Writing Quotes - Page 10

What are minnows but brief flashes? And what are thoughts? And how do you capture a brief flash, even for a second?

The key to high concept is that fresh twist. Make it a big one. Wow your reader. Force her to gasp when she comes to that part in your story.

Darynda Jones

First drafts don’t have to be perfect. They just have to be written.

Anonymous

I will continue to write moral stories in rhymed couplets. But I should be thrice a fool if I did it for aught but my own entertainment.

W Somerset Maugham

One idea to a sentence is still the best advice that anyone has ever given on writing.

Bill Bryson

A watched pot never boils." It's the same with success. So? Throw that burner on HIGH and just keep on cooking. Dinner will be ready soon.

Christy Hall

Writing is about allowing yourself to become a vessel of creativity. Writers are avatars of creation. We have tender hearts, and strong emotions. It's hard not to when you have a million different people's personalities playing out in your head.

Sai Marie Johnson

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

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

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

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

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

Writing is easy. Writing well is hard work.

Amy Joy

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

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

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

You are an author! You will be a published author. Take pride in that, and present only your best work. Then, continue to improve, so your best gets even better.

Courage Knight

Any advice for how to be a successful author?""Yes. Don't be a woman. And be dead. And do both at the same time, if you can.

Michelle Franklin

Only God gets it right the first time and only a slob says, "Oh well, let it go, that's what copyeditors are for.

Stephen King

I practiced writing in every possible way that I could. I wrote a pastiche of other people. Just as a pianist runs his scales for ten years before he gives his concert: because when he gives that concert, he can't be thinking of his fingering or of his hands, he has to be thinking of his interpretation. He's thinking of what he's trying to communicate.

Katherine Anne Porter

At its most basic we are only discussing a learned skill, but do we not agree that sometimes the most basic skills can create things far beyond our expectations? We are talking about tools and carpentry, about words and style...but as we move along, you'd do well to remember that we are also talking about magic.

Stephen King

Tighten your prose so the story flows.

Anna Dobritt

Writing is a solitary endeavor, being an author is not.

Karen A. Chase

Let your eyes be the camera and your imagination be the set.

Raleigh Daniels

Whenever I write I always transport myself into the story to get a better glimpse to what I am capturing.

Raleigh Daniels

A love of writing is far greater than any word count.

Molly Looby

... when editors were flattered, they would sometimes give in on some of their mad ideas.

Stephen King

A clever trick does not a concept make.

Larry Brooks

Remember: Bad timing equals great plot twists.

A.L. Mabry

Ultimately, then, creativity and originality lie not in the avoidance of established forms but in the imaginative use of them.

Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein

Love words, agonize over sentences. And pay

Susan Sontag

I hate dialect. It gets in the way. If there is a need for dialect, you can render it quite easily by reproducing the rythm of that form of speech. Then you don't need to bother with silly spellings

Diana Wynne Jones

The size of your audience is more important than the size of your book

Bernard Kelvin Clive

Let your emotions guide your hand to the paper and watch how your sorrows can turn into beauty. For tears relieve your body but writing relieves your heart.

Raneem Kayyali

Don’t write like your mentors

Bernard Kelvin Clive

There's no rule for better writing. It's best to make your own rules, and see what works best for you.

Tarang Sinha

One expert may be as good as another until one writes a book

Bernard Kelvin Clive

Sometimes it helps to pick out one person-a real person you know, or an imagined person-and write to that one.

John Steinbeck

Publish. Be damned. Repeat.

Tassa Desalada

You have to simply love writing, and you have to remind yourself often that you love it.

Susan Orlean

Protect the time and space in which you write. Keep everybody away from it, even the people who are most important to you.

Zadie Smith

I do a lot of rewriting. It’s very painful.

James Baldwin

Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination.

Jim Jarmuscdh

A character is defined by the kinds of challenges he cannot walk away from.

Arthur Miller

What I am trying to achieve is a voice sitting by a fireplace telling you a story on a winter’s evening.

Truman Capote

Make it so good and so clear that it doesn't need any further explanation.

Shel Silverstein

Essential characteristic of the really great novelist: a Christ-like all-embracing compassion.

Arnold Bennett

When I used to teach creative writing, I would tell the students to make their characters want something right away even if it's only a glass of water.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

On the whole, I think you should write biographies of those you admire and respect, and novels about human beings who you think are sadly mistaken.

Penelope Fitzgerald

People say that writers write for money. From my own experience that's not true. I write for me. I publish for money.

Greg Curtis

In general, shorter is better. If you can encapsulate your idea into a single captivating sentence, you're halfway home.

Len Wein

Don't be 'a writer.' Be writing.

William Faulkner

But the secret of good writing is to strip every sentence to its cleanest components. Every word that serves no function, every long words that could be a short word, every adverb that carries the same meaning that's already in the verb. every passive construction that leaves the reader unsure of who is doing what-these are the thousand and one adulterants that weaken the strength of a sentence. And they usually occur in proportion to education and rank.

William Zinsser

Previous 1 … 8 9 10 11 12 … 122 Next

Writing Quotes - Page 10

Related Topics