Quotes about fiction-writing

The vital power of an imaginative work demands a diversity within its unity and the stronger the diversity the more massive the unity.

I don’t mind working, holding my ground intellectually, artistically; but as a woman, oh, God, as a woman I want to be dominated. I don’t mind being told to stand on my own feet, not to cling, be all that I am capable of doing, but I am going to be pursued, fucked, possessed by the will of a male at his time, his bidding.” …Anias Nin

Without a doubt the two best words in the English language are The End

Every book contains a secret – even the writer doesn't always know what it is.

Do what you love, especially if your sharing the word

I am often told that the model of balance for the novelist should be Dante, who divided his territory up pretty evenly between hell, purgatory, and paradise. There can be no objection to this, but also there can be no reason to assume that the result of doing it in these times will give us the balanced picture it gave in Dante's. Dante lived in the thirteenth century, when that balance was achieved by the faith of his age. We live now in an age which doubts both fact and value, which is swept th

He was always crazy about her. If he was a king then she was his crest– the emblem of his kingdom. Without her, his world is lost. He left his house or rather palace, now spends his days on some filthy park-bench. He is a king turned to beggar. Nothing can cure him except his Angel, Emily.

Fiction is a careful combination of observation, inspiration, and imagination.

To be stories at all they must be a series of events: but it must be understood that this series - the plot, as we call it - is only really a new whereby to catch something else.

She asserted that the best fictional detail was a chosen detail, not a remembered one - for fictional truth was not only the truth of observation, which was the truth of mere journalism. The best fictional detail was the detail that should have defined the character or the episode or the atmosphere. Fictional truth was what should have happened in a story - not necessarily what did happen or what had happened.

This whole show vs tell concept both bewilders and challenges my mind.

I keep being told that my writing is getting better and better. - Now, at first I am thrilled by that, but then I think, Isn't everybody's? Do some authors grow cozy with their own style, and stay there?I think of writing fiction as an art form. As such, it's a constant exploration of new and developing ideas. If any of my books were much like my others, I don't think I'd even bother to write them.

After finishing 1st draft of a novel, I have the characters, dialogue, scenes, and a plotline. I used to think this meant I knew where the story was going, and what the book was about.I have learned over the years, this ain’t so.As I work through its 2nd draft, characters start to nudge each other. The story itself takes its first soft and shallow breath, and one could imagine he hears a little bit of a heartbeat. Passions deepen, and emotional threads start to weave through what had earlier jus

I still suspect that most people start out with some kind of ability to tell a story but that it gets lost along the way. Of course, the ability to create life with words is essentially a gift. If you have it in the first place, you can develop it; if you don't have it, you might as well forget it.But I have found that people who don't have it are frequently the ones hell-bent on writing stories. I'm sure anyway that they are the ones who write the books and the magazine articles on how-to-write

Yeah, I know what your English Professor tried to tell you. But if your English Professor could make a living writing fiction, they would have been doing it.

He has the mistaken notion that a concern with grace is a concern with exalted human behavior, that it is a pretentious concern. It is, however, simply a concern with the human reaction to that which, instant by instant, gives life to the soul. It is a concern with a realization that breeds charity and with the charity that breeds action. Often the nature of grace can be made plain only by describing its absence.

If she was going to write a novel, she felt defeated before she began, because someone might be coming along to pick it apart, looking for symbols like The Conch or The Whale, which seemed to have mythic proportions.

The viewpoint character in each story is usually someone trapped in a living nightmare, but this doesn't guarantee that we and the protagonist are at one. In fact Woolrich often makes us pull away from the person at the center of the storm, splitting our reaction in two, stripping his protagonist of moral authority, denying us the luxury of unequivocal identification, drawing characters so psychologically warped and sometimes so despicable that a part of us wants to see them suffer. Woolrich als

Perhaps this is what Henry James meant when he talked about the “irresponsibility” of characters. Characters are irresponsible, art is irresponsible when compared to life, because it is first and foremost important that a character be real, and as readers or watchers we tend to applaud any effort made towards the construction of that reality. We do not, of course, indulge actual people in the world this way at all. In real life, the fact that something seems real to someone is not enough to inte

Nobody wants to be a part of your story. Everybody wants you to elaborate on their fantasies.

It's always wrong of course to say that you can't do this or you can't do that in fiction. You can do anything you can get away with, but nobody has ever gotten away with much.

The table was covered with food like roast chicken, roast potatoes, roast parsnips, roast turkey, roast liquorice and, the centrepiece, a roasted knight.

Reading is fuel for the brain. Writing is fuel for the spirit...

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

I imagined a time when being gay is as unquestioned and un-judged as is having blue eyes. Some might call it fantasy or science fiction. I’d like to think it’s the future.

Inside a wool jacket the man had made a pocket for the treasure and from time to time he would jiggle the pocket, just to make sure that it was still there. And when on the train he rode to work he would jiggle it there also, but he would disguise his jiggling of the treasure on the train by devising a distraction. For example, the man would pretend to be profoundly interested in something outside the train, such as the little girl who seemed to be jumping high up on a trampoline, just high enou

Now the second common characteristic of fiction follows from this, and it is that fiction is presented in such a way that the reader has the sense that it is unfolding around him. This doesn't mean he has to identify himself with the character or feel compassion for the character or anything like that. It just means that fiction has to be largely presented rather than reported. Another way to say it is that though fiction is a narrative art, it relies heavily on the element of drama.

Commercial fiction writing – where my bread is buttered – is fairly straightforward. The writing is simply efficiency and story. The more you have of one the less you need of the other.

If you love somebody then tell them how you feel dont be scared of their reaction or rejection life is too short. you should take a chance and if things dont work out as you plan dont worry cuz life moves on and true love will be waiting for you again.

Jika kita menyukai sesuatu, bagaimanapun keadaannya, kita hanya akan tetap menyukainya. Rasa suka itu tidak akan terpengaruh oleh faktor lain. Suka, ya, suka, dan akan begitu walau dilihat dari sudut pandang mana saja.

You take people, you put them on a journey, you give them peril, you find out who they really are.

Family is a permanent adhesive that creates a lifetime bond.

Misunderstandings arise only in undefined relationships

There’s so much to learn. So much to enjoy. So terribly much to be curious about. Take your life and run with it. Make a habit of being alive. This much of anything, I have learned. And am still learning.

Writing is a solitary business. It’s just you and your characters and a blank page you need to fill.

She opened her eyes and looked into his rather intensely. "What?" Alex asked. "This cannot be." "What can't be?" Alex asked her, more bafflement in his voice this time. "I have been reading people all my life. I can even read cats and dogs. I've been doing it all my life and i've been here longer than the two of you put together." "And?" Alex wanted to get to the point. Whatever the truth may be, he just wanted to hear it, wanted it on the table before them so he could get this over with and

For his lunch break, Alex decided to sit outside for a smoke. There was no break room to speak of, just a backdoor that led to a neglected parking lot and an old payphone. There was an upturned crate by the door used to hold the door open or to sit on if one so desired. But Alex couldn't sit down, even though he had been standing for the past four hours, his anxious mind kept his feet moving.He paced back and forth, smoking his cigarette with the speed of an anxious drug addict. The cool but fai

Danilo's was the kind of place where many drinking men come to hide, be it from their wives, in-laws, their jobs or life in general. it was where men and women can come to drink poison as if it was the only form of medicine available to remedy the migraine headache called life. The lighting dim and secluded, mostly covering the tables, counters and the door to the bathroom. The walls were decorated in decades of memories, favorite sports teams and other miscellaneous decor that was typical of sm

I long for some connection, to the real and those who love them, and hope that my fiction can reach beyond the veil, that I might touch someone and make them feel something…or something.

