Chandler on Writing Fiction

When I started out to write fiction I had the great disadvantage of having absolutely no talent for it. I couldn't get characters in and out of rooms. They lost their hats and so did I. If more than two people were in a scene I couldn't keep one of them alive. This feeling is still with me, of course, to some extent. Give me two people snotting each other across a desk and I am happy. A crowded canvas just bewilders me.

Raymond Chandler

I've always loved Chandler's description of his sense of his own writing. My favourite is the line about everyone losing track of the hats. When I write fiction, I have similar trouble--I'll get most of the way through a scene before I ask myself Where is everybody? My characters tend to have long conversations in unspecified voids.