"No; I only imagine it."
"What's the good of that?"
"It's part of a romance I'm working at."
"Ah, so you write romances! Will you put us into them?"
"Oh, no! Romance writing does not consist in merely copying down all that one sees and hears about one."
"I should like to know how you set about it?"
"First of all I think out the end of the story."
"What, you begin at the end?"
"Yes. Then I create the characters of the story. Then I deal out to these characters the parts they must play, and the vicissitudes they must go through down to the very end of the story."
"Then, according to that, none of it is true?"