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 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 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 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 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.
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.