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Quote by Jack Woodford

“Characterization is an accident that flows out of action and dialogue.”

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Exploring the nature of trial and error as a fundamental method of discovery and improvement, this book delves into the psychological and philosophical aspects of learning from mistakes and iterative processes. more

Author

Jack Woodford

Jack Woodford, born in 1894, was a renowned British novelist. His works are known for their profound character development and rich imagination, having a profound impact on 20th-century British literature. more

“One of my standard - and fairly true - responses to the question as to how story ideas come to me is that story ideas only come to me for short stories. With longer fiction, it is a character (or characters) coming to visit, and I am then obliged to collaborate with him/her/it/them in creating the story.”

Writing Ideas Character Stories Fiction Creating Standards Response Insightful Short Story Obliged

Author:Roger Zelazny

“The best fantasy is written in the language of dreams. It is alive as dreams are alive, more real than real, for a moment at least, that long magic moment before we wake.”

Writing Long Real Moments Dream Language Fantasy Alive Written Magic Fantasy Books Magic Moments

Book:Dreamsongs: A RRetrospective

Source: Dreamsongs: A RRetrospective

“I hate outlines. I have a broad sense of where the story is going; I know the end, I know the end of the principal characters, and I know the major turning points and events from the books, the climaxes for each book, but I don't necessarily know each twist and turn along the way. That's something I discover in the course of writing and that's what makes writing enjoyable. I think if I outlined comprehensively and stuck to the outline the actual writing would be boring.”

“I get up every day and work in the morning. I have my coffee and get to work. On good days I look up and it's dark outside and the whole day has gone by and I don't know where it's gone. But there's bad days, too. Where I struggle and sweat and a half hour creeps by and I've written three words. And half a day creeps by and I've written a sentence and a half and then I quit for the day and play computer games. You know, sometimes you eat the bear and sometimes the bear eats you. [Laughs]”

“I don't like the strictly objective viewpoint [in which all of the characters' actions are described in the third person, but we never hear what any of them are thinking.] Which is much more of a cinematic technique. Something written in third person objective is what the camera sees. Because unless you're doing a voiceover, which is tremendously clumsy, you can't hear the ideas of characters. For that, we depend on subtle clues that the directors put in and that the actors supply. I can actually write, "'Yes you can trust me,' he lied." [But it's better to get inside the characters' heads.]”

Quote by Jack Woodford

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