FICTION WRITERS ON FICTION WRITING

Copyright, 1923
By The Bobbs-Merrill Company

Printed in the United States of America

PRESS OF
BRAUNWORTH & CO.
BOOK MANUFACTURERS
BROOKLYN, N. Y.

This book is dedicated to the one hundred and sixteen authors who wrote it and to every author who may profit from their writing.

Authors Whose Replies to the Questionnaire Make Up the Body of This Book:

Bill Adams
Samuel Hopkins Adams
Paul L. Anderson
William Ashley Anderson
H. C. Bailey
Edwin Balmer
Ralph Henry Barbour
Frederick Orin Bartlett
Nalbro Bartley
Konrad Bercovici
Ferdinand Berthoud
H. H. Birney, Jr.
Farnham Bishop
Algernon Blackwood
Max Bonter
Katharine Holland Brown
F. R. Buckley
Prosper Buranelli
Thompson Burtis
George M. A. Cain
Robert V. Carr
George L. Catton
Robert W. Chambers
Roy P. Churchill
Carl Clausen
Courtney Ryley Cooper
Arthur Crabb
Mary Stewart Cutting
Elmer Davis
William Harper Dean
Harris Dickson
Captain Dingle
Louis Dodge
Phyllis Duganne
J. Allan Dunn
Walter A. Dyer
Walter Prichard Eaton
Charles Victor Fischer
E. O. Foster
Arthur O. Friel
J. U. Giesy
George Gilbert
Kenneth Gilbert
Louise Closser Hale
Holworthy Hall
Richard Matthews Hallet
William H. Hamby
A. Judson Hanna
Joseph Mills Hanson
E. E. Harriman
Nevil G. Henshaw
Joseph Hergesheimer
Robert Hichens
R. de S. Horn
Clyde B. Hough
Emerson Hough
A. S. M. Hutchinson
Inez Haynes Irwin
Will Irwin
Charles Tenney Jackson
Frederick J. Jackson
Mary Johnston
John Joseph
Lloyd Kohler
Harold Lamb
Sinclair Lewis
Hapsburg Liebe
Romaine H. Lowdermilk
Eugene P. Lyle, Jr.
Rose Macaulay
Crittenden Marriott
Homer I. McEldowney
Ray McGillivray
Helen Topping Miller
Thomas Samson Miller
Anne Shannon Monroe
L. M. Montgomery
Frederick Moore
Talbot Mundy
Kathleen Norris
Anne O'Hagan
Grant Overton
Sir Gilbert Parker
Hugh Pendexter
Clay Perry
Michael J. Phillips
Walter B. Pitkin
E. S. Pladwell
Lucia Mead Priest
Eugene Manlove Rhodes
Frank C. Robertson
Ruth Sawyer
Chester L. Saxby
Barry Scobee
R. T. M. Scott
Robert Simpson
Arthur D. Howden Smith
Theodore Seixas Solomons
Raymond S. Spears
Norman Springer
Julian Street
T. S. Stribling
Booth Tarkington
W. C. Tuttle
Lucille Van Slyke
Atreus von Schrader
T. Von Ziekursch
Henry Kitchell Webster
G. A. Wells
William Wells
Ben Ames Williams
Honore Willsie
H. C. Witwer
William Almon Wolff
Edgar Young

FICTION WRITERS ON FICTION WRITING

FICTION WRITERS
ON FICTION WRITING

HOW THIS BOOK CAME INTO BEING

Since this book is not only written for the most part by others than myself and since, for a second reason, its coming into being is the result of an accident, not of any inspiration on my part, there is no reason why I should not state frankly my opinion of its practical value and exceptional interest.

The mere statement of that value is its own proof:—There have been hosts of books, classes and correspondence courses claiming to teach the writing of fiction, but in all but a handful of cases these teachers have been eminently unqualified for the work. The majority have no sound right to speak at all, lacking sufficient accomplishment or even experience of their own and showing in their attempt the lack of ability as critic or teacher often evidenced by those who are themselves unable to create. Of the remainder a very few have proved any considerable ability as creators of fiction and these, as a group, are inclined to proceed on the dangerous principle that what is good for one case, their own, is therefore good for all other cases. Another few, with some editorial experience (though generally almost none) and, therefore, at least some understanding of the general field, are mostly barren of accomplishment as creators and so unable to enter satisfactorily into the inner problems of those who do create. Still another few, while versed in the academic requirements of literature are unfamiliar with both the actual magazine and book field and the actual work of creating. All of them are sadly handicapped in their undertaking by an obsession for reducing the art of writing to a performance almost altogether governed by general formulas and ironclad rules for universal application.

But here is a book written not by an author of negligible standing, an editor who can not create, a college professor speaking from the outside, or any other theorist whatsoever, but by the successful writers themselves, each telling in detail his own processes of creation. No one else in the world can bring us so quickly to the real heart of the matter or come so close to speaking the final word. While the words of any one of them are of value, the contrasted and collective cases of one hundred and sixteen of them are beyond estimate of value. For either the beginner or the established writer. Even for each of these one hundred and sixteen themselves.

As to the accident that brought the book into being, my own justification for venturing to act as collector and summarizer, and the reason for choice of the particular lines of investigation:

Having been a magazine editor for twenty years (Adventure, Romance, Delineator, Smart Set, Transatlantic Tales, Watson's, Chautauquan), I had become more and more rebellious against present methods of teaching fiction writing, for year by year their fruits poured across my desk by the thousands—stories often technically correct but machine-like, artificial, lacking in real individuality. American fiction as a whole is characterized by this result of the curse of formula and, until that curse is removed, American fiction can never attain the place to which native ability entitles it.

Many who attempt to write can never succeed. Some succeed despite all obstacles. But in between are a great number with varying degree of ability, many of them appearing in books or magazines, some of them attaining a fair degree of real success, some of them failing of print, but no one of them who could not do far better if he would shake himself free from the influence of machine-like methods and give opportunity to whatever of individuality may lie within him. A long procession of possibilities unrealized, regrettable because of the loss to American fiction, pathetic if one looks behind the manuscripts at vain struggles and hopes unfulfilled.

The only chance for remedy seemed a direct attack upon the school of formula and rule itself, followed by whatever could be done in a constructive way. A lone editor could accomplish little by himself, but he could accomplish even less than that if he didn't try. He was not the only editor grumbling over the situation and among experienced writers were many in agreement as to the evils of too much formula; perhaps, once the challenge were definitely made—

As equipment, besides editorial experience, I had been "a contributor of fiction to our leading magazines" sufficiently to appreciate creative problems from the other side of the editorial desk, and at two universities and elsewhere had absorbed sufficient of the academic for foundation and background. There had been, too, sufficient rebellion against general editorial precepts and precedents to keep me from falling so deep into the editorial rut that I couldn't at least see over the edges. Most of all, I was sick and tired of seeing the formula-worshippers doing all they could to increase the flood of fiction that, however perfect by formula and however skilfully polished, is inevitably and forever hack.

So I wrote a book in protest and in the hope that it might to some degree serve those who were willing to turn from formalism to individual expression if only they could find some small guide-posts along the way. In Fundamentals of Fiction Writing I tried to give them, instead of rules, an understanding of the facts of human nature upon which art and its rules must be based, so that they might see their own way and walk upon their own feet. To drive home the point it was necessary to show them beyond chance of doubt that rules applied without understanding were unsafe guides. The simplest and most effective way of proving this was to show them that the writers who had actually succeeded did not blindly follow general rules but chose among them each according to his own needs and bent, and that what was one writer's meat was another writer's poison.

So, to prove that rules must be subject to individuality, I sent out a questionnaire to writers, planning to use the answers as an appendix to Fundamentals. Some questions were added to gather further data on facts of human nature, and still others were suggested by writers (William Ashley Anderson and L. Patrick Greene) with whom I consulted, answers to these last questions being sought as data of interest to writers in general.

The answerers, of course, had not seen my book, though the body of it was already in the publisher's hands, and in the questionnaire I took pains that there should be no hint of any points I hoped to see established. While the effort to keep the wording of the questions from tending in any way against entirely uninfluenced answers made some of them less definite and more banal than I should have liked, there was more than compensation in the resulting wealth of data that had not been even hoped for.

When the answers began coming in, it became at once apparent that here was material far too valuable to be tucked away in the appendix of any book. The questionnaire had gone to only those writers who had contributed to my own magazine, Adventure, some of them beginners, some of them established writers appearing in all our magazines and between book-covers. It was then sent to a general list of authors and their answers were added to those first received.

The result is a broadly representative list of authors almost perfect for the purpose. It includes the tyro and the writer of life-long experience, those little known along with our best and our most popular. There are those who write avowedly for money returns alone; those who make literary excellence their single goal. They come to authorship by various roads from all walks in life, from England as well as America. They run the whole gamut of difference in schooling, method, aim, ability, experience and success.

The value of their symposium to the beginner is beyond easy calculation. If there is an experienced writer who can not find profit as well as interest in these ideas and methods of his fellow craftsmen, considered both individually and collectively, I can not at the moment guess his identity. If other editors can learn from it as much as I have, they will find it difficult to name any other one thing from which they have learned so much of value in so short a time. If literary critics will bring to it a consideration of fundamentals and of facts, that their general type is none too prone to exercise, there will be a gain both to them and to the standards of criticism and valuation they so largely control. To readers of fiction it is the opening up of a fascinating world hitherto seen only in detached glimpses. And if the average writer of text-books or teacher of class expounding the art of writing fiction will let go of formulas and theories handed to him by others and consider the actual laboratory facts of what he is trying to teach, the gain to American fiction will be tremendous.

If my summaries and discussions of the answers group by group leave much to be desired, I plead the difficulty of exactness in dealing with matters of infinite variations and subtle shadings, the impossibility of covering even sketchily all the points that arise, the limitation imposed on entirely free discussion of material furnished one through courtesy and good will, and the fact that in any case my comments are of extremely minor importance in comparison with the answers themselves.

The answers have in most cases been given in full. What cutting was necessary in places has been done, I think, with as little bias as is shown in the questions. Where specific teachers, books, authors and so on were mentioned, there have been some omissions, nearly always of those unfavorably mentioned. If specific instances seem ill-chosen for either cutting or exceptions, I can plead only good intent and the best judgment I could summon. I have been editing copy for more than twenty years and have found few cases offering greater difficulties to consistency and intelligent handling. The specific difficulty mentioned is, naturally, far from being the only one.

My sincere thanks go to the authors whose kindness furnished the material for this book. While some of them were personal friends or acquaintances, there were others upon whom I had no shadow of claim and who responded only through an innate spirit of helpfulness—helpfulness not just to the asker but to the host of aspiring writers who they knew would profit from the information experienced writers could give. My thanks, too, for the good will of those authors who were prevented from answering by circumstances beyond their control. I have dealt with writers most of my life and, as in any other group of people, there are disagreeable, trying, ridiculous and even criminal exceptions, but as a whole I have found them very kindly, human folk. Perhaps it is because the material of their life-work is human nature, or because their natural bent is such as to make them choose that life-work. It would, I think, be a vastly kinder, gentler world if all who live in it were equally ready with the helping and friendly hand.

