Character 430Plot 329Style 192Structure 180Setting 171Color 166Material 158All 56Action 21Atmosphere 16Situation 13Development 7Abstract Ideas 7Clearness 7Suspense 7Surprise 7Drama 7Keynote 7Humanity 7Thought 7Charm 7Theme 7Verisimilitude 7Feeling 7Philosophy 6Period 6Humor 5Punch 3
Character 430Plot 329Style 192Structure 180Setting 171Color 166Material 158All 56Action 21Atmosphere 16Situation 13Development 7Abstract Ideas 7Clearness 7Suspense 7Surprise 7Drama 7Keynote 7Humanity 7Thought 7Charm 7Theme 7Verisimilitude 7Feeling 7Philosophy 6Period 6Humor 5Punch 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 withmy 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.
QUESTION IX
What are two or three of the most valuable suggestions you could give to a beginner? To a practised writer?
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 somuch."
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 readanalytically. 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 brainand 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 notmade. 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, doso. 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.
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 assalesare 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. ReadMartin Edenbut 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 themoon, 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'timagine 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, andworkat 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 judgmentthat 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 verybest 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 thebestthing 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'sabout 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!"
Harris Dickson: Personally my most valuable suggestion to myself is towrite 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, ofthe 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 hemustdo 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.
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'sPrice of Stringin 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.
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.
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 yourselfand 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: Besureyour 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 anauthor, 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 charactertremendously, 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. Dramaticsuspense. 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 youknowof 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 aftera little while. Don't get discouraged; success came to the biggest authors only after the most discouraging failures. Revise—and revise—andrevise!And stick to the people, the things, that you know.
To a practised writer I would say:
Pleasedon'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.
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.
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 tooffer. 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 isa curse. If you want to write in several styles, have anom de plumefor 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 forceyourself, 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.
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 aresureyou 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 outwhythey 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 lackingin 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 thatrewritingis 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 afinished 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 goingto 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 gettingfertilizers; 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 youknow. 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 actionwhich 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 hisreward, I believe. Ask the publishers aboutIf 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 allthink. And realize right at the beginning that bluffs won't work. Don't pretend to be a writer untilyou 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. Lookback.
Barry Scobee: For the beginner: Know youwantto andwillwrite. Then learn technique. Then get something out of yourownexperience 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. Isaw in theMetropolitanfive 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 itsatisfiesthat 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 matterhow 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 ofyou. 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 withnaturalexpression, 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 hisown 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 whimsas 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 makemedo 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 notpractised 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 bookreviewing. 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 talentbut 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 athingthat started the first story—a queer-shaped loaf of bread in a Syrian baker's shop—the kind ofbread 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.