Never Read Bad Stuff

Never read bad stuff if you're an artist; it will impair your own game. I don't know if you ever played competitive tennis, but you learn not to watch bad tennis; it messes up your game. Art's the same way.

JAMES LEE BURKE

The Reader Will Do Much of the Work

Writers get better at the craft once we learn to assume that the reader will do much of the work for us, filling in the blanks with their own experiences and lives. Plant a few key pieces of evidence, and your reader will dream up the connections.

ROGER ROSENBLATT

Start with a Hook

A good writer should draw the reader in by starting in the middle of the story with a hook, then go back and fill in what happened before the hook. Once you have the reader hooked, you can write whatever you want as you slowly reel them in.

ROLAND SMITH

Even a Great Storyteller Requires Professional Writing Skills

Few writers have what it takes to produce “great writing,” but even a great storyteller requires professional writing skills to get the story across to the reader. The difference between amateur writing and professional writing is rewriting.

MAEVE MADDOX

Punctuation Indicates How the Writer Hears the Prose

Punctuation…indicates how the writer hears the prose, as they create it. So I use ellipses, dashes and commas quite a lot, because they express how things sound to me. Exclamation marks convey moments of passionate overemphasis or profound disorder—like someone shouting in public or bursting into tears. So they make things briefly uncomfortable—and then we go on again.

JOANNA KAVENNA

Writing a Screenplay Is Like Climbing a Mountain

Writing a screenplay is like climbing a mountain. When you’re climbing, all you can see is the rock in front of you and the rock directly above you. You can’t see where you’ve come from or where you’re going.

SYD FIELD

START WRITING

Start writing. I don't mean to sound dismissive, but START WRITING. There is NO SUCH THING as "too late" in the arts. Trust me. START.

PATTON OSWALT

Science and Writing Are Utterly the Same Thing

I think science and writing are utterly the same thing. They are completely rooted in passion and desire, if they're any good at all. You can fall in love with the natural world in the same way you fall in love with a person. There's that same sense of helplessness, of lacking control over how much of your life you want to devote to it.

ANDREA BARRETT

Writing Well Involves Two Gifts

Writing well involves two gifts—the art of adding and the art of taking away. Of the two, the first is more important, since without it the second would not exist.

JOHN UPDIKE

Our Power is Patience

Our power is patience. We have discovered that writing allows even a stupid person to seem halfway intelligent, if only that person will write the same thought over and over again, improving it just a little bit each time. It is a lot like inflating a blimp with a bicycle pump. Anybody can do it. All it takes is time.

KURT VONNEGUT