Booth Tarkington: I don't know how to make a suggestion to a beginner without knowing that beginner; same applies to a practised writer.
W. C. Tuttle: Giving advice to beginners is like trying to teach a novice to shoot. You can hand 'em the gun, point out the target and explain about notching the sights. A typewriter for a gun, paper for ammunition and the editor for the target. Seriously, I should tell them to write only of things of which they "know." Do not copy any one, try to stick to their own vocabulary, and be human. After they grow past writing only of things they know, perhaps they might expand. I never have.
Lucille Van Slyke: I'd say to a beginner—"Don't do it! Not unless you just can't help yourself, not unless you can't stop yourself!" And I'd say to a practised writer, "Stop, unless you can keep singing, 'I, too, have lived in Arcady and have never forgotten the way back!'"
Incidentally, the way I wedged in might interest a very beginning writer. My first paid job at writing was book reviewing. I was less than twenty and utterly unqualified for such a task, but it was the only job I could get. It was probably hard on the chaps whose books I reviewed, but very good for me. I did it for about a year and in that time began to understand that the wretched books in the lot by unknowns (why any publisher risked time on them I couldn't see) were by persons who knew nothing about what they were writing. So I registered a vow within me that I would never insult any editor by sending him anything that I wasn't as sure as I could possibly be contained all that I could find out about its subject. That a beginning writer better tackle children because it was the only age she could possibly have anything like a perspective for. That everybody else had done American children so well that I'd better tackle foreign ones. I had just pulled through a classical course at college and decided I'd like to try Greek children. I couldn't go to Greece, so I prowled about New York trying to find a Greek colony. Stumbled on a Syrian one. Fell head over heels in love with 'em. Pretty nearly lived with 'em for three years. Spent all the time I could in the Oriental room at the library, dragging out all the history and legend and poetry, good, bad or indifferent, that I could corral. Spent another year struggling with dialect and pondering over whether I'd dare risk it—or risk reproducing the effect I wanted without it. In all it was nearly four years before I had a single story on paper—and it took me about two years to write just fifteen stories—all of which were sold. Then I stopped quick while the stopping was good, because I didn't want to get into a rut. This can be of no possible use to any writer with genius or talent but it might help a person like myself who had nothing to begin with but an inclination to write. And it was a way into finding out that I could earn money while I was learning to write—I mean trying to learn to write! (Again I realize that it was a thing that started the first story—a queer-shaped loaf of bread in a Syrian baker's shop—the kind of bread that is sold to be used at the party given when a little Syrian cuts his first tooth.)
Atreus von Schrader: To the beginner; don't write a story unless you know and understand both your characters and your setting. To a practised writer; find a group of characters and stick to them. This makes for better writing and for cumulative value until, as is almost invariably the case, the thing is overdone.
T. Von Ziekursch: To spin the tale in such a way that the reader must live through it.
Henry Kitchell Webster: The best advice I have to give a beginner is that he write, and keep on writing; that, when he has told his story, he despatch it to an editor, or a series of editors, and forget it, telling a new story, if he has a new one to tell, instead of trying to improve an old one.
G. A. Wells: The advice to the beginner to condense is important. Most stories printed will stand pruning, many of them to a considerable extent. I would also impress upon the tyro the absolute necessity of work. Work! He can't observe union hours. Twelve hours a day is about right; fifteen if possible. Read anything and everything. One class of literature is likely to make a parrot of him.
Only those who have the grace to see good in a rejection slip belong in the game. The beginner must make up his mind that possibly (very likely) he will have to struggle years before he breaks through. Far too many aspiring young men and women go into the game of authorship with a guess-I'll-write-a-story-and-sell-it-for-a-thousand-dollars spirit. First stories do get across now and then, but they are the exceptions and not the rule. I sold my first story six years after I began to write, and in the meantime accumulated a bale of rejection slips. I am still at it.
Most aspirants quit cold after a few rejections. They haven't the guts (pardon) to stick it out. There are a number of would-be authors in this town. One by one they crop up, bloom a while in the sun of anticipation, then the vitriol of disappointment withers them and they fade again into the soulless clerks and truck drivers of yore. Too much stress can not be placed upon persistence. Persistence alone may mean the difference between success and failure.