Writing Advice Quotes - Page 2

When it comes to writing, clarity trumps all rules.

Your story must told.Live a life legacy- written book or notes.This will be there for many generations to know your rich experiences and knowledge.

Lailah Gifty Akita

Make time to write every day. The writing muscle is like any other muscle; the more you exercise it, the stronger it becomes.

Judy Penz Sheluk

Modern writing at its worst does not consist in picking out words for the sake of their meaning and inventing images in order to make the meaning clearer. It consists in gumming together long strips of words which have already been set in order by someone else, and making the results presentable by sheer humbug. The attraction of this way of writing is that it is easy. It is easier -- even quicker, once you have the habit -- to say In my opinion it is not an unjustifiable assumption that than to say I think.

George Orwell

You think you have no ‘talent’? Write anyway. lots of people with ‘talent’ don’t actually act on it. As long as you write, you will learn, you will improve, and you will be better than anyone claiming to have ‘talent.

M. Kirin

If the passage absolutely demands cursing, be moderate. A little of it goes a long way. I've seen beginning writers pepper curse words through sentence after sentence.'If you don't -blanking- get your -blanking-blank-blank- in to this house this -blanking- minute, I'm going to -blank- your -blank- and nail it to the -blanking- door.'Two things happen when I read this junk: I get bored and I get angry. I didn't pick up your book to read garbage. If this is as clever as you can be, I don't want to read your prose. In life if you met someone who spoke like this, you'd want to flee. Then why put this stuff on the page?As near as I can determine, this abomination occurs because a writer is corrupted by the awful -blanking- dialog that movies inflict on us these days. It's also a sign of insecurity. The writer wonders if the dialog is strong enough and decides a lot of -blanking-blank- will do the trick.Someone might object that this kind of dialog is realistic in certain situations--intense scenes involving policemen or soldiers for example. I can only reply that in my research I spend considerable time with policemen and soldiers. Few of them curse any more than a normal person would. This garbage isn't realistic. It merely draws attention to itself and holds back the story. Use it sparingly.

David Morrell

Write freely and as rapidly as possible and throw the whole thing on paper. Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down. Rewrite in process is usually found to be an excuse for not going on. It also interferes with flow and rhythm which can only come from a kind of unconscious association with the material…..

John Steinbeck

Trust your instincts. Do not confuse ego with instinct. Ego has to be set aside if you want to improve, and we should always want to improve. There is no glass ceiling on being better.

Catherine Cruzan

If you have a machine with three or four parts, you can shake them up in a box and it's still pretty clear what's there. If you have a machine with 10,000 parts and you shake them up in a box, what you have is a box of junk.

Gene Wolfe

Fiction must convince our bodies for it to have any chance of convincing our minds.

Bonnie Friedman

...a deadline should not prevent you from writing, but writing will help prevent you from missing your deadline. Then write a word. Then remind yourself of that again. And then write another and hey, look at you! You’re spitting in that deadline’s eye.

Courtney Summers

Daily life is always extraordinary when rendered precisely. We can unlock our lives with a pencil tip.

Bonnie Friedman

Plot joined the expedition unwooed, as a necessary companion. It was not the scout. The scout was a certain mood. I followed that mood, and let the shape of the story flow from that.

Bonnie Friedman

We don’t read to observe the character from a distance. We read to become the character and experience the conflicts and rewards they are experiencing.

Darynda Jones

I don’t get writer's block because I don’t believe in it. I believe you sit in front of the computer and force your fingers to get something on the screen.

Janet Evanovich

Let at least one word of my writings impregnate the reader's heart.

Vladimir Nabokov

Use what you stand for and what you oppose as a foundation to write great content that resonates with readers and creates a ripple effect.

Mark Twain

While the goal of a book is to create a positive emotional experience for the reader, the goal of the opening is to set the stage, to pull the reader in.

Darynda Jones

We should be told: Write fast, write close to the bone, write for ten hours straight until you’re not thinking in words anymore, but in colors, in smells, in waves of memory. Right what you care about. Don’t write one more word you don’t care about. Don’t waste any more of your life on what does not matter to you. Write only what matters to you—those scenes, those dialogues. Get messy. Before you get neat, get very, very messy. Write until you are more alive than you have ever been before.

Bonnie Friedman

I’ve had situations when I’ve actually encouraged authors to self-publish because their book was poor. Now one would conclude that I’m asking them to self-publish because their book was poor and the self-publishing warehouse is where all the poor books belong. But no, it’s because “poor” is only my opinion, and I’m just one in millions of readers.

