Clay Perry: I believe that technique is something that comes absolutely last in the consideration of creating a story.
Michael J. Phillips: I have to be restrained when technique is mentioned. Any person who deliberately strives to say things in fiction in an impressive manner, to roll out sonorous sentences and use nice, long, mouth-filling words, is either a wonderful stylist or an ass. If he is a wonderful stylist, well and good; his stuff will be worth reading for the gorgeous riot of word-pictures on which one may feast his inner vision. If the writer is not a wonderful stylist, he is an ass. Also a hypocrite, intellectually speaking, because he is trying to be what he is not. He is trying to set himself up as a magnificent fellow who is to the manner born and tosses big words about in the air as a juggler does oranges.
To me ideal technique is the manner of writing which best expresses the character, personality and flavor of the person who is writing while at the same time it permits him to tell his story in the clearest, simplest and most understandable manner. Any pretentious style says: "I'm a devil of a fellow, but my story may be rotten." Simple, natural expression says: "Here's my story, told as best I can tell it."
Walter B. Pitkin: My early classical training, especially my long study of Aristotle, gave me an insight into the fundamental worth of technique and, I think, enabled me, fairly early, to distinguish between technique and the humbug recipe-formula stuff which half of the college teachers and the correspondence quacks peddle. Technique in the Greek sense is the basis of all good art, even the most lyrical. For all great art is communicative in some degree; and technique is the science of effective communication. No more, no less.
E. S. Pladwell: I know nothing of technique except in a general and hazy way. Technique to me means three words: Tell the story.
Lucia Mead Priest: I should think technique is as essential to the writer as the foundation of a house is to a builder. As I think of it, the art of the writer is like the history of Italy's painters. Her old masters had great stories to tell but they were minus technique. They had no perspective, no anatomy. Hampered by these limitations, there came a day when their intelligence was aroused.
Every man was so interested in the new things he was learning—the technique, he entirely forgot his story. Then came the giants, they whose hearts were full of grand themes, whose minds and hands were trained to the doing. Unhampered by the machinery of their art, they gave forth masterly interpretations of great stories. This is, I think, the evolution of the individual worker, whatever the craft. Most particularly is this true of the writer's.
Eugene Manlove Rhodes: Nothing worth while without endless labor.
Frank C. Robertson: My feeling in regard to technique is that it is something that must be mastered before any real success can be achieved. But I feel that a writer should to a certain degree master a technique that is peculiar to his own personality. That is why I am skeptical about a too rigid adherence to the rules laid down in the text-books. The first consideration, in my estimation, is to write the story, then smooth it over with the shining gloss of technique. Then you will have used no more technique than is necessary; but try writing the story according to the rules and it is liable to be cramped and artificial.
Ruth Sawyer: I think there always must be technique. It is something that must be mastered in the beginning and then allowed to drop into the subconscious mind and stay there. I can not imagine a good story being written by any author who is conscious of his technique.