“And if I'm guilty of having gratuitous sex, then I'm also guilty of having gratuitous violence, and gratuitous feasting, and gratuitous description of clothes, and gratuitous heraldry, because very little of this is necessary to advance the plot. But my philosophy is that plot advancement is not what the experience of reading fiction is about. If all we care about is advancing the plot, why read novels? We can just read Cliffs Notes.” IfsWritingLittlesPhilosophyCareReadingSexFictionNovelViolenceClothesNotesGuiltyDescriptionPlotAdvancementCliffsAdvancingFeastingReading Fiction Author:George R. R. Martin
“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.” FeelsWritingTryingWellsSeemsMightEyeTogetherCertainEnergyProcessFictionHappenedShapesNotesDrivenEtcPlotConfinedNon FictionFiction WritingGood EnergyScanningVignettes Author:George Saunders
“I didn’t like it [computer] when I first began using it. Where it’s helped me a lot is in nonfiction which is a kind of different process. You’ve got research, you’ve got your notes, You can block out what you want to work on for the next 10 pages and put it in another file, and then you can kind of carve it into shape” WantFirstsKindDifferentNextProcessFictionShapesComputerPagesResearchNotesWhat You WantBlockFilesNon Fiction Author:Joan Didion
“When you're writing fiction, you don't have notes necessarily. You don't carve it, it's not like a piece of sculpture, it's more like water color.” WritingWaterFictionPiecesColorNotesSculptureWriting Fiction Author:Joan Didion
“An important factor to note is that it's rare for anyone to sell a first novel written before they turned 30-35; long-format fiction tends to require a bunch of experience of human life that takes time to acquire. So your average mid-career novelist is in their forties to fifties!” FirstsHumansLongImportantFictionCareersNovelWrittenSellsNotesAverageBunchFactorsHuman LifeNovelistsAcquireFortyTake TimeFormat Author:Charles Stross
“Dogwalker is a book of fiction, with characters based on the types of people who truly exist in the world. I've seen them and know them - some of them I know really well. Although the stories are sometimes gritty and unsettling, my hope is that in the end they hit a positive note.” PeopleKnowsWorldWellsBookEndsSometimesCharacterStoriesFictionTypeNotes Author:Arthur Bradford
“Read Mann's notes, which contain precise accounts of cholera and its symptoms, and observe how careful he is throughout his fiction in getting medical details straight - then you might begin to wonder whether cholera is the only candidate for the cause of Aschenbach's death. What results from this, I think, is a deeper appreciation of Mann's brilliance in keeping so many possibilities in play. The ambiguity is even more artful than people have realized.” PeopleThinkingPlayMightCausesResultsFictionWonderPossibilityAccountsNotesDetailsCarefulAppreciationDeeperMedicalCandidatesPreciseSymptomsAmbiguityBrillianceCholera Author:Philip Kitcher