ill. The beginner's own intelligence must choose for him among all these

offerings of advice the ones best adapted to his own particular case. Taken as a whole, the advice given is invaluable--stimulative and soundly helpful. But the test of its value to any writer must lie in his own discriminating judgment based on a sure knowledge of his own gifts, weaknesses and habits.

Since it is brought out so forcefully in one of the answers and forcefully enough in so many others, one point deserves notice. An answerer gives, as his advice to experienced writers, "For God's sake don't talk so _much_!" It may sound flippant. It may sound presumptuous, since to some experienced writers this man may be unknown. Almost certainly it will not be taken seriously by those who most need to heed the advice. Knowing the man, I know it is not flippant; knowing his work, I know it is not presumptuous, for he has gifts of expression that most of our best known writers can never attain. There can be no doubt of the soundness of his advice or of the need of it. That it should be given so many times in these answers is particularly significant.

There is frequent discussion of the difference between literature and "magazine fiction" including what is found between book-covers. It is a hardy analyst who would attempt drawing a definite and final line of demarkation between the two, but one easy distinction may be made. Literature expresses what needs to be expressed; the greater part of our magazine fiction expresses too largely for the sake of hearing itself talk prettily and a great deal, or because its authors have found they can get money and popularity and standing from a gift of cultured, or mere taking, gab. This is perhaps even more true of established authors--yea, even some of our most famous--than it is of our beginners.

I do not mean that all of them analyze the situation and follow the method as conscious policy. It would be more hopeful if this were the case. The bulk of them are proudly content under the amazing delusion that what they write has literary quality. It hasn't. The best that can be said of it is that it is fool's gold, for it glitters exceedingly despite its lack of worth. It is, for the most part, words only. Generally beautiful words or amusing words or very scholarly words, all skilfully and pleasingly joined together, sprinkled heavily with a cheap cologne giving off a strong smell suggestive of literary quality and interspersed with modest little cries of "Note the genius in this turn of phrase! And, prithee, do not miss the scholarly distortion of this simple sentence or the very literary vagueness in the expression of this elementary and commonplace idea! Behold, too, how the really skilled hand can stretch this infinitesimal atom of material into pages of exquisite and delightful reading! How crudely would one lacking literary gift have set it forth in a few plain words! And, pardon, reader, but you haven't been so dull as to miss noting the heights of sophistication from which your author looks contemptuously down upon the puppets he moves with careless skill upon his board, upon the board and even upon the very moving?"

Or perhaps such cries are omitted and the reader merely confronted with an army of words marching impressively in literary formation without worthwhile distinction, carrying no baggage and with no literary reason for marching at all.

Yes, I'm bitter. And very, very sick at the stomach. For most critics call this procession of words literature, and most of the public meekly accept the dictum. Worse, it becomes a model for other writers. And all the time it builds up the ruinous idea that literature is something apart from life and reality, incompatible with simplicity and naturalness, an inorganic thing of exotic plumage, something not everlastingly dependent upon the anxiously exact adaptation of expression to something worth expressing.

In our answers above I have in more than one place omitted the name of one of the best known American magazines because of unfavorable mention. In one case part of an answer was omitted bodily because its whole point was the advice to practised writers not to read that magazine or the work of a certain well-known writer not included among our answerers. The reasons for that advice were not stated, but that magazine is perhaps the chief exponent of the surface-glitter and infinitely wordy type of story, shaped editorially with no consideration of real literary worth or anything else except large popular sales and adherence to a formal morality rather lacking in ethics. Yet it is a strong factor in providing standards for critics lacking any of their own, in influencing both editors and writers toward similar material and in lowering the tastes and standards of the general reading public.

Unfortunately it is not the only exponent of the over-written story. You find them in most of our best magazines, in the school of realism as well as that of idealism or romanticism. If you doubt, analyze one of them. Remove the word-wrappings and search beneath. You will find, quite often, incident, sometimes a great deal of it; sometimes a real plot, though generally a threadbare and slight one. But in most cases you will find little structure worthy of the name, sometimes because there is nothing much with which to construct and sometimes because if the author had ability for structure he would not prostitute himself on that kind of story. You may find caricature, even characterization done with a clumsy brush in gaudy colors and jutting outline, but no characterization that warrants the story's existence on that score. Color very probably--a whole box of colors melted under a forced draft. Probably so much setting that the photography of it contributes much of the illusion of the story's being literature. Other things, of similar quality and degree. But literature? Not even a chemist's trace.

I am heartily glad some of our answerers turned the light where it is needed. Probably the chief weaknesses in present-day American fiction are three in one:

1. Wordiness

2. Lack of simplicity

3. Surface tinsel

Teachers of fiction might contribute a worthy service by compelling all students to gaze upon, say, the relentless brevity and simplicity of De Maupassant that yet gives more and more subtle shadings, even in translation, than most of the wordy ones can give in five times the space. Or Flaubert's exquisite nicety in word selection, not for the mere sensual sound of the word but for the word's real office in expression.

Perhaps such frank expression may seem out of place in this volume. But being a magazine editor and the compiler of this book does not free me from all other obligations. And there is need of every voice that can be raised in outcry against the tidal wave of words that is drowning so much of American fiction. As to good taste, I am less interested in it than in trying to help against this increasing evil. The advice of our answerer ought to be nailed to the wall above the desk of--what per cent.?--of our established writers: "For God's sake don't talk so _much_!"

QUESTION X

_What is the elemental hold of fiction on the human mind?_

ANSWERS

=Bill Adams=: Life pitched against death; and man the master.

=Samuel Hopkins Adams=:

"The devotion to something afar From the sphere of our sorrow."

=Paul L. Anderson=: The inherent necessity for excitement, which, despite the Puritans and the high-brows, is as much an elemental need as food.

=William Ashley Anderson=: It is a mental stimulant. Like every other stimulant, the doses vary, and it affects various tastes in various ways. It has the power of frightening, amazing, inspiring, amusing, enraging--in fact working upon all the human emotions. It has the power to derange human minds; it has also the power to soothe them. Its appeal rests directly upon the curiosity of man, i. e., the insatiable desire of man to hear something unusual he has not already heard.

=H. C. Bailey=: Tell me a story.

=Ralph Henry Barbour=: The satisfaction of a craving for romance in a civilization that is more and more coming to look on it as sinful.

=Frederick Orin Bartlett=: The desire for emotional reactions greater than those the average life affords.

=Nalbro Bartley=: The opportunity to phantasy in a harmless fashion. The average person occupied with average tasks demands a release from monotony which wholesome fiction supplies. They want to see the commonplace glorified--even if it is between the pages of a book.

=Konrad Bercovici=: The human mind has never held anything else but fiction. It is the only real thing in life. Science is a myth. It has been invented by fiction writers.

=H. H. Birney, Jr.=: Fiction takes the reader out of the drab monotony of life into a new world of color and action and romance. He finds there what Jack London calls his "purple passages." That's why the shop-girl reads _Three Weeks_ and _The Sheik_ which bore most men to tears. Most women cherish, unknowingly perhaps, a suppressed eroticism. Sex-interest and sex-emotions are to her the greatest factors in existence. The average man takes his sex-emotions casually. Woman is essentially monogamous, man polygamous. (Gosh, I didn't mean to get in that deep! My wife would run me ragged if she read it. Sounds like I've been reading friend Freud, doesn't it?)

O. Henry covered the appeal of fiction to the average individual when he described the tired clerk who would remove his shoes, place his aching feet against the cold radiator, and read Clark Russell!

=Farnham Bishop=: Story-hunger, which is as strong as any of the other natural appetites.

=Algernon Blackwood=: I do not know.

=Max Bonter=: Fiction seems to take the reader over the hill--beyond the horizon. The mind takes a voyage into the mysterious, reveling in strange scenes, characters and situations. Then it swings back from exoticism with renewed zest for the commonplace.

Fiction is the "holiday spirit" in literature. It is an orgy in which we spend our emotions. We feel better afterward.

=Katharine Holland Brown=: The fact that we all like to dramatize ourselves,--and the story-writer helps us do it? (This is a question, not a reply.)

=F. R. Buckley=: I do not know. Guess--vicarious adventure.

=Prosper Buranelli=: The Arab spinning tales before a fire, or the drummer telling a nasty story. Shocking the boobs and pleasing the scapegraces with accounts of marvels either small or great, in which the narrator would like to have figured--only he has a broken backbone.

=Thompson Burtis=: The fascination of overcoming, by proxy, through the personalities of hero or heroine, difficulties, dangers and problems, and of temporarily feeling with one's self the greatnesses of the storied person. Particularly in fiction of more adventurous type, I believe John Smith's kick comes from perceiving how much like Daring Dave Devere he really is.

=George M. A. Cain=: I believe it is love of the more intense emotional states. Fiction provides these by proxy for those whom circumstances or indolence prevents from actual experience in sufficient frequency. Others seek in artificial stimulants the heightening of emotions not normally excited by circumstance itself. A few go after the actual experiences. The trouble with this is the rarity of really thrilling experiences, even for men or women able to spend their lives in hunting for them, and the fact that no experience can hold its grip on the emotions through repetitions. The actually thrilling experiences readiest to hand for everybody are those of animal appetites, and these are the most dangerous. Gambling, a little higher in the quality of its thrills, is hardly to be recommended. Yet a certain amount of excitement is really wholesome, necessary to save the mind from rusting in grooves too well worn to call forth its activities. Personally, I believe that mild alcoholic stimulants have always been a benefit to the race, all their after reactions notwithstanding. But the raising of emotional states through imaginary experiences offers what, in these days, is as readily obtainable stimulant as alcohol has ever been, and one freer from the objections of after reactions and of peril in excess. Hence the value of fiction in inducing exalted moods.

And this leads to my ideas of character drawing. On the assumption that the first appeal of fiction is as an opportunity for proxy experience of emotions, it seems obvious to me that extreme character drawing is generally a mistake. The reader can not imagine himself as a hero whose characteristics are extremely different from his own, as any extreme characteristics will surely be. Even when a character is so well drawn as to arouse strong feeling of liking or dislike, I doubt if the ordinary reader can take the interest in him or his imagined experiences that he will instantly feel in himself as placed in the same series of events. It is certainly difficult to acquaint a reader with any one in the limits of a short story, for whose fate his interest can be aroused to equal his good old love for himself. For this reason I rarely draw a strikingly marked character for the hero of a story.

=Robert V. Carr=: Perhaps a desire to escape the commonplace, or, perhaps, mental laziness and the desire to ride on the imagination of another.

=George L. Catton=: To be amused. Eight-tenths of the population of to-day are too cowardly to think and want nothing but full guts and to be amused. Comedy will sell to-day, and slapstick comedy at that, faster and quicker than anything else. And that rotten sex stuff--who but a moron would read it?

=Robert W. Chambers=: Amusement.

=Roy P. Churchill=: Voyage into new seas. The elemental pull toward new experiences.

=Carl Clausen=: Ask a college professor who teaches fiction writing but does not write himself.

=Courtney Ryley Cooper=: Fiction is the world of our dreams come true. For the clerk in the store, his dream is adventure. For the girl in love, it is the Prince Charming. For the discouraged man, it is the yarn of the fellow who fights past obstacles. We like fiction because in that we see the things we would like to do become realities in the person we easily can imagine ourselves to be. Did you ever see a reader wanting to be the villain of a story? Hardly.

=Arthur Crabb=: Among the upper classes, a means of passing away an otherwise unoccupied hour or two; to the middle and lower classes it is either a stimulant to a poor imagination or takes the place of imagination entirely.

=Mary Stewart Cutting=: It expresses what we would like to express.

=Elmer Davis=: Relief from troubles. This, I think, is as true of realism as of the so-called "literature of escape." Realism at least turns your attention from your own worries to other people's.

