the stimulus.
George M. A. Cain: In reading a story, I think my
imagination aims to reproduce the picture naturally
attaching to it. To what degree this is clear in detail or
color depends entirely on the interest evoked by the story.
[pg 114]
Often the images are so real as to produce physical reactions.
I have grown actually ill over a description of some
repulsive disease. But I can not say that any mere suggestion
of pain in any form has induced an actual like pain
in, e. g., some given part of my body. The distress of
imagining pain with me is entirely mental, capable of reacting
in physical lassitude, inducing nausea only as it becomes
repulsive in its manifestations to other senses than
feeling. Suppurations are really the only things which I
can not imagine without the physical reactions becoming
local in my stomach. As for tastes and smells, these have
few keenly attractive reactions with me in actual life, and
I am affected by imaginations of them only adversely. I
can read the Cardinal's Snuff-box without sneezing. But
I am pretty apt to reach for my pipe, if I read much about
smoking.
Solid and plane geometry were the only mathematics I
ever found so absolutely easy that a glance was sufficient
for almost any proposition.
I think response is more or less determined by the degree
to which the author dwells on description. As a matter
of fact, in answering this and the following question, I
would say that it is my opinion that we all form our pictures
from things we have actually seen. Stage settings,
drawings, faces—I believe we conjure entirely from memory.
If the author goes into details, we correct our memory
pictures to make them correspond with his stage directions.
This I have sometimes found capable of actual interference
with really writing. In one or two instances I have
had so vivid a picture in my mind of the relative positions
of certain actors or furnishings, when, say, a character
had to use his right hand in the action, and could
not have done so in the picture—that I have had to stop
and draw diagrams to straighten things out and be sure
of avoiding what some reader might instantly see as impossible.
I rather think the images I create in my own writing are
[pg 115]
clearer to my mind. I have to stay with them longer.
Some months ago my wife asked me in startled tones what
was the matter with my face. I had to admit that I was
just up from writing of the appearance of an insane man
in a cabin door and was unconsciously trying to look like
him in my efforts to chalk off his most noticeable features
for the readers' benefit.
I have considered these things as trade tools only to the
extent of being careful to have very clear images before
me in writing. Sometimes I have found them almost a disadvantage.
My own picture was so clear, I took for
granted the reader's seeing what I saw, without my telling
him what he could not guess.
Robert V. Carr: Paragraph III is another set of questions
involving, to my limited comprehension, heredity, environment,
physical condition, psychological wounds, racial
memories and the power of intelligence far beyond that
possessed by my little finite mind. Who can tell where
matter merges into spirit? Who can tell where the imagination
of the writer leaves off and the imagination of the
reader begins? When I think of the Infinite, I think only
of a word. Wise cuckoos, ready to be interned in some
asylum, assert that they can imagine the Infinite. What
man can imagine a million objects? It is an unusual man
who can imagine ten thousand. It makes me hunt for comparisons
to imagine a thousand. I have to remember how
my regiment looked in line, or its length in a column of
fours. What man, then, can imagine thought? He can
babble words, he can mumble words, but, after all, he can
not imagine thought. He can shovel a lecture on Divine
Intelligence into a set of open-billed morons, but, when he
is through and has drained the pitcher of water, hasn't he
merely put in an evening shoveling words?
Stock pictures? How do I know that my ideas are not
all stock ideas? How does any writer know but what his
dearest thoughts—thoughts he fondly fancied were his own
little, bright-eyed children—may have been fathered by
[pg 116]
some tribal psychological wound? His most cherished idea
may be the offspring of some hereditary weakness. He
may write sex poetry because his grandfather was a roué.
His little ideas he considers so wonderfully original, may
be little stock ideas born of racial stock ideas, family stock
ideas, environment stock ideas. The heavy-domed scientists
claim the Anglo-Saxon habit of meat-eating has produced
a certain set of stock ideas. I consider myself
merely a human animal who, when he bumps into something
he can not comprehend, gives it an impressive name
and lets a gaudy word stand for the gap in his intelligence.
There are men who have a ready answer for every question;
Congress and the asylums are full of them.
Difference in imagination when reading and when writing?
Involving, so far as I can see, heredity, racial memories,
acquired physical weaknesses, mental quirks, tricks
of egotism, and a multitude of mysteries I have never been
able to solve. I give this up with scarcely a struggle.
George L. Catton: Yes; if the characters are distinctly
drawn and the setting correctly planned and the action
natural under the circumstances, I can see it as fast as I
can read it. If it is not, I skip over what I can't see immediately
as not worth wasting time over. And I might
just mention, by the way, to a student of such things as
characters, action and setting, some of the characters and
setting and action in fiction are so impossible as to be ludicrous.
No, I can't say that I can become so immersed in
the atmosphere of a story that I can "hear" and "smell"
and "feel" and "taste" with the characters in the story;
that is, the characters in a story that I am reading. But
with the characters in a story that I am writing—well,
that is something else again. If I want to I can weep with
my characters and laugh with them and run the whole
gamut of the human emotions with them, but that is something
I seldom allow myself. I go too far then, with the
emotions of my characters.
Yes, I can really see things with my eyes shut, or open,
[pg 117]
in the dark or in the daylight. And there are no limitations
whatever. Green grass is green, a pine tree is a
darker green, and a forest lake is yet a darker shade.
Colors, and black and white, reproduce themselves in
their natural shade when I am picturing in my mind's eye
a scene to be put down in words on paper. Also the characteristics
of a character. I can see a broken nose just as
plainly as a straight one, and a hare-lip as plainly as a
cupid's bow. Details stand out as distinctly, or even more
so, than the whole. Continuity writing for the movies is,
to me, one of the easiest and most fascinating tasks I ever
tackled.
Never had an opportunity to study any other geometry
or mathematics.
If the author of a story I am reading fails to picture a
scene or character or bit of action so that it can be understood
and "seen" as fast as I can read his picture, I supply
what is lacking myself to make it up and save time.
In fact, in lots of cases I find that the pictures the author
drew were never needed at all, as far as I was concerned;
certain things will happen under certain circumstances,
inevitably, and the ground under a knot of pine trees will
be bare of grass without any one telling me that.
Never have stock pictures. Each setting is built up to
conform to the necessities of the action and the characters
and the theme. Stock pictures and characters, etc., savor
too much of a manufactured article and kill the personality
of a story.
Only in one thing is there any difference in the behavior
of my imagination when reading or writing a story. If I
am reading a story by another author my imagination
pictures for me only what is absolutely necessary to make
the story interesting. If I am writing a story my imagination
brings me a thousand pictures, incidents, etc., to
choose from. Or, to put it another way, in reading a story
my imagination is localized to the restrictions of the story;
while if I am writing my imagination knows no boundaries.
[pg 118]
Yes, I have long considered these matters as tools of my
trade; so long in fact that a consideration of them now is
unnecessary. In fact, to think of them now when working
on a story is to restrict their working.
Robert W. Chambers: It depends on the story. No
limitations to "seeing." Colors. Distinct. All mathematics
annoy me. Response depends upon the author. No
stock pictures. Do not resent many images if they are well
done. Difference when reading and writing? Of course.
As tools? Have given it no thought.
Roy P. Churchill: I have never thought of this before,
but believe that in my own case my responses through the
senses are governed by what I have actually done myself.
For instance, I know how a six-inch gun sounds, the noise
of the shell, the impact of the explosion. I can see the
splash at the target, follow the birdlike flight of the shell,
smell the powder, taste the smoke. For I have done these
things, experienced them, and when they are in a story my
senses respond. Yet I have not been a jockey in a horse
race. I can't get near as vividly the feel of the saddle,
the smell of sweating horses, hear the shouts of the crowd,
the taste of churned dust on the track. So in a story the
writer's experiences must be real, it seems to me, to give
anything like a second-hand impression on the senses of
the reader. Yet I do enjoy prize-fight stories, and never
did them, love horse-race stories and never rode in a race.
It must be that the authors of such stories had a very, very
clear picture to give it to me at all.
In stories of places I have not seen, telling of experiences
I have not gone through, imagination fits in somewhat
blurred details, but often more enjoyably than stories of
things I already knew. For instance, I have confused
ideas of just what passes are made in a duel in The Three
Musketeers, but it does not detract from the charm of the
story.
I have no stock pictures of scenes, rather try to make
them fit what the characters need.
[pg 119]
My imagination works more freely in reading stories
than in writing them.
Carl Clausen: I feel all of these things if the story is
done well enough. Actual colors, I think. Always distinct.
Did not study geometry to any extent. Limited to
the author's description. No stock pictures so far as I
am conscious. Difference when reading and writing?
Can't answer this. Don't know for sure. I write by
"ear." If these are tools, I don't know it.
Courtney Ryley Cooper: Unless I can see the story
clearly and know the characters, the thing falls short with
me. I feel that there is something either wrong with the
author or myself.
Black and white.
Never got as far as solid geometry. Arithmetic was bad
enough!
I reproduce myself and often "help" the author. If I
don't like his setting, I make one of my own and go merrily
on.
Individual.
I don't like description that is too minute. I feel like
a kindergarten pupil.
A great deal. In writing, I am so terribly concentrated
that I actually see nothing. Everything seems to be working
out from my subconscious brain, whatever that is.
No.
Arthur Crabb: This is a bit too highbrow for me. It
seems to me that a great many writers try to make an undue
appeal to the senses and too little to the common sense
of the reader. For instance, if a tale is laid at the seashore
I am not particularly interested in having the writer
explain to me that the air is salt and the sea is green and
the sand is white, and so on. What I am interested in is
knowing what the character thinks of it, that is, if the
heroine has lived all her life at the seashore, the salt air
and the green sea and the white sand probably do not interest
her any more than the back of the brick building I
[pg 120]
see out of my office window interests me. If the heroine
comes from an inland farm then the effect of the sea on
her is decidedly different. The same thing in general applies
to all the rest of human emotions. The idea of making
a little shop girl, of no antecedents, go through the range
of emotions that would put a prima donna to shame, is, it
seems to me, unnecessary and undesirable. I recently started
a story in which the author plastered on so many colors
my only impression was a kaleidoscopic paint shop. The
characters in the story never saw any of the colors at all.
I, like every other human being, can see things with my
eyes shut, if I get what you mean. I can make imaginary
characters act and picture imaginary scenes in complete
detail. That, it seems to me, is absolutely necessary if one
is to write at all.
I studied mathematics two or three years beyond calculus.
Naturally solid geometry gave me more trouble than
plane geometry or trigonometry. It is a far more complex
proposition. I think the two are comparable to learning
to ride a bicycle and learning to walk on a slack wire.
Incidentally I think there is a catch in this question, but I
am dodging it.
It depends on the author. Without checking myself up
by compiling statistics I think the really great authors cut
out what you call vivid description. Do you realize that
the probability is that nothing in this world exists at all
except in an individual's inner consciousness? The
reader can not be, certainly ought not to be, particularly
interested in some writer's own picture of something or
other except as his characters are affected.
I certainly do not have stock pictures of anything.
I do resent.
My answer as to difference when reading and writing is
"of course." My idea of a story is people; the description,
plot, etc., are the frame of the picture. I am for instance
not so much interested in who committed a murder
as why the murderer did it.
[pg 121]
My general answer is, no.
Mary Stewart Cutting: It entirely depends on the
power with which the story is written. As a rule, my imagination
does not produce the same results on my senses as
do the actual stimuli themselves. But, on the other hand,
if I may give an instance from Booth Tarkington's Alice
Adams, the dinner party given by Alice to her apparent
suitors is so vivid to me in every detail that I can never get
over the feeling of being actually there in the heat and the
murkiness and the smell of the brussels-sprouts.
There are no limitations to the pictures seen with your
eyes shut. I think we have stock pictures in our minds,
unless they are described.
There is a great difference in the behavior of my imagination
when reading them and when writing them. One
has to use continued effort to keep the proper proportions
in one's imagination. When you are reading stories it is
simply a relaxation.
Everything is a tool of one's trade.
Elmer Davis: Depends on how good an author he is.
As a matter of fact, my senses respond in detail much less
than I had imagined till I tried it with your questions in
mind. Usually I have a mere intellectual response to sensory
images in a story, though on occasions, with especially
good writers or in stories of unusual interest, I feel
them. E. g. I get no feeling of smooth contact or gentle
pressure from Cytherea or The Sheik, though those stories
are full of this item. But I do from certain poets—Catullus,
Donne, author of the Song of Songs which is
Solomon's. A. Dumas and your Mr. Gordon Young can
generally give me an impression of rough contact or hard
impact. I taste food described in a story when I am hungry.
But in the main my senses don't respond—sight and
hearing come across more often than the others.
I assimilate the scene described to the nearest like it that
I have known—very generally, of course, and following
the author's descriptions in principal details.
[pg 122]
I believe I incline to see them in black and white except
when other colors are mentioned. Details blurry unless
set down. (Note for argument. Yet I much prefer
stories which leave details to my own imagination in the
main. The curse of Hergesheimer is his overloading with
minutiæ of interior decorating. The great value of most
Oriental stuff, notably the Arabian Nights and Herodotus,
is their use of stock phrases "fair as a moon on the fourteenth
night," etc., which let you make your own picture.)
No more trouble.
Largely answered above. The creation of atmosphere
and suggestion is of course a delicate business, as you know.
When it is done right I much prefer the suggestive concept.
Stock pictures drawn from recollections of childhood
(mainly) for most things. Country church, barnyard, I
have from the age of three. With variations, of course, to
fit the particular case. Most images fall into certain types
based roughly on things I have seen.
Yes, I do resent, as said above.
Works better and more freely when I am writing them.
No, haven't used them as tools, but, believe me, I will
hereafter.
My wife, just reading McTeague, calls my attention to
Frank Norris's overdeveloped tendency to use the olfactory
image. For example, he pictures the beginning of
marital disillusionment by "McTeague's" consciousness
of the smell of his wife's hair-brush. Maybe I have the
details wrong, but anyway "McT." on entering the bedroom
is conscious of the smell of the hair-brush where one
of our modern heroes would smell the fragrant powder on
her palpitant flesh, etc. Also in a mob scene in The Octopus,
where some thousands of the Californian peasantry
get together to hunt jackrabbits on a hot summer day, Norris
speaks of the "strong ammoniacal odor." Now I think
the average reader doesn't feel with his nose unless the
author, as in these cases, deliberately calls his attention.
[pg 123]
That is, if you write "a sweating crowd" most of us would
think of the glistening brow rather than the animal odor.
Probably that was in the ordinary practise, the naturalist
school, but there seems to be evidence that Norris ran
more naturally to the smell-image than most of them.
William Harper Dean: When I read a story I must
live through it with the characters. If this is impossible I
will not stay with it. If I can not suffer and rejoice with
the characters, laugh with them, hate with them, the story
lacks the power to produce that reaction in me which my
own stories must produce in me. If the style grates or
lumbers along I become disgusted—the fine charm is lacking.
Yes, I see things with my eyes shut—place my characters
in a situation, then stand off, as it were, and watch
them react, then record what they do and say. I can't
ram words down their throats, neither can I drag them
about like dummies and think they are acting.
Solid geometry to me was always more immediately
assimilated in its logic than analytical geometry or calculus.
The former made pictures, the latter nebulous nothings.
An author who can, like Knut Hamsun, write one line
describing a situation, then pass on to the next stage of plot
development, gives me that delightful privilege of placing
my own interpretation to the line and, in my mind, reading
several chapters while I let my eyes follow into his
next paragraph. And that's writing. Not everybody can
do it, for not every author is a writer. The reader deserves
latitude for exercising his interpretative powers—if
an author sets about to argue out every situation down
to the orthodox Quod erat demonstrandum, he not only
clutters up the story with words but he cheats the reader
and the reader resents it. I might go a step beyond and
say he is casting reflections upon the reader's intelligence.
I have no stock pictures for any setting or any character.
I construct them as I need them from life. I always
[pg 124]
can produce a prototype for anything I use, for I
don't attempt to write about any setting or any character
with which I have never made contact. It's no trouble to
scent out inventions in a story; they grate and make the
story squeak and clank. I am running a series of stories
in The Ladies' Home Journal built around a boy character
of the twelve-year age. He is my own son. Where he
plays, I know every nook and cranny of that great woodland
park, I know the code of ethics held by his clan, I
know how his mind reacts under certain stimuli. When I
need a character like the ogre which every boy his age has,
I find him in the neighborhood, or, failing, go back and
resurrect one which I knew in my boyhood.
No, when I read a story, my imagination works in the
same channels followed as when I write one.
I do not consider these things "tools of the trade"; subconsciously
I use them as such, but I try to divorce from
creative writing any and all "rules," "tools" and "formula."
Good writing is nothing more than good thinking—if
we thought by rule and formula, what a world
this would be!
Harris Dickson: These things depend, I believe, upon
the skill of the writer and perhaps as much upon the
reader's present mood. Sometimes and in some stories, all
the incidents, settings, characters, smells, sounds and
sights are just as clear as if I were actually present.
Sometimes I do not get them at all. For instance, many
years after I still feel the gruesome atmosphere that
Conan Doyle created in his Hound of the Baskervilles, remember
passages from The Lord of the Isles, and smell the
deep dark medieval woods in The Forest Lovers. Books
with me are like people—some I see once and remember
always; some I see every day and fail to register them at
all.
I shouldn't know solid geometry if I saw it coming down
the big road with a bell on it.
I am not conscious of having stock pictures in mind; the
[pg 125]
end of Loch Katrine (Lady of the Lake) is very different
from Lake Geneva (Prisoner of Chillon). And the battle of
Waterloo (Vanity Fair) does not resemble the battle of
Omdurman (With Kitchener to Khartoum).
I don't know whether too many pictures should be given
a reader. The writer should, in this day and time, remember
that "The tale's the thing." And pictures of
setting, etc., perform precisely the same function as sets in
a drama. Sometimes a too-elaborate setting detracts from
and holds up a story—as in a very gorgeous recent film of
Nazimova, called The Red Lantern, the perfection of the
actress herself was largely obscured by distracting scenery.
To my mind the art is just as bad if you have too much
of this—perhaps worse—as it is if you have too little.
To me there is much difference between reading and
writing; in reading I must follow what is told me; in writing,
what imagination I have roams on a loose halter.
Sure, some of these matters are tools of the trade, a trade
that in many respects is just as mechanical as carpentering—secure
foundations, body of edifice, and climax roof.
Captain Dingle: Depends of course on the artistry of
the author in that particular story. Some stories read to
me like the monotonous dirge of a praying revivalist's
convert. But when the story is well written and is a story
after mine own heart, I can generally see, taste, smell, feel
with the author, though I never recall feeling physical
pain. Of the senses, I think sense of smell gets to me most
vividly. (No, that isn't any wallop at anybody's stuff.
My own stinks sometimes.)
I have to "see" my own work, though not necessarily
with eyes shut. When I visualize a story it is like seeing a
fleet of ships coming out of a fog. When the fog clears,
the bell rings for "Full Ahead."
I never had a chance to study anything deeply. To pass
any of my nautical exams I was simply crammed with
rules and never learned the roots. So far as I remember,
of any studies I suffered at school, what we called plain
[pg 126]
ordinary "sums" gave me as hard a hammering as anything.
I never could learn to do more than add and subtract
and blunder through division. Salt hoss and hardtack
and rope-ends constituted my curriculum after the
age of fourteen and a half.
Sometimes an author's mere phrase will give me a clear
picture, but not often. I can't recall a writer of recent
date who can do that for me.
I have a fresh vision, usually, for each picture I form
myself, except where I am using a character or a scene
over and over again, as in a series. I mean, I don't see
any building as a mere pattern, nor any man as a type
altogether.
Oh, yes! My own imagination works like a pre-war non-union
artisan when I am writing: smoothly, without
strikes, and never kicking at a bit of overtime. When reading,
unless the stuff grips extra hard, the imagination is
like one of the post-war scum who never work except to
fight up to the pay window, then strike till next pay-day.
No, I don't think so. Perhaps I ought.
Louis Dodge: When I read a story I consider it an excellent
or a poor story just in proportion as I see it and
realize it—and all the characters—clearly, as if I were participating
in it. I like swift strokes which make things
vivid and real. For example, in The Master of Ballantrae,
Stevenson, wishing to indicate the deterioration of a man's
character, pictures him as he walks with his little son.
"Mackellar" is speaking: "It was pretty to see the pair returning,
full of briers, and the father as flushed and sometimes
as bemuddied as the child; for they were equal sharers
in all sorts of boyish entertainment, digging in the
beach, damming of streams, and what not; and I have
seen them gaze through a fence at cattle with the same
childish contemplation." That last phrase (the italics are
mine)—does it leave anything invisible? The real masters
do make me see colors and smell odors and feel beaten
down by forces. When I was a boy I took the writer's
[pg 127]
word for it; but now he has to show me. That, perhaps,
is the test of a "rattling" story—that it shows us instead
of telling us.
I can see things clearly with my eyes shut, but only the
major colors appear; the blue of the sea and sky, the red
and black of fire and smoke, the green of grass. When I
see human faces I see only expressions. I can now see the
face of "Barnaby Rudge's" mother, with the expression of
mysterious and hidden terror in it.
Solid geometry was easier to me than plane geometry—perhaps
because it came afterward, perhaps because the
additional dimension made the thing more tangible.
I don't like stock figures; yet I confess that when I think
of school-masters I think of dear old Professor Lane of
Quitman College, a bent old man with calm dark eyes and a
meek manner and an iron-gray mustache; and when I
think of western sheriffs I always think of Bob Dowe of
Maverick County, Texas, who spoke softly and "went and
got 'em." I try not to use stock figures.
I would rather write stories than read them. Making a
story is my own adventure; reading one is following another
man.
I don't like to think of "the tools of my trade." I think
Dickens' best book is The Pickwick Papers—a book in
which the author plainly didn't know where he was going
or what he was going to do. The greatest books are formless:
Les Miserables, Jean Christophe. Perhaps little folk
ought to have tools and think about them. The result may
be a good job, but never, I think, a great story: and I
like to hitch my poor wagon to a star.
Phyllis Duganne: Depends on the author whether I
visualize his story-world or not. Some writers can make
me see and believe people and places and action that I'd
be inclined not to believe—and some writers can make a
perfectly ordinary living-room scene look more like a cardboard
set than a house. Same with sounds and tastes and
smells and touches and feelings. I think that in the average
[pg 128]
short story I find the people more real than the settings
and action. And it depends a great deal, too, on my
mood. If I'm interested in the story as a piece of work—the
sort of job I'm doing myself—it's more an interesting
laying of words end-to-end to make a piece of fiction that's
convincing and readable than anything else. But if I'm
not thinking of the story as work—but just as a tale—I can
be righteously indignant with the villain and thrilled with
the hero.
There aren't any limitations to "seeing things with my
eyes shut"—if the writer can make me see them. A writer
I like and enjoy—and I like a good many—can make me
see things and people and places quite as though I were
there; every detail and color and sound and smell and
noise as distinct as though it were before me.
I didn't study solid geometry, but I'm sure it wouldn't
have given me as much trouble as plain every-day arithmetic.
Nothing could have.
Again it depends on the author. I think that usually
my response is more than the exact description of the
author.
I think I haven't any stock pictures; perhaps I have
for a cowboy.
If images really are formed, I don't resent it. But
when a writer tries so hard that he merely spoils the
image I've already formed without giving me anything
else, I do.
Stories that I write are more vivid to me than the average
story I read. But I think that must always be true;
it's the thing that makes me feel my limitations most: that
people and places can be so vivid and real to me and that
I can't make them so vivid and real to other people. Edna
Ferber in her Old Man Minick made the old man as real as
any one I've ever seen or imagined or written about—but
I suppose he is much more real to her—and probably different—than
he is to me.
Yes, I've considered these things as "tools of my trade."
[pg 129]
A story isn't much good unless it's real to the reader, and
reality comes through making a person forget it's a story
and actually see and hear and feel.
J. Allan Dunn: All emotions come to us through the
senses. And the sense of sight is the key to memory. As
smell is akin to taste, so that one may barely distinguish, I
think it is hard to say how the memory of what one sees
may stimulate the other senses. I can see plainly many of
the characters of other authors, they are as distinct as if I
had met them. I recognize them partly by the masonry of
our craft. So too I can see the setting if I stop to connect
up. But I think it is largely the difference between being
able to think in a foreign language when we read it, or
to pause—however connectedly—and translate. I can force
my reading mind to translate more vividly for me if I
want it to. Color I can see best. Vaguely I can taste.
Sense of rough or smooth contact, no. Nor of pain. But
I can get exhilarated by the pleasure of the characters,
depressed by their sorrow, react to bravery, patriotism,
sacrifice, sorrow. My lachrymal glands will work, my
emotions are on the qui vive, but the sense impressions are
in the main hazy.
I can see things with my eyes shut without a question. I
can conjure up places I have seen or that are well described.
I can see color, I can see details, if I stop to think.
Don't believe I can read and do it nearly as vividly, unless
experience of my own is coincident.
I had no trouble with solid geometry. I got my mathematical
degree at Oxford.
An author will stimulate me far beyond the exact degree
of description.
I try to avoid all stock pictures as I would the plague.
I conjure up an individual vision. I endeavor to see
plainly every character and every bit of scenery I use.
Often the characters and scenes are taken entire from life.
It is my general plan to write of no phases of life, no places,
that I have not known at first hand.
[pg 130]
My imagination is highly stimulated when writing
stories that I start upon with special enthusiasm, but the
work of a fine craftsman urges me to better effort for myself
and gives me enormous satisfaction.
I don't know how far I use such matters as tools of my
trade. Certainly the ability to conjure up my scenes and
characters is most essential. I am afraid of plagiarism. I
acknowledge the reaction to write something in the style or
upon the lines of an author I admire and I have to fight
it.
Walter A. Dyer: In reading I visualize, particularly
the setting. Atmosphere in a story always appeals to me.
Thus I see the town of Middlemarch as a real place, and
Egdon Heath in The Return of the Native is very vivid to
me, while the salient points of the characters have faded.
I react to sound, taste and smell less readily. Tenseness
of dramatic passages I feel physically, but not pain very
acutely. Stories by Conrad have left me physically weary
as though I had taken part in the action, but not every
author affects me in this way.
I believe I visualize color as well as outline, and motion
is included, even the passing of wind, in the picture. I
always found solid geometry easy. I do not have stock
pictures. Probably I am a bit sophisticated and react to
the suggestiveness of so-called literary description more
than the average.
My mind works much the same way when I am writing.
I believe I succeed in getting atmosphere into my stories,
but I do not find it has the most telling element in making
them salable.
I might add that in reading I am not so much carried
away by pure action as by vividness of detail and the
dramatic element that is psychological. Beyond that,
humor in presentation and color in description appeal to
me. Stevenson, for example, and to a large extent Kipling
and Hardy, combine these to my liking.
Walter Prichard Eaton: I certainly see in imagination,
[pg 131]
as clearly as in reality, when my mind is concentrated.
I couldn't write anything if I didn't see as I
wrote. A person without strong visual imagination may be
a great philosopher, but he can never enter fiction.
I never studied solid geometry. Plane was the only
mathematics I ever could do, though!
I have, as a reader, stock pictures only for stock stories.
If a writer can not compel an individual image in me, I
throw away his manuscript.
I resent description that is a mass of detail, when my
picture is formed at a sentence. Most American magazine
writers sin this way. I skip the second half of nearly all
their description. The French never sin this way. They
select few, but the salient details.
Of course one's imagination differs in the acts of reading
and creating—i. e. the process of employment differs.
In reading it is passive and follows a lead, in creating, it
is active. That is why it is more fun to create—and why it
tires you quicker. The imagination itself is the same in the
two processes, but in the second it has a sense of freedom.
Artists have initiative of imagination.
I don't know what you mean by considering these matters
as tools of your trade. I have had always an interest
in psychology, especially the psychology of esthetics. But
it never occurred to me that anybody could possibly write
creative literature without the ability to reassemble sensory
impressions and hold them steadily by the power of
the imagination. If I hadn't possessed to some extent this
power, I should never have tried to write. The stronger
one has it, the more inevitably he becomes an artist.
E. O. Foster: Having been a copy reader I am afraid
that when I read a story I do not allow my imagination
the play it should have and I fear that this probably reacts
in my own composition. For me to get the full benefit
of a story it must be off the ordinary track, for instance—F.
St. Mars' stories of animal life appeal to me. I could
see and sense the different animals in their habitat. Talbot
[pg 132]
Mundy's stuff appeals to me but in a different way.
I think it is by association, for I have lived a great deal of
my life in foreign countries.
I can not see things with my eyes shut, but if I concentrate
my memory will bring back details I can write down.
For instance in one of my stories I spoke about an
"obscene lizard." This particular lizard, a "Gecko," was
perched on top of a broken bamboo a short distance in front
of one of our trenches in Manila. He was making the night
hideous. I threw a club at him just as he started his "yammer."
The club hit the bamboo and he went sailing into
the air to land ultimately on the ground. I can feel as
plainly to-day as I could then my astonishment when, with
the sound of his impact, came the "you-you-y-o-u," with
which he always ended his call. You could not page him.
Scenery to me comes back in its color, as do paintings,
but a house—even the house in which I was born and
reared—does not seem to me to have color.
I have not studied solid geometry, therefore I can not
answer this question.
My response is not limited to the exact degree to which
the author's description makes vivid, for I frequently find
myself trying to add to an author's conception.
I think possibly that when I visualize a church it is possibly
the little one in which I first attended divine service,
but I have seen so many cowboys and so many soldiers that
I imagine each case produces individual vision. I have not
been inside many churches lately.
There is a decided difference in the behavior of my
imagination when I am reading a story and when I am
writing one. Nor have I considered these methods as tools
of my trade.
Arthur O. Friel: My imagination does not reproduce
any of these sense impressions, or pain. If the writer has
made these things vivid they register strongly, but I do
not actually see, hear and smell them as in real life. Didn't
study geometry. Am limited virtually, though not actually,
[pg 133]
to the writer's portrayal. No stock pictures. Reading
vs. writing? Yes. When writing a story I live it.
Have not considered these as tools of my trade.
J. U. Giesy: Personally in reading a story my imagination
reproduces the scene of the author only as tinctured
by my own characteristic bent, I suspect. I actually
see the characters and settings—I mentally appreciate the
sounds, flavors, tastes, smells and tactile impressions described,
but wholly in a comparative rather than any other
sense. The pain sense in a physical way, I can not say I
have ever felt—on a mental plane, as applying to pathos,
grief, etc., I have always been keenly responsive. In writing
I have at times laughed heartily at some humorous
situation or wept at the emotion I sought to convey by the
situation and cause for grief expressed.
In "seeing things with my eyes shut" I believe that the
pictures take on the mentally pre-recorded tints resulting
from past experiences of life. Details with me are exceedingly
distinct—a setting or locale is as clearly apprehended
as though it for the moment was actually existent
in a physical state.
Geometry never troubled me. It probably would now as
I haven't tried to demonstrate a theorem for years.
I am very apt to carry on the author's concept along my
own lines—or to diverge from it at times to an entirely
different result.
I have no stock pictures in the sense you mean. Each
setting grows as applying to the story in hand. At the
same time there is no doubt that each is in a sense the result
of past knowledge of such settings, many of them having
come down from childhood, and each being modified
for the case in hand to suit.
I read in a more or less passive state, trying to get the
meat of the author's thought. I write in a state of tense
concentration trying to force my thought on the reader.
The processes are very different I think.
I fear I have never thought of this as fully as I have
[pg 134]
since the question was asked by you. As you know, my
writing is an avocation and pleasure—a relaxation from a
professional life.
George Gilbert: If the story is good, I live it as I
read; if it is without appeal to me enough to compel me
to live it, I throw it aside. In regard to seeing "things
with your eyes shut," this question evades a square answer,
for who can analyze the limitations of his own imagination,
when he must use it for the analysis? Who else
can do it for him? The imagination, in its workings, is
the one power that is inalienable, non-delegateable. Do I
"have stock pictures for church, cowboy," etc.? I hope
not. Reading vs. writing? No one can tell; certainly I
can't. Tools? No; not; none. If an author kept all that
in mind, he'd write, not stories, but a text-book on them.
Kenneth Gilbert: To a great degree I have spoiled
myself as a reader; in other words, I have for years taught
myself to be always looking for the mechanics of a story.
I ask myself: Why did the author do this? And I am
not satisfied until the question is answered. Occasionally,
however, I read a story that by its smoothness and charm
stirs my admiration and imagination, and I find myself
being carried along, reacting the same as the average
reader, in just the way the author wished. Then indeed
do I hear the sounds described and taste the flavors of
the story. Imagination does not reproduce smells very
markedly, but the sense of touch is very real. Physical
pain is felt; more keenly when sympathies are deeply
stirred. A poignant sense of sympathy is the keenest emotion
I feel, it seems to me. In addition I would say that
clever dialogue in dialect, such as a negro—if he is funny—is
most realistic. I can hear the words spoken.
I "see things with my eyes shut," but sketchily, only
the high lights being visible, therefore the details, unless I
focus my attention on them, are blurred. In colors.
Solid geometry proved far more interesting than arithmetic,
which was very distasteful to me.
[pg 135]
I have stock pictures, unless the author has troubled to
depict objects otherwise. I prefer to see them through his
eyes rather than resort to my familiar scenes.
Decidedly there is a difference in the behavior of my
imagination when I am writing, as compared to reading,
stories. Reading a story never keys me up until I am
oblivious to all but my immediate surroundings, while I
fairly live a dramatic scene in my own story.
I consider these matters "tools of the trade." For example,
I try to test impartially my own description, to see
if I have gone far enough, or too far. If I feel that it is
graphic enough for the reader to "get" its highlights, his
own imagination will supply the rest. (I'm taking Kipling's
word for that, and I think it is correct, as I have
proved it to my own satisfaction by questioning discerning
friends who read my stories.) A sentence which carries
imaginative stimuli, and therefore a flavor, is one of
my constant aims.
Louise Closser Hale: I know that good reading makes
good writing, develops style, polishes our sentences and
gives us an unconscious measure for us to go by. I know
that I have often written down a word and, after writing
it, realize that I had no clear idea what that word meant,
but upon digging at my dictionary I have found it to be
absolutely the word for the definition of my thought. That
comes from good reading. How beautiful it is that, like
acting, we can learn and enjoy at the same time! Is there
any difference in the workings of my imagination when I
am reading and when I am writing? Well, I generally
read authors who write better than I do and my imagination
makes pictures of every situation of their story. But
I resent any great description of the characters. I can
make my own pictures; and I am impatient when I myself
am writing if there seems any compelling necessity
for going into the delineation of features and coloring and
what they wear. The reader can make my people look just
the way he wants to. I don't care—it's enough to be read.
[pg 136]
I might say more than that. As Kate Douglas Wiggin
said once to me, teasingly: "I've bought your last book. I
don't suppose you care whether I have read it or not."
Perhaps it is just enough to be bought.
Holworthy Hall: Unfortunately, when I read a contemporary
story I am always seeing the machinery, especially
if I know the author personally. If, however, I read
the work of an author unknown to me personally or an
author no longer living or a so-called "classic," I am
much more subject to my own imagination. It is only once
in a hundred instances that any writer can make me forget
the methods by which he has attempted to produce his
effect. When this happens, I know that I have read something
genuine. Nevertheless, even if a story is bad and
even if the wheels creak, I am very receptive of any appeal
to any specific sense, primarily the visual sense.
With "my eyes shut" I have no limitations in color or
in detail.
I took honors in solid geometry.
Generally I am offended by a wealth of description and
detail which prevents me from independent thinking; I
much prefer to receive a vivid suggestion and to be allowed
to ferment it myself.
As a reader I have no "stock pictures." I put it up
to the author to show me what he has; if he fails to convince
me, I walk out. I decline to substitute my own conceptions
for those which he impliedly guaranteed to provide
me.
Next question answered already—above.
Obviously, after what I have already said, there is all
the difference in the world between the state of my imagination
when I read and when I write.
Never. If I had, I should be too self-conscious to write.
Richard Matthews Hallet: The trend of the questions
on imagination seems to be to discover what type of imagination
mine is, auditory, visual or motor. These I believe
are the psychological divisions. I think mine is auditory.
[pg 137]
I get things I hear better than things I see. A word
or two may mean more to me than a whole landscape.
Words collect values round themselves in some queer way
and they provide you with an imaginary world not so
sharp as the real one—that is my case at least—but to
which my emotional reaction is vastly keener. I wonder
if the imaginations of most writing men are not chiefly
auditory, with a good infusion of the motor type where
there is a knack of swift flowing narrative. Certainly the
chief preoccupation of the writer is with words and not
things. Does he have the same grasp of detail as the
practical-minded man? I doubt it, even where his writing
is all made up of detail. He husbands the details he does
grasp, that is all. They are precious and astonishing to
him for the very reason that he is weak on that side. Lafcadio
Hearn's writing is a gorgeous mass of color and of
sensuous appreciation; yet the man was half blind, I believe.
His sight was certainly defective. This may have
helped him. Beethoven's symphonies were none the worse
for their composer being deaf. Obstacles may be the very
things that compel genius to extend itself.
Mathematics hits me on my blind side entirely.
I do not resent having images formed for me, I demand
it. I dislike sketchy writing. I'm not speaking of the
enormous suggestiveness which words of course have in
themselves, but of a habit of leaving the reader to fill in
the picture. If most stories were of the Lady or the Tiger
type, they would fall flat, in my opinion. A story, to ring
the bull's eye, should be self-contained.
As to behavior of my imagination when reading and
when writing, it differs as the behavior of a man loafing
differs from that of a man slaving under the lash. This
is a large difference. I don't write easily; not apparently
because I like it. And yet any other job would certainly
suit me less. So where are we?
William H. Hamby: It all depends on the writer. If
he has seen what he is describing and does it interestingly
[pg 138]
and convincingly I see it too. If he doesn't—I skip to the
next story. I do not bring up in my mind sounds described
in a story nearly so vividly as I do tastes or smell.
The description of an odor comes very vividly to me. I
do not feel physical pain as I read of it—with the exception
of cold or fatigue. I have a very vivid sense of touch
and any mention of coldness, smoothness or the like is
felt as I read.
I see things with my eyes shut and I often see them in
colors. At times they are misty and again I see the picture
in very vivid details.
Solid geometry was very easy for me. I started in solid
geometry before I had studied plane geometry and demonstrated
every proposition in the text.
I usually see most vividly that which is merely suggested
or very briefly described. A detailed description
kills the picture with me.
I have no stock pictures. If a picture comes at all, it is
a new one.
Naturally one's imagination works more definitely when
he is writing than when reading. In order to write at all
one must bring his mind into a state of intense activity.
But he can read almost passively—often passing over long
stretches merely to get to what he hopes is coming.
No, I never have.
Joseph Mills Hanson: When I read a story I see everything
vividly, provided it interests me; characters, action
and setting. I do not hear sounds; merely realize them.
Yes, I believe I do taste flavors. Not much doing on
smells. Sense of touch also rather somnolent (hope I'm
not getting atrophied!). But I do feel actual, physical
pain, if it is feelingly depicted.
Often "see things with my eyes shut"; it comes naturally.
Things seem in natural colors and distinct.
Thank goodness, I never studied solid geometry. Algebra
was bad enough. However, I liked plane geometry
better than other mathematics—which isn't saying much.
[pg 139]
If I become absorbed in a story, my imagination runs
away ahead of the author; though not always, of course,
nor often, to his conclusions.
I usually get different pictures for every church or cowboy,
or dog or barnyard, or anything else.
There is, I believe, a difference in the conduct of my
imagination when reading or writing a story. It acts more
slowly, perhaps less logically, when writing; I have to
ponder situations a good deal before deciding and going
ahead.
Yes, I have thought of them as tools of my trade. The
sub-divisions have not occurred to me in that light.
E. E. Harriman: In reading a story I see every, smallest
detail and if the author is chary of descriptions I fill in
unconsciously. One reason why I am at times short on descriptions—I
see it so plainly myself that I am liable to
forget that others can not. My imagination carries me
into a field of action so completely that I am often under a
strain that tires me out. I have, in writing a gunfight
scene, jumped nearly out of my chair when a neighbor
slammed a board down on another one. I am often so
affected by pathos of my own composition that I have to
pause and assure myself that it is fiction, before I can
finish. In reading Payson Terhune's dog story in the last
Ladies' Home Journal last night I got so worked up that
I wanted to hammer hell out of that speed maniac who
killed the dog. I feel, see, hear, smell, anything vividly
represented by a good writer.
Seeing in the dark—the colorings are there, to the last
gradation. Every detail is clear cut and distinct. I can
see things I saw fifty years ago, in just that way. As I
think of my dog that died forty-two years ago, I can see
the shadings that ran down from his reddish back to his
light yellow belly. I can see the color and expression of
his eyes and the way he would cock his head on one side
when listening to me.
Never studied solid geometry, though I made the drawings
[pg 140]
in the University of Minnesota. Enjoyed them immensely
and took a high mark.
If a writer hints at anything, my mind pictures it instantly.
If his description is stopped shy of completion, I
finish it.
I have no stock pictures, though my memory is full of
scenes. Any style or kind is built up instantly by a phrase
or sentence.
I think that there is a marked difference in imaginative
vision when writing or reading. In reading I feel that I
am looking at a photograph or watching action by others.
In writing I feel that I am in the scene—a part of it—helping
in the action.
I use these "tools of my trade" daily. Often I start
with a man or boy as my central character. Before long
he gets into a scrape. At once I become that character
and have to live the situation in order to learn what he
would or could do to get out of a fix.
Nevil G. Henshaw: This is rather hard to answer, but
in reading a book or story that I'm genuinely interested
in I react far beyond the written page in all the senses you
enumerate. I imagine I feel most the emotions of the
characters, fear, hate, desire, pain, etc. Also taste hits me
hard. Smell not so much. Sound still less. Touch last
of all. A scene well done I see perfectly and I delight in
the little touches that make real and set off the whole,
trifles like a puddle in a road, a rock on a hillside, an
odd piece of furniture or ornament in a room.
In writing unless I can see what I'm writing about I
can't get it on paper. The picture is perfectly clear to the
last detail no matter how fanciful. This applies to any
picture I try to conjure up. I see the colors also.
Being a dub at all mathematics, I never studied geometry.
If an author gives me a good hint I can generally go beyond
it.
I've no stock pictures, especially in my own work. A
[pg 141]
place will give me an idea even quicker than a person.
But then I've always thought that there was a great deal in
that ancient expression "Ain't nature grand."
There is, of course, a big difference though it's hard to
explain. Perhaps I can get at it best by saying that writing
is work, reading play.
These matters are most certainly tools of the trade, and I
use them all I can.
Joseph Hergesheimer: My reaction to a story is partly
to the fineness of its writing and partly to the depth of its
humanity—its pity and understanding. I see no mental
pictures—again all this is simply the emotion of recognition.
Solid geometry? I have never studied anything.
Stock pictures or individual vision? If it isn't the latter
it's nothing! Resent too many images? This is not clear.
"Behavior of the imagination" escapes me. Tools of
trade? This, too, is complicated. I think I am centered
on the main thing, and the rest follow subconsciously.
Robert Hichens: I can not answer this.
R. de S. Horn: I certainly consider these matters as
tools of the trade. Perhaps this comes from the peculiar
situation I find myself in; viz., having to write or do nothing.
I had always liked to write; did a lot of it at the
Naval Academy and afterward as a side line mostly for the
pure fun of it. But when I was smashed up and rendered
unfit for most occupations I took to writing with deliberate
intent to make it my one profession. Writing is in
mind at all times, whatever I do, wherever I go. And with
such in view I try to make everything useful and subservient
to the end in view.
I find that my imagination is quite vivid, and it immediately
interests itself in every story I read. I smell smells,
see sights, hear sounds, taste tastes and feel emotions provided
the author himself has done so and thus has handed
them on to me. In other words I quite enter into the atmosphere
of the stories I read. More than this, I sometimes
find myself seized with a new solution to the story
[pg 142]
and thinking it out to see if possibly the story wouldn't
have been better that way. Generally the pictures I see in
my imagination are black and white; silhouettes, you
might say, though I still see the colors. The idea is that it
is the outlines that strike me most forcibly, sort of like
cardboard outlines of mountains, for instance, that show
the bold characteristics rather than the tiny details. By
focussing I am able to bring out the details better, however,
after a bit. But the first impression is usually silhouette-like.
Solid geometry and spherical trigonometry did give me
considerably more trouble than the plane branches of
mathematics. However by the time I had finished calculus
and a few more like that I seemed to have acquired the
knack of it.
The author's words frequently set my imagination off
in its own and sometimes quite different channels.
I don't believe I have stock pictures. It seems to me
that every story should have its own distinctive characters
and settings. However I have not written sufficiently to
say for certain that I don't use them unconsciously.
I think my imagination works differently when writing
than when reading. In the first case I direct it myself and
deliberately put it to work in most cases after the story
actually begins to take form. But when reading it works
purely subconsciously.
Clyde B. Hough: The mere printed word does not
and never can present the picture in the fulness of its
maturity. The best that the printed word can hope to do
is to suggest graphically, so graphically that the imagination
of the dullest reader will experience no difficulty in
rounding out the picture, in clothing it with all the splendor,
emotion, etc., that the author has suggested. It is my
belief that any author's success will be measured according
to the extent that he succeeds in achieving this goal.
When I read other men's stories, or to be accurate I
should say when I study other men's stories, I see their
[pg 143]
characters. I am enthralled by their action which expresses
their sensations. My subconscious mind is aware
of the tastes, the flavors and the smells or anything else
that goes to round out a given setting, but I do not physically
experience these things. My imagination does not
reproduce the sense of touch, nor does it cause me to feel
pain. I account for this by the fact that all the rounding
out of the story, as a reader supplying what the author
suggests, is left to my subconscious mind, because my conscious
mind is solely occupied with studying the story from
the craftsman's standpoint. To put the whole matter in a
nut shell, I do not read for entertainment, but solely to
study the other fellow's craftsmanship in order that I myself
may acquire more craft.
Yes, I can "see things with my eyes shut" and the limitations
are, allowing for the ratio of imagination, in proportion
to the number and variety, or the sum total of all
the actual concrete things I have ever seen. These pictures
and objects in my mind automatically take on the color
that is appropriate to themselves. The details are not distinct
unless I make a special effort in concentration. But
by an effort of the will I can generally straighten out the
kinks.
I have not studied any form of higher mathematics.
I do not think that I elaborate on other men's work in a
creative sense, although many stories have started me
thinking on certain lines which ultimately rewarded me
with a plot germ. But in all such cases I have been extremely
alert to avoid allowing any similarity between
such a story and the other author's story which fathered
the embryo thought.
I do not believe that I have stock pictures for either
pirates, preachers or church steeples. I make this statement
because I am never surprised at meeting people differently
garbed or at seeing things differently shaped
from what I have been accustomed to see them.
When I am reading, my imagination works, I believe,
[pg 144]
just about as much as the suspense, thrill, emotion, etc.,
recorded in what I'm reading requires—no more than that.
But when I'm writing my imagination is brought under
the pressure of my will and driven to its uttermost capacity—with
the guiding hand of judgment at the reins always
of course.
Some of the phases of the writing craft thus far touched
upon I have considered and used consciously. Some I
have missed automatically.
This laboratory test will be of inestimable worth to any
author.
Emerson Hough: I have no mental contortions. My
mouth never waters. Just see the pictures clear, as nearly
as I can tell. Geometry? You are getting too deep. All
mathematics troubled me plenty. As to response, I don't
savvy this. No, I don't think any writer has stock pictures
who has resources of his own. I don't resent; sometimes
I don't read. Reading vs. writing? I'll say there is!
Tools? I never throw fits. I am a very plain, ordinary
person.
A. S. M. Hutchinson: When reading a story my imagination
is entirely and most vividly with the persons of the
story. When one of them is about to become the victim of
a misunderstanding I find myself simply longing that he
will somehow escape it, and this never mind whether the
story is good, bad or indifferent.
Limitations depend entirely on the extent to which my
interest is aroused.
No, far less trouble from solid geometry.
Response depends entirely on how much the thing described,
well or ill, interests me.
Each its own picture.
Not a bit, unless I resent them as images. But suggestion,
leaving me to do the rest, is what I most enjoy.
I do not know.
As tools? No.
Inez Haynes Irwin: I would say yes to all these questions.
[pg 145]
I enjoy fiction intensely. All my life I have been
the easy prey of fiction writers. Allowing that sometimes
the mind gets fatigued and ceases to register impressions
(although I do not remember ever to have had this experience)
I would say that I saw, heard, tasted, smelled and felt
all the things the author wanted me to see, hear, taste,
smell and feel. I do seem in imagination actually to feel
physical pain when the author wishes me to do so. Recently
while suffering from an attack of grippe I had to
stop reading a novel, Dorothy Speare's Dancers in the
Dark, because the opening chapters described the fatigue of
a group of girls who had danced all night. Their fatigue
added so much to my weakness that I could not go on with
the story. I remember once reading an essay by John
Burroughs on The Apple. When I had finished it, I had
to go out and buy an apple to eat, although ordinarily I
don't care for apples.
I am particularly susceptible to color in writing; and I
find that I enjoy particularly the work of those writers
who have studied art or have been artists. Du Maurier's
books were a great joy to me and if Hergesheimer had
nothing else to interest me, I think I should read him for
the wonderful color arrangements in his descriptions.
Java Head is remarkable in this respect. Robert Chambers
has some of this color quality too; so, of course, to an
extraordinary degree, has Conrad.
The pictures I see in my imagination are always colored
as the author directs me to color them.
I do not think details are blurred in my imagined version
of the author's picture—except when I have read too
hurriedly or skipped.
I have studied arithmetic, algebra, plane geometry and
solid geometry. The higher the mathematics the better I
liked it. I was exceptionally stupid in arithmetic but I
enjoyed plane and solid geometry enormously. It appealed
to my imagination.
I am not quite sure that I understand what this question
[pg 146]
means. Of course highly imaginative writers—especially
if they have the great technical gift of connotative writing—can
start your imagination with a broken phrase, can
keep it working long after their words have stopped. It is
as though they left echoes in one's mind. I think H. G.
Wells makes this magic in my mind more often than any
other writer that I know. Although I am half inclined to
say that Henry James—who can also involve me in a maze
of obscurity—is his equal if not his superior in this respect.
I am sure that each case produces its individual vision.
I don't remember ever formulating this while reading;
but of course I realize that an author may have a too explicit
style.
As to reading vs. writing. I think not, because it has
never occurred to me that there could be any such difference.
In writing description, I always do try to appeal to the
five senses of my reader. Perhaps this is so because in the
writing courses which I took at Radcliffe College the instructors
impressed it on us to do that.
Will Irwin: Answering generally the complex questions
under the head: In reading writers who are "my
men," as Stevenson, Wells, Anatole France, I find myself
seeing the scenes in my imagination. The fight in David
Balfour, the meeting of "Pontius Pilate" and "Laelius
Lamia" in Le Procurateur de Judée, are to me as though I
had witnessed them. I hear the sounds, but I can not say
with truth that I taste the flavors or experience the smells.
That doubtless is a matter of individual peculiarity. I
have almost no sense of smell. On the other hand, I often
see the colors most vividly. That again comes from individual
peculiarity—I take the greatest delight in color.
In a treatise on dreams which I have read recently the
author says that dreams are like photographs; that they
have no color, only one low tone and white. If that is so, I
must be a freak. I am always dreaming in colors—as a
few nights ago of seeing a procession in russet brown
[pg 147]
carrying rose-colored banners. Sometimes my imagination,
in reading, reproduces the sense of touch, and occasionally
the sense of pain. When I "see things with my eyes shut,"
I think the image is usually blurred and lacking in detail
except for one central figure. But I do usually see such
pictures in colors. I perceive what you are driving at in
your question about solid geometry. I run true to form.
Other mathematics did not interest me. I loathed arithmetic
and algebra and I quit trigonometry from absolute
boredom. But I was a sharp at geometry, both plane and
solid.
I think that the mere concept of an author whom I
recognize as one of my men will often set me to imagining
things beyond those which he has described. By the same
token I am sometimes bored by over-detailed description.
I can not say, however, that I have stock pictures for persons
and things which come within the limits of my experience.
I do, however, for categories of persons and things
which I have not seen—as a cavalier, a Zulu chief or a king
on his throne. The visual faculty of my mind works in the
same manner when I am reading a story as when I am
writing one. In both cases I have a succession of color-pictures.
Certainly I use these things as tools of my trade—especially
the picture faculty. One analytical passage in Barrett
Wendell's treatise on Shakespeare has been very useful
to me. He shows that Shakespeare's magic consists
largely in creating a succession of haunting pictures in the
mind. Since I absorbed that principle I have analyzed
other magic styles and found this their secret. I have
tried to follow in my poor way. I also try to use the tactile
style. As it is a thing generally beyond me, I avoid
dragging in the sense of smell. I do use sounds a great
deal, however.
Charles Tenney Jackson: As to reading a story my
imagination goes more to an author's pictures than his
plot. I am rather coldly critical about plots and most of
[pg 148]
them show their ragged spots to me, lapses, improbabilities
and negligences. But I like to have the chap show me a
setting that seems real. If it's the sea islands, I want their
colorful warmth; the Yukon, I want its snows and grim
menace to the human actors. People are so much alike
that a story does not move me because a writer attempts
to show me their differences in different settings. My
idea is that human nature reacts exactly the same everywhere.
In other words, answering query III if an author
gives me a hurricane I want that vivid, smashing, either
by description or suggestion, and I don't give a durn who
lives through it to rescue the girl. I know to start with
that she'll be pulled out. There are certain banal things in
either reading or writing fiction that you can't get away
from; so I slide past 'em to see how the minor keys can be
played.
Frederick J. Jackson: When I read a story I live it,
that is, if the author has a sureness of touch with his characters
and action that is convincing to me. Some authors
I can not read at all. I won't read them. It's a waste of
time. They don't get over with me. What I consider a
perfect story is one in which the author can make me suffer
with his characters, laugh with them, play with them,
make my eye look through the sights of an aimed rifle, let
my finger be on the trigger.
To the things I "see with my eyes shut" there are few
limitations, the pictures are colored, real, the details are
distinct.
My response is not limited to the degree with which the
author describes and makes vivid. A mere hint suffices to
draw a really definite picture in my mind. If the author
doesn't spoil my own picture with too damned many cloying
details I'm better satisfied. I dislike wading through
paragraph after paragraph of detailed description, unless
an accurate picture is necessary in order to give a complete
understanding of certain action or certain moves
made by a character.
[pg 149]
I carry that dislike for detailed description into my own
work. If I use more than one sentence of description I
wince. I like to convey a picture, a real picture in as few
words as possible. I like to put action into my description,
into my picture of a setting.
I never have stock pictures. A village church? Immediately
before my mind passes a parade of all the village
churches I have ever seen, in villages or movie lots.
My dislike for description applies to characters as well
as scenery. A hint here and there, characterization—things
that will make each reader furnish the details he
likes best. I might have described them in detail—mere
words to tell how they appear in my picture. Really now,
when you read about characters, doesn't your mind supply
a picture of the physical man? A man to your liking, unhampered
by clogging, useless words? Didn't characterization
do that? If you have a leaning toward dark heroes,
you conceive him to be dark. If to your mind a guy with
red hair is the real Peruvian gooseberry as the main character,
red headed he'll be in your mental picture. Etc.,
etc.
Is there any difference in behavior of your imagination
when you are reading stories and when writing them? I
live with my characters both in reading and writing, but
oh! what a difference. In writing, I have to work out the
problems; in reading, the problems have been worked out
by the author. It's traveling with a sled, but one is going
up-hill and the other down-grade.
Mary Johnston: Impossible to answer this fully.
Sometimes there is a high degree of reality, at other times
less. Depends upon the amount of energy that is functioning,
energy and attention.
Yes, it is possible to see things with your eyes shut. I
see them colored, in the round, and at times in motion.
Not always in minute detail. Often only a general impression.
No more trouble from solid geometry.
[pg 150]
As to response, if you have the concept, you can produce
the appropriate phenomena. Individual pictures usually.
Sometimes a composite or an idealization.
Prefer things to be suggested rather than minutely described.
Probably a difference as to reading and writing.
They are tools of life—therefore of one's work also.
John Joseph: If it is a really good story my imagination
reacts to all the emotions and sensations mentioned
except "physical pain." Very few stories belong to this
class, however.
The author's "pictures" (in good stories) are reproduced
in every detail, and distinctly. My mental pictures
often go far beyond anything the author has actually described.
I have no "stock" pictures; every "cowboy" and
"village church" differs from all the others.
There is little difference in "behavior of imagination"
whether reading or writing. I think that all these points
are valuable to the writer.
Lloyd Kohler: In reading a story I am very apt to
puzzle out in my own mind the outcome of the story long
before the end is reached. Often the author's ending of
the story, however, is radically different from what my
own imagination had planned. Sometimes I can't overcome
the idea that my own solution would have bettered
the story; at other times I can easily see that the author's
solution was vastly superior to my own.
In writing a story, or planning a story to write, my
imagination generally runs—well, we'll say "wild." For
instance: I may carefully plan a certain climax—and then
find when the story is finally written that the first climax
has been substituted for a more fitting one which flew
into my mind during the last stages of the writing.
I don't want to commit myself on this question—I can't
even agree with myself regarding the different angles of
it. But I will say that when reading a story generally I
do see in my imagination the characters, action and setting,
[pg 151]
though perhaps not so clearly as if looking at the
actual scene. The vividness of the picture, of course, depends
upon the clearness and vividness of the author. It
depends also on just how familiar I am with the picture
presented by the author.
The pictures described by an author which "I see with
my eyes shut" are more in black and white. The details
are very apt to be indistinct.
Plane geometry was exceedingly easy for me, but with
another restless spirit I put to sea, consequently I can't
say how I would have fared with the solid variety.
My response is not necessarily limited to the exact degree
to which the author describes. It depends on how
familiar I am with that which the author attempts to make
vivid. The very thought of some things would set me to
producing as vividly, perhaps, even more vividly, than the
author himself. On the other hand, if the description were
unfamiliar the response would likely be limited.
I don't believe that I have stock pictures for anything.
If I have, some bit of description is bound to stick to me
that will allow the thing to be individualized. Two cowboys
are no more apt to be alike than two business men.
Harold Lamb: Yes, the imagination reproduces the
story-world completely. Although not so fully with sounds
as with sight, touch, smell. Perhaps the fact that I am
nearly half deaf may have something to do with this.
About sensations it is hard to find the right word. Of
course reading of a slashed finger does not give a resultant
pain in any finger. It may give, however, a vivid mental
image of pain in some finger. This is apt to be more
annoying and enduring than a thumb actually cut by a
knife.
The strength of the imagery is, logically, in proportion
to the skill of the writer in creating his story-world. Reading
Knut Hamsun's Hunger caused a more active mind
distress than Les Miserables. Les Miserables was worse
(that is, stronger) than Quo Vadis. By this last I do not
[pg 152]
mean to raise the standard of Scandinavia over Poland.
Knut Hamsun's tale was fashioned to reproduce the imagery
of hunger completely, and it was marvelously done.
As compared with the actual sensation it was more painful.
I mean retrospectfully painful. At certain times I
have been rather hungry. But a full meal always banished
the distress. No after-impress of pain remained.
But, walking the streets of Copenhagen in the person of
Knut Hamsun's young man, I never had any satisfaction
from gorging after starving. He—I—always threw up.
So with other sensations. But the most vivid sensations
received from the printed word are those that have been
experienced in life. Such as pain from frostbite, suffocation
under water, drowsiness.
As to limitations of imagination, I do not know of any.
Images are distinct. Colored as in the story. When color
is lacking, I seem to supply it. Brown, green, gray are
always present. (An artist explains that these are the
neutral tints.) White, blue and red come into place as
described, but less often volunteer. Black, yellow and
purple almost never volunteer and when the printed word
summons are sketched hastily.
Poor in all mathematics, least deficient in plane and
solid geometry.
Seem to reproduce more in imagination than the author
sets forth and have always thought that most readers did
likewise. I find that continually I am snubbed back by a
fresh word as to setting in the course of a story.
No stock pictures.
As to reading vs. writing, the cart before the horse, and
behind.
Tools of trade? I have not puzzled about the psychology
of a reader.
Sinclair Lewis: My imagination reproduces thus occasionally.