QUESTIONNAIRE

Answers to Which Constitute the Body of This Book

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?

II. Do you map it out in advance, or do you start with, say, a character or situation, and let the story tell itself as you write? Do you write it in pieces to be joined together, or straightaway as a whole? Is the ending clearly in mind when you begin? To what extent do you revise?

III. When you read a story to what extent does your imagination reproduce the story-world of the author—do you actually see in your imagination all the characters, action and setting just as if you were looking at an actual scene? Do you actually hear all sounds described, mentioned and inferred, just as if they were real sounds? Do you taste the flavors in a story, so really that your mouth literally waters to a pleasant one? How real does your imagination make the smells in a story you read? Does your imagination reproduce the sense of touch—of rough or smooth contact, hard or gentle impact or pressure, etc.? Does your imagination make you feel actual physical pain corresponding, though in a slighter degree, to pain presented in a story? Of course you get an intelligent idea from any such mention, but in which of the above cases does your imagination produce the same results on your senses as do the actual stimuli themselves?

If you can really "see things with your eyes shut," what limitations? Are the pictures you see colored or more in black and white? Are details distinct or blurred?

If you studied geometry, did it give you more trouble than other mathematics?

Is your response limited to the exact degree to which the author describes and makes vivid, or will the mere concept set you to reproducing just as vividly?

Do you have stock pictures for, say, a village church or a cowboy, or does each case produce its individual vision?

Is there any difference in behavior of your imagination when you are reading stories and when writing them?

Have you ever considered these matters as "tools of your trade"? If so, to what extent and how do you use them?

IV. When you write do you center your mind on the story itself or do you constantly have your readers in mind? In revising?

V. Have you had a class-room or correspondence course on writing fiction? Books on it? To what extent did this help in the elementary stages? Beyond the elementary stages?

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?

Answers

Bill Adams: Usually three words with a bit of a slideway to them, thus, "There was once a ship"—or "The sun of morning shone upon the water"—

I don't know how it grows, or whether it grows—it sort of occurs, as it were.

Samuel Hopkins Adams: Genesis—usually from an incident, sometimes from a single phrase which illuminates a character; never from a title. In my entire experience I have found so-called "true stories" available only once or twice, and then in greatly modified form. Life is dramatic, but it isn't fictional until interpreted and arranged by the fictional mind.

Paul L. Anderson: The genesis of a story with me may be any of the things you mention, or something else, entirely different; a newspaper item, a picture, a story some one else has told (I mean I get a suggestion from another yarn, not that I take some one else's story and tell it as my own). For example, the genesis of one prehistoric animal story, was a picture in Henry Fairfield Osborn's book, The Origin and Evolution of Life; of another, a group in the American Museum of Natural History; of one story, the fact that a man will do more and suffer more for his loved ones than for himself. The genesis of the best story, by far, that I ever wrote, which has been consistently rejected by magazine after magazine because it is too gruesome, was this: lying in bed one morning, on the borderland of waking, I dreamed I heard some one say these words: "Far above us in the darkness I heard a trap-door shut with a clang." The memory of those words carried over into waking, and the story grew from that. The genesis of another yarn was a trip I once made in my flivver, which involved crossing a railroad track laid along a side-hill. Etc., etc. "All's fish that comes to the net."

William Ashley Anderson: No definite principle can be laid down as to the inspiration of a story. It may be based on an actual occurrence; a striking tradition; a strange custom. Or an argument may suggest a point to be proved by a story. An extraordinary character, an unusual scene, an atmosphere even (fog, storm, scorching heat). I think one of the basic principles is the desire to tell something unusual about things that are commonplace, or to tell something commonplace about things that are extraordinary.

H. C. Bailey: Nearly always in my mind a story begins with a character or characters. This holds good though the main interest of the story may be incident or the surprise of its plot. Making the story is with me the process of providing these people with things to do and say which will express them. I never began with a title (they are my plague), or a setting. Once or twice with a situation. Occasionally with a sentence which came into my mind from heaven knows where.

Edwin Balmer: The genesis of a story is decided, I think, by the writer's age and experience. As a story is usually the writer's reaction to that which at the time is of most interest to him, it used to be that a story started with me with a situation. I started writing when I was eighteen when I was in college, and I then caught at a situation which established suspense. That struck me as the best start for a story. Gradually, situation became less the whole thing and a definite increase in concern for the characters came. I never started with a title, but sometimes with a setting, or rather, a setting creating a situation—such as the Alps suggesting a mountain-climbing story. Now though I never really start with a character, the situation does not mean much to me until it has a character in it.

Ralph Henry Barbour: An idea for a story is anything upon which a story may be built, and story ideas come from as many sources as do ideas of any other sort. The inspiration that provides the idea may be generated by an incident, a person, a situation, a locality, even, I think, by a condition of mind, or by two or more of these in combination. To me a title does not very often suggest an idea for a story; it merely suggests the idea to write a story; there's a difference! In my case the genesis of a story is more frequently a situation. After that a character, an incident, a locality, in the order given.

Frederick Orin Bartlett: A story may grow from any of the sources you suggest—even from that mysterious "or what?" Something serves as a spark to fire the dry kindling of your imagination. The two essentials are that the spark shall be hot enough and that you shall have kindling.

Nalbro Bartley: It, the genesis of a story, could spring from any of the suggested things—an idea for a story to my mind suggests a theme such as capital versus labor, love versus money, etc.

Konrad Bercovici: I will be hanged if I know what the genesis of a story is. I only know I do not sleep well a few nights before I write one. And after a headache or two a story comes. As a boy, it broke my heart never to be able to see the actual breaking through of a plant. I always found it broken through in the morning,—if you get what I mean.

And then pictures begin to rise before me. Pictures of things I have seen and others that I wanted to see. And then the men and women in my stories walk through those pictures and stay where they like and see what they want and I stand by and watch them and agree most of the time with each one of them and sometimes say what I would say under similar circumstances. But, like "Mr. Saber" of If Winter Comes, I can see his point of view. When the whole thing has come to an end in my mind, I sit down and write.

Ferdinand Berthoud: I usually pick on an incident from some actual happening to myself or to one of my old-time friends. Then tack on other incidents of which I have heard. Once or twice a story has come from a peculiar expression or the manner or speaking of some man I have known. Or some man's way of looking at life.

H. H. Birney, Jr.: Ideas. Some situation or idea possessing possible dramatic value will come to me; I will lie awake the best part of a night or two nights thinking it over, and put it on paper the next day. Sometimes the whole story seems to unfold itself instantaneously before me; again I will work it out detail after detail mentally. Some ideas for stories have come from remarks of friends, from some anecdote, or an experience that was personal and of which the dramatic value was unrecognized at the time.

Farnham Bishop: The wedding of a newly-discovered fact to something already in mind, followed by the swift begetting, birth and growth of a story. Example: "Carranza to Blockade Mazatlan. Mexican Navy to be sent through Panama Canal, against Stronghold of Revolution" (newspaper head-line, sometime in summer of 1920). That, plus British naval officer's book (which I had recently read) containing description of the Scooter or C. M. B., developed within ten minutes into fairly complete mental outline of The Rest Cure.

Algernon Blackwood: The genesis of a story with me is invariably—an emotion, caused in my particular case by something in nature rather than in human nature: a scrap of color in the sky, a flower, a sound of wind or water; briefly, an emotion produced by beauty.

Max Bonter: Anything that stirs my emotions is likely to furnish the idea for a story. It may be an incident, a character, a trait of character, a situation, a setting, a title. It may be any one of them, a combination of several of them, or all of them. An idea embodying all of them, of course, would really be more than an idea; it would be practically the story itself—either a true story in which I had figured, or one that I had heard related—and would require at my hands little else besides an amalgamation of the attributes specified.

Pure fiction, in my case, seems to have its inception in a contrast, or in a sudden break of continuity—something irregular or freakish that draws a quick focus of the mental faculties and demands of them why, how? My mind immediately struggles to paint the significance of the contrast, or to splice the broken threads of circumstance into a tissue of normality. In other words, it is my mind's tendency to give balance to unbalanced or opposing conditions or things.

For example: In a quiet little community of soft-spoken, well-civilized males I find an old barbarian—the boss stevedore of a freight dock—who chews, swears, drinks, and lives with a common-law wife. Their little household is practically in a state of ostracism. My emotions are aroused; my sympathies enlisted in an endeavor to place in a better light this old pariah whose chief fault seems to be the carelessness wherewith he persists in being human. I bring the opposing standards together and after the clash the stevedore's chief detractor—a prominent church-goer—is found to be a sly old rake; whereas the dockman's tough hide covers a heart that had kept him true even to an unsanctified union.

That is what I would call an "idea" for a story. Around it I would build plot, detail, incident, characterization, etc.

Katharine Holland Brown: Once in a long while a story begins as a situation: as a tangle, a conflict, to be unwound, fought out. But almost always the story arrives as a whole—without any planning whatever, the story is suddenly there, a big blurry mass of pictures and incidents and action, that must be splattered down in black and white as fast as you can possibly write. It goes racing by like a runaway movie film and the best you can do is to snatch at the most significant moments, before they escape. Therefore the idea for a story is not an idea; it is the story itself. (With a serial, which must have a succession of ascending climaxes, a rough outline is made and followed, after the big scenes and the principal action are jotted down.)

F. R. Buckley: The genesis of a story with me is likely to be anything. Occasionally a character; more often a title; more often still, a good basic situation, up to and from which the story can lead; most frequently, an ending. Story I liked best, Archangel in Steel, deduced from setting and period: Florence, XVI century; connoted an age of plotting and intrigue; since plots were villainous, hero must be anti-plotter. History supplied the conspiracies; the story consisted of the hero's counter-actions.

Prosper Buranelli: My first idea is always an incident or a situation, sometimes several to be combined. Or a generic situation in some phase of life—such as an opera singer's being at the mercy of the orchestra conductor.

Thompson Burtis: I have had stories come to me as a result of all the things mentioned in your question, except a title. And I'm about to try to construct a story around a title. The most usual starting-points for stories with me are either incidents or characters. In a large percentage of cases I start with an incident and then work my main character into it with regard to his particular traits.

George M. A. Cain: A story almost always takes its genesis with me from a situation, sometimes suggested by an incident, character, trait, setting, title, anything. Unless any other feature can shape itself readily into a situation for me, there is no story. But the situation may not mean the beginning of the story as told. I may write the whole story to get that situation.

Robert V. Carr: The question involves, at least to my understanding, chemistry, heredity, environment, psychological wounds, tricks of memory, and a thousand and one mysteries. No doubt there will be writers who will cleverly announce that they know exactly where they secure their ideas, but it is beyond me. The writers of motion-picture scenarios should be able to tell you in a few words where they get their ideas. For my part I do not know the true genesis of any idea.

