Arthur O. Friel: A minor consideration. Subordinate to the actual story. A "tool" only.
J. U. Giesy: I admire a good technique—just as I admire any finished work by a finished workman. I would not however damn a virile and entertaining bit of plot or narrative because of faulty technique unless hopelessly defective, I think.
George Gilbert: Technique is merely a means to an end. Many of the world's biggest stories are weak in technique, but go big because of their theme.
Kenneth Gilbert: I have a high regard for technique. Nothing disgusts me more than serious technical flaws, yet I try to be temperate about it because I realize that I may be more alert for such faults than is the average reader. I firmly believe that unless technique can be supplanted by really worth-while originality, it should always be observed in a general way, at least.
Holworthy Hall: You might as well ask my general feeling on the subject of "technique" in art or music. Technique constitutes the only difference between what is good and what is bad. But if you ask me what technique is—I should have to write you a book about it, because the expression itself is a paradox.
Richard Matthews Hallet: I am a little suspicious of the word "technique" as applied to writing. Fiction has two parts, form and essence, or matter. Technique, I take it, runs to the form and governs the method of presentation. If the matter is there, it will carry nearly any natural kind of presentation with it. Technique is too liable to be synonymous for complexity and subtlety. Technique ruined Henry James. Few candid people will say that his later work is even half as good as the simpler Roderick Hudson. The earlier stuff of Conrad and Kipling is better than the later, for the same reason. The fact is that generally speaking, animal spirits and a living zest in the things of this earth are a big element in fiction, and as a man's senses dull and his experiences get more commonplace, his matter crumbles through his fingers, and then he resorts to technique to cloud the issue, much as a cuttle-fish squirts ink.
A little technique is as good as a lot.
William H. Hamby: I don't think much about it. I do not believe a writer who is a clear thinker and has mastered the rudiments of expression need spend much time thinking of his style.
A. Judson Hanna: Technique, if striking enough, seems to give a writer a strong, but temporary, vogue. For instance, the technique of O. Henry and Ring Lardner and George Ade. The only striking technique I recall at the moment which, I believe, will become classic, is the technique of Kipling.
Joseph Mills Hanson: Good technique undoubtedly will help a mediocre story to "get across"; but if a story is inherently unique and forceful, it will get across whether it is technically excellent or not.