“It has long been a tradition among novel writers that a book must end by everybody getting just what they wanted, or if the conventional happy ending was impossible, then it must be a tragedy in which one or both should die. In real life very few of us get what we want, our tragedies don't kill us, but we go on living them year after year, carrying them with us like a scar on an old wound.” IfsWantShouldWritingYearsLongBookRealEndsWantedDiesNovelImpossibleGoes OnTraditionTragedyWoundsReal LifeScarConventionalHappy EndingsOld Wounds Author:Willa Cather
“My favorite novels allow me to imagine the characters afterward and what happened, and that I've witnessed a really great story, where the world goes on.” WorldCharacterStoriesNovelImagineHappenedGoes OnMy FavoriteReally Great Author:J.H. Wyman
“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
“After the first shock of recognition - a sudden sense of "this is what I'm going to write" - the novel starts to breed by itself; the process goes on solely in the mind, not on paper. I feel a kind of gentle development, an uncurling inside, and I know that the details are there already, that in fact I would see them plainly if I looked closer, but I prefer to wait until what is loosely called inspiration has completed the task for me.” IfsKnowsFeelsWritingMindFirstsKindFactsInspirationWaitingProcessNovelGoes OnDevelopmentPaperTasksDetailsRecognitionGentleShock Author:Vladimir Nabokov
“I myself love to read those Victorian novels which go on and on, and you don't read them in one sitting. You might read one over the course of a summer, but that isn't what I want to write.” WantWritingMightCoursesNovelGoes OnSelf LoveSummerSittingVictorianLove To Read Author:Joan Didion
“But the doctors in the past, as the review of the evidence showed, branded Jenner, Semmelweis, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., Pasteur, Lister, Koch and Keen as charlatans...Napoleon said that war is too important to be left to the generals. We go on the assumption in the Senate that foreign relations are too important to be left to the diplomats...this question (on a novel cancer cure) is too important to leave purely to doctors.” SaidImportantWarAgePastLeftDarkNovelGoes OnEvidenceDoctorsRelationCancerMedicalCuresAssumptionReviewsSenateDark AgesHolmesDiplomatsCharlatansBrandedForeign RelationsPasteurCancer Cure Author:Paul Douglas
“But I'm not a small-literary-novel kind of guy, and once I'd developed the world in the first couple of hundred pages, I felt that there was potential here to go on and write an engaging story set in that world. So that's what I did. This probably ruins things both for the people who want small literary novels and for those who want action-packed epics, but anyway, it's what I wrote.” PeopleWorldWantWritingFirstsKindStoriesActionGuyFeltNovelGoes OnCouplePagesHundredRuinsEpicEngaging Author:Neal Stephenson
“I see everything visually. It's very visual for me. And so I think, from a plotting standpoint or what have you, there's obviously a certain amount of internal thinking that goes on in a novel (that) you can't do...in a screenplay. But I think, pacing wise, my novels move quickly because (they aren't overly) descriptive.” ThinkingMovingCertainNovelWiseGoes OnAmountVisualsInternalsScreenplaysStandpointPacing Author:Michael Landon, Jr.
“I think the success of every novel - if it's a novel of action - depends on the high spots. The thing to do is to say to yourself, 'Which are my big scenes?' and then get every drop of juice out of them. The principle I always go on in writing a novel is to think of the characters in terms of actors in a play. I say to myself, if a big name were playing this part, and if he found that after a strong first act he had practically nothing to do in the second act, he would walk out. Now, then, can I twist the story so as to give him plenty to do all the way through?” IfsThinkingWayGivingWritingFirstsPlayCharacterStoriesBigsActionActorsFoundNamesStrongTermWalksPrinciplesNovelGoes OnDependsSceneSpotsPlentyThings To DoTwistsJuice Author:P. G. Wodehouse
“The strange thing, though, is that most people who write novels these days seem to be aware of only a fraction of its possibilities. Kundera goes on and on about this, and I never tire of reading him on the subject, because I agree very deeply with it.” PeopleWritingSeemsReadingNovelSubjectsPossibilityStrangeGoes OnAgreeThese DaysTireFractionsStrange ThingsVery Deep Author:Teju Cole
“When you take a child who's hollering like hell, sit him on your knee, and say "once upon a time", you stop him hollering. As long as you go on telling him a story, he will listen. Novelists who neglect this fundamental effect do so at their peril. They become what is known as the experimental novelist, and an experimental novel is not really a novel at all.” ChildrenLongStoriesKnownNovelHellEffectsGoes OnFundamentalsKneesNovelistsNeglectPerilOnce Upon A Time Author:William Golding