FICTION WRITERS ON FICTION WRITING (continued 5)

Solid geometry was pretty easy to me, because of my ready concrete visualization.

I go beyond the description of the author in some cases. For instance, in Mr. Dunn's castaway story of the eight or ten men I took his description of the island as he gave it from time to time and filled in a lot of details. And I imagined quite a little action besides that which he narrated. I never changed his descriptions, I merely filled them out.

I have not exactly stock pictures, but if I am called on imaginatively to see a village church or a cowboy I am likely to revert visually to some particular church or particular man that has made a great impression on me. But with the stimulus of the slightest description that doesn't fit, my mind facilely makes the necessary modification.

Tools? No. I just "write" as I tend to and can.

Raymond S. Spears: Some of my characters are as real, and even more real, than most people I know. They are usually distinct personalities that I know better than living people. In writing them I am often quite unable to give them the bitterness of experiences I have in mind because I hate to abuse them so! That's a fact, too, and has spoiled some of my—to me—most interesting ideas and stories. My feeling toward my characters does not include physical pain, for I can cut or shoot a hero without compunction, but I hate to embarrass a man or woman, probably because I am rather sensitive myself.

I hear the music I write about better than I hear the reality; thus the lapping of wavelets along the hull of a shanty-boat, the ringing of a bell or gobble of a turkey in a fog is more audible in my imagination than in fact—for I am hard of hearing. But I have heard these things at some time or other, and the memory is direct, whether hearing, seeing, smelling, etc.

What I see is environment I actually know, which I have seen and studied. I see characters in action. Sometimes I go myself through a whole story, as one of the characters; then go back and put down the imaginary episodes with myself as one or other of the characters, but usually a minor or spectator character. I read others' fiction nearly as I form my own.

I never studied solid geometry. Poor health kept me out of school, so I had only two years and a half in a grammar school, after brief period in a country district school. I had, however, a great working library for a boy, in my father's collection, to which advantage I later added a four-years course as Sun reporter in New York, and wide-range reading. But I do not recall that I ever read anything or studied anything the need of which I did not acutely feel. Thus in reading fiction it satisfies some longing as for experience, information, a view-point, etc. I can overlook errors of statement obviously outside a writer's own knowledge or experience, if he puts in good things within the scope of his own data.

In writing, details come into focus if I look at them. That is, if I describe a trapper's cabin, if it is of logs I see the moss chinking and the spruce, balsam or other "banking up." I ask the equivalent of this accuracy of knowledge in what I read and take delight, for instance, in the minute knowledge of equipment displayed by Pendexter or the desert flora by Harriman or Tuttle's fine cowboy exaggeration and faithfulness to a habit or frame of mind.

My stock in trade is a vast junk yard, properties more varied than a motion-picture lot's, and I seldom see the same thing twice. If I read, for example, a Western, I may know its exact location (as I do my own story-atmospheres). In that case I see as I remember, and if I don't remember very well, I get out a map, note-books, etc., and find out what's wrong. I read stories for amusement and information, and often I write stories to give information—hoping to amuse as well.

Norman Springer: It depends on the story and the author.

In a romantic story I'm always chiefly interested in the characters. In a realistic story I am often more interested in the setting, or background, than in the characters.

Sounds, smells, feels, pictures—if the tale is artfully written, these are quite real, though, of course, in a subdued or diluted sense. Suggestion makes these things more real than elaborate description.

Pain, I think, is usually met by the reader with feelings of anger and pity.

Suggestions of smells are, I think, most vivid to me.

If I visualize a picture, it is in color. The distinctness of details depends on the intensity of the scene, or my interest in it. Characters are usually distinct; scenery blurred.

No geometry.

The response, I think, is often killed by too much description. Suggestion, particularly sensory suggestion, does the work best with me—and I think with most people. If the author outlines the picture and sets my five senses—or any of them—to work, I get a much more vivid and "real" impression than if he spent pages in meticulous description.

If the characters are alive and the setting interesting, the mental pictures of a story are individual. Otherwise, I suppose they are stock pictures.

A great deal of difference. In reading I can allow my imagination free play. In writing I must discipline it, keep it within the bounds of the story. I find it hard to do.

Yes. I think all writers consider them as tools. They have to be considered in every story, as it is being written. There is the general style of the story to be considered, and following that, each situation. I think, "Now how can I get this effect or that; how can I make this fellow behave like a real man?" In fact, my stories so far have been a series of experiments. I nearly always try something new in each story, something I haven't tried before. Something that I hope will make the story more real and readable. Quite often the result is a rotten failure; but sometimes it isn't.

Julian Street: It depends on the author's ability to transmit the pictures he wishes me to see. I am always ready to do my share. My mouth does not literally water, except possibly over exceptionally fine descriptions of fine food and drink—which are rare. I do not think, however, that I get physical pain. My reactions are intellectual and emotional. Tarkington, for instance, can make me happy or unhappy or worried about his characters. He presses the buttons—we do the rest. The work of inferior observers and inferior writers of course reaches me less and less. I am fastidious in these matters.

When writing a scene, I "see" things vividly in color. In reading less so, though to a considerable extent if the author has the picture-making power.

No, thank God, I don't have standard stock pictures of scenes and persons. I depend on the author to give me his pictures, and if he is any good, he can do it. If he can't give me pictures, I don't want to read him.

I resent not having sufficient images made for me. I also resent images made in a conventional trite way—written out of the author's reading rather than out of his observation. I want my author to be a keen observer and artful interpreter. I want him, as Tarkington says, to "flush me with colors."

Yes, my imagination is most vivid when I am writing stories. The characters I read, however real to me, are never quite so real as those I create. Because those I read are other people's children, whereas those I create are my own. I love my children more than I love those of others, even though the others may be in every way better products. It amuses me that this should be so and I am a little ashamed to confess it.

T. S. Stribling: As I said, I almost never read a story. They bore me to death. It seems to me there are few things in this world as stupid as fiction.

When I am writing I see everything I write about. I never try to remember anything; I am simply looking at the thing and it is no more effort to describe it than it would be to describe the typewriter under my fingers now. Pictures are always in color, and the details are blurred except at the point I am describing and that is just as clear-cut as if I were looking at the real thing, not at a picture.

Yes I studied solid geometry; mathematics never gave me any trouble at all.

No, I don't have stock pictures for anything or at least I am not conscious of it. If I say a village church I will then have to decide what sort of village church I want. However when I get clear out of my experience, say into the Eskimo, the word Eskimo simply calls up a little fur-covered man; however if I should start writing about them, this generalization would instantly dissolve into scores of individuals.

When I read stories my imagination sinks into a profound stupor. Everything seems too dull and tame; when I write, everything picks up, life grows gay again, and I have the deuce of a good time.

No, I don't consider them "tools of my trade." I don't consider I have a trade nor any tools. The first novel I ever wrote was because I couldn't find a novel that I enjoyed reading; the last one I write will be written for the same reason.

Booth Tarkington: I shall have to leave these answers pretty indefinite. The answer to each differs with every story. As a reader every one, I imagine, has, when a village church is mentioned, the image of some village church he has seen—or I should say, more probably, that is, a thin haze of a fragment of some village church.

An author forming too many images of course fatigues the reader.

W. C. Tuttle: I have always been afraid of paying too much attention to other authors' work, for fear that I might absorb some of their traits. A few years ago I was a newspaper cartoonist and I have often found myself unconsciously using another artist's technique. It was not because I desired to do this, but because I admired his style. Perhaps we are all copyists, as far as that is concerned, and I believe it would be easy to adopt some favorite author's style of writing.

There are certain kinds of stories which lure me on to long periods of reading. Give me a tale of the days of old, with plumed knights, stage-coaches drifting over muddy roads, tavern brawls, etc., and I'm useless until the end of the story. I can fairly smell the tap-room, hear the rattle of dice and the clash of swords. It is more like a moving picture than a tale of fiction.

I often envy the writers of these tales. To me this is "real" fiction. My mind sometimes flashes back to the author and I wonder if he enjoyed the writing as I did the reading.

I think that in many cases I improve upon the author's description. If it is a coach team I can see in a flash just the size and color of the horses, the general appearance of the coach, the contour of the road. It appears like a moving picture, if you know what I mean. Such detail as the jolting of the coach, the creaking of harness; little details that no author would stop to describe, I see and hear them in my own story, but would never think to burden the reader with such small detail. Yet, I wonder if it isn't the little detail that makes a good story.

Somehow I always draw a mental picture of the author at work on that certain story, and I wonder if he planned it all out before putting it on paper. Did he know what the ending would be? Where and how did he get the idea in the first place?