George L. Catton: A story with me may grow from, to begin with, the merest trifle. Sometimes I start with a character only; other times perhaps it is a title, or a peculiar characteristic of a character, a situation or a setting. But the big start for me, the start I always try to get, is a theme. It's a poor story I'll write if I can't put down the title before I write a word. I never wrote a story yet that didn't have a theme, and I never will. A story without a theme is a story without a soul, and is just about as much use as a man in the same predicament. An idea for a story with me, then, is a theme.

Robert W. Chambers: From an incident.

Roy P. Churchill: Most of my story ideas come from what I call a "condition" for want of better expression. That is, affairs of life in a certain setting, with certain characters, assume a "condition" which makes for the unusual.

Carl Clausen: An idea for a story always means to me an incident.

Courtney Ryley Cooper: A story always starts with me at the finish—I write the rest of my story to a climax. In other words, I get the big punch of a story, and build up the rest of the structure to fit it. In a mystery story, I always get the explanation of a thing, then fit my incidents to this.

Arthur Crabb: It seems to me that a story may grow from an incident or a character, or even a trait of character or situation, which it seems to me are other ways of saying the first two.

Mary Stewart Cutting: The genesis of a story with me usually grows from some small incident or the reverse of the incident. But in an autobiographical story the character is the main theme.

Elmer Davis: The genesis of a story, with me, is a situation—invariably the same. I see financial obligations falling due. My salary is fixed; my credit distended to the bursting point. No way to meet the bills but by writing fiction.... Whereupon I grab anything that looks as if it might start a story; usually a character in a situation.

William Harper Dean: The genesis of a story with me sometimes is a single word, the title, which strikes the motif of the story; sometimes a character, sometimes a situation, or a setting. But most frequently the beginning is the climax, from which I work backward through the middle and to the beginning.

Harris Dickson: Any of these, or a combination. More usually, perhaps, it is a story, or an incident that I hear or see. For instance, The Trapping of Judge Pinkham, in The Saturday Evening Post, is approximately true, and happened not long ago at the very place described. Real incidents, however, generally begin "up in the air" and end the same way. Better beginnings and climaxes must be worked out.

It is quite rare with me that I deliberately devise a story out of the whole cloth.

I live in the South. It is a country that has attracted the attention of much enthusiastic ignorance on the part of philanthropists, and many attacks. Sometimes I do a story for the purpose of showing some particular phase of life that is not understood at the North, and try to make it so convincing as to silence these long-distance reformers who haven't an idea as to how we live, and why. For this purpose I believe temperately-stated truth, rubbed in with humor, is the most effective vehicle.

Captain Dingle: In general my story comes from a vision of a character and a situation. Sometimes only the situation. Then I make a character to fit it—usually out of material I know.

Louis Dodge: With me, the genesis of a story is usually a character, perhaps coupled with a characteristic action. I like to imagine what the logical destiny of that character would be. And so I try to work it out.

Phyllis Duganne: Ideas for short stories usually come to me through something I actually see or hear about; sometimes a person is interesting or romantic enough so that I begin to make up things that might happen to him—and discover I have a plot on my hands. Or sometimes a situation is a good beginning or ending for a story, and I try to evolve the rest. Sometimes I do and sometimes I don't—I suppose every one has loads of fascinating situations that he can not quite whip about into story form. Sometimes it is just a romantic spot—a house that should have a story about it. And once in a great while I just discover myself with a perfectly formed story on my hands, not there one minute and utterly there the next. That's real magic—and doesn't happen so often as I wish it did.

J. Allan Dunn: It varies. I am, of course, deliberately setting aside such stories as are suggested by the needs of editors, expressed by themselves. But I think the genesis of many stories is hard to trace. They are evolved in the brain cortex by that comprehensive and all too liberal phrase "subconsciousness." I mean by that process that every writer is perforce somewhat of a dramatist, somewhat of an artist, and that his mind, inclined and, later, trained to observe, does this continually until an idea is born. Not necessarily, not probably is this idea complete. Occasionally a short story that works out delightfully is thus conceived and will project itself into the conscious mind upon the proper stimulus—perhaps after a walk or during it, perhaps while hearing music.

Sometimes I read a story that a man has written down as news, the skeleton of a yarn that needs flesh about it, a heart and soul added.

Very often I endeavor to work out some particular trait or character, with its weakness and strength. Sometimes a character I know suggests the story. But I believe the genesis is born very much as is the theme of a musician, the desire of an artist to portray a certain mood or key, the inspiration of a poet.

I believe that the story-teller's profession is one of the most ancient. I believe it may well have antedated the artist—as animated in the cave-carver or the painter of skins. That it may have prefaced the musician in the drum-beater or the blower of a conch. I think there was always a tale-teller about the fires of the wildest, earliest tribes, one who stimulated their imaginations, touched their pride, bolstered their bravery. There are such to-day in almost every wild tribe that I have met. And, as the modern musician, the modern artist, have evoluted from their primitive forebears, so I think that the spark, the flicker of story-telling, has come down in the cell together with the ear for music, the eye for color and proportion. Add to that your technique—use of action, color, suspense, opposing forces, laughter, tears, tragedy and the results of experience and observation—and your story appears.

I do not mean to say we are all genuises but that the story-teller, as the poet, is made, that the impulse is engendered with his ego.

Walter A. Dyer: Formerly I used to try to manufacture a plot as the starting point for a story, but always found it very difficult, my mind usually being ready to stop with a situation. Sometimes such a situation would make a story, sometimes it wouldn't. I have found it comparatively easy to get color into the settings and to do the thing up in some sort of style, but my mind isn't inventive in the field of complete and more or less intricate plots. Of late I have had better success in beginning with character. And I have heard that others have reached the same conclusion. First visualize a real person or persons, with distinctive and out-of-the-ordinary characteristics (consistent and plausible, of course), and get them to function like human beings. Then throw them into the situations and settings that come easiest and see what will happen. Sometimes a real story grows out of it, and when it does it is likely to be a better story than one in which lay figures are fitted into a ready-made plot. This, however, does not apply to the requirements of all editors.

Walter Prichard Eaton: A story comes in a dozen different ways. Sometimes a title waits two years or more for a plot to plot it. Sometimes a character comes and grows. Sometimes a situation. I find I am most successful when it is a character, however, which comes first, and dictates the rest. The hardest unit is to start with a general thesis (problem) and then get a plot and people to seem natural.

Charles Victor Fischer: I am writing a story that has to do with Little Rock, Arkansas. Sitting at the eats this evening (two hours ago), I had Little Rock buzzing round in my up-stairs. My sister spoke of an old black mule she'd seen during the afternoon; how sorry she was for the poor animal—skin and bone were the only things he didn't have anything "else but." On top of that my father pipes up about a diamond ring theft.

See the point? I'm thinking about Little Rock. (I was there about two years ago, shortly after I came out of the Navy.) And whenever I think of Little Rock I think of coons. The mule—the diamond ring. And all of a sudden I had a story.

E. O. Foster: The genesis of a story with me generally grows from an incident which I have observed, around which I weave a plot taking the characters from people whom I have known.

Arthur O. Friel: It differs. It may be any one of these things. Sometimes hits me suddenly, like an electric spark forming contact, and the wheels begin to buzz. If I keep them buzzing, I have a story.

J. U. Giesy: Genesis with me is generally either from an incident heard or read, or from a title which suggests a parallel or divergent train of thought.

George Gilbert: All depends upon the story; some grow out of single incidents or characters; some out of several.

Kenneth Gilbert: My stories seem to spring from three sources: (1) A strange and interesting fact or incident that apparently has never been touched upon. One story had its genesis in a piece of newspaper miscellany, which stated that Marconi was experimenting with wireless apparatus that would keep out eavesdroppers. That was new, so far as fiction was concerned. Using it as the basis of a plot, I wove around it color from my own store of wireless knowledge, decided on the title, and proceeded to transcribe it. (2) An interesting character. One of my animal stories illustrates this point. It was about a raccoon, which I selected because he is a highly interesting animal; very intelligent, and with traits that approach the human at times. Moreover, he had not been "written out," as would seem to be the case of the dog. I had written stories about nearly all of the menagerie except procyon lotors; therefore, why not a 'coon story? The setting I supplied from life; the incident from study and experience, and the "atmosphere"—a vital component of an animal story—took care of itself. (3) A title. A snappy title always suggests a story, and while I have utilized this method several times, I prefer a plot germ in other form.

Holworthy Hall: To date I have written perhaps two hundred short stories. The basic ideas arrived approximately as follows: From titles, not over ten—notably The Six Best Cellars, Henry of Navarre, Ohio, You Get What You Want, etc. From a situation, at least one hundred and fifty. From characters or traits of character, the balance. Incidentally I have never yet written a story in which the basic idea was not fundamentally serious and a part of my personal philosophy; nor would I have any interest in writing a story in which the basic idea did not seem to see or partake of a certain universality of thought or conduct.

R. M. Hallet: As to (I) I think the characters and the action reciprocally contribute to the growth of the story. Hardly anything but action will really illustrate character, it seems to me. The further you develop the characters, the better glimpses you get of the plot; and if you have an idea for a plot, that will usually thicken character for you. As to which comes first, it's probably the old problem of the hen and the egg. Either might, logically.

William H. Hamby: There is no rule with me. Sometimes I start a story with a character, and, all things considered, that makes the best story. Sometimes the plot comes first; again a situation or an incident will start the mind to weaving a story. The series of stories, The Adventures of a Misfit, which one of my friends assures me were the worst stories I ever wrote, was suggested merely by a name. Red Foam, which other of my friends claim is the best story I have written so far, was written from a motif—I had a strong feeling that I wanted to visualize that frothy shallowness of judgment which is so easily mislead by a little palaver.

Joseph Mills Hanson: The genesis with me is usually an incident, situation or setting. I always have in mind a lot of provocative events in the history of the Northwest or elsewhere, and hang my stories on to them. I try to make my characters appropriate to the time, the place, the atmosphere, the special problem that has to be solved.

E. E. Harriman: I usually think of an incident, a situation, and roll it over like a snowball until it accumulates enough to make it a story.

Nevil G. Henshaw: I've no fixed rule, although, in a long piece of work, I try to present a certain section with its corresponding inhabitants and industries. With short stories I either work from a single plot idea, or propound a certain phase of human character and set out to prove it by means of the story—(as in Madame Justice I endeavored to give certain conditions under which a mother would kill her well-beloved son).

Joseph Hergesheimer: It grows from the emotion caused by a place or an individual.

Robert Hichens: Usually some big situation arising from the clash of two characters.

R. de S. Horn: The genesis of a story with me is generally an incident, a situation, or a character or trait of character, with the incident predominant. I have some settings tucked away in my note-book, but I expect they will be used only when I've got a situation, character or incident idea to go with them. The title is the last thing I write usually, and it generally comes hardest. However sometimes I stumble on it in the middle of the story. Every idea that suggests a story possibility I immediately enter in my note-book.

