How the writer can convert his own life and curiosity into stories. An interview with L. Ron Hubbard
by R. Walton Willems.
L. Ron Hubbard grinned when I asked him for a few secrets of his writing success. “No secrets, I’m afraid.” He waved a hand, as though to say that everything was open and, on the whole, not too difficult. “I believe the writer must be in debt to Life, that his plots must come from curiosity of his own making and that the most important thing in writing a story is to write the story.”
The last item seemed the easiest to start with, so I asked Mr. Hubbard if the advice were really as obvious in meaning as it sounded.
“Almost,” he admitted, “though I think I mean it with a harder punch than is usually the case. If you want to write a story—write it! The more time spent in planning it, thinking it over, the longer it is likely to be before the story gets written. In spite of this, many writers tell themselves that the final draft will come sooner if they put thinking time in first. Thinking time is too often stalling time. The quicker the story is down in first draft the better. Then planning, if still needed, can be done—working now with something concrete, something that can be handled and headed toward the final draft. Write while the idea’s hot, while the desire to do that story is still there to help you with the story. The planning can come in then, and it will be planning without stalling.”
I asked Mr. Hubbard if this would not lead to a writer doing, in the long run, more work on revisions than would be required if the story were carefully planned.
“At first, it might. Though here I think the extra work—if there were any—would be small compared to the advantage of getting the story started. Later on, though, with a lot of writing behind him, the writer will find that the story idea becomes almost self-planning as the first draft is written. The actual writing of the first draft will be done by an author who has conditioned himself to think as he writes. As time goes on he will find that the first draft is ever closer to what the final draft should be. Eventually he should be able to make that first and final draft, which is also the story-planning draft, all the same thing.”
Then I remembered something I had heard about L. Ron Hubbard: How magazine editors had, at times, sent messengers to him with a cover painting of a forthcoming issue. The messenger would wait while Hubbard looked at the painting, then wrote a story to suit the illustration, and the messenger would return to the editor with painting and story ready to go to the printer. I asked Hubbard about this. He shrugged it off as not being a true part of the real business of writing.
“Though situations like that do come up, and the writer should be prepared to meet them. They present a challenge, of course, and the writer has a chance to come through with a yarn that will make the reader feel that, for once, the artist read the same story the reader did before making the illustration. However, work in that category is minor, although it always helps the writer’s future to be able to help an editor out of a jam. Situations might, one day, be reversed.
“I think the writer’s best story ideas and plots are ones developed in his own mind as a result of his mental prying into something that strikes his fancy.
“A method I think is good is for the writer to imagine an impossible situation, then work from there. The final story plot need have no connection with the situation you started with, and all characters and ideas in the original situation might be left out of the final story entirely. But the incident has served its purpose of getting the mind thinking in story terms, asking questions that lead to a story.”
“For instance?” I asked.
Mr. Hubbard smiled, came back with a question of his own. “What kind of a story?”
“Love story,” I said. “With an airplane.”
“Airplane. Pilot. Something unlikely: Goldfish. A pilot who always takes a bowl of goldfish in his plane with him. Ask yourself what that has to do with the girl, what that means to him. Where does he stand with the girl, how does the future look. What has happened. What is about to happen … The story’s under way—the goldfish could be made to stay in, but for the usual story they would be dropped about this time, something more plausible submitted. The unusual situation there to start with should be considered as strictly a springboard. Don’t try to hold on to it after the story starts taking hold on its own.”
I asked why something unusual was used.
“Merely to get the writer interested, asking himself questions, thinking along story lines. In the actual story opening the writer is going to try to get the reader curious, make him want to read the story. Same idea for the writer—he’s got to hook himself into the story or there never will be a story. If the finished story idea has a place for the unusual situation that started the writer thinking, leave it in there, let it be used to hook the reader. But don’t try to force it in where it no longer belongs. If, as the story grows, it wants to outgrow its creative situation, let it.”
“That’s two of your nonsecrets, Mr. Hubbard. How about the idea of being in debt to Life?”
“That means living and learning. It means doing all you can, studying all you can, learning all you can. It means—borrowing from the Bank of the World in ideas and knowledge and experience. Recognize this as a debt to the people around you—a debt the writer must pay back with his writing. It isn’t a hard debt to pay, for the repayment will be made easy by borrowing—the greater the borrowing, the greater the ease with which payments can be made. The writer who has drawn much from the world will find that his mind is filled with material that can be used to make the payments. The more the writer throws himself into debt, the more he will have with which to repay.”
I asked Mr. Hubbard to summarize the points he had touched on in our talk. He ticked them off on his fingers.
“The writer should make his own background for his writing, a background built of his own living and learning. Story ideas should grow from an appeal to his own curiosity. He should write the story while the idea is burning in his mind.”
“That’s all there is to it?”
Hubbard grinned warily. “Well, at least those are three steps in the right direction.”