It appears to me that an author must see things in color, with detail clear, in order to convince the reader. A blurred image will not reproduce clear. I have managed to cover a bad piece of drawing with technique, but I have never seen a bad piece of writing that could be concealed in a mass of words. When my mental picture becomes foggy I quit writing until it clears. At times I have two or more stories under way, and when one gets blurred I take another. I have never found them all out of focus, and it has saved me hours of waste time.

Things are pretty much the same when I read a story, and it does not take me long to feel whether the author knew his characters, locale, etc. Some of them actually live, while others are merely lay figures, with labels instead of souls. I can accept bad description, but when the dialogue is stilted, unreal, I lose interest.

Perhaps it is my imagination that hampers me in writing. I can see every detail so clearly that I forget that the reader must at least have a diagram of what I see in order to understand. And I have no stock picture for anything. It is not a case of "a rock is a rock and a tree is a tree."

I suppose I absorb a certain amount from reading, although I would be unable to point out just what benefit it has been to me. The handling of a story has always interested me, even if the characters were unreal, and I believe that a well-written story is a "tool of the trade" to any author, if he will consider it in that light.

Lucille Van Slyke: May I add that when I read a story by Laura Jean Libbey types of writers that I never see anything they write as real—Abject apology: I never saw anything the lady wrote—it is exactly like watching a play that is so poor that the eye registers scenery and grease paint every minute.

Things I see with my eyes shut are never black and white—always sharply colored. Some one detail will be distinct—from which I edge through blurred ones. Example. Recently in a story I had to strand a boat on a sand-bar at twilight. I sit back, shut my eyes and try to remember where I have got the sand-bar idea. I saw an old coat, plaid, wet, lying on sand, a basket next to the coat—basket had food in it—tomatoes—red tomatoes. All this can have nothing to do with my story, you understand, but I'm back five years ago on a real sand-bar with a stranded picnic party waiting for tide to come up. Zip, I'm off! Don't have to imagine it, it's there!

Hate "math" of all kinds but had less trouble with solid geometry than with any other kind of mathematics. Yet I had the same teacher that I had for algebra and plane—think perhaps I was a bit older and could concentrate better.

If my concept were limited to the exact degree to which the author makes vivid I'd have to quit reading! Again, if he's a real writer man he sets me tingling—if he isn't I quit reading! If I'm not getting a real "kick" out of the thing, I stop.

Nope, haven't any stock pictures for anything.

Much resent having every t crossed and every i dotted.

Think you are using the wrong word when you say imagination, anyway the question is not clear to me. It's like the difference between watching somebody else work and working myself. If it's going right I enjoy watching it—if it isn't I want to take off my coat and show the other fellow how I think it ought to be done.

I consider these matters very much tools of my trade. The most helpful thing any editor ever said to me was this: Always pretend to yourself that your reader can not think at all—but always remember that he can feel—and make him feel all that you can.

When I read a story by a—oh, say a Conrad—I think my imagination is swept along with his to such an extent that I see the thing as an actual scene. Sounds I never hear consciously, except music. Tastes I do not get. But smells I do get, distinctly. Touch I think I get because I find my fingers often move as I read. That "pain" part of the question so fascinates me that I hope every writer you sent it to is equally intrigued by it. I have never been able to feel in any degree any pain that a writer talks about. Neither have I ever been able, even a day or two after acute pain, to make myself remember how it felt. I can remember where I felt it and that I was acutely miserable, but I can not refeel it. I have repeatedly questioned scores of persons in all walks of life to describe how they felt "the day after"—I always get bromidic expressions—"Like a toothache"—or "sharp"—or "dull"—or something that indicates very clearly that the pain itself is obliterated, gone. I've doped it out this way—that it is nature's kind provision—that we couldn't any of us exist very long actually facing prolonged acute pain—we'd be pretty brave for a while but we'd give up eventually. Even doctors and nurses can't feel the pain they are assuaging. But, this seems to me an extraordinary thing—I have repeatedly noted many young mothers whose faces unconsciously reflect pain that a very young child is enduring.

And I can not resist adding this very personal note. I am sometimes subject to that type of headache that is I believe called migraine—for which I believe physicians have no known reason. It may not occur for years in my case—then I may have several blinding attacks of it—strangely enough when I am quite well otherwise. And I'm a fairly husky animal. And nothing helps it. I literally fight it for days, finally submerge—the thing works to its two- or three-hour horrible climax—and as I begin to feel the pain ooze out—possibly after two or three days or so of illness—I am suddenly aware that every sense is working clearly—literally with an after-the-thunder-storm clearness. I am still too weakened from pain to have any inclination to do anything—I begin to grow drowsy after many nights of insomnia—but half-way to the sleep—click, it goes—possibly a half dozen or more things that have bothered me solve themselves—maybe a story plot that I've toiled over years before and abandoned and forgotten—possibly something I was working on when the thing hit me. Or a perfectly new thing may suggest itself. Or I will know exactly what was the matter with the unsatisfactory spot in the story I had been reading (by somebody else!). Find myself wanting to change the endings of plays I may have seen years before and been disappointed in. This period lasts sometimes twenty or thirty minutes—sometimes nearly fifty but usually goes in less than ten—when I fall asleep. Note this—if I am too weak or not near a pencil—these curious things are washed out forever—just like dashing a sponge over a slate. For years I was too lazy or stupid to understand that I must grab at those amazing few moments and grab hard. Yet I can not anticipate it—nor can I say that I'm very keen about paying hours of pain in advance for a few ideas! I call it blasting out of solid ivory—eh? But I do wonder if it happens to other writer persons and if so, if they consider it has any significance.

Atreus von Schrader: The extent to which my imagination reproduces the story-world of the author depends, I believe, both on the author's skill and the degree of my interest in what he happens to be writing about, as well as my familiarity with the same story-world. I hear, see, smell and taste Kipling; Poe I only hear. I do not feel actual physical pain presented in a story; my feeling is rather that of a man in a warm room looking through the window at a raging storm; he gets the effect, and is glad he's not out in it.

The pictures I see are colored; their clearness again depends on the skill of the author and my interest in the tale.

I studied solid geometry; it was the only subject in which I failed, twice, to pass my college entrance examinations.

I do not suffer from stock pictures of physical things or people; I find it necessary to guard against stock characteristics for certain types of people; the too heroic hero, the too villainous villain, etc. This is a common error of certain editors, who insist upon story-heroes being all white and villains all black. Were it not for the libel laws, I should like to cite one or two experiences of my own in this connection.

When reading a story the imagination is at liberty to cavort without restriction. When writing, it is not. But in the latter case I see and feel with far greater vividness as long as my story is developing; if I have to stop to feel my way, the picture fades; to reappear as soon as the thank-you-marm has been passed.

T. Von Ziekursch: If an author has written into his or her story enough of the color of the setting (for instance, if it is a desert scene the author has got to picture a desert for me as I have seen them, or the woods as I have lived in them) then my imagination carries me along with the characters. I believe that just enough of the actual local color of the story either makes or breaks it, and must confess I detest these yarns that are merely written around action and incident and plot. They are cheap and fail utterly to have any value. In their wake they leave nothing of pleasant memories.

If the author has painted the scene and skilfully laid the settings then I can drift contentedly with the tale, seeing the characters, the action, hearing the sounds and smelling pleasant odors in my imagination. Unpleasant odors are much more difficult to get over with me. I can not taste, but my imagination has frequently reproduced the sense of touch. Here is a curious thing. I can only feel pains which I have experienced. For instance I was badly injured breaking a horse once; I have been shot four times. Now I can feel it when a character is injured by a horse or shot.

Details of coloring are usually somewhat indistinct unless the author has achieved them with abruptness that is very skilful.

Do not ask me what I think of mathematics—and that includes both plane and solid geometry, trigonometry, logs, algebra and all their brood.

I have formed the opinion that every reader inevitably strides beyond the scenes laid in the story to develop broader vistas, provided the author has painted his scenes skilfully enough. To me there are innumerable little by-paths that the author merely sketches the openings of—and allows the reader to wander down them at will, formulating his own vague scenes. As an example—a character in a story is following a trail in the forest; the author draws the picture of the distant mountains as the character sees them and perhaps puts in a little touch more. In reading that story I subconsciously explore those mountains, looking down on the whole scene almost like a resident of Olympus, and a deal of the fun and enchantment of the story is in that by-play, I am confident.

As to the stock pictures in my mind I should say that depends entirely on the author. If he is writing "plot and action" stories with nothing else, how could the reader help having anything else but stock pictures mentally—the kind that have been foisted on the public so long?