=William Harper Dean=: The elemental hold of fiction, if I get your point, is through humanity's inner craving to see itself mirrored, to have its tragedies and triumphs interpreted, so that each of us may say, "Oh, that's me--my life! I have lived that, felt it. I'm glad some one understands."

=Harris Dickson=: Perhaps, that each of us is his brother's keeper and likes to hear what Bud is doing. Some of us love small-town gossip, some crime yarns, some revel in the poetic, the romantic, the imaginative. But from the dawn of time the Teller of Tales has been a force--like the troubadour whose songs were legal tender for his welcome everywhere.

=Captain Dingle=: Wonder, I imagine.

=Louis Dodge=: That it enables an individual to go places and do things (vicariously) and utter sayings which would otherwise be beyond him. A reader is a man with a score of eyes and hands and feet.

=Phyllis Duganne=: Interest, I suppose. The main object of most people's lives is not to be bored--and fiction can help them attain that grand end considerably. And for people whose lives are dull and rather empty, I suppose fiction offers an outlet; the reader can become hero or heroine and do grand and noble things. Just like the movies.

=J. Allan Dunn=: In an attempt to be brief, I think it is a conjuration of what he or she would like to have been if their lots had been cast differently. I think it sometimes stimulates to adventures, to a struggle against the commonplace. That it can undoubtedly mold opinion and create a recognition of the virtues. That it can show--if the fiction is painted with the colors from the palette of Life itself, excellent example. That it is the poor man's purse and the stay-at-home's vicarious romance. It is Aladdin's Lamp--the Magic Carpet.

=Walter A. Dyer=: This is rather too deep for me. Fiction is, in a measure, in its relation to life, what massage is to exercise. Mighty useful sometimes.

=Walter Prichard Eaton=: Say--have a heart! Well, in one word--"Escape."

=E. O. Foster=: To my own mind fiction is as necessary as food to the body. The tired man or woman may throw themselves out of the ordinary routine returning refreshed to take up again the "hum-drum" labors of life.

=Arthur O. Friel=: Entertainment; refreshment by substituting new pictures for those of every-day life.

=J. U. Giesy=: The spirit of play--make-believe--the element of the "might have been"--relaxation, change. The mind reaches out to contact other than routine experience.

=George Gilbert=: Its power to lift the reader out of himself and make him live in another realm.

=Kenneth Gilbert=: A sincere desire to escape if but momentarily from the commonplaces of life. If we have imagination at all we are adventurers; we have a curiosity to see the odd and unusual; to possess a helmet of invisibility and the power of levitation; to have the under-currents of human impulse that we sense yet can not describe run before us as we would have them do.

=Holworthy Hall=: Love--Success--Youth.

=Richard Matthews Hallet=: A good yarn carries you out of yourself. It's a red wishing-carpet, a transporting cloud, nothing more or less. Makes you forget for a time the "everlasting, tormenting" ego.

=William H. Hamby=: Answered in above.

=A. Judson Hanna=: I believe that suspense is the elemental hold in fiction, having in mind the average reader, and the editors' demands. Speaking personally, the elemental hold is character and development. I have a sort of cynical contempt for happy endings because they do not ring true. Events and episodes in real life so rarely end happily, in my experience.

=Joseph Mills Hanson=: The elemental hold of fiction on the human mind I take to be the fascination of uncertainty.

=E. E. Harriman=: To me it seems that it lies in its power to reveal to one the minds of hundreds, to show in brief how other people live and think and act, and to cultivate in the mind of the reader wholesome ambitions.

=Nevil G. Henshaw=: Granting that you read what you like, I should say that it is the enjoyment of imagining some one's doing what you would like to do yourself.

=Joseph Hergesheimer=: The story!

=R. de S. Horn=: The elemental hold of fiction on the human mind is deep-rooted. It began in the make-believe days of childhood; it continues to death. It is hope, it is appreciation; it is akin to invention and progress. Without the imagination--and what is fiction but molded imagination?--life would be a pretty hopeless, sordid existence.

=Clyde B. Hough=: It is exactly in proportion to the humanness of the fiction. Humans are enthralled by fiction because it reproduces thrills, emotions, desires, etc., which they have experienced or can understand and which by the help of their imagination they re-live temporarily without any aftermath disadvantages.

=Emerson Hough=: Maybe bread and butter, and love.

=A. S. M. Hutchinson=: Being "told a story."

=Inez Haynes Irwin=: It offers release and escape from whatever burdens life has brought and it extends experience.

=Will Irwin=: It satisfies the social desire--the human love of knowing and, if possible, of liking, other people. And it gives the illusion of widened experience.

=Charles Tenney Jackson=: The elemental hold of fiction on the human mind appears to be that it is the last adventure, the last romance, the bringing of novelty, of charm, of forgetfulness. Life for men has become so standardized, so propagandized, chucked into routines by civilization, that his primal stirrings--which, primitively, he satisfied by clubbing his dinner out of the jungle or swiping a woman from his neighboring tribe--must now be soothed in reading about it in its modern phases. That's why you sell magazines--sure!

=Frederick J. Jackson=: Principally, I think, the chance it affords a person to get outside of himself, to be for the time being, while he reads, something he is not, something he wants to be, to live vicariously life and action that he has no chance to live in the flesh, but would like to live. Then again, to learn, to laugh--W. C. Tuttle's stuff holds more laughs to the page than that of any other writer, to me, at least. But what's the use? Some analytical guy will answer in a thesis on psychology that will "knock" 'em cold. I can't or won't.

=Mary Johnston=: It is a mode of truth.

=John Joseph=: It is based on the almost universal passion to see the _triumph_ of the _right_. And a story in which everything seems likely to go to pot and then suddenly straightens out _right_ will always hold the reader provided it is plausibly told. Sympathy for the underdog is a phase of this point, too.

Too, every human is more or less of a hero worshiper, and has also a tremendous urge to get into the limelight himself. And if he can't actually get in, the next best thing is to imagine himself there. Hence there is always more or less of a tendency to picture himself as the hero.

This urge for the limelight is a fundamental trait of human nature, and a very necessary one. It is simply a desire to appear well in the sight of his fellowman; and it is really the driving-power behind all human endeavor beyond satisfaction of the purely animal desires. Hence, a story should 'rouse something in the reader that will make him want to get busy and take a hand himself, so to speak. That is my idea of a really good story--one that will hold the reader from start to finish--and no mere mechanical perfection or nicety of literary diction can possibly take the place of it.

I read lots of stories, (they seem to be published literally by the tens of thousands) and after I have finished them I sit and wonder why in Heaven's name they were published. And the only answer I can find is "technique, structure and literary polish." Too _much_ insistence on these points has a tendency not only to handicap the writer, but to standardize style, and I read magazines the subject-matter of which might every word of it have been written by the same author, as far as I could tell.

Curiosity is another powerful element. Perhaps the most potent of all, in a certain sense. A mystery story intrigues all classes of people. Of course it must have the other qualities mentioned, too.

=Harold Lamb=: To be honest, I don't know. A child likes a story because it opens a door that the child can not open of itself. It pleases a child to have imaginary experiences, giving pleasure, the stimulus of danger, and the satisfaction of curiosity.

A grown-up is pretty much the same. Except that a child desires especially to have curiosity satisfied, and a grown-up likes to forget things.

=Sinclair Lewis=: It affords an "escape"--the reader or hearer imagines himself in the tale.

=Eugene P. Lyle, Jr.=: Imagining yourself in the same fix.

=Homer I. McEldowney=: The impulse, weak or dominant, that is in all mankind--to be what he is not, to have what he has not, and to see that which he has not seen. That, I think, is the elemental hold of fiction on the human mind.

=Ray McGillivray=: The hypnotizing grasp it exerts upon imagination--persuading, _compelling_ the reader to project himself, his likes and dislikes, his sympathies and his ambitions into the story he peruses.

=Helen Topping Miller=: The withdrawing of the reader from his own world, transporting him into an imaginary place where he is able to picture things as he wishes them rather than as they are. Every reader has more or less yearning for the dramatic. In reading fiction he sees himself the hero, fights the conflicts and achieves the reward which the author supplies.

=Thomas Samson Miller=: Sentiment, curiosity, heroism.

=Anna Shannon Monroe=: The story hold--the love of a story, whether a crisp anecdote or a novel; the thing that lifts one out of his surroundings into another world for a little while.

=L. M. Montgomery=: The deep desire in every one of us for "something better than we have known." In fiction we ask for things, not as they _are_, but as we feel they _ought_ to be. This is why the oft-sneered-at "happy ending" makes the popular novel. Fairy tales are immortal--in some form or other we _must_ have them or we die. Fiction redresses the balance of existence and gives us what we can't get in real life. This is why "romance" is, and always will be, and always should be more popular than "realism."

=Frederick Moore=: It is in the joy of make-believe. Animals have the same trait in some degree. Also, "Let George do it." That is, let the other fellow get shot while I enjoy the thrill but know all the time that my slippers are on and I'm safe enough.

=Talbot Mundy=: It reveals himself to every reader.

=Kathleen Norris=: Might it be that life disappoints most of us, and we like to lose ourselves in dreams where things come just a little nearer comedy, tragedy, retribution, revenge and achievement?

=Grant Overton=: On the part of the writer, a desire to make some one else feel what he has felt; on the part of the reader, the craving to understand something that one does not fully understand, even though one feels it and has felt it often.

=Hugh Pendexter=: To entertain. Once it captures the reader's interest its power is unlimited. It can teach and preach and direct the trend of national thought provided it continues to entertain. Christ taught His great truths by parables.

=Clay Perry=: Stimulation of the imagination; creation of a fairer, cleaner, or at least a different and more romantic world than that of every day.

=Michael J. Phillips=: Good fiction is a journey, all too brief, into fabled Araby--to lands of sandalwood and frankincense and myrrh and spikenard and all those other wonderful, glowing words of which I don't know the exact meaning but which lift us out of ourselves.

=Lucia Mead Priest=: We know nothing, truly, of mind and heart of even our nearest. The writer plays the part of Omniscience. We like to know how the other fellow feels; we like to see him messing about in situations in which we, too, have been lost--or found.

It is human interest in the virtues and weaknesses of our kind. Fiction is as old as man. Read it on the tomb of Ti or the more-up-to-date "Beowulf."

Is it not curiosity? Perhaps interest in the affairs of the other fellow, for we all love gossip--? Yes, all of us.

=Eugene Manlove Rhodes=: Putting yourself in his place.

=Frank C. Robertson=: It satisfies the longing for change. The body at best is a slow and cumbersome thing, and practically stationary compared to the flights of mind. In fiction we live thousands of lives--without it we live but one.

=Ruth Sawyer=: I should say the same hold that folk tales have had since man developed a mind. The desire for idealizing; the enjoyment of seeing his own human activities re-created for him and the everlasting appeal of adventure. I believe that the adult quite as much as the child reader likes to picture himself as the hero or main actor in the stories. I suppose one could sum this all up in terms of imagination stimuli.

=Chester L. Saxby=: I can't answer this one, unless you mean the selfish desire in each one of us to picture ourselves as heroes--and the thing called sympathy that we can't disown. But perhaps evolution makes us crave these indirect experiences in lieu of direct ones.

=Barry Scobee=: Have ideas but I could hardly express them yet. Might be, "A feller wants company." Might be, it suggests strength, success, victory; contains warning. How's this for a theory? The human mind is eternally seeking harmony. A perfect story, or a well done story, gives a subtle sense of harmony, like music but more subtle. I think the answer goes still deeper, and I shall find it sometime.

