I have been searching for this quote by the great Truman Capote, which I heard him utter in a short documentary by the Maysles Brothers called ‘With Love From Truman.’ In the documentary he compared finding the true, natural shape of a story to the way in which an apple is the perfect shape for the ‘job’ it does. I couldn’t find the exact quote, but he says something very similar in an interview in The Paris Review (among other wonderful insights into the craft of writing), which I excerpt below:
INTERVIEWER: How does one arrive at short-story technique?
CAPOTE: Since each story presents its own technical problems, obviously one can’t generalize about them on a two-times-two-equals-four basis. Finding the right form for your story is simply to realize the most natural way of telling the story. The test of whether or not a writer has divined the natural shape of his story is just this: after reading it, can you imagine it differently, or does it silence your imagination and seem to you absolute and final? As an orange is final. As an orange is something nature has made just right.
INTERVIEWER: Are there devices one can use in improving one’s technique?
CAPOTE: Work is the only device I know of. Writing has laws of perspective, of light and shade, just as painting does, or music. If you are born knowing them, fine. If not, learn them. Then rearrange the rules to suit yourself. Even Joyce, our most extreme disregarder, was a superb craftsman; he could write Ulysses because he could write Dubliners.