In regard to the difference in behavior of the imagination in reading and writing I am not competent to judge. I have read very, very little modern American fiction. My imagination holds me an absolute slave when writing—far more so than when reading.

I can honestly say that I do not remember ever having given any of these matters a moment's thought. In fact I am greatly surprised that I am able to tell you as much as I am now doing. I have never thought of the "tools of my trade." I merely write.

Henry Kitchell Webster: My most vivid sensational reactions are to sound, touch, taste and smell. I would hesitate to say that I can see things with my eyes shut. I don't remember ever feeling any actual physical pain, even in the slightest degree, to correspond with the pain presented in a story. I found solid geometry rather easy, and analytical geometry, which for the first time gave a meaning to algebra, was a revelation and a delight. My response to description and suggestion in what I'm reading or seeing on the stage or in the movies is variable. I have phases in which I get nothing but the bare fare that is offered me, and others in which I run out and amplify enormously. I haven't, so far as I know, any stock pictures for village churches or cowboys. I don't resent too many images being formed for me; if there are too many, I simply ignore them. There's an enormous difference in the behavior of my imagination when I am reading stories and when I am writing them. I do indeed consider these matters as important "tools" of my trade.

G. A. Wells: Sad to relate, very few stories carry me along with them into the very thick of things. That comes of being too darned hypercritical. It is hard for me to get away from the author. I believe I am too much interested in the mechanics and not enough in the result, always admiring or condemning the author for what he does. With the exception of a few cases which I will mention the author, like the poor, "is always with me."

James Connelly's earlier stories—those to be found in the book of the title Deep Sea Toll especially—carry me with them. Pendexter and Mundy have this power over me, but not in every case. Also Jack London's stories, particularly those of the North. Tarkington's Alice Adams and Hutchinson's If Winter Comes brought me out of myself to a certain extent. That story of Bill Adams', The Bosun of the Goldenhorn's Yarn, was a gem and affected me very much. No play I have seen for the past twenty years has made me forget that it was merely a play I was seeing. The writer whose work has the greatest power over me is Lord Macaulay. I forget I am alive when I read his essays or history.

I can see and hear characters, scenes and colors, and taste the flavors of a story, but they are never genuine. When a character is struck with a club I do not feel it; I simply stand back and watch his reaction to the blow. Scenery more nearly produces the same results on my senses as do the actual stimuli.

The things that originate in my own imagination I can see with my eyes shut as plainly as if they were realities, and things in a story to a lesser degree of vividness. I can imagine an old hag beating a child and actually work up tears. The same thing in a story does not have the same effect by a good deal. The things in stories are to me merely animated word photographs. I am not strongly susceptible to illusion as it appears in a story or a play. But the realities of actual, living life affect me powerfully.

I once saw a man—a beast, rather—kick a dog. If he had kicked me I could not have felt it more. In a story I would not have felt the kick the least bit. It would have been a kick on paper. It is my great loss that I am unable in most cases to get the desired fictional effect.

Paintings, however, act otherwise on me. In the Corcoran gallery at Washington there is a large painting depicting a body washed ashore on a beach, and nearby stands a policeman taking the names of a man and woman in a note-book. The first time I glanced at that picture it gripped me and in my imagination at this moment I see it in actual detail and feel the strength of it. I have gone a hundred miles out of my way purposely to look at that picture. One morning I sat before it from about nine until noon without scarcely ever taking my eyes from it. The paintings in the Metropolitan gallery in New York would never tire me. I am devoted to etchings.

The pictures an author presents to me are never blurred. Nor are they black and white. They are always without exception distinct and in natural colors. When Pendexter mentions a British soldier I see a man with a flaming red coat. When Dingle or Dunn shows me a pirate I see a man with swarthy face and black eyes. Trees and grass are always green unless otherwise stated.

Solid geometry was he—ll! It gave me more trouble than all other studies combined.

My response to the author is nearly always abstract.

I have no stock pictures for anything I read. I let the author paint his picture by direct description and accept it as he shows it, or form or paint it for myself from the various hints he scatters through his story. If his story is laid in the West all he need say for me is that the incidents occurred on a ranch. I'll paint my own ranch in. If his story is of the mountains he can say so briefly and depend on me to picture the mountains.

I have two imaginations—one for reading and the other for writing. The former is better than the latter. Imagination is, in my opinion, the chief tool of trade of the writer. It counts for about ninety per cent. Without that all the other tools in his chest are worthless.

William Wells: The nearest that I can come to answering this is to say that both in reading a well-told story and in building one from my imagination the scenes are as real as if I were watching them thrown on the screen. I am oblivious to all else, but detached, take no part myself. But I possess the faculty of making the scenes reproduce themselves as often as I wish—in my own stories—or of changing them and making the characters act as I want them to.

I really "see things" with my eyes shut—or open, for that matter—perfect in every detail, see the flame of fire or the smoke from firearms, but my only sensation is that of the onlooker, although I get quite excited.

Never studied geometry.

The concept sets me to reproducing.

No stock pictures; all different.

Only as I have noted. I can make my own characters do as I wish.

Just starting to use these "tools of my trade."

Ben Ames Williams: Reading usually awakens in me only an appreciation of the author's ability—or a criticism of his lack of it. I get more pleasure out of discovering how an author has done this or that than in reading his story as a story. An example within the past fortnight, in Tolstoi's War and Peace. He describes a banquet and gives a paragraph to the state of mind of a German tutor who had not appeared previously and does not appear thereafter. After you have read the dozen lines you know the tutor. That passage gave me more pleasure than anything in the book. In like fashion, the bit of paper fluttering to the floor when they opened the long-closed bungalow in Conrad's Victory; the derby hat rolling on its crown after the murder in his Secret Agent. These things delight me. Rarely any emotional reaction. An exception; in Saint Teresa, when the lady tried to rip off the gentleman's lip I had a moment of actual physical nausea.

These statements apply only to my reading to myself; if I read aloud, I laugh, cry, tremble, shudder or adore as the author intended.

Honore Willsie: A whole lot depends on who wrote the story. Robert Louis Stevenson stimulates my imagination to such a degree that as regards one of his tales I can answer yes to this group of questions. Joseph Conrad, ditto. Lesser writers in less degree.

Yes, I see things with my eyes shut in vivid detail and in full color.

Solid geometry was my favorite form of mathematics and I did well in it.

All depends on the skill of the author in choice of words.

As a reader I have no stock pictures.

I read Lorna Doone and If Winter Comes with equal pleasure. One paints, the other suggests, pictures. But both are presented by masters.

Much less concentrated effort of imagination in reading than in writing.

No.

H. C. Witwer: In reading a story my imagination does reproduce the story-world of the author, or else I can not finish his yarn. I see his characters, the action and setting, as well as if I were there. Usually when I get real interested in a story—and I generally do—I find my mind wandering between the lines and wondering what the author is going to do with his characters. What will his climax be? If he fools me without stretching the long arm of Mr. Coincidence too far, or without a grotesque improbability, I am that author's greatest fan and will read him assiduously, thinking, "Ah, if I could write like that!" Mere trick endings or endings that I have grasped on page two of the story arouse my honest indignation. In a well-written yarn all my senses will react to those described. I have been drenched with spray by Conrad; starved, fought and shed blood with Couzens, Young and, most of all the latter, Arthur O. Friel. I would offer one of his South American jungle tales as a typical story to which all my senses reacted. I would say the "pictures I see with my eyes shut" are colored approximately to the scene and rather clear-cut than blurred.

I never studied solid geometry—at the time I might or should have been, I was studying left hooks and straight rights!

On some things my response is limited to the degree in which the author describes them. On others the mere concept will set me to reproduce just as vividly. In this class I would put mention of the sea, jungle, a prize-fight, Indian warfare, gambling, Chinese settings, and other things that have a strong appeal to my imagination. In the first class I would put things that have no appeal to me and with which I have had no acquaintance. I'm afraid, as a reader, I do have "stock pictures" for village churches, cowboys and other things with which I'm not familiar. (No reflection on the village church—or the cowboy either, for that matter.)

As a reader I do resent too many images, too much description, particularly the latter. A paragraph by a good author is more stimulating to the imagination, more interesting and less of a "drag" on the action of the story, than pages by others. I loathe this sort of thing: "He sat down at his frugal meal of fried eggs, hash browned potatoes, wheat bread, coffee, condensed milk, creamery butter and salt and pepper. The potatoes were a bit crisp. The eggs, turned over once, etc." And I don't care who writes it. It has always irritated me and always will!

There is a great deal of difference in the behavior of my imagination when reading stories and when writing them. When reading, my imagination is joy-riding, when writing it has entered an endurance contest.

