John Braine

The best way to put it is this: If the reader is dissatisfied, if he hasn’t been told about something he wanted to be told about, if the narrative has causaed him to ask a question which hasn’t been answered, then this is due to a deficiency in craftsmanship-or rather, as I have said, simpl;y to laziness. And I’m somehow sure that the writer is always aware when he’s been guilty of this offence. His instincts, if he really is a novelist, tell him that he should write the scene in question; but such scenes always present a problem… the problem is how to make them readable, how to keep the impact of the story.