=Robert Simpson=: Conflict--the clashing of forces, or the pursuit by one force of another that does not want to be caught. Conflicts may appear in many guises, from a young love interest to a mastodonic fight between prehistoric brutes, but in some form or another conflict must predominate.

=Theodore Seixas Solomons=: We are immensely curious about life, and in a way that mere description of it from the point of view of psychology, history, past and current, geography, industry and the like, wholly fails to satisfy. For it is man's specific reaction to his environment in his efforts to accomplish his urges in which we are principally interested, and in order that we may make comparison of our own reactions with those of others about us, we crave not those dry, statistical texts setting forth systematically acquired knowledge but instances of actual men's and women's reactions to environment--actual life itself. Thus any narratives of parts of the ordinary life of others are more interesting to us, essentially, than text knowledge, but since life is so largely routine and monotony, since there is so little in any given actually true narrative that is likely to be in the least novel or to afford us the comparisons which we crave, our appetite has been wont to seek satisfaction in narratives specially selected to pretend the exceptional and unusual; and those who satisfy this desire are the story-tellers.

The impulse of the story-teller, then, is to present life in its exceptional and therefore interesting phases and happenings--interesting just in proportion to the degree in which it presents for our personal comparison men and women in situations, and engaged in actions, which lift them--and hence ourselves--out of the common routine. Thus, vicariously, we slake our thirst for varied, high tension living, with its emotional tests and thrills.

The fictional element is accidental, depending only upon the circumstance that actual life fails, usually, to furnish the story-teller with a completely satisfying narrative of strange and unusual reactions. Actual life is so conditioned by the usual and routine that even when the unusual thrusts up its head and people get into unusual situations, the routine and the usual quickly submerge the unusual--in fine, the story fails consistently to maintain our exaltation to a logical end. Hence the story-teller finds that in order completely to satisfy his hearers he must thwart this tendency of actuality by continually substituting and supplying. He does not take anything not found in life--else at once his art is defective. But he uses materials of life that never were actually found together in life, so far as he knows. He may find two-thirds of a story ready to hand in an actual life story, and then he needs to supply from his mind's storehouse of general-life happenings (_i. e._, things that are so natural that they either have happened or may happen at any time) enough to form the remaining third. The aim is merely to carry out as well as possible the aim of the story-desire he seeks to allay which is to experience vicariously sorts of life and living which, either because of their novelty to us, or because of special urgings and aptitudes, are grateful and satisfying to us.

Fiction, then, in the sense of its elemental hold on us, is that conscious modification of the actual occurrences of life by rearrangement of them so that they present to us _complete_ experiences of the sort for which we yearn. The more perfectly we are enabled to visualize ourselves as actually going through these experiences--and to visualize the characters going through them amounts precisely to this--the stronger the hold of the fiction because the more completely and perfectly it satisfies the desire to which it is directed. Hence the vital necessity of naturalness, whether the matter be of realism or romanticism.

=Raymond S. Spears=: Fiction is an adventure to the mind.

=Norman Springer=: An escape from reality, or, at least, from environment; and in fiction the reader realizes in a sense the wishes and ambitions that are thwarted in life. It is the power to make-believe.

=T. S. Stribling=: I think the main hold fiction has on human beings is that it gives them imaginary experiences which they could neither get nor think by themselves. It is first aid to the mentally lazy and dull. As proof of this, take the "movies." These are even more obvious and require less concentration than fiction, so they are correspondingly more popular.

I am speaking now of the appeal of popular fiction. It is the same thing to the public that the leg show is to the tired business man--born tired.

However, one should differentiate the stages of the human mind. Children read fiction out of curiosity about the world they are to enter, grown-ups read it to escape from the world they have entered, old age reads it to recall the world they have left behind.

=Lucille Van Slyke=: Oh, but you've asked a mouthful! What are Yonkers, anyhow? If you knew the answer to that you wouldn't be an editor and if I did, I'd weave it so hard into everything I write that even the most blasé editor in Christendom--or out of it--would be walking about waving the manuscript with sheer joy when he got to the end of it! But I'll venture a guess--that it's the same thing that made E. nibble the apple.

=Atreus von Schrader=: It is probably the same hold as that of liquor or drugs; it takes the addict away from himself, his troubles and his ennui.

=T. Von Ziekursch=: Perhaps to entertain, but I believe it goes further than this; the average person's life is a narrow thing--not what that person would choose at all probably. Fiction to the mass offers the opportunity to lift out of that close circle of existence, to live, to see, to mingle with the world, to do the things which they are physically, mentally or morally unable to do.

=Henry Kitchell Webster=: It is so elemental that it is pretty hard to get back to. I suppose it springs from human gregariousness. We feel enough alike, enough a part of all mankind, each of us, to feel that what has happened to another might happen to us. Reading fiction stimulates us, therefore, and exalts us with a sense of our own infinite possibilities.

=G. A. Wells=: Fiction is to the mind an antidote for the mental aches and ills of reality. It is in part a recompensation for living. It transports us from what is to what we would wish. It carries us back to the days of 'tend-like and restores the illusions of fancy. It is the oasis in the dry desert of life. It provokes and at the same time in a measure satisfies the spirit of adventure that we inherit from the race. We crawl as babies from the crib to see "what's around the corner." Most of us incessantly long for adventure. And, as we can not have adventures, we soothe ourselves by watching others at their adventures.

Life for most of us is rather colorless, a routine made up of meals, beds, offices and shops, with now and then a dash of pleasure to make it all endurable. We move in grooves. We complain that nothing ever happens to us. We are discontented that nothing ever does. We may wish to march out with a gun and kill somebody. The law forbids. But there is that desire, so to satisfy it we turn to fiction and see other men march out with a gun and kill somebody. We want to go to Alaska and dig for gold and have all sorts of scrapes. We can't. So we let Jack London or Rex Beach tell us of more fortunate people who did what we wished to do. Fiction is a safety valve.

=Ben Ames Williams=: People read fiction, I suppose, for the sake of the emotions which it awakes in them. I'm speaking of the highest form of fiction, which we call art. To stimulate emotion is the function of art in any form; people enjoy this stimulant as they do any other, because it is a part of human nature to enjoy being stimulated. Volstead to the contrary notwithstanding.

=Honore Willsie=: The romantic appeal to the imagination.

=H. C. Witwer=: The reader's enjoyment in being a hero or heroine by proxy, _i. e._, the reader, for the time being, is the hero or heroine of the tale and rejoices or weeps according to the action of the yarn. When they are gripped by a story they stop for the moment wishing they were rich, beautiful, brave, famous, strong, clever, etc. While reading, they are all or any of those things, in the degree the leading character is.

=William Almon Wolff=: Its power to entertain. That is a statement of enormous implications, and much less simple than it sounds.

=Edgar Young=: Arousing memories of sights, feelings, etc., etc., from the subconscious mind above the threshold of consciousness, so that a re-experience takes place. Where no such experiences have taken place, sympathy from similar experiences of the reader.

SUMMARY

The following state they do not know or don't understand the question--one that it is "an academic question": Edwin Balmer, Ferdinand Berthoud, Algernon Blackwood, Robert Hichens, Lloyd Kohler, Hapsburg Liebe, Rose Macaulay, E. S. Pladwell, R. T. M. Scott, Julian Street, Booth Tarkington, William Wells.

Here again the answers need no tabulation or extensive comment. Their greatest value lies in forcing upon beginners a general knowledge of the real nature of fiction. To a majority of them it is merely a game played by somebody's rules, a pastime with no rules at all, a chance of making money, an opportunity to pour out on the world a rather uncomfortable and obstreperous something inside them, a serious business of imitation, all these and more, but never a thing eternally based on the fundamentals of human nature.

Formal rules concerning it can mean nothing except as those rules are justified by fiction's human-nature fundamentals. And the beginner, buried under thousands of rules made by all kinds of people, most of them unequipped for the making of rules, has no way of telling an unsound rule from one worth observing unless he can test it by some fundamental principle that is adequate and satisfying to his intelligence. Nor, having found an equipment of rules to meet his needs, can he reconcile or even understand seeming conflicts among them, or make fully intelligent use of any one of them, when it comes to their practical application in the thousands of varying cases that will arise in his work.

No rule or collection of rules can cover the infinite number of those cases with fineness and nicety, or even cover them at all, unless back of those rules there is an understanding of the fundamental principles upon which those rules are based. If the writer is to stand and march upon his feet, he can not lean his weight upon crutches handed him by others. It is not possible to make all the crutches he will need. He must learn to do his own walking and he must himself know his direction and his path.

QUESTION XI

_Do you prefer writing in the first person or the third? Why?_

Though this matter is of far less importance than those thus far considered, it serves to settle a question that has been much discussed, probably even more by readers than by authors. That is, it settles the question in the only way it should or can be settled--by showing that there can be no definite answer. Not only must each writer decide according to his own individual case, but, unless his natural bent and ability lie very strongly in one direction or the other, he must--or at least should--make a separate decision as to each story he undertakes.

On various phases touched upon in even this simple matter there is flat contradiction of opinion. This wholesome difference again brings out the point that generalities, particularly when shaped into general rules, are not likely to be safe guidance.

The everlasting value to beginners in the writing game is that they themselves and their material, not definite, unyielding rules laid down by any writer or by anybody else, should be the deciding factors in their work of conveying to the reader what they have to say.

ANSWERS

=Bill Adams=: Never tried the first.

=Samuel Hopkins Adams=: The third. Because I am prone to find myself hampered by self-consciousness in the first person, though not invariably.

=Paul L. Anderson=: The third; you can swing a wider loop. It is admitted, though, that the first person gives a more intense effect, and I sometimes use it.

=William Ashley Anderson=: It is immaterial, and depends upon the nature of a story. But I think a story is most naturally told in the first person. This also insures the action being continuous. It also adds an illusion of authenticity.

=H. C. Bailey=: In the third person. The first person, apart from technical difficulties, seems to me to encourage diffuse writing on the insignificant.

=Edwin Balmer=: I occasionally write in the first person. It is a more limited way of writing than in the third person because, among other reasons, continued use of the first person in many stories of different character certainly breaks down the sense of illusion.

I think a man should never write in the first person as a woman and vice versa.

=Ralph Henry Barbour=: I prefer writing in the first person. Nearly every writer does, and will say so if he's truthful. I write in the third person because editors believe, correctly or incorrectly, that readers prefer it. I prefer the first person because it is easier.

=Frederick Orin Bartlett=: I prefer the first person because it offers a more direct way of telling a story. The public, I think, prefers the third person because this form permits a wider range of sympathies.

=Nalbro Bartley=: I prefer the third person for writing because it is more impersonal and one can get into the swing of the story in a more intense way.

=Konrad Bercovici=: No particular preference.

=Ferdinand Berthoud=: Third--for many reasons. One is that I know editors and the public prefer stories in the third person, and another is that it is easier and more convincing. A third reason is that I've never tried the first person.

=H. H. Birney, Jr.=: Depends entirely on the particular story. First person is ordinarily easier, but your hero can be made much more heroic if some one else is talking about him.

=Farnham Bishop=: In the third. When I try telling a story in the first person it makes me too self-conscious and gums up the action.

=Algernon Blackwood=: Third person. The use of the first person tends to remind a writer of himself, whereas fiction should mean an escape from one's tiresome self--a projection into others.

=Max Bonter=: I seem to have no preference in this regard.

=Katharine Holland Brown=: The first person. Easier. Besides, I like to be in it myself.

=F. R. Buckley=: Used to prefer first person. Now equally at home in both. Natural instinct when telling a pleasant lie is to have yourself in it. Later--third person gives you greater scope. The "I" doesn't have to be carried from place to place to report things.

=Prosper Buranelli=: I would rather be hanged than write in the first person. A fellow who can't thrust himself forward without the use of "I" doesn't know even how to brag.