I have never considered these matters as tools of my trade, but I do not doubt that they are.

William Almon Wolff: I'm afraid I don't react that way at all—or to a very limited extent. It seems to be my mind that's active, when I read. I'm much more sensitive to music than to words, so poetry and such prose as Conrad's move me. But, even so, it's what I read, rather than what moved the writer, that engages me. In other words, I'm more interested in the writer's emotions and reactions than in what stimulated them.

My imagination isn't a visual one. I don't see things with my eyes shut at all, so far as I know.

No. I was a frightful dub at mathematics, but I didn't begin to take even the foggiest interest in them until I got into trigonometry and solid geometry.

Decidedly it's the concept that I want.

Individual visions, every time.

I prefer, on the whole, to fill out details for myself.

That depends. If I'm satisfied, I surrender to the author. If I'm not, I start writing the story as I would have done it myself.

The answer to the last paragraph of this question is that I really don't know. I think the answer is no, though.

Edgar Young: I am unable to put myself in the mood of a casual reader, but watch closely how another man works, although a real artist can make me forget my critical attitude and sway me so that I feel the emotions he expresses. When I am really interested I am unable to say which of the five senses is most affected. A reaction from another writer is not a normal reaction.

Can easily call up mental pictures of places I have seen with most of the main and many of the smaller details distinct.

Solid geometry never bothered me much. I ate it alive.

My responses are mainly governed by verisimilitude. I have been so many places that when a place is out of gear with the real place, a character not a character of the place he is supposed to be—just a few paragraphs and I am in the "where in hell do you get that stuff" mood and end up by roundly swearing at the poor fellow who wrote the story. Imagine a rubber worker in Brazil using the words of Handsome Harry of Old Diamond Dick fame (actual words), a Mexican using Barcelona Spanish, a Peruvian speaking of things by Mexican names, a Central American reckoning in old Spanish coins, a Brazilian speaking Spanish and local Rio de Janeiro all balled up. How would you like to read one about some place you knew intimately and find it all mixed up?

Summary

All or part of the III questions were answered by 113 writers. Question 1. Each of the five senses and pain are tabulated separately. Questions 2 and 3, dealing with visual imagination, are included under "sight."

1. Sight. Of 111 answering, 73 can see without using their physical eyes, 19 have this ability to some degree and 4 generally have it—95 in all. Only 6 lack this power entirely; 5 generally—11 in all. Two can not tell and 2 are not easily tabulated on this point.

Out of the 96 with at least some visual imagination 68 answer specifically as to whether their mental pictures are in colors—45 fully; 8 somewhat; 4 a little; 10 no; 1 untabulated.

As to distinct detail 57 answer—38 yes; 11 some; 5 a little; 3 no.

Analysis of the actual answers on the above will show that "yes" often means "some," though it is tabulated at its face value. It is to be regretted that specific data were not asked for on visualization of motion and on comparative ability to visualize characters and setting.

Geometry. 61 answered as having had solid geometry. Found it more difficult than other mathematics, 12; the same, 16; easier, 32; one, who found it more difficult but attributed the fact to a bad start, is not tabulated. In support of the theory that it would be more difficult for those lacking visual imagination and easier for those possessing this ability, 34, to which should probably be added at least some of the 16 who found it the same; in contradiction of the theory, 9—2 who can not visualize found it easier and 7 who could visualize found it more difficult. In all cases other factors must have had bearing; on the whole, the theory seems sufficiently established.

Two people I know, both high-school valedictorians and both unable to visualize at all, were entirely helpless over solid geometry until they solved the difficulty by cutting up raw potatoes to represent the problem.

Hearing. 57 answers. The remaining 56 can probably be counted as lacking auditory imagination. Of the 57 there are 31 answering yes; 14 somewhat or a little; 10 no; 2 untabulated. We may say that 45 out of 113 possess the ability to at least some degree, while 68 lack it entirely. In two cases the imagination in this sense is more vivid than in any of the others; in three cases less vivid than in any of the others. Curiously enough, one has the ability for music but for no other sounds—perhaps as a result of systematic training and development in music.

Taste. 57 answers. Yes, 23; somewhat, 10; no, 19; untabulated, 5. Out of 113, 33 claim this ability, while 80 lack it. With one this imagination sense is more acute than any of the others except sight; in another case, very acute.

Smell. 58 answers. Yes, 29; somewhat, 11; no, 16; untabulated, 2. Out of 112, 40 possess it to at least some degree, while 72 are without it. In two cases it is the most vivid of the senses; in two cases it ranks next to sight and taste.

Touch. 43 answers. Yes, 13; somewhat, 12; no, 14; untabulated, 4. Out of 113, 25 possess and 88 lack it. In one case it is the only sense reproducing through the imagination.

Pain. 35 answers. Yes, 8; somewhat, 6; no, 20; untabulated, 1. Out of 113, 14 claim it and 99 do not.

All the Senses. As to their relative commonness, the five senses and pain rank as follows:

Sight—73 yes; 23 somewhat; 96 total.

Hearing—31 yes; 14 somewhat; 45 total.

Smell—29 yes; 11 somewhat; 40 total.

Taste—23 yes; 10 somewhat; 33 total.

Touch—13 yes; 12 somewhat; 25 total.

Pain—8 yes; 6 somewhat; 14 total.

I believe that if the answerers were to subject themselves to a more rigid analysis, the number of those answering "yes" and "some" would in each of the six cases be very materially reduced, but the relative frequency of the six cases as shown above would seem fairly dependable, except that the temptation to "yes" or "some" in the case of sight is probably stronger than in the other cases.

4. Response limited by author. 95 answers. Tabulation is complicated and difficult. Of these 95, 81 can visualize, 14 not, and since the two preceding questions, and most of the one before that, centered on visualization, the sense of sight is probably to be considered the chief criterion in the present test. Naturally the possession or lack of visualization determines the real value of an answer here. In the following, those possessing only slight power of visualization are included under "can't visualize."

If you attempt tabulation you will find that an answer sometimes has to be recorded under several heads two of which, when considered in some aspects, give contradictory evidence, so that your total of answers does not always divide, on some points, into parts whose sum equals the whole.

Imagination response limited by an author's description, 28; somewhat limited, 10; by certain authors only, 2. Total, 40.

Along with these consider 15 who are limited by the general skill of an author, description not specified and sometimes indicated as a minor consideration.

Not limited by author's description, 42. Of these, 39 can visualize, 3 not. Of the 39, 34 state their ability to go beyond the author's description, filling in and coloring for themselves. Of the 3 who can't visualize, 2 definitely state inability to go beyond the printed description.

Of the 81 (out of the total 95) who can visualize, 61 go or can go in their imagination beyond the author's printed words; 19 can not; 1 doesn't know. These 61, roughly speaking, prefer an approximation of mere suggestion or concept rather than full description.

Getting at this last point from another angle, 8 who visualize state definite objection to full description; 17 visualizers and 4 non-visualizers resent "too much"; 12 visualizers and 3 non-visualizers state preference for suggestion only. Total against description, 44, 21 of them merely objecting to "too much"—an amount difficult to define.

There are 9 visualizers and 1 non-visualizer who do not resent description. These, with 1 visualizer and 1 non-visualizer satisfied with either method, make 12 neutrals.

On the other hand, 4 visualizers want full description and 2 resent mere suggestion. Total, 6.

Definitely against description, 23.

Against "too much," 21.

Neutral, 12.

For full description, 6.

Only a questionnaire carried into minute detail and answered by large numbers could warrant, in a subject of so many factors, any nicety of conclusion and, also, it is not to be forgotten that the answerers are not mere readers but readers who are also writers. On the other hand, they are in these matters trained and sensitive observers. In any case we are fairly safe in concluding that there exists in readers a tendency to dislike too full description as found in the fiction of to-day. Probably a prime cause of the dislike, in the case of visualizers, the majority, is the violence done to the reader's own instantaneous imagery by the almost necessarily different imagery the author's full description forces upon him, while to non-visualizers the author's imagery is not a picture at all. This violence to the visualizer is akin to that often furnished by an artist's illustrations of fiction.

An extraneous element demands consideration here. Fiction, largely because of its imitative tradition, does not develop so fast as the world it lives in. There is warrant for holding the classics as models, but only those elements of them that are universal in their appeal, that are good for all time. The mistake lies in swallowing them whole, or in admitting to their ranks fiction keyed too markedly to its own time alone. In particular, fullness of description is characteristic of certain past times whose fiction is often cited as a model. But meanwhile the world itself has ceased to travel in stage-coaches or on horseback and has taken to railroads and motors. Certainly ours is not so leisurely an age. Telephone, telegraph, steam, electricity, gasoline have geared our generation to a far faster speed. We lack our forefathers' happy patience over long descriptions. Try your boy on the stories you liked at his age. And do not forget the tremendous influence of the motion pictures for speed of narrative and quick description.

