Fiction Writers on Fiction Writing / Advice, opinions and a statement of their own working methods by more than one hundred authors

by Unknown

It is evident that at least some of those belittling technique are thinking of technique in its most formal sense—of books of rules, of strictly academic instructions, of hours spent in intensive study of abstract ways and means. Bear in mind that while naturally no one is born in possession of technique there are some who, perhaps before they even begin to write, have unconsciously absorbed from reading fiction a good many principles of construction and general method, while to others reading has brought little understanding of technique and when they begin authorship they must make deliberate study of methods before they can produce anything resembling well constructed fiction. Any editor can point to authors whose earliest stories were written with sufficient technique to warrant publication, and to many more whose early efforts had great faults and who acquired technique only by slow development through practise and study.

This book has utterly failed of a main purpose if, through the answers of the writers themselves, it has not shown vividly and forcefully that writers vary in methods, principles and purpose fully as much as in natural ability and results. If all had agreed as to the exact definition of technique or as to its exact place in the scale of importance, it would have been a miracle.

Nor can I, or any one else, step in and definitely fix its relative importance or give it an iron-clad definition that will entirely satisfy all writers. But if we turn back to the discussion of technique in the chapter on thinking of the reader when writing we can find a definition of technique that will at least explain the differences of opinion that may now confuse us.

Technique is applied knowledge of all that facilitates and perfects expression.

Literature is an expression or interpretation. No expressing or interpreting can be done unless it is done to some one. Even when writing is solely self-expression the writer must constitute his "other self," his critical self, the representative of human minds in general and the judge of whether he has succeeded in reaching human minds with his message by recognized human symbols and in accordance with generally accepted human standards.

His other or critical self is the adapter of his creations to the demands of a common human standard of expression and understanding—is his guide as to technique and the repository of all he knows concerning technique. During creation he may or may not be conscious of this critical self, but he can be unconscious of it only if technique has been so thoroughly absorbed and assimilated that the critical self can apply it automatically, working in perfect unison with the creative self or, if you like, having become identified with the creative self or passed its knowledge on to the creative self until that knowledge has become a part of the creative self.

Of all technique that has not yet been thus thoroughly assimilated he will be conscious; the less assimilated, the more conscious; the more conscious, the more distracted and hampered by these tools that demand attention for themselves instead of fitting unnoticed into the creative hand.

In other words, technique so thoroughly assimilated that it is unconscious is mastered technique. No other kind is. So long as any bit of technique is still so strange to the creative hand that it has not become an unnoted part of it, that bit of technique may even then be a useful tool but it has not been thoroughly mastered. And to the extent that it is not mastered it will distract the creator's attention from the creating to itself.

Unmastered technique is therefore both bad and good. Good, because it is on its way to becoming mastered technique and because even in the process it has some value. Bad, because it distracts from the real creating, hampers and cripples it.

If a writer, whether beginning or experienced, adds new technique too rapidly, he will be too much distracted and slowed up and his individuality, upon which the value of all his creating is wholly dependent, is too much held back from free expression—blocked, cramped, suppressed and atrophied. There can be no general rule as to how much new technique a writer can take up and assimilate at one time any more than there can be a general rule as to how much a man can eat and assimilate during a given time, but in either case there is a line beyond which lie indigestion and harm. A man can kill himself by eating too much. The creative self can be crushed under too great a mass of technique fed to it in too short a time.