Ngaio Marsh Talks On Detective Novels

Press, Volume XCVI, Issue 28346, 3 August 1957, Page 2

Ngaio Marsh Talks On Detective Novels

“Strange views are held about professional writing—scarcely a month goes past without some instance being given, either in correspondence or over the telephone, of. the attitude of certain people towards the author 'who earns his or her own living by writing books and having them published,” said Miss Ngaio Marsh in an address to the literary circle of the Canterbury Women’s Club yesterday. “A few weeks ago I received a telephone call from a lady who said she proposed to write a book and she wanted some tips. I asked her what sort of book, and she replied what would I suggest?” said Miss Marsh.

“I then asked her what she had read, and she replied she didn’t read. I then thought it was a friend of mine having a practical joke, so I asked her if she was pulling my leg and she answered with a very indigant ‘No,’ and that she felt she didn’t need to read. The conversation at this point became a little confused and ended without any marked display of cordiality on either side,” Miss Marsh said. “Then there are the ones who send uninvited, and without stamped and addressed envelopes for return, long works of fiction upon which they would like to receive ‘as soon as possible’ a detailed report and analysis accomPcfnied by full instructions about •how to get it printed’ and a recommendation to a good publisher,” said Miss Marsh. “There are also the ones, who while despising detective fiction as a bastard of the minor arts, say that they wouldn’t mind polishing one off as a potboiler while- they -sa**e their serious-at-tention for the developmen 4 of a serious work. Of course it will be published under a non-de-plume. They will be glad to hear ‘as soon as possible’ how this may be done. The Collaborators

“Then there are the collaborators. My prize would-be collaborator wrote to me on the back of a 5s postal note saying that in order to obtain this plot all I had to do was to insert an advertisement in a North Island provincial newspaper saying simply, ‘Yes.’ I lost the postal note, and to this day, I suppose, he thinks I pinched it.” Miss Marsh said.

Of course, they were not all as fantastic as these, said Miss Marsh, but she thought that it would be true to say that out of what must now have been scores of such approaches, only one came

within the remote possibility of publication, and that was a charming story by a North Canterbury girl of about 12 on farmyard animals. When she had been asked to give the talk it had been suggested that the title be “How to Write Detective Fiction,” said Miss Marsh. This had reminded her of the correspondence schools whose advertisements purported to teach their customers how to write and make large sums. “I often wonder why the proprietors don’t make the fortunes for themselves by writing their own highly valuable pieces for the top-paying magazines and publishers and thus saving themselves the trouble of passing on their ‘mystique’ to the uninstructed. The truth is that nobody can tell anybody else how to write. The nearest they can get to it is to try to tell them how not to write,” sair' Miss Marsh. “There are certain questions one is asked repeatedly. ‘How do you begin?’ is perhaps the commonest. The answer is that no two writers begin in the same way. Some writers of detective fiction start off, no doubt, with the bones of a plot and go on to clothe these bones in the flesh of appropriate personalities. Others—of whom I am one—begin with people—with a conflict of situation or character.

“Since we are writers of detective fiction, we then have to involve these characters in a crime of violence so that the plot, in this case, arises out of character In the former method the character is tailored to suit the mechanics of the plot. “I would imagine that Marjorie Allingham, Michael Innes, and Dorothy Sayers belong to the character-first group, and Agatha Christie, Freeman Wills Crofts, and possibly Nicholas Blake (Cecil Day Lewis) to the plot-first group. “But however one begins these books, there are no two ways about how to carry on and finish them,” Miss Marsh said. “There must be equally firmly established both plot and character. The writer must make himself fully acquainted with any technical complications that may arise, and he must be perfectly certain that the facts are 100 per cent, accurate. And beyond all these operative details he must write with the best style that he has at his command.” Readers The readers of detective books were predominantly professional men—lawyers, doctors, soldiers, clergymen, politicians, and even policemen, said Miss Marsh. She did not know why policemen were interested in these books, but perhaps it was because they encountered situations they never experienced in rea} life. The simplest crime of violence immediately developed unexpected complexities, and if the writer made a mistake he could be sure he would hear about it in no time from an angry reader. If a person got an idea for a novel, Miss Marsh advised against talking about because if the ideas were repeated a number of times they had the habit of evaporating. Speaking of how to get work published, Miss Marsh said if the writing was up to a certain standard there were publishers all over the world looking for things to publish. Of course, the work had to be sent to an appropriate publisher.