Chekhov's Prose

You can pick up a volume of Chekhov’s stories and open it anywhere, and, no matter how well or poorly the Russian has been translated, you will probably have a hard time finding a sentence you can’t understand. This is because, as much as any other writer and more than most, Chekhov put such a premium on writing comprehensibly, without flowery language or unnecessary adornment.

FRANCINE PROSE

Go for a Walk

I can count on one hand, or possibly one elbow, the number of good writing ideas I’ve had while straining at the keyboard. When you find yourself stumped, when a character seems to want to do this but the story seems to demand that she do that, it’s time to go for a walk. The answer will pop up into your mind so unexpectedly that you will very likely not be carrying a pen.

BEN DOLNICK

Do Whatever You Need to Do

I had a wonderful teacher, Irwin Blacker, and he was feared by everyone at the school because he took a very interesting position. He gave you the screenplay form, which I hated so much, and if you made one mistake on the form, you flunked the class. His attitude was that the least you can learn is the form. “I can’t grade you on the content. I can’t tell you whether this is a better story for you to write than that, you know? And I can’t teach you how to write the content, but I can certainly demand that you do it in the proper form.” He never talked about character arcs or anything like that; he simply talked about telling a good yarn, telling a good story. He said, “Do whatever you need to do. Be as radical and as outrageous as you can be. Take any kind of approach you want to take. Feel free to flash back, feel free to flash forward, feel free to flash back in the middle of a flashback. Feel free to use narration, all the tools are there for you to use.”

JOHN MILIUS

Use Seasoning Sparingly

Use all your seasoning sparingly. Do not worry about making your characters shout, intone, exclaim, remark, shriek, reason, holler, or any such thing, unless they are doing it for a reason. All remarks can be said. Every time you use a fancy word your reader is going to turn his head to look at it going by and sometimes he may not turn his head back again.

SHIRLEY JACKSON 

Novel Readers Are Super Nosy

Plot means that every notable event is conditioned on previous events. Start with the novel’s climax (often the first thing you know about it, its most striking moment) and work backward, asking why-why-why. Then write forward. With proper buildup, a scene that means little in isolation can become as significant to readers as it is to you. Your plot will of course reveal character through conflict, but novel readers are super nosy, so be sure to work out some characters’ personalities in detail.

NELL ZINK

Take Pride in Yourself

You need that pride in yourself, as well as a sense, when you are sitting on Page 297 of a book, that the book is going to be read, that somebody is going to care. You can’t ever be sure about that, but you need the sense that it’s important, that it’s not typing; it’s writing.

ROGER KAHN

Putting the Thought in Writing

Going into the writing I like to cultivate a particular juncture between knowing and not knowing — having all the facts but remaining uncertain how they fit together. It’s a delicate balance, because if you know too little what you write will be halting and opaque, and if you know too much it will be dead on the page, a mere transcription after the fact. In any case, whatever ideas and speculations may occupy the writer’s head, writing does not begin with an idea; it begins with a sentence. What occurs in your mind is a great swirling mass of half-formed notions, which are interwoven with worries, memories, songs, and emotions; the signal-to-noise ratio is overwhelming. Putting the thought in writing crystalizes it and gives it life.

LUC SANTE

Don't Overcrowd the Narrative

Don’t overcrowd the narrative. Characters should be individualized, but functional – like figures in a painting. Think of Hieronymus Bosch’s Christ Mocked, in which a patiently suffering Jesus is closely surrounded by four threatening men. Each of the characters is unique, and yet each represents a type; and collectively they form a narrative that is all the more powerful for being so tightly and so economically constructed.

SARAH WATERS

Human Nature Is the Great Constant

I think humans are the most interesting thing I know about. They’re inexhaustibly interesting. And I think one of the great beauties of the novel as a form is that it shows us that human nature is the great constant. Human nature is the same in all places, in all times, in all languages. And that makes it the great subject of any writer’s life, just to try and explore this vast ocean of human beings.

SALMAN RUSHDIE

Writing Habits

I’m a full-time believer in writing habits, pedestrian as it all may sound. You may be able to do without them if you have genius but most of us only have talent and this is simply something that has to be assisted all the time by physical and mental habits or it dries up and blows away. I see it happen all the time. Of course you have to make your habits in this conform to what you can do. I write only about two hours every day because that’s all the energy I have, but I don’t let anything interfere with those two hours, at the same time and the same place. This doesn’t mean I produce much out of the two hours. Sometimes I work for months and have to throw everything away, but I don’t think any of that was time wasted. Something goes on that makes it easier when it does come well. And the fact is if you don’t sit there every day, the day it would come well, you won’t be sitting there.

FLANNERY O’CONNOR