Clyde B. Hough: My story ideas generally grow out of a phrase or a sentence and this phrase or sentence most often takes its place in the story, either as the core, the hinging base or the climax. This sort of plot germ is generated in various ways. Sometimes by a scene, sometimes by a spoken word and sometimes by a man's action.

Emerson Hough: Some big motive or period. Not a Peeping Tom incident.

A. S. M. Hutchinson: Character entirely.

Inez Haynes Irwin: It is very difficult for me to tell you what I mean by the idea for a story. There is so much to say that I would like to answer this question in a book. That idea may come from anywhere or grow from anything. It may be as you suggest "an incident, a character, a trait of character, a situation, a setting, a title." It may come through a conversation, by analogy, out of the very air itself. In my experience a single scene has suddenly amplified to a whole story, a whole novel has suddenly diminished to a story. Parts of stories, quite disconnected, have suddenly sprung together and made one complete story. I have had the experience of having two or three stories develop in successive instants from a single germ; sometimes I have waited years before writing because I could not decide which one of them was the best. Mere ideas that I have carried in my mind for years have suddenly developed into stories. Mere phrases and titles have spawned stories. Interiors, empty houses, geographical situations have exploded stories. Stories, full grown, have sprung without any warning into my consciousness; and apparently with no spiritual or psychological raison d'etre. I have even had stories, all complete, hurtle out at me from life itself. Reading the stories of other authors sometimes brings stories into my mind; their first paragraphs are occasionally exceedingly stimulating. Certain ideas have always been highly stimulating to me—uninhabited islands, ghosts, fourth dimension, murder, they have engendered numberless stories. In brief stories come in every way and through every medium. Everything on earth, under the earth and above the earth is fish to the creative artist's net.

I would like to illustrate every one of the above statements but it would make the answer to your first question interminable.

Will Irwin: The genesis of a story is with me usually a situation. To give an example from a piece of fiction which I have recently finished, a friend with much experience of the underworld mentioned in conversation a case where a convict just released struck his girl who was waiting for him at the door of the prison. Speculation on what circumstances might lead to such an act gave me my story. Sometimes, however, the story grows from contemplation of an interesting character and speculation as to what he would do if placed in unusual or dramatic circumstances.

Charles Tenney Jackson: The genesis of a story with me is more likely to spring from a single incident, a situation—perhaps even a phrase—one might say, a mental gleam that seems unique—and then appears to gather to itself the characters which lead on to a plot that slowly evolves. But always the urge of it is the first suggestion.

Frederick J. Jackson: With me stories grow from incidents, characters, situations, settings and titles.

Give me a good title: I don't ask more. For example, six years ago, in New York, one popped into my mind from a clear sky. Down she went in my note-book. Last spring I felt the urge to work. Not an idea in the world. Out came the old note-book. I thought about it for a day, then batted out the story that the title suggested. The title and nothing more to start things moving.

For one story—the skipper who could always cross Humboldt Bar when other master mariners were helplessly bar-bound.

Give me a good parody or take-off on a well-known phrase or quotation and I seem to ask nothing more.

The first story of one series evolved from the character I conceived. The genesis of one story was a vivid picture that occurred to me of an outlaw coming over a hill to the cemetery outside a western town and finding four fresh graves. Three of them were occupied, the fourth empty, significantly so, since the other three were filled by the outlaw's pals on their last raid. A pleasing picture, and I made it more so by placing three sticks of wood at the heads of the filled graves, pieces split from a wooden box. The sticks were upright in the fresh earth. The top of each stick had a slit in it, and into each slit was placed an epitaph. The three epitaphs were the knaves of hearts, diamonds and clubs. In town the outlaw learns that the sheriff is carrying the knave of spades and an earnest intention to place it at the head of the fourth grave. This much just came to me. The rest of the story is a matter of mechanics.

Setting? The origin of the idea for one tale was a matter of setting, the kelp-beds along the coast south of Cape Mendocino. Small vessels—fishing-boats—sometimes put into the kelp for shelter from high seas and gales. The heavy kelp has much the effect of oil on breaking seas. With this in mind, the story was a matter of mechanics. A steamer leaving Eureka for San Francisco, a run of twenty hours, and then disappearing for eleven days, given up for lost. She had lost her propeller, her deckload, her boats and all loose deck-gear. All this came ashore north of Cape Mendocino—sure sign she had gone down, with a southwest gale raging. But her skipper had managed to get her into the kelp—he knew the kelp—and there piled all his cargo forward until the propeller shaft was above water. He shipped a new propeller right there in the open sea. The vessel lay against a background of cliff, the country back of it is deserted, isolated; steamers passing there were at least fifteen miles out to sea to get around Blunt's Reef; there was no wireless aboard. Therefore she remained undiscovered, given up for lost, until one morning, battered, smashed, burning her lumber cargo for fuel, she limped into San Francisco Bay.

Fine! An editor wanted a series about the character—the nervy, never-at-a-loss young skipper. The skipper was pure accident. I had given no thought at all to characterization. The story, the situations, his grasping a slim chance for life when his older officers could see no chance at all, were what I thought made the story. But upon close analysis it was he who made the story.

In the story I had unconsciously used the same combination of characters as in another series—the young sea captain, the ship owner and his daughter.

More stories wanted. Not an idea in the world. But a lot of promised money will make ideas come. I squared off at the Underwood and started in with the ship owner.

Conjured up a pleasing picture of him seated in his private office with wrath oozing from every one of his pores. What will make a ship owner mad? Loss of money was the answer. How could he lose money? By one of his steamers being bar-bound. So the largest steamer of the fleet is bar-bound in Gray's Harbor—has been for three weeks. Empty, she went over the bar all right. With a couple of million feet of lumber aboard she couldn't get out. "Martin" to the rescue. He gets her over the bar—all this is deliberately manufactured with not a single idea one paragraph ahead of my fingers on the keys. Then, with the steamer at sea, ideas come galloping. It is very seldom that I start a yarn with not even a title to work on, not an idea in the world as to what is going to happen. But I finished up with a real story which brought a bigger check than any I had received up to that time for any story.

The third of the series came easier. In The Saturday Evening Post I read a story by Byron Morgan called The Elephant Parade, a tale of motor-trucks. Into my mind popped the idea of using caterpillar tractors in a sea story. By this time I had "Martin" firmly in hand, well-trained. The fourth story went over nicely. But in the fifth one I made the mistake of bringing some war stuff in. Editor said nix. I got disgusted with "Martin" right there and left him flat.

Now in your question you have omitted the word "theme," which might be included. For instance one was the growth of something that can not be called a definite idea. It was hazy, vague, when I started it. All I had in mind was the traits of blondes (feminine) as I have known them, especially movie blondes. My working title on the story was The Cussedness of Blondes. I changed that to Press Agents' Paradise, and wound up with A Million Dollars' Worth. The working title changed as I got into the thing and began to see sunshine ahead. The only thing I had in mind with which to end the story was a beautiful double-cross on the part of the blonde girl. I ended it that way. I had many a laugh at the situations I had conjured up and slapped into the story. Laughing at my own stuff. Read it and weep.

Mary Johnston: Sometimes one, sometimes another. But usually a character or a situation, or an idea that seems to have ethical or evolutionary value. To see the idea for a story means to see the story.

John Joseph: The genesis of a story? The idea for a "red-blooded" story comes from my own experience. That is, things I have actually seen. Such stories are, as a matter of fact, fictionized facts. Some stories are based on a peculiarity of human nature. That is, they arise from a study of human nature.

Lloyd Kohler: Of course, the idea for a story may spring from almost anything. With me, however, the idea for the story usually springs from an incident in actual life. Quite often, too, the story grows from a very brief newspaper article. Incidents from my own life and the sharp brief stories of the daily press have furnished all the ideas for my stuff.

Harold Lamb: The genesis of a story is most often some happening that comes into the fancy, followed by the impulse to draw character in connection with that happening.

Sinclair Lewis: Varies. Usually from a character.

Hapsburg Liebe: My best stories grow from a character; then a situation to fit in with the character. I have had most of my failures, I think, from inventing a situation and sticking doll-like characters in it.

Romaine H. Lowdermilk: With me, the good stories originate around a character. As the characters are supposed to seem real and be interesting to the reader I feel that they, as the actors, are more vital than their doings. When I have my characters in mind I choose one upon whom to center interest and one for humor unless I can combine the two. Around this character (or characters) I work out action that I think true to their natures and the setting to which they are native. It takes considerable thought to think up a series of incidents leading to some definite end or some theme, but then that's the writer's business. He's got it to do! Given a character you can make yourself acquainted with, you can write a story around him, and the more commonplace the character the more likely you are to hit on a story that reads true to life among a majority of readers. Sometimes I write from situation, setting or incident, but usually go back to the beginning and find the character who, when properly used, seems to work out most of the story himself. The title is my stumbling-block. I never find a title until after the story is done, and then only after great effort and generally at the suggestion of some of my family who act as "critics" on the completed work.

Eugene P. Lyle, Jr.: The genesis of a story, with me, may be any bit of mental detritus lodged in the flow of thought long enough to collect about it enough flotsam to round into a missile to throw at an editor. The "bit" may be any of those you have listed, but I like best an idea, or a theme. Given an idea, I like to try to translate it into life—i. e., fiction. Ideas, though, are scarce. But whatever the story germ is, it has to bite hard, else the story is not likely to be much.

Rose Macaulay: I usually start from some idea I have in my head about the world or life or people and illustrate it with the particular plot and character that seem to suit it.

Crittenden Marriott: The climax; I always start with it—and write up to it. I begin anywhere, and half the time I have to begin again and perhaps again till I find a beginning that lets the story run smoothly. I keep the false beginnings and work some of them into the story.

Homer I. McEldowney: The idea of a story with me has been of varied origin—a name, a situation, a character, or a plot. I have only written four yarns thus far, and I have used four different methods. Perhaps the next will be still different. And I wonder, when the various methods have been exhausted, if I'll be, too—at the end of my rope!

Ray McGillivray: Two people at cross-purposes, two or more opposed forces, or a person and a conflicting force, usually give a yarn of mine initial impulse—at least of consideration. I sketch a plan or synopsis, then dictate it straight through from beginning to end. My steno hands me a result which—because of her garbling, my smoke-clouded diction and incomplete ideas—resembles a finished story somewhat less than a plate of steak and Idaho baked potatoes with pan gravy resembles a fat man. I chew away at the script, and return to the girl a mess of pages upon which there is more pencilling than ink. Being human and slightly myopic, she does not turn out a final draft—yet. The third typing finishes a script, though—unless it be part of a novel, or an editor asks rewriting done. Given the right sort of quarrel, dilemma or unconscious conflict between interesting persons or forces, however, I believe that setting, incidents of development, and atmosphere traipse right into the yarn without being paged.