But, whatever the element of time, human beings remain human beings and when you paint a word-picture satisfying only your own desire of imagery you will not only surely fail to please all, but your imagery may be such that only a small minority find in it any satisfaction. You can not chart the world of readers as to the exact proportions of its imaginative responses to sense appeals, but your technique is either shaky or happily haphazard if you have no general idea of relative imagination responses and of your own responses in relation to those of the majority.

5. Stock pictures. None of the 86 answering confess to them as habitual, though 23 have them to some degree or in certain circumstances. If the author fails to stimulate to special images, 8 resort to them.

6. Imagination when reading vs. when writing. Of 85 answering, 19 note no difference, 2 don't know, 1 is untabulated, while 63 note a difference. In most cases, however, the difference is only that the imagination is more active, vivid, concentrated, etc., though there are some notable exceptions. From the answers to this experimental question I am unable to draw any conclusions that seem worth consideration.

7. The above as "tools of your trade." Out of 73, 31 answer yes, 4 somewhat, 33 no, 2 doubtful, 2 find the question too complicated, 1 uses no tools at all. Of the 34 answering yes in any degree, some have stated in answer to another question that they do not consider the reader at all when writing and only a few of these make an exception of the work preliminary to the actual writing or of revision. These must therefore obviously be counted out under one question or the other, probably here, leaving a considerably reduced number with a claim to conscious attention in their work to the imagination differences of readers.

The questions on imagination were answered in whole or part by 113, this particular question by 73. General knowledge of human nature would seem to give fairly good ground for concluding that most of the 40 not answering as to tools would have answered "no" if at all. In any case there are only a small number of the 113 whom we are warranted in listing under "yes." Of these few there were still fewer whose answers on the imagination questions as a whole left me unconvinced that their "yes" was to the real question at issue, though in their work they may well consider the necessity of appealing to all five senses. Even the remaining few give no single scrap of definitely conclusive proof that their "yes" means a weighing on their part of imagination differences among readers, but proof that they do not is equally lacking, with one probable exception.

Allowing for failures to tabulate properly in all cases, it is shown that only a small minority of these writers allow for the varying imagination powers of their readers or for their own imagination equations in relation to those of the majority. Is it not mere common sense to say that an understanding of these differences and relations should be assimilated into an author's unconscious technique or, failing that, be applied consciously in revision? It is all very well to say an author should just be himself and think not at all of those to whom he expresses himself, but as an artist it should be part of his art to see to it that his "himself" is in communication with those to whom he is trying to communicate, whether through his "other self" as their representative or directly. It is not art to talk to a deaf man or to persist in showing pictures to a blind man. Nor would it seem unassailably intelligent to talk in French to people who understand only Italian. Of what good is imagery if it can not be seen? What point in trying to interest picture-lovers or sound-lovers by refusing to give them pictures or sounds?

Mention may be made of a few of the many stray points of interest made here and there in the answers.

Heat and cold were not included in the question, but fortunately crop out in some of the answers.

It might be possible to divide authors into two classes—intellectual and sensory. The former, unless they sacrificed individuality, would have comparatively little need of sensory appeal, their natural audience being beyond its reach. The latter class, however, would have acute need of every device for developing and furthering sensory appeal.

Frequently the dependence of imagery upon actual personal experience is emphasized in the answers. Since imagination is incapable of constructing anything whatever except from elements familiar through experience, there is opportunity for a preachment on the value of getting as much personal experience of one's material as possible before attempting to mold it into fiction.

I can not resist pointing out that at least one writer who demands much description in what he reads gives almost none in what he writes.

One writer gives us a definite method for developing sight imagination. If others can also obtain results from it, the value of the suggestion is tremendous, and it opens the way into a comparatively unexplored field of immense possibilities. There is involved a study of the relation between keenness of sensory imagination and keenness of the corresponding senses themselves. Also the variation of both actual and imagination senses in correspondence to variation in physical or general nervous condition. Also, note that one answerer has observed a marked weakening of sight imagination after the age of forty, an age at which eyesight is likely to weaken markedly, while another says the ability to visualize through the imagination has been almost lost since adolescence.

At least two writers, one of them a friend, and I myself have laid aside glasses after years of use by following the directions of an oculist whose method of cure for most eye troubles is based largely upon direct practise with visual imagination. By developing and strengthening that, improvement is brought about in physical eyesight. It is the reverse of the method used by Mr. Scott for developing visual imagination and serves to illustrate the intimate connection between the senses and imagination.

The connection between visual imagination and actual eyesight is comparatively unexplored territory, as is the similar connection in the four other senses. To what degree is a writer's power of imagery, of sense stimulation in general, dependent on his own powers of imagination? To what extent is his imagination sense-power related to his physical sense-power? Can the one be developed through the other?

QUESTION IV

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

"Thinking of the reader" is a phrase subject to many interpretations and there is no doubt that the answers to the question containing it are not based upon a common understanding of its exact meaning. To have given it, in the questionnaire, any definite one of its several interpretations would have limited the answers in scope and robbed them of much of the valuable suggestiveness and information they contain. And by this more comprehensive approach we shall come to a clearer understanding of that vague thing called "technique."

Perhaps the interpretation most commonly made was: "Have you cheapened your work by allowing a consideration of popularity to set aside what you knew your art demanded?" If we take the more usual phrase, "Do you write down to your readers?" or, "Do you write for money or for art?" the reaction, in perhaps most cases, to this interpretation of the question would be, "No, I do not consider the reader when writing," and many of the negative answers given are undoubtedly the expressions of this natural reaction, given without further analysis.

On the other hand some writers do write for money, primarily for money, and quite honestly say so.

With a discretion born of experience I promptly avoid any opinion on the broad subject of whether what they write is therefore a calamity to Art, and retire hurriedly on the fact that said writers do do it. As a class, their reply to Question IV is more likely to be a Yes than a No.

But remember that so far as we are here concerned with them, both those writers who do and who do not write primarily for money, all write for publication involving at least the expectation of money. That is no reason for a cry of hypocrisy against those who claim not to write for money; there is an entirely justifiable line between writing primarily for money and writing one's best and then getting what one can for that best. In the case, also, of those who admit writing primarily for money, a similar distinction can be drawn; in the long run there is no surer way of making money than by doing one's best and plenty of writers recognize this fact. There are also those, dependent on their pens for daily living, who make a deliberate but temporary business of quantity and popularity as the only possible way to reach a position where they can write without regard for these factors. Some of our acknowledged best reached their goal by this path and would answer our question Yes or No according to the time of its asking.

There are those, too, who write primarily for fame, or for mere popularity, and to whom money may be an entirely negligible consideration. These, writing for a consideration other than art itself, may be, for all purposes of this book, classified along with those who write for money. And there are those who write for no consideration except self-expression or the "joy of the working," acknowledging no object except art alone.

The fact remains that all of our answerers alike are having their work published, whatever motives may be involved. Before they put a word on paper they know the story is meant for publication. They know it from the first inkling of the idea that is to give it birth. They know that it will fail of publication unless in creating it they make it such that readers (editors) will be not only reached by its expression but favorably reached and that publication chances for later stories will be endangered or impaired if in the present one their expression fails to reach favorably the general reading public. Some of them are dependent on publication success for their living; some are not; some are more interested in the creating than in its results; some are not. But all of them alike do publish. In saying that they never think of the reader, then, some of them must mean only that they do not think of him during the actual process of putting the story together on paper.

Otherwise they must maintain that when weighing the value of an idea or a bit of material for use in fiction they never consider whether that idea or material would be liked by the reading public or whether it might be of such nature that no magazine would publish it. If they do so maintain, either they should be able to support their claim, at least in part, by having for exhibit a very goodly number of unsalable stories that in their judgment are fully as good as the published ones, or else they must be recognized as individuals whose points of view, reactions and methods happen to be so identical with those of the reading public or of part of it that without thought, guidance or effort their stories invariably find public favor.

There are, beyond doubt, writers who write equally good but unpublishable stories, but I imagine most of them would tell us that said stories are unpublished solely because editors are lacking in discriminating judgment or have prostituted Art to Business, and that few of these writers would claim, however rigidly they had held to Art alone, that they had not written the great majority of these stories with the intention or hope of publication. There are, beyond doubt, also writers who at least approximate in themselves a fortunate reflection of the reading public's likes and dislikes. This identity of point of view and interest is either a happy accident involving no credit to them as craftsmen—it may be even a misfortune from the point of view of art, or else it has been attained unconsciously yet by a very definite pursuit of technique. This last point, however, is best left for discussion until after the answers to Question IV.