King Samuel Benson

They say it's a dangerous experiment to include dreams (actual dreams or otherwise) in the fiction you write. Only a handful of writers - and I'm talking the most talented - are able to pull off the irrational synthesis you find in dreams.

Haruki Murakami

You must learn to be three people at once: writer, character, and reader.

Nancy Kress

For me, art that's alive and urgent is about what it is to be a human being.

David Foster Wallace

Q: What do you think is magical about fiction?DFW: ... The first line of attack for that question is that there is this existential loneliness in the real world. I don't know what you're thinking or what it's like inside you and you don't know what it's like inside me. In fiction I think we can leap over that wall itself in a certain way... There's another level... A really great piece of fiction for me may or may not take me away and make me forget that I'm sitting in a chair. There's real commercial stuff can do that, and a riveting plot can do that, but it doesn't make me feel less lonely... There's a kind of Ah-ha! Somebody at least for a moment feels about something or sees something the way that I do. It doesn't happen all the time. It's these brief flashes or flames, but I get that sometimes. I feel unalone--intellectually, emotionally, spiritually. I feel human and unalone and that I'm in a deep, significant conversation with another consciousness in fiction and poetry in a way that I don't with other art.

David Foster Wallace

I shall be as brief as I can, for it is not by piling up detail that I hope to achieve my picture, but by putting the emphasis where I think it belongs.

Robertson Davies

If you want to be a writer, you have to keep writing, all the time, and when you're not writing, be thinking about and planning writing.

May J. Panayi

For every idea that's been done to DEATH, there's a child being BORN who hasn't read it yet. Don't kill your dragons.

J.N. Race

You’re allowed to manipulate the environment, but not the character.

Sean Platt

There is a muse, but he’s not going to come fluttering down into your writing room and scatter creative fairy-dust all over your typewriter or computer station. He lives in the ground. He’s a basement guy. You have to descend to his level, and once you get down there you have to furnish an apartment for him to live in. You have to do all the grunt labor, in other words, while the muse sits and smokes cigars and admires his bowling trophies and pretends to ignore you.

Stephen King

The best kind of praise is intelligent praise.

Rachel Heffington

Aspiring authors, get this through your head. Cover art serves one purpose, and one purpose only, to get potential customers interested long enough to pick up the book to read the back cover blurb. In the internet age that means the thumb nail image needs to be interesting enough to click on. That’s what covers are for.

Larry Correia

...and above all, you should not think of writing as a way of earning your living. If you do, your work will smell of your poverty. It will be colored by your weakness and be as thin as your hunger. There are other trades which you can take up: make boots, not books.

Marquis de Sade

Why is it that women are the only ones who will write perfect men into fiction? It's strange. If a man portrayed his fictional men as archangels, the feminists would throw back their heads and howl, "UNFAIR!" but we women will create our own Mr. Darcy's and Mr. Knightley's and defy anyone who would point out their unrealistic points. The men aren't the ones crazy about Pride and Prejudice. Obviously they don't find perfect men realistic and honest enough to bother reading about. We don't write perfect women characters, do we? No. Our women all have bad tempers, or resentful hearts, or scabby pasts, or hidden fears--things that make them real. It's because we're easy on ourselves and aren't trying to boast perfection because we know we don't measure up. Then why do we hold men to a different standard?..... I'd caution all writers to make sure that your male "hero" in your story has his own flaws. You don't want a one-dimensional character. You don't want a perfect man that will drive away other men from reading the book.Look to the men in your life. The men around you. Look to your brothers and fathers and pastors and neighbors. Your uncles and the guy down the street. Goodness--look to Taylor the Latte Boy if you must, but let's cast aside the Perfect-Man syndrome.

Rachel Heffington

We’re at this really unique time, I think, in trans representation in popular culture where homelessness, depression, mental health issues, instability-in-general are still so very real and need to be talked about, but we’re aware that they’ve dominated “trans” stories for years and years. And we’re now finally at a place where we’re seeing some really positive representations of trans folks in pop culture, and there’s this new pressure -- at least, I feel it, within trans and trans-ally communities -- to only focus on the positive. Because we’re trying, in some sense, to overcompensate for the years and years of too much negativity. As a writer, you might feel a pressure to push the negative stuff away. But there are consequences for that too. Anyone who’s working with trans characters right now is going to have to reconcile that tension.