Helen Topping Miller: My stories usually begin with titles. Often I carry a title in my mind for years before I am able to find the story to go with it. Occasionally I begin a story with only a character, but I must have my title before I can write. Having got my characters I devise the "conflict" which is to develop those characters, and then build the plot around that.

Thomas Samson Miller: There are stories which have their genesis in an author's rage at an inhumanity or injustice. We writers all start out being missionaries, I think, and only slack up when we discover that readers delighted in the jam—the story—and missed the pill. I have to be moved by a strong desire to expose some wrong to get across a really strong story. But my commercial success (if I may claim success) falls along adventure stories for young men and boys. In such stories incident is of the first importance. The incident has to dovetail into a plot, all the action flowing to a logical climax. The second importance is a hero—a manufactured hero, whose best traits only are shown, for character is complex—the admirable traits always associated with less admirable.

Anne Shannon Monroe: I believe a story almost always grows with me from a character; a certain kind of a person who always gets into trouble—or out—because he does certain sorts of things.

L. M. Montgomery: The genesis of my stories is very varied. Sometimes the character suggests the story. For instance, in my first book, Anne of Green Gables, the whole story was modeled around the character of "Anne" and arranged to suit her. Most of my books are similar in origin. The characters seem to grow in my mind, much after the oft-quoted "Topsy" manner, and when they are fully incubated I arrange a setting for them, choosing incidents and surroundings which will harmonize with and develop them.

With short stories it is different. There I generally start with an idea—some incident which I elaborate and invent characters to suit, thus reversing the process I employ in book-writing. A very small germ will sometimes blossom out quite amazingly. One of my most successful short stories owed its origin to the fact that one day I heard a lady—a refined person usually of irreproachable language—use a point-blank "cuss-word" in a moment of great provocation. Again, the fact that I heard of a man forbidding his son to play the violin because he thought it was wicked furnished the idea for the best short story I ever wrote.

Frederick Moore: The genesis of a story with me may be any of the things mentioned, but generally I find it is some incident upon which a plot may be built. And frequently the plot in its final form has no bearing whatever on the original incident which gave birth to the plot.

Talbot Mundy: With me, the genesis of a story is too often the need for money; or at any rate, the need for money generally has too much to do with it. I disagree totally from the accepted theory that it does a writer good to be "hard up." It is true that I wrote some of my best stories when I was frightfully "broke"—The Soul of a Regiment for instance; but the idea of selling that story never entered into the conception or construction of it; had nothing to do with it, in fact. It was an idea and an incident that took hold of me and thrilled me while I wrote it. It was based on a tale that my father told me one Sunday morning at breakfast when I was about eight years old. He told it to me all wrong, but contrived to put across the spirit of the thing, and it seems that that part stuck.

Ideas, I am afraid, are no good unless pinned down in the very beginning to a character and one main incident. I can live in a world of ideas; in fact, I generally do, dreaming along without much reference to "hard" facts. I see pretty clearly the necessity to make ideas concrete by turning them into persons, things and incidents. A plot is otherwise a mere conundrum without much interest to the reader, however appealing to the writer it may be. Thus, an idea for a story (in my case) may be an incident, a trait of character, a situation, setting, title or almost anything; and the temptation, which I fall for much too often, is to go dancing along with the idea, letting it will-o'-the-wisp me all over the place. Whereas the true process is to pin that idea down and make it so concrete that the reader doesn't recognize it as an idea, but does recognize a sort of familiar friend—concrete as a sidewalk. This is a counsel of perfection; but it's the nearest I can get, after a dozen years of trying, to an answer to your question. Be concrete. Get away from the abstract by making it concrete. With that proviso, anything whatever is an idea for a story.

Kathleen Norris: The genesis of a story with me is usually a situation; the feeling that such and such a relationship between persons of such and such ideals or ideas would make for human interest. A servant girl who holds a baby above a flood all night—a boy who hates his father's second wife, etc., etc.

Anne O'Hagan: The stories that I have taken the most pleasure in writing and that have seemed to me the most successful have grown out of speculation upon a character in a situation. If I may use an illustration, Wings of Healing, a short serial published last year in McCall's, grew out of speculation upon a character, proud, resentful, out-of-joint with the world, returned to the environment which had embittered her, brought back face to face with all that she thought she most hated in the world. Of course, being a professional writer I have written many stories without any such genesis, stories based on an incident or even a setting. But with me, this is not my serious method of trying to write a good story.

Grant Overton: With me, a story may begin with a background, an incident, a character, a situation or a title. My idea of a story is simply something arising in the first place from any one of these sources. I should not say that a trait of character was sufficient for me in the beginning. My first novel arose from a particular background; my second novel was originated by an unusual situation, which I heard of; my third novel (in point of writing) was suggested by a place; my fourth novel arose from a character, Walt Whitman. The only two short stories I ever did that are of any account whatever, were both inspired by houses with "atmosphere."

Sir Gilbert Parker: Character always.

Hugh Pendexter: Dramatic situation. A flashlight picture of a climax with no explanation. Then technique of going back and building up to it.

Clay Perry: To me it has been a character, a situation, an incident, a title, striking enough to set imagination at work.

Michael J. Phillips: Out of nowhere at all an idea comes into my head. It may consist of a novel association of two apparently unrelated ideas; it may be a picturesque phrase or it may be an out-of-the-ordinary incident. I think to myself: "That might make a story."

Immediately the other side of me pops its head out and says: "You poor boob, there's nothing in that at all but grief and hard work and disappointment. There isn't a story there and if there is, you can't write it. That isn't your style at all, so forget it."

Consciously I forget it. But the next day as I am walking to the office—most ideas come while I am hiking,—the first half of my mind says apologetically: "Of course we know that was a fool idea we had yesterday and there's nothing to it and we can't do anything with it, and we don't intend to, but—If it was any good and we expected to use it and if we had enough talent to make a readable story out of it, here is a little incident which would tag along with it."

Then the germ and the incident are rudely thrust back into limbo. This sort of thing happens for about three or four days, the story taking form until I know the story and the finish and most of the incidents before I consciously accept it and start to polish it off in my mind. The story is complete, or practically so, before I set it down on paper.

The only story which didn't come to me that way hit me all of a heap and convinced both sides of my mind at once, taking the citadel by storm. It was the real, authoritative goods, and I knew it, and glowed over it. I have rewritten it twice, and it's still unsold. While others, which were dragged on to my door-step by my unwilling brain working under compulsion, but which I wrote more or less easily, with my tongue in my cheek, have been pronounced good by hard-headed gents who pay money for fiction.

Walter B. Pitkin: A story may grow from anything with me. Most commonly, though, from a big critical situation, then from a setting (atmosphere); less often from a character trait; and still less from a complete character in real life.

The four best stories I have written, judging quality exclusively by the approval of editors and readers, grew out of a combination of an idea and an odd situation.

A story idea sometimes starts with a title; but I find that the title never carries me very far, though it may start something going.

E. S. Pladwell: I can not answer. Sometimes it just grows out of random thoughts. Again, it comes from stories I have heard, or personal experiences. An idea for a story grows out of a setting, a character and a climax. The three combined make the finished job.

Lucia Mead Priest: I should say that the genesis of what stories I have written have never been twice alike.

A situation, a phase of character, a setting, some other fellow's adventure or one of my own, have furnished the kernel around which the matter has concreted.

Now and then it has meant immediate germination but more often the corm has been tucked away on a mental shelf to ripen or desiccate.

I do not know whether that is the usual process of a mentality or the working of an irregular one.

Eugene Manlove Rhodes: How would a given character react to a given situation? Answer is a story. Character, situation.

Frank C. Robertson: The world is full of interesting situations and unusual characters. I think I always carry around some of these somewhere in the back of my head. Every once in a while one of the unusual characters will accidentally get into one of these interesting situations and the story begins to crawl. These two, character and situation, always seem to come simultaneously and demand to be written about.

Ruth Sawyer: Generally from an incident or character. Primarily it is the human appeal which decides.

Chester L. Saxby: A story with me grows out of any kind of seed, but most frequently from an incident or a situation. The character is essentially a part of that incident. The character is the shaper of the idea in my mind; without him and apart from him it does not exist. But the dramatic possibility of the idea is the thing.

Barry Scobee: It may be any one of these, or from an idea that pops into my mind as I read or watch a movie, but mostly the genesis starts with a situation or a condition. By situation I mean, of course, the position a character is in. By condition I mean a dramatic, novel, puzzling or pathetic theme or phase of life, somebody or group of somebodies. To illustrate, the remote, isolated big-ranch people of southwest Texas. They are in a condition from which rises the dramatic or novel. After all is said, an idea for a story, with me, is a situation—even if it be the mental situation brought about by a man's own state of mind. It is that more than character or the other things.

R. T. M. Scott: To some extent the genesis of a story comes to me from all the things which you mention. More particularly it comes to me from a character or a title. All my "Smith" stories are from character with the exception of the first of the series. One came from the title out of the "nowhere." There is one source, however, which you have not mentioned and which has had significant results for me. I refer to dreams. If I can get to my typewriter before the atmosphere of a dream has vanished the story is sold. A case of this kind occurred with Such Bluff as Dreams Are Made Of, the first of the "Smith" series. I crawled out of bed to my typewriter and wrote the thing straightaway without an alteration. It sold at once and, as soon as it appeared in print, Cassel's Magazine of London wanted it and I was asked to cable my reply. I dreamed both of the dreams described in this story. Selling dreams is clear profit.

Robert Simpson: The idea for a story has, with me, no specific method of birth. It may be derived from any of the sources you refer to, or it may, as sometimes happens, spring out of nowhere, practically complete from introduction to climax. Most frequently, however, and particularly with short stories, I merely sit down and write. A sentence of some sort finds its way on to the paper, then another and another, and ultimately a story begins to take shape. A number of these "germ sentences" may have to be removed from the finished product, but most of them remain. When I have evolved a story idea by this method, I go just so far and no farther until I have decided on a climax. If I can't create a climax that satisfies me, I allow the idea to rest for a while, and usually, when I am not consciously thinking about it at all, a fitting climax comes along and the story is written. With book-length stuff, however, I generally begin with four things—a character who sounds a decided key-note, the setting, and, however vaguely, a conception of the beginning and the end. Until I have these ingredients fairly well fixed in my mind, I don't attempt to "write them into existence." Generally speaking, the principal character is suggested to me first by name. I can't write about anybody whose name doesn't "fit."

Arthur D. Howden Smith: Sometimes a situation; sometimes a character or group of characters.

Theodore Seixas Solomons: "Story germ," though a trite expression, hits it with me as to what a yarn grows from. But it may be a situation or a very odd trait of character in what would otherwise be a not uncommon situation. Sometimes an incident, if it seems a germinal one; rarely or never a setting or title.