=Thompson Burtis=: I have no choice. Humorous stuff I like to write first person, because of the latitude in language. Ordinary stuff, on second thought, I believe I would rather write third person, the reason being that I can then draw the character that "I" would represent more fully. Another great plot advantage is that by not tying one's self down to a first-person story he can present the mental reactions and innermost thoughts of both hero and villain. This adds a great deal to the opportunities of a story. The first person story is limited to the scenes and thoughts of "I" alone.

=George M. A. Cain=: I think I rather enjoy first-person writing best. But that is a matter I regard as entirely to be determined by the nature of the story. The first person carries a degree of conviction not so easily obtained in the third person. I really think it has no effect in the matter of the reader's ability to put himself in the hero's place. He reads it as "I." That is just as near him as "he." Obviously the first person can not be used (1) where the suspense concerns the life of the hero, who could not have died and told the tale; (2) where the mental processes of more than one character must be brought in, since the personal introduction of the writer himself precludes knowledge of the thoughts of others; (3) where the hero's acts are such that to tell them would be boastful.

My own rule as to persons is this: Where the character fitted to my general aim in the story is essentially too weak to hold the sympathy of the reader, I use the first person, even at the cost of straining to show others' mental processes by actions. I can not escape the conviction that there is a man-to-man-ness about the first person which commands sympathy. I should give up trying to write a story with a hero guilty of any real weakness, if I found it could not be done in the first person.

For a story in which a striking character is introduced as hero, I particularly like the use of the first person for a secondary character in the position of a witness. It affords easier conviction of truth as in its use for the hero. It provides instant opportunity to present the hero in attractive light. I should use this method to the limits of its possibilities but for the fact that it is the one which makes it most difficult for the reader to put himself in the hero's place. That fact relegates its use with me to stories of characters so strongly marked as to require the reader's friendship for, rather than his self-identification with, the hero.

Which indicates the place I give the third person by elimination. It becomes, after all, the one of principal use interfering with no manner of suspense, allowing for presentation of the reasoning of any or all characters of the story, commanding sufficient sympathy for any character from dead neutral up, if at all properly handled.

=Robert V. Carr=: According to mood.

=George L. Catton=: Immaterial. All depends on the requirements of the particular story. In the first person there is less explanatory matter needed; that's the only difference.

=Robert W. Chambers=: It makes no difference.

=Roy P. Churchill=: I would rather be an observer than an actor, if I am to tell the story.

=Carl Clausen=: Third. First limits my view-point.

=Courtney Ryley Cooper=: It depends entirely on the story. I use the third person mostly, but there are times in stories of great sympathy when it is impossible to use anything but the first. Third person preferred, however.

=Arthur Crabb=: It depends on the theme to be developed; generally I should say in the third person. By that I mean that the author does not appear at all. A writer can do a whole lot more if he keeps himself out of it and then if he restricts himself to what he could see and know himself.

=Mary Stewart Cutting=: I prefer writing in the third person, though in two or three of my favorite stories I have written in the first person. Usually the third person gives you more scope.

=Elmer Davis=: Depends on the story. Obviously in an "I" story there are things you can't tell the reader without introducing the old expedient of the messenger or something like it. But it has its merits if the plot permits.

=William Harper Dean=: I seldom write a finished story in the first person. But (and here's something) did you ever write a story in the first person and then go through it and change it to the third person and inspect the result? I can write a much better story in the first person--a more spontaneous one than in the third. For in the first person I say what I would say under certain circumstances in the plot, feel what I would feel--whereas writing "He thought--," makes me stop and think--now what _would_ he think? And right there you are in danger of inventing instead of interpreting as you should be doing.

=Harris Dickson=: I began writing in the first person. Don't know why I have abandoned it. I do believe, however, a tale in the first person, well told, takes a stronger hold on the imagination. Perhaps because, like every child who asks "Daddy, is it true?" we seem to get an atmosphere of verity from the fellow who says, "This happened to me." For the same reason the teller of anecdotes prefers to lay them on himself, or his friend.

=Captain Dingle=: First person, though it seems unpopular, so I don't indulge often. This way I fall into my characters' boots easier.

=Louis Dodge=: I like to write in the third person chiefly for convenience. The first person must go in at a door; the third may go in at a keyhole or through a wall.

=Phyllis Duganne=: I much prefer writing in the third person. The first person seems to have so many limitations; if the first person is your hero or heroine, there are so many things he can not tell about himself that have to be told in other ways. I don't like to read stories in the first person, as a rule; I don't find them so convincing. This "I" person is always getting in the way of the story. First-person stories are easier to write; I mean that they flow more easily, though I think they are harder to make convincing. I think people usually resent this "I" who thinks he knows so much, and talks at such great length. It makes a story out of it--an unreal thing--while a story in the third person has no one, ever present, to remind you that it's only a tale and may not be true anyway.

=J. Allan Dunn=: I enjoy writing in the first person but do not believe it attracts the majority. It smacks of conceit, for one thing, but if one writes of a character in which one can project one's own thoughts, character, successes, failures, hopes and despair, the intimacy is a stimulus. It has limitations because the hero, if he sees everything, condenses the narrative. And he is only a translator for the other characters. So I prefer the third for sheer craftsmanship. To write a first person narrative through the eyes of a third person, who may be a minor character but a shrewd observer, is one of my preferences.

=Walter A. Dyer=: It all depends. I usually write in the third person, because in that form a character can be handled more freely, but I have written stories in a frame of mind that demanded only the first-person treatment.

=Walter Prichard Eaton=: It is easier to write in the first, because the process of thinking "I" identifies you with the character. Also, it is more dangerous, because the same process identifies the character with you. (This is really quite wise and intelligent.)

=E. O. Foster=: I prefer writing in the third person so as to have as little of my own personality enter into the story as is possible.

=Arthur O. Friel=: No preference. Depends on the story. Some are told more naturally in first person; others in third.

=J. P. Giesy=: The first, I think, since in it I may, as it were, vicariously live the part exactly as the actor lives his part for the time being and consequently enter very nearly into the thing. However, I very frequently choose the third because of the very nature of the subject in hand.

=George Gilbert=: Some stories can only be told in the first; some only in the third person. The story itself decides the person, not the author. If the story is one that can only be told best by one person's having knowledge of all the incidents, the first person becomes permissible, not mandatory. If the story is such that no one person could have had knowledge of all the details without recourse to the receipt of letters, telephone calls, confidences given in such a way as to interrupt the thread of the tale, the story calls for other treatment than first-person telling. The limitation on the first-person story, when the narrator is the hero, is this: It is plain that the narrator lived to tell the story, so no matter what peril he gets into during the tale, the reader must know he survived, unless it is a tale of a manuscript found buried or in family archives, etc. The first-person-narrator story is most effective when the narrator is not the hero, yet some fine tales have been written that violate this rule of mine. In any event, the author must look into his story at the beginning and decide this point. Another author might have an entirely different idea on it, and succeed at a given tale where I would fail using my rule.

=Kenneth Gilbert=: While writing in the first person is the easiest way to tell a story, I prefer the third for the freedom of description it permits. Many stories, however, would fall flat if not written in the first person.

=Holworthy Hall=: Third person. Generally more convincing and less conceited.

=Richard Matthews Hallet=: I have written both ways. The first person makes an easier narrative, but makes it harder to develop a plot. And I find, curiously, by asking the question a great many times and from being criticized myself, that there is among a great body of readers an odd aversion to a story in the first person. I've never heard even the semblance of a reason for it, but no matter, it exists and will certainly work against the popularity of a story in the first person. There is also a considerable group of persons who profess unwillingness to read a story with the faintest touch of dialect in it; in spite of this dialect stories thrive. So do some stories written in the first person.

=William H. Hamby=: Really prefer writing in the first person, but rarely do.

=A. Judson Hanna=: This is a matter governed by circumstances. By far the majority of my published stories have been written in the first person. As a rule, I prefer to write them so because it allows so much freedom of expression and creates an informality between writer and reader that appeals to the reader. It is the personal touch.

=Joseph Mills Hanson=: I prefer to write in the first person because it gives me a sense of more intimate grasp of the motions of the characters and a more vivid realization of the situations. Nevertheless, I have written more often in the third person; perhaps because the former seems, also, egotistic.

=E. E. Harriman=: In the third person, because writing in the first gives a feeling of indecent exposure of the intimate corners in my soul.

=Nevil G. Henshaw=: In short stories I've no particular preference, although I think it a trifle easier to use the first person. In long work I find the first person much the harder, as then a vast number of facts and ideas must be presented from the single point of view. I also find the transition more difficult.

=Joseph Hergesheimer=: Third, for obvious reasons.

=Robert Hichens=: I prefer writing in the third person. I like to tell a story, not to tell about myself. As a rule, I dislike a novel written in the first person and I very much dislike a story told in the form of letters. I scarcely know why.

=R. de S. Horn=: I generally prefer writing in the third person. In this case I can go anywhere, describe anything. I am omnipotent; I can see through walls, read minds, experience emotions unlimited. In the first person I am narrowly proscribed. I can only represent my own emotions and what I can know through the medium of my five senses. The only advantage of the first person is that stories thus told have an air of veracity, of plausibility, that is particularly desirable at times. Furthermore, they can the more strongly enlist the reader's emotions and sympathies.

=Clyde B. Hough=: I prefer to write in the third person. It gives me more scope.

=Emerson Hough=: I don't know--as it chances.

=A. S. M. Hutchinson=: In the third. I feel my own individuality would get in the way if I wrote in the first.

=Inez Haynes Irwin=: I think writing in the first person is infinitely easier than writing in the third because inevitably one _dramatizes_ more when writing in the third person and _describes_ more when writing in the first person. Dramatizing is more difficult than describing. Perhaps that is why I prefer the third person--the other seems too easy. Yet there's an ease about first-person writing, an informality.... It goes swiftly, breezily, directly.

=Will Irwin=: When I began, I liked best to write in the first person. Now I prefer the third. Why, I can not say exactly. Probably because your interests increase with years, and when writing in the first person you have limited yourself to the interests, experiences and observations of but one character.

=Frederick J. Jackson=: Third person. Simpler, usually more effective, is easier for me. Have written only two stories in first person.

=Mary Johnston=: Depends on what you're doing.

=John Joseph=: I very much prefer writing in the third person, but when it comes to an old-time western story--well, I have lived these things and the detached third person doesn't seem to belong, nor conventional English. I have heard these people talk every day for too many years, have heard too many camp-fire tales, I suppose, and the more a writer polishes his story the less real it seems.

=Lloyd Kohler=: The third person. I don't like that eternal "I." Still, I have read many authors who could handle that very same "I" convincingly. More power to them!

=Harold Lamb=: The first person is a little more fun. Because it gives a freer hand in description and more play to emotion.

=Sinclair Lewis=: Third, less (obviously) egotistical.

=Hapsburg Liebe=: I prefer writing in the third person because in the first I can't keep the perpendicular pronoun sufficiently down.

=E. P. Lyle, Jr.=: In the first person. Comes easier, less formal, your reader not a reader but seemingly a friend on the other side of the hearth. I'd recommend it to a beginner. Also tell him to forget he is writing literature, and to keep in attitude of writing a letter.

=Rose Macaulay=: Third. Because I dislike reading stories told in the first.

=Crittenden Marriott=: Third. In the first the quotation marks are such a bother.

=Homer I. McEldowney=: The third person. It is easier, for me, and, I think, more effective.

=Ray McGillivray=: Fifty-fifty with me. First person is easier. The third person style has been responsible for most of the best literature ever written. Not all, but most.

=Helen Topping Miller=: I have never written anything in the first person--it intrudes the personal idea and hampers my view-point. I prefer to see my characters impersonally.

