Best fiction & process Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings

“There is an argument for believing that the entire process of writing a piece of fiction is simply a thinly-controlled and highly-internalised nervous breakdown designed, with a bit of luck, to produce something worthwhile at the end.”

Writing Believe Ends Bits Process Fiction Pieces Produce Argument Luck Nervous Controlled Worthwhile Breakdown Nervous Breakdown

Book:Writing: A User Manual: A practical guide to planning, starting and finishing a novel

Source: Writing: A User Manual: A practical guide to planning, starting and finishing a novel

“Fiction and nonfiction, for me, involve very different processes.”

Different Process Fiction Nonfiction Fiction And Nonfiction

Author:Chad Harbach

“Screenwriting involves an often un-personal process. Co-writers, directors, producers, everyone has a say in what you put on a page, and stories are constantly changing according to budget, actors, and commercial needs. Films are a collaborative process and are also inherently narrative and structured, so you are always working within very tight parameters. Short fiction unleashes a more intimate voice and a passion for language. I believe short narratives can have the same amount of danger and drama as any action film.”

“I think that most creative fiction involves the transformational process, whether it is Dickens or Dostoyevsky and the writer in some sense is expressing their own journey through such a wilderness.”

Thinking Process Fiction Creative Journey Wilderness Dickens Dostoyevsky

Author:William P. Young

“For me, the fiction writer's job is to take the small, stupid process of learning to use an iPhone - and suddenly you're the guy who's asking your daughter, "When I go on Facebook, can it see me?"”

Use Jobs Guy Process Fiction Stupid Goes On Daughter Asking Iphone Fiction Writers Our Daughter Your Daughter

Author:George Saunders

“It is important not to force a character into something. Fiction writers can be too controlling - usually that's a terror of our own unconscious processes.”

Important Character Force Process Fiction Terror Unconscious Fiction Writers

Author:Jeanette Winterson

“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

“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”

Want Firsts Kind Different Next Process Fiction Shapes Computer Pages Research Notes What You Want Block Files Non Fiction

Author:Joan Didion

“I have to say that writing about my writing process is more daunting than writing non-fiction.”

Writing Process Fiction Writing Process Non Fiction

Author:Sefi Atta

“I've always been interested in the form itself, so I always feel like I've never been good at going ahead with the artifice and not acknowledging the self in the artistic process, and not acknowledging the absurdity of pretending that's required in fiction.”

Feels Self Form Process Fiction Artistic Pretending Absurdity Artifice Artistic Process

Author:Dave Eggers

“My writing process is ritualized and monotonous, but there's no other way to get the job done. All other fiction writers I've met say the same thing.”

Way Writing Done Jobs Process Fiction Mets Writing Process Monotonous Fiction Writers Get The Job Done

Author:Douglas Coupland

“Fiction is risky for writers also in that the process of making certain books, of shaping certain narratives, leaves scars and marks on your inner life.”

Book Certain Process Fiction Mark Narrative Scar Inner Life

Author:Chris Abani

“I more seriously considered publishing it under a pseudonym than I considered publishing it as fiction. I think the decision to write it as nonfiction happened at the very outset of the process, because the overwhelming impetus for writing this book was to understand what the experience meant, and to override my own reductions and rationalizations, whatever story I had that was not true. It didn't sit well with me and I needed to answer that. That's sort of the reason I write everything.”

Thinking Writing Wells Book Reason Stories Process My Own Decision Answers Fiction Happened Needed Overwhelming Nonfiction Publishing Reduction Impetus Pseudonyms

Author:Melissa Febos

“We translated the script together with them. And during the process of translation, they rewrote the scripts. They put a lot into it. They made it their own. There are names of plants or chants or certain rites and everything that you cannot come across it in a movie. You know, you cannot learn about them casually. So the film doesn't have value in the ethnographical, anthropological. It's fiction.”

Knows Made Together Film Certain Values Names Process Fiction Plant Scripts Made It Translations Rite

Author:Ciro Guerra

“I was only eight when Sputnik was launched, and at that age the boundary between science and fiction is pretty blurry. Whichever way the process ran, I've been a fan of science and SF ever since.”

Way Age Process Fiction Fans Eight Boundaries Ran Blurry Sputnik

Author:Edward M. Lerner

“To think that humans evolved from lower species BUT the evolutionary process somehow came to a halt and we all arrived at the finish line simultaneously is to embrace a fiction possibly more implausible than Christianity.”

Thinking Humans Process Lines Fiction Christianity Embrace Species Halt Finish Line

Author:Jim Goad

“I'm repledging myself to human-scale values. As a fiction writer, the best data comes through the senses and is then processed through many revisions. We have to learn to be intelligent assessors of the data coming in to us and what it's doing to our mental process.”

Humans Values Process Fiction Intelligent Senses Scales Data Fiction Writers Revision

Author:George Saunders

“I have a process that I seem to always, to some degree, as a writer, adhere to, but I certainly have never imposed the way I write a novel on my students. When I had students, I never said, "You should never start writing a novel until you have the last sentence." I never did that, and I wouldn't do it now, but people now seem so interested in the process [of writing fiction] that I have to constantly make it clear when I describe mine that I'm not being prescriptive. I'm not proselytizing.”

People Way Should Writing Said Seems Lasts Process Fiction Novel Clear Students Mines Degrees Sentences Writing Fiction Proselytizing

Author:John Irving

“I came to fantasy fairly late. For some ten years, I had been happily writing fiction and non-fiction for adults. But I always loved fantasy, whether for adults or young people; and at that particular point in my life, I wanted to try it, to understand it, as part of the process of learning to be a writer. The results were beyond anything I could have foreseen. As I've said often and elsewhere, it was the most creative and liberating experience of my life.”

People Writing Trying Years Said Wanted Young Process Results Fiction Fantasy Creative Particular Ten Late Adults Elsewhere Liberating Non Fiction Writing Fiction Foreseen

Author:Lloyd Alexander

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Fiction Quotes