=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 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 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.
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 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 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 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 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 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!"
=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.
=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.
=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
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 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
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 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 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.
=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 to 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 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.
=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 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 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.