Telling Tales
In the ten years or so that I have been editing magazines that question “Why I Buy the Stories I Do” has been asked of me dozens and dozens of times, and I am as far as ever from being able to answer it.
Authors and would-be authors are constantly coming and saying: “Mr. Clayton, what kind of stories do you want for your magazine?” and the only answer I can give them is, that I want any good story, providing it is not a sex story, and when they want to pin me down to what constitutes a good story I am utterly lost, and can only say that my idea of a good story is any story that I like.
I presume that every magazine to be successful must be an expression of its editor’s individual taste. In other words, it must have a personality of its own, and that personality can only come from the man who makes it.
Perhaps the point that appeals to me most strongly about a story is the humanness of its characters. They must really live, so that the reader is impressed with their reality. Only thus may he come to feel toward them a friendly spirit which will lead him to take an actual interest in their adventures or misadventures, their love affairs, their successes or failures.
The writing of a story is not, to me, the most important part of it. If the story is there, careful editorial work will smooth out many of the crudities of expression or careless short-comings of its author, but no editing can supply a plot where none exists, nor make human or interesting characters that are obviously mere wooden puppets to their creator.
Of course, the better written a story is, the larger is apt to be the check that is sent in return for it, because naturally, an editor, like the buyer of any commodity, cannot afford to pay as much for raw materials requiring a great deal of work to put them into usable shape, as he can for a finished and perfected article.
To sum up, I would say that before writing a story an author should first have a story to tell, and then be as careful as possible in the telling. The main quality needed after that, if one is to become a successful writer, is, I should say, inexhaustible perseverance.
William M Clayton.
Telling Tales.
114 Bible House,
New York City.