=Thomas Samson Miller=: The first person always seemed to me the more plausible, for in the third person the author often relates actions and happenings that occurred thousands of miles apart at the same time. I can never forget that _some one is telling me the story_ and that some one couldn't be--say in the heroine's bedroom, if he is a man author.

=Anne Shannon Monroe=: It is easier to write in the first person--more easily made real; but I prefer the third. The third is less personal, more the spectator's account of the whole. Writing in the first, there are many things you can't tell, because you, as one of the characters, can't know it all; as a spectator--a sort of on-looking creator--you can know it all.

=L. M. Montgomery=: Personally I prefer writing in the first person, because it then seems easier to _live_ my story as I write it. Since editors seem to have a prejudice against this, I often write a story in the first person and then rewrite it, shifting it to the third. As a reader, I enjoy a story written in the first person far more than any other kind. It gives me more of a sense of reality--of actually knowing the people in it. The author does not seem to _come between_ me and the characters as much as in the third-person stories. Wilkie Collins's _Woman in White_ is a fine example of the use of the first person. It could not have been half so effective had he told it in the third. And _Jane Eyre_ simply couldn't have been written in any but the first.

=Frederick Moore=: I like to write in the third person, because then I'm a god--all seeing, all knowing, all controlling--so far as the characters are concerned.

=Talbot Mundy=: On the whole, I think, the third person. It is easier to keep things concrete, and to keep off the paper the mental actions and reactions of Number One.

=Kathleen Norris=: A story in the first person is limited because the teller of it is presumably the hero, and consequently he has to _imply_ his own merit, beauty or intelligence. More than that, he must be present at every scene related and the plot must move in spite of him, as it were. This sort of story was enormously popular in Dickens' day, but it does not fit the new American type of novel.

=Anne O'Hagan=: I don't know. It's easier in the first person, but I don't think the results are apt to be so clear cut.

=Grant Overton=: I have, as it happens, never written anything except certain passages in the first person. I think I have no preference. It is all a matter of technical advantage in presentation.

=Hugh Pendexter=: I have no preference and use both first and third person as the story demands. I have started more than one story in the first person and found it impossible; perhaps because of plot demands. A story that walked lamely in the third person behaved well when told in the first. If I desire to show a young man, neither Whig nor Tory, but leaning toward the latter and his gradual turning to the former, the first person affords for me the only vehicle. If plot is accentuated, the third person becomes the vehicle.

=Clay Perry=: I prefer writing in the third person rather than in the first because, personally, I have always been more or less self-conscious and I have the same feeling in writing. Just to use the word "I" as now is hard work for me.

=Michael J. Phillips=: I despise first-person writing. I quarrel with the prig who is telling the story. He is either too wise or too ignorant. He either knows too much or doesn't know enough. If he is an actor in the story who really is deserving of a lot of credit and admiration, I can neither give him credit nor admire him. If he values himself as truly as a swashing, swaggering fellow who would be likable if some one else wrote of him, he becomes a hopeless braggart. And if he is modest, he does not glow sufficiently bright and I think: "Well, how did this fathead ever stumble into this delightfully distinguished, daring, lawbreaking group of real folks?"

=E. S. Pladwell=: Third person. The "I" becomes monotonous in print. Nobody can avoid it when the first person is used.

=Lucia Mead Priest=: I do not prefer the first person, in fact I do not approve of it, save for a certain type of writing. But when I write in the third I find myself growing stiff and formal. I am less direct, inclining to consciousness and pomposity. I don't know why.

=Eugene Manlove Rhodes=: Either, according to circumstances.

=Frank C. Robertson=: Depends on the nature of the story. As a rule I think the third person gives the writer more latitude for the development of character and material.

=Ruth Sawyer=: The third person. Unless the story needs the direct confession of an autobiographical treatment, I think the intrusion of the first person as eye-witness or teller of the tale makes for complexity rather than simplicity. Personally it has the same effect on me that my neighbor makes when she says, "My sister's husband told me that his friend, etc."

=Chester L. Saxby=: I like writing in the first person for the pleasure of dwelling intimately with the hopes and fears of the character. I like writing in the third person for that strong, austere impersonalness--like a laboratory investigation. All in the mood, I presume. We're not always the same. It explains the rejection of much good stuff by editorial offices. I think, on the whole, I prefer the first-person story. It's the story of me then; I'm putting forth effort as the story proceeds; I feel the reality more. But it's a difficult metier.

=Barry Scobee=: I prefer writing in the first- or third-person according to the story. No other reason.

=R. T. M. Scott=: I prefer the third person because editors prefer the third person and I have grown accustomed to the way of least resistance so far as editors are concerned. Besides, that "I" is hard to use genuinely in reference to all kinds of characters.

=Robert Simpson=: I prefer writing in the third person because it is, constructionally speaking, the simplest.

=Arthur D. Howden Smith=: First is easier. It's more convincing.

=Theodore Seixas Solomons=: I prefer, for celebrity (it's _easier_ and quicker) and humanness, writing in the first person. Its handicaps are, of course, that the omniscience of the third person is wanting and it is impossible to describe the characters and action in terms of the author's best philosophy when the character telling the story is almost always unable to achieve such philosophy. I therefore use the first person only when the action is such as not to require the peculiar advantages of third-person narration. But I much prefer the first person, because of its naturalness and humanness, when the nature of the story permits its use.

=Raymond S. Spears=: Some of my best work is under assumed name in first person--an adventure of the imagination.

=Norman Springer=: I like the first person best. I seem to be able to get under the skins of the characters better.

=Julian Street=: The third person is less easy but is generally the method of the best writers. The first person is (with some exceptions) the refuge of the tyro. As a writer learns his job, he is likely to write more and more in the third person--especially if he is a person of taste.

=T. S. Stribling=: I have no preference as to the person. I find the first person good for rapidity of relation and the elision of endless detail; the third person is best for expansiveness.

=Booth Tarkington=: Of course writing in the first person is infinitely easier. (That's one reason it should rarely be done.) The reason that writing in the first person is easier is this: The writing is supposed to be done by a fictitious person; the author, therefore, does not feel so responsible, _himself_, for the "quality of his prose."

=W. C. Tuttle=: A great majority of my stories have been written in the first person. In fact, I began writing that way because I could tell a story better than I could write one, and because, in the first person, there are fewer threads to carry. Characterizations are easier to depict in the third person, I believe, except in a humorous story, when I would rather describe a character in the first person.

=Lucille Van Slyke=: Third person. Because it seems to me that not one person in a thousand can successfully keep up the illusion of being another person very long. First person writing is a sort of lie as soon as it leaves personal experience behind, and most of us do not have a great many thrilling experiences personally. (I happen to adore writing in second person and do a great deal of that for sheer amusement. I wouldn't be so silly as to submit it to any editor, for I am aware of the well-known aversion to it--but, admitting that it presupposes a highly imaginative reader, think what fun it is for both writer and reader. I have been awfully interested in Louise Dutton's stories about an adolescent girl in which she uses second person a great deal but lapses to third--or indirect discourse--so often that she much breaks her continuity which makes me feel as though I were jumping in and out of a Punch and Judy box--I love the minutes I'm being Judy but get rather mixed when I am trying to be Punch!)

=Atreus von Schrader=: I prefer writing in the third person, because I believe the use of the first person distracts, nearly always, from the illusion of reality. Nine times out of ten the first person is used because it is easier, and for no other reason.

=T. Von Ziekursch=: Have no choice.

=Henry Kitchell Webster=: I seldom write in the first person, but there is a certain kind of story where the mechanical advantages it offers are great enough to more than compensate for its limitations.

=G. A. Wells=: I prefer writing in the first person, though seldom do so because I am not enough the craftsman to subdue my egotism. I like first person better because I get closer to the story. It is the personal equation. When one writes first person he goes on the stage and acts; no matter how large or small his part, he is in the show. In the third person he sits with the audience and merely records what happens. His readers have the same advantages he has and he can't show a superior air. I often write a story in the first person, and when finished strike out the big "I's" and substitute the name of the principal character. That way I get direct contact with the story.

=William Wells=: Third. Too darned bashful; seems like bragging.

=Ben Ames Williams=: I prefer writing in the manner best calculated to produce the effect I desire. This is a technical question, to be answered differently in different cases.

=Honore Willsie=: I prefer third-person writing, for, while it is more difficult than first-person writing, it is less apt to have an egotistical effect on the reader.

=H. C. Witwer=: I prefer writing in the third person, but have written two hundred fifty short stories in the first, because my readers seem to prefer that. I find writing in the first person much easier than any other.

=William Almon Wolff=: The third. There is, for me, a certain artificiality about first person writing; a certain seizing upon illicit aids. It's great fun to write in the first person, and, sometimes, of course, it's the right thing to do. But not often, I think. You dig deeper when you're interpreting life through your description of people seen objectively.

=Edgar Young=: Writing in the first person used to come natural to me, due to the fact that for years as a traveler I told many tales in this fashion to amuse friends and was an adept at it. At present I prefer third person work.

SUMMARY

An analysis of the general trend of these 109 answers shows that the first person is preferred and generally used by 14, the third person by 54, while 41 may be classed as neutral. Of this 41 only 24 are entirely neutral; 8, while using both, prefer the third, and 9, while using both or for various reasons using the third, prefer the first.

Some of the answers speak not only as writers but as readers and doubtless most of the others in their preference as writers voice also their preference as readers. On this rough assumption we might say that of 109 readers 23 prefer stories in the first person to 62 preferring the third. Two, as writers now preferring the third, originally preferred the first and, by free and easy analysis, might be assumed to have, as readers, rather a preference for the first. If so, the score becomes 25 to 60: Again, quite a number among both classes and also neutrals consider first person easier and therefore--perhaps--more natural and therefore--perhaps--more pleasing. A much smaller number give the third person as easier. This highly suppositional reasoning would bring the score for first person considerably nearer that for third. All of which has no value except as a straw indicating the truth of the generally accepted theory that most readers prefer third-person narratives to those told in first person, and as indicating that the proportion may be anywhere from 3 to 1 on down to 10 to 7.

Rather pathetic as information, isn't it? But not half so pathetic as the fact that writers and editors really _know_ so little as to the reading public's preference on this point that even such weak-kneed conclusions as the above are of some small value because they are at least drawn from a few data of fact. Nor one-tenth so pathetic as the fact that, while this commonly accepted theory seems justified by the above straw, there are quite a few other theories commonly accepted by writers, editors and critics that lack the support of even so slender a fact-straw as this.

As stated at the beginning of the chapter, the real value of the investigation is the answers' proof that the question of first person versus third is wholly a matter to be decided according to each writer's individuality and the nature of each particular story he takes up. Not by anybody's general rule.

QUESTION XII

_Do you lose ideas because your imagination travels faster than your means of recording? Which affords least check--pencil, typewriter or stenographer?_

This question, like the preceding one, was added to the questionnaire at the suggestion of several experienced writers with whom I consulted. As is pointed out in some of the answers, the choice of means of recording would seem a matter to be decided wholly in accordance with the idiosyncrasies of each particular writer. But human nature is somewhat prone to settle down upon one method without trying all and it may well be that some writers now wedded to one method may, on learning the experiences of over a hundred others, try some new method and find it advantageous. Certainly the answers as a whole give an interesting and full presentation of the practical arguments for and against the various methods, and, as in all the answers to the questionnaire, there are various bits of information not always bearing directly on the particular issue that will be found illuminating and valuable.

ANSWERS

=Bill Adams=: Never lose an idea while I'm writing. (Be nothing left if I did, m'lad.) God help poor sailors.