In colors, details distinct. Less trouble with
solid geometry. A mere concept will set me to reproducing
just as vividly. No stock pictures. Do not resent abundant
[pg 153]
images. Imagination is more active in writing than
in reading.
Hapsburg Liebe: If a story really interests me, I feel
everything, see everything, clearly. Reading of a man on
a desert makes me thirsty. Writing of the same thing
makes me thirsty. I cuss, cry and fight with the hero.
I did not study geometry. Never could study anything
much.
If I read "He found himself in a dense woodland," my
imagination makes the rest; I see pines, oaks, etc., as well
as the woods. I think most other readers are like this;
that's why they don't like detail.
Unless I'm careful, I have stock pictures for such things
as logging-camps, etc. Often I catch myself and make
myself see it differently, make the creek run the other way,
and so on—and it's harder than you'd think. The last
camp I worked in (there was a sawmill in connection) is
always coming back to me, and I've had a devil of a time
putting a thicket of laurel where the mill stood. This
sounds crazy, but I'm trying to answer your questions.
There is little, if any, difference in my behavior when
reading stories and writing them. I get "all het up" in
either case, if there's any reason for it.
"Tools of the trade?" I forget everything like that
when at work, I regret to say, though sometimes I take
pains to see how some real author has got his effects.
Romaine H. Lowdermilk: I actually imagine—envisage—everything
that goes on. If the writer has told it
at all clearly I see and hear everything. I smell or taste
nothing—my imagination does not go so far. I feel no
pain nor sense of touch except in very familiar things like
bitter cold, tropical heat, ropes, gun-shot in the leg and
the like. The scenes I see are all in "black and white"
much like the illustrations in magazines, or rather more
like a memory of an actual happening. I see bright sunlights
and deep shades, but seldom see colors even though
the heroine wears a yellow waist. The main details are distinct,
[pg 154]
the rest merely passing impressions. Sometimes an
especially vivid story brings out a lasting remembrance
and I have it as almost an actual happening.
Solid geometry gave me no more trouble than any of
my mathematics, but, at that, it is a terrible arraignment
to numbers.
My response is generally limited to just about what the
author describes. Naturally I do not know what is coming
and so do not give much room to imaginings. The only
thing that peeves me is to go through a lot of fine description
only to find that it had nothing whatever to do with
the progress of the story; was just slung there by the
author for the sake of more words, words, words! But
description in line with the action, or used to bring out the
story more clearly, is a delight.
I have stock pictures only for that with which I am not
familiar, like the interior of a submarine. All sub-sea
stories to me might well be written around the same old
boat, as that is the boat I see. But cowboys, cattle, people,
village churches or vaudeville theaters all are individual.
Sometimes even I find a writer who seems to know his
subject well enough to give me a description exactly fitting
some place I know. Then I read him with great interest.
In my own writing I have an individual in mind whether I
write a description or not. I never write of things I must
needs use a "stock" illustration for—only of course as
for brief mention. If my hero had once been caught
undersea in a submarine I might mention that incident, but
to write a story about it—never.
Which brings me to my own imagination when writing.
Indeed there is a great difference! When I write I see
everything. I see all my characters in their widely separated
haunts, and right in the "center" so to speak is a
bright spot like a spot-light and seemingly my characters
come out of the semi-darkness and enter that light for the
moment of their action. It is somewhat like rehearsing a
play, only far more vivid to me, for the scene is constantly
[pg 155]
changing; instead of the scene changing under the spotlight,
the light moves over the story-stage and spots first
one location and then another. I have difficulty sometimes
deciding which characters to put on or to deal with
next and sometimes withdraw one who has done much and
fire him completely. Then, too, when I hit certain scenes
I have so many thoughts and things crowd so swiftly I
whack away, hitting any old letter and spacing weirdly
for the sake of speed. In some scenes I weep. If I try to
stifle my emotion my thoughts falter. Often in the reading
I wonder what there was to sniffle over when I wrote,
but sometimes the best part of the story is right there.
Often I soberly type off something that makes me laugh,
real sudden humor, when I come to read it. Often it is
something I didn't realize was funny when I put it down.
Usually, like the sob-stuff, it requires considerable revision
to make it presentable. I am glad I can feel the emotions
so strongly and hope it will stay with me. I consider
it a valuable "tool" and try not to abuse it.
Eugene P. Lyle, Jr.: Writing stories keeps my imagination
alert. Reading stories, the keeping of my imagination
alert depends on the stimuli—the art of the author.
In one case the imagination is in harness; in the other it
is loose in a pasture, and may be asleep.
A story has to be pretty vivid to react on my physical
senses. Zola's novels, for example.
I rarely visualize, see with my eyes shut, except by conscious
effort or intention. Then I can, easily.
Solid and spherical geometry gave me less trouble than
algebra. I had to think hard to work out some of the
original problems, though, but it was a satisfying experience.
The mere concept is sufficient for a vivid impression,
but provided it impinges on something in my emotional
make-up that is already susceptible or sensitive. For instance,
the thought of a keen knife drawn across the palm
of the hand—you don't have to go any farther; you don't
[pg 156]
have to describe it. But something else you might, and
even then it might leave me cold. I think the personal
equation figures in here tremendously.
No, I don't think I have stock pictures, not as a rule,
unless some particular thing in my experience has made a
deep impression. If you say cathedral, I'm likely to see
the one at Cologne, while I wouldn't think of Notre Dame
at all. The latter is sui generis—not a cathedral. It's
Notre Dame. Say Notre Dame and I get it.
Rose Macaulay: Depends entirely on how well and
forcibly the story is written. Most stories convey no impression
of any kind to me. My imagination pictures are
just like what I see with my eyes open, I think. No solid
geometry. My response limited by the author. Having
stock pictures depends on the description. Resentment as
to images depends on whether described well or tediously.
A great deal of difference when reading and writing. As
to tools, don't quite follow this question.
Crittenden Marriott: I taste through imagination to
some extent. As to pain presented in fiction, I "choke
up" on some stories—Mrs. Abbott's for instance. Can see
images with eyes either open or shut. Details blurred.
Solid geometry easier. Response limited by the author.
I don't describe much, except when I am trying to please
the women with meteorologic disquisitions; then I sling
words. As to tools, no.
Homer I. McEldowney: It depends more or less upon
the ability of the author, I should say. I have a pretty
fair imagination and if the writer gives me half a chance,
I believe that I see just about what he saw—or sets down
in print. That, I think, applies quite as truly to taste,
sound and smell, as to sight. I've read yarns that gave
me an odd tightening through the chest and which, if they
didn't actually "raise my hair on end," did produce a fine
stand of "goose flesh" at the back of my neck. I've caught
myself with the palms of my hands moist and cold. If
these are sound indications of inner turmoil, then I'm getting
[pg 157]
all the kick there is in a yarn—with no transformer
reducing the voltage.
Nope, solid geometry didn't give me any more trouble
than other mathematics—and a damned sight less than a
five-hour course in algebra that I just plugged through
with a weak-kneed D!
I don't believe in stock pictures. I haven't them, and
hope I'm never turning out stuff at such a rate that I
actually have to employ them. I get a lot of fun out of my
characters and scenes. To me they have individuality. I
have never tried it, but I suspect that my use of a stock
picture or character would result in a lightly veneered but
wooden yarn.
I believe that for the most part I really get into the
stories I write rather more deeply than into those I read,—with
some exceptions, perhaps.
Ray McGillivray: To some degree imagination supplies
an adumbrance of all the sensations you mention.
With me auditory imagery is strongest. Anything appealing
through any sense to my notion of the dramatic,
curious or interesting I remember in fairly accurate (often
exaggerated, I'll admit) detail. Solid geometry was my
shark subject in mathematics. Calculus was where I resigned.
My greatest handicap to pleasure in reading fiction lies
in the fact that unless characters are (1) left automatons,
or (2) portrayed vividly like Hamsun's "Isak," Hardy's
"Tess," or Stribling's "Birdsong,"—my concepts and the
author's get to quarreling from the drop of the hat. Stating
it briefly, my favorite authors are Hamsun, Turgenieff,
Dickens and Nick Carter. In dime novels I write my
own story as I read.
Stock types of characters hang on a writer only when he
is trying to vivify a setting or situation with which he is
not thoroughly familiar—or when he never has taken the
pains to look closely at people in the endeavor to form constructive
estimates of them. Of course weariness of body
[pg 158]
and mind, too—but then the chap behind the pencil or
Chatterbox No. 5 is not a writer but merely a dumb Will-To-Work.
The only difference in the way imagination works when
reading and writing—so far as I know—lies in the fact
that in reading every ascending step in the flight of story
development opens a whole new gamut of conjecture, questioning
and hope; in writing the imagination has to cross
and recross, mount and descend the same space too often
for any such tremendous scope. I verily believe a wide-awake
writer of adventure fiction actually reads three
novels every time he completes the perusal of seventy
thousand words of an interesting story written by some one
else. Vice versa, he crosses his own steps three times or
more—three hundred might be a better figure—on his own
pièce de resistance.
Helen Topping Miller: Reading is to me a sort of orgy
of the imagination. I see, feel, hear, smell and experience
every sensation written into the story—more keenly, I
think sometimes, than the author who writes it. Naturally,
I supply my own pictures for the setting—if a writer describes
a country road I see—not his road, but the roads I
knew as a child back in rural Michigan. I do not know
whether I "see things with my eyes shut" or not. I know
that when any idea is presented my imagination gives one
leap and is gone. I live, walk, see, feel and hear the
scene, experience the emotions of the characters, sense
everything distinctly. There is no blurring, rather the impression
is painfully keen.
Mathematics were an abomination to me. I scrambled
through them as easily as possible and forgot them with
cheerful alacrity.
I certainly consider my ability to experience every sensation
imaginatively as my most important tool. It seems
to me the most valuable and essential factor in trying to
write fiction—the thing the canny Irishman called the
"ability to get inside other people's skins."
[pg 159]
Thomas Samson Miller: Imagination and visualization:
I feel location—the very hue of the sky, feel of the
air, the scents and sounds of nature. I am less vivid on
human actions and sayings. I am not so closely in sympathy
with human beings as with nature. It is my greatest
drawback in fiction writing.
I do not carry mental "stock pictures"; that would be
reducing novelizing to bookkeeping. Certain authors do it,
just as the same keep to one successful form of story and
repeat, even in time-worn phraseology, so that one finds
"Of a sudden" five to ten times in a single short story.
Behavior of imagination in reading and writing stories:
The stories I read are so utterly beyond my art that
there is no comparison. In writing the imagination is intense;
one lives in the story, which one can not do in another
story, any more than a violinist can reach the depths
and heights of feeling of the composers whose composition
he plays. No reader gets out of a story a tenth part of the
feeling and visualization the author puts into it, or, perhaps,
thought he put into it.
Anne Shannon Monroe: If the story I am reading
"gets" me at all, I swing full into it, become absorbed and
follow breathlessly through; if it doesn't "get" me, I
don't go on.... I see the characters, the place—it is all as
if it had been an actual experience. Sounds, tastes, odors,—it's
all real in my mind, if the writer has made it real
on paper.... I think the atmosphere of the story gets into
my sense more keenly than anything else,—the feeling of
it—beauty of scene if beauty is created on the page—as in
Hudson's writing.
Pictures I see in imagination are as they are pictured
by the creator of them: the intense glare of a desert under
sun—it's blinding just to think about: the deep rich
purple-green of heavy old forests—it's almost suffocating:
some writers make me feel these things just as if I had seen
them.
All mathematics were impossible to me, solid geometry
[pg 160]
no more so than that whole idiocy, from the multiplication
table up.
If the presentation is true, the mere concept starts my
mind off on jaunts of its own.
I do not have stock pictures; each character, scene, place
is new, fresh—a creation.
I do resent too many images. I could not wade through
all of Main Street: while Lulu Bett was a delight.
Difference in behavior of imagination when reading or
writing stories? Well, in one way, no: if my imagination
is not fired, I do not read and neither do I write. Often
when I start to read a story it suggests one of my own,
and I am off on my own adventure, instead of following
the one the author has put before me. But if he has put it
so as to catch my interest, I follow him with the same enthusiasm
with which I write.
L. M. Montgomery: Yes, when I read a story I see
everything, exactly as if I were looking at an actual scene.
I hear the sounds and smell the odors. When I read Pickwick
Papers I have to make many an extra sneak to the
pantry, so hungry do I become through reading of the
bacon and eggs and milk punch in which the characters so
frequently revel. I never feel physical pain when I read a
story, no matter how intense the suffering described may
be. But I feel mental pain so keenly that sometimes I
can hardly bear to continue reading. Yet I do not dislike
this sensation. On the contrary I like it. If I can have a
jolly good howl several times in a book I am its friend for
life. Yet, in every-day existence, I am the reverse of a
tearful or sentimental person. No book do I love as I love
David Copperfield. Yet during my many re-readings I
must have wept literal quarts over David's boyish tribulations.
And ghost stories that make me grow actually cold
with fear are such as my soul loveth.
I can "see things," with eyes shut or open, colors and
all. Sometimes I see them mentally—that is, I realize that
they are produced subjectively and are under the control
[pg 161]
of my will. But very often, when imagination has been
specially stimulated, I seem really to see them objectively.
In this case, however, I never see landscapes or anything
but faces—and generally grotesque or comical faces. I
never see a beautiful face. They crowd on my sight in a
mob, flashing up for a second, then instantly filled by
others. I always enjoy this "seeing things" immensely,
but I can not do it at will.
The very name of geometry was a nightmare to me. I
decline to discuss the horrible subject at all. Yet I loved
algebra and had a mild affection for arithmetic. These
things are predestinated.
I have no "stock pictures" as a reader. I generally see
things pretty much as the writer describes them—though
certainly not as the "movie" people seem to see them!
This is especially true of places and things. But very
few writers have the power to make me visualize their
characters, even where they describe them minutely. Illustrations
generally make matters worse. I detest illustrations
in a story. It is only when there is some peculiarly
striking and restrained bit of description attached to a
character that I can see it. For example: when R. L.
Stevenson in Dr. Jekyll says that there was something incredibly
evil about "Hyde"—I am not quoting his exact
words—I can see "Hyde" as clearly as I ever saw anything
in my life. As a rule, I think the ability to describe
characters so that readers may see them as clearly as they
see their settings is a very rare gift among writers.
Yes, as a reader I do resent having too many images
formed for me. I don't want too much description of anything
or too many details in any description.
When I read a story, I see people doing things in a
certain setting; when I write a story I am the people myself
and live their experiences.
Frederick Moore: My imagination reproduces the
story-world of the author to the extent that the author has
given me pictures or has suggested them to me. I actually—mentally—see
[pg 162]
and hear all given to me in the story. I
can not say I smell or taste, except the reference is to
something already in my memory. For instance, if an
author refers to the smell of a whaling-ship, or a bilge-water
forecastle, I smell it in memory—that is, I know it.
But I doubt if I could create the smell that might be referred
to in filling a helium-gas balloon, because that is
beyond my ken. If it should smell like, say, rotten oranges,
I might get a reaction that would be fairly accurate. I
can not say that I feel pain presented in a story in any degree.
The strength of the suggestion on my imagination
depends largely on the skill of the writer in transmitting
his idea to me. Of course, I suffer more mental pain in
seeing a cat injured than I do in reading of how several
men were killed. In the latter case shock is missing, yet
I have seen more men killed than I have cats hurt. There
is a difference in the behavior of imagination when reading
and when writing—while reading, my imagination is
being spoon-fed; in writing, it is on "high," climbing a
hill and watching the road carefully. And there is a difference
in concentration, for in writing I am emptying my
subconscious reservoir, while in reading I am refilling it.
After finishing a story, I find that a lapse of time is
necessary to allow the subconscious (or what I presume to
be the subconscious) to refill. I couldn't write stories on
an eight-hour basis—if I wanted to.
I really see things with my eyes shut, in the colors
which I may desire to give them. Details are distinct if I
care to turn the "spot-light" on them, so to speak—in
other words, to the point on which I want to concentrate
for description. The detail I am working on is distinct,
but if I want to hold the image long enough for extended
use I do not attempt to hold it steadily. I find that impossible.
But I can make the image repeat itself without
limit. I doubt if anybody can hold an image, even of
something that has just been looked at, longer than a very
[pg 163]
small fraction of a second. And by this I don't mean a
succession of "flashes" but a fixed image.
Solid geometry gave me less trouble than other mathematics,
because I could visualize it better. However, I
have been able to copy from mental images of a problem I
have seen written out, or printed on a page, a problem required
in an examination. That is, I have found it easier
to recall that problem as I saw it in figures, and copy it,
than I have to attack the problem and work it to the required
answer. I presume everybody else can do the same.
In examinations in artillery I have been able to recall
images of cross-sections so readily as to be able to reproduce
them in rough sketches or to give the required description.
But if the question related to something that I
had heard in a lecture, I might well miss the question entirely.
I show very poor results in written examinations
relating to book matter—unless the questions relate to
pages with such type arrangement or sub-heads that I
can recall the entire page mentally and pick out of the
image what I want. I may know a thing very well practically,
and not be able to pass as high in it, as something I
have acquired wholly from a book. I believe text-books on
all subjects should be more visual.
The response of my imagination in some cases is dependent
on the skill at description of the writer, especially
in things or scenes with which I am not familiar. But a
mere concept will set me reproducing if the matter deals
with something with which I am familiar. By this I do
not mean to say that my imagination will not work except
with things with which I am familiar—I am referring
to degree of response.
No, I do not have stock pictures for anything. I may
think first of some picture in memory, and from that
basis create the character, the place and the events. However,
imagination probably requires something in the
nature of a "feeder." What the imagination of a person
[pg 164]
blind from birth does would be most interesting. If a person
had been blind up to, say, twenty and then recovered
sight, it should be interesting to know what kind of mental
picture he had had of, for instance, a full-rigged ship.
I have considered all these matters as tools of my trade.
Without them, I doubt if it is possible to have the trade.
Talbot Mundy: If I pick up a book, say, on India,
and provided the book is sufficiently well written not to
"get my goat," I am in India instantly. I see, smell, hear
and taste India. Sometimes I almost touch it. The same
with any other country or place. India merely serves as
an illustration. I have to be brought back to my surroundings
with a wrench.
Sound is perhaps the least real of the sensations. I get
the effect of the sound without the sound itself. The
louder the sound, the less real, I rather think. For instance,
if a gun goes off I don't jump out of my skin, and
I don't think I hear the report—or, if so, I rather see than
hear it. Colors are absolutely real, although rather more
beautiful than in actual experience.
This is a very difficult question to answer, however.
The world of imagination and ideas seems to me to be a
separate world in which we experience all the sensations
above referred to, but experience them differently. The
sting—the element of personal suffering—to use the Christian
formula, the cross—seems to be missing in this world of
imagination; so that, although the cross and its consequences—a
strong smell and its discomfort, pain and its
distress—may all be present in the story, they are seen
objectively and have practically no physical reaction except
that of conscious pleasure.
On the other hand, ideas, emotions, contrasts between
right and wrong do have a pronounced physical effect. I
frequently sweat or grow angry or get prodigiously excited
while reading—but always because of an idea that is
concretely presented.
Perhaps I can put it best this way: Suppose that we
[pg 165]
torture the heroine. The most blood-curdling description
of her agonies would probably excite my curiosity and
might perhaps tickle a sadistic vein, but would certainly
not cause me physical distress nor even mental disturbance.
But the question whether she shall be tortured or
not—the right and the wrong of it—the low-down arguments
used on the one side, the high standards raised on the
other, would arouse me almost to frenzy, and the blood
would go coursing through my veins twice as fast as usual.
I don't have to shut my eyes to "see things." I see
them more easily with eyes wide open. Possibly because
I am short-sighted, the imaginary things that I see in that
way are often more "real" than the real world. The
pictures are invariably colored. Never black and white.
My response is not limited by any means to the degree
in which the author describes and makes vivid. As often
as not, too much description has the reverse effect.
I never studied solid geometry.
I think that in most instances vision is individual and
new; but I rather suspect that things I have seen at different
times and in different places form the store from
which I draw apparently fresh illustrations as required.
This, however, is another very hard question to answer correctly
and really could not be answered without keeping
tabs on one's self for a month or two.
Reading is better fun than writing. Therefore, when
reading, the imagination is less rebellious and does its
work more swiftly and easily. Otherwise I think there
is little if any difference.
Kathleen Norris: I can't say that I ever get an actual
sense emotion from what I write, that is, in taste or smell,
but I have felt my mood very definitely affected by the
experiences my characters are experiencing, and I frequently
confuse them with real persons for an hour or two,
and will find myself saying at lunch, (say) "Oh, a woman
told me this morning ..." forgetting that the woman
is of my own creating.
[pg 166]
One would see things in this way pretty much as one
would remember a meeting with somebody close and vital,
or anticipating such a meeting. It would be natural to
imagine the room, the sunshine, the gowns, etc., etc.
I never even finished grammar school.
No, it seems to me the only books worth while (that is,
in the sense of popular fiction, etc.,) are the books that
stimulate fresh imaginings of one's own.
I hate to read a book that does not produce an individual
vision and so add to one's stock, as it were. The
chief delight of reading seems to me exploratory.
On the contrary, a writer who can form images is a great
writer. But having images distorted or ill-formed is
merely tiresome, and annoys one with a sense of wasting
time.
Yes, all the difference between eating a meal and cooking
it. (Incidentally I would always prefer the cooking.)
My brother-in-law, Frank Norris, once said that when he
really wished carefully to depict a scene, he appealed to
each of the five senses in turn; and to a greater or lesser
degree I don't think any picture can be painted without
one or more of these "tools."
Anne O'Hagan: It seems to me that the only possible
answer to this question is: "It depends upon the genius
of the author." There are villages in England I could
find my way about in, there are drawing-rooms in which
I perfectly see the furnishings, because of Jane Austen and
Thackeray. I have grown hungry reading Dickens' meals.
I suffered utter fatigue, misery and coldness crawling
back to the farm with "Hetty" in Adam Bede; and I
think I had something the same actual feeling of physical
exhaustion in reading the Italian home scenes in The Lost
Girl. But for the most part the impressions are impressions
only, not experiences.
Pictures are colored when I actually have them, and
details distinct.
All mathematics gave me trouble, but I think that the
[pg 167]
climax of despair was reached in calculus instead of solid
geometry.
Response follows vivid suggestion as well as detailed
description—when there is response.
I suppose that if the author of the village church or the
cowboy did not cause me to see a definite creation, I have
a property-room church or cowboy which my imagination
would fit into the story. But I think with a little help I
am able to construct a new one for the story in question.
Probably yes. That is, I should be bored by not being
allowed to use my own imagination a little.
Yes. Only the masters of literature can absorb my mind
with their characters, create a world which takes the place
of the actual one for the time being; but when I am writing
(with most pleasure and most of the feeling of creation,
I mean—most successfully) I can be absorbed in my
characters and can live in their world without for a moment
believing that I am a master of literature. I mean
by this that I know from my own experience how much
real creation is involved in the production of that which
is not great or fiction.
No.
Grant Overton: I often see the people, the action and
above all the setting. I do not know that I hear the
sounds or taste the flavors or smell the smells or feel any
impacts. I do feel what the people of the story feel, at
least in the more emotional moments. I have suffered exquisite
pangs along with my characters, have been thrilled
with them, have despaired with them. To me fiction is
merely a form of communicating feeling.
I do not see things with my eyes shut but with them
open. I seldom notice details. What I see I can not describe,
except as an effect. That is why I can not write
descriptions full of physical detail.
Plane geometry is the only mathematical subject that
gave me trouble. I don't think I ever studied solid geometry,
but I undoubtedly passed an examination in it.
[pg 168]
My response is wholly determined by the emotional content
of the narrative and the emotional activity of the
characters though conditioned by the skill of the author in
verbal presentation.
I should probably image the village church from one I
had seen. I should have no picture of the cowboy unless
emotionally I found myself akin to him.
I do not mind how many images are formed for me
but I resent nothing but images. I want, above all, to feel
something.
Yes, my imagination when writing and when reading
is totally different, but I do not know whether I can say
how. In writing my imagination labors often painfully.
In reading—but I suppose it is the difference between
listening to music and playing some instrument yourself.
I can not answer as to tools. The five senses mean
little to me when it comes to writing or reading. I should
say that the appeal was to my intellectual senses if there
is such a thing.
Sir Gilbert Parker: Everything is seen clearly. Better
at geometry than anything else. Each case has its own
vision. Do not resent multiplicity of images. It is the
duty of the author to command my vision.
Hugh Pendexter: I get all the drama very clearly or
else I quit. I must have the geography of the story in
mind and often post myself on the locale with use of a
map. I respond thoroughly to the comedy or tragedy of a
story and read myself into it. I react more quickly to
pathos than to the infliction of physical pain. Torture of
a victim does not torture me. A child saving pennies to
buy a garish, impossible tie for his old grandfather probably
would bring tears. If a road or river is pictured, I
must see it as though walking over or along it. I do not
believe my imagination goes much beyond what the writer
supplies, as then it becomes my story and not his and I
can finish it without bothering to finish the book.
I really see things with my eyes open. The details are
[pg 169]
as distinct as any my physical vision can reveal. They are
not outlines, nor black and white studies, but as they actually
would exist as to form and color. I see most clearly
those scenes I write about.
Mathematics never intrigued me. My recollection of
solid geometry is that it was to me the delirium tremens of
plane geometry. My two sons find mathematics absorbing.
I abhor mathematics.
As to degree of my response, that is explained above.
Much difference. When writing a story my imagination
supplies a wealth of detail that does not appear in
the yarn. If I have to supply overmuch for the other
fellow's yarn, I quit, as noted above.
The next query is rather blind to me. My best "tool
of trade" is my immediate vision of what I wish to put
into type.
Clay Perry: I visualize very much; in reading a story
as well as in writing it. A story in which I am unable to
visualize clearly annoys me. I want to go around the
corners and see what the author sees. I suspect that an
author who does not furnish the locale, color and plan
which will enable me to see his story is careless. This goes
for the characters, double. They should be seen clearly,
I believe.
Sounds, I "hear," also, in the inner ear and taste the
flavors with the tongue of imagination and sometimes my
mouth waters to a pleasant flavor well pictured. To
smells, being supersensitive anyway, the reaction is strong.
To touch the reaction is not so strong, except in rare instances,
mostly unpleasant suggestions, pain. I feel the
pain if in sympathy with the character who suffers it, more
than otherwise.
"Seeing things with my eyes shut" amounts to re-creation,
through the stimuli of description, of a more or less
familiar scene; or at least with a familiar scene the nucleus
of the image built upon the stimuli. Details are distinct
if description is vivid and, again, if the stimuli call
[pg 170]
up something which I have actually seen or experienced in
the past that is akin to the scene or incident described.
Solid geometry gave me less trouble than any other
mathematics and Lord knows the others gave me trouble!
I believe the concept stimulates me to imaging "what
lies over the hill" in many cases, the "behind the scenes,"
perhaps because of a habit in my own writing of trying
to set a stage "solid," not with mere "drops."
Stock pictures for stock "sets"? For a village church—a
composite picture of the several dozen I had to attend
when a boy, none of them the same exactly. For a cowboy,
different stock pictures in different context. I think
this depends largely on the manner and setting in which
the object of character is first introduced.
Yes, there is a difference in the behavior of my imagination
when I am reading stories and when writing them.
In reading, one has only to accept the author's concept; in
writing, one has to consider and reject several and decide
upon one. (There is, however, in reading, the tendency
to look behind the scenes, which is perhaps a fainter manifestation
of the selective impulse or artistic judgment
habitual in the creation of a picture myself.)
I have thought of my reading constantly in connection
with my writing. If a book or story is good, I get a stimulation
from it, perhaps an inspiration, which, mingled
with the profusion of other impulses and ideas, emerges,
some time, as a part, or a tendency, in my own work. More
often, however, I am astonished, when well started on a
story of my own or when completing it, to run across another
with a curious similarity of thought or philosophy—or
perhaps, a contradictory philosophy in similar setting.
Michael J. Phillips: I try hard to visualize in important
scenes. If I get stuck in a description I stop and
visualize—hard. I don't see all the characters, but only
the principal ones. I don't imagine the sounds unless I
want to conjure up the effect of a sudden, alarming sound,
like a shot, on the man or woman who hears it.
[pg 171]
I do not taste the flavor of a story. I do not get rough
or smooth contact nor physical pain. Rarely a story
moves me to laughing aloud, and equally rarely, say twice
a year in each case, does a story bring tears. My response
to a good story—and it must be good—is the prickle down
your back when he really puts it over. This may be at the
finish or when one of the characters does an admirable or
a clever thing in a way wholly admirable and noteworthy,
and what is done is described by a master. Too much
sophistication to get the kick that once I did, I suppose.
A duel of words between two men in a love story over the
girl, a battle of wits in which breeding and good sportsmanship
are displayed, will produce the prickle down my
spinal column quicker than exciting physical action.
I can not see the scenes with my eyes shut readily. It is
only by effort, and they are in black and white. I can
not visualize the faces of all my friends and relatives. The
degree of nearness and dearness does not enter into visualization
at all. Some strangers impress themselves on
my mental retina, and I can not recall by shutting my
eyes how some relative, perhaps in the next room, looks.
I have a lot of fun visualizing a horse race with the jockeys
wearing different colored jackets. This I use in the rare
attempts I make to get to sleep when I do not fall instantly
asleep on going to bed. I can't make it stick much. The
colors get all mixed up. I have to keep telling myself
which color my favorite wears.
I went to high school only a month or two in the second
year, then quit to paint little white coffins in a casket factory,
so you see solid geometry is a sealed book to me.
Algebra was bone labor to me, but I was quite proud of
myself when I solved a problem, and in some degree it was
an attraction on that account.
I think I prefer the author not to clutter the picture
with too many words. I don't want too much detail
painted in, but I do want him to make his primary and
essential characters and objects plain and clear. If it's a
[pg 172]
man and a horse, I don't want any impressionistic or
cubist daubs that leave me in doubt whether it's a monkey
and a rhinoceros. If he'll just show me plainly it's a man
and a horse, I'll dress them up to suit myself. He makes
me tired when he goes meticulously into detail, unless he's
an artist—and they are damn few.
Each case produces its individual vision, I think.
To me, the reading of stories and the writing of them
are not related at all. In reading, the imagination wanders
where it wills; in writing, it is an imagination harnessed
and doing its work.
They are tools of the trade and I use them steadily,
though perhaps not so much as I should.
Walter B. Pitkin: I see colors and details pretty well
with my eyes shut. Since I turned forty this function
has noticeably weakened. When in my twenties and early
thirties I could look at a piece of white paper and see, in
faint, swimmy colors projected on it, the things I was
imagining. My capacity to visualize has been unusually
intense, as psychological tests have repeatedly shown. At
the end of a day's work I can see the minutest details of
the objects I have dealt with; the grain in the wood of my
desk, the shadows on my office floor, the colors and forms
in the street. I can see these at night just before going
to sleep; and I used to get myself to sleep by watching
the parade of visions!
All mathematics was extremely difficult for me in
school, but chiefly because I had poor teachers. Geometry
still is almost a black art to me, although higher mathematics
is fairly easy.
My response to what I read is uncomfortably excessive.
In handling the manuscripts of other writers I am constantly
seeing more in the scenes than the writers themselves
saw; and they have often told me this.
I have no stock visions of types. But I do tend to
reproduce a series of real persons or objects from my experience,
when I read about a similar one.
[pg 173]
I do not resent the presence of many images and pictures
in a story.
My imagination behaves very differently when reading
from its manner when writing. But I confess that I can
not adequately describe the difference. So much can be
said of it. When I read I "follow the leader" and do not
run off into my own channels; but when I am writing
my fancy runs wild and I think of the most preposterous
and remote things which—as later analysis often shows—have
indirect and obscure connections with the idea I am
working over. When reading I am passive, more or less;
when writing, I am active. There is a curious difference,
over and above this, in the nature of my emotional responses;
and this rather stumps me to set down on paper.
It seems as if I give deeper and surer emotional reactions
to the content of what I read than I do to what I am
fancying when in the midst of writing. I find that calculating
and constructing makes me deliberate and a degree
cool toward the subject-matter. This is the result of
deliberate intellectualizing, of course.
I have always considered the functions of imagination
as the basic "tools of the trade."
E. S. Pladwell: This question is too broad. It is all
according to the author. Some can make me see, feel, taste,
smell. Others merely glue my attention to the action.
Others bore me. Under some authors I will say that I see
the people and action, subconsciously, not as in real life.
My response is with one kind of author limited to the
exact degree that he describes things, while with others I
am able to wander all over. A concrete example: Kipling
in a few lines can intimate things which will make me lay
down the book and think. O. Henry, on the other hand,
keeps one so busy keeping up with his sparkling action
that there is no time for another thought. Kipling's mere
concept, or hint, can produce unlimited mental pictures;
but O. Henry has to draw them line for line. I believe
that the concept or hint is best.
[pg 174]
I never studied solid geometry, being fired from college
just in time to avoid it. All mathematics bore me; and yet
I can draw a ship or a city in perfect proportion and perspective.
I suppose it's instinct or something.
Have no stock pictures for church or cowboy. Each individual
case is interesting in itself.
Imagination to me is clearer when reading than writing.
When reading I can sit back and let things flow by in easy
sequence. When writing I must labor, taking various
imaginings as a bricklayer picks up bricks, and then
selecting those which are useful and rejecting those which
are not. When I get a new idea my imagination is vivid;
but in writing it I fade the picture, for my mind is occupied
with means for putting the picture over, rather than
the picture itself. The picture is still there; but it is subordinated.
Lucia Mead Priest: If a writer is master of his craft
he can do what he will with my imagination. My senses
are alert, particularly those of sight, taste, smell.
Oh, yes, my mouth waters. Dickens used to make me
hungry till I sampled his edibles. "'am and weal pie"
is a sordid delusion, a menu snare.
This is guess-work, but I should say I do respond to the
various stimuli to the senses. Not in the same measure to
all. When I read the death of "Nancy Sikes" I see her
in the ghastly light of a London morning, see the grimy
curtain with "Bill," and the horror under it, but I feel no
quiver of flesh when he beats down the upturned face. I
respond to mental hurts not to physical—not as physical.
When impressed I find I carry a mental pain—even for
years.
It depends entirely on the author's designs on me. If
he paints his sunset clearly, I see it in color.
I think I must see details, for descriptions, bits of books,
here and there, stand out from the main story often. I
fancy the color of them is ephemeral.
I have no remembrance of any thing in mathematics
[pg 175]
from the multiplication table to trigonometry that didn't
spellTrouble for me with a monster T.
My response to an author who interests me is evidently
helpful. I have found, often, that in rereading something
I have liked I have built on many additions, colored it
with my imagining.
Sorry, but I'm afraid my "stock room" is bare. Maybe
I would find Owen Wister's or a stage cowboy in it, never
having seen a live one.
My pictures come from original locations—geography I
have covered myself.
No great difference in the working of the imagination
between writing and reading. If so, one of degree. By
the looks of my hair, when "genius" (?) has burned, I
should judge I may get greater emotional depths when
creating.
Eugene Manlove Rhodes: Visual imagination, yes.
Hearing, no. Taste, smell, touch, pain, thirty to fifty per
cent. Colors: distinct. No solid geometry. Concept is as
good as three volumes—better; want to roll my own. No
stock pictures. Reading vs. writing, no difference. As to
tools, yes.
Frank C. Robertson: My imagination reproduces the
story-world of an author, though with limitations. That
is, I see a story-world when reading but I frequently realize
later that it is not just the same as the author's. This,
of course, is not the fault of the author, but comes from my
own peculiar reactions. For instance: the author says
"the lion roared." I don't hear the roar, I see a lion open
his mouth in the motions of roaring. He says: "the gurgling
brook." I don't hear it gurgle—I see it cascading
over stones and know that it is gurgling. But if he forces
me to it like "out in the darkness there sounded a strange,
droning noise," I actually hear a strange, droning noise.
In lesser measure this holds true with all the senses. The
author speaks of his starving hero eating luscious fried
bananas. I can see those bananas and my mouth waters,
[pg 176]
but to save my life I can not taste them. My sense of sight
predominates. But where acute physical pain or mental
agony is described I think I actually feel. At every blow
of the lash my flesh shrinks and my nerves recoil. And I
am as easily moved to tears as the veriest schoolgirl—which
is why I write he-man stuff. Cold, callous and indifferent.
The mental pictures that I see are usually clear-cut and
the coloring very much as I see the same objects in real life.
My response is not limited to the exact degree to which
the author describes. I frequently seize upon a mere impression
left by the author and from it build up a whole
chain of pictures. I find this a decided handicap in my
own writing for I am prone to leave a mere impression
of the setting, and the scenes which are so clear to me
are blurred in the mind of the reader. In rewriting I find
that I always have to make the setting and atmosphere
more vivid. In these mental pictures each case, or object,
has a distinct individuality.
My imagination is never so active when reading a story
as when writing it. In reading I am content to float along
with the author, analyzing what has gone before rather
than probing continually into the future as I do when
writing.
To the extent that structure, appeal and atmosphere are
necessary to the story I have considered these things as
"tools of the trade." Just recently I have begun to
realize the value of appealing to all of the reader's senses
to get him more fully into the spirit of the story.
Ruth Sawyer: If a story is strongly and convincingly
written I generally see characters and action developing
with the same degree of reality that one sees a motion
picture. Sounds, flavors, smells—in fact all sense perceptions
become extremely acute. I should say the relationship
to the actual stimuli is comparable with a vivid dream.
I rarely see color. For the most part things are black
and white but with sharp detail.
[pg 177]
I studied solid geometry and flunked it. The only examination
in mathematics I ever flunked.
A suggestive concept will start me picturing endless detail
provided the suggestion is true to type and locality.
No, I do not have stock pictures for village churches.
I think that depends largely on the condition of mind
when one takes up a story. I find if I am tired I want
the work of detail picturing done for me provided it is not
overdone to the point of weariness. Also I think if one is
generally familiar with the atmosphere the writer is creating
that one enjoys filling in a large part of the picture
with one's own imagination.
Yes. I should say when I read stories my imagination
was passive and receptive; that when I wrote stories it was
active and creative.
Not consciously.
Chester L. Saxby: In reading, my imagination functions
in exactly the same manner as in writing. I write as
I read, trying for the story-world, trying for reality. I
think this explains why with me the atmosphere is the
biggest thing, sometimes too big, bigger than the story. I
write as if I were reading, not creating. I have that feeling.
Barry Scobee: I believe my imagination reproduces
the story in almost minute detail, if it is interesting. I am
a slow reader, the slowest I know, too unutterably slow ever
to sit in on the newspaper copy desk. I've tried it to my
sorrow.
I will see the scenes minutely—the details of the grove
or lot or room or barn—the vast expanse of desert or
prairie or sea or mountains. I will see the out-of-doors
or the things with which I am familiar. I will see all this
without effort. But as to hearing, smelling, tasting, feeling,
I will not catch them nearly so minutely or accurately,
unless the author is impressing them with emphasis. If
they are impressed emphatically, I take them in fairly
well.
[pg 178]
As to whether the story-pictures in my mind are black
and white—shadowy—or colored, well, it depends on what
the author says or whether I have seen places similar to
what is being described.
I prefer to read, and write, where there is a splash and
promise of color and description so that I can form my
own pictures or let my reader do it for himself. A "big
man with uncombed hair and in his sock feet" is likely to
be better than a detailed description. It lets the imagination
of the reader work, which is one of the technicalities
the author should take advantage of. However, sometimes
the dramatic can be enhanced by minute description. If I
have seen something close to what the author describes or
hints at I can see it in all its color.
Solid geometry, as I recollect—I am nearly thirty-seven—gave
me just the same trouble as all other mathematics,
which was trouble indeed, from addition to trigonometry.
It may be clear in the foregoing that a hint from the
writer sets me to reproducing, if the description is anything
at all within the compass of my experience or previous
reading and comprehension.
I do not have a single stock picture in mind, so far as I
am aware of now.
When I write my imagination behaves differently from
when I read—it goes more slowly, because I must ponder
and weigh and try out. But otherwise it brings in the
material with clarity, if I have my mind well on what I
am doing.
As tools of your trade? I don't quite savvy. All the
thousands of quirks of technique, all the tricks of the
trade, certainly are "tools of the trade." (And it's funny
I can't think of a blooming one right now with which to
illustrate.)
R. T. M. Scott: When I read a story my imagination
reproduces the story-world of the author very vividly. If
it does not, the story does not interest me and I pass on
to the next. I do not hear sounds in connection with a
[pg 179]
story which I am reading except upon rare occasions.
Taste, on the other hand, is very acute. Smells, too, are
acute although not quite so acute as tastes. The sense of
touch is not so pronounced, though I feel it to a certain extent.
I feel no actual pain corresponding to the physical
pain described in the story. In the case of taste my imagination
produces the same result upon my sense as does
the actual stimulus itself. (If the above proves me to be
weak-minded or a degenerate please give me a chance to
argue the matter with the fellow who says so.)
Limitations with the "eyes shut" need not exist. Pictures
may be colored, in black and white, blurred or
distinct. You are the master or a child wandering in fairy
land. It rests with you if you will but practise regularly
for short intervals of time. Five minutes every day at the
same hour will be sufficient for a starter. Seat yourself in
a chair with your back to the door and with your eyes
closed. Imagine yourself rising from the chair and walking
around behind your back toward the door. See the
door and feel the knob so vividly that you have forgotten
that you are sitting in the chair. Open the door and pass
out, closing it behind you. Enter the room again and look
at the back of your own head as you sit in the chair.
Open the door and pass out, closing it behind you. Enter
the room again and look at the back of your own head as
you sit in the chair. Sounds silly, but try it once a day for
six months. If you have made no progress in three weeks,
give it up. If you do make progress, however, you will
reach marvels at the end of half a year or earlier. There
will be no limits and you will be able to visit any place
that you ever heard of or never heard of as you please to
be the master or the child. London or Cairo, the center of
the earth or the opposite side of the moon await you while
something unconscious sits in your chair with its back to
the door. Proof? There is no proof for the man of science
such as the counting of beans in a closed box. The reason
for proof is doubt and, with doubt, the trick vanishes.
[pg 180]
Solid geometry gave me more trouble than other mathematics.
You can't prove me a maniac on this, however,
for I fooled away my time at the commencement of the
study and a weak foundation may have been to blame.
I am not quite sure that I "get" your next question.
Perhaps I can not answer definitely. Sometimes I follow
the author pretty closely and sometimes I leave the author
in my lap while something sits in the chair with its back
to the door.
I have no stock pictures. Each case produces its own
vision.
In reading stories my imagination usually follows. In
writing a story it leads or is led. You will say that, if it is
led, it follows. Yes, but not in the same way. In reading
it follows the plot. In writing it follows something altogether
apart from the story and the result of that following
is the story. What is this something which the imagination
follows—which leads the imagination? It is, I
think, that which makes us think at certain times when
our thoughts are not lazily centered upon heat and cold
or food and drink—the cravings and sensations of the
body. There is something beyond all selfish desires and
emotions and that something should be master of our
thoughts if we are to function to the best advantage. If
there is nothing on the other side of the grave, then all
these ideas are nonsense. If we do continue to "live"
after death, however, then that permanent self is not likely
to be born at death. It is much more probable that we
have it now or even that we may have had it for millions of
years—perhaps always. If such should be the case it
might well be that thought or imagination is sometimes
influenced by the contact of our work-a-day mind with
that real self which never dies and which may be a vast
store-house of knowledge and high ideals.
I have considered these matters as "tools of my trade"
and I try, very falteringly, to use them. The best theory
upon which to work is, to my mind, the theory of reincarnation.
[pg 181]
Perhaps, however, that must be proved by each
man for himself. I have studied it and I do believe that it
gives results.
Robert Simpson: When I read a story and can't
see the whole business—people, places, things—I don't go
on reading. It is at once a lifeless thing—inchoate—a
blur. I don't try to see and feel and taste and smell and
so forth, if the story is getting over to me. If I don't experience
these sensations in a greater or lesser degree, it is
possible, of course, that I may have dyspepsia, but it is
more likely that the story has a flat tire.
The pictures I see "with my eyes shut" are generally
only half formed. The people are real and distinct
enough—too distinct, I think, because I am tempted, in
writing about them, to mark every trivial expression.
Their positions in the pictures are most exact. But the
furnishings or surrounding buildings or landscapes are not
very clear, unless a chair or a house or a tree or several
or all of these are absolutely necessary to the story. The
whole scene, in other words, I see clearly. The details
are blurred until they become specific. Then they stick
out like a sore finger. The pictures are black and white
for the most part. Red, yellow and green I can also see
with fair distinctness. The finer shades are blurred.
They fade in and fade out in an unsettled kind of way, as
if I were having a hard time holding them there.
I never studied geometry or mathematics and I'm not
going to. I was supposed to study them, but all I ever got
out of them was a headache.
When the author of a story has set his stage, I generally
see the setting in my own way. Most folks, I think, are
guilty of this crime against the author's good intentions;
particularly artists.
I have no stock pictures of anything I am reading or
writing. Some scenes and things are more or less built to
a pattern, but I like to "see" them differently whether
they are or not.
[pg 182]
When I am reading my imagination is naturally to a
large extent subservient to the dictates of the printed
page. I can make my own pictures out of the author's
words, but I have to keep my imagination within bounds
or I'd lose track of "what came next." When I'm writing,
I'm the boss. I can go where I please and do what I
please. It's a different thing and a different sensation.
The first is a receptive mood that may kind o' tug on the
reins, but always goes docilely or cheerfully on; the other
is a creative one that gropes hopefully through a maze of
plot and counterplot, scenes, people who are never where
they ought to be when one wants them, and, finally and
tediously and most importantly, technique.
I have always considered vizualization as the most valuable
tool of my trade. Without it I couldn't write a
line. This will indicate how much I use it.
Arthur D. Howden Smith: When I am working at my
best I live the story literally. Color and distinctness depend
on my physical condition, I think—mental states of
the moment have something to do with it. As to solid
geometry, don't know what you mean—it never meant
anything to me.
Response is up to the author. The question of stock
pictures is up to the author. Reading vs. writing—you
bet. As to tools, it would take a book to tell you, principally
because my reactions are different at different times.
Theodore Seixas Solomons: I am a visualizer in writing
and reading. Psychologically there is little difference
with me in the two processes, except that in reading I visualize
little besides what the author describes, while in
writing I visualize all the attacks I make in the creation
besides the one that stands—is adopted. That is, at every
point where I hesitate between proposed actions, before I
adopt one of them, I visualize each as I think of it. Conceiving
it in fancy being itself a visualizing process.
I do not hear, smell or taste anything. I can see their
action, as they talk, see their lips move, if there is any
[pg 183]
point in the manner of enunciation—but no sounds. The
bear meat may be frying, but I do not hear it hiss or get
mentally the aroma. Nor do I get the sense of touch. In
fine, beyond visualization of the main picture and its
immediate surroundings from point to point in the narrative—my
own or that which I read—my mental activities
are conceptual only and never sensory. But I do feel.
My mind flames to sympathetic feeling. I have a weak
replica of all the emotions appropriate to the course of
the story. This is far stronger, usually, in writing my own
stuff than in reading the fiction of others. I do not attribute
this to any superiority of fancy in myself, but only to
the fact that the act of imagination may be so much more
complete when exercised in the creation of my own fiction
than when stimulated by the fiction of another that it
moves me correspondingly more. When my story is down
the stimuli are, of course, no more numerous for the other
person than another writer's have been to me in his story,
but in the process of writing that which forms the text of
my story I have lived through so very much more concerning
the people in it than I have selected to be written
that I am beset emotionally and mentally with many times
as many effects—and am affected proportionally.
To sum up my answer to this question—when I have
pictured physically the scene and people, either in writing
or reading, it is my intellect alone that works as to what
takes place in the sense world among them. Just as in a
cinema we imagine by the action of the mind alone sounds,
touches, smells, so my stories (and those I read) are cinemas
in which I imagine, mentally only, the rest of the
action. The mental physical picture—if you get me—is
data enough, stimulation enough to suggest to my mind all
other sense perceptions in their effects. That is, if I see
the bear-meat frying, I can readily supply smells and
touches and sounds without experiencing any imagined
sense impressions of smells, touches or sounds.
I see things as well with my eyes open, if moving objects
[pg 184]
do not sidetrack my attention, as with them shut. In fact,
I can not plot or write without seeing things, any more
than I can describe the route to my place in the mountains
without visualizing it as I describe. I see things in their
natural colors. Necessary details are distinct. The picture,
however, is hazy "off the main trail." That is, my visualizing
apparatus is economical—or penurious—enough to
refuse to draw and color in areas beyond the main trend
of the story I'm conceiving or writing.
Solid geometry was pretty easy to me, because of my
ready concrete visualization.
I go beyond the description of the author in some cases.
For instance, in Mr. Dunn's castaway story of the eight
or ten men I took his description of the island as he gave
it from time to time and filled in a lot of details. And I
imagined quite a little action besides that which he narrated.
I never changed his descriptions, I merely filled
them out.
I have not exactly stock pictures, but if I am called on
imaginatively to see a village church or a cowboy I am
likely to revert visually to some particular church or particular
man that has made a great impression on me. But
with the stimulus of the slightest description that doesn't
fit, my mind facilely makes the necessary modification.
Tools? No. I just "write" as I tend to and can.
Raymond S. Spears: Some of my characters are as
real, and even more real, than most people I know. They
are usually distinct personalities that I know better than
living people. In writing them I am often quite unable
to give them the bitterness of experiences I have in mind
because I hate to abuse them so! That's a fact, too, and
has spoiled some of my—to me—most interesting ideas
and stories. My feeling toward my characters does not
include physical pain, for I can cut or shoot a hero without
compunction, but I hate to embarrass a man or woman,
probably because I am rather sensitive myself.
I hear the music I write about better than I hear the
[pg 185]
reality; thus the lapping of wavelets along the hull of a
shanty-boat, the ringing of a bell or gobble of a turkey in
a fog is more audible in my imagination than in fact—for
I am hard of hearing. But I have heard these things at
some time or other, and the memory is direct, whether
hearing, seeing, smelling, etc.
What I see is environment I actually know, which I
have seen and studied. I see characters in action. Sometimes
I go myself through a whole story, as one of the
characters; then go back and put down the imaginary
episodes with myself as one or other of the characters, but
usually a minor or spectator character. I read others'
fiction nearly as I form my own.
I never studied solid geometry. Poor health kept me out
of school, so I had only two years and a half in a grammar
school, after brief period in a country district school.
I had, however, a great working library for a boy, in my
father's collection, to which advantage I later added a
four-years course as Sun reporter in New York, and wide-range
reading. But I do not recall that I ever read anything
or studied anything the need of which I did not
acutely feel. Thus in reading fiction it satisfies some
longing as for experience, information, a view-point, etc.
I can overlook errors of statement obviously outside a
writer's own knowledge or experience, if he puts in good
things within the scope of his own data.
In writing, details come into focus if I look at them.
That is, if I describe a trapper's cabin, if it is of logs I
see the moss chinking and the spruce, balsam or other
"banking up." I ask the equivalent of this accuracy of
knowledge in what I read and take delight, for instance,
in the minute knowledge of equipment displayed by Pendexter
or the desert flora by Harriman or Tuttle's fine
cowboy exaggeration and faithfulness to a habit or frame
of mind.
My stock in trade is a vast junk yard, properties more
varied than a motion-picture lot's, and I seldom see the
[pg 186]
same thing twice. If I read, for example, a Western, I
may know its exact location (as I do my own story-atmospheres).
In that case I see as I remember, and if I don't
remember very well, I get out a map, note-books, etc., and
find out what's wrong. I read stories for amusement and
information, and often I write stories to give information—hoping
to amuse as well.
Norman Springer: It depends on the story and the
author.
In a romantic story I'm always chiefly interested in the
characters. In a realistic story I am often more interested
in the setting, or background, than in the characters.
Sounds, smells, feels, pictures—if the tale is artfully
written, these are quite real, though, of course, in a subdued
or diluted sense. Suggestion makes these things more
real than elaborate description.
Pain, I think, is usually met by the reader with feelings
of anger and pity.
Suggestions of smells are, I think, most vivid to me.
If I visualize a picture, it is in color. The distinctness
of details depends on the intensity of the scene, or my interest
in it. Characters are usually distinct; scenery
blurred.
No geometry.
The response, I think, is often killed by too much description.
Suggestion, particularly sensory suggestion,
does the work best with me—and I think with most people.
If the author outlines the picture and sets my five
senses—or any of them—to work, I get a much more vivid
and "real" impression than if he spent pages in meticulous
description.
If the characters are alive and the setting interesting,
the mental pictures of a story are individual. Otherwise, I
suppose they are stock pictures.
A great deal of difference. In reading I can allow my
imagination free play. In writing I must discipline it,
keep it within the bounds of the story. I find it hard to do.
[pg 187]
Yes. I think all writers consider them as tools. They
have to be considered in every story, as it is being written.
There is the general style of the story to be considered, and
following that, each situation. I think, "Now how can I
get this effect or that; how can I make this fellow behave
like a real man?" In fact, my stories so far have been a
series of experiments. I nearly always try something new
in each story, something I haven't tried before. Something
that I hope will make the story more real and readable.
Quite often the result is a rotten failure; but sometimes
it isn't.
Julian Street: It depends on the author's ability to
transmit the pictures he wishes me to see. I am always
ready to do my share. My mouth does not literally water,
except possibly over exceptionally fine descriptions of fine
food and drink—which are rare. I do not think, however,
that I get physical pain. My reactions are intellectual and
emotional. Tarkington, for instance, can make me happy
or unhappy or worried about his characters. He presses
the buttons—we do the rest. The work of inferior observers
and inferior writers of course reaches me less and
less. I am fastidious in these matters.
When writing a scene, I "see" things vividly in color.
In reading less so, though to a considerable extent if the
author has the picture-making power.
No, thank God, I don't have standard stock pictures of
scenes and persons. I depend on the author to give me
his pictures, and if he is any good, he can do it. If he
can't give me pictures, I don't want to read him.
I resent not having sufficient images made for me. I
also resent images made in a conventional trite way—written
out of the author's reading rather than out of his
observation. I want my author to be a keen observer and
artful interpreter. I want him, as Tarkington says, to
"flush me with colors."
Yes, my imagination is most vivid when I am writing
stories. The characters I read, however real to me, are
[pg 188]
never quite so real as those I create. Because those I read
are other people's children, whereas those I create are my
own. I love my children more than I love those of others,
even though the others may be in every way better products.
It amuses me that this should be so and I am a
little ashamed to confess it.
T. S. Stribling: As I said, I almost never read a story.
They bore me to death. It seems to me there are few
things in this world as stupid as fiction.
When I am writing I see everything I write about. I
never try to remember anything; I am simply looking at
the thing and it is no more effort to describe it than it
would be to describe the typewriter under my fingers now.
Pictures are always in color, and the details are blurred
except at the point I am describing and that is just as
clear-cut as if I were looking at the real thing, not at a
picture.
Yes I studied solid geometry; mathematics never gave
me any trouble at all.
No, I don't have stock pictures for anything or at least
I am not conscious of it. If I say a village church I will
then have to decide what sort of village church I want.
However when I get clear out of my experience, say into
the Eskimo, the word Eskimo simply calls up a little fur-covered
man; however if I should start writing about
them, this generalization would instantly dissolve into
scores of individuals.
When I read stories my imagination sinks into a profound
stupor. Everything seems too dull and tame; when I
write, everything picks up, life grows gay again, and I
have the deuce of a good time.
No, I don't consider them "tools of my trade." I
don't consider I have a trade nor any tools. The first
novel I ever wrote was because I couldn't find a novel
that I enjoyed reading; the last one I write will be written
for the same reason.
Booth Tarkington: I shall have to leave these answers
[pg 189]
pretty indefinite. The answer to each differs with every
story. As a reader every one, I imagine, has, when a village
church is mentioned, the image of some village church
he has seen—or I should say, more probably, that is, a
thin haze of a fragment of some village church.
An author forming too many images of course fatigues
the reader.
W. C. Tuttle: I have always been afraid of paying too
much attention to other authors' work, for fear that I
might absorb some of their traits. A few years ago I
was a newspaper cartoonist and I have often found myself
unconsciously using another artist's technique. It
was not because I desired to do this, but because I admired
his style. Perhaps we are all copyists, as far as
that is concerned, and I believe it would be easy to
adopt some favorite author's style of writing.
There are certain kinds of stories which lure me on to
long periods of reading. Give me a tale of the days of
old, with plumed knights, stage-coaches drifting over
muddy roads, tavern brawls, etc., and I'm useless until
the end of the story. I can fairly smell the tap-room, hear
the rattle of dice and the clash of swords. It is more like a
moving picture than a tale of fiction.
I often envy the writers of these tales. To me this is
"real" fiction. My mind sometimes flashes back to the
author and I wonder if he enjoyed the writing as I did the
reading.
I think that in many cases I improve upon the author's
description. If it is a coach team I can see in a flash just
the size and color of the horses, the general appearance of
the coach, the contour of the road. It appears like a moving
picture, if you know what I mean. Such detail as the
jolting of the coach, the creaking of harness; little details
that no author would stop to describe, I see and hear
them in my own story, but would never think to burden
the reader with such small detail. Yet, I wonder if it isn't
the little detail that makes a good story.
[pg 190]
Somehow I always draw a mental picture of the author
at work on that certain story, and I wonder if he planned
it all out before putting it on paper. Did he know what
the ending would be? Where and how did he get the idea
in the first place?
It appears to me that an author must see things in color,
with detail clear, in order to convince the reader. A
blurred image will not reproduce clear. I have managed
to cover a bad piece of drawing with technique, but I
have never seen a bad piece of writing that could be concealed
in a mass of words. When my mental picture becomes
foggy I quit writing until it clears. At times I
have two or more stories under way, and when one gets
blurred I take another. I have never found them all out
of focus, and it has saved me hours of waste time.
Things are pretty much the same when I read a story,
and it does not take me long to feel whether the author
knew his characters, locale, etc. Some of them actually
live, while others are merely lay figures, with labels instead
of souls. I can accept bad description, but when the
dialogue is stilted, unreal, I lose interest.
Perhaps it is my imagination that hampers me in writing.
I can see every detail so clearly that I forget that
the reader must at least have a diagram of what I see in
order to understand. And I have no stock picture for
anything. It is not a case of "a rock is a rock and a tree
is a tree."
I suppose I absorb a certain amount from reading, although
I would be unable to point out just what benefit it
has been to me. The handling of a story has always interested
me, even if the characters were unreal, and I believe
that a well-written story is a "tool of the trade" to
any author, if he will consider it in that light.
Lucille Van Slyke: May I add that when I read a
story by Laura Jean Libbey types of writers that I never
see anything they write as real—Abject apology: I never
saw anything the lady wrote—it is exactly like watching a
[pg 191]
play that is so poor that the eye registers scenery and
grease paint every minute.
Things I see with my eyes shut are never black and
white—always sharply colored. Some one detail will be
distinct—from which I edge through blurred ones. Example.
Recently in a story I had to strand a boat on a
sand-bar at twilight. I sit back, shut my eyes and try to
remember where I have got the sand-bar idea. I saw an
old coat, plaid, wet, lying on sand, a basket next to the
coat—basket had food in it—tomatoes—red tomatoes. All
this can have nothing to do with my story, you understand,
but I'm back five years ago on a real sand-bar with
a stranded picnic party waiting for tide to come up.
Zip, I'm off! Don't have to imagine it, it's there!
Hate "math" of all kinds but had less trouble with
solid geometry than with any other kind of mathematics.
Yet I had the same teacher that I had for algebra and
plane—think perhaps I was a bit older and could concentrate
better.
If my concept were limited to the exact degree to which
the author makes vivid I'd have to quit reading! Again,
if he's a real writer man he sets me tingling—if he isn't I
quit reading! If I'm not getting a real "kick" out of the
thing, I stop.
Nope, haven't any stock pictures for anything.
Much resent having every t crossed and every i dotted.
Think you are using the wrong word when you say
imagination, anyway the question is not clear to me. It's
like the difference between watching somebody else work
and working myself. If it's going right I enjoy watching
it—if it isn't I want to take off my coat and show the
other fellow how I think it ought to be done.
I consider these matters very much tools of my trade.
The most helpful thing any editor ever said to me was this:
Always pretend to yourself that your reader can not think
at all—but always remember that he can feel—and make
him feel all that you can.
