Best Fiction Writing Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings Page 4

“With non-fiction writing I feel like I'm confined and driven by what actually happened. That makes the "plot". So it's a process of getting all of my notes typed up, then scanning through the notes, trying to extract or find certain vignettes that seem like they might write well - that might have a potential for good energy, shape, etc. And then at some point I start stringing these together, keeping an eye on the word count.”

Feels Writing Trying Wells Seems Might Eye Together Certain Energy Process Fiction Happened Shapes Notes Driven Etc Plot Confined Non Fiction Fiction Writing Good Energy Scanning Vignettes

Author:George Saunders

“The one thing fiction and non-fiction writing have in common for me is that sense of trying to get the sentences to be minimal but at the same time be a little overfull - to encourage them to do a kind of poetic work.”

Writing Trying Kind Littles Common Fiction One Thing Sentences Poetic Non Fiction Fiction Writing

Author:George Saunders

“Once you're imagining being the main character, and you're having the conversations and actually being there, the magic in fiction writing takes over.”

Writing Character Fiction Magic Conversation Being There Fiction Writing Main Characters

Author:Will Hobbs

“Writing a novel is like heading out over the open sea in a small boat. It helps, if you have a plan and a course laid out.”

Ifs Writing Helping Courses Novel Plans Sea Boat Headings Fiction Writing Writers And Writing Writing Fiction Writing By Writers

Author:John Gardner

“Editors never buy manuscripts that are left on the closet shelf at home.”

Home Left Editors Shelves Closets Manuscripts Fiction Writing Fiction Writers Reading And Writing Writers Reading Writing And Reading Reading Writing

Author:John W. Campbell

“In fiction writing, I would say there are several different strands that have been woven through my own writing, and each influenced by a different group of writers.”

Writing Has Beens Different My Own Fiction Groups Woven Fiction Writing Strands

Author:Alan Lightman

“Another strand of my writing is the importance of the idea. If you think about fiction writing as a spectrum, where at one end of the spectrum in the infrared, are the story tellers, and the people for whom creation of wonderful characters and telling a good story is the most important thing.”

People Ifs Thinking Writing Important Ideas Ends Character Stories Fiction Wonderful Creation Importance Important Things Spectrum Good Story Fiction Writing Strands Infrared

Author:Alan Lightman

“In fiction writing ideas have to be handled extremely carefully. You can't let your characters just be mouthpieces for your ideas. They have to live and breathe on their own.”

Writing Ideas Character Fiction Breathe Fiction Writing Mouthpiece

Author:Alan Lightman

“When you're writing a book that is going to be a narrative with characters and events, you're walking very close to fiction, since you're using some of the methods of fiction writing. You're lying, but some of the details may well come from your general recollection rather than from the particular scene. In the end it comes down to the readers. If they believe you, you're OK. A memoirist is really like any other con man; if he's convincing, he's home. If he isn't, it doesn't really matter whether it happened, he hasn't succeeded in making it feel convincing.”

“I want to do some fiction writing, I've had some pretty good luck with short stories, I'd like to do a couple of larger things.”

Want Writing Stories Fiction Couple Luck Short Story Good Luck Fiction Writing

Author:Janis Ian

“Fiction writing is a strange business when you think about it. You sit down and weave a network of lies to explore deeper truths.”

Thinking Writing Lying Fiction Strange Down And Deeper Fiction Writing

Author:Wally Lamb

“My first and biggest love was always fiction writing. But it is a very lonely pastime.”

Writing Firsts Fiction Lonely Fiction Writing Pastime

Author:Etgar Keret

“A professional writer is an amateur who didn't quit.”

Source: A Gift of Wings

“Never believe that the fiction writing life makes sense.... It's insanity by definition.”

Writing Believe Fiction Definitions Make Sense Insanity Writing Life Fiction Writing

Author:Jo Beverley

“When I was hired by the University of Washington extension school to teach the one-year fiction writing course - 96 classroom hours - I quickly determined that I knew only about an hour's worth off the top of my head.”

Writing Years School Courses Hours Fiction Teach University Determined Classroom Extensions Fiction Writing

Author:James Thayer

“I researched fiction writing for months before I taught my first class, much of it looking for strong techniques from bestselling authors.”

