“Cut like crazy. Less is more. I've often read manuscripts - including my own - where I've got to the beginning of, say, chapter two and have thought: “This is where the novel should actually start.” A huge amount of information about character and backstory can be conveyed through small detail. The emotional attachment you feel to a scene or a chapter will fade as you move on to other stories. Be business-like about it.” FeelsShouldTwoCharacterStoriesMovingMy OwnNovelCuttingCrazyInformationEmotionalHugeAmountSceneIncludingDetailsAttachmentFadesChaptersManuscriptsLess Is MoreSmall Details Author:Sarah Waters
“This novel has it all--mystery, psychological insight, emotional truth, and--most important--characters whose lives matter. You'll fall in love with these families. Solti writes with such passion it is inescapable, lyrical, and profoundly moving. The Forgetting Tree goes on my top ten list.” WritingImportantMatterCharacterMovingFallPassionForgetNovelMysteryTreeEmotionalGoes OnTenFalling In LoveInsightListsPsychologicalLyrical Author:Jonis Agee
“There is a fine line I have to walk throughout the writing process in a novel. It is this line between drama and melodrama, and it is this line between evoking genuine emotional power and being manipulative.” WritingProcessLinesWalksNovelEmotionalFineDramaGenuineWriting ProcessFine LinesMelodramaManipulativeEmotional Power Author:Nicholas Sparks
“Whatever is felt upon the page without being specifically named there - that, one might say, is created. It is the inexplicable presence of the thing not named, of the overtone divined by the ear but not heard by it, the verbal mood, the emotional aura of the fact or the thing or the deed, that gives high quality to the novel or the drama, as well as to poetry itself.” GivingWellsFactsMightFeltQualityNovelHeardEmotionalDramaPagesEarsDeedsMoodAurasInexplicableHigh Quality Book:Not Under Forty Source: Not Under Forty
“Starting a new novel is a little like starting a new relationship - you have to be prepared to commit for at least three years and put up with the domestic tedium as well as the emotional highs!” WritingYearsWellsLittlesThreeNovelEmotionalPreparedStartingCommitThree YearsBe PreparedNew RelationshipTedium Author:Tobsha Learner
“With the novels, I usually start from something in my own life that I can't resolve, so I turn it into a metaphor and for months or sometimes years I'll exhaust all of my emotional reaction to this issue by making it enormous on the page.” YearsI CanSometimesTurnsMy OwnNovelIssuesEmotionalMonthsPagesMetaphorEnormousReactionsResolveMy Own LifeEmotional Reactions Author:Chuck Palahniuk
“Usually, ordinary histories don't get the emotional feel of a period. That's what a novel can do.” FeelsCan DoNovelEmotionalPeriodsOrdinary Author:Alix Kates Shulman
“The English tradition offers the great tapestry novel, where you have the emotional aspect of a detective's personal life, the circumstances of the crime and, most important, the atmosphere of the English countryside that functions as another character.” ImportantCharacterNovelCrimeEmotionalCircumstancesOffersAspectTraditionFunctionAtmospherePersonal LifeDetectivesCountrysideTapestryTapestry Of LifeEnglish Countryside Author:Elizabeth George
“I think there's a false division people sometimes make in describing literary novels, where there are people who write systems novels, or novels of ideas, and there are people who write about emotional things in which the movement is character driven. But no good novels are divisible in that way.” PeopleThinkingWayWritingIdeasSometimesCharacterNovelMovementEmotionalDrivenDivisionDescribingEmotional Things Author:Dana Spiotta
“I was aware that I had to pay off things in a convincing emotional fashion, that I had to address the lingering plot points in some real tangible sense, and that I had to make this a self-contained novel, in case I'm run over by a bus tomorrow or in case there's no demand for anyone to ever see a sequel. (Two things that I hope don't happen, incidentally.)” TwoRealSelfHappensRunningPayCasesNovelFashionEmotionalTomorrowDemandTwo ThingsAddressesPlotBusConvincingTangibleSequelsLingeringSelf Contained Author:Tod Goldberg
“I can be really silly when I'm not actually writing silliness, and I have to rein that in. Pynchon, in my opinion, sometimes tells elaborate shaggy dog stories just to work up to a pun or punch line. My challenge is to use humor and wordplay to reinforce the emotional core of the novel.” WritingI CanSometimesStoriesUseChallengesLinesOpinionNovelDogEmotionalCoreSillyReinsPunWordplaySilliness Author:Mary Kay Zuravleff
“I've been told by people who write historical novels that you just sort of write the emotional truth first, the story at the core, and then you go back and research it at the end.” PeopleWritingFirstsEndsStoriesNovelEmotionalResearchHistoricalCoreHistorical Novels Author:Jami Attenberg
“Simply put, you can read a story in a single sitting and hold it all in your mind. You can experience all of its rhythms, beginning to end, during that span. Consequently it has, I think, greater emotional power than a novel because of this real-time effect. Stories can stun you.” ThinkingMindRealEndsStoriesNovelGreaterEffectsEmotionalSittingRhythmEmotional Power Author:Adam Ross
“I'll never forget reading Chekhov's "A Doctor's Visit" on a train to Hawthorne, New York, and I got to the end - the scene where the patient says goodbye to the doctor and she puts a flower in her hair as a kind of thank you to him - and I felt like a cowboy shot from a canyon's top. This is a different experience from reading a novel, I think. The emotional effect is cumulative. Let's just hope market forces don't send short fiction the way of the dinosaur, because their sales are paltry compared to the novel and this is truly unfortunate.” ThinkingWayKindDifferentEndsReadingForceFeltForgetFictionNovelEffectsNew YorkEmotionalFlowerHairSceneShotsDoctorsTrainPatientGoodbyeNever ForgetUnfortunateCowboySaying GoodbyeDinosaursCanyonsCumulativeDifferent ExperiencesChekhovHawthorne Author:Adam Ross
“Novels may have taken care of the emotional business for me, which has allowed music to be more emotional for me.” MayCareNovelTakenEmotional Author:John Wesley Harding
“Writing fiction lets you be a little more emotional and unguarded, a little freer. Writing fictional characters is also really different from writing about real people. In nonfiction, you can only say so much about the people you interact with. After all, they're actual people, their version of their story trumps yours. In a novel, you can build a character, using certain parts or impressions of someone you know, and guessing or inventing others, without having to worry that your guesses or memories or inventions are wrong.” PeopleWritingDifferentRealCharacterMemoriesWorryNovelEmotionalInventionImpressionFictional Character Author:Elif Batuman
“Novels can fill in the spaces about what that emotional resonance is.” NovelEmotional Author:Quiara Alegria Hudes
“The thing is, for me, as a fiction writer, I don't think there's a finer testament to our lives than this thing that's being spurned - the emotional intelligence, the ethics, the beauty. It's all there. It's all so fully contained in a novel that succeeds. But at the same time, I understand the impulse to put away childish things.” ThinkingNovelEmotionalSucceedEthicsImpulse Author:Joshua Ferris
“The novels I love, the ones I remember, the ones I re-read, have an empathetic human quality, or 'emotional truth'. This quality is difficult to fully define, but I always recognise it when I see it: it is different from honesty and more resilient than fact, something that exists not in the kind of fiction that explains but in the kind that shows.” HumansKindDifferentFactsShowsRememberDifficultFictionQualityNovelHonestyEmotionalRecogniseResilientEmpatheticHuman Qualities Author:Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie