The hardest thing about writing, in a sense, is not writing. I mean, the sentence is not intended to show you off, you know. It is not supposed to be “look at me!” “Look, no hands!” It’s supposed to be a pipeline between the reader and you. One condition of the sentence is to write so well that no one notices that you’re writing.
JAMES BALDWIN
A character is never a whole person, but just those parts of him that fit the story or the piece of writing. So the act of selection is the writer's first step in delineating character. From what does he select? From a whole mass of what Bernard DeVoto used to call, somewhat clinically, "placental material." He must know an enormous amount more about each of his characters than he will ever use directly--childhood, family background, religion, schooling, health, wealth, sexuality, reading, tastes, hobbies--an endless questionnaire for the writer to fill out. For example, the writer knows that people speak, and therefore his characters will describe themselves indirectly when they talk. Clothing is a means of characterization. In short, each character has a style of his own in everything he does. These need not all be listed, but the writer should have a sure grasp of them. If he has, his characters will, within the book, read like people.
WILLIAM SLOANE
The bigger the word, the less emotion it conveys.
Avoid exclamation points! Really!! Because they’re distracting!! Almost as much as CAPITALIZING THINGS!!!
Make sure that each scene gives us new information, rather than rehashing things we already know. Never tell us the same fact twice. Because it’s boring and stops the flow of the story. Never tell us the same fact twice. Because it’s boring and stops the flow of the story.
If the reader doesn’t know there’s intrigue a foot, there is no intrigue afoot.
Scenery without subtext is a travelogue.
Everything must be earned. In story, there’s no such thing as a free lunch – unless, of course, it’s poisoned. Think Snow White. In other words, if it’s free, it’s going to cost you big time. (I refrained from using an exclamation point in that last sentence, I admit, it’s not easy! Oops.)
There are two basic motivating factors for just about all human action: Fear and Desire. Almost always, these two are pitted against each other.
The most important element of any story is to make the reader want to know what happens next. Period. Everything else is gravy.
Life goes on, and for the sake of verisimilitude and realism, you cannot possibly give the impression of an ending: you must let something hang. A cheap interpretation of that would be to say that you must always leave a chance for a sequel. People die, love dies, but life does not die, and so long as people live, stories must have life at the end.
JOHN O’HARA
In the long run, the revision process feels better if you approach it with curiosity. Each editorial mark can’t register as a “mistake” that threatens the spider ego. Remind yourself that revising proves your care for the reader and the nature of your ambition.
MARY KARR
If you require a practical rule of me, I will present you with this: Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it—wholeheartedly—and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. Murder your darlings.
ARTHUR QUILLER-COUCH
You must read everything, and you must let it all the way into your life, all the way into the part of you that makes writing, and you must let every good thing in — none of this reading a few lines of so-and-so with the hope that you might write something that sounds like it.
SARAH MANGUSO
Young writers often confuse dialogue with conversation, under the assumption that the closer you get to reality, the more convincing you sound. But dialogue is not conversation. Dialogue is a construct; it is artificial; it is much more efficient and believable than real conversation. Just as fiction itself distorts reality in order to achieve a larger truth, so dialogue eliminates all the false starts and irrelevant intrusions of real life in order to reveal character and move the encounter toward a dramatic conclusion.
JOHN L'HEUREUX
The purpose of being a serious writer is not to express oneself, and it is not to make something beautiful, though one might do those things anyway. Those things are beside the point. The purpose of being a serious writer is to keep people from despair. If you keep that in mind always, the wish to make something beautiful or smart looks slight and vain in comparison. If people read your work and, as a result, choose life, then you are doing your job.
SARAH MANGUSO
When you listen intensely to anything you see how it can be improved. It’s a rhythmic thing. Like music. You can feel the way that language lifts and turns around itself.
SAM SHEPARD
Writerly wisdom of the ages collected by the author of Advice To Writers, The Big Book of Irony, and The Portable Curmudgeon.
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