Writing Firsts Strong Fiction Class Taught Months Technique Fiction Writing First Class

Author:James Thayer

“The professions of novelist and journalist are very separate. As a novelist, you are ultimately working for yourself. Yes, you need the approval of a publisher and an audience, but what is valued in fiction writing - style, individual voice, insight - is scorned by the editor who is combing through your newspaper article.”

Needs Writing Individual Voice Fiction Audience Style Insight Profession Newspapers Journalist Novelists Editors Articles Approval Publishers Fiction Writing Writing Style Scorned

Author:Jon Weisman

“Fiction and screenwriting blend for me. I feel like being a TV writer/screenwriter has definitely made my fiction writing better, although I have less time to do it.”

Feels Writing Made Fiction Tvs Screenwriters Fiction Writing Screenwriting

Author:Nick Antosca

“What you create when you're teaching fiction writing is a kind of literary salon, not a social club or a mutual admiration society, not a debating society, not a repair shop, not a fight club or a soap box. It's a place to have a conversation about a story.”

Writing Kind Stories Fighting Social Fiction Teaching Conversation Boxes Clubs Shops Mutual Admiration Soap Fiction Writing Salons Mutual Admiration

Author:John Dufresne

“The first time I took a fiction writing class was sophomore year. And I just found myself taking that extremely seriously, in a way that I didn't take anything else seriously. So I guess that was the start of it.”

Way Writing Years Firsts Found Fiction Class First Time Fiction Writing Sophomore Sophomore Year

Author:John Brandon

“It's my experience that people don't think of fiction writing as being as intellectually serious as other kinds of writing in academia and so without a career as a critic or essayist you can be treated as something of a spiritual medium - a fraud - for "just" writing fiction.”

People Thinking Writing Kind Spiritual Fiction Careers Serious Critics Treated Mediums Fraud Academia Fiction Writing Writing Fiction Essayists

Author:Alexander Chee

“I grew up treating a life as a writer as a career in letters, one devoted to many kinds of writing. And so it seemed normal to study both fiction writing and the literary essay as an undergrad.”

Writing Kind Fiction Careers Study Grew Normal Grew Up Letters Devoted Essays Fiction Writing

Author:Alexander Chee

“When I taught at the University of Houston in the Creative Writing program we required the poets to take workshops in fiction writing and we required the fiction writers to take workshops in poetry. And the reason for that is because the fiction writers seemed to need to learn how to pay greater attention to language itself, to the way that language works.”

Way Needs Writing Reason Language Pay Attention Fiction Creative Greater Taught Poet Program University Creative Writing Workshops Fiction Writing Fiction Writers Houston

Author:Edward Hirsch

“Every good story needs a complication. We learn this fiction-writing fundamental in courses and workshops, by reading a lot or, most painfully, through our own abandoned story drafts. After writing twenty pages about a harmonious family picnic, say, or a well-received rock concert, we discover that a story without a complication flounders, no matter how lovely the prose. A story needs a point of departure, a place from which the character can discover something, transform himself, realize a truth, reject a truth, right a wrong, make a mistake, come to terms.”

“My work is very eclectic. I write books that range from writing fiction, writing fable where I am very directly trying to imagine alternate worlds, to writing about [Buckminster] Fuller who was the ultimate world man creating all sorts of alternate worlds and believing that they were imminent to my own work of - for instance, a project that I've been working on for some year and a half, two years now that continues to evolve has been what I call Deep Time Photography.”

“Fiction is the truth inside the lie.”

Life Writing Truth Beautiful Lying Fiction Bad Ass Fiction Writing Fiction Writers Writing Fiction Reading And Writing Writers Reading Reading Writing Realistic Fiction

Book:Danse Macabre

Source: Danse Macabre

“I love deadlines. I like the whooshing noise they make as they go by.”

“Maybe the example of Southern fiction writing has been so powerful that Southern poets have sort of keyed themselves to that.”

Writing Has Beens Powerful Fiction Example Poet Southern Fiction Writing

Author:Robert Morgan

“I teach a non-fiction writing class at New York University, and one of my great pleasures is deciding on the syllabus.”

Writing Pleasure Fiction Class Teach New York University Non Fiction Fiction Writing Syllabus

Author:Susan Orlean

“Fiction writing, and the reading of it, and book buying, have always been the activities of a tiny minority of people, even in the most-literate societies.”