Mitch Kellaway

Too often we sit back and speak platitudes of the nitty-gritty bits of writing; the editing, the story structure, the verbal sparring vs. banter, the character development, the world-building become more important to us than the tune rhythm of the tale. And when you lose the music of the story, all the footwork in the world is not going to make up for the loss of continuity and heart. We need to take a step back in our souls and conjure the image of what this story is: the notes and beats and things woven into it's fullness. See, that's what is so easy to lose sight of as we write. We forget that, in a way, this story is a full story in itself. We tend to try to build the story piece by piece, line upon line, precept upon precept, but that--as any true writer knows--is not entirely practical. A story does have its own identity. To some extent, the story exists in your mind as a whole. Its own being. To chance sounding sappy: Your story is a full piece of music waiting for you to dance it into existence. Don't make the mistake of leaving out all the music. It is tempting to want to have everything arranged to perfection so that little editing will be done. But if you are keeping in mind the way your story needs to run--feeling it and dwelling in the beauty of its passion and color and vibe--the footwork will take care of itself. Certainly it will require practice and your technicalities will need a little work--everyone's does. But you will have captured the essence and blood of the tale, and really that's the prettiest part of a dance.

Rachel Heffington

Always carry with you a pen and a notebook or a journal to write the thoughts that flashes in a moments.

Lailah GiftyAkita

The only prophecy the artist can make with confidence is that he and his message will be misunderstood by a world that values all the wrong things.

Chloe Thurlow

Writing is easy. Writing well is hard work.

Amy Joy

Rejection is the run in the pantyhose of life.

C.E. McLean

The shock of recognition is a moment of excitement that shakes the soul. It may be hard to describe, but like other forms of love, you will know it when you feel it

Stephen Koch

Park your ego and listen to your readers. They can be your best friend or your worst enemy. But chances are you'll learn something from them.

Eliza Green

If you aren't willing to put your best work out there, write for yourself. Don't ever publish.

Eliza Green

In fact, “talent” is as common as mud; what’s rare is the motivation to sit down and actually do something with one’s talent, the discipline to do it regularly, and the persistence to stick with it until it’s finished.

Patricia C. Wrede

When it comes to creating compelling fiction, the devil may be in the details, but it is your imagination that ultimately allows your work to spread its wings and take flight. And fly it must. Only by soaring above the clouds of doubt can one truly achieve a suspension of disbelief

Max Hawthorne

Not everyone is fodder for books,' said Rosalind.

Jeanne Birdsall

To write, live.

C.R. Hedgcock

You will do well not to write for money, not because you won't get rich doing it, but because writing fueled by that sort of motivation becomes dull and lifeless and mediocre.

Joyce Rachelle

When you're writing, don't forget to keep your favorite audience in mind--you.

Lori Lesko

Motivated authors sacrifice TV time, sleep, hobbies, and even family time.

Gudjon Bergmann

There is no such thing as lack of time, only unclear priorities and lack of motivation. It is better to abandon a project than to work on it half-heartedly for a protracted period of time.

Gudjon Bergmann

Write a book, not the book.

Gudjon Bergmann

Not everyone is fodder for books," said Rosalind.

Jeanne Birdsall

Writers, that deep dark secret is not something you should hide from the world. It is your gift. Take it from memory and illuminate it in literature,shake the dust from it, unless it will get you arrested, lol.

Kevin R. Hill

On Hayao MiyazakiI told Miyazaki I love the "gratuitous motion" in his films; instead of every movement being dictated by the story, sometimes people will just sit for a moment, or they will sigh, or look in a running stream, or do something extra, not to advance the story but only to give the sense of time and place and who they are."We have a word for that in Japanese," he said, "It's called ma. Emptiness. It's there intentionally."Is that like the "pillow words" that separate phrases in Japanese poetry? "I don't think it's like the "pillow word." He clapped his hands three or four times. "The time in between my clapping is ma. If you just have non-stop action with no breathing space at all, it's just busyness, but if you take a moment, then the tension building in the film can grow into a wider dimension. If you just have constant tension at 80 degrees all the time you just get numb.

Roger Ebert

If you're going to have a complicated story, you must work to a map; otherwise you can never make a map of it afterwards.

J.R.R. Tolkien

The only way you'll find out if you "have it in you" is to get to work and see if you do. The only way to override your "limitations, insecurities, jealousies, and ineptitude" is to produce. You have limitations. You are in some way inept. This is true of every writer, and it's especially true of writers who are twenty-six. You will feel insecure and jealous. How much power you give those feelings is entirely up to you.

Cheryl Strayed

You can swap the message around, and whatever the particular norm is, or whatever the particular message is, when you put your pet-peeve message before story, odds are you are going to bore the shit out of your reader.

Larry Correia

Repeat the mantra: Writing is when I make the words. Editing is when I make them not shitty.

Chuck Wendig

It's not pain. It's raw material.

Jo Bell

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Writing Advice Quotes - Page 2

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