Anne Shannon Monroe: I have had neither classroom nor correspondence work in writing fiction. Have read no books on the subject that I can remember, save a few stray passages from Flaubert—seems to me he knew how.
L. M. Montgomery: I never took any kind of a course in writing fiction. Such things may be helpful if the real root of the matter is in you, but I had to get along without them. I was born and brought up in a remote country settlement, twenty-four miles from a town and ten from a railway. There I wrote my first stories and my first four books. So no beginner need feel discouraged because of remote location or lack of literary "atmosphere."
Frederick Moore: No. There may be people who can teach story writing—that is, stimulate to endeavor. The old hand can give tips to the beginner that keep him from getting off the track, but the writer must actually do his own creating. The creative impulse must exist to create, though technique is another thing. I believe everybody has the creative impulse in some degree. If it is weak, technique will avail nothing. The experts on technique are generally deficient in creative ability. If they had both, their expertness in technique would be smothered—that is, not apparent—while their creative ability would make them rich and famous. To put it another way, the mass of readers are not conscious of technique and simply say, "That writer writes fine stories." But the expert, or the novelist, says: "He is a wizard at creation, and good at technique." Of course, technique may come as naturally to a writer as his creative ability—he or she may know how to handle the story so as to get the strongest effect, and we get, say, another Robinson Crusoe. But it is very apparent, in reading the complete story by DeFoe that he did not know where he was going when he set out. He flopped all over the shop until he got to his island, and I am convinced that at that point he struck his gait and knew what he was about. Every story presents its own problem in technique—that is, merely the best way to tell that kind of a story. And there is a best way for every story—a way that fits the environment, the characters, and the happenings in that particular combination. Once in a dog's age it is done, like Ethan Frome, or The Red Badge of Courage, or The Call of the Wild. I regard every story as an experiment in chemistry. It is possible to blow yourself up, so to speak, or discover an elixir of life. Most writers are known for one piece of work, though they have done many others. DeFoe wrote volumes and is known for Robinson Crusoe, while Lorna Doone was the work of a novelist who wrote other volumes; also, consider Uncle Tom's Cabin. And I believe that each of these three books was written at just the right moment to insure success: Crusoe, when the English were fired with foreign exploration, Lorna Doone when a peaceful life in the English countryside had become the ideal, and Uncle Tom when the nation needed its arguments on slavery focussed into a tract which could be handed out with a kind of "Here! Read this, and see what you think of slavery then!" Also, Empey's Over the Top came when the men getting ready for war needed something in the way of a text-book on war—"This is the sort of thing we can expect to get into."
To me, one of the most discouraging things (but not personally) is that the higher the art in fiction, the less the number of appreciative readers. Of course, I mean by that the kind of novels in which little actually happens outside the minds of the characters. I do not say such novels are best, but most critics do. And why do critics always criticize from a "trade standpoint," that is, as if novels were written for other novelists? The story that is most violently attacked by critics generally sells best. I am not saying that stories are written to sell, but that they are written to entertain, to arouse emotions, to give an experience in life that is likely to be missing in the life of the reader. The reader likes to see himself in the condition described and to wonder how he would react. And most great books have had difficulty in reaching print. So many editors are shouting for original stories, but they are actually afraid of stories that are too original—until that type of story has proved successful. Then they all want something like it, and we develop another "school of fiction." But don't blame the editor for that—the public must be trained to that type, and an editor has to be a practical man if he wants to continue to edit. Merely because a story is bizarre does not make it necessarily original, and if original, not necessarily desirable. What editors mean when they say "originality" is a new angle on an old idea or an old plot—but the age not apparent.
I believe that the best fiction written in this country today is being published in the so-called "cheap magazines." That is, magazines devoted to fiction alone. They actually cost more than many of the "better magazines," and they are free of "jazz," degeneracy and sex. Coated paper and good illustrations do not give quality to fiction. The Bible printed on news stock would still be the Bible, and the same is true of all other fiction, from Shakespeare to date. There can be just as much art used in telling an adventure story as in any other kind—and as a matter of fact, more is needed in that kind of story than in the story which depends on sex for its interest. The fiction magazines have to deliver the goods, and many of them have a higher manuscript-account for their material than the fancier looking products. The so-called "cheap fiction" magazines have really developed our best American writers, generally speaking. These magazines have provided a market for the beginners and have encouraged them during their apprenticeship. If the same writers had to wait until they were able to sell to the "highbrows," many writers famous to-day would never have struggled on. Many a person who has paid two dollars for a book held up as a fine piece of work is unaware that the chauffeur read the same story as a serial in a "cheap magazine." And Treasure Island was sold as a serial to a "boy's shocker" and published under the name of Captain John North. Most people know Robinson Crusoe as a classic, in spite of the fact that it has shipwreck, cannibalism, and killings galore. So "blood and thunder" comes nearer to representing life than many a devious study of some maniac's brain written in Russia, for all the loud cries of the critics and others. For several years past the world has been all "blood and thunder" and many woke up to the fact that the human animal is given to violence and murder. This must all be considered by the person who sets out to write—and that person must remember that art is not always done with deliberation. Sometimes it just happens.
Talbot Mundy: No.
Kathleen Norris: I had some college work in "daily themes," a sort of primary fiction work, for some six months, and I think it did me incalculable good. (This was before I ever wrote a line.)
Anne O'Hagan: No.
Grant Overton: I have never had any training in writing except what I have learned or sensed myself. I have read books about it but none of them amounts to a great deal.
Sir Gilbert Parker: Never. Fiction can't be taught!