Publisher's Synopsis
From the FOREWORD.
A famous actress, long since dead, once remarked with bitterness: "In my day all that was necessary to produce a play were two boards and a passion; today all that is necessary are two sticks and a wardrobe." In adapting this statement to the writing art I am tempted to paraphrase it as follows: In the good old days all that one needed to become a writer was an idea and a dozen goose quills; today all that one needs is a dozen rhetorics and a blue pencil.
This book was written with an eye on the student, not on the rules of composition and rhetoric. It conceives of the student as a creature who loves to use his eyes and ears, and who takes delight in playing the amateur detective and in ravelling and unravelling plots. It assumes that a young man or a young woman is filled to overflowing with warm, living interests and desires and aspirations which, taken together, constitute a greater driving force toward success in writing than anything which the textbooks and teachers can give him. By taking advantage of these natural desires and instincts and not working against them it is believed that the teacher may best "draw out" the student to the fullest self-expression.
One of these deep-seated instincts of the student is to see things in the concrete. For that reason the method of presenting exercises commonly used in this book is the so-called "projective method." Instead of being asked to describe a city street, the student is asked to read a sentence that helps him to visualize a street and then to write down what he sees.
Another deep-seated instinct of a boy is to "get somewhere." Much as we may decry this by-product of the American worship of efficiency, we must accept it as a fact, whether or not we ignore it in theory. The American boy hates to mark time. For that reason he gives the best of himself in supporting his football team which is fighting its way toward a very definite and materially visible goal, and withholds all but the minimum amount of himself from the mastering of Latin conjugations where the goal is shrouded in mists of "sweetness and light." For the same reason the average boy hates the thought of writing "themes" where the only relation of one to the other is as the relation of the chapters on Unity, Coherence and Mass in his textbook are one to the other, and where the final result is the blue pencil or the wastebasket....
