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

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VI. How much of your craft have you learned from reading current authors? The classics?

VII. What is your general feeling on the value of technique?

VIII. What is most interesting and important to you in your writing—plot, structure, style, material, setting, character, color, etc.?

IX. What are two or three of the most valuable suggestions you could give to a beginner? To a practised writer?

X. What is the elemental hold of fiction on the human mind?

XI. Do you prefer writing in the first person or the third? Why?

XII. Do you lose ideas because your imagination travels faster than your means of recording? Which affords least check—pencil, typewriter or stenographer?

QUESTION I

What is the genesis of a story with you—does it grow from an incident, a character, a trait of character, a situation, setting, a title, or what? That is, what do you mean by an idea for a story?