Elmer Davis: It can be overdone, but most of us are in no danger.
William Harper Dean: I feel that technique is the leaven in a story—you can ruin the possibilities in a situation in its development if your technique is poor. Illogical sequence in the development, the stressing of minor situations, the slighting of the weightier ones, the faltering in the forward march to the climax—these things mean poor technique and a poor story.
Harris Dickson: Technique, it would seem to me, is the handling of a story in harmony with its matter. Naturally the method of handling a detective story is different from that of a treatise on esoteric Buddhism. A negro story violates every known rule of white technique to follow a rambling and garrulous illogical method of its own—which becomes logical when applied to our brother in black, for that is the process of the African mind. He's a curiously devious oriental.
Captain Dingle: I don't understand exactly what this question means. In fact, except in the matter of plot, I scarcely know what "technique" means. As for plot, I believe that far more stress is put upon this as an essential than any audience or readers demand.
Louis Dodge: As for technique, I like the technique of Jack Dempsey, who hits first and hardest. I don't mean that he hasn't any technique: I mean simply that he is Jack Dempsey.
Phyllis Duganne: My general feeling is that technique saves time and labor—and that you get it only through much previous time and labor.
J. Allan Dunn: The value of technique in story writing is, I think, in exactly the same ratio as technique is to the painter, the singer, the musician, the sculptor, the architect. It is more elusive in writing, but it must be acquired. The world is full of chaps who mistook an ear for music, an eye for color, a faculty for mimicry and a desire to write as a token of genius that would flow like buttermilk out of a jug. Technique constitutes the difference between the amateur and the professional in every profession.
Walter A. Dyer: If I did not still retain a belief in the value of technique I should be in despair.
Walter Prichard Eaton: Without technique not one in a hundred can get by—and the one exception who does will be found to have created a new technique!
E. O. Foster: My training in newspaper writing is that technique is a most valuable asset. With the proper technique a man can make even an ordinary newspaper story interesting.