Konrad Bercovici: A little technique does not hurt. It is like salt and pepper in a dish, but who wants a dish of salt or a dish of pepper?
Ferdinand Berthoud: I don't quite understand. Do not feel enough of an authority to have an opinion on the subject.
H. H. Birney, Jr.: Almost impossible to answer. Just what do you mean by "technique"? Webster's definition, summarized, is "artistic execution." Taking it as such, technique is almighty important. To sell, a story must "read well." It must be smooth, finished, plot must be well developed, interest sustained, etc. All of this can be classed as literary technique.
Farnham Bishop: Technical training is good in so far that it teaches a man to use the tools of his trade. But unless he was born to the trade, he'll never master it. Creative ability is as the Creator is pleased to bestow it. The very small quantity that I possess has been much more helped than hindered by my teachers.
The more a man writes, the better his technique should become. To tell a good tale plainly is better art and harder work than jig-sawing and bedecking a poor little bungalow of an idea to make it look like a palace.
Algernon Blackwood: I have never consciously studied technique. Up to a point technique must be instinctive. But it can be over-stressed. It can overlay an idea, especially a thin idea. Its value, of course, can not be over estimated. It is essential. But no text-book has ever helped me much.
Max Bonter: Wish I knew more about technique. Am trying to learn.
Katharine Holland Brown: Profoundly valuable—if the story lives, too.
F. R. Buckley: Technique is essential: technicalities (as above) seem to me murderous. Most important point of technique (to me) is tempo—taking the two extremes of dull legato and fatiguing staccato and hitting the exact point between them, using the exact combination of them, you need to produce the particular effect you want. Never saw anybody try to teach this. Doubt if it could be taught.
Prosper Buranelli: Technique is everything. A writer who can not write is an illiterate. The trouble with letters in this country is that its literary men are illiterates—I mean even fellows like Dreiser and Sherwood Anderson.