=Samuel Hopkins Adams=: Yes; but I catch a lot in the act of escaping by keeping a reserve sheet of paper close at hand while writing, and I will break off in the middle of a sentence if necessary to pin the fugitive down. Pen or pencil. You can't head off an escaping idea with a typewriter. I've never tried a stenographer for fiction; if I did, she would lead a wild-goose chase sort of existence, for my mind constantly courses ahead of my plot and brings in small game to be attended to while the main chase proceeds.

=Paul L. Anderson=: No, because I have the whole thing planned beforehand. Sometimes, if I have an unusual idea, which seems likely to get away, I note down a word or two on a scrap of paper and keep it by me while writing. This happens oftener with a turn of words than with a fundamental idea. The fastest mode of production, by far, is dictating to a s'nog'f'r, as they are usually called in conversation. Next, the typewriter; next, the pen; last, the pencil--the blame thing keeps getting dull and you have to stop to sharpen it! I can seldom afford a stenographer, but when I can, and have a good one, composition is unalloyed bliss; I can light a cigarette, put my feet up, and live the whole story, without distractions. Joy!

=William Ashley Anderson=: With a typewriter of light touch I can write most clearly and sharply, because, I think, I feel the restraint of the appearance of words actually in type.

The most agreeable tool to me is a goose quill. I only used quills a little while, in England, where they are still in use even in government offices. There is practically no friction between the quill and paper, and no noise. The effect is complete privacy and smoothly flowing words. I do sometimes lose ideas which get away from me.

=H. C. Bailey=: I never lost ideas by forgetting them. I write in pencil and slowly. Dictation or typewriting would be impossible to me for any imaginative work.

=Edwin Balmer=: Typewriter.

=Ralph Henry Barbour=: I don't think my imagination ever gets so far ahead of my means of recording that I lose ideas. As to those means I prefer a typewriter. I have never tried to dictate--to a stenographer. I don't believe that I'd like it. Or maybe the stenographer wouldn't. Anyway, I intend to keep on pounding it out myself.

=Frederick Orin Bartlett=: I use a typewriter and find that travels fast enough for me--as long as I don't worry particularly over what keys I hit.

=Nalbro Bartley=: No--I do all my stuff on a typewriter. I revise it personally--I make the final copy myself.

=Konrad Bercovici=: I never lose any ideas. I never begin to put them down until they are rounded out in my mind. One never loses anything except what he does not care to possess.

=Ferdinand Berthoud=: Yes, I do, but I mostly pick them up again unexpectedly, perhaps months afterward. Always write my draft in pencil, as it is easier to make instant alterations. Also the clicking and mechanism of a typewriter are liable to bring me suddenly back from out of my dream world.

=H. H. Birney, Jr.=: No; I don't think so. Story is pretty well outlined in my mind before I start writing. I personally write entirely with a fountain pen. Dislike the "scratching" of a pencil and the lack of permanency of penciled notes. Have tried doing my work direct from brain to typewriter, but find that the purely mechanical strain of using ten fingers, returning carriage, watching right-hand margins, etc., tends to hamper thought. Tried stenographer only once, so am not qualified to express opinion there.

=Farnham Bishop=: I always compose mentally before I begin to write. Conceived the plot of _Malena_ while walking post, outlined the whole novel and held it in my head until I came off guard. Often come back from a walk with one or two long paragraphs composed and memorized, ready to be set down. I have held ideas and worked them over mentally for months and years, before writing a word on the subject.

That being the case, I almost never write except on my trusty Corona, H. & P. Method.

=Algernon Blackwood=: Imagination invariably travels faster than power of recording it. I use shorthand to jot down bits that flash ahead of the words I am actually typing at the moment. These flashes otherwise prove irrecoverable. With a stenographer beside me I could not think of a single sentence. I compose straight on to my own machine.

=Max Bonter=: Typewriter seems to afford me least check in recording thoughts. I write Pitmanic shorthand two hundred words a minute, but seldom use it in composition. In this case my hand is speedier than the flow of ideas. Moreover, ideas that would flow as fast as that would not seem to be reliable. Such a flow of bull would have to be edited very carefully afterward--so why be so precipitate? Better take it easier and pay more attention to logic than verbosity.

The clatter of a typewriter does not disturb my train of thought. I don't need a sound-proof cell when I write. When I feel in the mood for writing my spine is stiff and I sit straight in my chair and punch hard. I like to feel the keys bounce back from the platen. It makes me feel as if I'm punching something and getting somewhere.

=Katharine Holland Brown=: Yes. Either the typewriter or a pen. Never a stenographer.

=F. R. Buckley=: Never lost an idea that way yet. I write extremely fast, and without conscious effort, on the typewriter--up to ninety words a minute. I used to write in pencil and pen when on English newspapers; now I'm used to the typewriter, I find it and the hand-methods' check equal. I mean, typewriter used to check me, now hand-writing does. Just what you're used to. Typewriter for me.

=Prosper Buranelli=: It seems to me that a writer is a person with the gift of gab, but whose gift of gab is slower than the jawbone. Slow typewriting is about the speed of my gabble.

=Thompson Burtis=: Yes. I have never used any other means of writing than a typewriter. I do not believe that I would be effective through a stenographer, and I'm damn certain that I'd never write a line unless I was starving if I had to depend on pen or pencil.

=George M. A. Cain=: I do lose ideas before I can catch up to them with the recording. I have never done any writing for publication otherwise than directly upon the typewriter. Any handwriting entirely confuses me. I can use a typewriter blindfolded. I can write with it twice or three times as fast as with the pen or pencil. Without having tried it, I imagine that the presence of a stenographer would greatly bother me at first. I have always thought that I might possibly get better results by using a dictaphone and then cutting out about two-thirds of what I said to it. Heaven knows I am prolix enough on a typewriter. I hesitate to credit heaven with any generally distributed knowledge of what I would do, if it involved no greater effort than talking.

=Robert V. Carr=: When manufacturing literary sausage I naturally want to grind it out rapidly. But if I am working on what seems to be a good story, I can get my ideas down with a pencil.

=George L. Catton=: Lots of ideas are lost that way, though they generally come back. Pencil, with me, affords the least check on loss.

=Robert W. Chambers=: Do not lose ideas thus. Pencil and eraser.

=Roy P. Churchill=: I believe the mind can be trained to construct with the means at hand. I have seldom lost any real valuable ideas by having the spirit run away with the physical construction of some sort of record. At first I wrote with pencil, which is slow, then on a machine, which is faster, and now dictate to a rapid stenographer. I have had to get the habit of each method, and time would be lost if I had to change again.

=Carl Clausen=: Sometimes. Pencil.

=Courtney Ryley Cooper=: That depends also. I use every possible style of writing. I have started a story by pen, switched to pencil, gone to the typewriter and dictated the climax, the reason being this: I must write character slowly. I must do action as swiftly as it is possible for me to put it down. And when the action becomes too fast for my typewriter, I dictate. In other words, although it is bromidic, I know, I live my stories to a great extent. I personally go just as slow or as fast as the story itself--there are times when I can not write swiftly to save my life--because I am in a maze of slow characterization. Then again, I have to go like an express train to keep up with my story.

=Arthur Crabb=: To some extent, but not seriously. I sometimes have trouble in retaining ideas that come when I am off the job. Pencil.

=Mary Stewart Cutting=: No, as I said before, when I imagine anything, I write it down and so do not lose my ideas. A fountain pen in my hand greatly facilitates thought and expression.

=Elmer Davis=: Yes, but still worse because I sit around and think about the damn thing before I start writing at all, and most of the good stuff is gone by the time I drag out the old mill and get to work. Never tried anything but typewriter, though I have seen stenographers who would take a man's mind off the fleeting thought and the evanescent phrase.

=William Harper Dean=: No, I can keep up with my ideas, because I can write fast on a typewriter. I seldom leave it until the story is done in its first draft--an eight-thousand-word story will go down in the rough before I leave the machine. Then come the long careful hours of revision and rewriting, the thumbing of my Thesaurus. But I must get it down in black and white while I am hot with it--that's why I'll never write a book. I couldn't write a thousand words to-day and a thousand to-morrow. No, when I'm full of the thing it must be written.

=Harris Dickson=: No. I am an expert typewriter and stenographer, and have so few ideas that I can not afford to let one get away.

=Captain Dingle=: I can only write one way--typewriter--straight out from my imagination. Neither pen nor pencil helps, nor any amount of notes, except such as are necessary to avoid errors of date or place. Imagination seems to keep up. When it slows, I know it's time to clew-up for a spell.

=Louis Dodge=: If I get a good idea--conceding that I ever do--it never gets away from me permanently. It'll come back. But I get along better with a typewriter. It's easier, that's all.

=Phyllis Duganne=: I don't lose ideas because my imagination travels faster than my means of recording while I'm actually working. I can lose them through being interrupted before I've finished. A typewriter affords least check; it's almost impossible for me to write with a pencil. And my own typewriter is so well trained that it can write just about as fast as I can put my thoughts into words.

=J. Allan Dunn=: I find that my own typing keeps up fairly well with my imagination, a little behind, far enough to look over the situation ahead and amend or alter it. But then I have usually thought out my day's typing beforehand, probably several times over. The machine is less check than any other medium, but it was not until I had acquired a certain speed. If my technique bothers me I can sometimes dictate very rapidly. I find, however, that the matter of proper punctuation, dialect and unusual spelling suffers at the hand of another--this includes a dictaphone. I had a hard fight getting away from pencil to the typewriter, but I don't want to go back.

=Walter A. Dyer=: I write pretty rapidly, and so I seldom lose ideas. When I find my mind running ahead it is usually a warning that what I am doing is dull. If an idea jumps into my mind that I am afraid I shall forget, I sometimes stop and jot down a note of it. Usually the best stuff comes when the mind and the typewriter are well synchronized. I used to write with a lead pencil, but I have learned to use a typewriter with less effort and so with better results.

=Walter Prichard Eaton=: I lose ideas because I quit to play golf. When I am writing I should certainly feel sore if I couldn't hold one till I got it down. I never use a typewriter--never found one that could spell. When I use a pen I write so badly that nobody can tell whether it can spell or not. I can't dictate. I at once begin to write like Daniel Webster's Bunker Hill Oration.

=E. O. Foster=: I lose ideas because my imagination travels faster than my typewriter. Of the four channels--pen, pencil, typewriter and stenographer, the typewriter affords the least check to my imagination.

=Arthur O. Friel=: Yes. Pencil.

=J. U. Giesy=: At times. The typewriter serves me best.

=George Gilbert=: I use the typewriter, because I am skilled on it to the point where I can write two thousand four hundred words an hour. I once wrote ten thousand words at one sitting, averaging two thousand an hour. The story was not revised materially. I gained this skill transcribing one hundred million words during my long career as an Associated Press code operator, taking twelve thousand to fifteen thousand words a night for many years. I can think on the machine easily.

=Kenneth Gilbert=: While I do not lose ideas because of mechanical inability to set them down rapidly, I lose enthusiasm for them, and, perhaps, some of the precious fire that would make them glow stronger. I find a typewriter the least check on my imagination. I have never tried a stenographer, but I have long felt that a dictating machine would be very helpful.

=Holworthy Hall=: Not yet. Pencil.

=Richard Matthews Hallet=: My imagination does not travel at better than a snail's pace. I could do a cuneiform inscription without the sacrifice of a single idea. Sometimes I compose on a typewriter and sometimes with a pen. If you write fast on the typewriter, if you really do bring the speed dogs into play, and you are a fast thinker, you gain momentum, I should think. But I always gain momentum at the expense of nearly everything else. I do at most two thousand words a day, even on re-write stuff, and going at this pace, you can see that my imagination does not feel the lag of the writing instruments. A friend of mine leans into the horn of a dictaphone every morning and sprays vocal folly there; but I never got courage for that. That horn would follow me in dreams.

