W. Somerset Maugham on writing excellent fiction

    Somerset Maugham tells what most of us know, but it is refreshing to hear him say it:

One fusses about style. One tries to write better. One takes pains to be simple, clear and succinct. One aims at rhythm and balance. One reads a sentence aloud to see that it sounds well. One sweats one’s guts out. The fact remains that the four greatest novelists the world has known, Balzac, Dickens, Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, wrote their respective languages very indifferently. It proves that if you can tell stories, create character, devise incidents, and if you have sincerity and passion, it doesn’t matter a damn how you write. All the same it’s better to write well than ill. (From page 321 of A Writer’s Notebook, by W. Somerset Maugham. 1977. Arno Press.)

    For a brief biography of W. Somerset Maugham, click here.

Comments

[Michael Jablonski]

Read anything by Jules Verne to see more examples of good stories. Verne's writing is simple and makes for easy reading. Everyone remembers his stories, not his writing style.