Writing Craft Quotes

I don’t know if you have had the same experience, but the snag I always come up against when I’m telling a story is this dashed difficult problem of where to begin it.

P.G. Wodehouse

Each letter has a shape, she told them, one shape in the world and no other, and it is your responsibility to make it perfect.

Kim Edwards

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

Often as writers, we are surprised by what we learn about ourselves. It runs counter to what we’ve thought about who we are. But it is closer to the truth.

Rob Bignell

Writers don't suffer from insanity, they depend upon it!

Avijeet Das

A writer needs to ingest love to be passionate. Passion is a metabolite of love, and good writing is an active metabolite of passion.

Roman Payne

I read not so long ago about the construction of a large telescope in Chile's Atacama Desert, where rainfall can average a millimetre a year and the air is fifty times as dry as the air in Death Valley. Needless to say, skies over the Atacama are pristine. The pilgrim astronomer ventures to the earth’s ravaged reaches in order to peer more keenly at other worlds, and I suppose the novelist is up to something similar.

Brad Leithauser

Cliches are the viruses that infect your writing with diseases.

Pawan Mishra

Writing a story is like going on a date—you will spoil it if you aren't living in the moment.

Pawan Mishra

Don’t break the rules when you haven’t fully figured them out yet.

Pawan Mishra

Dreams are good at playing with your memory. They love leaving no trace behind and hate to show up once again in the morning.

Pawan Mishra

A writer can do without food for a few hours, but not without the sight of books.

Pawan Mishra

Ideas either age like fine wine or rot like potatoes over time.

Pawan Mishra

If you are a singer, you must sing. If you are a dancer, you must dance. If you are a writer, you must write. Don’t suffocate your heart.

Pawan Mishra

I ran across an excerpt today (in English translation) of some dialogue/narration from the modern popular writer, Paulo Coelho in his book: Aleph.(Note: bracketed text is mine.)... 'I spoke to three scholars,' [the character says 'at last.'] ...two of them said that, after death, the [sic (misprint, fault of the publisher)] just go to Paradise. The third one, though, told me to consult some verses from the Koran. [end quote]' ...I can see that he's excited. [narrator]' ...Now I have many positive things to say about Coelho: He is respectable, inspiring as a man, a truth-seeker, and an appealing writer; but one should hesitate to call him a 'literary' writer based on this quote. A 'literary' author knows that a character's excitement should be 'shown' in his or her dialogue and not in the narrator's commentary on it. Advice for Coelho: Remove the 'I can see that he's excited' sentence and show his excitement in the phrasing of his quote.(Now, in defense of Coelho, I am firmly of the opinion, having myself written plenty of prose that is flawed, that a novelist should be forgiven for slipping here and there.)Lastly, it appears that a belief in reincarnation is of great interest to Mr. Coelho ... Just think! He is a man who has achieved, (as Leonard Cohen would call it), 'a remote human possibility.' He has won lots of fame and tons of money. And yet, how his preoccupation with reincarnation—none other than an interest in being born again as somebody else—suggests that he is not happy!

Roman Payne

Writing Craft Quotes

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