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Fanomena, March 1948
Page 9
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THE ART OF WRITING DAVID H. KELLER If a young man asked me for advice concerning writing as a career, I would answer him in a very few words, "DON'T allow yourself to start writing!" That would be very good advice, and might save him many weary hours of work in the remaining years of his life. If he does not start, he will not continue; it is like refusing to take the first dose of opium, drink the first glass of brandy. For writing, once begun can become a habit and the writer simply becomes an accident, slave to the typewriter, a vagabond hunting continually the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. However, if the young man refuses to take my advice, then it might be worth while for him to learn somewhat of the pathway he should follow to make even a moderate success as a writer. First he should acquire an excellent vocabulary and working knowledge of grammar. He cannot secure these from a dictionary and a text book on sentence construction. The best source is reading the masterpieces of literature, and of these, he should select those which have stood the test of time. Not all good books are old books, but if a book was first written a hundred, three hundred, sixty hundred years ago and is still being printed in new editions and still read with interest, then that book has the essence of immortality- which permeates only fine literature, and is worth study. Having read extensively, it is next necessary to learn the art of expression. It seems that this can only be obtained by long hours of practice. Take some single, very simple idea, such as: "The cat six patiently by the mouse hole knowing that by waiting long enough she will obtain a meal." Blow that idea up to five hundred words; then write and rewrite it, taking out all unnecessary words, substituting short words for long words, substituting periods for words like "and" and "but". After being satisfied with the final results, read it out loud. If it does not read smoothly, connectedly, with the singing of poetry in it, then rewrite it. Finally there remains one story about a cat. Now the beginner has learned to write one paragraph. A story, a novel, is simply a number of connected paragraphs; and if the beginner has learned to write a perfect paragraph he can, perhaps, learn to write a perfect story. The next problem is to develop an individual style. The fault with schools of literature is that they to train the student to imitate the style of great writers. If the student copies style he simply becomes a fifth rate O. Henry or a ludicrous de Maupassant. His only salvation is to gain a medium of expression which will mark his writing and make it highly personalized. How this is accomplished is difficult to put into words, but it is an objective that simply has to be attained if the beginning writer ever hopes to gain even a modicum of fame. Now comes the NEW IDEA for a story or novel. To find such a new idea is one of the most difficult tasks of writing. Some writers only have one idea in their entire career. Horatio Alger had one: THE POOR BOY COMES TO THE CITY AND BECOMES RICH. He wrote for over thirty years and never found another plot. Some science fiction writers show the same lack of ideas, and use the same plot over and over with very little change. Eventually, in some mysterious manner, a writer finds a new idea. Now comes the problem of how to tell it. Often a careful analysis will show that the story can be written in five or six different ways. Take the cat and mouse sentence and make a story out of it. Here are some of the different modes of telling it: 1. Told by a cat in first person. 9
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THE ART OF WRITING DAVID H. KELLER If a young man asked me for advice concerning writing as a career, I would answer him in a very few words, "DON'T allow yourself to start writing!" That would be very good advice, and might save him many weary hours of work in the remaining years of his life. If he does not start, he will not continue; it is like refusing to take the first dose of opium, drink the first glass of brandy. For writing, once begun can become a habit and the writer simply becomes an accident, slave to the typewriter, a vagabond hunting continually the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. However, if the young man refuses to take my advice, then it might be worth while for him to learn somewhat of the pathway he should follow to make even a moderate success as a writer. First he should acquire an excellent vocabulary and working knowledge of grammar. He cannot secure these from a dictionary and a text book on sentence construction. The best source is reading the masterpieces of literature, and of these, he should select those which have stood the test of time. Not all good books are old books, but if a book was first written a hundred, three hundred, sixty hundred years ago and is still being printed in new editions and still read with interest, then that book has the essence of immortality- which permeates only fine literature, and is worth study. Having read extensively, it is next necessary to learn the art of expression. It seems that this can only be obtained by long hours of practice. Take some single, very simple idea, such as: "The cat six patiently by the mouse hole knowing that by waiting long enough she will obtain a meal." Blow that idea up to five hundred words; then write and rewrite it, taking out all unnecessary words, substituting short words for long words, substituting periods for words like "and" and "but". After being satisfied with the final results, read it out loud. If it does not read smoothly, connectedly, with the singing of poetry in it, then rewrite it. Finally there remains one story about a cat. Now the beginner has learned to write one paragraph. A story, a novel, is simply a number of connected paragraphs; and if the beginner has learned to write a perfect paragraph he can, perhaps, learn to write a perfect story. The next problem is to develop an individual style. The fault with schools of literature is that they to train the student to imitate the style of great writers. If the student copies style he simply becomes a fifth rate O. Henry or a ludicrous de Maupassant. His only salvation is to gain a medium of expression which will mark his writing and make it highly personalized. How this is accomplished is difficult to put into words, but it is an objective that simply has to be attained if the beginning writer ever hopes to gain even a modicum of fame. Now comes the NEW IDEA for a story or novel. To find such a new idea is one of the most difficult tasks of writing. Some writers only have one idea in their entire career. Horatio Alger had one: THE POOR BOY COMES TO THE CITY AND BECOMES RICH. He wrote for over thirty years and never found another plot. Some science fiction writers show the same lack of ideas, and use the same plot over and over with very little change. Eventually, in some mysterious manner, a writer finds a new idea. Now comes the problem of how to tell it. Often a careful analysis will show that the story can be written in five or six different ways. Take the cat and mouse sentence and make a story out of it. Here are some of the different modes of telling it: 1. Told by a cat in first person. 9
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