“In an improv group and a successful work team, the members play off one another, each person's contributions providing the spark for the next. Together, the improvisational team creates a novel emergent product, one that's more responsive to the changing environment.” PersonsPlayTogetherNextNovelSuccessfulEnvironmentGroupsTeamProductsMembersContributionCollaborationSparksProvidingSuccessful WorkChanging Environment Author:R. Keith Sawyer
“Most good novelists have been women or homosexuals. The novel is the triumphant evolved creation, one increasingly has to think, of these two groups, who have cooperated more closely in this domain than in any other.” ThinkingHas BeensTwoWomenNovelGroupsCreationNovelistsHomosexualityHomosexualDomainTriumphant Book:U and I: A True Story Source: U and I: A True Story
“The act of migration puts into crisis everything about the migrating individual or group, everything about identity and selfhood and culture and belief. So if this is a novel about migration it must be that act of putting in question. It must perform the crisis it describes.” IfsCultureIndividualBeliefNovelGroupsIdentityCrisisMigration Author:Salman Rushdie
“Reading groups, readings, breakdowns of book sales all tell the same story: when women stop reading, the novel will be dead.” BookStoriesReadingNovelGroupsBreakdown Author:Ian Mcewan
“If only a group of people were more important to me than the idea of a Novel, I might begin a novel.” PeopleIfsImportantIdeasMightNovelGroups Author:Sylvia Plath
“Every novel deals with social problems. It can't help it because the protagonist must come in conflict with his group. So the author has to offer an analysis of how the group and the protagonist fit. Otherwise, the reader will just say, "This makes no sense," and will put it away.” HelpingProblemSocialDealsNovelGroupsReaderFitOffersConflictAnalysisProtagonistsSocial Problems Author:Jane Smiley
“I'm always looking for context in which people tell stories. In "Fight Club" it's these support groups for dying people, and then in "Choke" it's 12-step recovery groups. In one novel it's artists' colonies, in another novel it's a diary form that submariners' wives typically keep so that when their husband comes back from serving on a submarine they have an accounting of their spouse's time. So I'm always looking for, number one, a non-fiction context - because you can tell a more outrageous story if you use a non-fiction form.” PeopleIfsStoriesUseFormArtistFightingNumbersFictionStepsSupportNovelWifeGroupsDyingHusbandClubsRecoveryServingSpouseDiariesNon FictionOutrageousChokeAccountingColonySubmarinesSupport Groups12 Step Recovery12 Step Author:Chuck Palahniuk
“If a novel is written in a certain language with certain characters from a particular community and the story is very good or illuminating, then that work is translated into the language of another community - then they begin to see through their language that the problems described there are the same as the problems they are having. They can identify with characters from another language group.” IfsCharacterStoriesProblemCertainLanguageCommunityNovelWrittenGroupsParticularVery GoodIlluminating Author:Ngugi wa Thiong'o