The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Technique of Fiction Writing, by
Robert Saunders Dowst

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Title: The Technique of Fiction Writing

Author: Robert Saunders Dowst

Release Date: April 22, 2010 [EBook #32092]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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THE TECHNIQUE OF FICTION WRITING

"The one excuse and breath of art--charm."--_Stevenson._

The Technique of
Fiction Writing

By
ROBERT SAUNDERS DOWST

JAMES KNAPP REEVE
PUBLISHER
FRANKLIN, OHIO

Copyright, 1918
The Editor Company

Copyright, 1921
James Knapp Reeve

_TO
C. K. R. D._

PREFACE

Many books have been written on fiction technique, and the chief excuse
for the present addition to the number is the complexity of the subject.
Its range is so wide, it calls for so many and so different capacities
in one attempting to discuss it, that a new work has more than a chance
to meet at least two or three deficiencies in all other treatments.

I believe that the chief deficiency in most works on fiction technique
is that the author unconsciously has slipped from the viewpoint of a
writer of a story to that of a reader. Now a reader without intention to
try his own hand at the game is not playing fair in studying technique,
and a book on technique has no business to entertain him. Accordingly, I
have striven to keep to the viewpoint of one who seeks to learn how to
write stories, and have made no attempt to analyze the work of masters
of fiction for the sake of the analysis alone. Such analysis is
interesting to make, and also interesting to read, but it is not
directly profitable to the writer. It is indirectly profitable, of
course, but it will give very little direct aid to one who has a
definite story idea and wishes to be told the things he must consider in
developing it and writing the story, or to one who wishes to be told