=William H. Hamby=: Yes. To me the pen.

=A. Judson Hanna=: I certainly would lose ideas because my imagination travels faster than my means of recording had I not adopted a plan for nailing down these fugitive ideas. When an advance idea comes to me I break off composition instantly, even in the middle of a sentence, and record the advance idea. Later I run back over the rough draft, pick out the fugitive ideas and insert them where they are most effective. I began by writing with a pen, slowly; discarding the pen for the typewriter, and finally settling down to the use of the pencil on any scrap of paper that is at hand when the thoughts come, writing so swiftly that I have trouble in deciphering my writing if I allow it to become "cold." As my mind works now, I could not use a stenographer. In fact, the mere presence of another person in the room where I am writing disconcerts me and disorganizes my train of thought.

=Joseph Mills Hanson=: My imagination seldom travels faster than my means of recording. I find it easiest to do original writing with a pencil. The next easiest method is with a typewriter.

=E. E. Harriman=: At times my ideas seem to run down a smooth chute at lightning speed and no stenographer or human tongue could keep up with them. I lose some on the way. The machine for me every time.

=Nevil G. Henshaw=: I often lose ideas by not being quick enough to get them down. For first draft I can't go beyond a pen or pencil.

=Joseph Hergesheimer=: Pen.

=Robert Hichens=: No. I write always with a pen and not very fast.

=R. de S. Horn=: Yes; that is one of the most provoking things about writing. The imagination so far outspeeds all methods of recording that I can command.

=Clyde B. Hough=: I am able to express ideas as fast as I can compose them. Dictation to a stenographer is the easiest method in writing for me.

=Emerson Hough=: I never have any ideas to lose. Sometimes I write in longhand, sometimes on the typewriter. I dictated about half of _The Mississippi Bubble_ direct on the machine in my business office. Wrote the rest at home between ten o'clock at night and four in the morning. If you _think_ the medium does not matter, does it?

I don't really see much use in trying to get at these things. Every fellow writes in his own way, or ought to do so. So far as these things helping other writers may be concerned, I really don't think there is much in it. It's a hard enough game, and so far as I can get at it, experience is the only teacher in it that is worth a cuss. Sometimes not even experience is worth that much. Advice is nearly always worth a great deal less.

=A. S. M. Hutchinson=: Not, I think, when I am actually writing.

=Inez Haynes Irwin=: My husband, Will Irwin, believes that difficulty in the mechanical means of expression makes for lucidity and elegance of style. He always uses pen or pencil. I think this is only partly true. I think there are times when it is impossible to get things down with enough speed. I am sure that sometimes I lose ideas and expressions when imagination is flowing free and I can not register its outpouring quickly enough. I can of course get my ideas expressed more quickly when I dictate to a stenographer. There is no doubt in my mind that a story gains _directness_, a certain fluency, fluidity and plasticity--and a quality, which comes from the spoken word alone--in dictation. Perhaps equally it loses in precision and compression. I started writing with a pencil; rejected the pencil for the typewriter; the typewriter for dictation to a stenographer. Now I am writing with the pencil again. Next month, I may revert to the typewriter. In my opinion an ideal way to compose would be to dictate the story first and then rewrite the dictated version with a pencil.

=Will Irwin=: I can not remember ever losing an idea because my means of recording was not fast enough. In writing fiction, and generally in writing journalism, I use a pen or lead pencil. I have a tendency to be diffuse, and a slow and difficult means checks this. I regard the typewriter and dictaphone as the enemies of style.

=Frederick J. Jackson=: My imagination travels fast, but I get a death clutch on my ideas. Typewriter is my favorite: cleaner, more effective copy. Pen next. Pencil too mussy. Stenographers are the bunk. Haven't found one who can take my stuff right.

=Mary Johnston=: There are ideas too swift for our catching--as yet. I prefer a soft, black pencil.

=John Joseph=: Yes, my pencil lies beside the machine and I make a great many notes, otherwise I'd lose many good (?) ideas. The typewriter affords the least check to the imagination.

=Lloyd Kohler=: Yes, I have often lost ideas because my imagination travels faster than my means of recording. A pencil or fountain pen affords the least check. I have never tried the stenographer plan--I'm afraid I'd be a little self-conscious; gun-shy, you know.

=Harold Lamb=: No, when the imagination travels over a bit of ground it is always able to return. As for ideas, a penciled note, a word or so, will bring them back A typewriter gives least check, probably due to habit.

_Tamen shud!_

=Sinclair Lewis=: Rarely. Typewriter.

=Hapsburg Liebe=: My imagination often travels too fast, and then I make notes. I use a pencil for writing names of characters and the situation roughly; the rest I do on a typewriter; _it makes a better, clearer picture for me to see as I go along_.

=Romaine H. Lowdermilk=: I do lose ideas that way. I can get them down better with pencil, for it gives opportunity for quick substitution and marking-out. Still, I do most of the work on a typewriter, as it is more convenient when it comes to revision (double space). I can't always read what I write by hand. My imagination works best at night; criticism in the morning. I do best thinking in hot weather. I don't get up at night to write but have lost good ideas by not doing so. And I hope there's something useful in the foregoing!

=Eugene P. Lyle, Jr.=: Not often--not often enough. Ideas are slow travelers. I wish they could keep up with my fingers on the typewriter. Typewriter affords the least check, or about the same as a pencil.

=Rose Macaulay=: Yes. Waterman's safety fountain pen.

=Crittenden Marriott=: Pen and stenographer about the same.

=Homer I. McEldowney=: I have a skeleton of my entire story. It is simply scribbled in a hurry and I keep the pen moving fast enough to prevent the ideas from getting away before I can rope and hog-tie them.

=Ray McGillivray=: Stenographer. Often she interjects ideas into the scripts I never even imagined. Still, she's not bad, though a letter like this would burn out her bearings.

=Helen Topping Miller=: My stories are usually fairly complete in my mind before I begin to write them. Usually the first thousand words are so completely formulated that I could recite them before I put a line on paper. No matter what I am doing--traveling, teaching, going about my domestic tasks, I am "making up" stories "in my head," as the children say. I write on a typewriter, usually, though I am able to work as rapidly with a fountain pen on rough paper. I can not use a pencil.

=Thomas Samson Miller=: I use pen, and sometimes an idea slips in memory, but nothing of great importance, and if it is best work--work done over and over--the idea is picked up again.

=Anne Shannon Monroe=: Yes, I am never able to keep up with my ideas; often I have to stop typing and make a note on a scrap of paper, of something on ahead, fearful lest I forget it when I come up with it. I use a typewriter altogether.

=L. M. Montgomery=: I don't think many ideas ever get away from me by reason of slowness of recording. My aforesaid note-book habit has been of tremendous value here. I write with a pen and couldn't write with anything else--at least, as far as prose is concerned. When I write verse I always write on an ordinary school slate, because of the facilities for easy erasure. But for prose I want a Waverly pen--this is not an advertisement--I just can't write with any other! a smooth unlined paper and a portfolio I can hold on my knee. Then I can sail straight ahead and keep up with any ideas that present themselves. But these are only personal idiosyncrasies and have nothing to do with a writer's success or non-success. So no aspiring beginner need despair because his or her stationer is not stocked up with Waverly pens!

=Frederick Moore=: I sometimes lose ideas because my imagination travels too fast. It may be that those ideas are like the fish that got away--not so big. But just the right angle on a situation will sometimes slip away and won't come back for days. Then it is not wise to chase it too hard, for it seems to get out of reach entirely if pressed too close. It frequently comes back under the queerest circumstances and when least expected. The writer works all the time--at the theater, walking, and sometimes when talking with another person on other subjects. My own hands on the typewriter beat everything in the way of creating. I have tried all others. The other person, in dictating, seems to act as a barrier with me. I find myself watching the effect of what I dictate on that person, or the secretary makes faces or looks bored, or makes a noise when he breathes, or looks at me. So I have to do it myself to avoid assault and battery. And I won't allow machine copying, for I find that if I copy myself, I change the turn of a sentence or add to something that makes an improvement. And a stretch of writing is more exhausting than a similar period at the hardest of labor. Only the writer knows what a sapping, wearing job writing a story happens to be. That is what makes 'em so cranky.

=Talbot Mundy=: The typewriter seems best, but I am going to try a dictaphone by way of experiment. As regards the losing of ideas, "when found make a note of" is probably the remedy. Then the only difficulty is to force yourself to consult your note-book and, having consulted it, to link up again the hurriedly made note with the wonderful winged idea that inspired it.

The only stuff really worth writing is poetry, although I'd hate to have to read nothing else! The stuff I enjoy reading most of all is philosophy and metaphysics. Next after which, good books of travel and treatises on finance and bee-keeping hold the board.

I believe that the apex of exquisite enjoyment is, for instance, reading Kant or John Wesley and shooting their arguments all to pieces. But I can't afford to enjoy myself.

=Kathleen Norris=: To "lose ideas" seems to me to imply an untidy sort of brain. The imagination needed for a story should not be a spasmodic, incoherent, impulsive sort of business, but an orderly production. A person who would lose ideas would also lose her purse, her friends, her petticoat, and eventually, I should suppose, her mind.

=Anne O'Hagan=: I think I'll answer this the other way around, naming the things that oppose the _most_ check in their order--pen, stenographer, typewriter, pencil.

=Grant Overton=: I always compose on the typewriter. I should lose ideas if I had to write by hand, but I generally sit down to a day's work of possibly three concentrated hours with only a vague idea of what I shall write about. I may know a sentence or two. I let it build itself up from moment to moment. All the ideas and most of the pictures grow out of the moment before.

=Sir Gilbert Parker=: I could not dictate a word, and I never used a typewriter. All I do is written by hand with a pen.

=Hugh Pendexter=: Often. But they usually come back to me without any conscious effort to reclaim them. The typewriter is my best medium for setting down the story. I never use pen, pencil, or dictate. But there is no medium ever invented that can keep up with a man's imagination and preserve all the coloring and minutiæ of effects.

=Clay Perry=: I used to lose ideas because of being unable to get them on paper fast enough, but since I educated my two forefingers to the hunt and touch system on the typewriter that happens very seldom. Having done practically all my fiction work for the past five years on a "mill" and never through dictation, I can not say whether dictation would help more. A pen or pencil would "cramp my style" very badly, now. I've synchronized my mind to the "mill." However, I believe this is purely an artificial, mechanical condition which could be worked out, one way or another, in necessity.

=Michael J. Phillips=: Newspaper training has disciplined my mind so I lose nothing through failure of speed to transcribe. It is all right for some, but I would be afraid of a yarn that forced me to such speed. The thing would be impossible when I had finished it. Usually use typewriter and copy all of my own short manuscripts, having longer ones copied by stenographer. The newspaper game has taught me to dictate either over the phone or to stenographer; to typewrite; and to write with pencil with equal freedom. I wouldn't care for a pen. Under the circumstances, the typewriter is the most practicable, so I use it almost exclusively.

=Walter B. Pitkin=: I lose much through inability to record fast enough. I work best when typing myself; next best with a pen or pencil. I am totally unable to dictate anything but the deadest form-letter stuff to even the most sympathetic stenog! I have two utterly distinct styles and manners, one when writing freely and one when talking to a secretary or stenog. The latter is simply awful.

=E. S. Pladwell=: No. My imagination travels fast but I do not lose ideas because of it. Out of a hundred ideas, five are good. Those five, if good, need not be forgotten. It works out automatically. I remember a good idea. The rest can go hang.

Being a newspaper man, I use the typewriter constantly and now I can not write longhand without a cramp in two minutes.