[pg 192]
When I read a story by a—oh, say a Conrad—I think
my imagination is swept along with his to such an extent
that I see the thing as an actual scene. Sounds I never
hear consciously, except music. Tastes I do not get. But
smells I do get, distinctly. Touch I think I get because
I find my fingers often move as I read. That "pain"
part of the question so fascinates me that I hope every
writer you sent it to is equally intrigued by it. I have
never been able to feel in any degree any pain that a
writer talks about. Neither have I ever been able, even a
day or two after acute pain, to make myself remember
how it felt. I can remember where I felt it and that I
was acutely miserable, but I can not refeel it. I have repeatedly
questioned scores of persons in all walks of life to
describe how they felt "the day after"—I always get
bromidic expressions—"Like a toothache"—or "sharp"—or
"dull"—or something that indicates very clearly that
the pain itself is obliterated, gone. I've doped it out this
way—that it is nature's kind provision—that we couldn't
any of us exist very long actually facing prolonged acute
pain—we'd be pretty brave for a while but we'd give up
eventually. Even doctors and nurses can't feel the pain
they are assuaging. But, this seems to me an extraordinary
thing—I have repeatedly noted many young mothers
whose faces unconsciously reflect pain that a very young
child is enduring.
And I can not resist adding this very personal note. I
am sometimes subject to that type of headache that is I
believe called migraine—for which I believe physicians
have no known reason. It may not occur for years in my
case—then I may have several blinding attacks of it—strangely
enough when I am quite well otherwise. And
I'm a fairly husky animal. And nothing helps it. I literally
fight it for days, finally submerge—the thing works
to its two- or three-hour horrible climax—and as I begin
to feel the pain ooze out—possibly after two or three days
or so of illness—I am suddenly aware that every sense
[pg 193]
is working clearly—literally with an after-the-thunder-storm
clearness. I am still too weakened from pain to
have any inclination to do anything—I begin to grow
drowsy after many nights of insomnia—but half-way to
the sleep—click, it goes—possibly a half dozen or more
things that have bothered me solve themselves—maybe a
story plot that I've toiled over years before and abandoned
and forgotten—possibly something I was working
on when the thing hit me. Or a perfectly new thing may
suggest itself. Or I will know exactly what was the
matter with the unsatisfactory spot in the story I had
been reading (by somebody else!). Find myself wanting
to change the endings of plays I may have seen years before
and been disappointed in. This period lasts sometimes
twenty or thirty minutes—sometimes nearly fifty
but usually goes in less than ten—when I fall asleep. Note
this—if I am too weak or not near a pencil—these curious
things are washed out forever—just like dashing a
sponge over a slate. For years I was too lazy or stupid
to understand that I must grab at those amazing few moments
and grab hard. Yet I can not anticipate it—nor
can I say that I'm very keen about paying hours of pain
in advance for a few ideas! I call it blasting out of solid
ivory—eh? But I do wonder if it happens to other writer
persons and if so, if they consider it has any significance.
Atreus von Schrader: The extent to which my imagination
reproduces the story-world of the author depends,
I believe, both on the author's skill and the degree
of my interest in what he happens to be writing about, as
well as my familiarity with the same story-world. I hear,
see, smell and taste Kipling; Poe I only hear. I do not feel
actual physical pain presented in a story; my feeling is
rather that of a man in a warm room looking through the
window at a raging storm; he gets the effect, and is glad
he's not out in it.
The pictures I see are colored; their clearness again
depends on the skill of the author and my interest in the
tale.
[pg 194]
I studied solid geometry; it was the only subject in
which I failed, twice, to pass my college entrance examinations.
I do not suffer from stock pictures of physical things
or people; I find it necessary to guard against stock characteristics
for certain types of people; the too heroic hero,
the too villainous villain, etc. This is a common error of
certain editors, who insist upon story-heroes being all
white and villains all black. Were it not for the libel
laws, I should like to cite one or two experiences of my
own in this connection.
When reading a story the imagination is at liberty to
cavort without restriction. When writing, it is not. But
in the latter case I see and feel with far greater vividness
as long as my story is developing; if I have to stop to feel
my way, the picture fades; to reappear as soon as the
thank-you-marm has been passed.
T. Von Ziekursch: If an author has written into his or
her story enough of the color of the setting (for instance,
if it is a desert scene the author has got to picture a desert
for me as I have seen them, or the woods as I have lived in
them) then my imagination carries me along with the
characters. I believe that just enough of the actual local
color of the story either makes or breaks it, and must confess
I detest these yarns that are merely written around
action and incident and plot. They are cheap and fail
utterly to have any value. In their wake they leave nothing
of pleasant memories.
If the author has painted the scene and skilfully laid
the settings then I can drift contentedly with the tale,
seeing the characters, the action, hearing the sounds and
smelling pleasant odors in my imagination. Unpleasant
odors are much more difficult to get over with me. I can
not taste, but my imagination has frequently reproduced
the sense of touch. Here is a curious thing. I can only
feel pains which I have experienced. For instance I was
badly injured breaking a horse once; I have been shot four
[pg 195]
times. Now I can feel it when a character is injured by a
horse or shot.
Details of coloring are usually somewhat indistinct unless
the author has achieved them with abruptness that is
very skilful.
Do not ask me what I think of mathematics—and that
includes both plane and solid geometry, trigonometry, logs,
algebra and all their brood.
I have formed the opinion that every reader inevitably
strides beyond the scenes laid in the story to develop
broader vistas, provided the author has painted his scenes
skilfully enough. To me there are innumerable little by-paths
that the author merely sketches the openings of—and
allows the reader to wander down them at will, formulating
his own vague scenes. As an example—a character
in a story is following a trail in the forest; the author
draws the picture of the distant mountains as the character
sees them and perhaps puts in a little touch more.
In reading that story I subconsciously explore those mountains,
looking down on the whole scene almost like a resident
of Olympus, and a deal of the fun and enchantment
of the story is in that by-play, I am confident.
As to the stock pictures in my mind I should say that
depends entirely on the author. If he is writing "plot
and action" stories with nothing else, how could the reader
help having anything else but stock pictures mentally—the
kind that have been foisted on the public so long?
In regard to the difference in behavior of the imagination
in reading and writing I am not competent to judge.
I have read very, very little modern American fiction.
My imagination holds me an absolute slave when writing—far
more so than when reading.
I can honestly say that I do not remember ever having
given any of these matters a moment's thought. In fact
I am greatly surprised that I am able to tell you as much
as I am now doing. I have never thought of the "tools
of my trade." I merely write.
[pg 196]
Henry Kitchell Webster: My most vivid sensational
reactions are to sound, touch, taste and smell. I would
hesitate to say that I can see things with my eyes shut. I
don't remember ever feeling any actual physical pain, even
in the slightest degree, to correspond with the pain presented
in a story. I found solid geometry rather easy, and
analytical geometry, which for the first time gave a meaning
to algebra, was a revelation and a delight. My response
to description and suggestion in what I'm reading
or seeing on the stage or in the movies is variable. I have
phases in which I get nothing but the bare fare that is
offered me, and others in which I run out and amplify
enormously. I haven't, so far as I know, any stock pictures
for village churches or cowboys. I don't resent too many
images being formed for me; if there are too many, I
simply ignore them. There's an enormous difference in
the behavior of my imagination when I am reading stories
and when I am writing them. I do indeed consider these
matters as important "tools" of my trade.
G. A. Wells: Sad to relate, very few stories carry me
along with them into the very thick of things. That comes
of being too darned hypercritical. It is hard for me to
get away from the author. I believe I am too much interested
in the mechanics and not enough in the result, always
admiring or condemning the author for what he does.
With the exception of a few cases which I will mention the
author, like the poor, "is always with me."
James Connelly's earlier stories—those to be found in
the book of the title Deep Sea Toll especially—carry me
with them. Pendexter and Mundy have this power over
me, but not in every case. Also Jack London's stories,
particularly those of the North. Tarkington's Alice
Adams and Hutchinson's If Winter Comes brought me
out of myself to a certain extent. That story of Bill
Adams', The Bosun of the Goldenhorn's Yarn, was a gem
and affected me very much. No play I have seen for the
past twenty years has made me forget that it was merely a
[pg 197]
play I was seeing. The writer whose work has the greatest
power over me is Lord Macaulay. I forget I am alive
when I read his essays or history.
I can see and hear characters, scenes and colors, and
taste the flavors of a story, but they are never genuine.
When a character is struck with a club I do not feel it;
I simply stand back and watch his reaction to the blow.
Scenery more nearly produces the same results on my
senses as do the actual stimuli.
The things that originate in my own imagination I can
see with my eyes shut as plainly as if they were realities,
and things in a story to a lesser degree of vividness. I
can imagine an old hag beating a child and actually work
up tears. The same thing in a story does not have the
same effect by a good deal. The things in stories are to me
merely animated word photographs. I am not strongly
susceptible to illusion as it appears in a story or a play.
But the realities of actual, living life affect me powerfully.
I once saw a man—a beast, rather—kick a dog. If he
had kicked me I could not have felt it more. In a story
I would not have felt the kick the least bit. It would have
been a kick on paper. It is my great loss that I am unable
in most cases to get the desired fictional effect.
Paintings, however, act otherwise on me. In the Corcoran
gallery at Washington there is a large painting depicting
a body washed ashore on a beach, and nearby
stands a policeman taking the names of a man and woman
in a note-book. The first time I glanced at that picture
it gripped me and in my imagination at this moment I see
it in actual detail and feel the strength of it. I have gone
a hundred miles out of my way purposely to look at that
picture. One morning I sat before it from about nine until
noon without scarcely ever taking my eyes from it. The
paintings in the Metropolitan gallery in New York would
never tire me. I am devoted to etchings.
The pictures an author presents to me are never blurred.
Nor are they black and white. They are always without
[pg 198]
exception distinct and in natural colors. When Pendexter
mentions a British soldier I see a man with a flaming
red coat. When Dingle or Dunn shows me a pirate I see a
man with swarthy face and black eyes. Trees and grass
are always green unless otherwise stated.
Solid geometry was he—ll! It gave me more trouble
than all other studies combined.
My response to the author is nearly always abstract.
I have no stock pictures for anything I read. I let the
author paint his picture by direct description and accept
it as he shows it, or form or paint it for myself from the
various hints he scatters through his story. If his story is
laid in the West all he need say for me is that the incidents
occurred on a ranch. I'll paint my own ranch in. If his
story is of the mountains he can say so briefly and depend
on me to picture the mountains.
I have two imaginations—one for reading and the other
for writing. The former is better than the latter. Imagination
is, in my opinion, the chief tool of trade of the
writer. It counts for about ninety per cent. Without
that all the other tools in his chest are worthless.
William Wells: The nearest that I can come to answering
this is to say that both in reading a well-told story
and in building one from my imagination the scenes are as
real as if I were watching them thrown on the screen. I
am oblivious to all else, but detached, take no part myself.
But I possess the faculty of making the scenes reproduce
themselves as often as I wish—in my own stories—or
of changing them and making the characters act as I
want them to.
I really "see things" with my eyes shut—or open, for
that matter—perfect in every detail, see the flame of fire
or the smoke from firearms, but my only sensation is that
of the onlooker, although I get quite excited.
Never studied geometry.
The concept sets me to reproducing.
No stock pictures; all different.
[pg 199]
Only as I have noted. I can make my own characters
do as I wish.
Just starting to use these "tools of my trade."
Ben Ames Williams: Reading usually awakens in me
only an appreciation of the author's ability—or a criticism
of his lack of it. I get more pleasure out of discovering
how an author has done this or that than in reading his
story as a story. An example within the past fortnight,
in Tolstoi's War and Peace. He describes a banquet and
gives a paragraph to the state of mind of a German tutor
who had not appeared previously and does not appear
thereafter. After you have read the dozen lines you know
the tutor. That passage gave me more pleasure than anything
in the book. In like fashion, the bit of paper fluttering
to the floor when they opened the long-closed bungalow
in Conrad's Victory; the derby hat rolling on its
crown after the murder in his Secret Agent. These things
delight me. Rarely any emotional reaction. An exception;
in Saint Teresa, when the lady tried to rip off the
gentleman's lip I had a moment of actual physical nausea.
These statements apply only to my reading to myself;
if I read aloud, I laugh, cry, tremble, shudder or adore as
the author intended.
Honore Willsie: A whole lot depends on who wrote
the story. Robert Louis Stevenson stimulates my imagination
to such a degree that as regards one of his tales I
can answer yes to this group of questions. Joseph Conrad,
ditto. Lesser writers in less degree.
Yes, I see things with my eyes shut in vivid detail and in
full color.
Solid geometry was my favorite form of mathematics
and I did well in it.
All depends on the skill of the author in choice of words.
As a reader I have no stock pictures.
I read Lorna Doone and If Winter Comes with equal
pleasure. One paints, the other suggests, pictures. But
both are presented by masters.
[pg 200]
Much less concentrated effort of imagination in reading
than in writing.
No.
H. C. Witwer: In reading a story my imagination
does reproduce the story-world of the author, or else I
can not finish his yarn. I see his characters, the action
and setting, as well as if I were there. Usually when I get
real interested in a story—and I generally do—I find my
mind wandering between the lines and wondering what
the author is going to do with his characters. What will
his climax be? If he fools me without stretching the long
arm of Mr. Coincidence too far, or without a grotesque
improbability, I am that author's greatest fan and will
read him assiduously, thinking, "Ah, if I could write like
that!" Mere trick endings or endings that I have grasped
on page two of the story arouse my honest indignation.
In a well-written yarn all my senses will react to those
described. I have been drenched with spray by Conrad;
starved, fought and shed blood with Couzens, Young and,
most of all the latter, Arthur O. Friel. I would offer one
of his South American jungle tales as a typical story to
which all my senses reacted. I would say the "pictures
I see with my eyes shut" are colored approximately to the
scene and rather clear-cut than blurred.
I never studied solid geometry—at the time I might or
should have been, I was studying left hooks and straight
rights!
On some things my response is limited to the degree in
which the author describes them. On others the mere concept
will set me to reproduce just as vividly. In this class
I would put mention of the sea, jungle, a prize-fight, Indian
warfare, gambling, Chinese settings, and other things
that have a strong appeal to my imagination. In the first
class I would put things that have no appeal to me and
with which I have had no acquaintance. I'm afraid, as a
reader, I do have "stock pictures" for village churches,
cowboys and other things with which I'm not familiar.
[pg 201]
(No reflection on the village church—or the cowboy
either, for that matter.)
As a reader I do resent too many images, too much description,
particularly the latter. A paragraph by a good
author is more stimulating to the imagination, more interesting
and less of a "drag" on the action of the story, than
pages by others. I loathe this sort of thing: "He sat down
at his frugal meal of fried eggs, hash browned potatoes,
wheat bread, coffee, condensed milk, creamery butter and
salt and pepper. The potatoes were a bit crisp. The eggs,
turned over once, etc." And I don't care who writes it.
It has always irritated me and always will!
There is a great deal of difference in the behavior of my
imagination when reading stories and when writing them.
When reading, my imagination is joy-riding, when writing
it has entered an endurance contest.
I have never considered these matters as tools of my
trade, but I do not doubt that they are.
William Almon Wolff: I'm afraid I don't react that
way at all—or to a very limited extent. It seems to be my
mind that's active, when I read. I'm much more sensitive
to music than to words, so poetry and such prose as Conrad's
move me. But, even so, it's what I read, rather than
what moved the writer, that engages me. In other words,
I'm more interested in the writer's emotions and reactions
than in what stimulated them.
My imagination isn't a visual one. I don't see things
with my eyes shut at all, so far as I know.
No. I was a frightful dub at mathematics, but I didn't
begin to take even the foggiest interest in them until I
got into trigonometry and solid geometry.
Decidedly it's the concept that I want.
Individual visions, every time.
I prefer, on the whole, to fill out details for myself.
That depends. If I'm satisfied, I surrender to the
author. If I'm not, I start writing the story as I would
have done it myself.
[pg 202]
The answer to the last paragraph of this question is that
I really don't know. I think the answer is no, though.
Edgar Young: I am unable to put myself in the mood
of a casual reader, but watch closely how another man
works, although a real artist can make me forget my critical
attitude and sway me so that I feel the emotions he
expresses. When I am really interested I am unable to
say which of the five senses is most affected. A reaction
from another writer is not a normal reaction.
Can easily call up mental pictures of places I have seen
with most of the main and many of the smaller details
distinct.
Solid geometry never bothered me much. I ate it alive.
My responses are mainly governed by verisimilitude. I
have been so many places that when a place is out of gear
with the real place, a character not a character of the place
he is supposed to be—just a few paragraphs and I am in
the "where in hell do you get that stuff" mood and end
up by roundly swearing at the poor fellow who wrote the
story. Imagine a rubber worker in Brazil using the words
of Handsome Harry of Old Diamond Dick fame (actual
words), a Mexican using Barcelona Spanish, a Peruvian
speaking of things by Mexican names, a Central American
reckoning in old Spanish coins, a Brazilian speaking
Spanish and local Rio de Janeiro all balled up. How
would you like to read one about some place you knew intimately
and find it all mixed up?
Summary
All or part of the III questions were answered by 113
writers. Question 1. Each of the five senses and pain are
tabulated separately. Questions 2 and 3, dealing with
visual imagination, are included under "sight."
1. Sight. Of 111 answering, 73 can see without using
their physical eyes, 19 have this ability to some degree and
4 generally have it—95 in all. Only 6 lack this power
entirely; 5 generally—11 in all. Two can not tell and 2
are not easily tabulated on this point.
[pg 203]
Out of the 96 with at least some visual imagination 68
answer specifically as to whether their mental pictures are
in colors—45 fully; 8 somewhat; 4 a little; 10 no; 1 untabulated.
As to distinct detail 57 answer—38 yes; 11 some; 5 a
little; 3 no.
Analysis of the actual answers on the above will show
that "yes" often means "some," though it is tabulated
at its face value. It is to be regretted that specific data
were not asked for on visualization of motion and on comparative
ability to visualize characters and setting.
Geometry. 61 answered as having had solid geometry.
Found it more difficult than other mathematics, 12; the
same, 16; easier, 32; one, who found it more difficult but
attributed the fact to a bad start, is not tabulated. In
support of the theory that it would be more difficult for
those lacking visual imagination and easier for those possessing
this ability, 34, to which should probably be added
at least some of the 16 who found it the same; in contradiction
of the theory, 9—2 who can not visualize found it
easier and 7 who could visualize found it more difficult.
In all cases other factors must have had bearing; on the
whole, the theory seems sufficiently established.
Two people I know, both high-school valedictorians and
both unable to visualize at all, were entirely helpless over
solid geometry until they solved the difficulty by cutting
up raw potatoes to represent the problem.
Hearing. 57 answers. The remaining 56 can probably
be counted as lacking auditory imagination. Of the 57
there are 31 answering yes; 14 somewhat or a little; 10
no; 2 untabulated. We may say that 45 out of 113 possess
the ability to at least some degree, while 68 lack it entirely.
In two cases the imagination in this sense is more
vivid than in any of the others; in three cases less vivid
than in any of the others. Curiously enough, one has the
ability for music but for no other sounds—perhaps as a
result of systematic training and development in music.
[pg 204]
Taste. 57 answers. Yes, 23; somewhat, 10; no, 19; untabulated,
5. Out of 113, 33 claim this ability, while 80
lack it. With one this imagination sense is more acute
than any of the others except sight; in another case, very
acute.
Smell. 58 answers. Yes, 29; somewhat, 11; no, 16; untabulated,
2. Out of 112, 40 possess it to at least some degree,
while 72 are without it. In two cases it is the most
vivid of the senses; in two cases it ranks next to sight and
taste.
Touch. 43 answers. Yes, 13; somewhat, 12; no, 14;
untabulated, 4. Out of 113, 25 possess and 88 lack it. In
one case it is the only sense reproducing through the imagination.
Pain. 35 answers. Yes, 8; somewhat, 6; no, 20; untabulated,
1. Out of 113, 14 claim it and 99 do not.
All the Senses. As to their relative commonness, the
five senses and pain rank as follows:
Sight—73 yes; 23 somewhat; 96 total.
Hearing—31 yes; 14 somewhat; 45 total.
Smell—29 yes; 11 somewhat; 40 total.
Taste—23 yes; 10 somewhat; 33 total.
Touch—13 yes; 12 somewhat; 25 total.
Pain—8 yes; 6 somewhat; 14 total.
I believe that if the answerers were to subject themselves
to a more rigid analysis, the number of those answering
"yes" and "some" would in each of the six cases be very
materially reduced, but the relative frequency of the six
cases as shown above would seem fairly dependable, except
that the temptation to "yes" or "some" in the case
of sight is probably stronger than in the other cases.
4. Response limited by author. 95 answers. Tabulation
is complicated and difficult. Of these 95, 81 can
visualize, 14 not, and since the two preceding questions,
and most of the one before that, centered on visualization,
the sense of sight is probably to be considered the chief criterion
in the present test. Naturally the possession or
[pg 205]
lack of visualization determines the real value of an answer
here. In the following, those possessing only slight
power of visualization are included under "can't visualize."
If you attempt tabulation you will find that an answer
sometimes has to be recorded under several heads two of
which, when considered in some aspects, give contradictory
evidence, so that your total of answers does not always
divide, on some points, into parts whose sum equals
the whole.
Imagination response limited by an author's description,
28; somewhat limited, 10; by certain authors only, 2.
Total, 40.
Along with these consider 15 who are limited by the
general skill of an author, description not specified and
sometimes indicated as a minor consideration.
Not limited by author's description, 42. Of these, 39
can visualize, 3 not. Of the 39, 34 state their ability to go
beyond the author's description, filling in and coloring
for themselves. Of the 3 who can't visualize, 2 definitely
state inability to go beyond the printed description.
Of the 81 (out of the total 95) who can visualize, 61 go
or can go in their imagination beyond the author's printed
words; 19 can not; 1 doesn't know. These 61, roughly
speaking, prefer an approximation of mere suggestion or
concept rather than full description.
Getting at this last point from another angle, 8 who
visualize state definite objection to full description; 17 visualizers
and 4 non-visualizers resent "too much"; 12 visualizers
and 3 non-visualizers state preference for suggestion
only. Total against description, 44, 21 of them merely
objecting to "too much"—an amount difficult to define.
There are 9 visualizers and 1 non-visualizer who do not
resent description. These, with 1 visualizer and 1 non-visualizer
satisfied with either method, make 12 neutrals.
On the other hand, 4 visualizers want full description
and 2 resent mere suggestion. Total, 6.
[pg 206]
Definitely against description, 23.
Against "too much," 21.
Neutral, 12.
For full description, 6.
Only a questionnaire carried into minute detail and answered
by large numbers could warrant, in a subject of so
many factors, any nicety of conclusion and, also, it is not
to be forgotten that the answerers are not mere readers
but readers who are also writers. On the other hand, they
are in these matters trained and sensitive observers. In
any case we are fairly safe in concluding that there exists
in readers a tendency to dislike too full description as
found in the fiction of to-day. Probably a prime cause of
the dislike, in the case of visualizers, the majority, is the
violence done to the reader's own instantaneous imagery
by the almost necessarily different imagery the author's
full description forces upon him, while to non-visualizers
the author's imagery is not a picture at all. This violence
to the visualizer is akin to that often furnished by an
artist's illustrations of fiction.
An extraneous element demands consideration here.
Fiction, largely because of its imitative tradition, does not
develop so fast as the world it lives in. There is warrant
for holding the classics as models, but only those elements
of them that are universal in their appeal, that are good
for all time. The mistake lies in swallowing them whole,
or in admitting to their ranks fiction keyed too markedly
to its own time alone. In particular, fullness of description
is characteristic of certain past times whose fiction
is often cited as a model. But meanwhile the world itself
has ceased to travel in stage-coaches or on horseback and
has taken to railroads and motors. Certainly ours is not so
leisurely an age. Telephone, telegraph, steam, electricity,
gasoline have geared our generation to a far faster speed.
We lack our forefathers' happy patience over long descriptions.
Try your boy on the stories you liked at his
age. And do not forget the tremendous influence of the
[pg 207]
motion pictures for speed of narrative and quick description.
But, whatever the element of time, human beings remain
human beings and when you paint a word-picture satisfying
only your own desire of imagery you will not only
surely fail to please all, but your imagery may be such
that only a small minority find in it any satisfaction. You
can not chart the world of readers as to the exact proportions
of its imaginative responses to sense appeals, but
your technique is either shaky or happily haphazard if
you have no general idea of relative imagination responses
and of your own responses in relation to those of the
majority.
5. Stock pictures. None of the 86 answering confess
to them as habitual, though 23 have them to some degree
or in certain circumstances. If the author fails to stimulate
to special images, 8 resort to them.
6. Imagination when reading vs. when writing. Of
85 answering, 19 note no difference, 2 don't know, 1 is
untabulated, while 63 note a difference. In most cases,
however, the difference is only that the imagination is
more active, vivid, concentrated, etc., though there are
some notable exceptions. From the answers to this experimental
question I am unable to draw any conclusions
that seem worth consideration.
7. The above as "tools of your trade." Out of 73, 31
answer yes, 4 somewhat, 33 no, 2 doubtful, 2 find the
question too complicated, 1 uses no tools at all. Of the 34
answering yes in any degree, some have stated in answer
to another question that they do not consider the reader
at all when writing and only a few of these make an exception
of the work preliminary to the actual writing or of
revision. These must therefore obviously be counted out
under one question or the other, probably here, leaving a
considerably reduced number with a claim to conscious
attention in their work to the imagination differences of
readers.
[pg 208]
The questions on imagination were answered in whole
or part by 113, this particular question by 73. General
knowledge of human nature would seem to give fairly
good ground for concluding that most of the 40 not
answering as to tools would have answered "no" if at all.
In any case there are only a small number of the 113
whom we are warranted in listing under "yes." Of these
few there were still fewer whose answers on the imagination
questions as a whole left me unconvinced that their
"yes" was to the real question at issue, though in their
work they may well consider the necessity of appealing
to all five senses. Even the remaining few give no single
scrap of definitely conclusive proof that their "yes"
means a weighing on their part of imagination differences
among readers, but proof that they do not is equally
lacking, with one probable exception.
Allowing for failures to tabulate properly in all cases,
it is shown that only a small minority of these writers
allow for the varying imagination powers of their readers
or for their own imagination equations in relation to those
of the majority. Is it not mere common sense to say that
an understanding of these differences and relations should
be assimilated into an author's unconscious technique or,
failing that, be applied consciously in revision? It is all
very well to say an author should just be himself and think
not at all of those to whom he expresses himself, but as
an artist it should be part of his art to see to it that his
"himself" is in communication with those to whom he is
trying to communicate, whether through his "other self"
as their representative or directly. It is not art to talk
to a deaf man or to persist in showing pictures to a blind
man. Nor would it seem unassailably intelligent to talk in
French to people who understand only Italian. Of what
good is imagery if it can not be seen? What point in trying
to interest picture-lovers or sound-lovers by refusing
to give them pictures or sounds?
[pg 209]
Mention may be made of a few of the many stray points
of interest made here and there in the answers.
Heat and cold were not included in the question, but
fortunately crop out in some of the answers.
It might be possible to divide authors into two classes—intellectual
and sensory. The former, unless they sacrificed
individuality, would have comparatively little need
of sensory appeal, their natural audience being beyond
its reach. The latter class, however, would have acute
need of every device for developing and furthering sensory
appeal.
Frequently the dependence of imagery upon actual personal
experience is emphasized in the answers. Since imagination
is incapable of constructing anything whatever
except from elements familiar through experience, there
is opportunity for a preachment on the value of getting as
much personal experience of one's material as possible before
attempting to mold it into fiction.
I can not resist pointing out that at least one writer
who demands much description in what he reads gives almost
none in what he writes.
One writer gives us a definite method for developing
sight imagination. If others can also obtain results from
it, the value of the suggestion is tremendous, and it opens
the way into a comparatively unexplored field of immense
possibilities. There is involved a study of the relation between
keenness of sensory imagination and keenness of the
corresponding senses themselves. Also the variation of
both actual and imagination senses in correspondence to
variation in physical or general nervous condition. Also,
note that one answerer has observed a marked weakening
of sight imagination after the age of forty, an age at which
eyesight is likely to weaken markedly, while another says
the ability to visualize through the imagination has been
almost lost since adolescence.
At least two writers, one of them a friend, and I myself
[pg 210]
have laid aside glasses after years of use by following
the directions of an oculist whose method of cure for most
eye troubles is based largely upon direct practise with visual
imagination. By developing and strengthening that,
improvement is brought about in physical eyesight. It is
the reverse of the method used by Mr. Scott for developing
visual imagination and serves to illustrate the intimate
connection between the senses and imagination.
The connection between visual imagination and actual
eyesight is comparatively unexplored territory, as is the
similar connection in the four other senses. To what degree
is a writer's power of imagery, of sense stimulation
in general, dependent on his own powers of imagination?
To what extent is his imagination sense-power related to
his physical sense-power? Can the one be developed
through the other?
[pg 211]
QUESTION IV
When you write do you center your mind
on the story itself or do you constantly
have your readers in mind? In revising?
"Thinking of the reader" is a phrase subject to many
interpretations and there is no doubt that the answers to
the question containing it are not based upon a common
understanding of its exact meaning. To have given it, in
the questionnaire, any definite one of its several interpretations
would have limited the answers in scope and robbed
them of much of the valuable suggestiveness and information
they contain. And by this more comprehensive approach
we shall come to a clearer understanding of that
vague thing called "technique."
Perhaps the interpretation most commonly made was:
"Have you cheapened your work by allowing a consideration
of popularity to set aside what you knew your art
demanded?" If we take the more usual phrase, "Do you
write down to your readers?" or, "Do you write for
money or for art?" the reaction, in perhaps most cases,
to this interpretation of the question would be, "No, I do
not consider the reader when writing," and many of the
negative answers given are undoubtedly the expressions of
this natural reaction, given without further analysis.
On the other hand some writers do write for money, primarily
for money, and quite honestly say so.
With a discretion born of experience I promptly avoid
any opinion on the broad subject of whether what they
write is therefore a calamity to Art, and retire hurriedly
on the fact that said writers do do it. As a class, their reply
to Question IV is more likely to be a Yes than a No.
But remember that so far as we are here concerned with
[pg 212]
them, both those writers who do and who do not write primarily
for money, all write for publication involving at
least the expectation of money. That is no reason for a cry
of hypocrisy against those who claim not to write for
money; there is an entirely justifiable line between writing
primarily for money and writing one's best and then getting
what one can for that best. In the case, also, of those
who admit writing primarily for money, a similar distinction
can be drawn; in the long run there is no surer way
of making money than by doing one's best and plenty of
writers recognize this fact. There are also those, dependent
on their pens for daily living, who make a deliberate
but temporary business of quantity and popularity as the
only possible way to reach a position where they can write
without regard for these factors. Some of our acknowledged
best reached their goal by this path and would answer
our question Yes or No according to the time of its
asking.
There are those, too, who write primarily for fame, or
for mere popularity, and to whom money may be an entirely
negligible consideration. These, writing for a consideration
other than art itself, may be, for all purposes of
this book, classified along with those who write for money.
And there are those who write for no consideration except
self-expression or the "joy of the working," acknowledging
no object except art alone.
The fact remains that all of our answerers alike are
having their work published, whatever motives may be involved.
Before they put a word on paper they know the
story is meant for publication. They know it from the first
inkling of the idea that is to give it birth. They know that
it will fail of publication unless in creating it they make it
such that readers (editors) will be not only reached by its
expression but favorably reached and that publication
chances for later stories will be endangered or impaired if
in the present one their expression fails to reach favorably
the general reading public. Some of them are dependent
[pg 213]
on publication success for their living; some are not; some
are more interested in the creating than in its results;
some are not. But all of them alike do publish. In saying
that they never think of the reader, then, some of them
must mean only that they do not think of him during the
actual process of putting the story together on paper.
Otherwise they must maintain that when weighing the
value of an idea or a bit of material for use in fiction they
never consider whether that idea or material would be
liked by the reading public or whether it might be of such
nature that no magazine would publish it. If they do so
maintain, either they should be able to support their claim,
at least in part, by having for exhibit a very goodly number
of unsalable stories that in their judgment are fully
as good as the published ones, or else they must be recognized
as individuals whose points of view, reactions and
methods happen to be so identical with those of the reading
public or of part of it that without thought, guidance
or effort their stories invariably find public favor.
There are, beyond doubt, writers who write equally good
but unpublishable stories, but I imagine most of them
would tell us that said stories are unpublished solely because
editors are lacking in discriminating judgment or
have prostituted Art to Business, and that few of these
writers would claim, however rigidly they had held to Art
alone, that they had not written the great majority of these
stories with the intention or hope of publication. There
are, beyond doubt, also writers who at least approximate
in themselves a fortunate reflection of the reading public's
likes and dislikes. This identity of point of view and interest
is either a happy accident involving no credit to
them as craftsmen—it may be even a misfortune from the
point of view of art, or else it has been attained unconsciously
yet by a very definite pursuit of technique. This
last point, however, is best left for discussion until after
the answers to Question IV.
But if some of the answers were negative because the
[pg 214]
answerers were considering only the time of actual drafting,
not the preparatory work or even the revision, there
are still distinctions that must be applied, still further obstacles
to accepting negative answers as final, and these
too must be left until the end of the chapter.
If my question had carried with it all these analyses and
distinctions there is, I think, little doubt that many who
answered "no" would have answered "yes." As one
writer puts it, "The distinction between thinking of a
story and thinking of a reader is difficult. I suppose my
mind is chiefly concerned with making the words express
what is real in my imagination—but that implies
considering a reader." There is extremely good reason
to weigh these various distinctions before reading the
answers given and before concluding—or believing these
writers conclude—that the reader can or should be excluded
from the artist's mind.
Are the answers, then, valueless? So far as the face
value of the question is concerned, partly so. But the insight
into various actual working methods is extremely
valuable, and the answers to that undefined query, not in
their mere yes or no but in their fullness and taken as a
whole, open an unequaled path to an understanding of the
nature, purpose and use of technique, a thing that even the
dictionary defines haltingly and that among writers, editors
and critics is only a term as vague as it is much used.
Before turning to the answers it must be noted that
through a clerical error the words "In revising" appeared
in only half the copies of the questionnaire that were
sent out.
Answers
Bill Adams: I never think of the reader—not even
when the story is in print. If I do, I think it is a remarkably
odd world to contain such queer ducks.
Samuel Hopkins Adams: Damn the readers. I'm too
busy with the immediate people of my imagination to worry
about the dim and distant thousands.
[pg 215]
Paul L. Anderson: The story only, when writing; consideration
of the reader comes in the preliminary planning.
William Ashley Anderson: I think only of the story
without regard to readers, on the assumption that a good
story will never fail to find readers.
H. C. Bailey: A distinction between thinking of the
story itself and of the reader is to me difficult. I suppose
my mind is chiefly concerned to make the words express
what is real in my imagination—but that implies considering
a reader. Of course it is necessary sometimes in revising
to simplify.
Edwin Balmer: On the story. When revising, somewhat
on the readers.
Ralph Henry Barbour: In writing, my mind does its
own centering, and it centers on the story. The reader gets
a mighty small look-in. In revising, the reader is considered.
But, as I've already said, I don't revise much.
Frederick Orin Bartlett: I never have my readers in
mind either in writing or revising. It is extremely difficult
for me to visualize a reader of any sort until the story
is actually in print. Then I feel my audience only as individuals
write to me or in some other way respond.
Nalbro Bartley: When I write, I think of only the
story—never whether anybody is going to read it—or pay
for it, for that matter. But when, after it has been cold-in-a-drawer
for about a week, I revise, I try to think of the
nature of the story which the editor originally ordered—whether
or not it hits any forbidden spots and if the average
reader is going to respond or not. I think impersonal
revision is the most valuable sort.
Konrad Bercovici: I never have the reader in mind
when I write. I do not want him to have me in his mind
either. It is the story. Nothing else.
Ferdinand Berthoud: I'm afraid that in my amateurish
way I center my mind wholly on my story—laugh and
cry with my characters. However, now I'm learning and
[pg 216]
getting a little more experienced I am trying to be less
selfish and to think of the readers.
H. H. Birney, Jr.: On the story.
Farnham Bishop: Write for the story, revise for the
reader. Except that, whenever explaining anything, I
keep trying to be clear enough for the layman, accurate
enough for the expert, and interesting enough for both.
(Result of ten years lecturing on semi-technical subjects
to general audiences.)
Algernon Blackwood: I never give the reader a single
thought. To some imaginary reader, sitting at a desk inside
my own mind, I tell my story. It is written to express—to
relieve—an emotion in my own being. It is never
written to please other readers or any imaginable public.
Max Bonter: As closely as I have been able to come
to it, I am a dual personality when I write. My imagination
invents, but reason checks. Reason seems in my case
to represent prospective readers.
Katharine Holland Brown: First, write down all the
story before it gets away. With no regard for any reader.
Second, revise, and try to make the story intelligible
and to make it march.
F. R. Buckley: I center my mind on the story. I have
thought of the readers beforehand, that is, I know what
will go and what won't: have generally studied the magazine
I'm writing for and got general atmosphere of the stuff
it uses; can't get more than that. In this atmosphere I
have framed the story as previously detailed. That's all I
have to do with the readers.
Prosper Buranelli: I never think of readers—am
never too sure I shall have any. You don't think of a
third party, whom to convince, when you are working out
a proof in geometry.
Thompson Burtis: I center myself on the story. Occasionally
the readers enter the picture when I am using
technical stuff which I realize I must write down to them.
George M. A. Cain: Am not clear about this. I endeavor
[pg 217]
to tell the reader enough to guide him to so much
of my vision as is vital to the story. I think he seldom
escapes my consciousness. I think of him as reading what
I tell. If I am writing for public speech, I think of myself
as saying the words to an audience imagined before me
while I write.
Robert V. Carr: When I want to sell my story, I
write with the reader in mind. When I want to enjoy
writing, I forget the reader. I am not sufficiently egotistical
to want to reform the reader, neither do I desire
to uplift him or to change his prejudices and superstitions
to fit my mold.
I believe that intelligence decreases with numbers; therefore
I am not a democrat. It has been my observation
that nothing arouses the hatred of the average man so
much as the power to do him good. If one has the power
to hurt him, to destroy him, he will erect a statue in honor
of the possessor of that power. But if one has the power
to do him good, and he lacks that power, he will, sooner
or later, fly at the possessor of the power to do good like
a mad dog. Pessimistic? It is no more logical to hope
for the best than to hope for the worst.
Why should I bounce a stone off the reader's head when
all he asks from me is a shot of literary hop to make him
forget the next installment on his tin canary, the ever-increasing
double chins of his wife, his children who no
longer make him feel a glow of pride by their resemblance
to him, or his late patriotic debauch from which he is now
recovering with a door-mat tongue and a general feeling
of seediness? Why should I attempt to make a reader
think, when I know so little myself? I should try to amuse
him and let it go at that.
George L. Catton: It all depends. Tastes differ. Personally
I don't care a penny for "blood and thunder"
stories, all action to no end and without a theme or soul.
But the vast majority of readers to-day want that kind of
story and if an author wants to keep eating he's got to
[pg 218]
kill his own likes and dislikes for his stomach's sake. I
like stories with action of brains, not brawn, but money
talks. I have to keep my mind on my readers' likes and
dislikes when I'm writing to keep my bread basket from
blowing away. Otherwise I'd write what I liked myself,
never think about my readers, and do better work—from a
literary viewpoint.
Robert W. Chambers: The story only. In revising,
the story alone.
Roy P. Churchill: My best stories come when I center
on the story, but it is very hard when the readers'
so-called limitations are so borne in upon you. For instance,
terms and expressions of sailors seem to need some
explanation when told to a landsman. Yet, do they?
My most enjoyable reading is when the writer fires on regardless
and lets you understand or not. Makes you work
your own mind just a trifle to "get" what he is driving at.
Carl Clausen: Always on the story.
Courtney Ryley Cooper: Absolutely on the story. In
revising, or rather editing, I watch the things that I
know a reader will look for. But the story comes first.
Because if it isn't a story—there won't be any readers!
Arthur Crabb: I think that when I write I have the
story in mind and not the reader. The same is true in
revising.
Mary Stewart Cutting: I center my mind on the story
itself. I have my reader in mind in so far as I wish to
write it clearly; in the vernacular "to get it over."
Elmer Davis: I used to center on the story itself, but
they didn't sell. Now I center on the editor at whom I am
aiming it. Yes, I know you will say that is all wrong. It
is, for Tolstoy, Balzac, etc. But not for the sort of writers
who make their living out of checks.
William H. Dean: My God! Never on the reader!
That's fatal. If one tries to write to or for an audience,
his work is worse than mediocre. I think of my characters
and their destinies, think only of them—do my best
[pg 219]
to interpret, never to invent. If my readers like what I
write, they agree with my interpretations. If any beginner
should ask me to give him a single rule to observe, I
should say, "Always write to interpret; you will go down
in defeat if you ever deliberately set about to please any
reader."
Harris Dickson: Don't think I ever have the reader
in mind, except when in matters of local coloring I must
consider viewpoints outside of the South and remember
to make myself clear. Frequently I do not employ certain
forms of colloquialism because the outside reader may
not comprehend—and explanations are generally bad. In
public speaking, however, this is different. There you
face your audience and get a response. Many times the
speaker practically follows his audience, falling into the
same vein of thought and traveling along in harmony.
Over and over again I felt this on the platform during our
wartime publicity campaigns. Again, the speaker may
feel a hostility or lack of comprehension in his audience,
that he must go further, explain more clearly, hammer in
a fact. Or he may feel that his audience has "got" his
slightest gesture, that they comprehend fully, and no more
is needed.
Captain Dingle: I never think of the reader. I lose
myself in the story. I am my characters, in turn, within
limits.
Louis Dodge: I think of my story, not of my readers,
when I write; however, I try to finish my story—to put
on paper what I have in mind, to make things fairly plain.
Phyllis Duganne: I don't think of readers when I'm
writing. At least, I suppose I do in a way—I try to make
people and things in a story convincing, and as I'm convinced
at the start, I must be considering readers. But I
don't think of them consciously; it's just the story I'm
consciously considering. In revising, I think frequently
of editors—after all, they're rather important.
J. Allan Dunn: I do not think I have my readers
[pg 220]
largely in the forefront of my mind, save as I know they
are apt to clamor, through the editor, for the satisfactory
ending. Which is one reason why I like to write for ——.
There I am practically untrammeled. I am unconscious
of an audience and I want to be.
Walter A. Dyer: I become preoccupied, when writing,
with the story rather than with my readers, and I am
afraid I too often leave the editors entirely out of account.
I have, however, in the case of stories for boys, had to keep
my audience in mind.
Walter Prichard Eaton: I never have my readers in
mind when I write. My one job is to get into words the
idea in my head. Alas! before I begin I consider whether
it is an idea which will sell. That is because we all feel we
have to live. In revising, I try only to make what I have
written correspond more closely with the idea I set out to
convey—and also, I try, often, to make my sentence
rhythms more attractive to the ear.
E. O. Foster: When I write I center my mind on the
story itself and I am ashamed to say that I do not have
my readers in mind, except as I write I know there are
over four million ex-service men in the United States who
are probably watching to catch me in an inaccuracy. I
also consider that I am writing about the time of the Spanish-American
War and that the tactics and military evolution
have changed considerably in these years. Fortunately
I was also in the World War and know what the
changes are.
Arthur O. Friel: The story excludes everything else.
J. U. Giesy: Mainly on the story, the scene and action
I wish to paint.
George Gilbert: I think only of the story. After it is
written I think of selling it. But although this answer
seems to exclude the readers, it puts them first, for I have
confidence enough in what I write to make me think that
if it is printed readers will like it. If I did not, I would
not write anything.
[pg 221]
Kenneth Gilbert: When I write, my mind is centered
on the story itself, but the reader is not forgotten, merely
crowded back a bit.
Holworthy Hall: I never think of the reader at all. In
the first place, I think of the story itself—and afterward
if I ever consider any one else, it is the editor and not the
reader. We are all constantly selling stories to editors, but
never to subscribers. It is the editor's job and not mine—to
consider what he imagines his subscribers want to read.
During the actual writing of a story I think of nothing
but the urgency of translating into words the ideas which
are in my mind.
Richard Matthews Hallet: When writing I certainly
think first of pleasing myself in the effects I fight for;
but a habit of stepping out of your own skin and into the
skin of a reader should be a healthy one and indeed is
three-parts, if not the whole of self-criticism, without a
wholesome infusion of which I doubt if much real work
gets done. But don't start by trying to please other people.
Please yourself first. As Walter Pater says of "that
principle axiomatic in literature," that, "to know when
one's self is interested, is the first condition of interesting
other people." I have gone astray before now by deluding
myself into thinking I was interested in a given story
simply because I had decided to write it.
William H. Hamby: On the story itself. I never think
of the reader unless it is some point that it occurs to me
might be misunderstood.
A. Judson Hanna: I seldom thought of the reader,
merely writing a story as it came to me, until I began receiving
the circulars sent to contributors by ——. When
writing now I try to consider the effect of a story on the
reader. I always have the editor in mind as I write.
Joseph Mills Hanson: I think of the story; very seldom
of the readers of it.
E. E. Harriman: I center my mind on the story—try
to make it natural—vivid—strong. The reader may go to
[pg 222]
Hades for all I care then. All I am thinking of is the
responsibility I have to bring this character out unblemished
and with the affectionate regard of the public or
to save that one alive and in possession of his claim.
Nevil G. Henshaw: In making the first draft I think
only of the story. In revising of the reader.
Joseph Hergesheimer: Never the reader!
Robert Hichens: When I am writing, I do not think
about readers, only about my subject, my characters and
how I am expressing myself.
R. de S. Horn: When I write I consider the story alone,
until it is almost finished or rather until the final corrections
are ready to be made. Then I consider my readers
only so much as to correct with an eye to avoiding technicalities
which they might fail to understand. Every
story in my opinion has one particular style prescribed
by the story itself as visualized by the author. If he allows
himself to be swayed by considerations of the people who
will read it or the magazines that may buy it, he is playing
himself false and I believe the story will show it. The
thing to do is to write the story as your consciousness tells
you it should be written and then leave it to the literary
agent to find the magazine and class of readers that it will
best fit. I think the best illustration of this fact is that
invariably our best authors' biggest works have come before
the magazines have had a chance to subsidize him and
buy his output in advance, thereby purchasing the right
to "advise" what form his work should take.
Clyde B. Hough: When I write I am not aware of the
fact that there are to be readers. A standard is hung up
somewhere in the back of my mind as a sort of goal to
drive it, but my mind is really concentrated on the characters
and their action, particularly their action.
Emerson Hough: I never think of my readers. Poor
people!
A. S. M. Hutchinson: Most emphatically no. I never
give a thought to the reader. The idea of doing so is extraordinary
[pg 223]
to me. It is impossible and ridiculous. How
can you tell a story if you are thinking about its effect
on the people?
Inez Haynes Irwin: I do not think I ever think of my
readers at all. In writing I am always thinking of my
own impressions of my work. I have to bear in mind certain
limitations of subject which publication in magazines
involves. That of course is another story. Revising is a
work I revel in—and I think only of my own pleasure.
Will Irwin: In writing the story I have only the story
in mind. In revising, I think of the reader. For by now
I have the succession of events and pictures so clearly
established in my imagination that I am likely to take too
many things for granted.
Charles Tenney Jackson: The story alone. I have
never given the reader much thought. Now and then I
wonder what the devil's the matter with an editor!
Frederick J. Jackson: In writing I center my mind on
the story itself; the same fellow who takes the hindmost
can take the readers. If my story can interest a critical
reader like myself, it's a cinch it will interest others. I
have a large number of partly completed stories. They
were never finished because they did not interest me. If
they have failed in this initial test they are too dead to
have much chance with others.
Mary Johnston: The story. In revising, the same.
John Joseph: I am quite sure that I never write a paragraph
without pausing to consider the reader's probable
reaction to it. Lately I have been learning to keep one eye
on the editor too.
Lloyd Kohler: I think that as a rule I constantly keep
my readers in mind while writing a story. At any rate,
the stories which I have really wanted to write I have
never written—because I know it would be dangerous to
try to "get them over."
Harold Lamb: Think only of story.
Sinclair Lewis: Both, inextricably mixed.
[pg 224]
Hapsburg Liebe: I don't have anything in mind but
the story itself when writing a story.
Romaine H. Lowdermilk: I center on the story alone
in the first draft. Thereafter I keep the reader in mind as
I revise. Especially do I try to make each sentence and
paragraph clear. I try to be merciful as well as lucid and
say what I have to say as clearly and as entertainingly as
I can without artificial means of tricking for interest.
Though I do resort to sustained suspense in the body of
the tale as well as bring in obstacles and the like much as
we encounter them every day in our efforts.
Eugene P. Lyle, Jr.: I'm afraid my mind is centered
mostly on the story itself and I'm not thinking of the
reader. Get a good story clearly told and you needn't
bother about the reader; he'll do the reading all right.
Rose Macaulay: Both.
Crittenden Marriott: On the story. I write a lot to
"get it off my chest."
Homer I. McEldowney: When I write I center my
mind rather intently on the story itself, with my reader,
however, parked on the side-lines. I don't forget that he
is there. I believe that I am coming to give him a thought
more often as I write more. Undoubtedly I take him into
greater consideration in my revision of detail, reference and
diction than I did at first.
Ray McGillivray: I do all my deciding in regard to
market, and all the work of reconciling recalcitrant characters
to the dictates of good taste (as best I can guess
both) before a word is written. Never was there a fiction
horse which ran well with either of these check-reins on
his neck.
Helen Topping Miller: When I write I do not consider
my reader at all. I am concerned with my characters; I
live, move, think and feel with them. Even in revising I
do not think of my reader. I work hard for a true picture,
and usually I find the reader gets it, if I have felt it
strongly enough.
[pg 225]
Thomas Samson Miller: Center the mind on the story,
of course; but never let the reader—and editor—out of
sight. Keep in mind certain peculiarities of editors, taboos
of magazines, and, above all, take care to avoid
offending popular tastes and prejudices, and keep in mind
the average stupidity and that average human beings are
non-visual and non-imaginative. At least I do so when
writing with dollars in view. Sometimes—quite often, in
fact—I indulge in truth and in beauty—in art, that is to
say.
Anne Shannon Monroe: I never think of my readers:
when I write I am galloping ahead on a lively good time
of my own: and when it is all finished, I hope it will mean
a good time to some one else—but I am not particular about
that.
L. M. Montgomery: In writing a story I do not think
of all these things—at least consciously. I never think of
my readers at all. I think of myself. Does this story I
am writing interest me as I write it—does it satisfy me?
If so, there are enough people in the world who like what
I like to find it interesting and satisfying too. As for the
others, I couldn't please them anyhow, so it is of no use
to try. I revise to satisfy myself also—not any imaginary
literary critic.
Frederick Moore: When I write I center my mind on
the story—I live it and sleep it until it is done. It exists
wholly, just as much as the Grand Central Station exists.
It has to. I do not think of the reader then, with the exception
of what result I want to get with every word,
every phrase, every sentence. But when I see it in type,
then I think actually of the reader—and shiver.
Talbot Mundy: The story. Hardly ever conscious of
the reader.
Kathleen Norris: In both writing and revising I never
have anything in mind but the story itself, and the struggle
to preserve consistency and verisimilitude.
Anne O'Hagan: My mind centers upon the story and I
[pg 226]
forget about the readers until the story begins to come
back from the editors.
Grant Overton: I do not think I ever think of my
readers when actually writing. Afterward in reading it
over I may think of them. I do not think of them very
much anyway. I think of how I like it myself.
Sir Gilbert Parker: On the story itself always, never
on the reader.
Hugh Pendexter: I never have the reader in mind
while writing a story. The story is as real as any news
assignment I covered when a newswriter.
Clay Perry: I believe the "readers" are absent when I
write, unless a dim nebulous sort of personality in the back
of my head which might be called "One," and represent
my idea of the composite taste and judgment of an average,
well-educated person, could be called "Mr. Average
Reader" (or perhaps a little above the average). If a
story is worth writing, it seems to me, it must absorb the
writer, he must live in it, become familiar with his characters.
Michael J. Phillips: I think the reader is pretty constantly
at the back of my mind. He is always, though
sometimes unconsciously, being taken into consideration.
Walter B. Pitkin: When I write my first draft, I think
only of the story I am telling. When I go to the second
draft I tend to think of both editor and reader. This is
only roughly and broadly true.
E. S. Pladwell: My mind is centered on the story itself.
If the story is good the reader will read. I wish to
cater to the reader's taste only in a general way; that is,
I know that all the mainsprings of human life and drama
are the same to reader and writer alike, and therefore a
story which appeals to the humanity of a writer must automatically
appeal to the humanity of a reader, in a general
way, always provided that the other elements of a good
story are present, such as plot, technique, etc.
Lucia Mead Priest: I seem to have about all I can do
[pg 227]
to keep my story folk where they belong. It is perhaps
unfortunate, but "readers" are a negligible quantity—seldom
in the count.
Eugene Manlove Rhodes: Center on the story itself.
Think of readers when revising.
Frank C. Robertson: My mind is always centered upon
the story I am writing, except where some question of
probability or plausibility arises. Right there I stop and
work it out from an imaginary reader's viewpoint. Of
course, in rewriting I have the reader constantly in mind.
Ruth Sawyer: On the story itself.
Chester L. Saxby: I do not have the reader in mind.
I write stories that nobody wants because they don't come
out pleasantly, or for some other reason. That's because
anything worth writing gets a hold on me as a subject
for thought and I want to express it for my own satisfaction.
Barry Scobee: On the story. Never think of the reader,
unless now and then in difficult passages I wonder if
the reader will grasp the meaning.
R. T. M. Scott: I have my readers always in the back
of my mind, but just sufficiently to keep away from things
like the war which editors are fed up on. (Perhaps the
editors and not the readers are in the back of my mind.)
Otherwise I forget the world or all of it which lies beyond
the story.
Robert Simpson: I center my mind on the story only.
Subconsciously, I suppose, my future audience is being
considered while I labor strenuously over revision.
Arthur D. Howden Smith: Try to think only of the
story.
Norman Springer: My tendency is, of course, to think
only of the story while writing it. This query uncovers
a curious thing. Now, when I write a story, I have a
tendency to ramble. The trouble usually is that I am too
much interested in my character. I like to investigate his
feelings and thoughts at much too great length.
[pg 228]
Well, I have developed a critic in the mind who works
while I write. It is as though some faculty were standing
quite aloof from me and the story, watching. When I
wander into by-paths it checks me. Sometimes it doesn't,
and I get into a mess. It is a faculty that is constantly
getting stronger, and, like the fond mother, I have great
hopes of it.
I've talked this thing over with other fiction writers
and I find it's a rather common experience. Several of
them told me that throughout their careers as writers they
have been conscious of this slowly developing faculty for
self-criticism while at work.
Julian Street: I don't have my readers in mind at all
until after the story is done—save that I always try to
make things clear to a vague some one to whom I am telling
my story. But in writing the story—the people in the
story—are everything. I don't think of editors, either. I
write to the severest critic I have inside me.
T. S. Stribling: A "reader" never enters my mind. I
never give a hang whether anybody reads it or not, or
what they think about it so long as I can get past the editor
and get a check. I want the check because I can't live in
idleness without it.
Booth Tarkington: I don't have readers in mind—only
myself as a reader.
W. C. Tuttle: I suppose that a writer should consider
the reader, but I have never done so; it has always been
a case of story first; feeling that, if the story is good, the
reader gets the real consideration.
Lucille Van Slyke: Your question hits upon the greatest
snag in my attempt to write. I find it bothers me excessively
to have to keep any reader in mind; it's a mental
hazard to me to think of anybody that I know personally
reading what I am writing—a perfectly childish stage
fright. (I qualify this—I dearly love writing a story for
a child.) I am scared to submit a story to an editor after
I have met him—don't mind at all having it slammed at
[pg 229]
fifty editors I have never met. Realize it's foolish and
feminine and illogical, but it's so. But I do try to visualize
a sort of composite reader when I am revising. Example—just
now I am doing a year's ghastly potboiling—a
thousand words a day six days a week for a newspaper
syndicate. Each day is a separate short story, all hinge
together—climax each sixth—larger climax each month
with a bang at the end of six months. This is the most
disagreeable writing task that I have ever tackled. It's
plain deadly. But I never sit down to it that I do not lay
aside my usual writing method. Remind myself of this:
Whoever reads what I am writing now is a person in a
hurry. I will have the attention at the most for not more
than two minutes. Scattered or tired attention. I must
literally jab. Short sentences, short paragraphs. Few
adjectives and always the same ones when I mention a
character already mentioned, so that I can save my regular
reader's time. And I must write very carefully with
extra clearness. This rubberstamping must be neatly done.
Nobody has issued such orders to me but myself and I
may be wrong, all wrong! But if I could visualize my
magazine reader or book reader as clearly, I dare say it
would be a very good thing for me as a writer. Only, I
forget the reader entirely when I'm working on the thing
that really interests me.
Atreus von Schrader: When I write I do not have my
readers in mind. But I have considered them carefully
beforehand ... also the editor to whom I hope to sell the
piece.
T. Von Ziekursch: When I write the reader is an outsider
and never has a chance. It is one of my biggest
hopes to bring some fun and joy, some touches of life,
some deeper thoughts to any who may read my stories; but
I certainly never have and probably never shall give these
possible readers a thought. I would write if I never sold
a word of it. I wanted to for years when I never had an
outside opportunity to get within gunshot of a paper and
[pg 230]
pencil; I could pour out a lot of those yearnings right
here, but what's the use? Now I am in a place where I
can write, I am fairly young and, believe me, I'm going to
it with both spurs working hard. My mind is unequivocally
centered on what I want to write. I hope to find
markets for it and readers who'll like it, but I'd write it
just the same if I didn't.
Henry Kitchell Webster: This question is answered,
better than I can answer it here, in my contribution to
The New Republic Symposium on the Novel, entitled, "A
Brace of Definitions and a Short Code."
G. A. Wells: I consider nothing but the story. It is
there to be told and I try to tell it to the best of my rather
poor ability. The reader for me does not exist. It doesn't
make any difference whether anybody reads it, other than
a continual complaint of unworthiness of my stories would
soon put me persona non grata with publishers.
William Wells: Center too much on the story. Am
breaking myself of that bad habit.
Ben Ames Williams: When I write, my mind is on the
job of writing. I never consciously consider either reader
or editor. I try to tell the story in an appealing way. But
if you ask me who I am trying to appeal to, I can't answer
you!
Honore Willsie: In writing or revising I never think of
the reader.
H. C. Witwer: In writing, I have nothing in mind but
the story. A wandering mind is fatal to good work. I
think of the readers when I see my yarn printed and—when
I get the mail.
William Almon Wolff: On the story, emphatically and
always. I take the reader into account, in revision, to this
extent: My final revision follows a reading by a friend.
I'm interested in whether he likes the story, but only
academically—I can't do anything about that. But I
want to know whether everything is clear. I will take infinite
pains in revision if a comment indicates that I
[pg 231]
haven't explained something fully; if my meaning has
eluded this reader. On that point I'm always wrong and
my reader is always right—the fact that I can explain the
confusion doesn't count. You can't follow your story, explaining
every point readers don't understand.
Edgar Young: I center on the story.
Summary
A general tabulation of the above shows that of 111
writers (110 of whom are tabulated) 51 give no thought
to readers at any time and that 5 do so for selling but not
for artistic purposes, a total of 56.
Only 14 state flatly that they bear the reader in mind
habitually during the first writing of the story; 11 do so
to some extent, 5 to less degree, 2 for clearness only, 1 for
technical material only. A total of 33.
Those who do not consider the reader when writing but
do so at other times number 22—16 when revising, 6 during
preliminary work.
Those who consider the reader at any time—during
writing, revision or preliminary work—number 55.
During the actual writing those who do not consider the
reader at all number 78 against 33 who do to at least some
degree.
During revision those who do not consider reader number
62 (56 + 6) against 49 (33 + 16) who do. Remember
that, through my error, to only approximately half the
answers was revision made a specific part of the question.
During preliminary work there were 72 (56 + 16) who
do not against 39 (33 + 16) who do. (It is reasonable to
believe that if the preliminary work had been specifically
mentioned in the question there would have been more replies
on this point and, since all those who do mention it
answer affirmatively, that a fair proportion, perhaps a
majority, of the replies would have been affirmative.)
