Home / Quotes / Quote by Carolyn Wheat

Quote by Carolyn Wheat

“One key to the distinction between mystery and suspense writing involves the relative positions of hero and reader. In the ideal mystery novel, the readers is two steps behind the detective.... The ideal suspense reader, on the other hand, is two steps ahead of the hero.”

Quote by Carolyn Wheat

Author

Carolyn Wheat is an American author born on August 8, 1946. Her works are known for their unique perspective and profound insight, spanning multiple literary genres. more

You May Also Like

“If beginnings terrify you, or if you just plain don't like writing them, or if they bore you, skip 'em.”

Ifs Writing Ems Bores Skip Bores You

Book:Writing Magic: Creating Stories That Fly

Source: Writing Magic: Creating Stories That Fly

“I don't think immediate tragedy is a very good source of art. It can be, but too often it's raw and painful and un-dealt-with. Sometimes art can be a really good escape from the intolerable, and a good place to go when things are bad, but that doesn't mean you have to write directly about the bad thing; sometimes you need to let time pass, and allow the thing that hurts to get covered with layers, and then you take it out, like a pearl, and you make art out of it.”

Thinking Needs Writing Mean Art Sometimes Hurt Source Tragedy Very Good Painful Bad Things Covered Layers Pearls Good Place Time Passes Places To Go

Author:Neil Gaiman

“What shouldn't you do if you're a young playwright? Don't bore the audience! I mean, even if you have to resort to totally arbitrary killing on stage, or pointless gunfire, at least it'll catch their attention and keep them awake. Just keep the thing going any way you can.”

Ifs Way Writing Mean Young Attention Audience Stage Killing Awake Bores Arbitrary Resorts Playwright Pointless

Book:Conversations with Tennessee Williams

Source: Conversations with Tennessee Williams

“There's an expression, "God is in the details," and it applies to nothing more than it does to the writing of fiction. To that and to the art of telling good lies. And what is fiction but the telling of lies?”

Writing Doe Art Lying Fiction Expression Details Good Lies

Book:Get That Novel Written!

Source: Get That Novel Written!

“The Nobel Prize is the best thing that can happen to a writer in terms of how it affects your contracts, the publishers, and the seriousness with which your work is taken. On the other hand, it does interfere with your private life, or it can if you let it, and it has zero effect on the writing. It doesn't help you write better and if you let it, it will intimidate you about future projects.”

Ifs Writing Doe Helping Hands Happens Term Taken Effects Projects Best Things Prize Zero Contracts Interfere Publishers Private Life Seriousness Intimidating Nobel Nobel Prize

Author:Toni Morrison

“No blur of inexactness, no cloud of vagueness, is allowable in good writing; from the first seeing to the last putting down, there must be steady lucidity and uncompromise of purpose.”

Writing Firsts Lasts Purpose Seeing Clouds Steady Good Writing Blur Lucidity Vagueness

Book:On Writing

Source: On Writing

“If anything in your life is more important than writing - anything at all - you should walk away now while you still can. Forewarned is forearmed. For those who cannot or will not walk away, you need only to remember this. Writing is life. Breathe deeply of it.”

Ifs Needs Should Writing Stills Important Remember Life Is Walks Breathe Forewarned

Book:Sometimes the Magic Works: Lessons from a Writing Life

Source: Sometimes the Magic Works: Lessons from a Writing Life

“Any writer of any worth at all hopes to play only a pocket-torch of light - and rarely, through genius, a sudden flambeau - into the bloody yet beautiful labyrinth of human experience, of being.”

Writing Humans Play Light Beautiful Genius Pockets Bloody Human Experience Torches Labyrinth

Book:Living in Hope and History

Source: Living in Hope and History

“I suffer as always from the fear of putting down the first line. It is amazing the terrors, the magics, the prayers, the straitening shyness that assail one. It is as though the words were not only indelible but that they spread out like dye in water and color everything around them. A strange and mystic business, writing.”

Writing Firsts Suffering Water Lines Prayer Magic Strange Color Terror Spread Mystic Shyness Indelible Business Writing

Book:Journal of a Novel: The East of Eden Letters

Source: Journal of a Novel: The East of Eden Letters

“Writers are greatly respected. The intelligent public is wonderfully patient with them, continues to read them, and endures disappointment after disappointment, waiting to hear from art what it does not hear from theology, philosophy, social theory, and what it cannot hear from pure science. Out of the struggle at the center has come an immense, painful longing for a broader, more flexible, fuller, more coherent, more comprehensive account of what we human beings are, who we are and what this life is for.”

Source: There Is Simply Too Much to Think About: Collected Nonfiction