Published in 1965, Dwight V. Swain’s “Techniques of the Selling Writer,” some feel, is a bit outdated. Written before the ubiquitous word processor, Google, and AI gives the book some age; however, after reading the book once and studying through it a second time, I think the book has good information. It is still in print, which speaks about the book’s endurance. The book has information for a freshman writer, like myself, or a senior writer. I’ll be studying through the book again and presenting some of my observations.
Dwight Swain (1915-1992) began his writing career in the 1930s. From publishing short stories, his writing evolved to include mysteries, westerns, and action-adventure stories. He was also a screenwriter.
Swain taught in the Professional Writing Program at the University of Oklahoma, where he oversaw the development of student writers. Students in the program submitted writing assignments. From these submissions, Swain drew many illustrations used to support his points in his nonfiction books about writing, such as Techniques of the Selling Writer, the focus of this discussion.
Writer’s Trap Seven – Bowing to the Objective
The seventh snare for a writer, according to Swain, is to bow down to the objective, by which he means the objectivist, the person who depends on facts, distrust feelings, and tries to write mechanically. The problem with a fact, Swain says, is that it has a record of past performance. A fact is often described as an unvarying characteristic of reality. Facts are all around, and one would be foolhardy to ignore them. A fact: any one who jumps from a wall will be pulled downward by gravity. Obeying the facts of thermodynamics keeps one alive. However, for Swain’s point, “a feeling is about as opposed to a fact as you can get.” (p. 15) Feelings are an internal driving force, varying from incident to incident and time to time. Facts, on the other hand, do not vary. The objectivist holds feelings as suspect. A story for an objectivist, then, becomes an exercise in mechanics.
Objectivism may be appropriate for the scientist evaluating an X-ray, or a carpenter constructing a house; “in a creator, however, such a pattern looms as utter and complete disaster.” (p 16) This is not an argument that the writer should ignore facts. Facts are things taken for granted, “but you don’t worship them.” (p. 16) Again, Swain returns to feeling. Feelings are what drive one forward, “which all is merely another way of saying that the writer is subjective more than objective.” (ibid.) So the picture of a pure objectivist or pure subjectivist is an exaggeration.
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