The answers as a whole seem to leave the question
largely one of individual taste or method. A more careful
consideration, however, will discover a common underlying
[pg 232]
principle for all and, in doing so, go far toward
clarifying our concept of "technique."
Literature is an expression: of what you please, but an
expression. To "express" inevitably implies some one to
whom you express. As one answerer puts it, one must always
write to "interpret." No interpreting is done unless
it is done to some one.
To interpret or express with no thought of those to
whom you interpret or express, without knowing whether
your message reaches them or considering means of insuring
its reaching them, is a completely idiotic performance.
To say that art is self-expression answers the above by
making the artist himself the person to whom he expresses
or interprets. Such a performance, if established, seems
rather unimportant in itself. Literature, or art, however
you may define these terms, should be a thing of world importance.
The self-expression of a lone individual, reaching
no one but himself, would seem a mere ephemeral atom
by comparison. Nor is it credible that most of our writers
would continue to write if they knew no one would ever
read what they wrote.
Would any of them? Yes. And if what an artist writes
solely for self-expression, being found good in its creator's
eyes, is then passed on to others, it was none the less written
for self-expression alone. If he has written entirely uninfluenced
by the thought or expectation of popularity,
fame, money or any other consideration except the impulse
to create artistically, he has undoubtedly written with no
thought of other readers.
That is, with no conscious thought of other readers.
But the fact remains that he has expressed himself, or interpreted,
to some human understanding. By recognized
human symbols, in accordance with commonly accepted
human standards. In this case it happened that the human
understanding to which he interpreted was his own,
but that does not alter the essentials of the act. He himself
is a representative of the human race and he can not
[pg 233]
interpret or express to himself without interpreting or expressing
to their representative. He is, however little he
may think of himself as such, merely their proxy.
You will have noticed in the answers that many of those
who do not consider the reader state that they make their
own judgment the test, constitute themselves the sole
critics, develop another self to serve as critic. In other
words, this "other self" is made the judge of their success
in interpreting to human understanding by recognized
methods in accordance with commonly accepted standards.
It is the writer's very own, yet it reduces to nothing more
than his individual knowledge and application of human
understanding in general—and of general human reactions,
standards and valuations. It is altogether individual
to himself, yet, like himself, it can be composed of
nothing but the elements common to the human race in
general, however they may be transmuted by his individuality.
A proxy for the race, it is, in fact, "the reader."
However strongly individualized, it is still a representative,
a composite, a standard.
The writer divides into self and other self, into the
writer in his strictly creative capacity and the writer in
his critical capacity as adapter of his creations to the demands
of the common human standards of expression and
understanding. The two, of course, are inextricably combined
and never twice combined alike. The writer may be
conscious of their working hand in hand during creation,
or may be altogether oblivious to his critical self until the
creative outpouring is finished. But whether he be conscious
or unconscious of the fact, the two are always present.
For the creative self can create out of nothing except
human elements and his critical self is his knowledge of
human elements; the creative self can express to human
understanding only through the critical self's knowledge
of human understanding. And the methods by which the
creative self interprets and expresses those elements to
that understanding are not known to it from birth but are
[pg 234]
taught to it gradually by the critical self as the latter
absorbs them from life.
His self creates, expresses; his other self tells him how
to express, is the adapter of his creations to the demands
of the common human standards of expression and understanding—is
his guide as to technique. His technique is
his knowledge, or applied knowledge, of all that perfects
expression, and his technique is altogether in charge of
his other self, the proxy for readers in general. Technique
is wholly based on consideration of readers.
The other self, to serve as critic, guide and test, must be
master of all principles, rules, formulas and methods that
facilitate and perfect expression so far as the writer knows
them—must be master of all the technique at his command.
The other self can function without the creative self's being
aware that it is functioning, but only if technique has
been so thoroughly absorbed and assimilated that the other
self can apply it automatically, working in perfect unison
with the creative self or, if you like, having become identified
with the creative self or taught its knowledge thoroughly
to the creative self. To just the degree that his
technique is not thoroughly assimilated, to that degree will
the creative self be conscious of it—and, probably, distracted
and slowed up by it.
It is impossible that all technique should be thus thoroughly
assimilated and unconscious. A writer might as
well claim to have assimilated all human knowledge of art,
of human nature and, for that matter, of nearly everything
else. He can not be entirely unconscious of even all the
technique at his command, unless he has ceased to develop
and fallen into using only what technique has become automatic
through long usage. If he is really an artist he will
know that, no matter how great his artistry, there is always
more technique for him to learn and there will always
be in his store of technique bits newly added and not
yet unconscious.
And technique is wholly based on consideration of
[pg 235]
readers. A writer can learn from other writers, but they in
turn must, however little they may have realized the process,
have built their technique, through their "other
selves," their proxies for readers in general, from their
knowledge of readers and of how to convey their ideas to
them.
Dividing writers roughly into two classes, one class considers
the reader more than he considers his art, playing
for the reader's attention and favor directly, consciously,
baldly. Still roughly speaking, that class may attain great
popularity, but it is not likely to create literature. Its
attention is on its tools rather than on its creating.
The other class holds first to art. It insists upon making
its tools so much a part of the artist that he is not conscious
of them. It shuts its eyes to other matters, concentrates
on creating and produces most of what we call
literature.
But this latter class must, of course, have its tools. To
have them it must get them from somewhere, make them of
something. The amazing thing is that, for the most part,
it doesn't really know where it gets them, doesn't really
know from what they are made nor the fundamental principles
in accordance with which they are constructed. The
proof of this lies in the answers to this question concerning
the reader and to the questions concerning the imagination
and technique.
The genius knows, whether or not he knows that he
knows. But there are few geniuses. The average first-class
writer does not know.
It is impossible to compute the degree to which their
art suffers in consequence. It may be a great deal. It
may, in some cases, be very little, for after all, being
human beings, they must have some kind of subconscious
understanding of the general fundamental nature and purpose
of their tools. But certainly their art does suffer, in
degree varying with the individual, as a result of their
lack of definite, clear-cut, conscious understanding of both
[pg 236]
their tools and their process. For they are working blindly
to this extent. If a writer adopts a piece of another man's
technique or finds one for himself and if it proves to suit
his case, there may be no loss in that transaction itself, but
he has added nothing to his ability to select a next piece
of technique with understanding discrimination.
Whatever the degree of damage to the experienced
writer, the harm is tremendous in the case of the beginner
or comparative beginner. He looks at the work of others
and finds many tools; he turns to books, teachers and
courses for specific instructions and has tools handed to
him, generally by the clothes-basketful. Each is for a specific
purpose and neither the tools nor the purposes are
correlated in accordance with any fundamental principle.
No one can tell the specific purpose of any tool of technique
with sufficient fullness and discrimination to cover
its use in all cases, and the poor beginner is given no fundamental
understanding whereby he can make intelligent
application as the varying cases arise in his work. The
results, registered in the unceasing flow of manuscripts
across the editorial desks of magazines and book houses, are
pathetic. What would be the results in law or medicine or
teaching if they were practised without conscious and very
definite knowledge of the fundamental principles upon
which their rules are based?
The present chief obstacle to successful teaching of the
art of writing is lack of correlation of the rules of technique
to fundamental basic principles. The rules of technique
have no other purpose than to facilitate and perfect
expression. There can be no test of the success of expression
except the person to whom one expresses—the
reader. Technique will remain a rather vague and chaotic
matter, with a corresponding difficulty in learning it, until
the reader-test is applied to its rules to prove their
soundness and to refer them back to the fundamental principles
which alone can give the writer an understanding
that will enable him really to assimilate his technique and
[pg 237]
to apply and modify a rule to fit each one of the myriad
cases that will arise.
The answers to the next question and to some later questions
of the questionnaire will give further insight into the
nature and practical use of technique.
[pg 238]
QUESTION V
Have you had a classroom or correspondence
course on writing fiction? Books on
it? To what extent did this help in the
elementary stages? Beyond the elementary
stages?
Answers
Bill Adams: No course of any sort.
Samuel Hopkins Adams: No technical course of any
kind. Such books as I have looked into only served to
befog my mind.
Paul L. Anderson: No course in fiction writing; stringent
course in the handling of words, in prep. school, college
and since.
William Ashley Anderson: I have never "studied"
short story or fiction writing in any popular form.
H. C. Bailey: I know nothing of any course of instruction.
Edwin Balmer: I was in short story writing classes
both at Northwestern University and at Harvard, and I
do not think they did me any good; in fact, in neither university
was my writing approved. The teachers encouraged
models of the past; I was writing after present-day
models and therefore was criticized. It did not worry me
because I used to sell to newspapers my classroom themes,
and I thought the newspaper editors knew more about
writing than the professors.
Ralph Henry Barbour: I have had no classroom or correspondence
course in writing fiction. I was born too
early for either. I have not read—through—any books on
the subject. I am not, therefore, able to judge any of these.
I have my own ideas, though, on the subject of being
[pg 239]
taught to write fiction. Being of little value, I'll keep
them to myself.
Frederick Orin Bartlett: I never, thank God, took any
course in writing fiction. It might help some but I am
sure from my experience with college English that it would
have only made me self-conscious.
Nalbro Bartley: No. I'm very much against courses
in writing, schools for authorship, journalism, etc.,—even
if people do live them down. From what I have seen, it
produces a sort of professional-amateur and we have so
many of them just now and so few people doing the things
which would, if they were inclined that way, make them
ultimately write. I mean—you can't write unless you
know what you are writing about and technique is a thing
belonging to a desk job, something which can be acquired
after you have either vicariously or otherwise been in the
arena. Personally, I found being a cub reporter on a
paper for two years, a special writer for two years and
then—just going to it with rejection-slips as my own teacher
and life my classroom the most satisfactory route.
Konrad Bercovici: No, no, no, no.
Ferdinand Berthoud: NO! I don't think even God
himself could write a decent story from any classroom or
correspondence-school course if He hadn't the background.
I know a man who is a critic for the —— Correspondence
School, and, from what I can see of it, the sole end and
aim of his organization is to string the poor, deluded aspiring
writer along and soak him for all he is worth. He
tells me that out of over a thousand stories he went over
during last year not one was good enough to hit a magazine.
H. H. Birney, Jr.: No course of any kind in writing.
Am considering one.
Farnham Bishop: Wrote my first school "composition"
at the age of ten, my last one at eighteen, all in the
same school, under the same teachers, who encouraged creative
work, criticized sanely, and banged English grammar
[pg 240]
into me in the good old-fashioned way. Wrote for
and later edited the school paper. Also turned out a lot
of wild kid stuff in collaboration with another chap, and
illustrated by Dwight Franklin, for private circulation
only.
My pal died just as we were about to enter Harvard together.
His death, and a douse of purely negative and
rather supercilious criticism from an overworked instructor
in Freshman English took all the fun out of writing.
By the time I began to find myself at Harvard, I was in
the Law School. Failed there, swung over into the Graduate
School, took English 5 under Dean Briggs, English 2
(Shakespeare) under Professor Kittredge, and a course on
Milton under Professor Nielson—all three the livest of live
wires. Worked my way through an extra year just to take
Professor Baker's English 47—the course on playwriting.
The school and graduate school courses helped me much
more than the undergraduate work in college, mainly, I
think, because of the difference in the personality of the
teachers. I learned much more from the men—the pick
of the men—who taught me than I did from the textbooks.
Algernon Blackwood: No. I began writing at the
age of thirty-six because I could not keep it back. I preferred
an evening thus engaged to any pleasure, social,
theatre, music or anything else. After a day of hard, uncongenial
business, the imaginative release on paper was
my real recreation.
Max Bonter: I have never read any literature on fiction
writing.
Katharine Holland Brown: Some classroom work,
which was very valuable in elementary work. And, too,
the classroom insistence on system and unity and all the
virtues has always been valuable—when it has been heeded.
F. R. Buckley: I once took half a course (at the age
of eighteen)—in short story writing (at a university). I
had already written and sold several yarns. That half-course
[pg 241]
killed me dead for five years. I was self-conscious,
and instead of telling a story I was inclined to wonder
whether the climacteric was all right, or if the anti-climax
had been put out-of-doors for the night. I now avoid anybody
who wants to talk nomenclature as being much more
harmful than the devil, and inexpressibly worse company.
Prosper Buranelli: I read two books on short story
writing. Got a couple of very elementary ideas. Got practical
training writing Sunday stories under a discerning
editor. That counted. If a plumber serves an apprenticeship
to learn his trade—is a writer's craft any less exacting
in the matter of skill?
Thompson Burtis: I have never had a course on writing
fiction. I have read one book on it. All the help I
ever got from it, as far as I can remember, is to have it impressed
on my mind that a story must build up to a
climax, which I believe I knew before. I had sold stories
before I ever read the book. However, I believed it helped
me a little at the start. Beyond the elementary stages, I
can not see how it has helped me at all.
George M. A. Cain: Never took any such courses.
Never learned anything from a book on the subject. I
am strong for the idea of a correspondence school of writing,
financed by publishers, free to pupils, handled by a
man or men of real editorial experience or wide variety in
authorship, ready and willing to be brutally frank with
the hopeless, and capable of pointing out certain technical
facts to those who can submit something of promise. Such
a fact I am going to mention under XI. I do not see
how any outside help can carry beyond the most elementary
stages of actual writing for publication, unless it
might be in the "trade journal" line of market information.
Robert V. Carr: Little schooling, no course of any
kind on writing.
George L. Catton: Have had two correspondence
courses in writing fiction, but they did me little good. To
[pg 242]
tell the truth, I have never read either of them through,
and yet I have the diplomas that were given for the final
lesson answers. My own private opinion is that a man may
be taught to write, but if he hasn't a talent for "telling"
a story he might better never tackle it. Too much "rules
and you-must and you-mustn't" are plain murder to talent.
The only training a man needs is training in what he
doesn't know; all other is waste of time and sand on his
fire. The only sane course of training for a writer is to
find out first what he doesn't know and then give him
just that and not another damn thing! It's a lot harder
to forget than to learn, and the "rules" of yesteryear are
the mistakes of to-day. The world do move! Have read
several books on authorship and found that there was little
in them that I didn't already know. Sounds egotistical,
but it's a fact nevertheless. No, I can't say that courses
or books ever helped me. Corrections made on a manuscript
or two and a bit of advice slammed at me with a
curse behind it was all I needed.
Robert W. Chambers: Rot!
Roy P. Churchill: Part of a correspondence course.
A number of books. These were a great help in elementary
stages. Some help later on.
Carl Clausen: Never had any.
Courtney Ryley Cooper: I have had very little education
of any kind, except a varied experience and a lot of
adventures and a long apprenticeship on a newspaper
which prided itself on its literary excellence.
Arthur Crabb: I never had any education in fiction
writing except from literary agents and editors.
Mary Stewart Cutting: I have never had any tuition
at all on story writing.
Elmer Davis: No. Probably need it.
William Harper Dean: No courses in writing. I have
some books purchased years ago—I'll swear I never got a
thing from them. I am hopelessly confused when I try to
follow such things. Of course that's because of my own
[pg 243]
type of mind—others, I know, get a great deal from books
on technique and the like.
Harris Dickson: As a very young boy I started to
write poetry. And did you ever think how much this may
help? How it leads one to cast about for the exact word,
for a word that balances with the sentence both in thought
and rhythm? Well, it does. After that I wrote a few
rotten short stories, one of which brought me five dollars.
Then several historical novels, because I had read so much
of our southwestern colonial history until I came to know
the people. And I also knew the country. Out of this
grew several pioneering sword and cloak novels of Louisiana
and Mississippi.
My first magazine work was a special article which
dealt with my criminal experiences in the city court. Then
I began to write short stories of southern life, largely of
negro life.
Captain Dingle: Neither course nor books. Lacking
the educational furniture of a writer, it has always seemed
to me that the sort of stuff I turn out must come bluntly
from me, and that no amount of study will help, except
the study of MEN.
Louis Dodge: Alas, I have had no classroom or correspondence
aids. There's a knot to unravel. Things can
be taught, certainly; but shall we learn to do a thing as
others would do it? Did Columbus? Gallileo? Buddha?
Shakespeare? Lincoln? Marconi? I suspect rules are
like clothes: you ought to get good ones and then forget all
about them.
Phyllis Duganne: No courses or books in writing.
But I've had advice from older authors, which is immensely
valuable. If teachers of writing fiction were
authors themselves, I think they would be very helpful.
J. Allan Dunn: I have had no classroom or correspondence
course nor have I read entirely any book on
writing fiction. I have received considerable help in the
beginning from advice given by an editor. Certain of his
[pg 244]
suggestions are strong with me to-day, such as his simile
for making a true rope of the story and tucking in all the
ends.
I was greatly indebted also in the beginning to an agent
of mine—since retired—Helen Gardenhire, who taught
me to keep my characters moving when they were on the
stage, to take them off when they were not needed and
not to let my hero stray up back-stage too often. In other
words, continued and precise action.
For myself I conceive my story as a play. I try not to
destroy the illusion or halt the action, not to take my
audience round back of the scenes and never to let down
the curtain and come out in front to make talk. I don't
say I live up to this. I try to. But my first two yarns
were accepted, I am sure, with all their faults of technique
because they had been done over and over and over—because
I had no real technique those days.
It is hard to apply, to set down, this psychology of the
art of writing. Jack London used to say "you've got to
learn the tricks, old man, then it will go easily." I try
to regard a rejected story as I would any article of merchandize
refused by customers—and find out what is the
matter with it. I do not believe in correspondence schools
for writers. The greatest advance lies in keeping at it and
trying to find out what's wrong.
Walter A. Dyer: I never had any sort of instruction
in fiction writing.
Walter Prichard Eaton: No, to this.
E. O. Foster: I have had no classroom or correspondence
course in writing fiction. I have read one or two
books on it and have not found they helped me to any
great extent in short story writing.
Arthur O. Friel: Studied rhetoric, composition, etc.,
in school and college, but made no particular study of fiction
work and such. Highly important as fundamentals.
J. U. Giesy: No.
George Gilbert: Took no course.
[pg 245]
Kenneth Gilbert: I've read books on short story
writing and found that they helped somewhat in the elementary
stages, but I have yet to find one that is other
than elementary. Recently, a set of volumes was sent to me
on approval, after I had been assured that they were just
what I had been looking for. I returned them when it
dawned on me that I knew more about technique than the
man who wrote them.
Holworthy Hall: No classroom or correspondence
course. I buy every book on "fiction writing" I can find.
The majority of them are classed in my library as
"humor." That is why I buy them. In the last ten years,
only six books of this sort have emerged from that class;
generally, they are funny without being short enough.
Richard Matthews Hallet: I did not fall to writing
fiction until I had left the classroom; and I never took
a correspondence course in same. I think there is a big field
for a book on certain practical features, such as you hint
at. I have a shelf full of books on rhetoric and etymology,
but nothing on how to write fiction. After all, it's a process.
If it goes on in you at all, you can chip and file at
it; if it doesn't go on, you have to seek other trades. I'm
a border-line case.
William H. Hamby: In the beginning I took a three
months' correspondence course and had real benefit from
it.
A. Judson Hanna: No, all around.
Joseph Mills Hanson: Never have had any course on
fiction writing other than in English courses at school.
I have, however, taken magazines for writers and read
books on the subject, and do still. I believe both to have
been helpful in the early stages of writing for publication,
and that they are still helpful. It is stimulating to read of
the experience of others in one's own craft and to digest
their suggestions and the suggestions of those who endeavor
to be instructors in the art of narration, whether
or not one attempts to follow their pronouncements.
[pg 246]
E. E. Harriman: Never had a correspondence course
or classroom training in writing. Read a book and spent
two hours over one by ——. These helped me some in the
elementary stages. Got most help in plot writing or making
from a little sheet published by Willard Hawkins,
Denver, in one page written by him. He concentrated
the whole thing and made it as plain as a pikestaff. Epitomized
it.
Nevil G. Henshaw: I've never taken any kind of
course in writing, although at first I read a book or two
on the subject. They helped in telling me what not to do.
But, if I've learned anything at all, it is due almost entirely
to the criticism and counsel of kindly editors.
Joseph Hergesheimer: Nothing—none!
Robert Hichens: I spent a year in a school of journalism
in London. I haven't specially studied many books
on writing, but I have studied many of the best prose
writers.
Roy de S. Horn: I had a correspondence course in
writing, but I never finished it. I finished twenty-eight of
the forty lessons and then went at the game directly. But
I still buy and study books on it whenever I can find a
new one. And I frequently sit down and study a current
story just as I was taught to do in the old course. I believe
that both the course and the books were and are of incalculable
assistance. The great thing to the beginner of
a course is that they are short cuts. They give him other
authors' experiences and deductions in concentrated form.
They make him get a clear idea of what he is about. And
most of all they tell him what not to write, thus saving him
the trouble and delay of finding out by personal experiment.
Clyde B. Hough: I have had no course of any sort
on writing fiction. Have read a few text-books and the
greatest impression they made on me was that I must work
hard, must expect many disappointments, but that I must
never holler "'nough." They, the text-books, are agreed,
[pg 247]
and they're right, that the time to holler "'nough" is
before you start at the game.
Emerson Hough: Thank God, no, I never did.
A. S. M. Hutchinson: (First and second questions)
No.
Inez Haynes Irwin: I took writing courses in my early
twenties for two years at Radcliffe College. I think these
courses were an enormous help then, because it was so
stimulating to be writing in a group. Also it developed
my taste and strengthened my ambition. It helped me to
acquire the habit of writing. Beyond these elementary
stages, I think it was of no special assistance. And in the
case of a girl like my niece, Phyllis Duganne, it would be,
I am sure, utterly unnecessary. She grew up in a household
in which there were always three writers and, when
visitors came, sometimes six. She acquired her technique
painlessly as artists' children learn to paint. She can not
remember when she began to write and I am sure she has
no memories of difficulties in learning to write. Her first
short story was accepted when she was sixteen and her
first novel was published before she was twenty-one. No
course in writing could have helped her much.
Will Irwin: I never had any formal instruction in
story writing except the expert coaching of Gellett Burgess
in collaboration with whom I wrote my first two books
of fiction, and later the criticisms of my wife who is a better
technician than I.
Charles Tenney Jackson: As to "classroom, correspondence,
text-books on writing," I am innocent of all of
'em. Never had any, read any.
Frederick J. Jackson: No classroom course on writing
fiction. No books. Correspondence course, yes. In
1913 a complete course from an editor. I sent him thirty
or forty stories. He returned them all and had so little
to do in those days that he sent a letter criticizing or commenting
upon each story. He made a bull's eye with each
shot of criticism. I made a hell of a lot of mistakes, but
[pg 248]
never made the same one twice. The letters of this bird
kept me interested in writing, made me keep on, thereby
ruining the makings of a live-wire press agent or advertising
man. I sold a lot of the stories he returned, mostly
due to the hints he dropped.
Did this help beyond the elementary stages? It did. It
made me determine to learn the writing game so that some
day I could make the above-mentioned editor apologize
when returning a story. Something over one hundred and
sixty magazine and picture stories sold is his pupil's record
so far. The said pupil considers that he is still serving an
apprenticeship in the writing game. If he works hard
enough he may be able to graduate by the time he's thirty-five.
Mary Johnston: No.
John Joseph: Have had no "classroom" or other instruction,
except such as I have received from kindly disposed
editors. And these little notes are highly prized,
believe me.
Lloyd Kohler: About four or five years ago I subscribed
to the —— course of the —— Correspondence
School. However, I don't believe that I sent in over two
or three of the lessons. I was in the Navy at the time, and
whoever has been in the "outfit" knows that the average
sailorman is lucky if he can write a letter home occasionally.
However, I think that I digested pretty thoroughly
——'s book on the short story. Since that time I have read
a great number of books on fiction writing. There is no
doubt but what they serve a very great purpose, but there
must be a natural talent for the work first—of that I am
satisfied.
A word as to genius and talent. One chap has said that
genius is hard work, or words to that effect. I don't
agree. For instance: I might study music for fifty years
and at the end of that period I'm well satisfied that I
wouldn't even be able to extract a harmonious note from
a jew's-harp. On the other hand, I believe that if there is
[pg 249]
such a thing as genius, it is merely a combination, or the
result of a combination, of talent (every-day natural
talent) and a capacity for hard work. If a fellow has a
natural talent, plus a capacity for darned hard work, he's
got the "makin's" for genius.
Harold Lamb: One classroom course in short story-writing,
after I had had a good deal published—and filled
space for the newspapers, bless 'em, and been part editor
of a trade journal. I could not hear anything the professor
said, but at the time his book was good reading.
Beyond the elementary stages it helped a good deal. In
clearing up ideas before beginning work, and following the
thread when a story was begun. (I think I missed a lot
by not studying it more closely, being certain at the time
that I knew more than editors or professors.)
Sinclair Lewis: Yes, classroom in Yale—that only (no
books, etc.). Classroom of NO value at all.
Hapsburg Liebe: I dickered a little (dabbled, rather)
with some so-called story doctors along at the beginning.
I don't believe it helped much. I've always had to do
things my own way (very likely it's usually the wrong
way).
Romaine H. Lowdermilk: I don't know whether to be
sorry or glad to admit I have had no special training. I
suppose I am still in the elementary stage to a certain extent.
I have purchased some books on story writing and
the like and have long taken the —— [magazine] but can
sum the results as more inspirational than anything else.
I have learned more about the actual wants of editors
from chance notes they have sent with rejected or semi-accepted
manuscripts. The actual building of the story
is more common sense than anything else and I have done
what I have done by plain "bare-handed writing." Still,
there is something wrong with this system, I know, for
my best stories—those that appeal most to me and the ones
I put the most into—have been rejected everywhere. Why
is that? To me they are far better than many I have sold,
[pg 250]
still they don't suit any editor. The story is surely there
and possibly if the editors knew how I love to revise they
would mention what seemed the matter. Still, they
haven't the time and don't care that much, I suppose.
Possibly a professional critic could spot the trouble, but I
doubt it. I haven't tried it. But I suppose each writer
has the same trouble.
Eugene P. Lyle, Jr.: Outside of college rhetoric, I've
had no instruction in fiction writing beyond the helpful
letters of editors. Nor books, until after I had been writing
for years. I can see that the books would have been
a great help, possibly, had I had them in the elementary
stages. But I was abroad and didn't happen to know about
them.
Rose Macaulay: Never had them.
Crittenden Marriott: No to everything. Twelve
years' newspaper work all over the world before I tried
fiction.
Homer I. McEldowney: I have had a couple of courses
in the short story, under a mighty fine scout—Doc
Weirick, one of the best in the English department here
at Illinois—a good-natured, long suffering, able critic,
and a fertile source of interesting information. I've got a
lot out of the past year of hobnobbing with him. The
course helped considerably, first, because it made us get
down with nose to the key-board and knock out words,
great stacks of them; and second, because there was a good
man in charge, with ready and worth-while criticism of
yarns submitted, and a real knowledge of what to read in
the course. We "learned the way to promotion and pay,"
as Kipling has it, not fundamentally from the pages of a
book, but from writing.
Ray McGillivray: I took aboard huge hunks of literary
fodder in college, going the pace that killed—originality—through
every course, from Old English to a postgrad
with Barrett Wendell. Then, after applying this
undigested knowledge to such pursuits as manual labor at
[pg 251]
Sears, Roebuck's, mixing ruby champagne cocktails at
Mouquin's, and cutting up a cadaver at Medical School
(ugh!), I reached, by devious byways of labor and loafing,
a post as sub-sub-editor on one of the most unconventional
national-circulation magazines in the world. I
had contributed a few personal narrative articles, and
needed a job.... The editor, a spunky Irishman (gosh,
come to think of it, I believe he claimed to be English!)
jumped all over my "lit'ry allusions." He appeared abruptly
before me one day, thrust two photos under my
nose, and bade me assimilate an eyeful. I obeyed. One
picture showed a Japanese trench outside Port Arthur.
Headless bodies, detached limbs and blobs of entrails were
festooned about the broken entanglements. It was brutal,
terrible, but it depicted war and death. The second photo
also dealt with death, but differently. Six men were carrying
a draped coffin, in which rested a man who in his
lifetime had won a way into the heart of a nation. There
was nothing in the picture save the varied expressions of
restrained, sincere sorrow on the faces of the dead man's
six friends.
"This trench picture," quoth my boss, "is Journalism.
This other is Art. Now, to hell with Art!" By that he
meant that henceforth I was to tie a jingling can to my
Aristophanes, my Tacitus—yea, even my Bullfinch and
my finchless Bull. And I did. You never would have
suspected how many miles of galley-proof a Socrates-Six
could cover with five cylinders stripped out of the chassis!
Helen Topping Miller: I had been selling short stories
for about twelve years before I read any books on the subject.
I have never found a book from which I felt that I
received any material benefit. Many books have inspired
me—but none of them ever helped me in the actual work
of writing.
Thomas Samson Miller: Never had a lesson of any
kind from any one in story writing. Don't believe in
them. One's got to learn how to write by writing; to learn
[pg 252]
what not to do and what to do by experience. My only
study was to take a short story that appealed to me in a
magazine and live with it; cut out all other reading. Analyzed
its plot, its characterization. Wrote out every word
written in it about a certain character to see just how the
author got the character across. Wrote the story from
memory. Read it so far, put it down, then tried to write
the rest out of my head.
Anne Shannon Monroe: I have had neither classroom
nor correspondence work in writing fiction. Have read
no books on the subject that I can remember, save a few
stray passages from Flaubert—seems to me he knew how.
L. M. Montgomery: I never took any kind of a course
in writing fiction. Such things may be helpful if the real
root of the matter is in you, but I had to get along without
them. I was born and brought up in a remote country
settlement, twenty-four miles from a town and ten from a
railway. There I wrote my first stories and my first four
books. So no beginner need feel discouraged because of
remote location or lack of literary "atmosphere."
Frederick Moore: No. There may be people who can
teach story writing—that is, stimulate to endeavor. The
old hand can give tips to the beginner that keep him from
getting off the track, but the writer must actually do his
own creating. The creative impulse must exist to create,
though technique is another thing. I believe everybody
has the creative impulse in some degree. If it is weak,
technique will avail nothing. The experts on technique are
generally deficient in creative ability. If they had both,
their expertness in technique would be smothered—that
is, not apparent—while their creative ability would make
them rich and famous. To put it another way, the mass of
readers are not conscious of technique and simply say,
"That writer writes fine stories." But the expert, or the
novelist, says: "He is a wizard at creation, and good at
technique." Of course, technique may come as naturally
to a writer as his creative ability—he or she may know how
[pg 253]
to handle the story so as to get the strongest effect, and
we get, say, another Robinson Crusoe. But it is very
apparent, in reading the complete story by DeFoe that he
did not know where he was going when he set out. He
flopped all over the shop until he got to his island, and I
am convinced that at that point he struck his gait and
knew what he was about. Every story presents its own
problem in technique—that is, merely the best way to tell
that kind of a story. And there is a best way for every
story—a way that fits the environment, the characters,
and the happenings in that particular combination. Once
in a dog's age it is done, like Ethan Frome, or The Red
Badge of Courage, or The Call of the Wild. I regard
every story as an experiment in chemistry. It is possible
to blow yourself up, so to speak, or discover an elixir of
life. Most writers are known for one piece of work, though
they have done many others. DeFoe wrote volumes and
is known for Robinson Crusoe, while Lorna Doone was the
work of a novelist who wrote other volumes; also, consider
Uncle Tom's Cabin. And I believe that each of these
three books was written at just the right moment to insure
success: Crusoe, when the English were fired with foreign
exploration, Lorna Doone when a peaceful life in the English
countryside had become the ideal, and Uncle Tom
when the nation needed its arguments on slavery focussed
into a tract which could be handed out with a kind of
"Here! Read this, and see what you think of slavery
then!" Also, Empey's Over the Top came when the men
getting ready for war needed something in the way of a
text-book on war—"This is the sort of thing we can expect
to get into."
To me, one of the most discouraging things (but not
personally) is that the higher the art in fiction, the less
the number of appreciative readers. Of course, I mean by
that the kind of novels in which little actually happens
outside the minds of the characters. I do not say such
novels are best, but most critics do. And why do critics
[pg 254]
always criticize from a "trade standpoint," that is, as if
novels were written for other novelists? The story that is
most violently attacked by critics generally sells best. I
am not saying that stories are written to sell, but that
they are written to entertain, to arouse emotions, to give
an experience in life that is likely to be missing in the life
of the reader. The reader likes to see himself in the condition
described and to wonder how he would react. And
most great books have had difficulty in reaching print.
So many editors are shouting for original stories, but they
are actually afraid of stories that are too original—until
that type of story has proved successful. Then they all
want something like it, and we develop another "school of
fiction." But don't blame the editor for that—the public
must be trained to that type, and an editor has to be a
practical man if he wants to continue to edit. Merely because
a story is bizarre does not make it necessarily original,
and if original, not necessarily desirable. What editors
mean when they say "originality" is a new angle on
an old idea or an old plot—but the age not apparent.
I believe that the best fiction written in this country today
is being published in the so-called "cheap magazines."
That is, magazines devoted to fiction alone. They actually
cost more than many of the "better magazines," and they
are free of "jazz," degeneracy and sex. Coated paper and
good illustrations do not give quality to fiction. The
Bible printed on news stock would still be the Bible, and
the same is true of all other fiction, from Shakespeare to
date. There can be just as much art used in telling an
adventure story as in any other kind—and as a matter of
fact, more is needed in that kind of story than in the story
which depends on sex for its interest. The fiction magazines
have to deliver the goods, and many of them have a
higher manuscript-account for their material than the
fancier looking products. The so-called "cheap fiction"
magazines have really developed our best American writers,
generally speaking. These magazines have provided
[pg 255]
a market for the beginners and have encouraged them during
their apprenticeship. If the same writers had to wait
until they were able to sell to the "highbrows," many
writers famous to-day would never have struggled on.
Many a person who has paid two dollars for a book held
up as a fine piece of work is unaware that the chauffeur
read the same story as a serial in a "cheap magazine."
And Treasure Island was sold as a serial to a "boy's
shocker" and published under the name of Captain John
North. Most people know Robinson Crusoe as a classic, in
spite of the fact that it has shipwreck, cannibalism, and
killings galore. So "blood and thunder" comes nearer to
representing life than many a devious study of some
maniac's brain written in Russia, for all the loud cries of
the critics and others. For several years past the world
has been all "blood and thunder" and many woke up to
the fact that the human animal is given to violence and
murder. This must all be considered by the person who
sets out to write—and that person must remember that art
is not always done with deliberation. Sometimes it just
happens.
Talbot Mundy: No.
Kathleen Norris: I had some college work in "daily
themes," a sort of primary fiction work, for some six
months, and I think it did me incalculable good. (This was
before I ever wrote a line.)
Anne O'Hagan: No.
Grant Overton: I have never had any training in
writing except what I have learned or sensed myself. I
have read books about it but none of them amounts to a
great deal.
Sir Gilbert Parker: Never. Fiction can't be taught!
Hugh Pendexter: No.
Clay Perry: At the age of fifteen years I subscribed
to a combination course in journalism and short-story
writing. It was absurd. In college I took a course in "The
Study of the Novel" which helped steer my course toward
[pg 256]
a liking for good fiction ... perhaps. I have never read
anything on fiction writing which helped me, that I know
of, either in the elementary stages or beyond them. One
friend who writes helped me more by a few suggestions
and criticisms than anything I have ever read on the subject
of writing.
Michael J. Phillips: No.
Walter B. Pitkin: I never studied writing under any
teacher. I dodged all writing courses in college because
they bored me to death and seemed to be engaged in unutterable
piffle. I never read any text-books on rhetoric
or style or story writing until I had been a professional
journalist and writer for nearly ten years!
E. S. Pladwell: I have never studied anything in
books or classrooms about fiction. I have glanced over one
or two books on writing, but have not found them simplified
enough. They start off with their arguments and
then ramble away into the realms of theories, technique
and other things which tend to becloud the mind away
from the few broad general rules.
Lucia Mead Priest: I have had a not very thorough
classroom training, with whatever books were prescribed—Hill,
Wendell, etc., etc.
I found them necessary, mildly stimulating. They
brought me to the realization that literature was work of
a profound character.
Everything has helped. I have not gone beyond the elementary
stage. It is a big, big craft, a long, long trail.
Eugene Manlove Rhodes: None.
Frank C. Robertson: I have had no classroom nor
correspondence course and have read not to exceed a half
dozen text-books on the subject, though I have long been a
subscriber to the Editor magazine and more recently to the
Writer's Monthly. Such reading as I have done has
helped, yet I am rather glad that I did not read enough at
the start to become rule-bound. Now I think I have literary
poise enough that I can discard what is inapplicable
[pg 257]
to my own needs, and so I am constantly adding to my collection
of books on the art of writing. Also, within the
last two months, I have formed the habit of sending my
stories to a capable critic before offering them to magazines.
I wish now that I had adopted this method long
ago. The resulting self-analysis of my own work has been
of more value to me than any other one factor.
Ruth Sawyer: Neither.
Chester L. Saxby: I have read books on writing, but
I found all of them vague and general or else too elementary.
I have had a fair education in English, and I have
the rudiments of an imagination for the English to work
upon. The link between is for the most part a judgment
of values (such as it is) gleaned in the college of hard
knocks and nine danged slaving years of schooling in that
institution, slaving and heart-rupture. But in beginning,
books on writing and even courses certainly have their
value. I've had the correspondence drill—with editors
who've stood me up and knocked me down. But that's
rough on the editors, if everybody does it.
Barry Scobee: Before I was twenty, or about that
time, I took a course in short-story writing and newspaper
also. Don't remember what school of correspondence. I
may have acquired a few basic principles; it probably did
me some good. I never had classroom instruction in writing.
I have studied a dozen books on the subject of fiction
writing. At first, for a year or two, I struggled along
without even knowing there was such a thing as books on
the subject, or without ever talking to a single person in
the world who knew the first thing about writing. Then
The Editor began to help me, and various books, especially
on plot and, I think, Price on the Drama. These were a
tremendous help to me in the preliminary stages. A fuller
answer will be found under VII.
R. T. M. Scott: I have never taken a course of any
kind in fiction writing. I have breezed through a few
books on short stories but I have never studied them. Most
[pg 258]
of the stories which I have sold have violated the rules
laid down in these books. I am still in the elementary
stage, however, and perhaps, some day, I shall be able to
stick to the rules and still sell the stories.
Robert Simpson: I have had no classroom or correspondence
course. Neither, as it happens, have I ever read
any books on writing fiction. This was more a matter of
chance than anything else. I've learned most of what I
know of the technique of story writing from writing "bad
ones" and finding out why they were bad; from the good
advice of an editor or two, and from simple, cold-blooded
analysis of my own and other men's work. This is a long
and tedious process, but it has the advantage of being thorough
if one is built for it. If I may say so, the method of
study is largely up to the make-up of the individual, but,
in agreement with a certain advertisement, "there are no
short-cuts to quality."
Arthur D. Howden Smith: No.
Theodore Seixas Solomons: I never had a course. I
have studied, or rather carefully read, one or two books
on writing, and numerous articles. I think that the idea
of unity has been the main derivative to me. The rest I
usually saw to be true enough, almost axiomatically, from
general considerations of art, but I do not think they
helped—probably more because I did not actually study
such writings than because they are incapable of lending
real help. I do not see how a proper study of them in
connection with exercise in writing can fail to be beneficial.
Yet such works, for the most part, are analyses of
the reasons for things which must be understood instinctively
and by experience, and then acquired, before the
reasons make such appeal.
Raymond S. Spears: No literary course except reading,
deliberately undertaken for certain purpose, as reading
Ruskin to learn how to describe.
I've read and tried to profit by practical books, handbooks,
books on authorship, writers' biographies, etc. But
[pg 259]
I find my own view-point and methods are nowhere described
or much helped by experience of others.
Norman Springer: No. I once tried a university extension
course in play writing. It was silly. Of course,
I read all the books I could find on the subject of story
writing. They didn't help much. They told me something
about the mechanics of a story (though even this
information was usually buried beneath mountains of pompous
academic phraseology), but they never gave me a
clue to the solution of the more important question that
worries the beginner—"How can I infuse spirit into the
story; how can I make it live?" This questionnaire is
really the first attempt I have encountered to get behind
the mechanics.
Being of the "self-raised" variety of writer, I've had
some experience with the "How To Write a Story" books,
and I confess they harmed rather than helped me. All
those I opened merely told me in technical, often almost
unintelligible language just what my story sense was telling
me in simple language. I didn't find a single book
that took me behind the mechanics of the story.
That is where the beginner is always trying to get to.
About the hardest thing he has to learn is how to weigh,
select and subdue thoughts. Memorizing all the rules and
learning all of O. Henry's tricks by heart won't help him.
But access to information such as your third query will
bring out will help him. So will the news that he must
discipline his imagination and make it obedient. Think
how we run wild and waste ourselves in the beginning.
Julian Street: No courses. I've read, written and in
my early stages been criticized by abler men—men like
Tarkington and Harry Leon Wilson. I think it well for
the absolute greenhorn to read and learn everything he
can about the art, but he must have the power to discriminate
between good and bad advice; and he must know
whether he himself wishes to aim high or aim low—whether
he wishes to run the risk of trying to produce
[pg 260]
something that may possibly live, always facing the great
danger of failing in that aim, or whether he wishes to
write popular truck. That will be determined ultimately,
I think, by the character and tastes of the aspirant, but the
sooner he acquires a definite aim, the better for him.
T. S. Stribling: Have never had classroom or correspondence
course in fiction. I did pay a dollar once
to have a story criticized. Afterward I wrote to the man
and offered him his criticism back if he would return my
dollar, but he wouldn't do it.
Booth Tarkington: No course or books on writing
fiction, ever.
W. C. Tuttle: I have never had any instructions on
story writing, beyond the kindly help of a certain editor.
Once upon a time I bought some books on short-story writing.
After reading them I ached from the reaction. I
understood that I was all wrong. But there seemed to be
no help for it; so I hid the books and went back to work.
Lucille Van Slyke: Very superficial daily theme
course in college my freshman year. Very bad for me, I
think, because I did it easily, got good marks and took no
pains whatever. Took me years to live that down! I have
read and continue to read every book on fiction writing
that I can find. In the elementary stages they helped a
very little—oh, very little. Not their fault, but mine, because
I did not see how to apply them to my case. Beyond
the elementary stage I found that Polti's Thirty Six Dramatic
Situations helped me to straighten out the plot difficulty
I already mentioned. ——'s Short Story Writing
did me good this way—I disagreed with it so violently that
it cleared my ideas on many points—but I found myself
singing, "Now mother has a sausage machine and to-day
she said to me, Tom, Tom, hurry back home, there'll be
sausages for your tea—"
Atreus von Schrader: I put in the winter of 1913
working with Walter B. Pitkin at Columbia; I had written,
without success, for some time. His genius, for that
[pg 261]
is what it amounts to, gave me a foundation and understanding
that have been invaluable. General formulas
and methods can be used to great advantage; to the greatest
advantage when practise has made their use instinctive.
T. Von Ziekursch: Never had anything in that line.
Was introduced to a teacher of how to write fiction once
and he bored me.
Henry Kitchell Webster: I've never had a classroom
course or a correspondence course on writing fiction. I
have read books on it, some of which interested me because
I agreed with the writers and some of which interested me
because I disagreed with them altogether. I am not conscious
that the first sort ever caused me to cry out,
"Eureka!" though I may have decided, over an item in
the second, "This is what I never do."
G. A. Wells: I have had no classroom course in story
writing and deplore that fact a great deal. Correspondence
courses are valuable to this extent—they urge one
to work and study by the reflection that he will have
thrown away his money if he doesn't. The same results
may be obtained by investing in a few good books on the
subject of writing. I would strongly advise the beginner
to let the correspondence schools alone. I have had much
experience with them. None of them can possibly do what
they so boldly assert in their literature. Not so long ago I
paid ninety dollars cash for a course in picture play writing.
For that sum I received two thin books of instruction,
three detailed synopses of plays produced (all of
them rotten!) and twelve pamphlets of lectures. I learned
nothing that I had not previously learned from text-books
got from the public library. Never again: (Right hand
up and left on heart.)
It is of interest that most of these correspondence schools
can't cite students who have been successful. One school
cited me —— ——. Her stories appear in the —— but nowhere
else that I have ever noticed. I do not call that success.
That is the only school of correspondence of about a
[pg 262]
dozen I have investigated that can cite a student who has
had anything published in a reliable magazine, and I think
that unless such a school can show such graduates it is
scarcely worth bothering about.
I attach great importance to books on the art of fiction
writing. They have been of great value to me. The chief
fault I find with these books is that they refer the student
for examples to stories that are not easily available to a
great many people. Too, they incline too much toward
citation of the classics, such as Poe, Dickens, Thackeray
and others. The student should have for his examples
Kipling, O. Henry, London, Melville Post and the modern
writers. Current magazine fiction is as a rule out of the
question.
But after all the only way to learn to write fiction is to
write fiction. I am of that number who contend that fiction
writing can't be taught. It must be learned. But
first of all one must have talent for it. That talent can't
be acquired, though, given that, it can be cultivated. If
one hasn't a talent for writing fiction all the teaching of
all the teachers won't make one a writer of fiction. Education
alone will not suffice, though I have had people say
to me, "He should be able to write stories, he is so highly
educated." It is to laugh. I say that the man with the
gift or knack for writing fiction will turn out a writer in
the end if he applies himself, regardless of schools and
books teaching the method and art.
In this town is a woman, very highly educated, who
studied two years in the classes of Dr. —— at Columbia.
She has tried time and again to sell stories she has written,
but up to date without success. From time to time I have
had people come to me for information on the business of
writing. The first thing I ask for is some of their stuff.
Not an editor in the country would print such truck. This
is rather unseemly in one who himself turns out a great
deal of worthless truck, but I can see the faults of others
better than my own. I can't see my own at all.
[pg 263]
The best text books on the subject are to be found on
the news-stands—Adventure, American, Saturday Evening
Post, Harper's, etc. These should come first because
they show the finished product of people who are actually
succeeding at what the student aspires to do. It is the
whole machine that can be taken down to learn how it was
assembled in the first place.
Text-books, I think, are valuable to the student in proportion
to their relationship to him. Are they really prepared
for the student, or written because the author had
certain views he wished to publish about a certain subject?
I think they should suggest rather than dictate. The
author should say, "Let's try this and see what happens,"
and not "Do this or you are damned." In short, I have
found most text-books far too dictatorial.
Detailed laws and rules should be avoided. The student
should get the general impression, but be left free to modify
his performances to suit existing needs or to satisfy
his individual point of view. Of course there are certain
laws of story writing that preclude dispute by their very
obviousness. I don't pay any more attention to the rules
of story writing than I do to a fly on a Chinaman's nose
in Canton.
It therefore galls me to have a text-book author tell me
that I must do thus and so. All I want him to do is to
give me the platform to stand on. I'll make and speak my
own piece in my own way. If he is going to write and
make my speech I'll step down.
William Wells: No.
Ben Ames Williams: I've never taken any "course"
in story writing. I once read a book on it. It helped me
not at all. The books that have helped me most in the
technical work of writing are books of criticism. Any of
the standard works.
Honore Willsie: Neither.
H. C. Witwer: I have never had any course of any
kind in short story writing, or, I should say, in writing.
[pg 264]
Nor have I read or studied books on the art, gift, trade,
profession, crime, or whatever it may be. I have about me
at all times as working tools, a dictionary, Roget's Thesaurus,
Shakespeare, Encylopedia Brittanica, Bartlett's
Familiar Quotations. Find all invaluable.
William Almon Wolff: No courses at all. The best
book I know is not about narrative fiction at all—it's
William Archer's Play Making. That has been and remains,
invaluable to me. I think, incidentally, that it's
helpful to think of a story in "scenes."
Edgar Young: No classroom course. Wrote several
stories before I ever knew there was such a thing as a book
on the subject. Must have learned something by reading
current magazines but was where I couldn't get them for
years when in South America. Since being here in New
York have read many of the books concerning writing.
Summary
Of 113 answering, 55 have used neither class, course or
book, 56 have tried one or more of these, and 2, saying only
that they took no course, are probably to be included with
those having tried none of the three.
Of the 56 who have tried one or more of the three, 40
give definite reply as to whether, in the elementary stages,
they derived benefit, as follows: much benefit, 6; benefit,
4; some benefit, 5; total 15. No benefit, 11; some harm,
1; harm, 2; much harm, 1; total, 15. There are 10 who
state they derived "little benefit" and this presumably is
to be taken as a negative answer. In any case, out of 40
there are 25 who derived little or no benefit in the elementary
stages of learning their art, and 4 of the 25 state that
they derived actual harm instead of benefit.
Add the fact that if the remaining 16 of the 56 who
have used one or more of the three derived any benefit
they did not take the trouble to say so, which would indicate
that, if there were any benefit at all, it was not a considerable
one. Add the additional damning fact that of
the 113 answering the general question 55 (probably 57)
[pg 265]
have not found it necessary to success to use any of the
three. Out of 113 writers only 15 claim any benefit, in
even the elementary stages, from classes, courses or books
purporting to teach the writing of fiction! Ninety-eight
against fifteen!
That testimony fills me with joy. Yes, I've written a
book myself on fiction writing, but it had not been published
when this questionnaire was answered, it was written
largely as an earnest protest against present methods
of teaching fiction and a chief purpose of this questionnaire
and of this present book giving its results was to get
proof in facts from a final source that present teaching
methods, as practised in all but a tiny handful of cases, are
badly in need of revolutionary revision.
My feeling in the matter was not due to theorizing. For
twenty years my life-business has been the handling of the
results of those methods as they pour in in the form of submitted
manuscripts across the editorial desk. For twenty
years it has been my business to deal with the authors
and would-be authors who write those manuscripts, to try
to find their strong points and their weak points and to
ferret out the causes and the remedies. They have worked
with me to this end and have talked frankly. Even if
there had been only the manuscripts themselves to look at,
it would have been evident enough that there was some
general cause, other than the writers' inabilities, for the
wide-spread and persistent weaknesses that were making
most of those manuscripts unavailable or at least far below
the standards possible to their authors.
If only half of our 113 successful writers have been
touched by these methods, remember that the successful
writers are only some ten per cent. of those who write and
that the remaining ninety per cent. are more prone to turn
to formal books and teaching. The man or woman with
pronounced native ability is more likely to hew his own
way or go to first courses, particularly after examining
the outside helps available. Do not forget, too, that these
[pg 266]
prevalent weaknesses in manuscripts are due not only to
positive faults in teaching methods, but to the lack of
really helpful, constructive advice and guiding.
A chief bad result of these teaching methods will be
taken up in our consideration of the question on the value
of technique. To take up all the bad results in detail would
fill more space than the nature of this volume warrants
its devoting to the subject.
While only 15 derived benefit from these methods in
the elementary stages, still fewer—10—found benefit in
the more advanced stages. One might expect the falling
off to be still more pronounced until one remembers that
these books and courses, whatever their general faults, do
cover a vast number of specific points and that in the discussion
of these points a writer who has already built his
own foundations can often find suggestion and information
of decided value to him without suffering from the
general faults. None of our answerers reports harm, in
advanced stages, from these methods and none reports
failure to get benefit in the advanced stages specifically,
though many simply give a "no" to the general question
of benefit.
Considering class, course and book separately, of 13 reporting
definitely on class experience 7 state benefit of
varying degree in elementary stages, though one of these
expresses doubt; 1, "little"; 4, none, 1 of these reporting
harm. Only one reports on advanced stages—no benefit.
On correspondence courses, 8 state experience; 3, benefit;
1, probably some; 1, "little"; 3, none. This as to elementary
stages. On advanced stages only 1 reports—some
benefit.
On books 40 report. On elementary stages, 35; benefit,
14; possibly, 1; little, 10; no benefit, 7; harm, 3. On advanced
stages, 10, including some of the 35 reporting also
on elementary stages; benefit, 3; little, 3; no benefit, 4.
Tabulating negatively, 78 of the 113 specifically report
no class experience; 73 no correspondence course; 47 no
[pg 267]
book. As already stated, 55—or 57—make a blanket report
of using none of the three.
Unfortunately the questionnaire did not include a specific
question on benefit derived from magazines devoted
to writers and their art. In spite of this omission three or
four voluntarily reported benefit therefrom in elementary
stages and no one volunteered to report harm or lack of
benefit. If reports had been asked for on these magazines,
I believe it would have been far more favorable than on
books, classes or courses.
These magazines use many articles by writers telling
their own experiences, difficulties, solutions. The people
best equipped to teach others are those who have themselves
learned how—who have accomplished, not merely
theorized. Each is handicapped as a teacher by the facts
that his methods and principles are naturally those he has
found best adapted to his own individual case, that the
needs of no two individuals are exactly alike and that his
methods may be for some others altogether useless or even
harmful. But in these magazines where many writers are
heard from these very differences appear and the intelligent
reader can pick and choose with profit. Most of all,
he learns that no one rule applies to all writers alike.
[pg 268]
QUESTION VI
How much of your craft have you learned
from reading current authors? The
classics?
Answers
Bill Adams: I have to admit that I know no current
authors—I never read a magazine story, and exceedingly
seldom a book. Used to read a great deal twenty to
twenty-five years ago.
Samuel Hopkins Adams: How can one tell? I might
guess at half and half.
Paul L. Anderson: Mostly the classics: that's one
reason I haven't sold more stuff—too old-fashioned.
William Ashley Anderson: Not much—if any—from
current writers, with a few isolated examples—except for
those who have already become standard: Kipling, and
authors of similar standing in various countries. I believe
strongly in the classics and regret very much that they
were not very deeply ingrained in me when I was at school,
as they were fundamental in literature. I believe just as
strongly in the standard works of literature. But I believe
a professional author wastes time reading current authors,
unless the work has distinct and special merit and is
brought to his attention.
H. C. Bailey: I should put the classics (using the
word in the widest sense, say from Homer and the Bible to
Maupassant and Mark Twain) first. Good models are of
any time and all time. From good models living and dead
and what I know of their methods I learned any craftsmanship
I have.
Edwin Balmer: When I began writing I considered
Kipling and Richard Harding Davis and Sophocles about
[pg 269]
the best writers in the world. I had taken a great deal of
Greek in college and took an M. A. at Harvard in Greek
and when I finished I could read classical Greek almost
as readily as English. I remember consciously admiring
and trying to put into my writing some of the sense of
quantity which the Greeks used. The first story I ever
sold to a magazine was certainly strongly influenced in its
wording by Greek models. I still think Greek literature
second to none.
Ralph Henry Barbour: Who knows the answer to
this question? Not I!
Frederick Orin Bartlett: I have absorbed, rather than
learned, a great deal from current authors—especially
English authors. The classics I feel to be an invaluable
background—a background that too many American
authors lack.
Nalbro Bartley: From the classics, I think I have
learned much—also from the daily newspapers but not
from current authors.
Konrad Bercovici: Reading current authors I have
learned what not to do. I have only learned something
about writing from the Bible, a little more from Balzac,
and if writing were a trade and I were a young man, I
should apprentice myself now to Anatole France.
Ferdinand Berthoud: None. Don't read current
authors. Have never read the classics. I wrote my first
story for my own amusement and without knowing that it
was a story, and without any single thought of how other
people wrote.
H. H. Birney, Jr.: Can't honestly say I've gained a
great deal from either. Try to read current authors to
learn, if possible, the secret of just how they "put it over."
Have read most of the "classics" and have doubtless,
though unconsciously, benefitted from them.
Farnham Bishop: I've read everything from Diamond
Dick to Marcus Aurelius, beginning early and sitting
up late, mixing my reading till now it is utterly hopeless
[pg 270]
for me to disentangle the results and reactions. There
are huge gaps in it, and some rather odd specializations.
How much have I learned from Homer and Vergil, and
how much from Kipling and Conan Doyle? Blessed if I
know the exact proportions! But I think that varying
your reading is a safeguard against writing pseudo-Kiplingese
and diluted O. Henry.
Algernon Blackwood: None. I read little fiction.
As a boy I missed the classics, and have only made up a
little of this leeway since. I never read a story without
feeling how completely otherwise my own treatment of his
idea would have been—probably, that is, how much better
his treatment is than mine.
Max Bonter: Whatever I may have learned from contemporaries
has been acquired unconsciously and without
design.
I studied Milton intensively with the idea of letting some
of his wonderful construction sink into me—particularly
the first two books of Paradise Lost. Have never regretted
the time so spent.
Katharine Holland Brown: Hard to answer. Reared
on the classics,—by the simple device of keeping them on
the top shelves, with the grave command, "Not to be read
till you grow up." Will admit to an extreme preference
for the most recent of the current fiction.
F. R. Buckley: Hard to say how much I got from
classics and so on. A great deal. Rough guess—should
say Rudyard Kipling and an English author named Neil
Lyons were my best teachers.
Prosper Buranelli: Reading current literature does
nothing but harm. Read Sophocles.
Thompson Burtis: I should say that all the superficialities
of the craft I have learned from current authors.
Fundamentals, such as vocabulary and characterization, I
believe I learned from the classics. As a young and green
writer, I believe I am picking up tricks of the trade constantly
from my contemporaries.
[pg 271]
George M. A. Cain: How much I owe to reading current
or classic authors I have not the slightest idea. I have
not consciously studied the work in half a dozen stories.
And I have not, within my memory, read a story without
a certain critical attitude which unconsciously noted its
structural features. For all the readiness with which my
mind conjures settings for what I read, I don't think I
have ever read anything without constant consciousness
of the man who wrote it, or ever forgotten to watch the
writing. Though I was late in putting my efforts to actual
use, my desire to write fiction goes back of my memory.
At twelve years of age I was habitually putting into words
every emotion and situation and scene I saw, experienced
or felt. I shall never know in this world to what degree
that has reacted upon me to make me everlastingly the
actor of what I imagined I should be rather than the
natural doer of what I was. Perhaps I should put it that
the expression of things has always assumed entirely undue
importance. In that attitude, I have unconsciously
studied everything I have read. And here I might mention
that, for me, the greatest difficulty of the relation
between reading and writing is the avoidance of unconscious
imitation. I can not read ten pages of Addison
or Irving, still less of Gibbon or Macaulay, without having
my writing run into sonorous cadences that frequently
are as out of place as a Gregorian hymn-tune for a coon-song's
words. Writers of striking idiosyncrasy, like O.
Henry, or Samuel Blythe in his humorous sketches, Wodehouse,
or Harry Leon Wilson, or anything in slang or
dialect, are completely fatal to the straightaway putting
of what I want to say which is my only notion of a style
of my own.
Robert V. Carr: I might imagine some writer helped
me, when he merely salved my prejudice or put into words
certain racial memories that harmonized with mine.
George L. Catton: Consciously, little. Subconsciously,
it is hard to say; perhaps all of it. From the classics,
[pg 272]
ancient classics, none. Never had the patience to wade
through a lot of explanatory matter and minute detail I
found in the so-called classics—to get at a fact or truth
that could have been put in one sentence to stand out in
the clear. Classics? Not to my way of thinking! I don't
have to be told one thing twenty different ways to get the
guts of it. Classics? old-fashioned expositions of old-fashioned
views and ideas, most of which have been exploded
long ago.
Robert W. Chambers: Current authors, nothing. Classics,
much.
Roy P. Churchill: Both are necessary. The classics
for vocabulary. People and current writers for modern
styles. One is as valuable as the other to me.
Carl Clausen: A great deal.
Courtney Ryley Cooper: None from current authors.
A lot from the classics, all devoured by the time I was
sixteen. I had read everything from Dickens to Gautier
by that time.
Arthur Crabb: I think I have learned very little from
reading current authors, if you mean by current authors
the average writer for the popular magazines. I used to
read a great many stories, but of late years have practically
stopped doing it. I have read and am reading constantly
classics, if by that you mean great books written
in the last three or four hundred years. I think that one
of the reasons I am not more successful is that I try to
write, as I see it, along the lines of the great novelists and
haven't the goods. If I aimed at a less pretentious mark
I would probably do a great deal better.
Mary Stewart Cutting: I have read everything classic
and current that I could lay my hands on from the age
of six.
Elmer Davis: Haven't learned it.
William Harper Dean: My work is influenced greatly
from reading current authors. Little through the classics,
unless you include Dickens among the latter. From him
[pg 273]
I have absorbed an invaluable conception of what the true
meaning of atmosphere is, the weight of the short sentence
and the power of the long one. But I am inspired in many
ways when I read Hall Caine or Hutchinson or Hamsun
or Conrad. I aspire to the easy, forceful style of Hutchinson,
I want to be able to handle my characters with that
charming grace which characterizes Conrad.