Raymond S. Spears: Generally speaking, I have a personal interest in some subject or other. I begin to collect information about it, as pearls, trapping, Mississippi River, shanty-boaters, etc. Perhaps a news clipping starts me off, or a book, or a fiction story. After a while, perhaps I have a hundred, a thousand clippings, books, etc. Then I go to the scene; thus I went to Muscatine, Iowa, on a motorcycle to spend half a day in a button factory, and a few days around that button-making town, buttons and pearls going together! Then I went on into the Bad Lands of western South Dakota, and spent a month on the prairies in homestead country. Later I rolled thousands of miles in homestead countries, to get "the big viewpoint."

Sometimes the story comes ready made in the material. Sometimes it comes divested of environment—atmosphere—and I have to dress it up in a desert, then a river, then a green timber environment, or facts, to find which fits. Often a story idea appears as a character of certain tendencies, and this character I bring up by hand, sometimes for years.

I gather my material of all kinds, and each group of material has characters, plots, ideas, themes, etc., wandering and wallowing around in the wilderness, and gradually a group of all sorts of things that go to make up a story is precipitated by conditions, and if I'm in too much of a hurry, I write too soon; the way through is invisible, and I run into a blind cañon.

Norman Springer: In all of these ways, incident, title, etc., but most often (say four times out of five) I visualize a character, and the story grows about him. (This character, by the way, is never dragged out of real life, and I don't try to make him a type. He is—at least while the yarn is in the making—a distinct individual, with individual characteristics. Though I do find that, as the story progresses, he acquires little habits of mind and manner of people I know or have known. If I don't guard against it, the character in the last story is likely to carry over and intrude his personality into the next story, where he isn't wanted.)

The genesis of the story is something like this: I think of the character. I try him in this situation and that. Perhaps he fits, and the plot grows naturally to its completion. Perhaps he doesn't fit, or the material is only half a story—then I shove the whole matter into the back of my mind. Weeks or months later additional situations, or maybe new incidents, occur to mind. Out trots the character from his seclusion, bringing his story with him.

Stories that come via the title route are nearly always of the "fate" variety.

If the plot is imagined first, and then the characters, I find that the latter are likely to be wooden and lifeless, and the story very hard to write.

Julian Street: Sometimes a situation. Practically always, however, the situation grows out of character. Never a title. That's always cheap, I think. The more I work and (I hope) ripen, the more I believe that the basis of most good stories is character. Character makes plot.

T. S. Stribling: I have derived stories from incidents, characters, tales told me by traveling companions, but my longer and more serious stories are nearly always something rather larger than a "setting"; I would say a social condition. I like to select a people whose form of life has the possibility of great drama. Then I enjoy studying that people, seeing how they live, get as nearly at their psychology as I can—customs, habits. Then I take their country and pick out spots where I will have a scenic background that best suits the mood of the story I propose to write.

For example just at this moment I am interested in Venezuela. I lived down there a year, I learned enough Spanish to talk and read intelligibly, and I expect to read Venezuelan books, histories, etc., for about three years more before I do a novel I have in mind on the country. Naturally, this sort of work must be planned for years in advance, and usually while I am working up a big story, I can get a bunch of smaller ones on the same theme. Otherwise I would starve between drinks.

Booth Tarkington: I shall have to leave this pretty indefinite. The answer differs with every story.

W. C. Tuttle: Usually the title is the last thing to be printed on my manuscript, and I pride myself on the fact that I have only had one title changed in seven or eight years of writing.

It may sound queer to you, but it is a fact that a certain character bothers me until I write a story around that character. Crazy, eh? Still it is a fact. Somehow I can see and feel that personality and a strong urge comes to me to put him in print. The strange part of it is that I worry about that mythical character until I put him on paper.

Lucille Van Slyke: Story genesis with me is usually some very insignificant object that I see in a half-light—or blurred—or far off when I am not thinking about writing at all.

Example: Listening to a second-rate opera company give Lohengrin my eyes note very idly that one fat chorus lady has very shabby black street shoes. My eyes travel—her face is deadly serious. Somewhere the back of my brain clicks off a story somebody told me about Henrietta Crossman's early struggles—how she nursed her infant son between acts while she played "Rosalind"—on the way out of the theater I hear a laughing feminine voice say "Chiffon is warmer and stronger than you think—" These things I scribbled in my plot-book when I reached home. But it was at least two years before I wrote the story these things suggested—but the impetus was undoubtedly a pair of shabby shoes—and the story was about a fragile, gay little chorus lady, the very antithesis of the fat lady with the shoes. (Nor were shoes ever mentioned in that story!)

Example: I pass a brownstone house, very swanky one. On the basement window-sill is a battered tin luncheon-tray with a soiled napkin, a wilted salad and some scraggly bits of lamb. I am on my way for a holiday, in an I-shall-never-write-again mood. But the little old nervous ganglia that serve as brains begin "What a rotten lunch—must have been for the dressmaker—and maybe the dressmaker was a dear—a princess in disguise effect"—and I find myself humming an old hymn, Oh, happy day—"Felicia Day would be a good name," saith my tune. So I jot it down in the back of my commutation-book and forget it. It's three years later that I write a book around that luncheon tray.

The funny part of all this is that I didn't know until your letter arrived that in almost every instance of either short story, serial or book I saw a definite object in the beginning. I tried to bunk myself into believing that I didn't, that a person or a character did it or a plot, but it's a thing—usually in half-light—so I see it rather blurry. Why?

Atreus von Schrader: A story may grow from anything; an incident, a character or trait, a setting, a title, a situation. It is my own experience that more stories develop from situations than any other course. I wonder if this would be true of a writer of character stories? By "situation" I mean a preconceived inter-relation of the dramatis personæ.

T. Von Ziekursch: Genesis of a story.—I have little idea where the ideas for stories come from. They merely seem to be dreams in which the characters become clearer and clearer until I live through the incident with them in an existence that is very real. I always have regrets when a story is finished; then the characters seem to fade out like old friends, gradually becoming hazier until they are lost. In my animal stories I believe incidents that I have seen and animals that I have studied form the stem about which I build the branchings. Perhaps the same thing occurs with the human characters.

Henry Kitchell Webster: My theory of the genesis of a story is a dynamic one. The motive power behind any story is furnished by the setting up in some life, or group of lives, of a condition of strain or disequilibrium, and the story itself is the sequence of events by which equilibrium is sought to be established. I never started a story from a title, but I fancy I have started at least once from each of the other items of your list.

G. A. Wells: Story ideas occur to me in flashes. As a rule it is no more than an idea, very brief and not, in most cases, sharply drawn. Most ideas come to me while reading the work of others, whether of fiction or fact, and it may be peculiar that the idea as it occurs is never similar to the story or article as a whole or any part of it that I chance to be reading at the time. To name a case in point, I distinctly remember that the idea for one story came to me while reading the third book of Dryden's translation of Virgil's Æneid. The idea hit me so hard that I dropped everything else and began the story at once. I don't attempt to explain it. I have never deliberately set about to invent a story idea. That is beyond my mental capacity. Ideas occur to me unwilled or not at all. But, given the idea, I will with confidence contract to work it out in any manner suggested.

William Wells: Anything gives me the idea for a story; my head is full of them all the time.

Ben Ames Williams: It is quite impossible to answer generally any such question as this. Some of my stories grow out of incidents observed or imagined; some are transcribed almost literally from experiences related to me; some grow up around a character, or an apt title, or a trait of character; some are built up as a play is built up, to put forward a definite dramatic situation; some put in the form of fiction a philosophic or religious idea which has appealed to me; some are merely whimsical studies in contrast. The only general statement I can make is that George Polti's book on dramatic situations has been of great help to me, not so much in suggesting stories as in assisting me to see more clearly what effect I want to produce.

Honore Willsie: I always start with some bit of human philosophy that I want to get over.

H. C. Witwer: I'm afraid I must answer this one rather generally. That is, I mean the genesis of a story with me grows from not one, but all the elements you mention, viz., character, situation, setting, title. Sometimes I hit upon a good title and write around that; sometimes I spend days on the proper title after the yarn is finished. A chance remark of an individual, quaint, funny, philosophic, etc., may furnish a story and so with the other ingredients above. I would say, though, that the majority of times the first thing I get to work on is a situation. Next title. After that, I go to it!

William Almon Wolff: If I go back I can find that stories have grown out of all the things you mention. But the actual making of the story never begins until one or more persons are in my mind. I have to deal with people, and the real planning and building of the story nearly always begins with speculation as to what this person or that would do in a certain situation. Here is a concrete example:

My friend, Robert Rudd Whiting, gave me, years ago, this, as an idea for a story. Repairs to a post road in Connecticut made him, for several days, take a detour; a little, lonely sort of road. And he used to pass an old house, where two old ladies sat, looking out eagerly at all the bustling life that had so suddenly come along their road.

Bob had tried to write the story, and failed. The idea fascinated me, too. My notion was to try to work something out and do it with Bob—I know, of course, that, if only he kept on, he could do the story, and do it better than I could ever hope to do it. But the war came along, and it took Bob. He was killed in action as truly as any man who died in France, although the records don't show that. So I felt that I was doubly obliged to write that story. But it eluded me until, at last, I saw in my mind exactly the right man, troubled, oppressed, sick of heart and mind and body, lured from the great road, with its rushing motors, by the peace of the little road.

From that moment I was on the way to doing the story. What ailed that man? What had gone wrong? What would he find when he came to the house and the two old ladies? And wouldn't the little road, in the end, if he followed it so far as it went, take him back, refreshed and strengthened, to the road and the life he had abandoned?

Edgar Young: A story usually starts, in my case, with an idea—some truth that I wish to prove, some fact that I wish to demonstrate, or some effect I wish to show. This, to my estimation, is what a story writer means when he speaks of "an idea" for a story.

Summary

Answering, 113. By a rough system of tabulating, allowing two points for a subject when it is usually or always the genesis of a story, and one point when it is sometimes or rarely the genesis, we get the following general view:

Character, 73; character and action, 4; character and situation, 10; situation, 73; incident, 69; titles, 19; setting, 19; purpose, 14; phrase, 11; "just born," 5; emotion, 4; miscellaneous, 26; varying as to genesis, 57; don't know, 4.

The miscellaneous include such as: contrast, condition of mind, problem, motive, period, tales, a name, a view of life, news, period.

These statistics from the data given can serve merely to give a general survey and to indicate, at least approximately, the relative frequency of use. That character, situation and incident should head the list was rather to be expected, though hardly in that order. That titles should rank next seems surprising.

The interest in these data is chiefly for the beginner. Probably the best place to get an idea for a story is wherever you can get it and be satisfied with it, but this data may show the beginner sources not previously considered. Perhaps the best service to him is the demonstration that creative minds do not all work alike and that general rules are to be regarded with suspicion until found really applicable to the particular case.

Aside from service, these data may be of some passing interest to writers, critics and editors in general.

QUESTION II

Do you map it out in advance, or do you start with, say, a character or situation, and let the story tell itself as you write? Do you write it in pieces to be joined together, or straightaway as a whole? Is the ending clearly in mind when you begin?To what extent do you revise?

