Don't Bludgeon Us Over the Head with Description

Don't bludgeon us over the head with description. A line or three about the character is good enough—and it doesn't need to be purely about their physical looks. It can be about movement and body language. It can be about what people think, about what goes on in her head. But throw out a couple-few lines and get out. Dialogue is where a character is revealed. And action. What a character says and does is the sum of her being. It doesn't need to be more than that: a character says shit, then does shit, then says shit about the shit she just did. In there lurks infinite possibilities—a confluence of atoms that reveals who she is.

CHUCK WENDIG

It's Time That Goodness Be Shown

If I were to commission a novel, I would ask the author for lots of things (that it be short; that it be written in free indirect speech; that it include funny, but frank, acknowledgment of women’s grooming rituals), but mostly I would want this notional novelist to take up the challenge of animating at least one character who is virtuous, not in the intimate way that everyone seems to be up close, but in a way that is obvious and legible in the book’s own universe. It’s time that goodness be shown in all its relentless torment and sacrifice.

ALICE GREGORY

Leave Room for the Characters to Change

The writer must always leave room for the characters to grow and change. If you move your characters from plot point to plot point, like painting by the numbers, they often remain stick figures. They will never take on a life of their own. The most exciting thing is when you find a character doing something surprising or unplanned. Like a character saying to me: “Hey, Richard, you may think I work for you, but I don’t. I’m my own person.”

RICHARD NORTH PATTERSON

Women in Fiction

As I began reading general fiction, I saw it as women using their bodies to try and make good boys do bad things: it was just a constant in literature of all kinds. So I wanted a woman who could be a whole person, which meant that she could be a sexual person without being evil. That she could be an effective problem solver, as women are in reality but not very often in fiction or on the screen. And that who she was sexually had nothing to do with it, except that it made her more fully human.

SARA PARETSKY

Writing Out of Real Life

Influences were young poets like Ed Dorn and Robert Creeley. In the years when I was young, the emphasis was on writers like William Carlos Williams, writing in the clearest, simplest American speech. Writing out of real life, and taking from real life, not embellishing but being as open-eyed and level as possible. I think that was the biggest influence, that was how I learned. It helped me as a young writer to not show off and not try to be romantic, or try to be funny, but to let the story be itself. And I did write to him [Williams] in my head for a long time, questioning whether he’d think something was arch or cute or showing off.

LUCIA BERLIN

Obscurity Is the Refuge of Incompetence

It's up to the artist to use language that can be understood, not hide it in some private code. Most of these jokers don't even want to use language you and I know or can learn . . . they would rather sneer at us and be smug, because we “fail” to see what they are driving at. If indeed they are driving at anything--obscurity is usually the refuge of incompetence. 

ROBERT A. HEINLEIN

Who Wants to Become a Writer?

Who wants to become a writer? And why? Because it’s the answer to everything.… It’s the streaming reason for living. To note, to pin down, to build up, to create, to be astonished at nothing, to cherish the oddities, to let nothing go down the drain, to make something, to make a great flower out of life, even if it’s a cactus.

ENID BAGNOLD

Voice Guides Everything

When novelists talk about what they’re working on, they rarely mention subject matter. Plot, theme, symbolism, character — those staples of English class — few of which have much to do with literature, don’t come up. Richard Ford has written thousands of passages about the New Jersey real estate agent Frank Bascombe, describing his marriage, his divorce, the death of his son, his health scares and his armchair philosophizing, but when I asked Ford what motivated him to write those books, he replied, “Oh, I just felt like I wanted to write something first-person, present tense.” He didn’t have to explain this to me. The right voice, once discovered, guides everything the writer does and supplies all necessary information and insight — often enough, things you didn’t think you knew.

JEFFREY EUGENIDES

Each Work Finds Its Own Time

Each work finds its own time. For many years I wrote at night. Then I became scared of writing at night, probably on account of the ghosts that you call to mind when you are writing, mostly when dealing with the subject of torture and other dark political issues. I’ve returned to the night shift just recently, and am rediscovering the pleasure of total silence. But I still enjoy jumping out of bed and onto the computer—from dream to word, with no time to repent.

LUISA VALENZUELA

Give It the First Energy of the Day

I give it the first energy of the day. When I get up, I go to my office and start writing. I'm still in my pajamas. I haven't even brushed my teeth. I just go straight to it. I feel that there's a little package of creative energy that's somehow been nourished by sleep and I don't want to waste that. I'll work for an hour or two until I feel like I've got something going. Then I can get washed and dressed.

SALMAN RUSHDIE