People Writing Book Reading Fiction Activity Tiny Buying Minorities Fiction Writing

Author:Paul Theroux

“Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't.”

Truth Science Fiction Possibility Truth Is Sticks Stranger Obliged Fiction Writing Honest Truth Truth And Honesty Truth Honesty Scientific Truth Stranger Than Fiction Equator Fiction And Nonfiction Fact And Fiction

Author:Mark Twain

“Any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae.”

Source: Palm Sunday: An Autobiographical Collage

“I am conscious of trying to stretch the boundaries of non-fiction writing. It's always surprised me how little attention many non-fiction writers pay to the formal aspects of their work.”

Writing Trying Littles Pay Attention Fiction Conscious Aspect Boundaries Formal Non Fiction Fiction Writing Fiction Writers

Author:Alain de Botton

“You must keep sending work out; you must never let a manuscript do nothing but eat its head off in a drawer. You send that work out again and again, while you're working on another one. If you have talent, you will receive some measure of success - but only if you persist.”

Ifs Writing Work Talent Work Out Persistence Rejection Again And Again Persist Manuscripts Fiction Writing Drawers Measure Of Success Persistence Inspirational

Author:Isaac Asimov

“Learning to listen, letting people finish their sentences, and most of all, the habit of noticing the difference between what people say and how they say it. {on the habits of psychoanalytic training and practice applied to fiction writing} The gap between what people tell you and what's really going on is what interests me.”

People Writing Interest Differences Fiction Practice Habit Training Sentences Gaps Noticing Fiction Writing Psychoanalytic

Author:Amy Bloom

“Close the door. Write with no one looking over your shoulder. Don't try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. It's the one and only thing you have to offer.”

“I am irritated by my own writing. I am like a violinist whose ear is true, but whose fingers refuse to reproduce precisely the sound he hears within.”

Writing Sound My Own Ears Fingers Refuse Fiction Writing Funny Life Writers And Writing Fiction Writers Novel Writing Irritated Writing Fiction Writing By Writers Violinist Creativity And Writing

Author:Gustave Flaubert

“Get it down. Take chances. It may be bad, but that's the only way you can do anything really good.”

“My own experience is that once a story has been written, one has to cross out the beginning and the end. It is there that we authors do most of our lying.”

“Don't try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say.”

“No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader.”

“It begins with a character, usually, and once he stands up on his feet and begins to move, all I can do is trot along behind him with a paper and pencil trying to keep up long enough to put down what he says and does.”

Source: Faulkner at West Point

“It is perfectly okay to write garbage – as long as you edit brilliantly.”

“Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.”

“When in doubt, have a man come through the door with a gun in his hand.”

Men Writing Hands Doubt Doors Gun Writing Advice Fiction Writing Writing Fiction When In Doubt

Author:Raymond Chandler

“If you can tell stories, create characters, devise incidents, and have sincerity and passion, it doesn't matter a damn how you write.”

“I have been successful probably because I have always realized that I knew nothing about writing and have merely tried to tell an interesting story entertainingly.”

Writing Has Beens Stories Interesting Successful Doubt Fiction Writing Writers And Writing Fiction Writers Writing Fiction Writing By Writers Story Writing Writing Stories Creativity And Writing Story Writers Interesting Stories Successful Writing

Author:Edgar Rice Burroughs

“A writer without interest or sympathy for the foibles of his fellow man is not conceivable as a writer.”

Men Writing Interest Fellows Fellow Man Fiction Writing Fiction Writers Foibles

Author:Joseph Conrad

“Science fiction writers, I am sorry to say, really do not know anything.”

Knows Writing Fiction Science Fiction Sorry Fiction Writing Writers And Writing Fiction Writers Writing By Writers I Am Sorry Am Sorry Creativity And Writing Writing From Famous Authors Writing Short Short Writing

Book:I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon

Source: I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon

“The work never matches the dream of perfection the artist has to start with.”

Writing Dream Artist Perfection Fiction Writing Writers And Writing Fiction Writers Novel Writing Writing Fiction Writing By Writers Creativity And Writing

Author:William Faulkner

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Fiction Writing Quotes