And yet it was also true that the tumor could not be removed by our doctor, and as a result of that a strange medication had been given him that enabled my brother to become even more of an enigma than he was before, and as a result of that there came to exist not only the machine and the inertia that came with it, but a change of perspective among the townsfolk that was a result of their interactions with the various phases of my brother. And so it was that when the flood began to rear its terr

Inside the room there sat a rocker, which she sat on, and which had rocked her while she sipped the beer, because in spite of herself she had become so giddy to have so quickly relieved her heart that she allowed herself to lean backwards while in the rocker, which had made it possible for the rocker to rock her, although it was not her intention to be so rocked. Also there stood an ironing board with a still hot iron on it that was burning a yellow shift, and there was, among several items that

I love my career. It is a career. A difficult one that takes many hours and total dedication to my craft. It is also what I was born to do--tell stories and entertain.

Editing fiction is like using your fingers to untangle the hair of someone you love.

Movie. What's my favorite kind of movie?”“Is there a point to this?”“Please, Lucy. What's my favorite movie?”“Horror. Why?”“No reason,” I sighed as I slouched back in the chair.“And would you stop that! Please? It's distracting,” she said as sheslammed her hand down on top of mine to stop me from twirling my ring.I jerked my hand out from under hers so I could cross my arms over mychest.“What's with you today?” Her tone was saturated with distaste.“Nothing.”“Well, you're being awfully annoying f

Well, I would tell Danny. I'd probably edit for Josh. That is if there wasanything worth editing.“Joshua Roberts, you had better get your butt on the move!” Dannyhollered as he walked down the stairs.I was nervously waiting for them to leave as I pretended to watch TV inthe front room.“We're going to be late.”“So the hair crisis is under control I see.”“A stray hair will never win between a bottle of gel and a gay man,” hedeclared with a smile. “Joshua!”“I'm coming. I'm coming.”I heard his sanda

That was enough dialogue for a few pages - he had to get into some fast, red-hot action.There weren't any more hitches now. The story flowed like a torrent. The margin bell chimed almost staccato, the roller turned with almost piston-like continuity, the pages sprang up almost like blobs of batter from a pancake skillet. The beer kept rising in the glass and, contradictorily, steadily falling lower. The cigarettes gave up their ghosts, long thin gray ghosts, in a good cause; the mortality rate w

Grayson: Fiction is just a lie anyway.Brianna: But it's not - it's a different kind of truth - it would be your truth at the time of the writing, wouldn't it?

The writer who position is Christian, and probably also the writer whose position is not, will begin to wonder at this point if there could not be some ugly correlation between our unparalleled prosperity and the stridency of these demands for a literature that shows us the joy of life. He may at least be permitted to ask if these screams for joy would be quite so piercing if joy were really more abundant in our prosperous society.

I long for the day I no longer long for him.

Sometimes a night of over-eating leaves you hungry for something you can't name. An emptiness haunted me. An emptiness I didn't have a name for until I met Jeb. Now, I' m starving.

Fiction writers, magicians, politicians and priests are the only people rewarded for entertaining us with their lies

You know this has really affected my ability to trust myself. No matter what happened in my life, I was always able to trust myself. My instincts. Two men in a row carrying on indiscretions makes me feel like I made up some story. Almost like a fiction, Iwrote in my mind that had a beginning, middle and end. It feels like I manufactured some ideal life that was a made-up invention that I needed to believe was the truth.

A smart person is not one that knows the answers, but one who knows where to find them...

In almost all other professions a man must be able to observe carefully and report accurately what he has seen. Those qualifications are unnecessary for journalists, however, since their job is to write sensational stories that sell newspapers.

Writing fiction feels like an adventurous act, nudging aside reality a word at a time.

Perhaps the critics are right: this generation may not produce literature equal to that of any past generation--who cares? The writer will be dead before anyone can judge him--but he must go on writing, reflecting disorder, defeat, despair, should that be all he sees at the moment, but ever searching for the elusive love, joy, and hope--qualities which, as in the act of life itself, are best when they have to be struggled for, and are not commonly come by with much ease, either by a critic's for

The fiction writer is an observer, first, last, and always, but he cannot be an adequate observer unless he is free from uncertainty about what he sees. Those who have no absolute values cannot let the relative remain merely relative; they are always raising it to the level of the absolute. The Catholic fiction writer is entirely free to observe. He feels no call to take on the duties of God or to create a new universe. He feels perfectly free to look at the one we already have and to show exact

You may ask, why not simply call this literature Christian? Unfortunately, the word Christian is no longer reliable. It has come to mean anyone with a golden heart. And a golden heart would be a positive interference in the writing of fiction.