Harris Dickson: I read spasmodically current fiction,
browse among the classics and naturally pick up ideas.
These pick-ups are not, as a rule, conscious. Things just
soak in, as water soaks into the ground and a spring comes
out somewhere else.
Captain Dingle: Impossible for me to say. If I have
learned from anybody it has been unconsciously. Had I
taken a master, I suspect I might have got farther.
Louis Dodge: I get enthusiasm from reading current
authors and the classics; but I try to find my own stories
among people and tell them in my own way. To me a
good book is like a preacher (the "ungracious pastor" of
Shakespeare): it says to me "be good"—but it doesn't
show me how.
J. Allan Dunn: I don't know. Don't believe much
until I had myself acquired a certain amount of technique
and could recognize the cleverness of others.
Phyllis Duganne: I've learned a great deal from reading
current authors. It's interesting to read a story and
like it, and then pick it to pieces to see how its writer made
me feel as he did, how he made scenes so vivid and people
so real, how he took an ancient plot and made it worth
reading even when I knew after the first paragraph what
the end would be. And it's instructive. And I suppose
the same thing holds more or less in the classics. I'm much
more interested in the modern school, so far as my own
work is concerned.
Walter A. Dyer: I have read studiously both modern
authors and the classics, and have got more inspiration
from the latter.
[pg 274]
Walter Richard Eaton: Nobody can say for me, I'd
answer. One learns much of his "craft" (in both senses!)
from a study of his market, the magazines. That is, he
adapts the size (length) of his story, etc., to the editorial
demands.
E. O. Foster: I have been an "omnivorous reader"
all my life, the dictionary and encyclopedia being my favorite
works.
Arthur O. Friel: Nearly all from current writers.
J. U. Giesy: All of it except what I have worked out
myself. Have been a somewhat omnivorous reader all my
life.
George Gilbert: No author can answer that, for he
does not know himself.
Kenneth Gilbert: Current authors have been very
helpful; classics scarcely at all.
Holworthy Hall: If I have learned anything at all
about any "craft," I have learned it from Leonard Merrick,
Mary Rinehart and Theophile Gautier.
Richard Matthews Hallet: I've probably learned a
lot from reading current authors. Couldn't quite say how
or what; and people who read me may doubt the above
proposition. The danger of watching the tricks of a contemporary
consists in liability to ape him in your own
stuff, especially if he is a powerful contemporary. We
have with us all the time young shadow-forms of Kipling,
O. Henry, etc. I dogged Conrad nearly to my undoing.
A man with some writing instinct can pick up the mannerisms
of another writer as easily as butter absorbs a taint.
The danger from reading the classics is less, and such reading
is probably worth more to a man.
William H. Hamby: Not consciously from either: although
I know I must have benefited from both, especially
modern writers.
A. Judson Hanna: I can not say that reading the
classics has helped me to write a story which will sell to
an American magazine. I have received much valuable
[pg 275]
help by reading current authors. For instance, a story
appearing in —— has passed the test. By studying
it I get an idea of what makes a short story. However, the
most help I have ever received I gained from criticisms,
by magazine editors, of rejected stories.
Joseph Mills Hanson: It seems to me difficult to estimate
how much of one's craftmanship in writing has been
gained from reading the work of others and how much
from his own impelling instincts and impulses. If he feels
the necessity of expressing himself in writing, his natural
abilities and limitations in narration probably govern his
craftsmanship in greater degree than any reading. I believe,
however, that my own style has been influenced at
different times by different writers who aroused my admiration,
both current authors and classic ones. Such influence
I think is detrimental to one's individual style and
should be guarded against. Even a poor individual style
is better than a poor imitation of another's style. But the
general effect of reading good authors can not but be elevating
and improving to one's own imagination and narrative
ability.
E. E. Harriman: Have developed more disgust than
delight in reading current authors, because I find so much
that is rotten-incorrect-ridiculous and out of reason in
them. For instance —— —— telling us that when on
skiis, crossing snow five feet deep, he found a bird sitting
on its eggs in a nest. And —— —— giving a grizzly bear
a round track.
The classics help me most. For clearness in composition—Shakespeare
and the Bible. Drummond's poems aid me.
Being foolish enough to do some versifying myself helps
me in prose writing.
Nevil G. Henshaw: I've got a lot from both, possibly
more from current authors.
Joseph Hergesheimer: All my early and important
reading was in the English lyrical poets.
Robert Hichens: I have learned, I think, a great deal
[pg 276]
by reading certain authors, but not current authors. A
book that has helped me is Tolstoy's Author's Art.
R. de S. Horn: After the beginner has got the fundamentals
of writing straight in his mind the greatest assistance
he can get anywhere is from reading current authors
and the classics. The classics show him the art at its highest
form: the models of technique. The current authors
show him the popular style and the trend of the times.
Neither one should be studied to the exclusion of the other.
A fifty-fifty ration is best, I think.
Clyde B. Hough: "How much of your craft have you
learned from reading current authors?" Absolutely all
that I know. "From the classics?" None. I don't strive
to write classics, so why study them? The classics of today,
most of them, were not considered classics when they
were written. And the good human stories of to-day will
be the classics of to-morrow.
Emerson Hough: I hope I never imitated any current
author. Could not any classic.
A. S. M. Hutchinson: I don't know; but I think wide
reading (not necessarily, or even at all, fiction) is necessary
to good writing.
Inez Haynes Irwin: I do not think I have gained anything
technically from reading the classics—with the exception
of the Elizabethan dramatists. And I can not say
exactly that they helped me technically—they delighted,
thrilled and inspired me. I suppose, to be perfectly fair,
I ought to say that the Russian novelists, who also dominated
my girlhood, gave me my taste for realism. I have
learned more than I can tell from the work of my contemporaries.
When I was at Radcliffe College, following I
think the example of Stevenson, my Harvard instructor
had the class write themes in imitation of the Bible, Dryden,
Walton, Addison, Johnson, Goldsmith, etc., etc. I
believe now it would have had infinitely more value if we
had been studying the short stories which were appearing
in McClure's Magazine at that period—a great period in
[pg 277]
American short-story writing. I can not overestimate how
much I have gained from the short fiction of such writers
as O'Henry, Percival Gibbons, Edna Ferber, Fanny
Hurst, Joseph Hergesheimer, Willa Cather, and of course
Henry James and Joseph Conrad.
Will Irwin: I suppose that I have learned a great
deal of my craft from both current authors and the classics.
How much, it would be hard to say. One absorbs
such training unconsciously.
Charles Tenney Jackson: As to "current authors and
the classics" I read the former very little; and the latter
seem to be part of a past curiosity which left me with a
certain vague, large respect much as you would give to a
ninth-century cathedral or a tapestry. I reckon they did
their durndest in their time, but I could wish that some
Athenian philosopher had stopped a moment to record
what he ate for breakfast, how the family wash was
handled, what he shaved with ... all about the life about
him, in fact; the picture, the color, the motives of folk
about him. My imagination turns from the temples to
what possibly housed the cobbler who mended Caesar's
sandals, and where his children played. The guesses of
the classic writers as to the riddle of life are not of interest,
for I have my own; but I would like to know the flavor
of the common life about them.
Frederick J. Jackson: I can't say how much technique
I have learned from reading current authors. The classics
is an easier question. The answer is about nothing, net,
plus war tax.
Mary Johnston: I do not know.
John Joseph: Have been a tremendous reader and
student of both current and classic literature, and if I
know anything at all about writing I must have picked it
up in this manner.
Lloyd Kohler: I think that it's safe to say that I've
learned a good half of my craft from reading and studying
current authors and the classics. There is a danger in this,
[pg 278]
especially if one follows a certain current author too
closely. It's best to read them all. As to the classics, there
is little danger of ever getting too much of them—I'd
venture that the average of us don't get enough of the
classics. I know that I don't.
Harold Lamb: Current authors, no. I read them
very little as a boy, and hardly at all as an author. The
classics, yes, if you let me name my own classics.
They were my friends. They still are my friends. I
refer to the coterie gathered together in the libraries of my
grandfather and uncle. Messrs. Gustave Doré, Æsop, the
Nibelungs, Roland and Oliver—the Song, you know—Pierrot,
Prince of Tatary, The Apostles, Dante in Purgatory,
Plato, Rider Haggard, Napoleon, Don Quixote de la
Mancha (but Sancho Panza was a better chum). A host
of others. But these had the finest pictures—an artist's
library, and a poet's. So they were my earliest friends. I
had others. Especially Francois Villon, Catullus, Henry,
Babur, Li Po, Macdonald, Robert Burns.
Sinclair Lewis: I don't know.
Hapsburg Liebe: Since I never had any schooling, I
guess I learned the little I know from reading, both modern
authors and classics—I haven't read enough of the
classics; they seem wordy to me. The average magazine, I
guess, wouldn't buy or publish half the classics now if they
were new.
Romaine H. Lowdermilk: Can't say. More from current
authors, anyway.
Eugene P. Lyle, Jr.: Can't say, but doubtless I've
learned a great deal from reading current authors (for
technique in current fiction) and from the classics for the
basic fundamentals.
Rose Macaulay: A great deal.
Crittenden Marriott: Mighty little.
Homer I. McEldowney: Thus far, I should say that
current authors have had more influence upon my writing
than have the classics, due to the fact that I read rather for
[pg 279]
amusement than for any lasting good which I might derive.
Ray McGillivray: In so far as any one must be blamed,
I believe the classics—if you'll stretch the definition to
include also Nick Carter, Old Sleuth and the Dalton Boys—are
responsible. I set the onus of responsibility at the
door of my own general cussedness, the trait which makes
me lay off any labor any time a bunch of good pals takes
a notion to drift from here to helangon, taking as equipment
a deck of cards, a few well-hidden quarts, a couple
of rifles and shotguns, a camera and some merry songs
of the road as cargo for the old gas-buggy. Such a guy
must write; it's about the only excuse he's got to live—except
the living, which is joy.
Helen Topping Miller: I read all the classics when I
was very young. How much of my ability to write I
owe to those early associations I am not able to judge.
Of late I have naturally studied the craft of successful
current authors. From modern novels I do not feel that
I gain anything; indeed it is very rarely that I am able
to finish a book without being dismally bored. On the
other hand, scientific and historical works, especially ancient
history and religious history, fascinate me. Travel
also forms a large part of my reading.
Thomas Samson Miller: Impossible to say how much
I am indebted to current authors and the classics. This is
all subjective.
Anne Shannon Monroe: I do not read many current
authors—haven't the time. I know many are good and I
miss a great deal, but out on our coast we just have twenty-four
hours a day, the same as in New York, and some
of them must be spent in the open, when the open is such
an enchanting wonderland. I read the classics in school-days—had
bookish parents who drove them down our
throats—but not since.
L. M. Montgomery: I think I owe considerable to my
greedy reading and rereading of standard fiction—the old
[pg 280]
masters—Scott, Dickens, Thackeray, Hawthorne. Occasionally,
too, a well-written modern magazine story has
been helpful and illuminating. But, as a rule, I think
aspiring authors will not reap much benefit from current
fiction—except perhaps from a purely commercial point of
view in finding out what kind of stories certain magazines
take! Most writers, except those of absolute genius, are
prone to unconscious imitation of what they read and that
is a bad thing.
Frederick Moore: I can not gauge what the classics
have done for me. There is some "bunk" about classics.
But I believe that behind every writer there is the inherited
tendency to write. This trait seems to well up, even if several
generations have been skipped in the art. The creative
urge does not always show itself in the same metier—for
instance, it will crop out as music in one generation, as
painting or sculpture in another, or as invention.
Talbot Mundy: God knows. I haven't read much.
Kipling has given me more pleasure than any other writer.
Have only just begun to read. Had no particular education,
beyond the usual grounding in Latin, Greek and
"English"—all worked into me with a stick and with all
the useful parts left out.
Kathleen Norris: The best modern authors, and all
the classics one can assimilate, seem to me indispensable.
But unless one can read them in their own languages it is
obvious that the only gain would be in plot, construction
and character work. But every one, from Milton to Galsworthy,
for style.
Anne O'Hagan: I can't answer this, but I should say
that I had learned most of my craft from reading the
English classics.
Grant Overton: In the beginning I really learned
everything from reading. I do not think one learns his
writer's craft directly from reading either current authors
or the classics. I think he gets from good reading a mental
elevation and impetus. The rest must come out of himself.
[pg 281]
Sir Gilbert Parker: Nothing. I have always gone my
own way, good or bad.
Hugh Pendexter: I am not conscious of being helped
by current fiction, which I read for entertainment purely.
I studied and taught Latin and Greek but could never discover
my work in those subjects has helped me any in my
work of writing.
Clay Perry: I am afraid it is impossible to answer
such a question. Undoubtedly the reading of the classics
when I was a boy has had a more lasting influence upon
me than the reading of current authors in the past few
years. If by "classics" is meant recognized craftsmanship
by modern authors, I should say that I had learned a
great deal from such writers as Jack London, Edith
Wharton, Hall Caine and a score of modern writers whose
style and craftsmanship is good. (One or both.)
Michael J. Phillips: I have not read the classics extensively.
I can't see Dickens nor Shakespeare. I consider
Charles Reade, the Cricket on the Hearth fellow,
and Blackmore, who wrote Lorna Doone, great artists and
I suppose they influenced me.
Of course I have been taught very largely by my job,
which has practically always been newspaper work. In
the shortest newspaper item there must be a certain construction.
It must have a beginning, tell its story in orderly
fashion, and an end. In my formative newspaper days
I had the advantage of being trained by a metropolitan
newspaper man who was the best judge of news values I
ever knew. He taught me unerringly, or nearly unerringly,
to put my finger on the novel, the dramatic, the
leading feature of a newspaper article, or "story," and
play it up. I think that this has been of great assistance
to me in fiction writing; that is, I believe it has taught me
selection and emphasis—what to write and what was the
more important.
Walter B. Pitkin: What I have learned about writing
has definitely come from little reading, much observation,
[pg 282]
and an irresistible tendency to write about all sorts of
things. Nobody ever urged me to write. I began it when
I was a schoolboy, kept elaborate journals, sold a story
when I was about ten years old for ten dollars, wrote
essays, treatises, fantasies, poems, everything but plays, in
fact; and have probably written in my life, in one way or
another, at least twenty million words of copy. I have
never liked the classics; have read very little in them;
know only three of Dickens, four of Thackeray, never a
novel of George Eliot, and so on. Am bored to death by
things that are not contemporary and verifiable in my own
life. (This is probably a violent reaction against too
much study of ancient philosophy and literature when a
youth.)
E. S. Pladwell: Classics and current authors have
their reflective influence upon the mind; but I have refrained
from trying to study any of them with one exception.
Kipling's magnificent condensation I believe to be
worthy of emulation. As for O. Henry, I think he is the
curse of American writers. The person who reads one of
his stories can not help but try, unconsciously, to ape the
brilliant gallop of his style, and they all come to grief.
The other authors have their styles, but to me they give
little that is remarkable. With them it is the story that
counts.
Lucia Mead Priest: I have always been a reader; I
can not answer you. May be all I have ever done has
come out of the reservoir of many years' storage. I should
say it is a toss-up between the classics and modern literature.
Creative power is low and I have been a great reader;
there you are! May be all of me is somebody else. Can
you unravel that?
Eugene Manlove Rhodes: Current authors, none. The
classics, all.
Frank C. Robertson: I should say that I have learned
about seventy-five per cent. of my craft from reading current
[pg 283]
authors, and about one per cent. from the classics.
Perhaps this is because I have devoted about the same
proportion of time to reading each.
Ruth Sawyer: Everything I know has been gained
through contact with authors—and these largely the so-called
classical. Coupled with these, the most helpful
stimuli I have had have come from the constructive criticisms
given by kindly and humane editors.
Chester L. Saxby: The classics are mainly barren
stuff for me—labored writing, involved presentation, devious
and unnecessary description and reference, slag-heaps
of introspection. I've learned from them—what not
to do. But from current authors I have gained everything.
I could say I have my little saints: Mary Johnston, Booth
Tarkington, Jack London, Margaret Deland, Ben Ames
Williams, Richard Harding Davis.
Barry Scobee: Tee-totally nothing, unless it might be
for a few minor—what shall I say, tricks of technique?
This in the current story. I seem to have been unable to
get anything from reading other writers, except in the instance
of one or two I have come to know.
R. T. M. Scott: So far as current authors are concerned—and
even the classics—I find that, when I try to
derive benefit from them, I imitate and fall down. In
other words I fail to be myself and a man can be nobody
as well as he can be himself. Of course a man may derive
knowledge and inspiration from all good authors, but he
takes those qualities and builds them into himself so that
they are part of himself. In this way all good reading is
beneficial and I have benefitted. One thing might be
pointed out. The classics stick in my memory much more
than does the work of modern authors.
Robert Simpson: I have learned a great deal from
studying how "the other fellow" did it. This applies to
all sorts of writing from that of the rawest novice to
Scott and Boccaccio. But Dumas, Hugo, Balzac, Dickens,
Stevenson, Kipling, O. Henry, Addison, Swift, Lamb,
[pg 284]
Newman, Carlyle, Emerson and several others of the big
guns among fictioneers and essayists have had most influence
on whatever style and technique I've achieved in
twenty years of trying to learn how to write.
Theodore Seixas Solomons: I have no idea how much
current authors have taught me. Mighty little that is
useful, I believe, in comparison with the dangers to imitation
they have constituted. The classics, however, read
largely in youth, must have been of tremendous influence,
but chiefly, I think, in the matter of expression. I think
the story-telling art is a thing antecedent to any influence
of stories or story-tellers, common or classic.
Arthur D. Howden Smith: Most of it, I should say, in
about equal proportions.
Raymond S. Spears: I read magazines rather than
authors, for I find that magazines generally group authors
rather sharply—perhaps I should say magazines group
moods of authorship. I read what I like, and I have five
feet of bandits, badmen, desperadoes above fifteen feet of
Mississippi River; and ten feet of outdoor hand-books and
information, including pearls, formulas, wild animals,
under six feet of classics, including Borrow, Plutarch,
Poe, Ruskin, Emerson, etc. I am not conscious of playing
any favorites among classics, dime novels, hand-books, government
documents, poetry, history, natural history, etc.
Norman Springer: Practically all I have learned
about story writing. I've tackled the living and the dead
both, with good results.
Julian Street: I've read both—that is in English. I
believe that Latin and Greek (languages I don't know)
tend to increase one's vocabulary and beautify one's style.
I know some French and Italian and I think languages
help. It is good to read French—for delicacies of expression
and grace of style. "The style is the man."
T. S. Stribling: I think I picked up most of my ideas
on how to write from the Russians.
Booth Tarkington: Learned nothing from reading
[pg 285]
current authors; all from authors now dead. From the
classics, I don't know what proportion.
W. C. Tuttle: At the risk of being called a "low-brow"
I must admit that I do not enjoy the classics. I
have only read a few, which is another "low" admission.
I feel toward them as I do toward the old masters in art—admit
that they are wonderful—and change the subject.
Lucille Van Slyke: I ar'n't larned me my craft and
never expect to. I don't want to be either a deliberate or
unconscious copy cat. But I'll tell you this—it sounds
funny but it isn't—Mother Goose is actually the biggest
help I have as a writer. Almost any situation in life or
books or plays will sum itself up in a Mother Goose rhyme,
plot and all. And if any writer knows a better 'ole—let
him go to it!
Atreus von Schrader: With rare exceptions I find
that I very much prefer the classics, using that term in
its broader sense, to current writers. This is true only of
the longer forms of fiction. The short story, in its present
state, has been developed within the last decade or two.
Jack London, for example, is of another period; tremendously
colorful, but too often lacking in plot. Upon rereading
your question, I find I have only half answered
it. I believe the modern American short story is in a class
by itself for neatness and finish of plot. But for color
and substance, for care and matured thought, the older
writers are our masters.
T. Von Ziekursch: Do not believe I have learned anything
much from reading current authors. Do not know
about the classics. Like the Greeks, the Latins, the French
and Russians. Thoreau, Anatole France, etc. Am at a
loss to answer this. John T. McIntyre, who to me is a
master of technique, has probably done more than anything
else for me by pointing out faulty tendencies to be
guarded against.
Henry Kitchell Webster: I don't know.
G. A. Wells: What I have was gained both from moderns
[pg 286]
and the classics in about equal proportions. I would
say that the classics taught me style, the moderns structure.
The two writers most responsible for what style I
may show are Macaulay and Emerson, though I would feel
guilty did I fail to mention Lowell, Stevenson, Addison,
Carlisle, Fenimore Cooper. There are others I can't call at
the moment. To me, Macaulay is the peer of all writers,
whether modern or classic, and I attribute my style to him.
For structure I would earnestly recommend Post, O.
Henry, Kipling, Mrs. Rinehart in the novel, and De Maupassant;
and more intimately, Gordon Young, Mundy, Solomons
and Pendexter, to mention a few. A student should
not study the classics for structure, provided he wishes
to write modern fiction. And to even matters, he should
not study the moderns for style. Moderns have style, but
it is not the quality of the classics.
William Wells: Don't know; have read very widely,
some translations of the classics, am familiar with nearly
all that is best in both American and English literature.
Ben Ames Williams: I'm unable to recall having
learned anything about writing from reading modern
authors. What I have learned from them has been acquired
unconsciously. I've read comparatively little written
by living writers, except that for four years I read
all the magazines, every issue, all the way through. I had
never read Conrad at all till some fatuous reviewer compared
one of my stories to his work; the same is true of
Hardy. I am entirely at odds with the play-in-the-dirt
school of modern writers. They may be right; but the
things that seem to them ugly and depressing seem to me
beautiful and even glorious. They, I think, look at them
from the outside. But as the fellow said, many an honest
heart beats under a ragged jacket. I'm not talking about
sex stories. I've no quarrel with them. I'm talking about
the Main Street school. If a man tries to take care of his
family and help them forward, I don't care whether he
appreciates Dunsany or not; and if a woman loves her husband
[pg 287]
and her children, she doesn't lose caste in my eyes
by failing to appreciate Amy Lowell. There are other
tests of manhood and womanhood besides a razor-edge taste
in literature; and one of the most valorous and admirable
men I know, a guide in the Maine woods, who loves his
neighbors, speaks not uncharitably, helps when he can and
tells the truth, can not even read his own name. There is
a splendor in the commonplace life which most of us live,
even though the only novel in the house may have been
written by Harold Bell Wright, and the only poetic works
may be the Book of Job and the Song of Songs. The
assumption that when fine men die they must pass an
examination on art before entering the pleasant ways that
wait for them seems to me utterly unsound.
But this is beside the point; a digression. To the second
head of the question:
I get a distinct inspirational stimulus from reading the
more-or-less classics. Kipling, De Maupassant, Poe and
some parts of O. Henry; all the Frenchmen with whom I
am familiar except Balzac; Fielding, The Tale of Two
Cities, The Way of All Flesh. Balzac is over my head.
Dickens, outside of the novel named, seems to me a caricaturist
rather than a novelist. The Growth of the Soil I
hold to be the finest novel I ever read. No need of prolonging
the list. Reading them over and over, the books
which most appeal to me, I always put them down full of a
brave determination to write something as fine. That the
resultant effort dwindles out discourages me only until I
have read the book again. I know no better way to put
yourself in the mood for trying to write good stuff than
by reading good stuff.
Honore Willsie: I have read and studied current and
classic writers constantly as training for my work.
H. C. Witwer: Nothing from either.
William Almon Wolff: I don't know that I can distinguish
between classics and modern authors. I've learned
most of what I know that way, I suppose.
[pg 288]
Edgar Young: Can't say. Have read many of the
modern authors and most of the classics. Also have read
rather widely in Spanish.
Summary
"Classics," of course, is a variable term, but even when
not specifically defined it serves the general purposes of
the question.
Of 113 answering, 58 found the classics useful to their
craft; current authors, 49.
Some benefit: classics, 10; current, 13. Yes: classics,
32; current, 21. Much: classics, 14; current, 13. All: classics,
2; current, 2. Little: classics, 11; current, 10. None:
classics, 13; current, 18. Waste of time: classics, 0; current,
1. Harm: classics, 3; current, 4. Don't know: 17.
Not classified: 4.
The tabulation is on both influence and value. From
the answers one gathers that the classics are read for: the
fundamentals, highest art, clearness, vocabulary, characterization,
style; current authors for vocabulary, what not
to do, modern style, popularity, short-story structure.
While allowance must be made for those deriving benefit
from both, the 107 who found benefit from reading other
authors contrast strongly with the 25 who stated either
elementary or advanced benefit from classes, courses and
books (all or any) on how to write.
It must be borne in mind that what some consider benefit
would be considered a loss by others.
A rough checking up of the answers shows that, while
some 90 authors or books were mentioned, no one of them
was mentioned often:—Kipling 8; the Bible, Dickens and
O. Henry, 4; Maupassant, Conrad, Jack London, 3; Milton,
Emerson, Scott, Homer, Sophocles, Hall Caine, Balzac,
Anatole France, the Russians, Poe, Gautier, Mary
Roberts Rinehart, Richard Harding Davis, 2. Since no
general expression as to particular books or authors was
called for, these chance expressions are not indicative of
[pg 289]
anything except that no particular ones seem found sufficiently
valuable to bring about much spontaneous mention.
Among the manuscripts (the total submitted, not
merely the accepted ones) coming in to my own particular
magazine the writers whose influence seems most marked
are Kipling, O. Henry, Conan Doyle, Jack London, Stevenson.
The list would vary at other editorial desks, but at
most of them these five would probably be included.
Only 7 of our answers warn against the dangers of imitation.
The warning is badly needed, particularly by beginners.
The essence of style is expression of self, not of
some one else, yet the manuscript world is tragically full
of writers who are straining every nerve—and killing or
drugging the individuality that alone can get them to any
place really worth reaching—in a silly effort to write like
some one else. They can't, for the simple reason that they
can't be this some one else. And meanwhile, instead of
expressing themselves, they are burying themselves.
Possibly O. Henry, Kipling and Doyle produce the
greatest numbers of imitators, but current fiction provides
many ephemeral models that produce noticeable waves of
imitation.
Even with successful writers, who can say where the
benefit from studying other authors ends and harm begins?
Of what value is technique if gaining it has suppressed
any of the individuality whose expression is technique's
only warrant for existence?
Few indeed are the writers who can not profit from a
study of good models, yet few are they who can unerringly
reap the undoubted benefit without paying for it in some
loss of individuality. Perhaps those most safe against the
danger are those least in need of the benefit. There can be
no question of the benefit to be derived, but to every beginner—and
to most writers on the highway of success—there
is need to shout a warning against letting the models absorb
him instead of his absorbing the models.
[pg 290]
QUESTION VII
What is your general feeling on the value
of technique?
In the following each writer naturally answers according
to his own particular definition of technique, only a
small minority expressing any doubts as to its exact meaning,
but the general conception is sufficiently common to
all for the purposes of our questionnaire:
Answers
Bill Adams: I do not know what technique is. I have
bronchial asthma.
Samuel Hopkins Adams: That it is one writer's meat
and another writer's poison.
Paul L. Anderson: An author can not have too fine a
technique, any more than a machinist can have too fine
tools; technique is a tool, and the better it is the better the
work that can be done with it. But either artist, author
or mechanic can become so interested in his tools that he
over-elaborates his work—authors and artists do this more
often than machinists!
William Ashley Anderson: An author ought constantly
to try to master his technique in the hope of reaching
a point where his ideas may be put into form without
hesitating or wasting effort over the means of expression.
H. C. Bailey: I rate technique high but second to
knowledge of men and the world.
Ralph Henry Barbour: Technique is something you
ought to have and not be aware of the fact. When you
know you have it you become a pest. It's like happiness.
Being happy is fine, but when you make a cult of it and
become "glad, glad, glad!" folks will run away from you.
To the beginner I'd say, "Don't worry." Write your
[pg 291]
story and let technique take care of itself. Let it go hang,
for that matter. Paraphrasing a chap who could write
pretty good fiction himself, "the story's the thing."
Frederick Orin Bartlett: Technique to be valuable
should be unconscious. The best way to get it is to be
born with it. The next best way is to absorb it through
the work of those already masters of it. The poorest way
is to study it deliberately and practise it consciously.
Nalbro Bartley: It is essential and a most admirable
thing to possess it, but to my mind, technique can be dispensed
with if one has to choose between the red-blooded
story and the purely mechanical perfection of transcribing
it.
Konrad Bercovici: A little technique does not hurt.
It is like salt and pepper in a dish, but who wants a dish
of salt or a dish of pepper?
Ferdinand Berthoud: I don't quite understand. Do
not feel enough of an authority to have an opinion on the
subject.
H. H. Birney, Jr.: Almost impossible to answer. Just
what do you mean by "technique"? Webster's definition,
summarized, is "artistic execution." Taking it as
such, technique is almighty important. To sell, a story
must "read well." It must be smooth, finished, plot must
be well developed, interest sustained, etc. All of this can
be classed as literary technique.
Farnham Bishop: Technical training is good in so far
that it teaches a man to use the tools of his trade. But
unless he was born to the trade, he'll never master it. Creative
ability is as the Creator is pleased to bestow it. The
very small quantity that I possess has been much more
helped than hindered by my teachers.
The more a man writes, the better his technique should
become. To tell a good tale plainly is better art and harder
work than jig-sawing and bedecking a poor little bungalow
of an idea to make it look like a palace.
Algernon Blackwood: I have never consciously
[pg 292]
studied technique. Up to a point technique must be instinctive.
But it can be over-stressed. It can overlay an
idea, especially a thin idea. Its value, of course, can not
be over estimated. It is essential. But no text-book has
ever helped me much.
Max Bonter: Wish I knew more about technique.
Am trying to learn.
Katharine Holland Brown: Profoundly valuable—if
the story lives, too.
F. R. Buckley: Technique is essential: technicalities
(as above) seem to me murderous. Most important point
of technique (to me) is tempo—taking the two extremes of
dull legato and fatiguing staccato and hitting the exact
point between them, using the exact combination of them,
you need to produce the particular effect you want.
Never saw anybody try to teach this. Doubt if it could be
taught.
Prosper Buranelli: Technique is everything. A writer
who can not write is an illiterate. The trouble with letters
in this country is that its literary men are illiterates—I
mean even fellows like Dreiser and Sherwood Anderson.
Thompson Burtis: I am somewhat uncertain as to
what technique means, to be truthful. If it means skilful
construction, well-turned phrases, proper handling of
suspense, etc., as my instinct leads me to believe, I am
strongly of the belief that it is very important. I read so
many good stories that interest me not at all—so many
others which, boiled down, have nothing much to them but
which through the skill and facility of the writer are
charming and interesting to me. I have read stories where
the young fellow met the girl, they liked each other and
got engaged, which pleased. Others with colorful background,
unusual characters and rapid-fire events have
been murdered for me because I sat back and watched the
green author botch them, annoy me with missed opportunities,
prick me with unfortunate phrasing, harass me with
clumsy construction, etc. There are a fluency, an inevitable,
[pg 293]
logical interest and a sense of complete satisfaction in
a sound, properly constructed, skilfully written yarn told
by a master of his craft which are unmistakable, I believe.
Tricks of the trade, many of which I see through, nevertheless
add life and personality to a story for me. Take Talbot
Mundy and his trenchant by-passages on everything in
general. I enjoy them, and yet I can see him sticking them
in, sometimes. And I couldn't read a page without knowing
it was Mundy writing.
George M. A. Cain: In that attitude, technique has
become so much a habit of feeling that I can not tell where
it begins or leaves off in my own construction of a story.
Where I consciously resort to technical tricks of writing,
such as deliberately arranged shifts from one to another
view-point for the sustaining of suspense, I am always
hampered with a sense of cheapening the work by the introduction
of a mechanical device.
Robert V. Carr: I am insensible to technique. I know
what the dictionary says about it, but the dictionary is
full of words. A lot of things that many discuss glibly are
just words to me.
George L. Catton: Am in doubt of your use of the
word. My dictionary says: "manner of artistic performance,"
which would be, in this case, style. And in this age
of a used up supply of plots and themes and characters
and incidents, style must be about everything. An
author's personality is the only new thing possible to-day
in fiction.
Robert W. Chambers: It is an essential part of all creative
work.
Roy P. Churchill: Frankly, technique is something I
have never seen a synonym for. It is evasive. Perhaps
you might say that technique is the life of the story.
Without it a story is dead. With it alive. And there are
a great many kinds of life. Some pleasant and some ugly.
Some appealing to one person and some to another. For
me this thing called technique must be in a yarn to make it
[pg 294]
live, and the more of it the stronger. That's why just
polish isn't technique.
Carl Clausen: If over-emphasized, it kills the spontaneity
of the story.
Courtney Ryley Cooper: Technique is excellent, but it
is like the frosting on pie. Sometimes we would like to
scrape it aside and find something REAL underneath.
Arthur Crabb: I think it is at least one of the most
important things in writing. Some genius may get along
without it, some isolated individual may evade the issue
for a while, but not for long.
Mary Stewart Cutting: I think technique has great
value.
Elmer Davis: It can be overdone, but most of us are
in no danger.
William Harper Dean: I feel that technique is the
leaven in a story—you can ruin the possibilities in a situation
in its development if your technique is poor. Illogical
sequence in the development, the stressing of minor
situations, the slighting of the weightier ones, the faltering
in the forward march to the climax—these things mean
poor technique and a poor story.
Harris Dickson: Technique, it would seem to me, is
the handling of a story in harmony with its matter. Naturally
the method of handling a detective story is different
from that of a treatise on esoteric Buddhism. A negro
story violates every known rule of white technique to follow
a rambling and garrulous illogical method of its own—which
becomes logical when applied to our brother in
black, for that is the process of the African mind. He's a
curiously devious oriental.
Captain Dingle: I don't understand exactly what this
question means. In fact, except in the matter of plot, I
scarcely know what "technique" means. As for plot, I
believe that far more stress is put upon this as an essential
than any audience or readers demand.
Louis Dodge: As for technique, I like the technique
[pg 295]
of Jack Dempsey, who hits first and hardest. I don't
mean that he hasn't any technique: I mean simply that he
is Jack Dempsey.
Phyllis Duganne: My general feeling is that technique
saves time and labor—and that you get it only
through much previous time and labor.
J. Allan Dunn: The value of technique in story writing
is, I think, in exactly the same ratio as technique is to
the painter, the singer, the musician, the sculptor, the
architect. It is more elusive in writing, but it must be
acquired. The world is full of chaps who mistook an ear
for music, an eye for color, a faculty for mimicry and a
desire to write as a token of genius that would flow like
buttermilk out of a jug. Technique constitutes the difference
between the amateur and the professional in every
profession.
Walter A. Dyer: If I did not still retain a belief in
the value of technique I should be in despair.
Walter Prichard Eaton: Without technique not one
in a hundred can get by—and the one exception who does
will be found to have created a new technique!
E. O. Foster: My training in newspaper writing is
that technique is a most valuable asset. With the proper
technique a man can make even an ordinary newspaper
story interesting.
Arthur O. Friel: A minor consideration. Subordinate
to the actual story. A "tool" only.
J. U. Giesy: I admire a good technique—just as I admire
any finished work by a finished workman. I would
not however damn a virile and entertaining bit of plot or
narrative because of faulty technique unless hopelessly defective,
I think.
George Gilbert: Technique is merely a means to an
end. Many of the world's biggest stories are weak in
technique, but go big because of their theme.
Kenneth Gilbert: I have a high regard for technique.
Nothing disgusts me more than serious technical flaws,
[pg 296]
yet I try to be temperate about it because I realize that I
may be more alert for such faults than is the average
reader. I firmly believe that unless technique can be supplanted
by really worth-while originality, it should always
be observed in a general way, at least.
Holworthy Hall: You might as well ask my general
feeling on the subject of "technique" in art or music.
Technique constitutes the only difference between what is
good and what is bad. But if you ask me what technique is—I
should have to write you a book about it, because the
expression itself is a paradox.
Richard Matthews Hallet: I am a little suspicious of
the word "technique" as applied to writing. Fiction has
two parts, form and essence, or matter. Technique, I take
it, runs to the form and governs the method of presentation.
If the matter is there, it will carry nearly any
natural kind of presentation with it. Technique is too
liable to be synonymous for complexity and subtlety.
Technique ruined Henry James. Few candid people will
say that his later work is even half as good as the simpler
Roderick Hudson. The earlier stuff of Conrad and Kipling
is better than the later, for the same reason. The
fact is that generally speaking, animal spirits and a living
zest in the things of this earth are a big element in fiction,
and as a man's senses dull and his experiences get more
commonplace, his matter crumbles through his fingers, and
then he resorts to technique to cloud the issue, much as a
cuttle-fish squirts ink.
A little technique is as good as a lot.
William H. Hamby: I don't think much about it. I
do not believe a writer who is a clear thinker and has
mastered the rudiments of expression need spend much
time thinking of his style.
A. Judson Hanna: Technique, if striking enough,
seems to give a writer a strong, but temporary, vogue.
For instance, the technique of O. Henry and Ring Lardner
and George Ade. The only striking technique I recall
[pg 297]
at the moment which, I believe, will become classic, is the
technique of Kipling.
Joseph Mills Hanson: Good technique undoubtedly
will help a mediocre story to "get across"; but if a story
is inherently unique and forceful, it will get across
whether it is technically excellent or not.
E. E. Harriman: I feel that too much emphasis is
placed upon technique by many, to the exclusion of clearness
and simplicity. Yet a certain amount is essential.
Nevil G. Henshaw: To my mind technique is invaluable.
It will save a poor story when nothing else will.
Joseph Hergesheimer: Naturally, one must write
well.
Robert Hichens: I do not believe in writing at haphazard.
The best writers take infinite pains. Joseph Conrad
and George Moore are examples of this. Guy de
Maupassant, one, I think, of the most perfect story tellers
who ever lived, was trained by Flaubert in the art of writing.
Young writers should not hurry or think that anything
will do. I believe in writing with enthusiasm and
then considering the result with critical coldness.
R. de S. Horn: Technique is a word that always
brings Stevenson promptly to my mind. Because technique
is the part of the art that comes from long and careful
study and practise alone, and Stevenson is the shining
light along these lines. He set out deliberately to be an
author and put weary years in at the task before he ever
tried to capitalize it. But look what a master he became.
Technique is the polish on both the diamond and the paste
jewel. It enhances the real thing and makes the imitation
salable. A story may sell that is naturally strong in itself
even though it be weak in technique; but this is no argument
for neglecting technique. Just think how much more
wonderful it would have been with the extra luster added.
And this much is certain: no master of any art ever lived
who had not added to his natural gifts the added technique
acquired by long practise and study.
[pg 298]
Clyde B. Hough: In my opinion technique is second
only to plot.
Emerson Hough: More thought and less technique
would be better for the country.
A. S. M. Hutchinson: I never think about it.
Inez Haynes Irwin: This is a very difficult question
to answer. Technique is highly valuable of course—necessary.
Some writers give one the impression that they have
more technique than matter. As between the two, I would
rather have a great deal to say, even if I said it awkwardly,
than nothing to say even if I said it exquisitely. I suppose
the perfection for which most writers aim is fullness
and originality of matter, plus a beautiful technique.
Will Irwin: Naturally an author, like a painter, must
have technique. The best of thought and feeling must remain
private thought and feeling unless the writer learns
how to put it into a form which is pleasing and convincing
to the reader. Naturally, too, technique may be overdone;
and it can not conceal barrenness of thought imagination
and feeling.
Charles Tenney Jackson: As to your question on
technique, I assure you, in reading, it is everything to me.
I will lose interest in any tale at once when I see it is not
well written. Plots seem so dolefully commonplace, they
are all ragged to tatters; and if an author can not present
his stuff with some attempt, at least, to distinction,
to personality, I can't go him much. The setting, the
color, the style and material are more than plot, which
will wander away into unrealities and commonplaceness in
no time if not worked upon by sincere discrimination. A
plot is no more than a dead dog which a good taxidermist
can make to stand up stuffed so artfully that you believe
it might wag its tail. If you can get it to bark—good!
You're a genius, but after all the bark and not the dog is
the important thing, and the art of it.
Frederick J. Jackson: I don't know. I have known
brainier men than I hope to be fail dismally when tackling
[pg 299]
the fiction game because they had stuffed themselves so
full of technique that it stuck out all over their stuff.
University fiction course professors hold technique up as a
sort of bogy. They overemphasize its importance, in my
estimation. The word itself scares many beginners. Why
don't the profs come down out of the clouds and use a
simpler word, namely, mechanics? I look upon a story as
a matter of mechanics. Certain set elements make a story.
Conjunction of these elements, plastered up with new
stuff, or a new way of portraying them, makes a salable
story. I have made speeches before journalism classes,
classes in short story writing, one of them the extension
course of the University of California. I quoted to this
effect: "A story is never so dead as when buried in
words." I emphasized it. I scandalized several admirers
of certain well known writers, one sonorous, heavy, wordy
gentleman in particular when his name was mentioned, by
stating frankly that even while I envied his vocabulary,
his characterization, his color, I always passed up his stuff
because it wandered too far afield, because he lacked plot,
or because the plot was submerged so deep in words that I
could not pump it out. A story with me is a matter of
mechanics, but I do my best to eliminate visible traces,
and above all to make the story human.
Mary Johnston: It has great value, but content comes
first.
John Joseph: Generally speaking I divide all stories
into two classes. One class I call a painting, the other a
mechanical drawing. The painting will live and be read
from generation to generation. The other will be read and
thrown aside and forgotten. You can't lay off a painting
with compass and try-square. For that reason the more
rules a writer is compelled to keep his eye on, the less able
he will be to express the thing he wants to express, the less
chance he will have to achieve that elusive, intangible, subtle
something that distinguishes the story that is a painting
from the one that is merely a mechanical drawing.
[pg 300]
One of the greatest afflictions of mankind is his tendency
to jump to conclusions, and to assume something to
be true when he does not, as a matter of fact, know whether
it is true or not. Theorizing is perhaps the principal avocation
of mankind, and to the chronic theorizer facts mean
nothing. Add to this the curse of precedent and the getting
into ruts which is often miscalled "policy," and you
have the cause of half the failures in every walk of life.
Too, independent thinking is the rarest of all achievements.
All of which means that in my opinion the editor
who will get out in the highways and byways and find out
who is reading magazines and why they read a particular
magazine will get the surprise of his life.
I have had this writing bug in my bonnet ever since I
was a kid. Never till lately have I had time, or tried to
write for publication, but I have made a very careful
study of readers during all these years. I am quite certain
that I have quizzed at least five thousand persons as
to their likes and dislikes in the matter of fiction, always
with the view to some day having a try at it myself.
I think that the value of "structure" or "technique"
is vastly overrated by the editor generally. That is, if he is
trying to please the largest possible number of readers.
Of course if he is merely trying to get out a perfect magazine,
from a literary standpoint, that is a different matter.
The reader—the general reader—cares not a whoop about
these things. He demands just one thing in his fiction,
and no more: The story must absorb him, and that's all
there is to it.
Lloyd Kohler: A knowledge of technique is essential.
Harold Lamb: Technique? It must be all-important,
but if you think about it too much, you are apt to make a
mess of things.
Sinclair Lewis: I don't know what this question means.
Hapsburg Liebe: My general feeling as to the value
of technique? One should study and cultivate it. I
haven't been able to do it, so far.
[pg 301]
Romaine H. Lowdermilk: Fortunately for fiction,
technique can not ride it to death. Good fiction, especially
adventure and humor, are to a certain extent immune
from technique. Of course technique, properly applied,
is necessary and used in every story whether knowingly or
not. Still, it is nothing in itself, to my notion.
Eugene P. Lyle, Jr.: Technique is so often over-stressed
that beginners are in danger of thinking manner
comes first and forgetting matter entirely. Have something
to say first; then try to say it. If you don't get it
said, then go to a technician to find out what's wrong.
So, little by little, you will get the technique, and in a way
that it becomes a part of you. Like hydrogen in the air,
technique can't be rated too highly, but taken alone it's
dangerous—to the beginner. A natural born story teller
intuitively tells his yarns without knowing a single rule
of technique. But natural born or not, I'm in two minds
if it would not be as advantageous for all beginners to tell
stories a year or two before they tackle technique at all.
Then, when they do, technique will help them, and may
not hurt them at all.
Rose Macaulay: Technique means, to me, the whole
art of writing, so of course I regard it as valuable to
writers.
Crittenden Marriott: Wish I had it.
Homer I. McEldowney: Perhaps I overrate the importance
of technique, but I believe that it is the fundamental
factor in success. In my mind, it comes before
plot. I have read a good many stories with next to no plot
at all—but they were "put across," and I enjoyed them.
And I have read half through more stories and chucked
them aside—even though their plots might have been
regular knockouts, had I stuck around to see.
Ray McGillivray: I believe technique strictly a minor
consideration—after true interest and sympathy and
punch are achieved. And of these, punch is most important.
No one I know—and Rascoe, Mencken, Fanny
[pg 302]
Butcher and some others drop into this honored (?) class—so
far has stopped to pick to pieces Growth of the Soil to
find out whether or not it violates rules of novel technique.
No boxer lately has made more than a four-round study of
the question as to whether Mr. Dempsey utilizes crude or
polished technique in his art. Champions, both. Both have
the punch, and a thoroughgoing sincerity about landing it
at precisely the right place. Technique, you say? Perhaps,
but if so, technique is a quality inherent in worth and can
not be achieved at all in a story which simply is written
according to a ruled line drawn on graph paper. For my
reading or my writing give me sincerity, sympathy and
punch, and I'll let the French fiction fans worry about the
mold into which any tale is cast.
Helen Topping Miller: As a teacher of technique, I
realize the value of it to the beginner in arriving early at
a certain mechanical facility in writing. Too devoted a
study of methods, however, I think has a tendency to
weaken the self-confidence of a writer and to hamper and
stifle the imagination. I have never studied technique,
except in teaching it to others. I had become a contributor
to The Saturday Evening Post before I had ever studied
the subject at all. My advice to beginners is to learn
technique—and then forget it.
Thomas Samson Miller: It can be overdone, but Lord
spare us the eeny meeny miney moists. Some stories read
like Turkish prayer wheels. Conrad has an English that
entrances, but has no idea at all of plot construction.
Browning—Robert Browning—wrote the best short stories,
in monologue. Fra Lippo Lippo, Andrea del Sarto, etc.,
are perfect short stories of the theme kind—theme and
human interest.
Anne Shannon Monroe: There's a right way to do
everything, and the wrong isn't worth doing. I believe
in revising till you sweat blood—but I can't afford the
time always to do it. One must live. When one realizes
what it means to put a piece of matter before the eyes of
[pg 303]
the world—the typing, reading by editors, setting up,
proof-reading—hammering and pounding a thing into a
fixed place, it seems nothing short of criminal to do all
this work—and make a place for a thing that has not
reached its highest point of perfection—to materialize a
lot of crudity. Every writer should go through the printing
trades, know the publishing business from a to izzard,—and
then I think he would feel more keenly the actual
crime in putting out something that isn't worth all this
putting into form and shape. Imagine setting up, in the
composing room, all the mistakes of the careless writer—deliberately
setting up mistakes! It's a fright!
L. M. Montgomery: I feel that its value is great up to
a certain point. But when you become conscious of a
writer's technique that writer has reached the point of
danger. When you find yourself getting more pleasure
from the way a writer says a thing than from the thing
itself, that writer has committed a grave error and one
that lessens greatly the value of his story. Carried too far,
technique becomes as annoying as mannerisms.
Frederick Moore: There isn't any authorship without
technique. It may be natural, that is, unconscious—but
it must be there. The title of a story is part of the
technique.
Talbot Mundy: Its importance can hardly be exaggerated,
although I have ignored it consistently and without
excuse. Technique is as important to the writer as it
is to a swordsman or a boxer or a diplomat, but it is rarely
to be found in hand-books. It varies limitlessly with the
individual.
Certainly the knowledge of how other men achieved
particular effects can do no harm.
But to make technique anything more than a means to
an end would be fatal.
Kathleen Norris: That technique is merely interpreted
personality, and personality is the most fascinating
thing in the world.
[pg 304]
Anne O'Hagan: I feel that the value of technique is
enormous.
Grant Overton: I do not think the value of technique
can be exaggerated, but I know of no method of directly
acquiring it.
Sir Gilbert Parker: Vastly important, but the story
is everything.
Hugh Pendexter: This query is blind (for me).
Clay Perry: I believe that technique is something
that comes absolutely last in the consideration of creating
a story.
Michael J. Phillips: I have to be restrained when
technique is mentioned. Any person who deliberately
strives to say things in fiction in an impressive manner, to
roll out sonorous sentences and use nice, long, mouth-filling
words, is either a wonderful stylist or an ass. If he is
a wonderful stylist, well and good; his stuff will be worth
reading for the gorgeous riot of word-pictures on which
one may feast his inner vision. If the writer is not a
wonderful stylist, he is an ass. Also a hypocrite, intellectually
speaking, because he is trying to be what he is
not. He is trying to set himself up as a magnificent fellow
who is to the manner born and tosses big words about
in the air as a juggler does oranges.
To me ideal technique is the manner of writing which
best expresses the character, personality and flavor of the
person who is writing while at the same time it permits
him to tell his story in the clearest, simplest and most
understandable manner. Any pretentious style says:
"I'm a devil of a fellow, but my story may be rotten."
Simple, natural expression says: "Here's my story, told as
best I can tell it."
Walter B. Pitkin: My early classical training, especially
my long study of Aristotle, gave me an insight into
the fundamental worth of technique and, I think, enabled
me, fairly early, to distinguish between technique and the
humbug recipe-formula stuff which half of the college
[pg 305]
teachers and the correspondence quacks peddle. Technique
in the Greek sense is the basis of all good art, even
the most lyrical. For all great art is communicative in
some degree; and technique is the science of effective communication.
No more, no less.
E. S. Pladwell: I know nothing of technique except in
a general and hazy way. Technique to me means three
words: Tell the story.
Lucia Mead Priest: I should think technique is as
essential to the writer as the foundation of a house is to a
builder. As I think of it, the art of the writer is like the
history of Italy's painters. Her old masters had great
stories to tell but they were minus technique. They had no
perspective, no anatomy. Hampered by these limitations,
there came a day when their intelligence was aroused.
Every man was so interested in the new things he was
learning—the technique, he entirely forgot his story. Then
came the giants, they whose hearts were full of grand
themes, whose minds and hands were trained to the doing.
Unhampered by the machinery of their art, they gave forth
masterly interpretations of great stories. This is, I think,
the evolution of the individual worker, whatever the craft.
Most particularly is this true of the writer's.
Eugene Manlove Rhodes: Nothing worth while without
endless labor.
Frank C. Robertson: My feeling in regard to technique
is that it is something that must be mastered before
any real success can be achieved. But I feel that a writer
should to a certain degree master a technique that is peculiar
to his own personality. That is why I am skeptical
about a too rigid adherence to the rules laid down in the
text-books. The first consideration, in my estimation, is to
write the story, then smooth it over with the shining gloss
of technique. Then you will have used no more technique
than is necessary; but try writing the story according to
the rules and it is liable to be cramped and artificial.
Ruth Sawyer: I think there always must be technique.
[pg 306]
It is something that must be mastered in the beginning
and then allowed to drop into the subconscious mind
and stay there. I can not imagine a good story being written
by any author who is conscious of his technique.
Chester L. Saxby: I put too much store by it. I warm
to a delicately sculptured story, a thing of shape and
beauty apart from the plot. But I strive to break myself
of this weakness. The true technique is directness almost
crude, restraint of emotion, fullness of fact with scant explanation.
"Look into your heart and write" is a mistake
of which I'm the victim. Heart serving mind—that's
writing. Jack London had the secret.
Barry Scobee: Technique is certainly necessary for
any writer. It is the letter, and of course the letter of itself
avails nothing. There must be the spirit. But the
spirit must have technique. In my elementary work I
learned something of technique. I am not aware any more
of how much I do use, until, as on only two or three occasions,
I have looked over a raw beginner's manuscript.
But the book learning on fiction writing is a part of me
despite my unawareness of it. And I learn more all the
time, but I haven't studied short story writing in three or
four years. But in my opinion technique is as essential in
this as in any trade or profession.
R. T. M. Scott: I just looked up "technique" in four
dictionaries:—Worcester's (1887), Collins' (not dated),
Murray's (1908) and Hill's Vest Pocket French-English
(1898). The word wasn't there. What does it mean?
Robert Simpson: Technique, to my mind, is of the
first importance. True, a man may write a perfectly good
story without an ounce of real dyed-in-the-wool technique
in his system, but the same story, technically correct,
would be a much bigger and better story in every way.
No artist can possibly do justice to his art without a practical
understanding of technique.
Arthur D. Howden Smith: I find myself constantly
valuing it more and more.
[pg 307]
Theodore Seixas Solomons: My feeling on technique
is that, like those bodies of it, so to speak, which make up
text works on the subject, it is "after the fact." Like
grammar, they undertake to examine writing (speech)
and tell us facts they ascertain about its structure. But
the structure—the story, the English speech—antedates
the analysis, having been formed unerringly in adjustment
to the laws of receptivity and response in the auditor.
Both grammar and expositions of literary technique have
been too empirical to be of much assistance in guiding the
formation of speech practises and fiction practises. Something
more fundamentally psychological must be devised
before either will be of much actual help.
Raymond S. Spears: Two things are indispensable in
my stories: a certain group of data and a certain form of
technique. Editors usually look for technique, and often
don't know it when they see it; I refer, of course, to
simple plot, (Aristotle's definition), requiring complex
plot only. The truest, highest, broadest things I do are
commonly simple plot, with beginning, continuity, end, but
without complexity. Most editors say "Fine—but no
plot!" of this type. So, to live, I have to complicate. Of
course, technique is utterly indispensable though it may
be unconscious.
Norman Springer: I think the writer must learn how
to use "the tools of his trade." If he is to make the most
of his material, he must study technique; or acquire it in
some way, by absorption, or anyhow. From my own observation,
I believe there is a danger in technique—it lies
in worshiping it, in placing it before the story, in making
the form assume more importance than the substance.
The oldest error in the world, I suppose. Think of all
the writers who are masters of technique, wonderful
technicians of language, and who are empty, with nothing
to say. They've lost their guts getting a style. Certainly
a writer must acquire technique—just as a painter acquires
skill with a brush, or a bricklayer with a trowel.
[pg 308]
Julian Street: There must be technique, but technique
is not so important as character or story. Joseph Conrad
is a wretched technician, but is a big man with a big sense
of character and story and a powerful picture-maker. But
he is clearly always tangled up in method. His trick of
having a man tell his story instead of telling it himself is a
great error—an error into which the author of If Winter
Comes fell, in that book, when he did not take the reader to
the court-room for his "big scene" but had a character
tell about it.
That is like the horse race that occurs "off stage" in
the theater. The actors pretend to look through glasses
and shout "Now they're at the quarter!"—"Salvatan
wins!" But we—the audience—don't see the horses running.
True, that method is sometimes inescapable, but
Conrad could often avoid it, and Hutchinson could easily
have avoided it in his delightful novel. If Winter Comes
deserves its success, but it would have been a much finer
book but for certain revelations of absolute ineptitude.
T. S. Stribling: Without technique a writer is lost,
but I think it should be subconscious, just as one's feeling
for English rhythm and the picturesque effect of words is
subconscious.
Booth Tarkington: The same as Tennyson's: "It's
not what we say, but how we say it; but the fools don't
know that."
W. C. Tuttle: I believe that technique is the greater
part of a fiction story—and the hardest to master.
Lucille Van Slyke: If by technique you mean facility—I'd
say it was immensely valuable to those who can grab
it—I never could—writing gets harder and harder the
older I get.
Atreus von Schrader: Technique is valuable in that
it does away with hit-or-miss writing. The author who
knows his technique will know when a story is a story, and
why.
T. Von Ziekursch: I am hardly competent to judge.
[pg 309]
Henry Kitchell Webster: If there is such a thing as a
positive technique, I do not know it. I have been writing
stories for the past quarter-century, and I don't know how
to do it. I have learned, in that twenty-five years, an immense
number of ways not to do it. I can sit all day rejecting
seductive-looking devices as they occur to me,—sometimes
because I can see just what the snare is that
they are spreading for me; sometimes because nothing
more than instinct bids me beware of them—and when a
real, honest, eighteen-carat, sound-to-the-core story comes
along I think I have learned to recognize it three times,
perhaps, in five. What technique I have managed to acquire,
then, after laborious years, is almost wholly negative,
and I've learned to be thankful even for that.
G. A. Wells: Many writers (the majority of them it
seems to me) get by without technique. That is, they are
not consciously aware of the fact that they have technique.
That is, in the highest form. Walpole, Galsworthy and
perhaps Richard Washburn Child, are deliberate technologists.
That is to say (as their work appears to me) they
are purposely aware of the rules of writing during the
entire process of writing. Technique shows in every line
they set down. The contrary of this is what I mean when
I say that most writers are unaware of the fact that they
have technique. Galsworthy never forgets the rules. He
would never wittingly express himself in a manner that
did not conform with the highest form of technique. Gilbert
Chesterton and, I think, H. G. Wells are of like caliber.
I think the writer who leaves conscious consideration
of technique out of the question predominates.
But there is this much about it—no writer can produce
first-class work (literature as the term is strictly applied)
until he has fully mastered technique. The better the
architect the better the structure. The architect who does
not understand wind pressures, tensile strengths, compression,
torque, weight stress and the other values of construction
can never design a perfect structure. The same
[pg 310]
way with a writer. A low grade of technique produces a
low grade of literature. I rank technique very high. Possibly
my respect for it comes of the lack.
William Wells: Oh, Lord!
Ben Ames Williams: I rate technique highly. It
seems to me a generalization from which there are few
exceptions that with perfect technique any subject-matter
can be transformed into a classic tale. My note-books are
almost as full of articles of faith in my technical creed as
they are of incident or description for later use in stories.
The most important single element of technique seems
to me to be the introduction at every opportunity of commonplace
details of daily life. To tell your reader that
your characters get up at seven fifteen, take a shower, a
shave, sing while they shave, put on their shoes, go down
to breakfast.... These things lend, I think, a similitude
of life to a story which can be had in no other way. It is
the ability to do this in the highest degree, I think, which
makes Tarkington's work so fine. If your hero and heroine
wash dishes together, tell how they do it; hot water,
soap-shaker, dry cloths. The reader will nod and say:
"Exactly; I've done that myself. This fellow knows what
he's writing about." And believe whatever else you have
to tell.
Honore Willsie: I think technique is as valuable to
the author as to the musician. It is to the story what the
steel structure is to the sky-scraper.
H. C. Witwer: My feeling on technique is that it must
obviously be present in some degree in all well-told stories,
or let us say, in all stories acceptable to the better magazines.
But I could not teach it and I doubt if it can be
successfully taught. How many famous writers are graduates
of such a course?
William Almon Wolff: The important thing to keep
in mind about technique, it seems to me, is that it is a
means to an end. Too many people think of it as an end
in itself, which it can not be. These are the people who
[pg 311]
say that a writer who has broken their rules has not technique,
or a bad technique. Rot! His technique is right
if he has accomplished his purpose, which is to tell his
story clearly and convincingly. What does it matter how
he tells it? Technique is essential, indispensable—but its
test must be a pragmatic one.
I think the reason for most failures though, is not technical
but this—that the writer has nothing to tell. I remember
what Freeman Tilden once told me:
"Very often I think a story is frightfully difficult, in a
technical sense. I can't seem to get it done. And then I
find out that the trouble is that I haven't a story—never
did have one."
Edgar Young: In the widest meaning of the word
technique is of great value.
Summary
Tabulating the above, out of 112 answerers we find 40
attaching extreme importance to technique, 45 taking a
sort of middle ground, and 21 assigning it little or no importance.
To the last may be added 3 who don't know
the exact nature of technique but indicate that they assign
slight value to it. Unclassified, 1; venturing no opinion,
2. To say that technique is not important in writing is to
say that it is not important to know how. One can not
write fiction at all without knowing how, without technique.
Do 21 of our writers therefore not know how and
do 45 of them consider not knowing how to be not extremely
important? No, and as a matter of fact investigation
would probably show that some of the 21 possess
more technique than do some of the 40 who attach most
importance to it.
