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." 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.
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, 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 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, 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 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.
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. 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.