Sima can accept the scholasticist position that writing a novel is not the same as storytelling, and that the author must pay close attention to structure and form. Nevertheless, he still maintains that “ the actual form must be determined by the content of the story, ” so he does not go along with the idea that the storytelling method is passé.
司馬中原能認同學院派的說法，寫小說不等於說故事，必須注重結構和形式，「但真正的形式必須根據內容來決定。」