But if some of the answers were negative because the answerers were considering only the time of actual drafting, not the preparatory work or even the revision, there are still distinctions that must be applied, still further obstacles to accepting negative answers as final, and these too must be left until the end of the chapter.

If my question had carried with it all these analyses and distinctions there is, I think, little doubt that many who answered "no" would have answered "yes." As one writer puts it, "The distinction between thinking of a story and thinking of a reader is difficult. I suppose my mind is chiefly concerned with making the words express what is real in my imagination—but that implies considering a reader." There is extremely good reason to weigh these various distinctions before reading the answers given and before concluding—or believing these writers conclude—that the reader can or should be excluded from the artist's mind.

Are the answers, then, valueless? So far as the face value of the question is concerned, partly so. But the insight into various actual working methods is extremely valuable, and the answers to that undefined query, not in their mere yes or no but in their fullness and taken as a whole, open an unequaled path to an understanding of the nature, purpose and use of technique, a thing that even the dictionary defines haltingly and that among writers, editors and critics is only a term as vague as it is much used.

Before turning to the answers it must be noted that through a clerical error the words "In revising" appeared in only half the copies of the questionnaire that were sent out.

Answers

Bill Adams: I never think of the reader—not even when the story is in print. If I do, I think it is a remarkably odd world to contain such queer ducks.

Samuel Hopkins Adams: Damn the readers. I'm too busy with the immediate people of my imagination to worry about the dim and distant thousands.

Paul L. Anderson: The story only, when writing; consideration of the reader comes in the preliminary planning.

William Ashley Anderson: I think only of the story without regard to readers, on the assumption that a good story will never fail to find readers.

H. C. Bailey: A distinction between thinking of the story itself and of the reader is to me difficult. I suppose my mind is chiefly concerned to make the words express what is real in my imagination—but that implies considering a reader. Of course it is necessary sometimes in revising to simplify.

Edwin Balmer: On the story. When revising, somewhat on the readers.

Ralph Henry Barbour: In writing, my mind does its own centering, and it centers on the story. The reader gets a mighty small look-in. In revising, the reader is considered. But, as I've already said, I don't revise much.

Frederick Orin Bartlett: I never have my readers in mind either in writing or revising. It is extremely difficult for me to visualize a reader of any sort until the story is actually in print. Then I feel my audience only as individuals write to me or in some other way respond.

Nalbro Bartley: When I write, I think of only the story—never whether anybody is going to read it—or pay for it, for that matter. But when, after it has been cold-in-a-drawer for about a week, I revise, I try to think of the nature of the story which the editor originally ordered—whether or not it hits any forbidden spots and if the average reader is going to respond or not. I think impersonal revision is the most valuable sort.

Konrad Bercovici: I never have the reader in mind when I write. I do not want him to have me in his mind either. It is the story. Nothing else.

Ferdinand Berthoud: I'm afraid that in my amateurish way I center my mind wholly on my story—laugh and cry with my characters. However, now I'm learning and getting a little more experienced I am trying to be less selfish and to think of the readers.

H. H. Birney, Jr.: On the story.

Farnham Bishop: Write for the story, revise for the reader. Except that, whenever explaining anything, I keep trying to be clear enough for the layman, accurate enough for the expert, and interesting enough for both. (Result of ten years lecturing on semi-technical subjects to general audiences.)

Algernon Blackwood: I never give the reader a single thought. To some imaginary reader, sitting at a desk inside my own mind, I tell my story. It is written to express—to relieve—an emotion in my own being. It is never written to please other readers or any imaginable public.

Max Bonter: As closely as I have been able to come to it, I am a dual personality when I write. My imagination invents, but reason checks. Reason seems in my case to represent prospective readers.

Katharine Holland Brown: First, write down all the story before it gets away. With no regard for any reader.

Second, revise, and try to make the story intelligible and to make it march.

F. R. Buckley: I center my mind on the story. I have thought of the readers beforehand, that is, I know what will go and what won't: have generally studied the magazine I'm writing for and got general atmosphere of the stuff it uses; can't get more than that. In this atmosphere I have framed the story as previously detailed. That's all I have to do with the readers.

Prosper Buranelli: I never think of readers—am never too sure I shall have any. You don't think of a third party, whom to convince, when you are working out a proof in geometry.

Thompson Burtis: I center myself on the story. Occasionally the readers enter the picture when I am using technical stuff which I realize I must write down to them.

George M. A. Cain: Am not clear about this. I endeavor to tell the reader enough to guide him to so much of my vision as is vital to the story. I think he seldom escapes my consciousness. I think of him as reading what I tell. If I am writing for public speech, I think of myself as saying the words to an audience imagined before me while I write.

Robert V. Carr: When I want to sell my story, I write with the reader in mind. When I want to enjoy writing, I forget the reader. I am not sufficiently egotistical to want to reform the reader, neither do I desire to uplift him or to change his prejudices and superstitions to fit my mold.

I believe that intelligence decreases with numbers; therefore I am not a democrat. It has been my observation that nothing arouses the hatred of the average man so much as the power to do him good. If one has the power to hurt him, to destroy him, he will erect a statue in honor of the possessor of that power. But if one has the power to do him good, and he lacks that power, he will, sooner or later, fly at the possessor of the power to do good like a mad dog. Pessimistic? It is no more logical to hope for the best than to hope for the worst.

Why should I bounce a stone off the reader's head when all he asks from me is a shot of literary hop to make him forget the next installment on his tin canary, the ever-increasing double chins of his wife, his children who no longer make him feel a glow of pride by their resemblance to him, or his late patriotic debauch from which he is now recovering with a door-mat tongue and a general feeling of seediness? Why should I attempt to make a reader think, when I know so little myself? I should try to amuse him and let it go at that.

George L. Catton: It all depends. Tastes differ. Personally I don't care a penny for "blood and thunder" stories, all action to no end and without a theme or soul. But the vast majority of readers to-day want that kind of story and if an author wants to keep eating he's got to kill his own likes and dislikes for his stomach's sake. I like stories with action of brains, not brawn, but money talks. I have to keep my mind on my readers' likes and dislikes when I'm writing to keep my bread basket from blowing away. Otherwise I'd write what I liked myself, never think about my readers, and do better work—from a literary viewpoint.

Robert W. Chambers: The story only. In revising, the story alone.

Roy P. Churchill: My best stories come when I center on the story, but it is very hard when the readers' so-called limitations are so borne in upon you. For instance, terms and expressions of sailors seem to need some explanation when told to a landsman. Yet, do they? My most enjoyable reading is when the writer fires on regardless and lets you understand or not. Makes you work your own mind just a trifle to "get" what he is driving at.

Carl Clausen: Always on the story.

Courtney Ryley Cooper: Absolutely on the story. In revising, or rather editing, I watch the things that I know a reader will look for. But the story comes first. Because if it isn't a story—there won't be any readers!

Arthur Crabb: I think that when I write I have the story in mind and not the reader. The same is true in revising.

Mary Stewart Cutting: I center my mind on the story itself. I have my reader in mind in so far as I wish to write it clearly; in the vernacular "to get it over."

Elmer Davis: I used to center on the story itself, but they didn't sell. Now I center on the editor at whom I am aiming it. Yes, I know you will say that is all wrong. It is, for Tolstoy, Balzac, etc. But not for the sort of writers who make their living out of checks.

William H. Dean: My God! Never on the reader! That's fatal. If one tries to write to or for an audience, his work is worse than mediocre. I think of my characters and their destinies, think only of them—do my best to interpret, never to invent. If my readers like what I write, they agree with my interpretations. If any beginner should ask me to give him a single rule to observe, I should say, "Always write to interpret; you will go down in defeat if you ever deliberately set about to please any reader."

Harris Dickson: Don't think I ever have the reader in mind, except when in matters of local coloring I must consider viewpoints outside of the South and remember to make myself clear. Frequently I do not employ certain forms of colloquialism because the outside reader may not comprehend—and explanations are generally bad. In public speaking, however, this is different. There you face your audience and get a response. Many times the speaker practically follows his audience, falling into the same vein of thought and traveling along in harmony. Over and over again I felt this on the platform during our wartime publicity campaigns. Again, the speaker may feel a hostility or lack of comprehension in his audience, that he must go further, explain more clearly, hammer in a fact. Or he may feel that his audience has "got" his slightest gesture, that they comprehend fully, and no more is needed.