It is evident that at least some of those belittling technique
are thinking of technique in its most formal sense—of
books of rules, of strictly academic instructions, of
hours spent in intensive study of abstract ways and means.
Bear in mind that while naturally no one is born in possession
[pg 312]
of technique there are some who, perhaps before
they even begin to write, have unconsciously absorbed
from reading fiction a good many principles of construction
and general method, while to others reading has
brought little understanding of technique and when they
begin authorship they must make deliberate study of methods
before they can produce anything resembling well constructed
fiction. Any editor can point to authors whose
earliest stories were written with sufficient technique to
warrant publication, and to many more whose early efforts
had great faults and who acquired technique only by slow
development through practise and study.
This book has utterly failed of a main purpose if,
through the answers of the writers themselves, it has not
shown vividly and forcefully that writers vary in methods,
principles and purpose fully as much as in natural ability
and results. If all had agreed as to the exact definition of
technique or as to its exact place in the scale of importance,
it would have been a miracle.
Nor can I, or any one else, step in and definitely fix its
relative importance or give it an iron-clad definition that
will entirely satisfy all writers. But if we turn back to the
discussion of technique in the chapter on thinking of the
reader when writing we can find a definition of technique
that will at least explain the differences of opinion that
may now confuse us.
Technique is applied knowledge of all that facilitates and
perfects expression.
Literature is an expression or interpretation. No expressing
or interpreting can be done unless it is done to
some one. Even when writing is solely self-expression the
writer must constitute his "other self," his critical self,
the representative of human minds in general and the
judge of whether he has succeeded in reaching human
minds with his message by recognized human symbols and
in accordance with generally accepted human standards.
His other or critical self is the adapter of his creations
[pg 313]
to the demands of a common human standard of expression
and understanding—is his guide as to technique and the
repository of all he knows concerning technique. During
creation he may or may not be conscious of this critical
self, but he can be unconscious of it only if technique has
been so thoroughly absorbed and assimilated that the critical
self can apply it automatically, working in perfect unison
with the creative self or, if you like, having become
identified with the creative self or passed its knowledge on
to the creative self until that knowledge has become a part
of the creative self.
Of all technique that has not yet been thus thoroughly
assimilated he will be conscious; the less assimilated, the
more conscious; the more conscious, the more distracted
and hampered by these tools that demand attention for
themselves instead of fitting unnoticed into the creative
hand.
In other words, technique so thoroughly assimilated that
it is unconscious is mastered technique. No other kind is.
So long as any bit of technique is still so strange to the
creative hand that it has not become an unnoted part of it,
that bit of technique may even then be a useful tool but
it has not been thoroughly mastered. And to the extent
that it is not mastered it will distract the creator's attention
from the creating to itself.
Unmastered technique is therefore both bad and good.
Good, because it is on its way to becoming mastered technique
and because even in the process it has some value.
Bad, because it distracts from the real creating, hampers
and cripples it.
If a writer, whether beginning or experienced, adds new
technique too rapidly, he will be too much distracted and
slowed up and his individuality, upon which the value of
all his creating is wholly dependent, is too much held back
from free expression—blocked, cramped, suppressed and
atrophied. There can be no general rule as to how much
new technique a writer can take up and assimilate at one
[pg 314]
time any more than there can be a general rule as to how
much a man can eat and assimilate during a given time,
but in either case there is a line beyond which lie indigestion
and harm. A man can kill himself by eating too
much. The creative self can be crushed under too great a
mass of technique fed to it in too short a time.
Because of this I do not hesitate to indict the entire
present system of teaching the writing of fiction. That
system, common to practically all colleges, correspondence
courses, special teachers and books dealing with the subject,
consists of seizing the beginner or comparative beginner,
leading him to the dining-table and forcing down
his throat at one sitting more food than he can digest in
ten weeks.
Naturally, acute and often chronic indigestion results.
In a few months or a year they feed him more technique
than he will be able to digest in five years, if ever. The
result is an appalling injury to his creative possibilities—an
injury from which in the large majority of cases there
is never a complete recovery and too often never even a
partial one. The workman is crushed by his tools. Individuality
is killed or aborted by the mere means for its
expression. Sometimes they talk to him about "preserving
his individuality," but they kill it just the same.
I do not base my charge on a theory. For more than a
score of years as editor on half a dozen fiction magazines
I've had the results of this teaching thrust under my eyes
in an unending flow of its results—stories often perfect
as to the formal rules of technique, but all merely mechanical
constructions without a breath of life. As one writer
has expressed it, these stories are an endless procession of
Fords, each complete in all its parts, well built according
to a plan, but all of them only collections of machinery
and all exactly alike. No individuality, no expression of
anything not expressed a million times before, no art. Just
mechanics.
The cause is evident—more technique gobbled down
[pg 315]
than can be assimilated, so many tools piled on that individuality
is crushed beneath the load. If proof is needed
it can be found by applying the remedy. When one of
these crushed, aborted writers discovers the seeming cause
or has it shown to him, casts overboard all his hampering
technique and creates freely, the results prove the diagnosis
correct.
He can not afford permanently to abandon technique or
the acquisition of technique, any more than a man can
afford permanently to give up eating, but he can give up
biting off more than he can digest.
Omitting from consideration writers who lack sufficient
ability ever to succeed, most writers who fail do so because
they write under a strain, artificially, mechanically. They
write this way because, from instructions or from fiction
itself, they have taken on more technique than they can
digest or master. Self-expression becomes impossible. Individuality
itself is stunted, buried alive or killed outright.
Experienced writers too often suffer from the same
trouble. How many writers can you recognize from their
stories if their names are covered up? So pronounced an
individuality in their work may not be considered a
necessity of good art, but, to present the situation more
liberally, do you not find the book and magazine fiction of
to-day for the most part very much cut from the same monotonous
pattern or half-dozen patterns? Give to all
writers the same material and plot and the resulting stories
will for the most part be so much alike that any one of
them would serve fairly well for all. Only the minority
will turn out stories with real individuality.
A distinction should be drawn, of course, between really
individualized creations and stories individualized only by
mannerisms or affectations of style, which may or may not
be really individual but are only surface phenomena.
American present-day fiction reeks with these surface
tricks—to the detriment of real art and of appreciation of
real art.
[pg 316]
One very particularly marked tendency toward degeneracy
in our literature is the growing tendency to decorate
a story with purely surface cleverness. Instead of expressing
his material in the language that best conveys its
meaning and spirit, a writer pretty well lets his real material
shift for itself and seeks for language that in itself
will allure and charm the reader. To him style means only
an opportunity for parading his ability for quaint or taking
phrase, glittering aphorism, cynical superiority, general
sophistication. All these are useful tools if used in
proper place, but writers of this type use them without
discrimination. The result is a paste jewel that pleases
many readers, but the result is nothing that even approximates
literature. Ignore this glittering tinsel and look beneath.
Generally you will find no characterization, no
real portrayal of life, no anything that makes real literature.
Sometimes a plot and often a situation, but the rest
is emptiness. Often the glitter is a true product of individuality,
but the individuality isn't worth putting on
paper as literature. These writers should be essayists, not
fictionists. As fictionists they are only vaudeville artists.
Yet they are a real menace to American literature, for
they appear regularly in most of our best magazines and
between covers issued from our best book houses.
Of this last type one good thing can be said—they are
not suffering from too much real technique.
For writers in general there can be no such thing as too
much technique, provided it is really assimilated. Nor can
there be anything more harmful than a stomachful of technique
undigested.
[pg 317]
QUESTION VIII
What is most interesting and important
to you in your writing—plot, structure,
style, material, setting, character, color,
etc.?
In going over the answers to various parts of this questionnaire
there has again and again risen the speculation
as to what would be the effect upon literary criticism in
general, particularly professional literary criticism, if such
facts as are here presented direct from the actual desks of
the writers themselves were read and seriously studied by
the critics. And applied not only to the writings of the
authors here speaking, but to fiction in general. To how
much more just assessment would it lead, to how much
more real an understanding of actual and comparative
values, to how much clearer a grasp of fundamentals?
There are good critics, to be sure, some very good, but
many very bad ones. Professional literary criticism in
America, including both the smallest local mediums and
those of most repute, is, generally speaking, perfunctory,
superficial, casual, over-sophisticated, sub-understanding,
hereditary, hack, and a long list of other uncomplimentary
adjectives. Perhaps the gravest indictment is that of being
hereditary, for this is more or less the root fault.
Critics, however inhuman their victims may consider them,
are entirely human and therefore subject to the human
failing of accepting the dicta of the past, not as merely
the best the past has been able to hand on to the present,
but as the final word that neither the present nor the
future can improve upon and that neither should dare to
question. If the past itself had acted wholly on this
theory a century or five centuries ago, its bequest to the
[pg 318]
present would be lacking in a century or five centuries of
accomplishment and progress.
The development of this speculation has little place here
and less in connection with this question than with those
concerning the imagination, but it has clamored for a hearing
all through the compiling of this book. So now it's
had it.
Reader as well as writer will find interest in the preferences
shown in the following answers. To know a
writer's "taking off place" is illuminating in any appreciation
or understanding of his work. To writers there is
here again further proof of the futility of general rules,
and from the actual experiences of a hundred writers it is
impossible that a beginner or even a writer of experience
should not glean information that otherwise would come
only through time, work and experiment.
Answers
Bill Adams: Character and color, (when I've got 'em
I say, "Hang you, Jack—I'm all right.")
Samuel Hopkins Adams: It depends largely upon the
nature of the stories. In my "Our Square" stories, setting,
color, style and atmosphere. In my more serious
works such as Success and The Clarion, character, plot,
structure and the interplay of living forces which partake
of and fuse all of these elements.
Paul L. Anderson: Character, material, color, style,
structure, setting, roughly in the order given (not invariably;
it depends on the story). Plot is essential; it's the
skeleton on which the living thing is built. To my mind,
the greatest of fiction writers, in the order given, are
Shakespeare, Sienkiewicz, Defoe, and Hugo. The setting
is, properly speaking, a part of the plot.
William Ashley Anderson: Material, setting, character,
and color. But this is accidental, and the result of
personal and unusual experience. All these elements ought
to be of value, and relative importance.
H. C. Bailey: Character is far most interesting and
[pg 319]
important to me, then style, and construction comes in the
third place.
Edwin Balmer: Answered under I.
Ralph Henry Barbour: I hold character the most important
in writing. If you've got that, you've got the
rest.
Frederick Orin Bartlett: Material.
Nalbro Bartley: Character development.
Konrad Bercovici: All the things put together make a
story.
Ferdinand Berthoud: Setting. My old Africa always.
I couldn't write a story of anything outside of Africa to
save my miserable life. Then I like fooling with the various
men I've known and making the poor beggars laugh
and suffer. Those who are alive of my characters would
murder me if they caught hold of me.
H. H. Birney, Jr.: To me, plot and material are the
most interesting, but I consider structure and style by far
the most important. Setting is of minor value if style and
structure are good. Witness Arnold Bennett! A man who
has solved the secrets of style and structure can write
about anything and make it salable and interesting.
Farnham Bishop: Plot, probably, at present. I feel
the story first, as a whole. Then I begin to see the men
who are behind it and ready to begin living it—character.
Perhaps I should have put material before plot, as the latter
usually springs from the former. Setting and color I
find very easily, after I have dug up all the available facts,
which is much more fun than setting them down, for I
write slowly and laboriously, forming each sentence carefully
in my mind before I set down a word of it. Therefore
my style is terse and bare.
Algernon Blackwood: Material, style, setting, character,
color.
Max Bonter: Style, I don't bother about. I just try
to make my lingo appropriate for the thoughts I want to
express.
[pg 320]
Material, setting, character and color always interested
me more than plot and structure. I am just now beginning
to realize the importance of plot and structure and to
pay to them the attention that they require.
Katharine Holland Brown: Most interesting—and
most difficult—the translation of the story, from an
image (very much scrambled, but clear to myself,) to one
that will be clear to others.
Therefore, the structure, and the pointing-up of the
plot.
F. R. Buckley: Most important ingredient to me?
Color! With five exclamation points.
Prosper Buranelli: Structure and style. The rest
are easy.
Thompson Burtis: In order of interest: Characterization,
plot, structure, material, color, setting. Style means
nothing whatever to me as yet. It never occurs to me. I
write as naturally and with as little trouble as I talk.
Consequently I have no style, probably.
George M. A. Cain: I can not answer this at all. Plots
are my chief difficulty. Structure comes next. Style is
unconscious. Material comes easily after a plot. Settings
present difficulty or interest to me, only when some
peculiar market requirement demands fitting stories to
them rather than them to the stories. My early ministerial
experience fastened my attention upon characters, and I
find them without effort. On the question of character in
fiction I shall say more under X. Color interests me
only when I have to get it from outside my own experience.
To me the supreme interest is always the reaction between
situation and character.
Robert V. Carr: I do not know.
George L. Catton: Theme first, then style, then characters;
the rest about equal in importance, with color last.
Robert W. Chambers: Fifty-fifty.
Roy P. Churchill: Plot and character first with all
the rest trailing after.
[pg 321]
Carl Clausen: In their order named: Character, plot,
structure, color and setting.
Courtney Ryley Cooper: All these ingredients are
necessary, with plot, structure, material, and one which
you haven't mentioned, accuracy, very much to the fore.
Arthur Crabb: Mind. Or if you prefer character.
Next to that is style. The structure is, of course, taken
for granted. The plot, setting, color, etc., seem to me to be,
as I said before, frames of the picture. One of my greatest
weaknesses is my inability, or possibly unwillingness, to
make the plot strong enough.
Mary Stewart Cutting: I think that structure, style,
material and character are important in the order mentioned.
Elmer Davis: Character, feeling. (If you've ever seen
any of my stuff you won't believe this, but you ought to
see the stuff I haven't sold.)
William Harper Dean: To me plot is the most interesting
and important. The rest of it—style, color, setting,
etc., can be sweated into keeping with the demands of the
plot. But if plot is illogical or non-gripping (I do not
mean exciting), then all the polishing and retouching in
the world will not make a story of the piece.
Harris Dickson: In my own work this differs greatly.
I have just finished a story that deals with the building of
a levee. As levee construction is little known outside of
this river country, I devoted much pains to the setting and
color. Besides this, the background of this story wields a
very strong effect on the characters themselves.
Sometimes a story is a character story, and incidents are
chosen to develop that character—as in the first "Old Reliable"
story. Sometimes it may be the story of a single adventure
in which the characters may be subordinated to
the events.
Captain Dingle: Material, setting, character.
Louis Dodge: The first consideration in writing a
story should be to tell a story, I suppose; but that should
[pg 322]
go without saying, and certainly style comes second, and
your style ought to be you, and not something you got out
of a book. In other words, a story is wearisome if it isn't
original, if it hasn't got something of the author in it.
Phyllis Duganne: I am more interested in character,
its development and peculiarities than anything else, in
either reading or writing. I like style and good structure,
but I think that real people—real people in fiction, I mean—who
interest me and make me either like or hate them,
are most interesting.
J. Allan Dunn: I should be inclined to state that character
drawing was the most important thing to me in my
writing. It is very likely my weakest point but it is to me
the most essential thing, the delineation of character and
its working under certain circumstances. I try for style.
Try hard to recognize of what my style may consist. I like
to write a story through one pair of eyes, if possible, and
that calls for an ingenuity that is interesting. Plot comes
next to character, then style, then color and setting. I
enjoy recalling local conditions, I revive the thrill of certain
atmospheres, I get a thrill from trying not to let them
run away with me and to use atmosphere and color only
where they tie up with action. And I continually realize
that I do not follow my own few rules.
Walter A. Dyer: Leaving out the question of what I
believe to be the requirements of editors, I find the elements
in writing most interesting to me in about this
order: style, color, character, setting, structure, material,
plot. Probably I've just reversed the needed order.
Walter Prichard Eaton: "Character is plot"—Galsworthy.
He said it of plays, but it is true of stories.
Character is always most important.
E. O. Foster: Plot, style and setting are to me the
most interesting things in writing.
Arthur O. Friel: Material, setting, character.
J. U. Giesy: Plot first, character drawing. Structure
is a part of plot, don't you think?
[pg 323]
George Gilbert: The whole story is important; when
I try, consciously, to pay any attention to the elements
you mention, the story escapes; I have only rubbish left.
Kenneth Gilbert: The most interesting and important
elements in fiction to me are plot, style and color. Plot
above all others; style that by itself may "put over" the
story when the plot is not what it should be, and color
that the story may grip the reader. Without color a plot
is merely harsh charcoal strokes on a white background,
and without style the story has no charm. Structure, of
course, is important, and material, setting and character
will serve to attract attention, but I hold the three first-named
to be vital.
Holworthy Hall: First—always—the story; second,
the style; third, there is no third.
Richard Matthews Hallet: I would sell my soul at any
time for a good plot, but it must be one for which I can
furnish background and foreground out of my own experience.
A plot attracts facts and characters as a magnet
attracts iron filings. If it is really a plot, and not a pseudo-plot
or theme, which is the amateur's usual conception
of a plot, you will be conscious of a quickening all along
the line, and all opposition dissolves as you go along. If
it is not really a plot, the obstacles will look big, the talk
will lag and the characters will have paper legs and
vacant faces. Touch a match to it and look for another
one.
William H. Hamby: Of importance in the order
named: character, plot, color.
A. Judson Hanna: The most interesting feature of my
work is setting and color. All else—plot, movement,
"punch" and "kick,"—is a rather weary necessity.
Joseph Mills Hanson: In practise, though perhaps not
in theory, the most interesting and important to me of the
elements mentioned by you in the writing of a story, are,
in their order; plot, setting, character, material, color,
style, structure.
[pg 324]
E. E. Harriman: The most important items in story
writing to me are—the appeal to a reader's sympathies—local
color—character—and the work it will do in strengthening
moral qualities, such as honesty, truthfulness,
courage.
Nevil G. Henshaw: First and most of all character.
Then plot, setting, structure and style. (I've lumped
color with setting.)
Joseph Hergesheimer: Humanity! Understanding!
Robert Hichens: Everything's important.
R. de S. Horn: A question difficult to answer. It depends
pretty much on the type of story. A character story
would naturally depend hugely on the handling of character.
I always have an instinctive feeling as to which is
the most important in the story I am planning to write,
and I try to capitalize it accordingly. Wouldn't it be better
to say that plot, character and atmosphere should be
considered of primary importance in the building of a
story?
Clyde B. Hough: I'm interested most intensely of all
in the action and humanness, that is to say the human
action, realistic emotions, desires and ambitions of my
characters which I strive to express in terms of action.
Next is plot and next is structure. Material and setting
are incidental. Style, characters and color should be
adopted to suit the occasion.
Emerson Hough: The story. The period. The thing
itself.
A. S. M. Hutchinson: Character.
Inez Haynes Irwin: All these things intrigue me but
if I must make a choice, I will say I am interested in character
first; atmosphere, which I think includes color and
setting, second; style third. Of course I am assuming that
I start with a plot but after all I should, I suppose, say
plot first because until there is a plot, there is no writing.
Will Irwin: I am most interested in character, next in
style, and next in color.
[pg 325]
Frederick J. Jackson: Plot and material most important.
Characterization vitally necessary to make the
story real. Structure and style the most interesting, principally
because I let them take care of themselves, if they
will. Setting and color? Use a camel hair brush, not a
shovel.
Mary Johnston: I can't say. All are so inwound.
Lloyd Kohler: The plot probably gets the most consideration;
style is also an important consideration.
Harold Lamb: This is a knotty kind of question. Are
not character and setting part of material, and color of setting?
Chasing one's imagination, as it were, around a
vicious circle? Just now, at least in tales based on history
or folk-lore, I give most thought to material, least to
structure.
Sinclair Lewis: How can one segregate them?
Hapsburg Liebe: The most interesting and important
things to me in writing are—first character, then situation
and setting, then—well, maybe structure.
Romaine H. Lowdermilk: Character. The characters
must be individuals, not mere types. Oh, how I hate the
hero, tall and handsome, a swift-roping, hard-riding cowboy!
Characters must be human and have mannerisms
and act natural! Plot is next. I must have plot or I
haven't a story. "Style" stories are a bore to the kind
of people I write to. All the rest—material, color, setting,
structure and so on depend on the sort of story and the
characters. I want (1) people, (2) action, (3) spots of
humor, (4) plot—unless you call action the plot. I don't.
Eugene P. Lyle, Jr.: Plot—that is, characters acting
and acted upon—is the most interesting and important to
me in writing. All the rest is incidental.
Rose Macaulay: Style, on the whole. But all of
them.
Crittenden Marriott: Mostly plot; sometimes all color.
Homer I. McEldowney: Character and color—with a
hope that some day style may be the most important.
[pg 326]
Ray McGillivray: Character, plot. See previous answers.
Helen Topping Miller: Character and setting interest
me most.
Thomas Samson Miller: I put material first, character
next, then structure; that is, I would prefer to put them
so, but commercially, plot is first, puppet characterization
next (editors have insistently congratulated me on characters
who were not characters at all).
Anne Shannon Monroe: It is difficult to say what are
the most interesting and important things to me in writing,
for every bit of it interests me intensely. I even love
to read proof—it's a thrill to look at a galley proof. But
the characters, I believe, are of keenest interest—just as
people are more interesting than trees or landscapes.
L. M. Montgomery: In my own writing character is
by far the most interesting thing to me—then setting. In
the development of the one and the arrangement of the
other I find my greatest pleasure and from their letters it
is evident that my readers do, too. This, of course, is because
my flair is for these things. In another writer
something else—plot, structure or color would be the vital
thing. Only the very great authors combine all these
things. For the rank and file of the craft, I think a writer
should find out where his strength lies and write his stories
along these lines. In my own case I would never attempt
to handle complicated plot or large masses of material. I
know I should make a dismal failure of them.
Frederick Moore: Plot comes first, structure next,
characters third. If these three are handled skilfully, that
is style. Setting and color not important. A good story
is—a good story.
Talbot Mundy: I am afraid that abstract ideas are the
important points of a story to me. I don't care so much
about a character as why he does so and so. I like to know
his mental arguments and all about his motives. But I'm
afraid that is heterodoxy. Setting and color certainly
mean a great deal.
[pg 327]
Kathleen Norris: Setting is the most fascinating type
of writing, to me. I should suppose character drawing to
be by far the most important and the most difficult.
Anne O'Hagan: Character development, then setting,
then style.
Grant Overton: It depends on the story. On the
whole, the material seems to me the most important thing.
I have seen all the excellences wasted on stuff that was
simply not worth writing about.
Sir Gilbert Parker: All are important.
Hugh Pendexter: Drama, material, structure, atmosphere
and character.
Clay Perry: Character, plot, philosophy, style, material,
color, setting, structure. This is the order of
importance in which I would place them. As to their
interest, to me, I place character first, always; philosophy
second, plot third and so on.
Walter B. Pitkin: The following order of interest
holds in my case: 1, the thought of the story; 2, the plot;
3, the character (or revelation of human nature in action);
4, the setting; 5, the color (which merges, for me, with the
setting).
E. S. Pladwell: Plot, character, color.
Lucia Mead Priest: "They are all like one another as
half pence are." If you ask me which gives me the greatest
pain I shall confess to plot and structure.
Eugene Manlove Rhodes: Character, plot, color.
Frank C. Robertson: The most interesting things to me
in writing are character, material and plot. The most important,
because I have to work the hardest upon them, are
setting, structure and color.
Ruth Sawyer: Plot—and its necessary structure;
character—and its necessary setting.
Chester L. Saxby: Can only say what I've already
said on this point: that development is the thing. It's like
saying, though, who is most necessary on a baseball team.
Where would you be if one of them was lacking? Material
[pg 328]
is the most often slighted in writing, I believe.
Stories are thin through lack of it.
Barry Scobee: All equally, I believe. If my story
lacks any one in proper portion and keeping with the
others it will drag with me, and when a story drags in the
writing it makes me wonder, makes me feel something is
wrong with it. However, a story will drag and bore sometimes
when it is good, so one must be careful about self-hunches.
But I must have plot, a puzzle, a frame to hang the story
on to get from crisis to crisis. To me, the plot lends the
essential puzzle and drama arrangement. Structure tells
it properly. Style—well, after all, I don't pay the slightest
attention to style, if by that is meant "the writer's
style." I don't know whether I have any style or not,
or what it is like. No one ever told me. Material—that,
after all, is the big thing. But I love the setting if it is in
my beloved Southwest, or where I know every detail—blade
of grass, or quirk of human, or smile of woman—that
is, what's back of 'em. Character—well, I have found
if I don't pal with my characters and know all their
thoughts, the story doesn't appeal to the editors. Color?
I don't know. Maybe I don't have much color. The word
doesn't stir my thought much. Local color, do you mean?
I'd get that in the setting.
R. T. M. Scott: Plot, structure, style, etc., are all
equally interesting to me and equally difficult. Perhaps
clearness, suspense and the surprise ending interest me the
most. If there is anything else—all the better!
Robert Simpson: The most interesting thing about a
story to me is the keynote. That decided upon, character,
structure, style, plot and so on follow naturally. They
can't help themselves. The keynote is struck, of course,
in or about the chief character. As he or she is, the other
"chords and discords" sound accordingly. I try never to
write two stories alike. Each story, of course, may have
a fairly general resemblance to all of the others from the
[pg 329]
reader's standpoint, but the note each strikes is as different
as I can make it. I am referring now particularly
to book length yarns, although my notion applies in a lesser
degree to short stories as well.
Arthur D. Howden Smith: In order: plot, structure,
character, color, material, setting, style.
Theodore Seixas Solomons: Structure and character.
Structure will make or break any story, because the reader's
fiction curiosity or interest is not to be satisfied unless
you rigidly adhere to certain laws of interest by which he
is governed. And character is the vitalizing principle that
gives snap and satisfaction to his reading. To put it metaphorically,
if the structure is not right he simply can't
swallow the story, because it opposes corners and angles to
the form of his mental gullet. But even given a proper
structure, the story is insipid to the taste unless the people
are real and enough out of the ordinary—have enough
"character"—to be interesting. The other elements you
enumerate, especially plot and style, are great aids, merely.
Raymond S. Spears: I find material, characters, setting
(atmosphere "color"), the most interesting; but this
betrays, of course, my lack of scholarship.
Norman Springer: I think in about the following
order—character, color, style, structure, plot, material.
But not always.
T. S. Stribling: I am simply delighted with every
one of the elements of a story which you mention. Take
any one out and it is like taking the tires off an auto. To
me it is not a rational question. For instance, which do
you like best, the tires, seats, engine or chassis of an auto?
Sure I like them best.
Booth Tarkington: I don't make your subdivisions.
W. C. Tuttle: It is rather difficult to say which part
of the story is of the most importance to me in writing.
The character has always been foremost, I believe; because
style, structure, setting and color must follow in order to
complete the characterization.
[pg 330]
Lucille Van Slyke: Something you left out of your
list! Something Barrie calls "that damned thing called
charm!" Ohee! If I could put on paper that—I'd let
any old body have the plot and character and the rest!
But trying to get it there is like walking on a tightwalker's
rope over Niagara—you're liable to slip off and get
drowndededededededead! End as plain mush.
Atreus von Schrader: Of all these, color is most important
to me; i. e., purposeful characters in colorful settings.
I prefer stories wherein people do things to those
in which nothing moves but the wheels in the characters'
heads.
T. Von Ziekursch: Structure, material, color.
Henry Kitchell Webster: The most important and interesting
thing to me, in writing fiction, is character.
G. A. Wells: I consider character the most interesting
feature of a story. A story without character is minus.
Plot also interests me. However, not too much should
happen. About two years ago I read a story of about
forty thousand words. In every line something happened,
and when I had finished the story I was decidedly tired,
both mentally and physically. There is such a thing as
having too much action in a story. I don't care for a story
that lacks structure and style, though if the plot is strong
and the character-drawing good, structure and style can go
hang. Setting is important.
William Wells: Oh, Lord!
Ben Ames Williams: Under these various heads: Plot
in a short story is often the most important element; in a
longer story it is interesting chiefly for its effect on the
characters of the characters. Structure always of first
importance. A story can be made, or ruined, by using
narration instead of a scene; by inverting the order of incidents;
by neglecting "sign-posts"; by cheating the
reader out of the big moment he expected; by putting
your climax too early—or too late. Or by many another
structural coup or mistake.
[pg 331]
Style is essential—and various. I try to tell my story,
produce my effect in the simplest possible way. Material
not important except in the negative sense that some
themes are taboo. Setting not important in a short story,
though it may be made so. Always important in a novel.
In a short story you may lift your characters out of their
background and deal only with them. In a novel you
must set them against their proper surroundings. Character:
The more definite, the better. Or in other words,
the more the better. Color: I see no difference between
color and setting. In this paragraph I assume to express
only my own views, of course. I've stated these views
dogmatically for the sake of brevity.
Honore Willsie: I could not differentiate. All are
essential to the finely rounded tale.
H. C. Witwer: Style and plot.
William Almon Wolff: Well, you have to have a story
first of all. So, I suppose, plot comes first. But you have
to have people, too, so character can be bracketed with
plot. After that the importance of various elements depends,
it seems to me, on the particular story.
Edgar Young: Style highly important, verisimilitude,
plot. With style and verisimilitude a man can go far in
story writing. By style I mean manner of narration in
connection with the particular story being written.
Summary
By assigning seven points to a first choice, six to a second
choice, etc., we get a general perspective on the trend
of these answers as a whole. Where several elements are
named without indicating order of preference all are
scored as first choice unless the order of the group is otherwise
located. Of 108 answerers 3 were unable to assign
relative values, 2 were not tabulated, 2 stated only that
importance varies with each particular story and 1 replied,
"I don't make your subdivisions."
Tabulating the remaining 100 answers we have a
roughly formulated score as follows:
[pg 332]
Character 430
Plot 329
Style 192
Structure 180
Setting 171
Color 166
Material 158
All 56
Action 21
Atmosphere 16
Situation 13
Development 7
Abstract Ideas 7
Clearness 7
Suspense 7
Surprise 7
Drama 7
Keynote 7
Humanity 7
Thought 7
Charm 7
Theme 7
Verisimilitude 7
Feeling 7
Philosophy 6
Period 6
Humor 5
Punch 3
The seven elements specifically mentioned in the question
were merely the stock names commonly used in the
profession that happened to mind and were of course intended
only to suggest the general purpose of the question.
Neither the seven nor the twenty-one other elements mentioned
in the table are all mutually exclusive and on
some there is no agreement of definition. This is of no
moment. We are not compiling a dictionary or a mathematical
table, though some of these summaries may give
that impression. We are seeking only to discover general
trends. Any deductions must be of a general, not a final,
nature, and most emphatically there must always be allowance
for the individual case, which on occasion can and
should defy all general rules and trends.
The value of such laboratory tests as these lies in our
using as a basis, not theories, but facts, our real purpose
being not to prove or disprove accepted theories but to
draw whatever conclusions the facts dictate. There is,
God knows, little enough of this kind of work being done.
Instead, the writing world is littered with thousands of
hereditary rules, arbitrary dicta, theoretical conclusions
and unsound generalities. Here are facts; let us get from
them what suggestions we may, each after his own fashion
and according to his own needs. I could fill pages with
[pg 333]
my deductions and conclusions from these answers, some
of them perhaps very good for my own case and perhaps
very bad for the next person.
It may be that the experienced writer can profit more
from the presentation of these facts than can the beginner.
Just as I with twenty years of editorial experience can
profit from them infinitely more than I could have done
five, ten, twenty years ago. We are all prone to conclude
that we have solved a matter for all time, when in reality
we have only become a little weary of learning and a little
"sot" in our beliefs. On the other hand, a little learned
in the beginning may be more effective than much learned
later by experience, for experience means vanished years.
That writers in general can and do learn from one another
as to problems and methods there is no doubt, and here
are writers by the score instead of by ones and twos.
These tabulations serve only toward a general perspective,
the more specific values being in the answers themselves.
A more general classification of the elements considered
in this section of the questionnaire may be worth
while, grouping them roughly as to general nature:
Plot, structure, action, situation, development, suspense,
surprise, drama, punch—574.
Character—430.
Setting, color, atmosphere, period—359.
Style, clearness, accuracy, charm, verisimilitude—220.
Material—158.
Abstract ideas, keynote, humanity, thought, theme, feeling,
philosophy—48.
[pg 334]
QUESTION IX
What are two or three of the most valuable
suggestions you could give to a beginner?
To a practised writer?
Answers
Bill Adams: In the matter of hints—to beginners—don't
begin yet. Wait till you've had a chance to learn a
bit more. To practised writers, "For God's sake don't
talk so much."
Samuel Hopkins Adams: To a beginner: to learn to
look at men and things directly, not obliquely, to write
what you want to write, not what others want you to
write; to adopt and cling to their creed, abominated or
considered heretical by most non-writers, that fiction is
and always must be more interesting and compact than
life, or it is not fiction.
As for advising a practised writer: why invite one to
practise an impertinence toward those who know as much
of the craft as I myself do?
Paul L. Anderson: To read analytically. To write.
William Ashley Anderson: A beginner ought to read
voraciously, learning to distinguish the real from the false.
He ought to study both history and literature. And he
ought to start off with the thorough realization that the
great writers were great thinkers, regular men and hard
workers. He ought never make a pose of writing, but go
at it, rather, as though it were a real job. There is nothing
to say to a practised writer except that he ought to have an
ideal and set high standards for himself, otherwise he will
inevitably become hack. A writer must sooner or later
show his personality in his works, and if he has no personality
(it may be a personality formed by his brain
[pg 335]
and character; his physical appearance has nothing to do
with it) he can never hope for continued success.
H. C. Bailey: To a beginner—know people and sympathize
with them. To a practised writer—don't use the
same characters.
Edwin Balmer: To try it on editors and get their
real reactions. Not to think you're good.
Ralph Henry Barbour: Suggestions to the beginner?
Nothing new, certainly. Make your stories real, though.
Have real characters, let them act naturally in natural
scenes and talk natural talk. Don't strive for a "style."
That comes. Or doesn't come. It doesn't matter in either
case. I'm one of the old-fashioned sort who believe that
writing is something that can't be learned as you learn
china painting or bridge or how to conduct one's self in
good society. I have a hunch that the ability to write anything
any one else wants to read is somewhere inside one
when one lets out the first infantile squall. I may be
wrong. Writing, after all, is just a method of self-expression,
like painting, music, sculpture. Successful musicians
are not made. They may be perfected. That is likewise
true of painters and sculptors. However, there are all
grades of musicians, and likewise there are many grades of
writers. Even a little natural ability will get you somewhere
if you cultivate it. Any one who wants to write has
my sympathy and good wishes. I say go to it. Only, if
you're taking up writing merely because it looks like an
easy path to affluence or because you're tired of gas-fitting
or selling automobiles or doing housework, don't be
disappointed if editors seem hard-hearted. To the practised
writer I have no suggestions to make. I'm not that
cheeky.
Frederick Orin Bartlett: My advice to a beginner
would be to write all the time; to a practised writer, not
to write all the time.
Nalbro Bartley: Don't write anything you are not
familiar with. If you haven't worked on a newspaper, do
[pg 336]
so. Don't be afraid to revise if an editor says to do so—the
"art" of your story is not likely to be imperiled!
Keep moving—in the way of getting new angles and
fresh copy. A practised writer so many times writes a
story which is hailed as his best, his masterpiece, and then
he settles back into turning out endless echoes of the same,
without realizing that he is retrograding. Don't mix too
much with inky people—you will do nothing but talk shop
and get into a deadly rut. Stay where you can see life—because
authors are not going to buy or read your stories
and the fiction reading public does not want to read about
authors—they want to read what authors write about the
fiction reading public.
Konrad Bercovici: If one feels it is the only thing he
wants to do; if he feels within himself the call of the minstrel;
if he can enjoy a good meal or a tall glass of wine
one day and dry bread the next, a soft downy bed one
night and the cold ground the following: if he feels he can
live that haphazard life without any desire to equalize it,
by spreading out his pennies so that he may have a little
more than dry bread every day instead of affluence one
day and misery the following: if he has had a manuscript
returned sixty times and still invests the next twelve cents
(borrowed from a friend) for a postage stamp to mail
same manuscript for the sixty-first time, then there is some
hope that some day he may become a writer. Every one
writing is really an apprentice. It is the most difficult
and the most impossible of all the arts, for none of us can
really write.
Ferdinand Berthoud: Don't try to write of something
you don't know about or have not experienced. Don't get
the impression that copying the style and structure of any
successful writer will be a sure stepping stone to immediate
success. Pretty clothes are not much use unless you have
something good to wrap them round. Don't get the mistaken
idea that writers become sudden millionaires by sitting
down and pounding the keys a couple of hours a day.
[pg 337]
As to giving advice to a practised writer—I haven't the
nerve.
H. H. Birney, Jr.: To a beginner I can only say that
the way to learn to write is to write. No one ever learned
to swim on dry land. Write all the time. Make yourself
your own merciless critic. Make up your mind you're
rotten and figure how to improve. Take some incident
from the daily paper. Write a story from it—not over
two thousand five hundred words for a starter. Lay it
aside till it's "cold" and then go over it, thinking only
"Here's a poor story by some one I don't know. How can
I make a good, readable yarn out of it?" Realize that you
can't be a Kipling or an O. Henry, but you can become successful
just the same. As soon as you are suited with a
story send it to a magazine for which it is suited. Ask for
a criticism of it. Frequently you'll get one, as editors
really want to help writers. Don't get discouraged. Remember
that, as far as sales are concerned, you're really
writing for just one or two men—the readers on the staff
of that particular magazine. What one reader doesn't
like another might. Read Martin Eden but don't let your
ego get too big for your cosmos as "Martin" did. Remember
that Jack London had been severely bitten by the
bacillus of socialism, and make allowances accordingly.
I'll wait until I am a practised writer before I attempt
to offer advice to one.
Farnham Bishop: Feed your fiction with facts. Never
cheapen your name and your self-respect by writing a pot-boiler.
Have only one grade: the best. If you can't make
a living at first by writing, enlist or take a regular job—and
learn about human beings and human nature in the
barracks or the shop, till you have something real to write
about. Learn to use a typewriter and always keep a carbon
copy until the story appears in print.
To the practised writer: Join the Authors' League and
the Authors' Guild. Build up your own staff of technical
advisers; an astronomer to coach you in the ways of the
[pg 338]
moon, a retired sea-captain or naval officer, doctors, lawyers,
engineers, buck-privates and other experts in all
walks of life.
Algernon Blackwood: To a beginner—don't write
unless you simply can not keep it back. Write to please
yourself. Never think of a public. Reduce your first
attempts to the briefest possible length. See in how few
words you can make your idea or plot intelligible. To a
practised writer—feel dissatisfied with everything completed,
put it aside and forget it entirely, then read it over
months later—and revise.
Max Bonter: I am only a beginner myself. Naturally
I wouldn't be idiotic enough to offer suggestions to anybody.
I have often wondered, however, what my fate would
have been if I had followed the line of least resistance.
Looking at my first story after twenty-two years of rough
house, I see that it was nothing but cub bunk. Nevertheless
at that time the editor told me that I had "promise,"
etc., and advised me to keep going.
What would have happened to me if I had started to
swell up at the tender age of eighteen and could have
found a market for the stuff? Why, at that time I fancied
that a swallow-tail coat represented the ne plus ultra of
social advancement!
I must have had a grain or two of sense under my callowness.
Now, after twenty-two years of real life, I feel
justified in making a beginning. I think that maybe, if I
work faithfully, I can say something before I quit.
Katharine Holland Brown: Don't write unless you
are profoundly convinced that you will be miserable in
any other occupation. Then, if you have determined that
you will write, tramp straight over everything and everybody
that gets in your way. Remember that to be a writer
will cost everything you have got, and more too. But go
up to the counter and pay. It's worth all you can pay.
After winning a certain amount of recognition, don't
[pg 339]
imagine that you can afford to lean back and relax. There
isn't any back to a writer's chair.
F. R. Buckley: To beginner, read Kipling and write
regularly without trying to imitate him. To old hand,
don't tell your plots before they're written. Not because
they're liable to be stolen, either.
Prosper Buranelli: I don't know of any suggestion—save
don't write unless you can't do anything else. If you
have the consciousness of genius, become a hobo, because
you are feeble-minded.
Thompson Burtis: As from one beginner to another,
without elaboration, I should say that the first dozen suggestions
would all be comprised in one: write about the
scenes, characters and events you know best and don't
describe a single thing or type on which you have to use
your imagination too much. Society girls writing about
the untrammeled West and a Kankakee newspaperwoman
writing about Reginald Vandervere are sad, and I think all
people who want to write whom I have known have inevitably
believed that their own actual experience and acquaintance
provided nothing interesting. The other two
suggestions I would make would be:
Go at writing as you would learning any trade—study
published stories in detail; learn proper technical procedure
from books or experienced writers, and work at it, forgetting
for the moment to consider it an art instead of a
business.
Having decided to write about something one knows
about, and having mastered technique enough to know that
in plot, construction and material the embryo story is
salable, do not let your wild desire to sell it and be a writer
cause you to revise, revamp and change your story so
much that it will lose its personality—its power of reflecting
you yourself. The best story, I firmly believe, which I
ever conceived finally ended up at half a cent a word after
many weary hours of work on it because I had revised it
until three prominent editors coincided in the judgment
[pg 340]
that it was "manufactured." It was woodenly written.
I believe the first draft of a lot of stories beat the final
one. Of course the newer the writers the harder they must
work, but I believe stage fright often makes them as stiff
as an amateur actor.
George M. A. Cain: My first nineteen suggestions to
a beginner would be Punch's celebrated advice to those
about to marry—don't. Literature is an art. If one can
conceivably be happy outside it, he had much better stay
there. As a lucrative profession it is simply a gamble.
If a man is free of all dependents and can stay so indefinitely,
he can afford to yield to the urge of the muse of
fiction. Even then, better not. If he has dependents, no
circumstance or artistic urge or anything else should lead
him to engage in literature at the expense or to the exclusion
of some other sufficient employment for a livelihood.
Needs demanding a source of income half that of a
plumber's helper will prove sufficient to hamper his advance
in his art, turn his life into a rack of financial worries,
spoil for him all natural affections, wreck his nerves,
weaken his mental powers, break his health. I know. Almost
every editor for whom I have ever written has insisted
that my best stuff was worthy of a much better
market than he could give me. The constant need of money
to keep the family together has compelled me to sell my
best with my worst, where I knew it would bring quick
cash. It has driven me to make a nuisance of myself to
editors who would be kind and quick; it has kept me from
trying editors who could not render such prompt service.
It has tied me to the cheapest and poorest markets. It
has caused me to fill these to overflowing, only to the
eventual loss even of them.
For the man who can not or will not take this advice, I
know of no qualification I possess to give any other.
Robert V. Carr: I can think of no suggestions that
would equal what a man finds out for himself.
George L. Catton: Write a story, doing your very
[pg 341]
best on it and paying no attention to any rules, and submit
it to a reliable, cold, disinterested critic. Then when
he has read it, ask him if he thinks you could ever make
good in the field. If he says no, stop right there and forget
it. If he says yes, go to it and stick to it in spite of
hell! But first, before you go any farther, get that critic
to point out to you your mistakes, and correct them. After
that pay no more attention to critics, or to courses of
study. Then write. Write! Write! Write! Laugh—and
write. Weep—and write! Get mad—and write!
And write! And laugh at rejection slips; they don't mean
anything. To a practised writer I would say: If you
want to be a "big boy" in the game, and you have the
money to invest, spend ten thousand dollars in an extensive
advertising campaign of your work. That's the big
secret and the only secret. And inside of a year or so
you'll get back your ten thousand with a thousand per
cent. interest. And I'm willing to prove it anytime.
Robert W. Chambers: To a beginner, be sure you
have something to say, then learn how to say it. To a
practised writer, work and pray.
Roy P. Churchill: To a beginner "Learn to express
your observations." To an oldtimer, "Learn to repress
your observations." That is, the beginner is afraid to
write fully about his characters, or does not know how.
The oldtimer does know how, and preaches too long without
selection.
Carl Clausen: Don't give up. Don't get conceited.
Courtney Ryley Cooper: Know your subject. Make
your story live. Stay away from the plaudits of your
friends and treasure every bit of criticism you can get
from persons who know. For the practised writer, this
motto: "I've just got a hunch for a story. It's going to
be the best thing I ever did in my life." For, I don't care
how poor that story may be when it is finished, it is the
enthusiasm that will make and keep making a writer.
When he sits down coldbloodedly just to write a story—that's
[pg 342]
about the time they're beginning to grease the toboggan.
Arthur Crabb: To beginners: Have an independent
income, no troubles, and a whole raft of experience. Far
be it from me to make suggestions to a practised writer
except from a commercial point of view. From that point
of view I should say find out what an editor wants and
give it to him, no matter how distasteful the job may be.
As I see it, current fiction writers are divided into two
classes, those who know thoroughly what they are writing
about and those who don't know anything at all what they
are writing about. So far as I can discover there does not
seem to be much middle ground.
Mary Stewart Cutting: One of the most valuable experiences
I ever had was that of manuscript reader for
two months. I found that every two out of three stories
that failed did so on account of unbalanced construction.
An architect does not build a house with all the windows
at the top and none at the bottom. A woman does not
make a dress with the sleeves put in back and front instead
of at the sides. But people write stories with apparently
no idea of relative proportion such as would apply to
anything else which they undertook.
Elmer Davis: To a beginner, take the Keeley cure
and try to get the infection out of your system before it is
too late. To a veteran, none.
William Harper Dean: To the beginner I would say,
"Write about the things that strike deeply into your
sense of emotion and damn the rest." To the practised
writer: "For God's sake don't prostitute your ability
for any editor—don't write to order. Go hungry and suffer
the pangs of near-failure (you will do both at times!)
if needs be, but hang on to what you know is life! Don't
let go for the easy money of the tailor-made story—these
have made it necessary for us to import stories to America.
Easy money from story writing buys a ticket through the
primrose path to—obscurity! Be a writer, not a hack!"
[pg 343]
Harris Dickson: Personally my most valuable suggestion
to myself is to write the thing that I know. For instance,
I did three or four historical novels that might
have been done by anybody that was able to read certain
books in which the material lay. Any hack writer can do
such stories in any library. Naturally they have no particular
value. But the man's story of his own back yard,
of his own neighbors, of his own town, of the conditions
that he knows the best, has more or less value as a contribution
to current history. Like the journals of St. Simon,
Pepys, The Jesuit Relations, etc., from which later histories
are written.
The young writer as well as the old must bear in mind
that he offers his work, not in competition with his next-door
neighbor, nor in competition with his town, his state,
his country or his own generation, but in competition with
the best that has ever been produced by the best brains of
the world. Therefore he must do his level best, at whatever
cost of time and labor. He simply can not afford
to let a story leave his hand when a better word will improve
it.
Captain Dingle: To a beginner: Write only of what
you know from personal contact; write your stories as
you would write your letters; avoid a multiplicity of
advisers. Write with your soul as well as with your pen,
and the first real editor who sees your stuff will either
encourage you to go on or send you a printed slip. If
that comes, go back to work. To a practised writer: Write
your best, even after you have arrived. Don't let an editor
down by giving him trash just because you believe he
will take it for your name's sake.
Louis Dodge: My suggestion to a writer, practised
or otherwise, would be: Be yourself—but be yourself developed
to the highest possible degree. And I should want
it understood that development is something that comes
more largely from within than without. To educate is to
lead out, or draw out—not to fill up.
[pg 344]
Phyllis Duganne: I suppose a beginner ought to learn
just what he needs to put into a story to make it convincing;
his good plot is nothing at all unless he knows how to
make his people alive. That's about the most valuable
thing I've been learning. And if he's inclined to use too
many words, he ought to learn not to do that—words can
get so in the way of a story. I'm not advising practised
writers yet; maybe I will some day.
J. Allan Dunn: I have suggested with good results to
several beginners that they should try to write in dramatic
form entirely before they start a story. That they should
write about what they know at first hand. That they
should leave the psychological alone. I think I can assimilate
advice myself but I don't know for sure and I don't
want to attempt to advise a practised writer. I don't want
to give an opinion on what is wrong with his yarn. I was
an editor once.
Walter A. Dyer: I would advise beginners to practise
restraint in writing and to seek to be sincere. Also to cultivate
the imaginative qualities in the development of
character and the making of pictures. To a practised
writer I have no right to advise anything, but I admire
independence and a devotion to the highest ideals of style
and structure; I despise the tendency to fall in with the
crowd and devote the greater energy to the invention of
the plot and emotions that "the public wants."
Walter Prichard Eaton: To a beginner—remember
that the Book of Ruth is told in three thousand words and
Guy de Maupassant's Price of String in three thousand
words.
E. O. Foster: The most valuable suggestions I would
give to a beginner are: First, to write; second, to write
and third, to write.
To a practised writer I could say first a big mailing
list, such as technical, sporting magazines out of the ordinary
line, so that "pot-boilers" could be adding to the
regular income, second to originate a style of your own.
[pg 345]
Arthur O. Friel: Having admitted that I can't boss
my own work, I'm hardly in position to tell another writer
how to do it. Since you ask for suggestions to beginners,
however, here are one or two for which there wasn't room
on the questionnaire:
Study words. They're the bricks with which you build
your story-house and you should know how to lay them
right. Learn just what they mean. You can not correctly
express your ideas without the requisite vocabulary.
Avoid using long or unusual words or complicated sentences,
so far as possible. You should know what the long
and unusual words mean, for occasions may arise when no
others will express your exact meaning; but usually you
can, and should, use simple words and simple sentences.
This makes your stuff easy to read. The reader doesn't
want to be forced to consult the dictionary in order to
find out what you're trying to say.
Read as much as you can. Reading will help greatly to
give you the hang of writing. But, in writing, don't try
to model your stuff on something you have read. Develop
it in your own way. Don't be a copy-cat.
Keep trying; that is, keep writing. If your first stories
don't "land" with editors, don't quit. Consider these rejected
stories as practise work, and write new ones. You
will gain in ease and power with every new tale written.
As for suggestions to a practised writer, the best and
only one I can give is this:
Pick your field and then specialize in that field. Learn
all you can about it—you never can know too much. If
you can, develop a new field; then you'll be its master,
not merely a follower of the trails laid down by others.
The beaten paths are always crowded with other folks who
are trying to do the same thing you're doing. If you can't
be a pioneer, then try to make yourself the best man in
whatever line you've chosen—the sea, the mountains, the
jungle, the city, the small town, or what-not. "Knowledge
is power" is an ancient bromide, but absolutely true.
[pg 346]
J. U. Giesy: Complete interest in work, dogged perseverance,
a study of language and its shades of meaning—a
study of dialogue with a view to both virility and
naturalness—a painting of descriptions broadly and concisely
rather than in detail (for a beginner). I'd hesitate
to advise a practised writer till I got into his class myself.
George Gilbert: Write; peddle your stuff through the
mails. Keep away from editors; you can't influence
them; do not let them influence you. Especially keep
away from the editor who wants you to "write something
like the last," or "string that idea into a series or a serial."
Be yourself and let all else not matter. Do not write to
order or to please any editor or set of readers.
Kenneth Gilbert: To the beginner I would say: Be
sure your plot is strong, dramatic and not commonplace;
start the action quickly, never let up on the suspense, and
end it with a twist. (The so-called "surprise" story, but
the safest with which to make the first landing.)
Modesty forbids me to suggest anything to the practised
writer. —— writers require no such advice from me, and
I wouldn't care to set down on paper any suggestions to
the ladies and gentlemen who over-write many of our other
magazines.
Holworthy Hall: Study Latin, forget O. Henry and
manage to have a rich relative or an independent income
in order to avoid the necessity of gambling with good ideas
and turning them into bad stories for immediate cash.
To a practised writer without identity, I should hardly
venture to offer suggestions.
Richard Matthews Hallet: I would say to a beginner
that after eight years in this game I was forced to hold
up a Spanish miner for food; and yet for seven years after
that I have made a living at least and paid up debts. If
the beginner is like me, he will need patience. If not this
year, next, and if not then, perhaps five years hence.
Respice finem.
I think I would also advise him not to set out to be an
[pg 347]
author, but if he has an itch to write, let him remember
that and do it on the side, but let him also have another
trade or profession and plug at that for his actual
contacts. A spectator pure and simple will give a pretty
thin interpretation of things, usually. A lawyer grows
better as a lawyer by the mere exercise of his profession,
and so a doctor; but an author by sitting at a desk can
improve nothing but his technique—that thing at which I
look aslant. He must go elsewhere for his matter. He
must charge himself if he is to discharge. And this is not
done too easily by strolling among his fellow-citizens and
pestering them with questions. Unless you have some
ground-knowledge, you can not even put the right questions.
Let him do something. Let him look to his personality,
in other words. In my opinion it will not tower much
over what it is when he leaves everything for writing.
William H. Hamby: The most interesting thing in the
world is human life. Real fiction is life interestingly told.
Of all artists the writer is the greatest, for in creating a
living, acting human being he comes nearest exercising
the power of a god.
A beginning writer should be intensely interested in
many things, the more the better. His mind should be
eternally curious. He must love life and people, especially
people of simple human qualities. Then he must discover
which of these interests he can portray most vividly and
give his stories or articles a background of his greatest
liking. At first it is hard to tell whether a thing is merely
of personal interest to the writer or of general interest
to the public. Many things are interesting or funny
purely because we know the characters to which they happen.
The writer must first make us acquainted with the
character before we can become interested in the details
of their lives. Advice, like medicine, is usually more
profitable to give than to take, but here is the sum of the
advice I would give a new writer; like your chief character
[pg 348]
tremendously, make him want something terribly, give him
the dickens of a time getting it, but let him get it.
A. Judson Hanna: This may sound cynical, but goes.
To the beginner: There seems to be little opportunity in
the field of fiction for originality. Follow the herd. To
the practised writer: You know how you got there. Keep
going along the same track and you'll go farther. Which
sounds like an Irish bull. In explanation—the very fact
that an editor will tell you just what he wants and what
he does not want seems to prove that a writer must manufacture
his stories according to system. The only chance
for originality that I have discovered is in variety of plot.
Joseph Mills Hanson: To a beginner, unless he be of
the unusual type of Poe, Jules Verne or H. G. Wells:—Adhere
to familiar subjects; personally familiar if the
subject be of the present time; historically familiar if of
the past. Know ten times as much about your subject as
you can possibly impart to the reader in the story in hand.
Tell your story in as few words as possible (I wish I could
practise that precept myself!). Write naturally; do not
strive for dramatic eloquence.
To a practised writer:—Do not become self-opinionated
and over-confident in your own abilities. Either tendency
spoils the freshness of view and the simplicity of statement
that is the charm of the best writing.
E. E. Harriman: I have given written advice to a
number of beginners, which can be condensed thus—concentrate
interest upon one figure—maintain interest unbroken—provide
continuity of incident—give central figure
an obstacle or obstacles to overcome by individual
grit, wit and perseverance—have a plotted, dramatic ending,
with very short denouement.
In addition I tell them—short words—short sentences—short
paragraphs.
Accuracy without detailed measurement, et cetera.
Forceful quiet English.
Wit, humor and pathos in proper proportions. Dramatic
[pg 349]
suspense. Clearness of expression that will inform
the most obtuse without wearying the clear-minded quick
thinkers.
To the practised writer I would say—be sure, since a
writer looks like a fool when he makes ridiculous statements.
—— makes a judge deny the right of appeal, when
all he could do was to deny a new trial.
I would tell the writer to avoid, as he would the plague,
a too free use of words requiring a dictionary at the
reader's elbow.
I would tell him to remember that America needs sanity,
not ravings of a madhouse, and to write such things as
would help her stand four square and solid before the
whole of creation.
Nevil G. Henshaw: In all humility I'd say to the
beginner—Write about what you know of with simplicity
and repression.
Joseph Hergesheimer: There are none but the need of
honesty.
Robert Hichens: Try to write each page as if it were
the only page you would ever write. Make each page as
good as you can. Don't give yourself up to some special
effort later on in your book. Put forth your best powers.
Don't be niggardly. Many writers are lazy-minded. That
is fatal. You must be ready to take any amount of trouble
over your book. Never think of money rewards or of the
opinions of critics when writing. Try only to satisfy
yourself thoroughly and don't worry about what others
will think or say. Never imitate another writer.
R. de S. Horn: To the beginner I would say:
Remember that writing is as much a profession as banking
or engineering; therefore don't try it unless you are
prepared to give it the same study and effort that you
would have to give these others to make anything of a
success. Carry a note-book always and note anything that
suggests a story. Write at least four hours every day,
whether you feel inspired or not; the ideas will come after
[pg 350]
a little while. Don't get discouraged; success came to the
biggest authors only after the most discouraging failures.
Revise—and revise—and revise! And stick to the people,
the things, that you know.
To a practised writer I would say:
Please don't write on your reputation. Write every new
story just as carefully and conscientiously as though you
were trying your first story on your first editor. It's so
disappointing to pick up a poor story by a good author.
Clyde B. Hough: Read, study, absorb and dissect current
fiction, take it apart sentence by sentence, word by
word, even dissect the words and see why some other word
would not have done better. As a suggestion to the practical
writer—still study current fiction.
Emerson Hough: To the beginner—Don't! To the
practised writer—Quit!
A. S. M. Hutchinson: No practised writer wants suggestions—not
my suggestions anyway. To a beginner—Read
all you can of the best stylists, write all you can, and
when you have started a thing always finish it, never
abandon it.
Inez Haynes Irwin: I have only one suggestion to the
beginner—getting into the habit of writing every day. I
have no suggestion to make to the practised writer.
Will Irwin: To the beginner. Get the writing habit.
Train yourself to write every day, whether you feel like
it or no. Write only about the life you know. Try to be
yourself. Avoid the habit of abandoning a piece of work
half-way through. Finish what you have begun, no matter
how bad it seems to you.
To practised writers—I humbly withhold advice!
Charles Tenney Jackson: As to suggestions to new
writers, I should think, whether of any value or not, they
are given above.
Frederick J. Jackson: To a beginner? First, second
and fourth sentences in VIII. To a practised writer the
same.
[pg 351]
Mary Johnston: Feel and think. Continue to feel and
think.
Lloyd Kohler: To the beginner I would advise that,
after he has studied the numerous books on fiction writing,
he forget about them entirely when he begins the story.
The minute he attempts to write a story according to rule,
he is playing with fire. He should study form and technique,
study the masters, and then, when the story is actually
begun, forget everything but the story itself.
Without doubt the greatest number of rejected stories
are rejected because of either the weakness or triteness of
the plots used. Beginners should always keep uppermost
in mind the fact that "the story's the thing." Get the
story first; technique and style are secondary—but always
very important also.
Harold Lamb: To a very beginner, to make friends
with some one who knows a great deal more about writing
than he does.
(This is the only school open to the beginner. There is
no academy for the would-be writer, no night course or
laboratory. They say the world is the university of the
story teller. But, after all, is not that only another way
of saying he must learn to crawl by himself, unless some
one wiser than he will instruct him?)
And then to make friends with those who have told
stories in other languages. To read them in their own
speech. The most valuable to me are French, Chinese,
Scandinavian, Russian, Persian. (No, I do not read Russian
or Scandinavian. Translations do, for these.)
And to write poetry. It is a good idea to burn it all
up afterward. That is a very valuable suggestion. Not
just emotional poetry, or that slip-shod thing, free verse.
But I think the beginner will learn that most of the masters
of his craft know both the music and the mechanism of
language. All the early masters did. To-day, I wonder if
the tools of the masters of the craft cut as deep as then?
Well, non sequitur.
[pg 352]
To the experienced writer, to follow every whim. And
to do a lot of work. He should know how to go about
that.
And a most valuable suggestion, if some one else will
make it, too, would be keep away from dictionaries, encyclopedias,
fiction magazines, literary clubs.
Sinclair Lewis: Work, work, work.
Hapsburg Liebe: To both the beginner and the practised
writer I would say: Get something to write about,
and know your subject, before you write; and write that
one story as though it were to be the best story in the
world—and don't throw away time on little stuff—try for
the biggest, always, and damn the wishwash and slush (as
J. London called it, and I will add) gush, mush and
tango.
Romaine H. Lowdermilk: I can think of nothing but
the trite. Work! Work! Write! Write! Count each story
that you finish—even if you fail to sell—as an exercise
in which you learn something. Think of the tight-rope
performer or opera singer. They have spent months,
years, at expense learning their business before being able
to turn a penny. The writer can at least consider the
story-writing as an avocation until he becomes proficient.
