Arthur Crabb: To beginners: Have an independent income, no troubles, and a whole raft of experience. Far be it from me to make suggestions to a practised writer except from a commercial point of view. From that point of view I should say find out what an editor wants and give it to him, no matter how distasteful the job may be. As I see it, current fiction writers are divided into two classes, those who know thoroughly what they are writing about and those who don't know anything at all what they are writing about. So far as I can discover there does not seem to be much middle ground.
Mary Stewart Cutting: One of the most valuable experiences I ever had was that of manuscript reader for two months. I found that every two out of three stories that failed did so on account of unbalanced construction. An architect does not build a house with all the windows at the top and none at the bottom. A woman does not make a dress with the sleeves put in back and front instead of at the sides. But people write stories with apparently no idea of relative proportion such as would apply to anything else which they undertook.
Elmer Davis: To a beginner, take the Keeley cure and try to get the infection out of your system before it is too late. To a veteran, none.
William Harper Dean: To the beginner I would say, "Write about the things that strike deeply into your sense of emotion and damn the rest." To the practised writer: "For God's sake don't prostitute your ability for any editor—don't write to order. Go hungry and suffer the pangs of near-failure (you will do both at times!) if needs be, but hang on to what you know is life! Don't let go for the easy money of the tailor-made story—these have made it necessary for us to import stories to America. Easy money from story writing buys a ticket through the primrose path to—obscurity! Be a writer, not a hack!"
Harris Dickson: Personally my most valuable suggestion to myself is to write the thing that I know. For instance, I did three or four historical novels that might have been done by anybody that was able to read certain books in which the material lay. Any hack writer can do such stories in any library. Naturally they have no particular value. But the man's story of his own back yard, of his own neighbors, of his own town, of the conditions that he knows the best, has more or less value as a contribution to current history. Like the journals of St. Simon, Pepys, The Jesuit Relations, etc., from which later histories are written.
The young writer as well as the old must bear in mind that he offers his work, not in competition with his next-door neighbor, nor in competition with his town, his state, his country or his own generation, but in competition with the best that has ever been produced by the best brains of the world. Therefore he must do his level best, at whatever cost of time and labor. He simply can not afford to let a story leave his hand when a better word will improve it.
Captain Dingle: To a beginner: Write only of what you know from personal contact; write your stories as you would write your letters; avoid a multiplicity of advisers. Write with your soul as well as with your pen, and the first real editor who sees your stuff will either encourage you to go on or send you a printed slip. If that comes, go back to work. To a practised writer: Write your best, even after you have arrived. Don't let an editor down by giving him trash just because you believe he will take it for your name's sake.
Louis Dodge: My suggestion to a writer, practised or otherwise, would be: Be yourself—but be yourself developed to the highest possible degree. And I should want it understood that development is something that comes more largely from within than without. To educate is to lead out, or draw out—not to fill up.
Phyllis Duganne: I suppose a beginner ought to learn just what he needs to put into a story to make it convincing; his good plot is nothing at all unless he knows how to make his people alive. That's about the most valuable thing I've been learning. And if he's inclined to use too many words, he ought to learn not to do that—words can get so in the way of a story. I'm not advising practised writers yet; maybe I will some day.
J. Allan Dunn: I have suggested with good results to several beginners that they should try to write in dramatic form entirely before they start a story. That they should write about what they know at first hand. That they should leave the psychological alone. I think I can assimilate advice myself but I don't know for sure and I don't want to attempt to advise a practised writer. I don't want to give an opinion on what is wrong with his yarn. I was an editor once.