Captain Dingle: I never think of the reader. I lose myself in the story. I am my characters, in turn, within limits.

Louis Dodge: I think of my story, not of my readers, when I write; however, I try to finish my story—to put on paper what I have in mind, to make things fairly plain.

Phyllis Duganne: I don't think of readers when I'm writing. At least, I suppose I do in a way—I try to make people and things in a story convincing, and as I'm convinced at the start, I must be considering readers. But I don't think of them consciously; it's just the story I'm consciously considering. In revising, I think frequently of editors—after all, they're rather important.

J. Allan Dunn: I do not think I have my readers largely in the forefront of my mind, save as I know they are apt to clamor, through the editor, for the satisfactory ending. Which is one reason why I like to write for ——. There I am practically untrammeled. I am unconscious of an audience and I want to be.

Walter A. Dyer: I become preoccupied, when writing, with the story rather than with my readers, and I am afraid I too often leave the editors entirely out of account. I have, however, in the case of stories for boys, had to keep my audience in mind.

Walter Prichard Eaton: I never have my readers in mind when I write. My one job is to get into words the idea in my head. Alas! before I begin I consider whether it is an idea which will sell. That is because we all feel we have to live. In revising, I try only to make what I have written correspond more closely with the idea I set out to convey—and also, I try, often, to make my sentence rhythms more attractive to the ear.

E. O. Foster: When I write I center my mind on the story itself and I am ashamed to say that I do not have my readers in mind, except as I write I know there are over four million ex-service men in the United States who are probably watching to catch me in an inaccuracy. I also consider that I am writing about the time of the Spanish-American War and that the tactics and military evolution have changed considerably in these years. Fortunately I was also in the World War and know what the changes are.

Arthur O. Friel: The story excludes everything else.

J. U. Giesy: Mainly on the story, the scene and action I wish to paint.

George Gilbert: I think only of the story. After it is written I think of selling it. But although this answer seems to exclude the readers, it puts them first, for I have confidence enough in what I write to make me think that if it is printed readers will like it. If I did not, I would not write anything.

Kenneth Gilbert: When I write, my mind is centered on the story itself, but the reader is not forgotten, merely crowded back a bit.

Holworthy Hall: I never think of the reader at all. In the first place, I think of the story itself—and afterward if I ever consider any one else, it is the editor and not the reader. We are all constantly selling stories to editors, but never to subscribers. It is the editor's job and not mine—to consider what he imagines his subscribers want to read. During the actual writing of a story I think of nothing but the urgency of translating into words the ideas which are in my mind.

Richard Matthews Hallet: When writing I certainly think first of pleasing myself in the effects I fight for; but a habit of stepping out of your own skin and into the skin of a reader should be a healthy one and indeed is three-parts, if not the whole of self-criticism, without a wholesome infusion of which I doubt if much real work gets done. But don't start by trying to please other people. Please yourself first. As Walter Pater says of "that principle axiomatic in literature," that, "to know when one's self is interested, is the first condition of interesting other people." I have gone astray before now by deluding myself into thinking I was interested in a given story simply because I had decided to write it.

William H. Hamby: On the story itself. I never think of the reader unless it is some point that it occurs to me might be misunderstood.

A. Judson Hanna: I seldom thought of the reader, merely writing a story as it came to me, until I began receiving the circulars sent to contributors by ——. When writing now I try to consider the effect of a story on the reader. I always have the editor in mind as I write.

Joseph Mills Hanson: I think of the story; very seldom of the readers of it.

E. E. Harriman: I center my mind on the story—try to make it natural—vivid—strong. The reader may go to Hades for all I care then. All I am thinking of is the responsibility I have to bring this character out unblemished and with the affectionate regard of the public or to save that one alive and in possession of his claim.

Nevil G. Henshaw: In making the first draft I think only of the story. In revising of the reader.

Joseph Hergesheimer: Never the reader!

Robert Hichens: When I am writing, I do not think about readers, only about my subject, my characters and how I am expressing myself.

R. de S. Horn: When I write I consider the story alone, until it is almost finished or rather until the final corrections are ready to be made. Then I consider my readers only so much as to correct with an eye to avoiding technicalities which they might fail to understand. Every story in my opinion has one particular style prescribed by the story itself as visualized by the author. If he allows himself to be swayed by considerations of the people who will read it or the magazines that may buy it, he is playing himself false and I believe the story will show it. The thing to do is to write the story as your consciousness tells you it should be written and then leave it to the literary agent to find the magazine and class of readers that it will best fit. I think the best illustration of this fact is that invariably our best authors' biggest works have come before the magazines have had a chance to subsidize him and buy his output in advance, thereby purchasing the right to "advise" what form his work should take.

Clyde B. Hough: When I write I am not aware of the fact that there are to be readers. A standard is hung up somewhere in the back of my mind as a sort of goal to drive it, but my mind is really concentrated on the characters and their action, particularly their action.

Emerson Hough: I never think of my readers. Poor people!

A. S. M. Hutchinson: Most emphatically no. I never give a thought to the reader. The idea of doing so is extraordinary to me. It is impossible and ridiculous. How can you tell a story if you are thinking about its effect on the people?

Inez Haynes Irwin: I do not think I ever think of my readers at all. In writing I am always thinking of my own impressions of my work. I have to bear in mind certain limitations of subject which publication in magazines involves. That of course is another story. Revising is a work I revel in—and I think only of my own pleasure.

Will Irwin: In writing the story I have only the story in mind. In revising, I think of the reader. For by now I have the succession of events and pictures so clearly established in my imagination that I am likely to take too many things for granted.

Charles Tenney Jackson: The story alone. I have never given the reader much thought. Now and then I wonder what the devil's the matter with an editor!

Frederick J. Jackson: In writing I center my mind on the story itself; the same fellow who takes the hindmost can take the readers. If my story can interest a critical reader like myself, it's a cinch it will interest others. I have a large number of partly completed stories. They were never finished because they did not interest me. If they have failed in this initial test they are too dead to have much chance with others.

Mary Johnston: The story. In revising, the same.

John Joseph: I am quite sure that I never write a paragraph without pausing to consider the reader's probable reaction to it. Lately I have been learning to keep one eye on the editor too.

Lloyd Kohler: I think that as a rule I constantly keep my readers in mind while writing a story. At any rate, the stories which I have really wanted to write I have never written—because I know it would be dangerous to try to "get them over."

Harold Lamb: Think only of story.

Sinclair Lewis: Both, inextricably mixed.

Hapsburg Liebe: I don't have anything in mind but the story itself when writing a story.

Romaine H. Lowdermilk: I center on the story alone in the first draft. Thereafter I keep the reader in mind as I revise. Especially do I try to make each sentence and paragraph clear. I try to be merciful as well as lucid and say what I have to say as clearly and as entertainingly as I can without artificial means of tricking for interest. Though I do resort to sustained suspense in the body of the tale as well as bring in obstacles and the like much as we encounter them every day in our efforts.

Eugene P. Lyle, Jr.: I'm afraid my mind is centered mostly on the story itself and I'm not thinking of the reader. Get a good story clearly told and you needn't bother about the reader; he'll do the reading all right.

Rose Macaulay: Both.

Crittenden Marriott: On the story. I write a lot to "get it off my chest."

Homer I. McEldowney: When I write I center my mind rather intently on the story itself, with my reader, however, parked on the side-lines. I don't forget that he is there. I believe that I am coming to give him a thought more often as I write more. Undoubtedly I take him into greater consideration in my revision of detail, reference and diction than I did at first.

Ray McGillivray: I do all my deciding in regard to market, and all the work of reconciling recalcitrant characters to the dictates of good taste (as best I can guess both) before a word is written. Never was there a fiction horse which ran well with either of these check-reins on his neck.

Helen Topping Miller: When I write I do not consider my reader at all. I am concerned with my characters; I live, move, think and feel with them. Even in revising I do not think of my reader. I work hard for a true picture, and usually I find the reader gets it, if I have felt it strongly enough.

Thomas Samson Miller: Center the mind on the story, of course; but never let the reader—and editor—out of sight. Keep in mind certain peculiarities of editors, taboos of magazines, and, above all, take care to avoid offending popular tastes and prejudices, and keep in mind the average stupidity and that average human beings are non-visual and non-imaginative. At least I do so when writing with dollars in view. Sometimes—quite often, in fact—I indulge in truth and in beauty—in art, that is to say.

Anne Shannon Monroe: I never think of my readers: when I write I am galloping ahead on a lively good time of my own: and when it is all finished, I hope it will mean a good time to some one else—but I am not particular about that.