=Lucia Mead Priest=: Sometimes my thoughts get ahead of me. If they are not nailed down they are likely never to come again.

I can keep up fairly well--if I do not have to _decipher_ the _next day_, I am safe.

I do not use the typewriter for several reasons. Mechanical things are irksome; I am lazy.

I use a pencil and a stenographer does the rest.

=Eugene Manlove Rhodes=: Yes. Pencil.

=Frank C. Robertson=: I find it pays to turn the imagination loose until the story is well outlined in the mind before touching paper. Then it is comparatively easy to concentrate upon the immediate problem before you when you sit down to write. I compose only on the typewriter.

=Ruth Sawyer=: Yes. I prefer typewriter. And when the material is definitely clear and fresh in my mind I prefer dictating.

=Chester L. Saxby=: Pen or pencil is a greater drag on me than a typewriter is. Due to habit, no doubt. I have never dictated. Oh, yes, ideas crowd on at times; but with a pencil I should find the crowding rushed my writing into chicken-tracks I couldn't read afterward. The very fact that typewriting holds me back I regard as an advantage; the first impulse must too frequently be rejected. Literature should be cooked up in hot blood--and then written _cold_.

=Barry Scobee=: I would lose ideas because my imagination travels faster than my typewriter, but I jot down points for my story, even pages ahead, as I go along and they come to mind. Typewriter affords least check for me. Never tried a story with any other tool.

=R. T. M. Scott=: I lose a few ideas because my imagination travels faster than my means of recording but I usually pick up others, equally good, which I would have missed had my recording kept pace with my thoughts. The typewriter affords me the least check, but I believe that to be a matter of habit. One thing about a typewriter is that you get a better look at your stuff as it goes down.

=Robert Simpson=: I don't lose many ideas owing to a rapid fire imagination. I haven't got one. Frequently it goes wandering off into bypaths, but the only thing I lose then is time. Everything I write is first written and revised in pen and ink. I detest a typewriter.

=Arthur D. Howden Smith=: No. Typewriter.

=Theodore Seixas Solomons=: I seldom lose ideas in that way. From my answer to II you will see that even if I happen to think faster than I can write, if the thought is a useful one it automatically attaches itself to my memory. As to the mechanism of writing, I am only now abandoning the pen and using, for almost all composition, the typewriter. But for the greater legibility and the quickness, when quickness is needed, of the machine, I should continue with the pen, for with me it is most conducive to careful first expression. I write with widely separated lines--about twice the usual spacing, or even three times. This, either with the pen or on the machine. My purpose is to avoid the necessity of making a new draft on new paper when I come to revise. I now use but the one manuscript draft, making all my changes on that. Occasionally I am obliged to prepare some new sheets, but ninety-five per cent. or more of the original sheets are retained. If I happen to be in my stride, or, what is more likely, if the matter happens to be easy to write, a page or two may escape with little correction. Again, I may line and interline, but I have the space and by using a fine script, which comes easy to me, I am able to make great changes and additions while retaining the original page.

The advantages of this will be manifest when one considers the value of having before one constantly, in his revisings, all his past thought and expression. Here, in my way of working, I have before me always the complete history of the fashioning of the thought--the sentence or paragraph. Often I later resume the original form, having found, by the lapse of time, that the improvement I sought and fancied I had achieved involved some objection greater than that I strove to remedy. This and many other advantages of this method would be impossible if a completely new copy were made, for one would never think to go back to the old, and if he did it would be difficult and cumbersome. Incidentally, it is a time-saver. When my first draft is a typed one I revise with the pen on the same sheets.

=Raymond S. Spears=: I can keep up with my typewriter, when writing stories. If my mind jumps ahead too fast, I make a pencil note to recall the look into the future of the story.

=Norman Springer=: The mind always runs ahead of the work. It plays around the sides of the story, so to speak. But I don't think there is any loss. If an idea isn't used, it sinks back into the mind and some day it pops up again.

I compose on a typewriter. It is a plodding business. But fast enough, for I find myself pausing only too often.

This query brings up another item. It is the difference between _thinking_ a story and writing it. And I find that this too is a common experience among writers I know.

Thinking up the story is fine work, pleasant and exhilarating. When you have your materials and your characters you think out the yarn from beginning to end. Everything seems crystal clear, every detail in its proper place, every difficulty solved. It appears to you to be a very good story indeed and ridiculously easy to write.

You begin to write, and alas, the story that seemed so clear in your mind turns out to have been not clear at all, but nebulous. As you thought it, it was beautiful; as you write it, it is a mess. No matter how hard you try, you can never get down upon paper the wonderful story you _thought_. The best you achieve is a caricature.

Another common experience is what I call "bumping into the stone wall." There comes a time in every story, usually toward its end, when you get stumped. By this time, anyway, you are usually pretty well disgusted with the tale. It is so inferior to what you planned, so different from the fine story you saw when you thought it out. Your mind is also eager to be at new work. So you bump into the stone wall.

This wall is usually some little hitherto unconsidered detail that suddenly assumes huge proportions. It seems to have wrecked your story. There is nothing to do then but plug, and pretty soon the difficulty is surmounted.

I mention this because I've noticed that the "stone wall" is the place where the new writer is apt to throw up the sponge.

=Julian Street=: I have that tendency but have trained myself to catch the ideas as they come by. The fancies that come when one is writing I have often called "butterflies of thought." One must be ready always with the net and _get_ them before they fly out of the window again.

=T. S. Stribling=: I never lose my ideas if I catch any. Anything will do except a stenographer; I can't bear to have another person in the room while I work; they disturb me just as much sitting silent and motionless as if they were raising bedlam.

=Booth Tarkington=: Sometimes. The pencil is best for me.

=W. C. Tuttle=: I have never dictated any copy. I am not fast on a typewriter--using only two fingers and profanity--but I am never more than two chapters behind my imagination. Seriously, I never know what the next paragraph is going to contain.

=Lucille Van Slyke=: I'd like to kid myself along by thinking I lose heaps of ideas that way, but common sense tells me they aren't very impressive or I wouldn't lose them. Typewriter. Except at those heavenly, rare--awfully rare--moments when I get a faint inkling (no pun intended!) of how it must feel to be an inspired writer instead of a bungling, struggling tortoise of a scribbler who is handicapped by being a trifle softheaded and by having to carry a beloved house around on her back as she crawls. At those times I like a big fat pencil, a whole box of big fat pencils.

=Atreus von Schrader=: No. Typewriter.

=T. Von Ziekursch=: Find the typewriter most satisfactory. Occasionally have stopped to jot down a note on some touch that I know I wanted to add later in the story and might forget in the fever of the story.

=Henry Kitchell Webster=: I don't think I ever lost an idea because my imagination had outrun the means of recording. I sometimes dictate, sometimes write on the typewriter; I think the difference is unimportant.

=G. A. Wells=: My imagination would move miles ahead of my writing instrument if I let it. I therefore adjust the tempo of my imagination to keep pace with the recording instrument. I think the use of a recording instrument depends upon the mood. I have trouble using a typewriter in artificial light. Can not use a pen during the day with the same facility as at night. I detest a pencil and very seldom use one. My mind is more free with a pen than with a machine, though most of my writing is done altogether on the machine.

=William Wells=: No, because I can call them back. Typewriter; can't dictate, get all balled up; maybe lack of practise.

=Ben Ames Williams=: I use a typewriter and find it satisfactory; to use pen or pencil for more than a few minutes tires me, physically, and my handwriting becomes entirely illegible.

=Honore Willsie=: Sometimes. Soft pencil.

=H. C. Witwer=: I have lost many ideas, plots, titles, bits of dialogue, etc., because my imagination has traveled faster than the means of recording it. It has not always been convenient to make notes. For example, I might be working on a story and later be at a theater or almost anywhere, and an idea for a funny or dramatic scene in this particular yarn will strike me. By the time I get back to my story, intervening events may have driven the idea entirely out of my mind. Yet weeks afterward it will crop up again most unexpectedly, apropos of nothing at all, and I'll think, "Darn it, I should have used that in such and such a story!"

I find the typewriter affords least check and work on it exclusively.

=William Almon Wolff=: I can keep up with my imagination when I use a typewriter; I can't with pen or pencil. I can't dictate at all. That is, I suppose, a matter of habit and custom.

=Edgar Young=: Write directly on a typewriter by touch system and rewrite from another person's reading where I catch many inconsistencies and change them as I write. I consider composing on a typewriter a very poor method and wish I had always used a pencil, marking out swiftly when the wrong word or sentence was put down. This letter is a fair sample of what I compose at a first draft.

SUMMARY

Total answering, 111. Losing ideas through too slow means of recording, 43; 10 of these prevent a final loss by making notes. Not losing, 55.

In tabulating the means of recording affording least check or preferred for general reasons, in several instances where a writer habitually still uses more than one, a score has been given for each. The heavy predominance of the typewriter was rather surprising to the tabulator, as was also the greater use of pencil than of pen. Typewriter 63; pencil 24; pen 23 (4 of these specified fountain pen and 1 a goose quill); longhand (neither pen nor pencil specified) 1; dictation to stenographer 9; any 1; any but stenographer 1. No dictaphone except 1 prospect.

This tabulation, like all others in this book, though carefully made, can not be exact, some answers not lending themselves to definite or even entirely satisfactory tabulation. This is of little moment, since in all cases the only purpose to be served is that of ascertaining general tendencies and drawing general comparisons.

THE END

Transcriber Notes:

Passages in italics were indicated by _underscores_.

Passages in bold were indicated by =equal signs=.

Small caps were replaced with ALL CAPS.

Errors in punctuations, inconsistent hyphenation, and inconsistent were italics were not corrected unless otherwise noted.

On page 7, "etc?" was replaced with "etc.?".

On page 25, "propellor" was replaced with "propeller".

On page 31, "told it me all wrong" was replaced with "told it to me all wrong".

On page 35, the period after R. T. M. Scott was replaced with a colon.

On page 78, "1 receive these" was replaced with "I receive these".

On page 81, "whether logical or no" was replaced with "whether logical or not".

On page 96, "It's aim," was replaced with "Its aim,".

On page 119, "that is too minute.." was replaced with "that is too minute.".

On page 121, "Mary Stuart Cutting" was replaced with "Mary Stewart Cutting".

On page 124, "subconciously" was replaced with "subconsciously".

On page 127, "Dicken's" was replaced with "Dickens'".

On page 138, a period was put after "(hope I'm not getting atrophied!)".

On page 154, a period was put after "it is a terrible arraignment to numbers".

On page 165, a period was put after "Otherwise I think there is little if any difference".

On page 193, a period was put after "I had been reading (by somebody else!)".

On page 198, "as I want them too" was replaced with "as I want them too".

On page 207, "Imagaination" was replaced with "Imagination".

On page 288, "Mauspassant" was replaced with "Maupassant".

On page 309, "Gilbert Chesterson" was replaced with "Gilbert Chesterton".

On page 327, "Anna O'Hagan" was replaced with "Anne O'Hagan".

On page 328, "attention to style, If by that" was replaced with "attention to style, if by that".

On page 342, "begining" was replaced with "beginning".

On page 347, "a a" was replaced with "a".

On page 365, "corrall" was replaced with "corral".

On page 390, "CHAPTER XI" was replaced with "QUESTION XI".

On page 400, "Colliers'" was replaced with "Collins's".

On page 409, "Paul K. Anderson" was replaced with "Paul L. Anderson".

On page 415, the period after Holworthy Hall was replaced with a colon.

On page 422, "Ann O'Hagan" was replaced with "Anne O'Hagan".

On page 415, the period after E. S. Pladwell was replaced with a colon.

End of Project Gutenberg's Fiction Writers on Fiction Writing, by Various