He can turn out a story once in a while though his days
be spent over the ribbon-counter. So to a beginner I suggest
cutting out the night dances, pool, cards and the like
and spending from seven to eleven each night at the typewriter—practising!
Don't get the idea story writing is
easy money. Be willing to give effort for each dollar received
and you're more likely to get the dollar. It's hard,
hard work and when ideas refuse to come it's even harder.
And when editors seem for a while to turn the cold
shoulder to stories you have poured your very life into you
begin to wonder if there isn't some pull being exercised
by the authors whose punk—very, very punk—stories you
see in the "big noise" magazines. But don't quit. Stay
with it. That is cold food but the only kind I have to
[pg 353]
offer. Keep writing and try to learn something every day
about the trade. Editors can't haul you along if you refuse
to follow their lead. They can't teach you.
To the practised writer I can only beg him to stick to
the things he knows. Nothing pains me more than to read
western stories written by persons who know nothing of
the West. Oh, the rope-tricks and the cactus and the wild-horses
and the cowboys they so glibly sling into a story!
One writer told of gathering armfuls of sun-dried cholla
(cactus)! Another told, lightly, of horseplay in which one
puncher heaved another into a clump of cholla!
Now see, I am going to write of a New York editor:
John Jones, editor of one of the big, down-town magazines,
finished his breakfast while his charming little wife,
Mary, packed his lunch-bucket. Then he arose from the
table and, with a brief kiss upon her ruby lips, he ran
down the steps and out across the bottle-strewn lawn and
down along the maple lined street. Mary stood in the door
and waved as he turned the last corner....
John whistled gaily as he strode into the editorial office,
punched the time-clock and set his lunch-bucket in the
cloak room. He removed his coat and put on the long,
black cloth cuffs that Mary had made; he climbed briskly
to his stool and, as the whistle blew, turned to the papers
that littered his desk and began to write rapidly....
Now, then. That's as near right as most of the cowboy
stories that appear in any magazine except ——. You hate
to read of that lunch-bucket as much as I do to read of
wearing the chaps into the Denver hotel, or using a hair-rope
for a riata! And all the rest.
Eugene P. Lyle, Jr.: To a beginner, see VII and XI.
To a practised writer: Repent, brother!
Rose Macaulay: Do not begin. Very few beginners
will come to any good. To practised writers: Stop. Very
few practised writers have not already written too much.
Crittenden Marriott: Choose one type of story and
stick to it. Otherwise you'll lose on all styles. Facility is
[pg 354]
a curse. If you want to write in several styles, have a nom
de plume for each.
Homer I. McEldowney: (See also under answer to V.)
One suggestion—the all-fired importance of taking the
old pen in hand often and as regularly as may be, and of
batting out lines, scads of them. And let it be the writer
himself that flows with the ink, not Zane Grey, Thackeray
or O. Henry.
Ray McGillivray: To a beginning writer: Read much
of the best of the sort of writing you wish to do. Suit
your own abilities and interests in the choice—and your
abilities depend upon what you have seen, felt, lived and
learned. Study every person as a human character. Live
as full a life as your typewriter will let you. Write like a
demon—and don't let up until your yarn satisfies you and
at least one editor.
To experienced professional writers I wouldn't say a
word. My questions, on the other hand, would keep them
humping.
Helen Topping Miller: My suggestion to beginning
writers is: first, learn people. Know as many people
from every walk of life as possible. Learn their lives,
their troubles, their problems, the joys they have—their
outlook on the rest of the world. Having acquired a strong
sincerity in dealing with humanity, the writer must inevitably
produce work which will ring true. In my opinion,
giving convincing and appealing character plot becomes
more or less a matter of mechanics and the employment
of the dramatic sense. Second: learn the language. Study
poetry, the psalms, songs, the Gospels—every form of
tuneful, rhythmic writing. To make words sing is to my
mind the supreme gift in writing English. And I can give
no better advice to the practised writer than this.
Thomas Samson Miller: Never force yourself, for the
stuff then comes from the head instead of from the heart.
It doesn't ring true. Quit before you are tired and you'll
be more eager to get at the work on the morrow.
[pg 355]
Anne Shannon Monroe: I would suggest to a beginner
that he first be sure he has something to say: then put
it every bit on paper; then find the main thread and eliminate
everything that does not make it stand out; to read it
aloud, and get the sound of his stuff; to read it to other
people and get their reactions; to lay it aside till he forgets
it, and then go over it again—maybe half a dozen
times. To eliminate every word he can eliminate and
still tell his story clearly and convincingly. And then to
copy it beautifully—and send it to an editor. One more
point: to pay not an iota of attention to praise of his
work, when he reads it to his friends, but to note their
actual reaction—their interest, curiosity, enjoyment of his
story. What they say has no value; how they enjoy it is
everything.
L. M. Montgomery: As to advising beginners—why,
I love to do it. Advice is so cheap and easy. First, I
always tell them what an old lady used to say to me:
"Don't marry as long as you can help it, for when the
right man comes along you can't help it." So—don't
write if you can help it; because if you ought to write and
have it in you to make a real success of writing you can't
help it. If you are sure you can't help it, then go ahead.
Write—write—write. Revise—revise—revise. Prune—prune—prune.
Study stories that are classed as masterpieces
and find out why they are so classed. Leave your
stories alone after they are written long enough to come to
them as a stranger. Then read them over as a stranger;
you'll see a score of faults and lacks you never noticed
when they came hot from your pen. Rewrite them, cutting
out the faults and supplying the lacks.
I would advise beginners to cultivate the note-book
habit. Jot down every idea that comes to you as you go
on living—ideas for plots, characters, descriptions, dialogue,
etc. It is amazing how well these bits will fit into
a story that wasn't born or thought of when you set them
down. And they generally have a poignancy that is lacking
[pg 356]
in deliberate invention. For example, I was once washing
the dinner dishes when a friend happened to quote to
me the old saying: "Blessed are they who expect nothing,
for they shall not be disappointed." I retorted, "I
think it would be worse to expect nothing than to be disappointed."
Then I dropped my dish cloth and rushed to
"jot it down." It lay in my note-book unused for ten
years and then it motivated one of the best chapters in my
first book. This illustrates what I mean by the note-book
habit.
Practised writers should try to avoid mannerisms and
stereotyped style. They won't succeed, of course, but they
should try. Also, they shouldn't presume on their success
and think that anything goes because they write it.
Frederick Moore: Read and labor. Don't get out of
practise.
Talbot Mundy: 1. Write. 2. Rewrite.
The beginner can learn to write only by writing, just
as you can learn to run only by running, or to ride by
riding.
I believe that rewriting is almost the most important
thing of all. "Go over a story again and again and
again" may be a counsel of unattainable perfection, but
I know it's good. It has never failed in my own case.
When I have failed to satisfy it has been because, for
financial reasons, I have neglected this essential.
It may rarely happen that because of long forethought
or peculiar skill or familiarity with a certain subject, a
writer may be able to dash off a story without pause.
Perhaps pause is a bad thing anyway. But reconsideration—polish—elimination
of unnecessary words, sentences,
paragraphs and even chapters—these are almost as important
as the plot. For of what use is a story if it gives
the reader no pleasure to read? Each story should be a
finished job.
There ought to be a law against writing more than one
book a year. In fact there is a law against it. I'm going
[pg 357]
to reform and obey the law. One book or its equivalent
in twelve months would pay ninety-nine out of a hundred
writers (in the end) vastly better than the novelette a
month that I have been attempting.
Kathleen Norris: Write as freely as you would bake
if you meant to be a baker.
Imagine that your seventeenth story is going to be your
first success, and move steadily and indifferently through
the discouragements that meet the first sixteen.
Live, in loving and giving, to the full; and think of your
work as a sort of overflow.
4th to 56th rule. Write.
Anne O'Hagan: The usual one—know enough about
your story, your characters, their lives and experiences, to
be in a way possessed by them when you are working with
them. Otherwise you can't write with any profit.
Do things not connected with the business of writing
now and then—study unrelated topics, travel, farm,
get into movements, etc., etc., not for the purpose of getting
material but for the purpose of getting fertilizers; as
the good agriculturist plows, cultivates and seeds a field
every now and then, not in order to reap a crop, but in
order to plow under his crop for the enrichment of his
soil.
Grant Overton: There is no suggestion of a concrete
sort that one can make which will be of any value to a
beginner—that is, a general suggestion. He must work it
all out for himself. He will get it with all his intellectual
five or six or seven senses from reading and from following
writers and other people in general. The work of synthesis
is his job. The creative emergence is his genius if
he has it. A practised writer is not in need of suggestions,
or, if he is, they have nothing to do with his actual writing
but with his qualities as a man and a thinker, his general
outlook upon life, his philosophy, etc.
Sir Gilbert Parker: None.
Hugh Pendexter: To the beginner: write what you
[pg 358]
know. Be interesting. To the practised writer: have nothing
happen beyond the plane of human possibilities. It
is better to keep to the plane of probabilities. Truth may
take such grotesque shapes as to surpass the wildest fiction,
but fiction should always be truthful.
Clay Perry: To a beginner I would say: get into a
writing game, newspaper work, if possible, and you will
soon find out whether you really want to write as a career.
Use raw life as a study. Mix with the common herd and
get to know them. Be of the people and you will be for
the people and they will be for you; it will reflect in your
work.
To a practised writer: Keep close to the source, human
nature. Don't go away and hide for long periods at a
time. Try to turn out in each successive story something
better than the last. Let each one be your current masterpiece.
Walter B. Pitkin: I can not give two or three suggestions
to a beginner, for every beginner is an individual,
having his own peculiarities of interest, perception, bent
and instinctive expressiveness. All I can say is that all beginners,
irrespective of individual differences, must
achieve three things: insight into and enthusiasm over
some aspect of life that is capable of being dramatized or
similarly portrayed in narrative; secondly, a sense of effective
presentation, be it of drama or character or what
not; and, lastly, some kind of original touch, which obviously
can not be defined except in some useless negative
way. Each of these three achievements involves both native
ability and training. The training need not come from
schools or teachers; it may come from the worker's own
resolve to observe, analyze and practise. Ability alone
gets only a little way. Training alone gets nowhere. A
word on the second achievement mentioned. Effective
presentation involves much more than a command of English.
It involves, over and above that, skill in selecting
episodes, angles of approach, phases of character and action
[pg 359]
which stress the significant in your story and blur or
wholly remove the trivial and irrelevant. In this department
of your work, nothing succeeds so well as patience,
elaborate observation and practise in "thumb-nail
sketches" and persistent revision.
E. S. Pladwell: There is only one valuable suggestion:
Know your own story. Know where it is going to
end. If the climax is clear any road can lead to the climax.
I never had trouble except when I ignored that rule. If
one knows the climax there need be no rambling to get
there. Give me a snappy climax and I can build any story
to it.
Lucia Mead Priest: I do not feel competent to suggest
in this, but I will venture to state what I feel is a sad
lack in our current literature—it is a loss in moral values.
Why has the story of A. S. M. Hutchinson swept the
English reading people off its feet? Because he has given
us something for which we were hungry—a decent, whole-souled,
high thinking man. "Mark Sabre" is not impossible,
nor a namby-pamby. He is real. The fact that the
world has responded is reassuring. We are not dead to
honor or clean thinking after all.
For one, I am deadly weary of flaunting naked bodies
and the coarse souls that meet us on every printed page.
Let us turn the leaf. Let us, every last man of us, get
down into himself, into his decencies, and turn his pen their
way.
He will reap his reward, I believe. Ask the publishers
about If Winter Comes.
Eugene Manlove Rhodes: Never read book reviews
or "literary" magazines—books about books.
Frank C. Robertson: To the beginner, and I would
not presume to advise any other kind, I would say that, if
there is the innate ability to write, adherence to three
simple rules should bring success. Think, Work, Revise.
But above all think. And realize right at the beginning
that bluffs won't work. Don't pretend to be a writer until
[pg 360]
you are one. The instant you stop to pose you lose some
of the momentum that is carrying you along toward success.
The woods are so full of posers that there is no
longer any distinction even in being a good one.
Ruth Sawyer: For a beginner I should say write
simply, write of the best and the most inspirational things
and people that you know. Test the value of what you do
by the quality of human appeal that is in it and remember
that the finest and most lasting influences in any art are
those that build toward something and not those that pull
down. To the practised writer I have nothing to offer. He
knows what he wants to do and how he wants to do it better
than I can tell him.
Chester L. Saxby: To a beginner: Read! Read! Read!
Anything, everything—and discuss it. Nobody can tell
a beginner what to write or how to write—in the way of
style or type of story, I mean. Let him go, and then be
fair enough to his future to find fault. Of course, a beginner
should seek the society of a practised writer, and a
practised writer should seek the society of the beginner.
The beginner needs insight into methods, and the practised
writer, God wot, gets as jaded and blasé and scrawny as
anything if he doesn't forever look behind him. To the
practised writer: Quit thinking of the reading public.
Be inspired once more. Look back.
Barry Scobee: For the beginner: Know you want to
and will write. Then learn technique. Then get something
out of your own experience to write about—in other
words, have something to write about. Don't flounder as
I did because I had nothing to write about. As soon as I
found something to write about I began to sell. By something
to write about I mean something you love, understand,
are sincere about.
Advice, hints to the practised writer? Nothing doing!
I'll try to listen, though.
One more thought here: It seems to me, after all, that
sincerity is the great need and essential of the writer. I
[pg 361]
saw in the Metropolitan five or six years ago that of two
thousand stories submitted not one seemed to be sincere.
(That may not have been the precise statement, but it is
the impression I got then.) And the statement set me to
thinking, and has kept me at it now and then ever since.
Sincerity! The editors of —— sent a story back to me
recently. It wasn't sincere writing and I knew it. There's
no use; I can't bluff or four-flush or give short measure in
my fiction and get away with it.
R. T. M. Scott: My best advice to a beginner is to
write one hundred stories. I would not advise a practised
writer. He would not be a practised writer if he accepted
any advice that did not come from within himself.
Robert Simpson: To a beginner I should say above all
things, write incessantly, write simply, and revise without
end. Learn to appreciate the true value of criticism.
All criticism is good, however incompetent or unjust some
of it may be, if only because it expresses a point of view.
Study the stories of the recognized masters, then those of
the rank and file, and finally the clumsy tricks of other
beginners. Lots of beginners have ideas and tricks of writing
that are worth knowing and mastering and applying to
your own particular style. Finally, always remember that
in a story, no matter what its class or nature, three things
are absolutely essential. These three are interest, suspense
and climax—the beginning, the middle and the end.
I won't split straws about the possible overlapping of interest
and suspense, because I don't allow myself to become
confused about their meanings. In beginning a story
one must write with a view to taking hold of the reader's
interest. As the story progresses it must develop suspense
to retain that interest more firmly, and, when the climax
is reached, one must be sure that it satisfies that interest.
Of these three the climax is the most important, largely
because it is the final impression the reader has of the
story. He takes that final impression away with him.
What went before is more or less of a blur, and no matter
[pg 362]
how brilliantly the climax may have been led up to, if it
does not satisfy the interest of the reader, his impression
of the story is going to be flat and unprofitable. Therefore,
try to get the climax first.
To the practised writer I should say—practise some
more. Simplify. Make one word grow where a dozen
grew before. There is no graduation day in the school
of writing. Do not be tempted by success into the worship
of false gods. Keep your work clean and honest and remember
that it is your public's only conception of you.
The man who doesn't put all of the God that is in him into
the stuff he writes isn't an author at all. He's only a
parasitic imitation. And he who does—well, he doesn't
have to be reminded that it is a long and dusty road to
the Throne.
Arthur D. Howden Smith: Simplicity of language.
Simplicity of plot. Clear-cut characterization. They
apply to new and experienced writers.
Theodore Seixas Solomons: On plot, or the "story"
factors, I would tell a beginner to be sure it's a story. If,
boiled down to a few sentences, it interests a person, particularly
a young person, and elicits, naturally, the remark
or the question "Now what do you think of that!"
it will mean it has that beginning and end and curve between
which distinguishes it from a mere piece of life or a
mere tale, or a mere unorganized, disunified thing which,
no matter what skill may be used in the handling of it,
can never be a story. Next I would tell him to beware of
excerpts from life, so-called "true stories," as he would
avoid rattlesnakes. Finally, that as to the language content
of his story, his expression, to begin with natural expression,
to write as he would write in a letter to a pal,
and learn dignity and "style," gradually, by a series of
modifications and buildings upon that natural speech of
his. As to grammar and rhetoric, they will give him little
trouble if he builds up from his own speech. By this
means he will always remain clear and always retain his
[pg 363]
own individuality; he will avoid imitation and avoid
"fine" writing. As to all the rest—everything—as to
technique, I would tell him constantly and always to consider
himself as a reader and not as a writer, and rigidly
adhere to all his prejudices and whims as a reader, while
learning to become a writer. That's all. To a practised
writer I'd merely omit that middle advice about working
up a style from his common speech in writing letters or
talking, for the practised writer has gone beyond the possibility
of doing that. But the rest of my advice to the
beginner I would repeat to the practised writer, for depend
upon it, whatever his faults are, they may be corrected
by following that advice. I wish somebody was
around me to make me do it!
Raymond S. Spears: Work on a newspaper, and learn
how to gather facts. Formulate a habit of recognizing literary
technique—as sentence structure, paragraphic,
chapter, etc. And weigh everything in a scales that shows
habit of mind regarding moral rectitude or obliquity. I
think every writer owes it to the public to use his talents,
say for an average of one hour a day, in unselfish public
service. For clean politics, help along education, drive out
criminal practises, as sale of narcotics, contract swindling,
etc. This is just a notion.
Norman Springer: For a beginner: Learn to take
criticism. Even if it hurts. Especially if it hurts. That's
the kind that helps. Don't waste your time inventing
fancy plots—they've all been done before. Don't take
your ideas of life from the movies. And beware of the
inspirational story, that one that comes rushing full clad
out of your mind and just dribbles from your finger-tips.
Every writer gets these stories occasionally; they are never
as good as you imagine them to be, they always need careful
revision, and—this is important—it is this sort of story
that sometimes turns out to be an unconscious plagiarism.
So don't be too proud of the "easy to write" story.
The practised writer: Well, I don't know. I'm not
[pg 364]
practised enough myself. But judging from observation,
the chief danger to the practised, and successful, writer
lies in the fact that he may catch egotitis.
Julian Street: The beginner should read good stuff,
but should not imitate. He should study life around him,
not life out of books. At least he should not write out of
what he has read, but out of his experience.
The experienced writer frequently needs cutting.
T. S. Stribling: Beginners should study the dictionary,
look up at least five thousand synonyms for the verb
"say," talk to everybody, love thieves, oil stock salesmen
and book agents as well as he does the cook, the banker and
the home-run slugger on his home-town team; read everybody's
stuff and resolve to do better; look at sunsets and
flappers, listen to sermons for amusement and go to the
vaudeville for thoughts of depth and gravity.
Have no advice for professional writers—their habits
are fixed.
Booth Tarkington: I don't know how to make a suggestion
to a beginner without knowing that beginner; same
applies to a practised writer.
W. C. Tuttle: Giving advice to beginners is like trying
to teach a novice to shoot. You can hand 'em the gun,
point out the target and explain about notching the sights.
A typewriter for a gun, paper for ammunition and the
editor for the target. Seriously, I should tell them to write
only of things of which they "know." Do not copy any
one, try to stick to their own vocabulary, and be human.
After they grow past writing only of things they know,
perhaps they might expand. I never have.
Lucille Van Slyke: I'd say to a beginner—"Don't do
it! Not unless you just can't help yourself, not unless
you can't stop yourself!" And I'd say to a practised
writer, "Stop, unless you can keep singing, 'I, too, have
lived in Arcady and have never forgotten the way back!'"
Incidentally, the way I wedged in might interest a very
beginning writer. My first paid job at writing was book
[pg 365]
reviewing. I was less than twenty and utterly unqualified
for such a task, but it was the only job I could get. It was
probably hard on the chaps whose books I reviewed, but
very good for me. I did it for about a year and in that
time began to understand that the wretched books in the
lot by unknowns (why any publisher risked time on them
I couldn't see) were by persons who knew nothing about
what they were writing. So I registered a vow within me
that I would never insult any editor by sending him anything
that I wasn't as sure as I could possibly be contained
all that I could find out about its subject. That a beginning
writer better tackle children because it was the only
age she could possibly have anything like a perspective for.
That everybody else had done American children so well
that I'd better tackle foreign ones. I had just pulled
through a classical course at college and decided I'd like
to try Greek children. I couldn't go to Greece, so I
prowled about New York trying to find a Greek colony.
Stumbled on a Syrian one. Fell head over heels in love
with 'em. Pretty nearly lived with 'em for three years.
Spent all the time I could in the Oriental room at the library,
dragging out all the history and legend and poetry,
good, bad or indifferent, that I could corral. Spent another
year struggling with dialect and pondering over
whether I'd dare risk it—or risk reproducing the effect I
wanted without it. In all it was nearly four years before
I had a single story on paper—and it took me about two
years to write just fifteen stories—all of which were sold.
Then I stopped quick while the stopping was good, because
I didn't want to get into a rut. This can be of no
possible use to any writer with genius or talent but it
might help a person like myself who had nothing to begin
with but an inclination to write. And it was a way into
finding out that I could earn money while I was learning
to write—I mean trying to learn to write! (Again I realize
that it was a thing that started the first story—a queer-shaped
loaf of bread in a Syrian baker's shop—the kind of
[pg 366]
bread that is sold to be used at the party given when a
little Syrian cuts his first tooth.)
Atreus von Schrader: To the beginner; don't write a
story unless you know and understand both your characters
and your setting. To a practised writer; find a
group of characters and stick to them. This makes for
better writing and for cumulative value until, as is almost
invariably the case, the thing is overdone.
T. Von Ziekursch: To spin the tale in such a way
that the reader must live through it.
Henry Kitchell Webster: The best advice I have to
give a beginner is that he write, and keep on writing; that,
when he has told his story, he despatch it to an editor, or a
series of editors, and forget it, telling a new story, if he
has a new one to tell, instead of trying to improve an old
one.
G. A. Wells: The advice to the beginner to condense
is important. Most stories printed will stand pruning,
many of them to a considerable extent. I would also impress
upon the tyro the absolute necessity of work. Work!
He can't observe union hours. Twelve hours a day is about
right; fifteen if possible. Read anything and everything.
One class of literature is likely to make a parrot of him.
Only those who have the grace to see good in a rejection
slip belong in the game. The beginner must make up his
mind that possibly (very likely) he will have to struggle
years before he breaks through. Far too many aspiring
young men and women go into the game of authorship
with a guess-I'll-write-a-story-and-sell-it-for-a-thousand-dollars
spirit. First stories do get across now and then,
but they are the exceptions and not the rule. I sold my
first story six years after I began to write, and in the
meantime accumulated a bale of rejection slips. I am still
at it.
Most aspirants quit cold after a few rejections. They
haven't the guts (pardon) to stick it out. There are a
number of would-be authors in this town. One by one they
[pg 367]
crop up, bloom a while in the sun of anticipation, then the
vitriol of disappointment withers them and they fade
again into the soulless clerks and truck drivers of yore.
Too much stress can not be placed upon persistence. Persistence
alone may mean the difference between success
and failure.
I would advise the practised writer to turn out less and
better work. He should forget money and write for the
sake of art. He should not depend too much upon past
performances, for even laurel withers. Most important of
all, he should quit while the quitting is good, and not go
on and on until his work shows that he has lost his grip.
Mark Twain went too far. London also. ——'s later stuff
is insipid. —— is beginning her second childhood in authorship.
—— used to write good stories. It is perhaps a
blessing that O. Henry died before he ruined himself with
"serious stuff." I admit that later work has a finish, a
polish that early work lacks; but very seldom does later
work show the fire, the vigor, the enthusiasm, the freshness
that early work does. So it is a good idea for the practised
writer not to make a marathon of what should be no
more than a dash.
William Wells: Oh, Lord!
Honore Willsie: Study story structure every day.
Use a dictionary and thesaurus constantly. Practise the
forming of sentences and paragraphs as constantly as you
would practise scales were you a musician. I have no suggestions
for the practised writer.
H. C. Witwer: To a beginner I would suggest a thorough
reading of the popular magazines, a shot at the newspaper
game if possible, plenty of clean white paper, a typewriter,
and a resolution to take punishment in the form
of hard work and rejections. The first time an editor says
or writes, "... but your work interests me, and I would
like to have a talk with you," all will be forgotten! To
a practised writer I would say this—apologizing for what
might be thought patronization—don't forget they are
[pg 368]
coming up from the depths every year, just as you came
up. Editors, as a whole, crave "discoveries," new names,
fresh viewpoints, etc. Don't think of attempting to rest
on past laurels. Don't keep a once popular character too
long before your readers, work harder now than you did
before you landed. Look around you, the biggest "names"
are the biggest producers, year after year. You're a writer—all
right, write.
William Almon Wolff: For the beginner: Be sure
you have something to say. Retain a single point of view
in a short story. Know—and make clear—exactly why
people do what they do, and see to it that they never do
anything simply to help the plot along.
Who am I to suggest things to the practised writer? But
those three things, and, especially, the third, are pretty
good things for any one to keep in mind, I should say.
Edgar Young: Write what you know about; do not
take other men's underlying ideas and try to make a story
from them, for the result will be weaker than the original;
do not lose faith in your own values of your work.
Summary
Obviously little comment is needed from a compiler.
Here both the beginner and the practised writer have the
best advice from those best qualified to give it—those who
have proved their theories by success. The road to that
success is no more a common one than it is a royal one.
What serves one writer best, serves another little, not at
all or very ill. The beginner's own intelligence must
choose for him among all these offerings of advice the ones
best adapted to his own particular case. Taken as a whole,
the advice given is invaluable—stimulative and soundly
helpful. But the test of its value to any writer must lie in
his own discriminating judgment based on a sure knowledge
of his own gifts, weaknesses and habits.
Since it is brought out so forcefully in one of the answers
and forcefully enough in so many others, one point
deserves notice. An answerer gives, as his advice to experienced
[pg 369]
writers, "For God's sake don't talk so much!"
It may sound flippant. It may sound presumptuous, since
to some experienced writers this man may be unknown.
Almost certainly it will not be taken seriously by those who
most need to heed the advice. Knowing the man, I know
it is not flippant; knowing his work, I know it is not presumptuous,
for he has gifts of expression that most of our
best known writers can never attain. There can be no
doubt of the soundness of his advice or of the need of it.
That it should be given so many times in these answers is
particularly significant.
There is frequent discussion of the difference between
literature and "magazine fiction" including what is
found between book-covers. It is a hardy analyst who
would attempt drawing a definite and final line of demarkation
between the two, but one easy distinction may
be made. Literature expresses what needs to be expressed;
the greater part of our magazine fiction expresses too
largely for the sake of hearing itself talk prettily and a
great deal, or because its authors have found they can get
money and popularity and standing from a gift of cultured,
or mere taking, gab. This is perhaps even more true
of established authors—yea, even some of our most famous—than
it is of our beginners.
I do not mean that all of them analyze the situation and
follow the method as conscious policy. It would be more
hopeful if this were the case. The bulk of them are proudly
content under the amazing delusion that what they write
has literary quality. It hasn't. The best that can be said
of it is that it is fool's gold, for it glitters exceedingly
despite its lack of worth. It is, for the most part, words
only. Generally beautiful words or amusing words or very
scholarly words, all skilfully and pleasingly joined together,
sprinkled heavily with a cheap cologne giving off
a strong smell suggestive of literary quality and interspersed
with modest little cries of "Note the genius in this
turn of phrase! And, prithee, do not miss the scholarly
[pg 370]
distortion of this simple sentence or the very literary
vagueness in the expression of this elementary and commonplace
idea! Behold, too, how the really skilled hand
can stretch this infinitesimal atom of material into pages
of exquisite and delightful reading! How crudely would
one lacking literary gift have set it forth in a few plain
words! And, pardon, reader, but you haven't been so dull
as to miss noting the heights of sophistication from which
your author looks contemptuously down upon the puppets
he moves with careless skill upon his board, upon the board
and even upon the very moving?"
Or perhaps such cries are omitted and the reader merely
confronted with an army of words marching impressively
in literary formation without worthwhile distinction, carrying
no baggage and with no literary reason for marching
at all.
Yes, I'm bitter. And very, very sick at the stomach.
For most critics call this procession of words literature,
and most of the public meekly accept the dictum. Worse,
it becomes a model for other writers. And all the time it
builds up the ruinous idea that literature is something
apart from life and reality, incompatible with simplicity
and naturalness, an inorganic thing of exotic plumage,
something not everlastingly dependent upon the anxiously
exact adaptation of expression to something worth expressing.
In our answers above I have in more than one place
omitted the name of one of the best known American magazines
because of unfavorable mention. In one case part
of an answer was omitted bodily because its whole point
was the advice to practised writers not to read that magazine
or the work of a certain well-known writer not included
among our answerers. The reasons for that advice
were not stated, but that magazine is perhaps the chief
exponent of the surface-glitter and infinitely wordy type
of story, shaped editorially with no consideration of real
literary worth or anything else except large popular sales
[pg 371]
and adherence to a formal morality rather lacking in
ethics. Yet it is a strong factor in providing standards
for critics lacking any of their own, in influencing both
editors and writers toward similar material and in lowering
the tastes and standards of the general reading public.
Unfortunately it is not the only exponent of the over-written
story. You find them in most of our best magazines,
in the school of realism as well as that of idealism
or romanticism. If you doubt, analyze one of them. Remove
the word-wrappings and search beneath. You will
find, quite often, incident, sometimes a great deal of it;
sometimes a real plot, though generally a threadbare and
slight one. But in most cases you will find little structure
worthy of the name, sometimes because there is nothing
much with which to construct and sometimes because if the
author had ability for structure he would not prostitute
himself on that kind of story. You may find caricature,
even characterization done with a clumsy brush in gaudy
colors and jutting outline, but no characterization that warrants
the story's existence on that score. Color very probably—a
whole box of colors melted under a forced draft.
Probably so much setting that the photography of it contributes
much of the illusion of the story's being literature.
Other things, of similar quality and degree. But literature?
Not even a chemist's trace.
I am heartily glad some of our answerers turned the
light where it is needed. Probably the chief weaknesses in
present-day American fiction are three in one:
1. Wordiness
2. Lack of simplicity
3. Surface tinsel
Teachers of fiction might contribute a worthy service by
compelling all students to gaze upon, say, the relentless
brevity and simplicity of De Maupassant that yet gives
more and more subtle shadings, even in translation, than
most of the wordy ones can give in five times the space.
Or Flaubert's exquisite nicety in word selection, not for
[pg 372]
the mere sensual sound of the word but for the word's real
office in expression.
Perhaps such frank expression may seem out of place in
this volume. But being a magazine editor and the compiler
of this book does not free me from all other obligations.
And there is need of every voice that can be raised
in outcry against the tidal wave of words that is drowning
so much of American fiction. As to good taste, I am less
interested in it than in trying to help against this increasing
evil. The advice of our answerer ought to be nailed
to the wall above the desk of—what per cent.?—of our
established writers: "For God's sake don't talk so much!"
[pg 373]
QUESTION X
What is the elemental hold of fiction on
the human mind?
Answers
Bill Adams: Life pitched against death; and man the
master.
Samuel Hopkins Adams:
"The devotion to something afar
From the sphere of our sorrow."
Paul L. Anderson: The inherent necessity for excitement,
which, despite the Puritans and the high-brows, is as
much an elemental need as food.
William Ashley Anderson: It is a mental stimulant.
Like every other stimulant, the doses vary, and it affects
various tastes in various ways. It has the power of frightening,
amazing, inspiring, amusing, enraging—in fact
working upon all the human emotions. It has the power to
derange human minds; it has also the power to soothe
them. Its appeal rests directly upon the curiosity of man,
i. e., the insatiable desire of man to hear something unusual
he has not already heard.
H. C. Bailey: Tell me a story.
Ralph Henry Barbour: The satisfaction of a craving
for romance in a civilization that is more and more coming
to look on it as sinful.
Frederick Orin Bartlett: The desire for emotional
reactions greater than those the average life affords.
Nalbro Bartley: The opportunity to phantasy in a
harmless fashion. The average person occupied with average
tasks demands a release from monotony which wholesome
fiction supplies. They want to see the commonplace
glorified—even if it is between the pages of a book.
[pg 374]
Konrad Bercovici: The human mind has never held
anything else but fiction. It is the only real thing in life.
Science is a myth. It has been invented by fiction
writers.
H. H. Birney, Jr.: Fiction takes the reader out of the
drab monotony of life into a new world of color and action
and romance. He finds there what Jack London calls his
"purple passages." That's why the shop-girl reads Three
Weeks and The Sheik which bore most men to tears. Most
women cherish, unknowingly perhaps, a suppressed eroticism.
Sex-interest and sex-emotions are to her the greatest
factors in existence. The average man takes his sex-emotions
casually. Woman is essentially monogamous, man
polygamous. (Gosh, I didn't mean to get in that deep!
My wife would run me ragged if she read it. Sounds like
I've been reading friend Freud, doesn't it?)
O. Henry covered the appeal of fiction to the average
individual when he described the tired clerk who would
remove his shoes, place his aching feet against the cold
radiator, and read Clark Russell!
Farnham Bishop: Story-hunger, which is as strong as
any of the other natural appetites.
Algernon Blackwood: I do not know.
Max Bonter: Fiction seems to take the reader over
the hill—beyond the horizon. The mind takes a voyage
into the mysterious, reveling in strange scenes, characters
and situations. Then it swings back from exoticism with
renewed zest for the commonplace.
Fiction is the "holiday spirit" in literature. It is an
orgy in which we spend our emotions. We feel better
afterward.
Katharine Holland Brown: The fact that we all like
to dramatize ourselves,—and the story-writer helps us do
it? (This is a question, not a reply.)
F. R. Buckley: I do not know. Guess—vicarious adventure.
Prosper Buranelli: The Arab spinning tales before a
[pg 375]
fire, or the drummer telling a nasty story. Shocking the
boobs and pleasing the scapegraces with accounts of marvels
either small or great, in which the narrator would like
to have figured—only he has a broken backbone.
Thompson Burtis: The fascination of overcoming, by
proxy, through the personalities of hero or heroine, difficulties,
dangers and problems, and of temporarily feeling
with one's self the greatnesses of the storied person. Particularly
in fiction of more adventurous type, I believe
John Smith's kick comes from perceiving how much like
Daring Dave Devere he really is.
George M. A. Cain: I believe it is love of the more
intense emotional states. Fiction provides these by proxy
for those whom circumstances or indolence prevents from
actual experience in sufficient frequency. Others seek in
artificial stimulants the heightening of emotions not normally
excited by circumstance itself. A few go after the
actual experiences. The trouble with this is the rarity of
really thrilling experiences, even for men or women able to
spend their lives in hunting for them, and the fact that no
experience can hold its grip on the emotions through repetitions.
The actually thrilling experiences readiest to hand
for everybody are those of animal appetites, and these are
the most dangerous. Gambling, a little higher in the quality
of its thrills, is hardly to be recommended. Yet a certain
amount of excitement is really wholesome, necessary
to save the mind from rusting in grooves too well worn to
call forth its activities. Personally, I believe that mild
alcoholic stimulants have always been a benefit to the race,
all their after reactions notwithstanding. But the raising
of emotional states through imaginary experiences offers
what, in these days, is as readily obtainable stimulant as
alcohol has ever been, and one freer from the objections of
after reactions and of peril in excess. Hence the value of
fiction in inducing exalted moods.
And this leads to my ideas of character drawing. On
the assumption that the first appeal of fiction is as an
[pg 376]
opportunity for proxy experience of emotions, it seems
obvious to me that extreme character drawing is generally
a mistake. The reader can not imagine himself as a hero
whose characteristics are extremely different from his own,
as any extreme characteristics will surely be. Even when
a character is so well drawn as to arouse strong feeling of
liking or dislike, I doubt if the ordinary reader can take
the interest in him or his imagined experiences that he
will instantly feel in himself as placed in the same series
of events. It is certainly difficult to acquaint a reader
with any one in the limits of a short story, for whose fate
his interest can be aroused to equal his good old love for
himself. For this reason I rarely draw a strikingly
marked character for the hero of a story.
Robert V. Carr: Perhaps a desire to escape the commonplace,
or, perhaps, mental laziness and the desire to
ride on the imagination of another.
George L. Catton: To be amused. Eight-tenths of the
population of to-day are too cowardly to think and want
nothing but full guts and to be amused. Comedy will sell
to-day, and slapstick comedy at that, faster and quicker
than anything else. And that rotten sex stuff—who but
a moron would read it?
Robert W. Chambers: Amusement.
Roy P. Churchill: Voyage into new seas. The elemental
pull toward new experiences.
Carl Clausen: Ask a college professor who teaches
fiction writing but does not write himself.
Courtney Ryley Cooper: Fiction is the world of our
dreams come true. For the clerk in the store, his dream is
adventure. For the girl in love, it is the Prince Charming.
For the discouraged man, it is the yarn of the fellow who
fights past obstacles. We like fiction because in that we
see the things we would like to do become realities in the
person we easily can imagine ourselves to be. Did you
ever see a reader wanting to be the villain of a story?
Hardly.
[pg 377]
Arthur Crabb: Among the upper classes, a means of
passing away an otherwise unoccupied hour or two; to the
middle and lower classes it is either a stimulant to a poor
imagination or takes the place of imagination entirely.
Mary Stewart Cutting: It expresses what we would
like to express.
Elmer Davis: Relief from troubles. This, I think, is
as true of realism as of the so-called "literature of escape."
Realism at least turns your attention from your
own worries to other people's.
William Harper Dean: The elemental hold of fiction,
if I get your point, is through humanity's inner craving to
see itself mirrored, to have its tragedies and triumphs interpreted,
so that each of us may say, "Oh, that's me—my
life! I have lived that, felt it. I'm glad some one understands."
Harris Dickson: Perhaps, that each of us is his brother's
keeper and likes to hear what Bud is doing. Some of
us love small-town gossip, some crime yarns, some revel in
the poetic, the romantic, the imaginative. But from the
dawn of time the Teller of Tales has been a force—like the
troubadour whose songs were legal tender for his welcome
everywhere.
Captain Dingle: Wonder, I imagine.
Louis Dodge: That it enables an individual to go
places and do things (vicariously) and utter sayings which
would otherwise be beyond him. A reader is a man with a
score of eyes and hands and feet.
Phyllis Duganne: Interest, I suppose. The main object
of most people's lives is not to be bored—and fiction
can help them attain that grand end considerably. And
for people whose lives are dull and rather empty, I suppose
fiction offers an outlet; the reader can become hero
or heroine and do grand and noble things. Just like the
movies.
J. Allan Dunn: In an attempt to be brief, I think it is
a conjuration of what he or she would like to have been if
[pg 378]
their lots had been cast differently. I think it sometimes
stimulates to adventures, to a struggle against the commonplace.
That it can undoubtedly mold opinion and create
a recognition of the virtues. That it can show—if the fiction
is painted with the colors from the palette of Life
itself, excellent example. That it is the poor man's purse
and the stay-at-home's vicarious romance. It is Aladdin's
Lamp—the Magic Carpet.
Walter A. Dyer: This is rather too deep for me. Fiction
is, in a measure, in its relation to life, what massage is
to exercise. Mighty useful sometimes.
Walter Prichard Eaton: Say—have a heart! Well,
in one word—"Escape."
E. O. Foster: To my own mind fiction is as necessary
as food to the body. The tired man or woman may throw
themselves out of the ordinary routine returning refreshed
to take up again the "hum-drum" labors of life.
Arthur O. Friel: Entertainment; refreshment by substituting
new pictures for those of every-day life.
J. U. Giesy: The spirit of play—make-believe—the
element of the "might have been"—relaxation, change.
The mind reaches out to contact other than routine experience.
George Gilbert: Its power to lift the reader out of
himself and make him live in another realm.
Kenneth Gilbert: A sincere desire to escape if but
momentarily from the commonplaces of life. If we have
imagination at all we are adventurers; we have a curiosity
to see the odd and unusual; to possess a helmet of invisibility
and the power of levitation; to have the under-currents
of human impulse that we sense yet can not describe
run before us as we would have them do.
Holworthy Hall: Love—Success—Youth.
Richard Matthews Hallet: A good yarn carries you
out of yourself. It's a red wishing-carpet, a transporting
cloud, nothing more or less. Makes you forget for a time
the "everlasting, tormenting" ego.
[pg 379]
William H. Hamby: Answered in above.
A. Judson Hanna: I believe that suspense is the elemental
hold in fiction, having in mind the average reader,
and the editors' demands. Speaking personally, the elemental
hold is character and development. I have a sort
of cynical contempt for happy endings because they do
not ring true. Events and episodes in real life so rarely
end happily, in my experience.
Joseph Mills Hanson: The elemental hold of fiction
on the human mind I take to be the fascination of uncertainty.
E. E. Harriman: To me it seems that it lies in its
power to reveal to one the minds of hundreds, to show in
brief how other people live and think and act, and to cultivate
in the mind of the reader wholesome ambitions.
Nevil G. Henshaw: Granting that you read what you
like, I should say that it is the enjoyment of imagining
some one's doing what you would like to do yourself.
Joseph Hergesheimer: The story!
R. de S. Horn: The elemental hold of fiction on the
human mind is deep-rooted. It began in the make-believe
days of childhood; it continues to death. It is hope, it is
appreciation; it is akin to invention and progress. Without
the imagination—and what is fiction but molded
imagination?—life would be a pretty hopeless, sordid existence.
Clyde B. Hough: It is exactly in proportion to the
humanness of the fiction. Humans are enthralled by fiction
because it reproduces thrills, emotions, desires, etc.,
which they have experienced or can understand and
which by the help of their imagination they re-live temporarily
without any aftermath disadvantages.
Emerson Hough: Maybe bread and butter, and love.
A. S. M. Hutchinson: Being "told a story."
Inez Haynes Irwin: It offers release and escape from
whatever burdens life has brought and it extends experience.
[pg 380]
Will Irwin: It satisfies the social desire—the human
love of knowing and, if possible, of liking, other people.
And it gives the illusion of widened experience.
Charles Tenney Jackson: The elemental hold of fiction
on the human mind appears to be that it is the last adventure,
the last romance, the bringing of novelty, of charm, of
forgetfulness. Life for men has become so standardized, so
propagandized, chucked into routines by civilization, that
his primal stirrings—which, primitively, he satisfied by
clubbing his dinner out of the jungle or swiping a woman
from his neighboring tribe—must now be soothed in reading
about it in its modern phases. That's why you sell
magazines—sure!
Frederick J. Jackson: Principally, I think, the chance
it affords a person to get outside of himself, to be for the
time being, while he reads, something he is not, something
he wants to be, to live vicariously life and action that he
has no chance to live in the flesh, but would like to live.
Then again, to learn, to laugh—W. C. Tuttle's stuff holds
more laughs to the page than that of any other writer, to
me, at least. But what's the use? Some analytical guy
will answer in a thesis on psychology that will "knock"
'em cold. I can't or won't.
Mary Johnston: It is a mode of truth.
John Joseph: It is based on the almost universal passion
to see the triumph of the right. And a story in which
everything seems likely to go to pot and then suddenly
straightens out right will always hold the reader provided
it is plausibly told. Sympathy for the underdog is a phase
of this point, too.
Too, every human is more or less of a hero worshiper,
and has also a tremendous urge to get into the limelight
himself. And if he can't actually get in, the next best
thing is to imagine himself there. Hence there is always
more or less of a tendency to picture himself as the hero.
This urge for the limelight is a fundamental trait of
human nature, and a very necessary one. It is simply a
[pg 381]
desire to appear well in the sight of his fellowman; and it
is really the driving-power behind all human endeavor beyond
satisfaction of the purely animal desires. Hence, a
story should 'rouse something in the reader that will
make him want to get busy and take a hand himself, so to
speak. That is my idea of a really good story—one that
will hold the reader from start to finish—and no mere
mechanical perfection or nicety of literary diction can possibly
take the place of it.
I read lots of stories, (they seem to be published literally
by the tens of thousands) and after I have finished them
I sit and wonder why in Heaven's name they were published.
And the only answer I can find is "technique,
structure and literary polish." Too much insistence on
these points has a tendency not only to handicap the
writer, but to standardize style, and I read magazines the
subject-matter of which might every word of it have been
written by the same author, as far as I could tell.
Curiosity is another powerful element. Perhaps the
most potent of all, in a certain sense. A mystery story intrigues
all classes of people. Of course it must have the
other qualities mentioned, too.
Harold Lamb: To be honest, I don't know. A child
likes a story because it opens a door that the child can not
open of itself. It pleases a child to have imaginary experiences,
giving pleasure, the stimulus of danger, and the
satisfaction of curiosity.
A grown-up is pretty much the same. Except that a
child desires especially to have curiosity satisfied, and a
grown-up likes to forget things.
Sinclair Lewis: It affords an "escape"—the reader
or hearer imagines himself in the tale.
Eugene P. Lyle, Jr.: Imagining yourself in the same
fix.
Homer I. McEldowney: The impulse, weak or dominant,
that is in all mankind—to be what he is not, to have
what he has not, and to see that which he has not seen.
[pg 382]
That, I think, is the elemental hold of fiction on the human
mind.
Ray McGillivray: The hypnotizing grasp it exerts
upon imagination—persuading, compelling the reader to
project himself, his likes and dislikes, his sympathies and
his ambitions into the story he peruses.
Helen Topping Miller: The withdrawing of the reader
from his own world, transporting him into an imaginary
place where he is able to picture things as he wishes them
rather than as they are. Every reader has more or less
yearning for the dramatic. In reading fiction he sees himself
the hero, fights the conflicts and achieves the reward
which the author supplies.
Thomas Samson Miller: Sentiment, curiosity, heroism.
Anna Shannon Monroe: The story hold—the love of
a story, whether a crisp anecdote or a novel; the thing
that lifts one out of his surroundings into another world
for a little while.
L. M. Montgomery: The deep desire in every one of
us for "something better than we have known." In fiction
we ask for things, not as they are, but as we feel they
ought to be. This is why the oft-sneered-at "happy ending"
makes the popular novel. Fairy tales are immortal—in
some form or other we must have them or we die.
Fiction redresses the balance of existence and gives us
what we can't get in real life. This is why "romance" is,
and always will be, and always should be more popular
than "realism."
Frederick Moore: It is in the joy of make-believe.
Animals have the same trait in some degree. Also, "Let
George do it." That is, let the other fellow get shot while
I enjoy the thrill but know all the time that my slippers
are on and I'm safe enough.
Talbot Mundy: It reveals himself to every reader.
Kathleen Norris: Might it be that life disappoints
most of us, and we like to lose ourselves in dreams where
things come just a little nearer comedy, tragedy, retribution,
revenge and achievement?
[pg 383]
Grant Overton: On the part of the writer, a desire to
make some one else feel what he has felt; on the part of the
reader, the craving to understand something that one does
not fully understand, even though one feels it and has felt
it often.
Hugh Pendexter: To entertain. Once it captures the
reader's interest its power is unlimited. It can teach and
preach and direct the trend of national thought provided
it continues to entertain. Christ taught His great truths
by parables.
Clay Perry: Stimulation of the imagination; creation
of a fairer, cleaner, or at least a different and more romantic
world than that of every day.
Michael J. Phillips: Good fiction is a journey, all too
brief, into fabled Araby—to lands of sandalwood and
frankincense and myrrh and spikenard and all those other
wonderful, glowing words of which I don't know the exact
meaning but which lift us out of ourselves.
Lucia Mead Priest: We know nothing, truly, of mind
and heart of even our nearest. The writer plays the part
of Omniscience. We like to know how the other fellow
feels; we like to see him messing about in situations in
which we, too, have been lost—or found.
It is human interest in the virtues and weaknesses of our
kind. Fiction is as old as man. Read it on the tomb of Ti
or the more-up-to-date "Beowulf."
Is it not curiosity? Perhaps interest in the affairs of
the other fellow, for we all love gossip—? Yes, all of us.
Eugene Manlove Rhodes: Putting yourself in his
place.
Frank C. Robertson: It satisfies the longing for
change. The body at best is a slow and cumbersome thing,
and practically stationary compared to the flights of mind.
In fiction we live thousands of lives—without it we live
but one.
Ruth Sawyer: I should say the same hold that folk
tales have had since man developed a mind. The desire
[pg 384]
for idealizing; the enjoyment of seeing his own human
activities re-created for him and the everlasting appeal of
adventure. I believe that the adult quite as much as the
child reader likes to picture himself as the hero or main
actor in the stories. I suppose one could sum this all up
in terms of imagination stimuli.
Chester L. Saxby: I can't answer this one, unless you
mean the selfish desire in each one of us to picture ourselves
as heroes—and the thing called sympathy that we
can't disown. But perhaps evolution makes us crave these
indirect experiences in lieu of direct ones.
Barry Scobee: Have ideas but I could hardly express
them yet. Might be, "A feller wants company." Might
be, it suggests strength, success, victory; contains warning.
How's this for a theory? The human mind is eternally
seeking harmony. A perfect story, or a well done
story, gives a subtle sense of harmony, like music but more
subtle. I think the answer goes still deeper, and I shall
find it sometime.
Robert Simpson: Conflict—the clashing of forces, or
the pursuit by one force of another that does not want to
be caught. Conflicts may appear in many guises, from a
young love interest to a mastodonic fight between prehistoric
brutes, but in some form or another conflict must
predominate.
Theodore Seixas Solomons: We are immensely curious
about life, and in a way that mere description of it from
the point of view of psychology, history, past and current,
geography, industry and the like, wholly fails to satisfy.
For it is man's specific reaction to his environment in his
efforts to accomplish his urges in which we are principally
interested, and in order that we may make comparison of
our own reactions with those of others about us, we crave
not those dry, statistical texts setting forth systematically
acquired knowledge but instances of actual men's and
women's reactions to environment—actual life itself. Thus
any narratives of parts of the ordinary life of others are
[pg 385]
more interesting to us, essentially, than text knowledge,
but since life is so largely routine and monotony, since
there is so little in any given actually true narrative that is
likely to be in the least novel or to afford us the comparisons
which we crave, our appetite has been wont to seek
satisfaction in narratives specially selected to pretend the
exceptional and unusual; and those who satisfy this desire
are the story-tellers.
The impulse of the story-teller, then, is to present life
in its exceptional and therefore interesting phases and
happenings—interesting just in proportion to the degree
in which it presents for our personal comparison men and
women in situations, and engaged in actions, which lift
them—and hence ourselves—out of the common routine.
Thus, vicariously, we slake our thirst for varied, high tension
living, with its emotional tests and thrills.
The fictional element is accidental, depending only upon
the circumstance that actual life fails, usually, to furnish
the story-teller with a completely satisfying narrative of
strange and unusual reactions. Actual life is so conditioned
by the usual and routine that even when the unusual
thrusts up its head and people get into unusual
situations, the routine and the usual quickly submerge the
unusual—in fine, the story fails consistently to maintain
our exaltation to a logical end. Hence the story-teller
finds that in order completely to satisfy his hearers he
must thwart this tendency of actuality by continually substituting
and supplying. He does not take anything not
found in life—else at once his art is defective. But he uses
materials of life that never were actually found together
in life, so far as he knows. He may find two-thirds of a
story ready to hand in an actual life story, and then he
needs to supply from his mind's storehouse of general-life
happenings (i. e., things that are so natural that they
either have happened or may happen at any time) enough
to form the remaining third. The aim is merely to carry
out as well as possible the aim of the story-desire he seeks
[pg 386]
to allay which is to experience vicariously sorts of life and
living which, either because of their novelty to us, or because
of special urgings and aptitudes, are grateful and
satisfying to us.
Fiction, then, in the sense of its elemental hold on us,
is that conscious modification of the actual occurrences of
life by rearrangement of them so that they present to us
complete experiences of the sort for which we yearn. The
more perfectly we are enabled to visualize ourselves as
actually going through these experiences—and to visualize
the characters going through them amounts precisely to
this—the stronger the hold of the fiction because the more
completely and perfectly it satisfies the desire to which it
is directed. Hence the vital necessity of naturalness,
whether the matter be of realism or romanticism.
Raymond S. Spears: Fiction is an adventure to the
mind.
Norman Springer: An escape from reality, or, at
least, from environment; and in fiction the reader realizes
in a sense the wishes and ambitions that are thwarted in
life. It is the power to make-believe.
T. S. Stribling: I think the main hold fiction has on
human beings is that it gives them imaginary experiences
which they could neither get nor think by themselves. It
is first aid to the mentally lazy and dull. As proof of this,
take the "movies." These are even more obvious and require
less concentration than fiction, so they are correspondingly
more popular.
I am speaking now of the appeal of popular fiction. It
is the same thing to the public that the leg show is to the
tired business man—born tired.
However, one should differentiate the stages of the human
mind. Children read fiction out of curiosity about
the world they are to enter, grown-ups read it to escape
from the world they have entered, old age reads it to recall
the world they have left behind.
Lucille Van Slyke: Oh, but you've asked a mouthful!
[pg 387]
What are Yonkers, anyhow? If you knew the answer to
that you wouldn't be an editor and if I did, I'd weave it
so hard into everything I write that even the most blasé
editor in Christendom—or out of it—would be walking
about waving the manuscript with sheer joy when he got
to the end of it! But I'll venture a guess—that it's the
same thing that made E. nibble the apple.
Atreus von Schrader: It is probably the same hold
as that of liquor or drugs; it takes the addict away from
himself, his troubles and his ennui.
T. Von Ziekursch: Perhaps to entertain, but I believe
it goes further than this; the average person's life is a
narrow thing—not what that person would choose at all
probably. Fiction to the mass offers the opportunity to
lift out of that close circle of existence, to live, to see, to
mingle with the world, to do the things which they are
physically, mentally or morally unable to do.
Henry Kitchell Webster: It is so elemental that it is
pretty hard to get back to. I suppose it springs from
human gregariousness. We feel enough alike, enough a
part of all mankind, each of us, to feel that what has happened
to another might happen to us. Reading fiction
stimulates us, therefore, and exalts us with a sense of our
own infinite possibilities.
G. A. Wells: Fiction is to the mind an antidote for
the mental aches and ills of reality. It is in part a recompensation
for living. It transports us from what is to
what we would wish. It carries us back to the days of
'tend-like and restores the illusions of fancy. It is the
oasis in the dry desert of life. It provokes and at the same
time in a measure satisfies the spirit of adventure that we
inherit from the race. We crawl as babies from the crib
to see "what's around the corner." Most of us incessantly
long for adventure. And, as we can not have adventures,
we soothe ourselves by watching others at their adventures.
Life for most of us is rather colorless, a routine made
up of meals, beds, offices and shops, with now and then a
[pg 388]
dash of pleasure to make it all endurable. We move in
grooves. We complain that nothing ever happens to us.
We are discontented that nothing ever does. We may wish
to march out with a gun and kill somebody. The law forbids.
But there is that desire, so to satisfy it we turn to
fiction and see other men march out with a gun and kill
somebody. We want to go to Alaska and dig for gold and
have all sorts of scrapes. We can't. So we let Jack London
or Rex Beach tell us of more fortunate people who
did what we wished to do. Fiction is a safety valve.
Ben Ames Williams: People read fiction, I suppose,
for the sake of the emotions which it awakes in them. I'm
speaking of the highest form of fiction, which we call art.
To stimulate emotion is the function of art in any form;
people enjoy this stimulant as they do any other, because
it is a part of human nature to enjoy being stimulated.
Volstead to the contrary notwithstanding.
Honore Willsie: The romantic appeal to the imagination.
H. C. Witwer: The reader's enjoyment in being a
hero or heroine by proxy, i. e., the reader, for the time being,
is the hero or heroine of the tale and rejoices or weeps
according to the action of the yarn. When they are
gripped by a story they stop for the moment wishing they
were rich, beautiful, brave, famous, strong, clever, etc.
While reading, they are all or any of those things, in the
degree the leading character is.
William Almon Wolff: Its power to entertain. That
is a statement of enormous implications, and much less
simple than it sounds.
Edgar Young: Arousing memories of sights, feelings,
etc., etc., from the subconscious mind above the threshold
of consciousness, so that a re-experience takes place.
Where no such experiences have taken place, sympathy
from similar experiences of the reader.
Summary
The following state they do not know or don't understand
the question—one that it is "an academic question":
[pg 389]
Edwin Balmer, Ferdinand Berthoud, Algernon Blackwood,
Robert Hichens, Lloyd Kohler, Hapsburg Liebe,
Rose Macaulay, E. S. Pladwell, R. T. M. Scott, Julian
Street, Booth Tarkington, William Wells.
Here again the answers need no tabulation or extensive
comment. Their greatest value lies in forcing upon beginners
a general knowledge of the real nature of fiction.
To a majority of them it is merely a game played by somebody's
rules, a pastime with no rules at all, a chance of
making money, an opportunity to pour out on the world a
rather uncomfortable and obstreperous something inside
them, a serious business of imitation, all these and more,
but never a thing eternally based on the fundamentals of
human nature.
Formal rules concerning it can mean nothing except as
those rules are justified by fiction's human-nature fundamentals.
And the beginner, buried under thousands of
rules made by all kinds of people, most of them unequipped
for the making of rules, has no way of telling an
unsound rule from one worth observing unless he can test
it by some fundamental principle that is adequate and
satisfying to his intelligence. Nor, having found an equipment
of rules to meet his needs, can he reconcile or even
understand seeming conflicts among them, or make fully
intelligent use of any one of them, when it comes to their
practical application in the thousands of varying cases
that will arise in his work.
No rule or collection of rules can cover the infinite number
of those cases with fineness and nicety, or even cover
them at all, unless back of those rules there is an understanding
of the fundamental principles upon which those
rules are based. If the writer is to stand and march upon
his feet, he can not lean his weight upon crutches handed
him by others. It is not possible to make all the crutches
he will need. He must learn to do his own walking and he
must himself know his direction and his path.
[pg 390]
QUESTION XI
Do you prefer writing in the first person
or the third? Why?
Though this matter is of far less importance than those
thus far considered, it serves to settle a question that has
been much discussed, probably even more by readers than
by authors. That is, it settles the question in the only way
it should or can be settled—by showing that there can be
no definite answer. Not only must each writer decide
according to his own individual case, but, unless his natural
bent and ability lie very strongly in one direction or
the other, he must—or at least should—make a separate
decision as to each story he undertakes.
On various phases touched upon in even this simple
matter there is flat contradiction of opinion. This wholesome
difference again brings out the point that generalities,
particularly when shaped into general rules, are not
likely to be safe guidance.
The everlasting value to beginners in the writing game
is that they themselves and their material, not definite,
unyielding rules laid down by any writer or by anybody
else, should be the deciding factors in their work of conveying
to the reader what they have to say.
Answers
Bill Adams: Never tried the first.
Samuel Hopkins Adams: The third. Because I am
prone to find myself hampered by self-consciousness in
the first person, though not invariably.
Paul L. Anderson: The third; you can swing a wider
loop. It is admitted, though, that the first person gives a
more intense effect, and I sometimes use it.
William Ashley Anderson: It is immaterial, and depends
[pg 391]
upon the nature of a story. But I think a story is
most naturally told in the first person. This also insures
the action being continuous. It also adds an illusion of
authenticity.
H. C. Bailey: In the third person. The first person,
apart from technical difficulties, seems to me to encourage
diffuse writing on the insignificant.
Edwin Balmer: I occasionally write in the first person.
It is a more limited way of writing than in the third
person because, among other reasons, continued use of the
first person in many stories of different character certainly
breaks down the sense of illusion.
I think a man should never write in the first person as
a woman and vice versa.
Ralph Henry Barbour: I prefer writing in the first
person. Nearly every writer does, and will say so if he's
truthful. I write in the third person because editors believe,
correctly or incorrectly, that readers prefer it. I
prefer the first person because it is easier.
Frederick Orin Bartlett: I prefer the first person because
it offers a more direct way of telling a story. The
public, I think, prefers the third person because this form
permits a wider range of sympathies.
Nalbro Bartley: I prefer the third person for writing
because it is more impersonal and one can get into the
swing of the story in a more intense way.
Konrad Bercovici: No particular preference.