Answers

Bill Adams: It writes itself—nothing to do with me. I never read stories—or very, very, very rarely. Most stories, though not quite so poisonous as my own, are indigestible. Never have the slightest idea what the end, and rarely what the next paragraph will be. Revise a great deal afterward, in small ways.

Samuel Hopkins Adams: As a rule the story is pretty well worked out in advance; always in the case of a novel. It does happen, however, that a character upon which a story is built will take the bit in his or her teeth and run away with the whole show—even to the extent of ditching it! I have had a short story turn out disconcertingly different from my original intention because one of the characters got out of control. After I write passages, particularly bits of dialogue before going at the story as a whole, I always revise and rewrite; sometimes I wholly recast a story.

Paul L. Anderson: A story is mapped out in advance, often to the very language, the actual words to be put down on paper. Revision is chiefly a matter of improving the wording, though it sometimes takes the form of shifting the action around; sometimes even of rebuilding the whole yarn, from start to finish.

William Ashley Anderson: No, I don't deliberately map out a story; though, generally, the theme of the story is in mind when I start, and the chief problem is to hit on the best point of departure. The ending is not clearly in mind when I start, though I am inclined to think that, as a rule, this is a distinct defect, because without an ending clearly in mind a story must start off without limits and the author can have no measure by which to judge the value of his characters. This applies particularly to the short story. In longer stories the characters must develop logically; and there should be no limits whatever for a novel.

My usual method is to write a story as the ideas present themselves or the characters move in their relation to the general theme. Then I rewrite, pruning freely. After that I often rewrite again.

On the other hand I have written very clear, sharp stories at one writing; and very vague stories after several rewritings.

But I firmly believe that no story is so good that it won't be improved by a second writing; and there are innumerable evidences in literature to sustain this.

Often a story changes while I am writing it. Starting with a vague idea, a strong idea may suddenly obtrude itself. Many times the "kick" in a story has come into mind when the story was already half done.

Thackeray noted the fact that when a man starts to set his ideas on paper he is surprised at how much more he knows than he thought he knew. This, I think, is characteristic of an experienced writer, while the opposite holds true of a novice.

H. C. Bailey: I always plan the whole thing before I begin to write, in considerable detail; every chapter of a book, every phase of a short story and often the key phrases of dialogue and narrative are in my private synopsis. But I hardly ever find that it all goes according to plan. Characters won't do as they are told. They turn out to be different from what I had imagined. Minor people become important. And so the characters work out their plots sometimes in ways of their own. I always work straight on from beginning to end. Once the manuscript is finished I only revise details, but the writing itself is a process of revision and rewriting page by page and line by line.

Edwin Balmer: Sometimes I map out the whole story in advance and I usually try to, but I think the best stories are those where I have merely started with a general idea and with a fairly definite conception of the outcome and then have followed the "hunches" which seemed of themselves to work through the story. I usually write straightaway as a whole until about two-thirds through a short story, when I fully revise at least once and then write to the end.

Ralph Henry Barbour: I do not "map out" a story in advance. I might fare better if I did so. I don't know, and I probably never shall know since it is something I am apparently incapable of doing. My start is made with a situation or with certain characters. Sometimes with even less. Whatever the start is, the characters at once take matters into their own hands, and while I may sometimes use a feebly restraining rein they generally end by taking the bits into their teeth. The end is clearly in my mind when I begin. That is, to return to metaphor, the goal is known to me. What isn't known is the road that is to lead to the goal, nor what is to happen on the way. Infrequently I find that I have arrived at a destination other than the one toward which I started. But that occurs only infrequently for the reason that, given my characters, I can usually tell how they are going to behave; or, rather, where, having behaved—or misbehaved—they are going to fetch up. From this it may be gathered that I let the story tell itself to a great extent. I do not write a story in pieces, but take it as it comes. I revise very little. Almost not at all. Perhaps my stuff would be better if I revised more. But I don't like revising. Something is going to be lost when that is begun. It is better, I think, to revise before you write.

Frederick Orin Bartlett: I never map out anything. For me nothing is more dangerous. My story as a whole is clearly in mind, but the details work themselves out as I write. That is true of my ending; I must know, of course, in a general way where I am going or I have no story, but that is as far as I commit myself except very rarely when the last sentence bobs into my head all made. Even then I may not know the preceding sentence or paragraph.

Nalbro Bartley: I write a story straightaway as a whole—the ending clearly in mind when I start. I always have it mapped in advance—and then, having started, I let the characters take the action in their own hands while I keep the characters in mine. It is like building a house with a plan—so many rooms, porches, etc.,—and letting the people who are to live in it furnish it as they please and live their own life as a family unit.

Ferdinand Berthoud: I map the story out wholly in my mind—practically see it finished as an artist sees a picture—before I begin to write. However, one or other of my characters is often likely to say some fool thing I hadn't previously thought of and slightly to change the trend of the yarn.

In writing I do the first two or three thousand words, then go for a long walk next morning and think up the exact wording of the next slab of misery. All I have to do then is practically to copy the stuff down.

Yes, I have the ending and the exact last words before I do a thing. Am ashamed to say I revise very little. Always keep my finished typed copy just two or three pages behind the original draft.

H. H. Birney, Jr.: Story is loosely mapped out in advance and written straight through—frequently at a single sitting. I do very little revision—little compared to what I understand some authors do. At times I will type a copy, single-space and carelessly, from my original pen and ink draft, do some revision as I proceed, and then prepare my final, double-spaced copy from this.

Farnham Bishop: Many of my stories start with things, rather than human beings: out-of-the-way ships, guns, primitive locomotives, what not. But as Kipling points out:

"Things never yet created things,
Once, on a time, there was a man."

Therefore I must create the man who creates or uses the thing. Also his opponent or opponents, and the other people who more or less "go with the situation." Try to humanize every one of them, even if he only walks on to speak a line or carry a spear.

My usual written outline is a neatly typed list of all names of people, ships and places. Make this before I begin writing the story, to avoid being held up later. Spend a great deal of time trying to pick effective names. Finding the right one helps me visualize the character. Pick them out of the phone book, old histories, etc.

Almost invariably have the ending in mind before I begin. In fact, often begin by setting aside a strong ending and then work up to it. Brodeur and I wrote our first story about the fall of Knossos. All we did was to fake up a plausible explanation of why the durned place fell. As for revision, I write the whole yarn, read it, pencil it full of corrections, and then type a fair copy with carbon, revising it again in the process.

Algernon Blackwood: An emotion produces its own setting, usually bringing with it a character who shall interpret it. The emotion dramatizes itself. The end alone is clearly in my mind. I never begin to write until this is so. Then I write fragments, scenes, fragments of the psychology, fitting them in later. Occasionally, however, when the emotion is strong, the story writes itself straightaway. Revision is endless. Often the story, when finished, is put aside and forgotten. The revision that comes weeks later, on reading over the tale as though it had been written by some one else, is the most helpful of all.

Max Bonter: Formerly I used to sit down and begin writing at random, letting the story tell itself as I wrote. I have at last decided that it is a most pernicious practise. If, when I begin writing, I haven't a fairly clear idea of what I am going to write, how can I bestow on each phase or angle of my subject an appropriate measure of importance? How can I obey the law of proportion?

The result of such procedure was nearly always a lopsided story. As a theme gradually developed under my hand and neared its objective, I discovered that the text was full of clots and excrescences that had no part in the climax and had to be cut out. My straightaway rush therefore availed me little, because it was succeeded by hash, slash and revision. It was too much like stumbling into a story.

Mathematics being the foundation of everything, including chemistry, which is Life, and correspondingly of creativeness, which is a phase of life, should, it seems to me, enter directly into the building of a story. It is a vast field for an untechnical brain like mine to browse in, but I hope to get something out of it before I quit. In the meantime I am striving to organize a simple but effective scheme of work, somewhat as follows:

1. Be sure an idea is worth developing, from a "human interest" standpoint.

2. Develop the climax first.

3. Start off the characters like a bunch of obstacle racers and bring them to the climax as quickly, but as logically, as possible.

4. Write tersely at first, expanding where advisable—rather than write voluminously and chop out.

5. Write nothing that won't put at least a grain of weight into the final wallop.

Katharine Holland Brown: The story tells itself as it is being written: or rather, it is fairly visible as a whole before I begin to write at all. The climax and ending are usually written first. The rest is written down in very concise fragments, just as these fragments present themselves. The story isn't written consecutively the first time. Only the high lights. Then, of course, it has to be rewritten, sometimes three or four times; sometimes only once.

F. R. Buckley: I combine mapping ahead and letting a character move the story. Method depends on mode of conception (see above). Roughly speaking, the average story is planned thus—I conceive either the beginning, the middle, or the end, to start with. If the end, then I work backward and decide what shall be the high spot of the middle: and, from that, backward and figure out just where and with what attention-gripping incident I can start the story. These three high points established, I take the main character and start him from the beginning toward the middle. He decides very largely how he gets there—his character does, I mean. And when he's reached the middle, I start him off again in the general direction of the end. I always have these three high points established before I begin. I write straightforward; revise little, except for redundancies and literals, except in the case of long stories and complicated shorts. Then I go very carefully over the thing for errors of fact or probability: e. g., I examine each situation to see whether it could have been resolved in any simpler way than I have resolved it; whether I have made my characters make a wide detour when they could, and would, have cut across lots, as it were. Since, however, the character of the hero or principal character dictates the minutiæ of action, I rarely (have never done so yet) find a mistake of this kind. This is the great advantage of having a strong character to dictate action, of course.

Prosper Buranelli: I have everything but small details in my mind when I begin writing.

Thompson Burtis: My stories are all mapped out in advance—the exact ending is in sight. Even some of the dialogue is in mind when I start. I write straightaway as a whole. I revise very little. Most rewritten pages are the result of my believing that the original page, after the inked-in corrections, was too messy. Due to the completeness with which I have blocked out the story in advance, there is no necessity for me to do any important revision. I may occasionally overlook some important point in the story and have to put it in, but in no case have I ever made a radical change in a character or description after the first draft. What you get from me is the story as I originally wrote it, with perhaps one or two pages rewritten to make them neater.

George M. A. Cain: Advance mapping with me is of the vaguest character. Everything shapes itself toward or from the situation originally conceived. I write straightaway, but very rarely without a clear notion of a possible ending, having found that to do otherwise is to introduce useless or troublesome incidents and make heavy revisions necessary. My greatest difficulty is in getting a story started to suit me. Here is done almost all my revising, and I frequently write a dozen beginnings before suiting myself. Once started, I write straight on, unless I find, in the development of my hitherto vague ideas of the plot, that I can get my results better by change. In that case, I simply chuck out whatever I wish to replace, or insert the needed new incident. I have rarely found that I improved a story by revising it as a whole. Unless I am trying to please a new editor by nice copy, I usually submit the first and only complete draught of the story, with an occasional alteration of a word in pencil. Typing is the bane of my existence.