L. M. Montgomery: In writing a story I do not think of all these things—at least consciously. I never think of my readers at all. I think of myself. Does this story I am writing interest me as I write it—does it satisfy me? If so, there are enough people in the world who like what I like to find it interesting and satisfying too. As for the others, I couldn't please them anyhow, so it is of no use to try. I revise to satisfy myself also—not any imaginary literary critic.

Frederick Moore: When I write I center my mind on the story—I live it and sleep it until it is done. It exists wholly, just as much as the Grand Central Station exists. It has to. I do not think of the reader then, with the exception of what result I want to get with every word, every phrase, every sentence. But when I see it in type, then I think actually of the reader—and shiver.

Talbot Mundy: The story. Hardly ever conscious of the reader.

Kathleen Norris: In both writing and revising I never have anything in mind but the story itself, and the struggle to preserve consistency and verisimilitude.

Anne O'Hagan: My mind centers upon the story and I forget about the readers until the story begins to come back from the editors.

Grant Overton: I do not think I ever think of my readers when actually writing. Afterward in reading it over I may think of them. I do not think of them very much anyway. I think of how I like it myself.

Sir Gilbert Parker: On the story itself always, never on the reader.

Hugh Pendexter: I never have the reader in mind while writing a story. The story is as real as any news assignment I covered when a newswriter.

Clay Perry: I believe the "readers" are absent when I write, unless a dim nebulous sort of personality in the back of my head which might be called "One," and represent my idea of the composite taste and judgment of an average, well-educated person, could be called "Mr. Average Reader" (or perhaps a little above the average). If a story is worth writing, it seems to me, it must absorb the writer, he must live in it, become familiar with his characters.

Michael J. Phillips: I think the reader is pretty constantly at the back of my mind. He is always, though sometimes unconsciously, being taken into consideration.

Walter B. Pitkin: When I write my first draft, I think only of the story I am telling. When I go to the second draft I tend to think of both editor and reader. This is only roughly and broadly true.

E. S. Pladwell: My mind is centered on the story itself. If the story is good the reader will read. I wish to cater to the reader's taste only in a general way; that is, I know that all the mainsprings of human life and drama are the same to reader and writer alike, and therefore a story which appeals to the humanity of a writer must automatically appeal to the humanity of a reader, in a general way, always provided that the other elements of a good story are present, such as plot, technique, etc.

Lucia Mead Priest: I seem to have about all I can do to keep my story folk where they belong. It is perhaps unfortunate, but "readers" are a negligible quantity—seldom in the count.

Eugene Manlove Rhodes: Center on the story itself. Think of readers when revising.

Frank C. Robertson: My mind is always centered upon the story I am writing, except where some question of probability or plausibility arises. Right there I stop and work it out from an imaginary reader's viewpoint. Of course, in rewriting I have the reader constantly in mind.

Ruth Sawyer: On the story itself.

Chester L. Saxby: I do not have the reader in mind. I write stories that nobody wants because they don't come out pleasantly, or for some other reason. That's because anything worth writing gets a hold on me as a subject for thought and I want to express it for my own satisfaction.

Barry Scobee: On the story. Never think of the reader, unless now and then in difficult passages I wonder if the reader will grasp the meaning.

R. T. M. Scott: I have my readers always in the back of my mind, but just sufficiently to keep away from things like the war which editors are fed up on. (Perhaps the editors and not the readers are in the back of my mind.) Otherwise I forget the world or all of it which lies beyond the story.

Robert Simpson: I center my mind on the story only. Subconsciously, I suppose, my future audience is being considered while I labor strenuously over revision.

Arthur D. Howden Smith: Try to think only of the story.

Norman Springer: My tendency is, of course, to think only of the story while writing it. This query uncovers a curious thing. Now, when I write a story, I have a tendency to ramble. The trouble usually is that I am too much interested in my character. I like to investigate his feelings and thoughts at much too great length.

Well, I have developed a critic in the mind who works while I write. It is as though some faculty were standing quite aloof from me and the story, watching. When I wander into by-paths it checks me. Sometimes it doesn't, and I get into a mess. It is a faculty that is constantly getting stronger, and, like the fond mother, I have great hopes of it.

I've talked this thing over with other fiction writers and I find it's a rather common experience. Several of them told me that throughout their careers as writers they have been conscious of this slowly developing faculty for self-criticism while at work.

Julian Street: I don't have my readers in mind at all until after the story is done—save that I always try to make things clear to a vague some one to whom I am telling my story. But in writing the story—the people in the story—are everything. I don't think of editors, either. I write to the severest critic I have inside me.

T. S. Stribling: A "reader" never enters my mind. I never give a hang whether anybody reads it or not, or what they think about it so long as I can get past the editor and get a check. I want the check because I can't live in idleness without it.

Booth Tarkington: I don't have readers in mind—only myself as a reader.

W. C. Tuttle: I suppose that a writer should consider the reader, but I have never done so; it has always been a case of story first; feeling that, if the story is good, the reader gets the real consideration.

Lucille Van Slyke: Your question hits upon the greatest snag in my attempt to write. I find it bothers me excessively to have to keep any reader in mind; it's a mental hazard to me to think of anybody that I know personally reading what I am writing—a perfectly childish stage fright. (I qualify this—I dearly love writing a story for a child.) I am scared to submit a story to an editor after I have met him—don't mind at all having it slammed at fifty editors I have never met. Realize it's foolish and feminine and illogical, but it's so. But I do try to visualize a sort of composite reader when I am revising. Example—just now I am doing a year's ghastly potboiling—a thousand words a day six days a week for a newspaper syndicate. Each day is a separate short story, all hinge together—climax each sixth—larger climax each month with a bang at the end of six months. This is the most disagreeable writing task that I have ever tackled. It's plain deadly. But I never sit down to it that I do not lay aside my usual writing method. Remind myself of this: Whoever reads what I am writing now is a person in a hurry. I will have the attention at the most for not more than two minutes. Scattered or tired attention. I must literally jab. Short sentences, short paragraphs. Few adjectives and always the same ones when I mention a character already mentioned, so that I can save my regular reader's time. And I must write very carefully with extra clearness. This rubberstamping must be neatly done. Nobody has issued such orders to me but myself and I may be wrong, all wrong! But if I could visualize my magazine reader or book reader as clearly, I dare say it would be a very good thing for me as a writer. Only, I forget the reader entirely when I'm working on the thing that really interests me.

Atreus von Schrader: When I write I do not have my readers in mind. But I have considered them carefully beforehand ... also the editor to whom I hope to sell the piece.

T. Von Ziekursch: When I write the reader is an outsider and never has a chance. It is one of my biggest hopes to bring some fun and joy, some touches of life, some deeper thoughts to any who may read my stories; but I certainly never have and probably never shall give these possible readers a thought. I would write if I never sold a word of it. I wanted to for years when I never had an outside opportunity to get within gunshot of a paper and pencil; I could pour out a lot of those yearnings right here, but what's the use? Now I am in a place where I can write, I am fairly young and, believe me, I'm going to it with both spurs working hard. My mind is unequivocally centered on what I want to write. I hope to find markets for it and readers who'll like it, but I'd write it just the same if I didn't.

Henry Kitchell Webster: This question is answered, better than I can answer it here, in my contribution to The New Republic Symposium on the Novel, entitled, "A Brace of Definitions and a Short Code."

G. A. Wells: I consider nothing but the story. It is there to be told and I try to tell it to the best of my rather poor ability. The reader for me does not exist. It doesn't make any difference whether anybody reads it, other than a continual complaint of unworthiness of my stories would soon put me persona non grata with publishers.

William Wells: Center too much on the story. Am breaking myself of that bad habit.

Ben Ames Williams: When I write, my mind is on the job of writing. I never consciously consider either reader or editor. I try to tell the story in an appealing way. But if you ask me who I am trying to appeal to, I can't answer you!

Honore Willsie: In writing or revising I never think of the reader.

H. C. Witwer: In writing, I have nothing in mind but the story. A wandering mind is fatal to good work. I think of the readers when I see my yarn printed and—when I get the mail.

William Almon Wolff: On the story, emphatically and always. I take the reader into account, in revision, to this extent: My final revision follows a reading by a friend. I'm interested in whether he likes the story, but only academically—I can't do anything about that. But I want to know whether everything is clear. I will take infinite pains in revision if a comment indicates that I haven't explained something fully; if my meaning has eluded this reader. On that point I'm always wrong and my reader is always right—the fact that I can explain the confusion doesn't count. You can't follow your story, explaining every point readers don't understand.