Ferdinand Berthoud: Third—for many reasons. One
is that I know editors and the public prefer stories in the
third person, and another is that it is easier and more convincing.
A third reason is that I've never tried the first
person.
H. H. Birney, Jr.: Depends entirely on the particular
story. First person is ordinarily easier, but your hero can
be made much more heroic if some one else is talking about
him.
Farnham Bishop: In the third. When I try telling a
[pg 392]
story in the first person it makes me too self-conscious
and gums up the action.
Algernon Blackwood: Third person. The use of the
first person tends to remind a writer of himself, whereas
fiction should mean an escape from one's tiresome self—a
projection into others.
Max Bonter: I seem to have no preference in this
regard.
Katharine Holland Brown: The first person. Easier.
Besides, I like to be in it myself.
F. R. Buckley: Used to prefer first person. Now
equally at home in both. Natural instinct when telling a
pleasant lie is to have yourself in it. Later—third person
gives you greater scope. The "I" doesn't have to be carried
from place to place to report things.
Prosper Buranelli: I would rather be hanged than
write in the first person. A fellow who can't thrust himself
forward without the use of "I" doesn't know even
how to brag.
Thompson Burtis: I have no choice. Humorous stuff
I like to write first person, because of the latitude in
language. Ordinary stuff, on second thought, I believe I
would rather write third person, the reason being that I
can then draw the character that "I" would represent
more fully. Another great plot advantage is that by not
tying one's self down to a first-person story he can present
the mental reactions and innermost thoughts of both hero
and villain. This adds a great deal to the opportunities of
a story. The first person story is limited to the scenes and
thoughts of "I" alone.
George M. A. Cain: I think I rather enjoy first-person
writing best. But that is a matter I regard as entirely
to be determined by the nature of the story. The first person
carries a degree of conviction not so easily obtained in
the third person. I really think it has no effect in the
matter of the reader's ability to put himself in the hero's
place. He reads it as "I." That is just as near him as
[pg 393]
"he." Obviously the first person can not be used (1)
where the suspense concerns the life of the hero, who could
not have died and told the tale; (2) where the mental processes
of more than one character must be brought in,
since the personal introduction of the writer himself precludes
knowledge of the thoughts of others; (3) where the
hero's acts are such that to tell them would be boastful.
My own rule as to persons is this: Where the character
fitted to my general aim in the story is essentially too weak
to hold the sympathy of the reader, I use the first person,
even at the cost of straining to show others' mental processes
by actions. I can not escape the conviction that
there is a man-to-man-ness about the first person which
commands sympathy. I should give up trying to write a
story with a hero guilty of any real weakness, if I found
it could not be done in the first person.
For a story in which a striking character is introduced
as hero, I particularly like the use of the first person for
a secondary character in the position of a witness. It
affords easier conviction of truth as in its use for the hero.
It provides instant opportunity to present the hero in attractive
light. I should use this method to the limits of
its possibilities but for the fact that it is the one which
makes it most difficult for the reader to put himself in
the hero's place. That fact relegates its use with me to
stories of characters so strongly marked as to require the
reader's friendship for, rather than his self-identification
with, the hero.
Which indicates the place I give the third person by
elimination. It becomes, after all, the one of principal use
interfering with no manner of suspense, allowing for presentation
of the reasoning of any or all characters of the
story, commanding sufficient sympathy for any character
from dead neutral up, if at all properly handled.
Robert V. Carr: According to mood.
George L. Catton: Immaterial. All depends on the
requirements of the particular story. In the first person
[pg 394]
there is less explanatory matter needed; that's the only
difference.
Robert W. Chambers: It makes no difference.
Roy P. Churchill: I would rather be an observer than
an actor, if I am to tell the story.
Carl Clausen: Third. First limits my view-point.
Courtney Ryley Cooper: It depends entirely on the
story. I use the third person mostly, but there are times
in stories of great sympathy when it is impossible to use
anything but the first. Third person preferred, however.
Arthur Crabb: It depends on the theme to be developed;
generally I should say in the third person. By that
I mean that the author does not appear at all. A writer
can do a whole lot more if he keeps himself out of it and
then if he restricts himself to what he could see and know
himself.
Mary Stewart Cutting: I prefer writing in the third
person, though in two or three of my favorite stories I have
written in the first person. Usually the third person gives
you more scope.
Elmer Davis: Depends on the story. Obviously in an
"I" story there are things you can't tell the reader without
introducing the old expedient of the messenger or
something like it. But it has its merits if the plot permits.
William Harper Dean: I seldom write a finished story
in the first person. But (and here's something) did you
ever write a story in the first person and then go through
it and change it to the third person and inspect the result?
I can write a much better story in the first person—a
more spontaneous one than in the third. For in the
first person I say what I would say under certain circumstances
in the plot, feel what I would feel—whereas writing
"He thought—," makes me stop and think—now what
would he think? And right there you are in danger of inventing
instead of interpreting as you should be doing.
Harris Dickson: I began writing in the first person.
Don't know why I have abandoned it. I do believe, however,
[pg 395]
a tale in the first person, well told, takes a stronger
hold on the imagination. Perhaps because, like every child
who asks "Daddy, is it true?" we seem to get an atmosphere
of verity from the fellow who says, "This happened
to me." For the same reason the teller of anecdotes prefers
to lay them on himself, or his friend.
Captain Dingle: First person, though it seems unpopular,
so I don't indulge often. This way I fall into my
characters' boots easier.
Louis Dodge: I like to write in the third person
chiefly for convenience. The first person must go in at a
door; the third may go in at a keyhole or through a wall.
Phyllis Duganne: I much prefer writing in the third
person. The first person seems to have so many limitations;
if the first person is your hero or heroine, there are
so many things he can not tell about himself that have to
be told in other ways. I don't like to read stories in the
first person, as a rule; I don't find them so convincing.
This "I" person is always getting in the way of the story.
First-person stories are easier to write; I mean that they
flow more easily, though I think they are harder to make
convincing. I think people usually resent this "I" who
thinks he knows so much, and talks at such great length.
It makes a story out of it—an unreal thing—while a story
in the third person has no one, ever present, to remind you
that it's only a tale and may not be true anyway.
J. Allan Dunn: I enjoy writing in the first person but
do not believe it attracts the majority. It smacks of conceit,
for one thing, but if one writes of a character in which
one can project one's own thoughts, character, successes,
failures, hopes and despair, the intimacy is a stimulus. It
has limitations because the hero, if he sees everything, condenses
the narrative. And he is only a translator for the
other characters. So I prefer the third for sheer craftsmanship.
To write a first person narrative through the
eyes of a third person, who may be a minor character but
a shrewd observer, is one of my preferences.
[pg 396]
Walter A. Dyer: It all depends. I usually write in
the third person, because in that form a character can be
handled more freely, but I have written stories in a frame
of mind that demanded only the first-person treatment.
Walter Prichard Eaton: It is easier to write in the
first, because the process of thinking "I" identifies you
with the character. Also, it is more dangerous, because
the same process identifies the character with you. (This
is really quite wise and intelligent.)
E. O. Foster: I prefer writing in the third person so
as to have as little of my own personality enter into the
story as is possible.
Arthur O. Friel: No preference. Depends on the
story. Some are told more naturally in first person;
others in third.
J. P. Giesy: The first, I think, since in it I may, as it
were, vicariously live the part exactly as the actor lives his
part for the time being and consequently enter very nearly
into the thing. However, I very frequently choose the
third because of the very nature of the subject in hand.
George Gilbert: Some stories can only be told in the
first; some only in the third person. The story itself decides
the person, not the author. If the story is one that
can only be told best by one person's having knowledge
of all the incidents, the first person becomes permissible,
not mandatory. If the story is such that no one person
could have had knowledge of all the details without recourse
to the receipt of letters, telephone calls, confidences
given in such a way as to interrupt the thread of the tale,
the story calls for other treatment than first-person telling.
The limitation on the first-person story, when the
narrator is the hero, is this: It is plain that the narrator
lived to tell the story, so no matter what peril he gets into
during the tale, the reader must know he survived, unless
it is a tale of a manuscript found buried or in family
archives, etc. The first-person-narrator story is most effective
when the narrator is not the hero, yet some fine
[pg 397]
tales have been written that violate this rule of mine. In
any event, the author must look into his story at the beginning
and decide this point. Another author might have
an entirely different idea on it, and succeed at a given tale
where I would fail using my rule.
Kenneth Gilbert: While writing in the first person
is the easiest way to tell a story, I prefer the third for the
freedom of description it permits. Many stories, however,
would fall flat if not written in the first person.
Holworthy Hall: Third person. Generally more convincing
and less conceited.
Richard Matthews Hallet: I have written both ways.
The first person makes an easier narrative, but makes it
harder to develop a plot. And I find, curiously, by asking
the question a great many times and from being criticized
myself, that there is among a great body of readers an odd
aversion to a story in the first person. I've never heard
even the semblance of a reason for it, but no matter, it exists
and will certainly work against the popularity of a
story in the first person. There is also a considerable group
of persons who profess unwillingness to read a story with
the faintest touch of dialect in it; in spite of this dialect
stories thrive. So do some stories written in the first person.
William H. Hamby: Really prefer writing in the first
person, but rarely do.
A. Judson Hanna: This is a matter governed by circumstances.
By far the majority of my published stories
have been written in the first person. As a rule, I prefer
to write them so because it allows so much freedom of expression
and creates an informality between writer and
reader that appeals to the reader. It is the personal touch.
Joseph Mills Hanson: I prefer to write in the first
person because it gives me a sense of more intimate grasp
of the motions of the characters and a more vivid realization
of the situations. Nevertheless, I have written more
often in the third person; perhaps because the former
seems, also, egotistic.
[pg 398]
E. E. Harriman: In the third person, because writing
in the first gives a feeling of indecent exposure of the intimate
corners in my soul.
Nevil G. Henshaw: In short stories I've no particular
preference, although I think it a trifle easier to use the
first person. In long work I find the first person much
the harder, as then a vast number of facts and ideas must
be presented from the single point of view. I also find
the transition more difficult.
Joseph Hergesheimer: Third, for obvious reasons.
Robert Hichens: I prefer writing in the third person.
I like to tell a story, not to tell about myself. As a rule, I
dislike a novel written in the first person and I very much
dislike a story told in the form of letters. I scarcely know
why.
R. de S. Horn: I generally prefer writing in the
third person. In this case I can go anywhere, describe
anything. I am omnipotent; I can see through walls, read
minds, experience emotions unlimited. In the first person
I am narrowly proscribed. I can only represent my own
emotions and what I can know through the medium of my
five senses. The only advantage of the first person is
that stories thus told have an air of veracity, of plausibility,
that is particularly desirable at times. Furthermore,
they can the more strongly enlist the reader's emotions
and sympathies.
Clyde B. Hough: I prefer to write in the third person.
It gives me more scope.
Emerson Hough: I don't know—as it chances.
A. S. M. Hutchinson: In the third. I feel my own
individuality would get in the way if I wrote in the first.
Inez Haynes Irwin: I think writing in the first person
is infinitely easier than writing in the third because
inevitably one dramatizes more when writing in the third
person and describes more when writing in the first person.
Dramatizing is more difficult than describing. Perhaps
that is why I prefer the third person—the other
[pg 399]
seems too easy. Yet there's an ease about first-person writing,
an informality.... It goes swiftly, breezily, directly.
Will Irwin: When I began, I liked best to write in the
first person. Now I prefer the third. Why, I can not
say exactly. Probably because your interests increase
with years, and when writing in the first person you have
limited yourself to the interests, experiences and observations
of but one character.
Frederick J. Jackson: Third person. Simpler, usually
more effective, is easier for me. Have written only
two stories in first person.
Mary Johnston: Depends on what you're doing.
John Joseph: I very much prefer writing in the third
person, but when it comes to an old-time western story—well,
I have lived these things and the detached third person
doesn't seem to belong, nor conventional English. I
have heard these people talk every day for too many
years, have heard too many camp-fire tales, I suppose, and
the more a writer polishes his story the less real it seems.
Lloyd Kohler: The third person. I don't like that
eternal "I." Still, I have read many authors who could
handle that very same "I" convincingly. More power to
them!
Harold Lamb: The first person is a little more fun.
Because it gives a freer hand in description and more play
to emotion.
Sinclair Lewis: Third, less (obviously) egotistical.
Hapsburg Liebe: I prefer writing in the third person
because in the first I can't keep the perpendicular pronoun
sufficiently down.
E. P. Lyle, Jr.: In the first person. Comes easier, less
formal, your reader not a reader but seemingly a friend
on the other side of the hearth. I'd recommend it to a
beginner. Also tell him to forget he is writing literature,
and to keep in attitude of writing a letter.
Rose Macaulay: Third. Because I dislike reading
stories told in the first.
[pg 400]
Crittenden Marriott: Third. In the first the quotation
marks are such a bother.
Homer I. McEldowney: The third person. It is easier,
for me, and, I think, more effective.
Ray McGillivray: Fifty-fifty with me. First person
is easier. The third person style has been responsible for
most of the best literature ever written. Not all, but most.
Helen Topping Miller: I have never written anything
in the first person—it intrudes the personal idea and
hampers my view-point. I prefer to see my characters impersonally.
Thomas Samson Miller: The first person always
seemed to me the more plausible, for in the third person
the author often relates actions and happenings that occurred
thousands of miles apart at the same time. I can
never forget that some one is telling me the story and that
some one couldn't be—say in the heroine's bedroom, if he
is a man author.
Anne Shannon Monroe: It is easier to write in the
first person—more easily made real; but I prefer the
third. The third is less personal, more the spectator's account
of the whole. Writing in the first, there are many
things you can't tell, because you, as one of the characters,
can't know it all; as a spectator—a sort of on-looking creator—you
can know it all.
L. M. Montgomery: Personally I prefer writing in the
first person, because it then seems easier to live my story
as I write it. Since editors seem to have a prejudice
against this, I often write a story in the first person and
then rewrite it, shifting it to the third. As a reader, I enjoy
a story written in the first person far more than any
other kind. It gives me more of a sense of reality—of
actually knowing the people in it. The author does not
seem to come between me and the characters as much as in
the third-person stories. Wilkie Collins's Woman in
White is a fine example of the use of the first person. It
could not have been half so effective had he told it in the
[pg 401]
third. And Jane Eyre simply couldn't have been written
in any but the first.
Frederick Moore: I like to write in the third person,
because then I'm a god—all seeing, all knowing, all controlling—so
far as the characters are concerned.
Talbot Mundy: On the whole, I think, the third person.
It is easier to keep things concrete, and to keep off
the paper the mental actions and reactions of Number One.
Kathleen Norris: A story in the first person is limited
because the teller of it is presumably the hero, and
consequently he has to imply his own merit, beauty or intelligence.
More than that, he must be present at every
scene related and the plot must move in spite of him, as it
were. This sort of story was enormously popular in
Dickens' day, but it does not fit the new American type
of novel.
Anne O'Hagan: I don't know. It's easier in the first person,
but I don't think the results are apt to be so clear cut.
Grant Overton: I have, as it happens, never written
anything except certain passages in the first person. I
think I have no preference. It is all a matter of technical
advantage in presentation.
Hugh Pendexter: I have no preference and use both
first and third person as the story demands. I have started
more than one story in the first person and found it impossible;
perhaps because of plot demands. A story that
walked lamely in the third person behaved well when told
in the first. If I desire to show a young man, neither
Whig nor Tory, but leaning toward the latter and his gradual
turning to the former, the first person affords for me
the only vehicle. If plot is accentuated, the third person
becomes the vehicle.
Clay Perry: I prefer writing in the third person
rather than in the first because, personally, I have always
been more or less self-conscious and I have the same
feeling in writing. Just to use the word "I" as now is
hard work for me.
[pg 402]
Michael J. Phillips: I despise first-person writing. I
quarrel with the prig who is telling the story. He is either
too wise or too ignorant. He either knows too much or
doesn't know enough. If he is an actor in the story who
really is deserving of a lot of credit and admiration, I can
neither give him credit nor admire him. If he values himself
as truly as a swashing, swaggering fellow who would
be likable if some one else wrote of him, he becomes a hopeless
braggart. And if he is modest, he does not glow sufficiently
bright and I think: "Well, how did this fathead
ever stumble into this delightfully distinguished, daring,
lawbreaking group of real folks?"
E. S. Pladwell: Third person. The "I" becomes
monotonous in print. Nobody can avoid it when the first
person is used.
Lucia Mead Priest: I do not prefer the first person,
in fact I do not approve of it, save for a certain type of
writing. But when I write in the third I find myself growing
stiff and formal. I am less direct, inclining to consciousness
and pomposity. I don't know why.
Eugene Manlove Rhodes: Either, according to circumstances.
Frank C. Robertson: Depends on the nature of the
story. As a rule I think the third person gives the writer
more latitude for the development of character and material.
Ruth Sawyer: The third person. Unless the story
needs the direct confession of an autobiographical treatment,
I think the intrusion of the first person as eye-witness
or teller of the tale makes for complexity rather than
simplicity. Personally it has the same effect on me that
my neighbor makes when she says, "My sister's husband
told me that his friend, etc."
Chester L. Saxby: I like writing in the first person
for the pleasure of dwelling intimately with the hopes and
fears of the character. I like writing in the third person
for that strong, austere impersonalness—like a laboratory
[pg 403]
investigation. All in the mood, I presume. We're not
always the same. It explains the rejection of much good
stuff by editorial offices. I think, on the whole, I prefer
the first-person story. It's the story of me then; I'm putting
forth effort as the story proceeds; I feel the reality
more. But it's a difficult metier.
Barry Scobee: I prefer writing in the first- or third-person
according to the story. No other reason.
R. T. M. Scott: I prefer the third person because editors
prefer the third person and I have grown accustomed
to the way of least resistance so far as editors are concerned.
Besides, that "I" is hard to use genuinely in reference
to all kinds of characters.
Robert Simpson: I prefer writing in the third person
because it is, constructionally speaking, the simplest.
Arthur D. Howden Smith: First is easier. It's more
convincing.
Theodore Seixas Solomons: I prefer, for celebrity (it's
easier and quicker) and humanness, writing in the first
person. Its handicaps are, of course, that the omniscience
of the third person is wanting and it is impossible to
describe the characters and action in terms of the author's
best philosophy when the character telling the story is
almost always unable to achieve such philosophy. I therefore
use the first person only when the action is such as
not to require the peculiar advantages of third-person
narration. But I much prefer the first person, because of
its naturalness and humanness, when the nature of the
story permits its use.
Raymond S. Spears: Some of my best work is under
assumed name in first person—an adventure of the imagination.
Norman Springer: I like the first person best. I seem
to be able to get under the skins of the characters better.
Julian Street: The third person is less easy but is generally
the method of the best writers. The first person is
(with some exceptions) the refuge of the tyro. As a writer
[pg 404]
learns his job, he is likely to write more and more in the
third person—especially if he is a person of taste.
T. S. Stribling: I have no preference as to the person.
I find the first person good for rapidity of relation
and the elision of endless detail; the third person is best
for expansiveness.
Booth Tarkington: Of course writing in the first person
is infinitely easier. (That's one reason it should rarely
be done.) The reason that writing in the first person is
easier is this: The writing is supposed to be done by a
fictitious person; the author, therefore, does not feel so
responsible, himself, for the "quality of his prose."
W. C. Tuttle: A great majority of my stories have
been written in the first person. In fact, I began writing
that way because I could tell a story better than I could
write one, and because, in the first person, there are
fewer threads to carry. Characterizations are easier to
depict in the third person, I believe, except in a humorous
story, when I would rather describe a character in the
first person.
Lucille Van Slyke: Third person. Because it seems to
me that not one person in a thousand can successfully
keep up the illusion of being another person very long.
First person writing is a sort of lie as soon as it leaves
personal experience behind, and most of us do not have a
great many thrilling experiences personally. (I happen
to adore writing in second person and do a great deal of
that for sheer amusement. I wouldn't be so silly as to
submit it to any editor, for I am aware of the well-known
aversion to it—but, admitting that it presupposes a highly
imaginative reader, think what fun it is for both writer
and reader. I have been awfully interested in Louise Dutton's
stories about an adolescent girl in which she uses second
person a great deal but lapses to third—or indirect
discourse—so often that she much breaks her continuity
which makes me feel as though I were jumping in and out
of a Punch and Judy box—I love the minutes I'm being
[pg 405]
Judy but get rather mixed when I am trying to be
Punch!)
Atreus von Schrader: I prefer writing in the third
person, because I believe the use of the first person distracts,
nearly always, from the illusion of reality. Nine
times out of ten the first person is used because it is easier,
and for no other reason.
T. Von Ziekursch: Have no choice.
Henry Kitchell Webster: I seldom write in the first
person, but there is a certain kind of story where the mechanical
advantages it offers are great enough to more
than compensate for its limitations.
G. A. Wells: I prefer writing in the first person,
though seldom do so because I am not enough the craftsman
to subdue my egotism. I like first person better because
I get closer to the story. It is the personal equation.
When one writes first person he goes on the stage and acts;
no matter how large or small his part, he is in the show.
In the third person he sits with the audience and merely
records what happens. His readers have the same advantages
he has and he can't show a superior air. I often
write a story in the first person, and when finished strike
out the big "I's" and substitute the name of the principal
character. That way I get direct contact with the story.
William Wells: Third. Too darned bashful; seems
like bragging.
Ben Ames Williams: I prefer writing in the manner
best calculated to produce the effect I desire. This is a
technical question, to be answered differently in different
cases.
Honore Willsie: I prefer third-person writing, for,
while it is more difficult than first-person writing, it is
less apt to have an egotistical effect on the reader.
H. C. Witwer: I prefer writing in the third person,
but have written two hundred fifty short stories in the
first, because my readers seem to prefer that. I find
writing in the first person much easier than any other.
[pg 406]
William Almon Wolff: The third. There is, for me,
a certain artificiality about first person writing; a certain
seizing upon illicit aids. It's great fun to write in the
first person, and, sometimes, of course, it's the right thing
to do. But not often, I think. You dig deeper when
you're interpreting life through your description of people
seen objectively.
Edgar Young: Writing in the first person used to
come natural to me, due to the fact that for years as a
traveler I told many tales in this fashion to amuse friends
and was an adept at it. At present I prefer third person
work.
Summary
An analysis of the general trend of these 109 answers
shows that the first person is preferred and generally
used by 14, the third person by 54, while 41 may be classed
as neutral. Of this 41 only 24 are entirely neutral; 8,
while using both, prefer the third, and 9, while using both
or for various reasons using the third, prefer the first.
Some of the answers speak not only as writers but as
readers and doubtless most of the others in their preference
as writers voice also their preference as readers. On
this rough assumption we might say that of 109 readers
23 prefer stories in the first person to 62 preferring the
third. Two, as writers now preferring the third, originally
preferred the first and, by free and easy analysis,
might be assumed to have, as readers, rather a preference
for the first. If so, the score becomes 25 to 60: Again,
quite a number among both classes and also neutrals consider
first person easier and therefore—perhaps—more
natural and therefore—perhaps—more pleasing. A much
smaller number give the third person as easier. This highly
suppositional reasoning would bring the score for first
person considerably nearer that for third. All of which
has no value except as a straw indicating the truth of the
generally accepted theory that most readers prefer third-person
narratives to those told in first person, and as indicating
[pg 407]
that the proportion may be anywhere from 3 to 1 on
down to 10 to 7.
Rather pathetic as information, isn't it? But not half
so pathetic as the fact that writers and editors really know
so little as to the reading public's preference on this point
that even such weak-kneed conclusions as the above are of
some small value because they are at least drawn from a
few data of fact. Nor one-tenth so pathetic as the fact
that, while this commonly accepted theory seems justified
by the above straw, there are quite a few other
theories commonly accepted by writers, editors and critics
that lack the support of even so slender a fact-straw as
this.
As stated at the beginning of the chapter, the real value
of the investigation is the answers' proof that the question
of first person versus third is wholly a matter to be decided
according to each writer's individuality and the
nature of each particular story he takes up. Not by anybody's
general rule.
[pg 408]
QUESTION XII
Do you lose ideas because your imagination
travels faster than your means of recording?
Which affords least check—pencil,
typewriter or stenographer?
This question, like the preceding one, was added to the
questionnaire at the suggestion of several experienced
writers with whom I consulted. As is pointed out in some
of the answers, the choice of means of recording would
seem a matter to be decided wholly in accordance with the
idiosyncrasies of each particular writer. But human nature
is somewhat prone to settle down upon one method
without trying all and it may well be that some writers
now wedded to one method may, on learning the experiences
of over a hundred others, try some new method and
find it advantageous. Certainly the answers as a whole
give an interesting and full presentation of the practical
arguments for and against the various methods, and, as in
all the answers to the questionnaire, there are various bits
of information not always bearing directly on the particular
issue that will be found illuminating and valuable.
Answers
Bill Adams: Never lose an idea while I'm writing. (Be
nothing left if I did, m'lad.) God help poor sailors.
Samuel Hopkins Adams: Yes; but I catch a lot in the
act of escaping by keeping a reserve sheet of paper close
at hand while writing, and I will break off in the middle
of a sentence if necessary to pin the fugitive down. Pen
or pencil. You can't head off an escaping idea with a
typewriter. I've never tried a stenographer for fiction;
if I did, she would lead a wild-goose chase sort of existence,
for my mind constantly courses ahead of my plot and
[pg 409]
brings in small game to be attended to while the main
chase proceeds.
Paul L. Anderson: No, because I have the whole thing
planned beforehand. Sometimes, if I have an unusual
idea, which seems likely to get away, I note down a word
or two on a scrap of paper and keep it by me while writing.
This happens oftener with a turn of words than with
a fundamental idea. The fastest mode of production, by
far, is dictating to a s'nog'f'r, as they are usually called
in conversation. Next, the typewriter; next, the pen;
last, the pencil—the blame thing keeps getting dull and
you have to stop to sharpen it! I can seldom afford a
stenographer, but when I can, and have a good one, composition
is unalloyed bliss; I can light a cigarette, put my
feet up, and live the whole story, without distractions.
Joy!
William Ashley Anderson: With a typewriter of light
touch I can write most clearly and sharply, because, I
think, I feel the restraint of the appearance of words actually
in type.
The most agreeable tool to me is a goose quill. I only
used quills a little while, in England, where they are still
in use even in government offices. There is practically no
friction between the quill and paper, and no noise. The
effect is complete privacy and smoothly flowing words. I
do sometimes lose ideas which get away from me.
H. C. Bailey: I never lost ideas by forgetting them. I
write in pencil and slowly. Dictation or typewriting
would be impossible to me for any imaginative work.
Edwin Balmer: Typewriter.
Ralph Henry Barbour: I don't think my imagination
ever gets so far ahead of my means of recording that I
lose ideas. As to those means I prefer a typewriter. I
have never tried to dictate—to a stenographer. I don't believe
that I'd like it. Or maybe the stenographer wouldn't.
Anyway, I intend to keep on pounding it out myself.
Frederick Orin Bartlett: I use a typewriter and find
[pg 410]
that travels fast enough for me—as long as I don't worry
particularly over what keys I hit.
Nalbro Bartley: No—I do all my stuff on a typewriter.
I revise it personally—I make the final copy myself.
Konrad Bercovici: I never lose any ideas. I never begin
to put them down until they are rounded out in my
mind. One never loses anything except what he does not
care to possess.
Ferdinand Berthoud: Yes, I do, but I mostly pick
them up again unexpectedly, perhaps months afterward.
Always write my draft in pencil, as it is easier to make
instant alterations. Also the clicking and mechanism of
a typewriter are liable to bring me suddenly back from
out of my dream world.
H. H. Birney, Jr.: No; I don't think so. Story is
pretty well outlined in my mind before I start writing.
I personally write entirely with a fountain pen. Dislike
the "scratching" of a pencil and the lack of permanency
of penciled notes. Have tried doing my work direct from
brain to typewriter, but find that the purely mechanical
strain of using ten fingers, returning carriage, watching
right-hand margins, etc., tends to hamper thought. Tried
stenographer only once, so am not qualified to express
opinion there.
Farnham Bishop: I always compose mentally before I
begin to write. Conceived the plot of Malena while walking
post, outlined the whole novel and held it in my head
until I came off guard. Often come back from a walk
with one or two long paragraphs composed and memorized,
ready to be set down. I have held ideas and worked
them over mentally for months and years, before writing
a word on the subject.
That being the case, I almost never write except on my
trusty Corona, H. & P. Method.
Algernon Blackwood: Imagination invariably travels
faster than power of recording it. I use shorthand to jot
[pg 411]
down bits that flash ahead of the words I am actually
typing at the moment. These flashes otherwise prove irrecoverable.
With a stenographer beside me I could not
think of a single sentence. I compose straight on to my
own machine.
Max Bonter: Typewriter seems to afford me least
check in recording thoughts. I write Pitmanic shorthand
two hundred words a minute, but seldom use it in composition.
In this case my hand is speedier than the flow
of ideas. Moreover, ideas that would flow as fast as that
would not seem to be reliable. Such a flow of bull would
have to be edited very carefully afterward—so why be so
precipitate? Better take it easier and pay more attention
to logic than verbosity.
The clatter of a typewriter does not disturb my train
of thought. I don't need a sound-proof cell when I write.
When I feel in the mood for writing my spine is stiff and
I sit straight in my chair and punch hard. I like to feel
the keys bounce back from the platen. It makes me feel
as if I'm punching something and getting somewhere.
Katharine Holland Brown: Yes. Either the typewriter
or a pen. Never a stenographer.
F. R. Buckley: Never lost an idea that way yet. I
write extremely fast, and without conscious effort, on the
typewriter—up to ninety words a minute. I used to write
in pencil and pen when on English newspapers; now I'm
used to the typewriter, I find it and the hand-methods'
check equal. I mean, typewriter used to check me, now
hand-writing does. Just what you're used to. Typewriter
for me.
Prosper Buranelli: It seems to me that a writer is a
person with the gift of gab, but whose gift of gab is slower
than the jawbone. Slow typewriting is about the speed
of my gabble.
Thompson Burtis: Yes. I have never used any other
means of writing than a typewriter. I do not believe that
I would be effective through a stenographer, and I'm
[pg 412]
damn certain that I'd never write a line unless I was
starving if I had to depend on pen or pencil.
George M. A. Cain: I do lose ideas before I can catch
up to them with the recording. I have never done any
writing for publication otherwise than directly upon the
typewriter. Any handwriting entirely confuses me. I can
use a typewriter blindfolded. I can write with it twice or
three times as fast as with the pen or pencil. Without
having tried it, I imagine that the presence of a stenographer
would greatly bother me at first. I have always
thought that I might possibly get better results by using
a dictaphone and then cutting out about two-thirds of
what I said to it. Heaven knows I am prolix enough on a
typewriter. I hesitate to credit heaven with any generally
distributed knowledge of what I would do, if it involved
no greater effort than talking.
Robert V. Carr: When manufacturing literary sausage
I naturally want to grind it out rapidly. But if I
am working on what seems to be a good story, I can get
my ideas down with a pencil.
George L. Catton: Lots of ideas are lost that way,
though they generally come back. Pencil, with me, affords
the least check on loss.
Robert W. Chambers: Do not lose ideas thus. Pencil
and eraser.
Roy P. Churchill: I believe the mind can be trained
to construct with the means at hand. I have seldom lost
any real valuable ideas by having the spirit run away with
the physical construction of some sort of record. At first
I wrote with pencil, which is slow, then on a machine,
which is faster, and now dictate to a rapid stenographer.
I have had to get the habit of each method, and time would
be lost if I had to change again.
Carl Clausen: Sometimes. Pencil.
Courtney Ryley Cooper: That depends also. I use
every possible style of writing. I have started a story
by pen, switched to pencil, gone to the typewriter and
[pg 413]
dictated the climax, the reason being this: I must write
character slowly. I must do action as swiftly as it is possible
for me to put it down. And when the action becomes
too fast for my typewriter, I dictate. In other words,
although it is bromidic, I know, I live my stories to a
great extent. I personally go just as slow or as fast as
the story itself—there are times when I can not write
swiftly to save my life—because I am in a maze of slow
characterization. Then again, I have to go like an express
train to keep up with my story.
Arthur Crabb: To some extent, but not seriously. I
sometimes have trouble in retaining ideas that come when
I am off the job. Pencil.
Mary Stewart Cutting: No, as I said before, when I
imagine anything, I write it down and so do not lose my
ideas. A fountain pen in my hand greatly facilitates
thought and expression.
Elmer Davis: Yes, but still worse because I sit around
and think about the damn thing before I start writing at
all, and most of the good stuff is gone by the time I drag
out the old mill and get to work. Never tried anything
but typewriter, though I have seen stenographers who
would take a man's mind off the fleeting thought and the
evanescent phrase.
William Harper Dean: No, I can keep up with my
ideas, because I can write fast on a typewriter. I seldom
leave it until the story is done in its first draft—an eight-thousand-word
story will go down in the rough before I
leave the machine. Then come the long careful hours of
revision and rewriting, the thumbing of my Thesaurus.
But I must get it down in black and white while I am hot
with it—that's why I'll never write a book. I couldn't
write a thousand words to-day and a thousand to-morrow.
No, when I'm full of the thing it must be written.
Harris Dickson: No. I am an expert typewriter and
stenographer, and have so few ideas that I can not afford
to let one get away.
[pg 414]
Captain Dingle: I can only write one way—typewriter—straight
out from my imagination. Neither pen
nor pencil helps, nor any amount of notes, except such as
are necessary to avoid errors of date or place. Imagination
seems to keep up. When it slows, I know it's time
to clew-up for a spell.
Louis Dodge: If I get a good idea—conceding that I
ever do—it never gets away from me permanently. It'll
come back. But I get along better with a typewriter. It's
easier, that's all.
Phyllis Duganne: I don't lose ideas because my imagination
travels faster than my means of recording while
I'm actually working. I can lose them through being interrupted
before I've finished. A typewriter affords
least check; it's almost impossible for me to write with a
pencil. And my own typewriter is so well trained that it
can write just about as fast as I can put my thoughts into
words.
J. Allan Dunn: I find that my own typing keeps up
fairly well with my imagination, a little behind, far
enough to look over the situation ahead and amend or
alter it. But then I have usually thought out my day's
typing beforehand, probably several times over. The machine
is less check than any other medium, but it was not
until I had acquired a certain speed. If my technique
bothers me I can sometimes dictate very rapidly. I find,
however, that the matter of proper punctuation, dialect
and unusual spelling suffers at the hand of another—this
includes a dictaphone. I had a hard fight getting away
from pencil to the typewriter, but I don't want to go back.
Walter A. Dyer: I write pretty rapidly, and so I
seldom lose ideas. When I find my mind running ahead
it is usually a warning that what I am doing is dull. If an
idea jumps into my mind that I am afraid I shall forget, I
sometimes stop and jot down a note of it. Usually the
best stuff comes when the mind and the typewriter are
well synchronized. I used to write with a lead pencil, but
[pg 415]
I have learned to use a typewriter with less effort and so
with better results.
Walter Prichard Eaton: I lose ideas because I quit to
play golf. When I am writing I should certainly feel
sore if I couldn't hold one till I got it down. I never use
a typewriter—never found one that could spell. When I
use a pen I write so badly that nobody can tell whether
it can spell or not. I can't dictate. I at once begin to
write like Daniel Webster's Bunker Hill Oration.
E. O. Foster: I lose ideas because my imagination
travels faster than my typewriter. Of the four channels—pen,
pencil, typewriter and stenographer, the typewriter
affords the least check to my imagination.
Arthur O. Friel: Yes. Pencil.
J. U. Giesy: At times. The typewriter serves me
best.
George Gilbert: I use the typewriter, because I am
skilled on it to the point where I can write two thousand
four hundred words an hour. I once wrote ten thousand
words at one sitting, averaging two thousand an hour.
The story was not revised materially. I gained this skill
transcribing one hundred million words during my long
career as an Associated Press code operator, taking twelve
thousand to fifteen thousand words a night for many years.
I can think on the machine easily.
Kenneth Gilbert: While I do not lose ideas because
of mechanical inability to set them down rapidly, I lose
enthusiasm for them, and, perhaps, some of the precious
fire that would make them glow stronger. I find a typewriter
the least check on my imagination. I have never
tried a stenographer, but I have long felt that a dictating
machine would be very helpful.
Holworthy Hall: Not yet. Pencil.
Richard Matthews Hallet: My imagination does not
travel at better than a snail's pace. I could do a cuneiform
inscription without the sacrifice of a single idea.
Sometimes I compose on a typewriter and sometimes with
[pg 416]
a pen. If you write fast on the typewriter, if you really
do bring the speed dogs into play, and you are a fast thinker,
you gain momentum, I should think. But I always
gain momentum at the expense of nearly everything else.
I do at most two thousand words a day, even on re-write
stuff, and going at this pace, you can see that my imagination
does not feel the lag of the writing instruments. A
friend of mine leans into the horn of a dictaphone every
morning and sprays vocal folly there; but I never got
courage for that. That horn would follow me in dreams.
William H. Hamby: Yes. To me the pen.
A. Judson Hanna: I certainly would lose ideas because
my imagination travels faster than my means of
recording had I not adopted a plan for nailing down these
fugitive ideas. When an advance idea comes to me I
break off composition instantly, even in the middle of a
sentence, and record the advance idea. Later I run back
over the rough draft, pick out the fugitive ideas and insert
them where they are most effective. I began by writing
with a pen, slowly; discarding the pen for the typewriter,
and finally settling down to the use of the pencil
on any scrap of paper that is at hand when the thoughts
come, writing so swiftly that I have trouble in deciphering
my writing if I allow it to become "cold." As my mind
works now, I could not use a stenographer. In fact, the
mere presence of another person in the room where I am
writing disconcerts me and disorganizes my train of
thought.
Joseph Mills Hanson: My imagination seldom travels
faster than my means of recording. I find it easiest to do
original writing with a pencil. The next easiest method is
with a typewriter.
E. E. Harriman: At times my ideas seem to run down
a smooth chute at lightning speed and no stenographer
or human tongue could keep up with them. I lose some
on the way. The machine for me every time.
Nevil G. Henshaw: I often lose ideas by not being
[pg 417]
quick enough to get them down. For first draft I can't
go beyond a pen or pencil.
Joseph Hergesheimer: Pen.
Robert Hichens: No. I write always with a pen and
not very fast.
R. de S. Horn: Yes; that is one of the most provoking
things about writing. The imagination so far outspeeds
all methods of recording that I can command.
Clyde B. Hough: I am able to express ideas as fast as
I can compose them. Dictation to a stenographer is the
easiest method in writing for me.
Emerson Hough: I never have any ideas to lose.
Sometimes I write in longhand, sometimes on the typewriter.
I dictated about half of The Mississippi Bubble
direct on the machine in my business office. Wrote the
rest at home between ten o'clock at night and four in the
morning. If you think the medium does not matter, does
it?
I don't really see much use in trying to get at these
things. Every fellow writes in his own way, or ought to
do so. So far as these things helping other writers may
be concerned, I really don't think there is much in it. It's
a hard enough game, and so far as I can get at it, experience
is the only teacher in it that is worth a cuss. Sometimes
not even experience is worth that much. Advice is
nearly always worth a great deal less.
A. S. M. Hutchinson: Not, I think, when I am actually
writing.
Inez Haynes Irwin: My husband, Will Irwin, believes
that difficulty in the mechanical means of expression
makes for lucidity and elegance of style. He always uses
pen or pencil. I think this is only partly true. I think
there are times when it is impossible to get things down
with enough speed. I am sure that sometimes I lose ideas
and expressions when imagination is flowing free and I
can not register its outpouring quickly enough. I can of
course get my ideas expressed more quickly when I dictate
[pg 418]
to a stenographer. There is no doubt in my mind that a
story gains directness, a certain fluency, fluidity and plasticity—and
a quality, which comes from the spoken word
alone—in dictation. Perhaps equally it loses in precision
and compression. I started writing with a pencil; rejected
the pencil for the typewriter; the typewriter for dictation
to a stenographer. Now I am writing with the pencil
again. Next month, I may revert to the typewriter. In
my opinion an ideal way to compose would be to dictate
the story first and then rewrite the dictated version with a
pencil.
Will Irwin: I can not remember ever losing an idea
because my means of recording was not fast enough. In
writing fiction, and generally in writing journalism, I use
a pen or lead pencil. I have a tendency to be diffuse, and
a slow and difficult means checks this. I regard the typewriter
and dictaphone as the enemies of style.
Frederick J. Jackson: My imagination travels fast,
but I get a death clutch on my ideas. Typewriter is my
favorite: cleaner, more effective copy. Pen next. Pencil
too mussy. Stenographers are the bunk. Haven't found
one who can take my stuff right.
Mary Johnston: There are ideas too swift for our
catching—as yet. I prefer a soft, black pencil.
John Joseph: Yes, my pencil lies beside the machine
and I make a great many notes, otherwise I'd lose many
good (?) ideas. The typewriter affords the least check
to the imagination.
Lloyd Kohler: Yes, I have often lost ideas because my
imagination travels faster than my means of recording. A
pencil or fountain pen affords the least check. I have
never tried the stenographer plan—I'm afraid I'd be a little
self-conscious; gun-shy, you know.
Harold Lamb: No, when the imagination travels over
a bit of ground it is always able to return. As for ideas,
a penciled note, a word or so, will bring them back A
typewriter gives least check, probably due to habit.
[pg 419]
Tamen shud!
Sinclair Lewis: Rarely. Typewriter.
Hapsburg Liebe: My imagination often travels too
fast, and then I make notes. I use a pencil for writing
names of characters and the situation roughly; the rest I
do on a typewriter; it makes a better, clearer picture for
me to see as I go along.
Romaine H. Lowdermilk: I do lose ideas that way. I
can get them down better with pencil, for it gives opportunity
for quick substitution and marking-out. Still, I
do most of the work on a typewriter, as it is more convenient
when it comes to revision (double space). I can't
always read what I write by hand. My imagination
works best at night; criticism in the morning. I do best
thinking in hot weather. I don't get up at night to write
but have lost good ideas by not doing so. And I hope
there's something useful in the foregoing!
Eugene P. Lyle, Jr.: Not often—not often enough.
Ideas are slow travelers. I wish they could keep up with
my fingers on the typewriter. Typewriter affords the
least check, or about the same as a pencil.
Rose Macaulay: Yes. Waterman's safety fountain
pen.
Crittenden Marriott: Pen and stenographer about the
same.
Homer I. McEldowney: I have a skeleton of my entire
story. It is simply scribbled in a hurry and I keep
the pen moving fast enough to prevent the ideas from getting
away before I can rope and hog-tie them.
Ray McGillivray: Stenographer. Often she interjects
ideas into the scripts I never even imagined. Still, she's
not bad, though a letter like this would burn out her
bearings.
Helen Topping Miller: My stories are usually fairly
complete in my mind before I begin to write them. Usually
the first thousand words are so completely formulated
that I could recite them before I put a line on paper.
[pg 420]
No matter what I am doing—traveling, teaching, going
about my domestic tasks, I am "making up" stories "in
my head," as the children say. I write on a typewriter,
usually, though I am able to work as rapidly with a fountain
pen on rough paper. I can not use a pencil.
Thomas Samson Miller: I use pen, and sometimes an
idea slips in memory, but nothing of great importance,
and if it is best work—work done over and over—the idea
is picked up again.
Anne Shannon Monroe: Yes, I am never able to keep
up with my ideas; often I have to stop typing and make a
note on a scrap of paper, of something on ahead, fearful
lest I forget it when I come up with it. I use a typewriter
altogether.
L. M. Montgomery: I don't think many ideas ever
get away from me by reason of slowness of recording. My
aforesaid note-book habit has been of tremendous value
here. I write with a pen and couldn't write with anything
else—at least, as far as prose is concerned. When I write
verse I always write on an ordinary school slate, because
of the facilities for easy erasure. But for prose I want a
Waverly pen—this is not an advertisement—I just can't
write with any other! a smooth unlined paper and a portfolio
I can hold on my knee. Then I can sail straight
ahead and keep up with any ideas that present themselves.
But these are only personal idiosyncrasies and have nothing
to do with a writer's success or non-success. So no aspiring
beginner need despair because his or her stationer
is not stocked up with Waverly pens!
Frederick Moore: I sometimes lose ideas because my
imagination travels too fast. It may be that those ideas
are like the fish that got away—not so big. But just the
right angle on a situation will sometimes slip away and
won't come back for days. Then it is not wise to chase it
too hard, for it seems to get out of reach entirely if pressed
too close. It frequently comes back under the queerest
circumstances and when least expected. The writer works
[pg 421]
all the time—at the theater, walking, and sometimes when
talking with another person on other subjects. My own
hands on the typewriter beat everything in the way of
creating. I have tried all others. The other person, in
dictating, seems to act as a barrier with me. I find myself
watching the effect of what I dictate on that person, or
the secretary makes faces or looks bored, or makes a noise
when he breathes, or looks at me. So I have to do it myself
to avoid assault and battery. And I won't allow machine
copying, for I find that if I copy myself, I change the turn
of a sentence or add to something that makes an improvement.
And a stretch of writing is more exhausting than a
similar period at the hardest of labor. Only the writer
knows what a sapping, wearing job writing a story happens
to be. That is what makes 'em so cranky.
Talbot Mundy: The typewriter seems best, but I am
going to try a dictaphone by way of experiment. As regards
the losing of ideas, "when found make a note of"
is probably the remedy. Then the only difficulty is to
force yourself to consult your note-book and, having consulted
it, to link up again the hurriedly made note with
the wonderful winged idea that inspired it.
The only stuff really worth writing is poetry, although
I'd hate to have to read nothing else! The stuff I enjoy
reading most of all is philosophy and metaphysics. Next
after which, good books of travel and treatises on finance
and bee-keeping hold the board.
I believe that the apex of exquisite enjoyment is, for instance,
reading Kant or John Wesley and shooting their
arguments all to pieces. But I can't afford to enjoy myself.
Kathleen Norris: To "lose ideas" seems to me to imply
an untidy sort of brain. The imagination needed for
a story should not be a spasmodic, incoherent, impulsive
sort of business, but an orderly production. A person who
would lose ideas would also lose her purse, her friends, her
petticoat, and eventually, I should suppose, her mind.
[pg 422]
Anne O'Hagan: I think I'll answer this the other way
around, naming the things that oppose the most check in
their order—pen, stenographer, typewriter, pencil.
Grant Overton: I always compose on the typewriter.
I should lose ideas if I had to write by hand, but I generally
sit down to a day's work of possibly three concentrated
hours with only a vague idea of what I shall write
about. I may know a sentence or two. I let it build itself
up from moment to moment. All the ideas and most
of the pictures grow out of the moment before.
Sir Gilbert Parker: I could not dictate a word, and I
never used a typewriter. All I do is written by hand with
a pen.
Hugh Pendexter: Often. But they usually come back
to me without any conscious effort to reclaim them. The
typewriter is my best medium for setting down the story.
I never use pen, pencil, or dictate. But there is no medium
ever invented that can keep up with a man's imagination
and preserve all the coloring and minutiæ of effects.
Clay Perry: I used to lose ideas because of being unable
to get them on paper fast enough, but since I educated
my two forefingers to the hunt and touch system on the
typewriter that happens very seldom. Having done practically
all my fiction work for the past five years on a
"mill" and never through dictation, I can not say whether
dictation would help more. A pen or pencil would "cramp
my style" very badly, now. I've synchronized my mind to
the "mill." However, I believe this is purely an artificial,
mechanical condition which could be worked out, one way
or another, in necessity.
Michael J. Phillips: Newspaper training has disciplined
my mind so I lose nothing through failure of speed
to transcribe. It is all right for some, but I would be
afraid of a yarn that forced me to such speed. The thing
would be impossible when I had finished it. Usually use
typewriter and copy all of my own short manuscripts, having
longer ones copied by stenographer. The newspaper
[pg 423]
game has taught me to dictate either over the phone or to
stenographer; to typewrite; and to write with pencil with
equal freedom. I wouldn't care for a pen. Under the
circumstances, the typewriter is the most practicable, so I
use it almost exclusively.
Walter B. Pitkin: I lose much through inability to
record fast enough. I work best when typing myself; next
best with a pen or pencil. I am totally unable to dictate
anything but the deadest form-letter stuff to even the most
sympathetic stenog! I have two utterly distinct styles
and manners, one when writing freely and one when talking
to a secretary or stenog. The latter is simply awful.
E. S. Pladwell: No. My imagination travels fast but
I do not lose ideas because of it. Out of a hundred ideas,
five are good. Those five, if good, need not be forgotten.
It works out automatically. I remember a good idea. The
rest can go hang.
Being a newspaper man, I use the typewriter constantly
and now I can not write longhand without a cramp in two
minutes.
Lucia Mead Priest: Sometimes my thoughts get ahead
of me. If they are not nailed down they are likely never
to come again.
I can keep up fairly well—if I do not have to decipher
the next day, I am safe.
I do not use the typewriter for several reasons. Mechanical
things are irksome; I am lazy.
I use a pencil and a stenographer does the rest.
Eugene Manlove Rhodes: Yes. Pencil.
Frank C. Robertson: I find it pays to turn the imagination
loose until the story is well outlined in the mind
before touching paper. Then it is comparatively easy to
concentrate upon the immediate problem before you when
you sit down to write. I compose only on the typewriter.
Ruth Sawyer: Yes. I prefer typewriter. And when
the material is definitely clear and fresh in my mind I
prefer dictating.
[pg 424]
Chester L. Saxby: Pen or pencil is a greater drag
on me than a typewriter is. Due to habit, no doubt. I
have never dictated. Oh, yes, ideas crowd on at times;
but with a pencil I should find the crowding rushed my
writing into chicken-tracks I couldn't read afterward.
The very fact that typewriting holds me back I regard as
an advantage; the first impulse must too frequently be
rejected. Literature should be cooked up in hot blood—and
then written cold.
Barry Scobee: I would lose ideas because my imagination
travels faster than my typewriter, but I jot down
points for my story, even pages ahead, as I go along and
they come to mind. Typewriter affords least check for
me. Never tried a story with any other tool.
R. T. M. Scott: I lose a few ideas because my imagination
travels faster than my means of recording but I usually
pick up others, equally good, which I would have
missed had my recording kept pace with my thoughts.
The typewriter affords me the least check, but I believe
that to be a matter of habit. One thing about a typewriter
is that you get a better look at your stuff as it goes
down.
Robert Simpson: I don't lose many ideas owing to a
rapid fire imagination. I haven't got one. Frequently it
goes wandering off into bypaths, but the only thing I lose
then is time. Everything I write is first written and revised
in pen and ink. I detest a typewriter.
Arthur D. Howden Smith: No. Typewriter.
Theodore Seixas Solomons: I seldom lose ideas in that
way. From my answer to II you will see that even if I
happen to think faster than I can write, if the thought is a
useful one it automatically attaches itself to my memory.
As to the mechanism of writing, I am only now abandoning
the pen and using, for almost all composition, the typewriter.
But for the greater legibility and the quickness,
when quickness is needed, of the machine, I should continue
with the pen, for with me it is most conducive to
[pg 425]
careful first expression. I write with widely separated
lines—about twice the usual spacing, or even three times.
This, either with the pen or on the machine. My purpose
is to avoid the necessity of making a new draft on new
paper when I come to revise. I now use but the one manuscript
draft, making all my changes on that. Occasionally
I am obliged to prepare some new sheets, but ninety-five
per cent. or more of the original sheets are retained. If I
happen to be in my stride, or, what is more likely, if the
matter happens to be easy to write, a page or two may
escape with little correction. Again, I may line and interline,
but I have the space and by using a fine script, which
comes easy to me, I am able to make great changes and
additions while retaining the original page.
The advantages of this will be manifest when one considers
the value of having before one constantly, in his
revisings, all his past thought and expression. Here, in
my way of working, I have before me always the complete
history of the fashioning of the thought—the sentence or
paragraph. Often I later resume the original form, having
found, by the lapse of time, that the improvement I
sought and fancied I had achieved involved some objection
greater than that I strove to remedy. This and many
other advantages of this method would be impossible if a
completely new copy were made, for one would never
think to go back to the old, and if he did it would be difficult
and cumbersome. Incidentally, it is a time-saver.
When my first draft is a typed one I revise with the pen
on the same sheets.
Raymond S. Spears: I can keep up with my typewriter,
when writing stories. If my mind jumps ahead
too fast, I make a pencil note to recall the look into the
future of the story.
Norman Springer: The mind always runs ahead of the
work. It plays around the sides of the story, so to speak.
But I don't think there is any loss. If an idea isn't used,
it sinks back into the mind and some day it pops up again.
[pg 426]
I compose on a typewriter. It is a plodding business.
But fast enough, for I find myself pausing only too often.
This query brings up another item. It is the difference
between thinking a story and writing it. And I find that
this too is a common experience among writers I know.
Thinking up the story is fine work, pleasant and exhilarating.
When you have your materials and your characters
you think out the yarn from beginning to end.
Everything seems crystal clear, every detail in its proper
place, every difficulty solved. It appears to you to be a
very good story indeed and ridiculously easy to write.
You begin to write, and alas, the story that seemed so
clear in your mind turns out to have been not clear at all,
but nebulous. As you thought it, it was beautiful; as you
write it, it is a mess. No matter how hard you try, you
can never get down upon paper the wonderful story you
thought. The best you achieve is a caricature.
Another common experience is what I call "bumping
into the stone wall." There comes a time in every story,
usually toward its end, when you get stumped. By this
time, anyway, you are usually pretty well disgusted with
the tale. It is so inferior to what you planned, so different
from the fine story you saw when you thought it out.
Your mind is also eager to be at new work. So you bump
into the stone wall.
This wall is usually some little hitherto unconsidered detail
that suddenly assumes huge proportions. It seems to
have wrecked your story. There is nothing to do then but
plug, and pretty soon the difficulty is surmounted.
I mention this because I've noticed that the "stone
wall" is the place where the new writer is apt to throw up
the sponge.
Julian Street: I have that tendency but have trained
myself to catch the ideas as they come by. The fancies
that come when one is writing I have often called "butterflies
of thought." One must be ready always with the net
and get them before they fly out of the window again.
[pg 427]
T. S. Stribling: I never lose my ideas if I catch any.
Anything will do except a stenographer; I can't bear to
have another person in the room while I work; they disturb
me just as much sitting silent and motionless as if
they were raising bedlam.
Booth Tarkington: Sometimes. The pencil is best for
me.
W. C. Tuttle: I have never dictated any copy. I am
not fast on a typewriter—using only two fingers and profanity—but
I am never more than two chapters behind my
imagination. Seriously, I never know what the next paragraph
is going to contain.
Lucille Van Slyke: I'd like to kid myself along by
thinking I lose heaps of ideas that way, but common sense
tells me they aren't very impressive or I wouldn't lose
them. Typewriter. Except at those heavenly, rare—awfully
rare—moments when I get a faint inkling (no pun intended!)
of how it must feel to be an inspired writer instead
of a bungling, struggling tortoise of a scribbler who
is handicapped by being a trifle softheaded and by having
to carry a beloved house around on her back as she crawls.
At those times I like a big fat pencil, a whole box of big
fat pencils.
Atreus von Schrader: No. Typewriter.
T. Von Ziekursch: Find the typewriter most satisfactory.
Occasionally have stopped to jot down a note on
some touch that I know I wanted to add later in the story
and might forget in the fever of the story.
Henry Kitchell Webster: I don't think I ever lost an
idea because my imagination had outrun the means of recording.
I sometimes dictate, sometimes write on the typewriter;
I think the difference is unimportant.
G. A. Wells: My imagination would move miles ahead
of my writing instrument if I let it. I therefore adjust
the tempo of my imagination to keep pace with the recording
instrument. I think the use of a recording instrument
depends upon the mood. I have trouble using a typewriter
[pg 428]
in artificial light. Can not use a pen during the day with
the same facility as at night. I detest a pencil and very
seldom use one. My mind is more free with a pen than
with a machine, though most of my writing is done altogether
on the machine.
William Wells: No, because I can call them back.
Typewriter; can't dictate, get all balled up; maybe lack
of practise.
Ben Ames Williams: I use a typewriter and find it
satisfactory; to use pen or pencil for more than a few
minutes tires me, physically, and my handwriting becomes
entirely illegible.
Honore Willsie: Sometimes. Soft pencil.
H. C. Witwer: I have lost many ideas, plots, titles,
bits of dialogue, etc., because my imagination has traveled
faster than the means of recording it. It has not always
been convenient to make notes. For example, I might be
working on a story and later be at a theater or almost
anywhere, and an idea for a funny or dramatic scene in
this particular yarn will strike me. By the time I get back
to my story, intervening events may have driven the idea
entirely out of my mind. Yet weeks afterward it will
crop up again most unexpectedly, apropos of nothing at
all, and I'll think, "Darn it, I should have used that in
such and such a story!"
I find the typewriter affords least check and work on it
exclusively.
William Almon Wolff: I can keep up with my imagination
when I use a typewriter; I can't with pen or pencil.
I can't dictate at all. That is, I suppose, a matter of
habit and custom.
Edgar Young: Write directly on a typewriter by
touch system and rewrite from another person's reading
where I catch many inconsistencies and change them as I
write. I consider composing on a typewriter a very poor
method and wish I had always used a pencil, marking out
swiftly when the wrong word or sentence was put down.
[pg 429]
This letter is a fair sample of what I compose at a first
draft.
Summary
Total answering, 111. Losing ideas through too slow
means of recording, 43; 10 of these prevent a final loss by
making notes. Not losing, 55.
In tabulating the means of recording affording least
check or preferred for general reasons, in several instances
where a writer habitually still uses more than one, a score
has been given for each. The heavy predominance of the
typewriter was rather surprising to the tabulator, as was
also the greater use of pencil than of pen. Typewriter
63; pencil 24; pen 23 (4 of these specified fountain pen
and 1 a goose quill); longhand (neither pen nor pencil
specified) 1; dictation to stenographer 9; any 1; any but
stenographer 1. No dictaphone except 1 prospect.
This tabulation, like all others in this book, though carefully
made, can not be exact, some answers not lending
themselves to definite or even entirely satisfactory tabulation.
This is of little moment, since in all cases the only
purpose to be served is that of ascertaining general tendencies
and drawing general comparisons.
THE END
Transcriber Notes:
Passages in italics were indicated by _underscores_.
Passages in bold were indicated by =equal signs=.
Small caps were replaced with ALL CAPS.
Errors in punctuations, inconsistent hyphenation, and inconsistent were italics were not corrected
unless otherwise noted.
On page 7, "etc?" was replaced with "etc.?".
On page 25, "propellor" was replaced with "propeller".
On page 31, "told it me all wrong" was replaced with "told it to me all wrong".
On page 35, the period after R. T. M. Scott was replaced with a colon.
On page 78, "1 receive these" was replaced with "I receive these".
On page 81, "whether logical or no" was replaced with "whether logical or not".
On page 96, "It's aim," was replaced with "Its aim,".
On page 119, "that is too minute.." was replaced with "that is too minute.".
On page 121, "Mary Stuart Cutting" was replaced with "Mary Stewart Cutting".
On page 124, "subconciously" was replaced with "subconsciously".
On page 127, "Dicken's" was replaced with "Dickens'".
On page 138, a period was put after "(hope I'm
not getting atrophied!)".
On page 154, a period was put after "it is a terrible arraignment
to numbers".
On page 165, a period was put after "Otherwise I think there
is little if any difference".
On page 193, a period was put after "I had been reading (by somebody
else!)".
On page 198, "as I want them too" was replaced with "as I want them too".
On page 207, "Imagaination" was replaced with "Imagination".
On page 288, "Mauspassant" was replaced with "Maupassant".
On page 309, "Gilbert Chesterson" was replaced with "Gilbert Chesterton".
On page 327, "Anna O'Hagan" was replaced with "Anne O'Hagan".
On page 328, "attention to style, If by that" was replaced with
"attention to style, if by that".
On page 342, "begining" was replaced with "beginning".
On page 347, "a a" was replaced with "a".
On page 365, "corrall" was replaced with "corral".
On page 390, "CHAPTER XI" was replaced with "QUESTION XI".
On page 400, "Colliers'" was replaced with "Collins's".
On page 409, "Paul K. Anderson" was replaced with "Paul L. Anderson".
On page 415, the period after Holworthy Hall was replaced with a colon.
On page 422, "Ann O'Hagan" was replaced with "Anne O'Hagan".
On page 415, the period after E. S. Pladwell was replaced with a colon.