It is generally supposed, and not least by Catholics, that the Catholic who writes fiction is out to use fiction to prove the truth of the Faith, or at the least, to prove the existence of the supernatural. He may be. No one certainly can be sure of his low motives except as they suggest themselves in his finished work, but when the finished work suggests that pertinent actions have been fraudulently manipulated or overlooked or smothered, whatever purposes the writer started out with have alrea

The type of mind that can understand good fiction is not necessarily the educated mind, but it is at all times the kind of mind that is willing to have its sense of mystery deepened by contact with reality, and its sense of reality depend by contact with mystery. Fiction should be both canny and uncanny. In a good deal of popular criticism, there is the notion operating that all fiction has to be about the Average Man, and has to depict average ordinary everyday life, that every fiction writer m

I'll call any length of fiction a story, whether it be a novel or a shorter piece, and I'll call anything a story in which specific characters and events influence each other to form a meaningful narrative. I find that most people know what a story is until they sit down to write one. Then they find themselves writing a sketch with an essay woven through it, or an essay with a sketch woven through it, or an editorial with a character in it, or a case history with a moral, or some other mongrel t

To my fellow writers' I say, 'Write. Build an imaginary world like nobody's watching.

Basically, if the author is totally un-educated, then the text won't bring out his best. Normal, educated people always understand that. But here's the thing—when the author is very highly-educated, the result is the same: the text turns out sub-par. Like if Charybdis was an uneducated cannibal, and Scylla was a sophisticated gourmand.Real literature snakes between the two. Like Hera's hair.

I believe one of the important differences between creating literature and just telling a story around the campfire is that in literature you’re recreating the experience of life, not just relaying a ‘this happened, then that happened’ kind of narrative. The specific details and layers of depth that make the world of the story — and what the character is experiencing in that world — as real as possible are elements I love as a reader and, consequently, elements I strive to use effectively as a w

In writing, there is art. And in art there is craft ...

You cannot be a good writer of serious fiction if you are not depressed.

Write it down and it will come alive.

Without thinking, I step a little closer, reaching out slowly to slide a fingertip over the largest petal of the lily tattoo on her lower back. Instantly a vibration moves up my arm, and I swear the mark on my hand burns against my skin.I clench my fingers into a fist, but I don’t step away.“Did you feel that?” she asks.I shake my head. “I don’t know.” I feel so much, always so much.She takes my hand and brings it to her side again, resting it on the violets. I look at thepurple flowers between

Expand your world. (Stories about wizards and spells) are very frequently about power relationships...

Fantasy or fiction is just a persons secret life. A world they want to be in. The only diffrence between them and you, is that they wrote it down in detail, printed it and shared it with the world.

I’ve never pondered my own life until I started watching fictional ones fight for theirs.

Ah, ya, omong-omong, aku sangat merindukanmu. Apa kau merindukanku juga, mmm?

Entah mengapa, mendadak dia merasa bahwa berkenalan dengan si pemilik nama itu sepertinya akan menyenangkan.

You can not describe anything without betraying your point of view, your aspirations, your fears, your hopes. Everything.

When well told, a story captured the subtle movement of change. If a novel was a map of a country, a story was the bright silver pin that marked the crossroads.

It's hell writing and it's hell not writing. The only tolerable state is having just written.

The trouble with writing fiction is that it has to make sense, whereas real life doesn't.

If you haven't cried at least once while writing a chapter of your inspirational book, then you have to ask yourself if your're writing fiction.

Fueled by my inspiration, I ran across the room to steal the cup of coffee the bookshelf had taken prisoner. Lapping the black watery brew like a hyena, I tossed the empty cup aside. I then returned to the chair to continue my divine act of creation. Hot blood swished in my head as my mighty pen stole across the page.

Action is the pulse of any good story, but the character is the heart. If the action has no consequence to the character, the story loses heart.