Robert V. Carr: Blind groper. Feeling my way through a strange country.

George L. Catton: It all depends on the length whether I map it out first or not. If it is one of those little fellows, the ones that I am best at, the story is all "there" waiting to be written down, start—finish. If it is a long one I let it write itself. That is, I get the best start I can think of and go ahead. Then when I reach the right starting-place I begin all over again. Occasionally, in a long story, the ending, in a general and vague way, may be in sight, but it very seldom ends as I planned at the start—something better turns up before I get to the end. I write it straightaway as a whole, go back often and make revisions, and often rewrite the whole thing after it is all finished.

Robert W. Chambers: Map it out in advance. Write it straightaway as a whole. Ending clearly in mind from the start. Revise murderously.

Roy P. Churchill: I have a working plan to begin with, end in view, characters named, setting selected; then write straight along as a whole. Often the working plan is radically changed, but never abandoned completely. The plan is not detailed painstakingly, but left open on purpose to change as the feel of the story develops. Revision with me is a second writing of the story, nothing less. This is where I proportion the coloring of the story and get the tones blended.

Carl Clausen: I always have the ending in mind. I write slowly, revise very little.

Courtney Ryley Cooper: My story is as clear as a bell before I ever start to write, characters outlined, action ready, ending clear and often I write the finish of my story first. I revise very little—when I have to revise I am worried to death about the yarn as I feel there is something fundamentally wrong about it that I can't put my finger on. My story is usually written in my head before I ever touch a finger to the typewriter. I often will spend six months framing a story. The actual writing of it is the smallest part of the job.

Arthur Crabb: I certainly do map out in advance. No hard and fast rules can be laid down. It is undoubtedly true that every writer may do one thing with one story and one with another. I think that most of mine are thought out completely before I start; any changes after the first draft are minor.

Mary Stewart Cutting: I do map it out in advance but not in detail. I write it straightaway as a whole. The middle part of a story is the least definite and has to be worked out. The ending is so clearly in mind when I begin that I have to write the last sentence of the story. A story, to me, is like a musical theme. It has to end on the same keynote on which it was begun. But if my mind vividly depicts some part of the story not in the proper sequence, I write it out in full as I see it and interpolate it where it belongs. I revise after the first writing, I revise before the final typewriting—mostly as regards minor sentences. But sometimes after it has gone to typewriter my mind will see where sentences should be inserted, usually to make the action clearer.

Elmer Davis: If I mapped it out in advance, I would sell more. Starting (usually) with a character in a situation, I map out six or eight chapters. By that time old Native Indolence is getting in its heavy work; the ideas are coming hard, bright thoughts and lines for the early chapters slip away while I am trying to think out and diagram the catastrophe; so I fall to writing, always easier than thinking. Write till I get stuck; then sit down and think some more; which of course usually entails considerable revision of the earlier chapters. Not much of the latter part.

William Harper Dean: Most frequently I have the ending in mind and work definitely to develop plot sequence which will enable me logically and directly to reach that end. I do not map out—such a practise would throw too many restrictions about the sweep of my imagination; I want full elasticity to that. Revise? Ah, there's the whole story! I revise and rebuild, strengthening here, eliminating there. Recently I started out with an idea for a short story and when I finished revising and rebuilding I had written a serial which sold at once for a most satisfactory price.

Harris Dickson: After I get some crude idea of a story I put down on a big sheet everything I can think of, generally without logical arrangement. This may be developed in a sort of scenario form. From this No. 2 sheet I begin to write, in longhand, in shorthand or a combination. You will note that sheets 1, 2 and 3 show progressive stages of the same material. The value of the big sheet, to me, lies in the fact that I can visualize an entire story at one glance, without having to search through a mass of tiny scraps. And it is so easy to rewrite in one column while looking at the other.

When I get my material pretty well in hand it is dictated to a dictaphone, from which the typist gives it back, with lines far apart and a wide margin. This is then scratched up, rearranged, and redictated.

Frequently a story pretty well tells itself, and sometimes the ending is clearly in mind. Sometimes not. Sometimes one kind makes the better yarn, sometimes the other. I've done a good story in three days, and struggled for three months over a bad one.

Captain Dingle: The story is pictured as a whole, with one ending clearly in view before a word is written. I do not—can not—plan a story or map it out; it has to write itself or it fails; and sometimes the ending I saw first has to give place to one more fitting to the developed story. I do not revise, except to correct noted errors of spelling and grammar (which are apt to slip anyhow, since I know damn little about 'em). Whenever I have revised a story it has proved a failure. The stuff, such as it is, must come spontaneously.

Louis Dodge: In the main I see my story to the end before I write it—or at least I try to do this. But largely I let the development—the secondary episodes—suggest themselves, or grow, as they will. I go straight through with a manuscript, and then I revise and revise and revise. I mean I write it entirely two or three or more times. This, perhaps, shows a lack of clear-mindedness, or of definite theories; but it is the best I can do.

Phyllis Duganne: I used to let stories tell themselves as I wrote them, but I've come to the conclusion that it saves more time to sit down with a pencil and paper and make a row of nice neat Roman numerals and letters and letters in parentheses, and make a diagram of the plot. That's mainly because, once I start writing, I can write on and on without getting anywhere in my story, and wasting loads of time and good paper. I write it as a whole with the general idea of the ending clearly in mind; I never know precisely where or how the tale will end. Sometimes I think I do, but the characters are likely to be ornery and not do at all what I wanted them to do. And if I make them follow a rigid plan, the story doesn't sound true. Revising depends. Sometimes hardly at all; sometimes I find that I have gone off on a tangent and have to cut out pages. Most frequently I find that I have to go through a story, individualizing and characterizing my people more. I know what they are like, but frequently I find on reading the story that I have kept most of my knowledge to myself.

J. Allan Dunn: Here is a hard question, how does the story grow? When it comes into your mind it has various stages of completion. Preferably I would let my story tell itself. No matter how carefully I may have outlined, gone over and over each next chapter, the thing amplifies when one sits down at the typewriter. The characters change, the situations demand things not thought of, you see a better way, the yeast ferments and rises unevenly. Seldom is my ending clearly in mind. An editor desiring certain breaks for serial publication will cause me to plan more carefully. Sometimes certain parts of a story obtrude themselves but not to such an extent with me as to make me break the straightaway development of the tale in due order. I may reach them with delight, look forward to them, find them in the forefront of my mind whenever I think of the yarn outside of working hours.

And what are working hours? You carry your story as a cow packs its cud. At least, I do. And I go over and over and over it, consciously and subconsciously. I take my next chapter to bed with me and automatically employ every spare minute, on the street even, to revolving the next phase of the plot. Sometimes details will blur, but the main plot extends itself far ahead. I like to try to plan a story with a purpose, but I decidedly prefer to try so to create my characters that they are alive and have certain wills of their own. As a rule I revise once—direct on the typed copy. And most of the errors are in typing. If I polish too much I am apt to overdo it, I find.

Walter A. Dyer: Partly answered above. I find it necessary to have some fairly clear conception of the destination of my story movement, or I find I have gone off at half-cock and the result is disappointing. The details, as a rule, come as I write. I try to have a telling ending in mind. Then I write the thing straight through and try to brace up the weak spots in revision. I sometimes have to change important portions of the story to get it right, but usually it is a matter of polishing. Each story seems to present its own particular problem as to the matter of revision. I have no rule.

Walter Prichard Eaton: I always like to know, before I write, around just where I am going and coming out. It is almost essential to me. Otherwise I would write far too much. Often the story in detail, sometimes in actual plot, etc., changes itself as I go along. Then I have to stop and look ahead and see a new finish.

E. O. Foster: Owing to newspaper training, I mull over a story in my mind until I have it fairly complete before I begin to write. Then I write the story with the beginning of the plot and ending clearly in my mind, after which by means of "inserts" and "adds" I enlarge it.

Arthur O. Friel: I let the story tell itself. Straightaway as a whole. Ending not clearly in mind. Revise comparatively little. Sometimes I rewrite a section, but usually not. My main revision is with the idea of compression and compactness.

In writing, I don't lay out my story and get it all nicely framed up before starting to write. I start with a general idea which comes to me from God-knows-where, and soon I'm marching along with my characters without any very clear idea of where we're all going to wind up. We get into swamps and cut our way through the bush and clamber up on to a hill and maybe find something on the other side; one thing leads to another, and eventually we make a good finish. Then we review our course, see where we went up a box-canyon which got us nowhere, and delete that place from the record of our trip; that's our "revision."

This, of course, is all wrong from the view-point of folks who love to systematize everything; but it's my way of traveling through a story, and I get there just the same. I have tried, on a number of occasions in the past, to make my characters and events fit a more-or-less definite idea of mine as to what they were to do, but it didn't work; they just took matters into their own hands and did all kinds of things I never meant them to, and all I could do was to trail along; and, darn 'em, they made a far better yarn of it than I'd ever have made if I'd clubbed them into submission. So now I've learned to let them do as they will, after I've brought them together in a certain place and started them on their way.

J. U. Giesy: Taking the germ, the "seed" of mental possibilities, I, as it were, plant it and proceed to cultivate it many times for months, letting it grow subconsciously, save for intervals when I water it by objective examination and conscious reviewing. In this way I "rough it in"—gain a general outline of the plot and action from first to last, with the ending always indicated at least. I then write it, filling in details on the main framework as I go along.

George Gilbert: Never map out, unless a little on novelettes and serials. Ending always in view. Never revise plot; sometimes revise diction materially, always some.

Kenneth Gilbert: All the mapping in advance is done in my mind, and I write the story straightaway. Of course, the tale develops and fills out as I write. I write carefully, and I find that I have but little revising to do; usually none at all. Newspaper training, whereby the first draft must be the last, may account for this care in preparing the manuscript. I always have a good general idea of the ending in my mind before I begin, and I have never been able to understand how others can go along without knowing what the next paragraph will be, unless they are willing to rewrite the story several times. I have always proceeded on the assumption that a good short story is "a dramatic tale objectively told." How may it be "objectively told" without the object in mind?

Holworthy Hall: I plan a story in advance only in so far as the development of the main situation is concerned. The ending, however, must be clearly in mind. I usually take as much time to write the first two paragraphs as to write all the rest of the first draft. Ordinarily I complete a first draft in a day or two—and a revision in ten days; but the time taken in revision is generally for style, and not for treatment. That is because, in the first draft, the sequence must be right, or I make it right before going ahead. I ought to say here that by a "day" I mean a working day of ten to sixteen hours.

Richard Matthews Hallet: I have to have a pretty definite scheme, a sequence of events with a denouement very clearly in mind, before doing much writing. This probably comes from being a cripple in the art. Scott certainly didn't. He wrote The Bride of Lammermoor when he was so nearly out of his head with pain that when the proofs came in he read them, he asserts, as if they were the work of another hand altogether. William de Morgan, to give a late instance, said he let the story drip off his pen-point. If I did this, it would drool, not drip.