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Novel Quotes

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Novel Quotes

“I think it's harder than ever to be an artist. I think that you end up, especially as a middle-aged person, you pay such big consequences for saying, 'I'm just going to devote my life to making art,' or 'I'm going to devote my life to writing novels.' You end up with no resources.”

Thinking Writing Persons Art Ends Bigs Artist Pay Novel Middle Consequence Resources Harder Middle Aged

Author:Dana Spiotta

“I think predictability is built into any good novel in some way - you begin reading Anna Karenina and you know pretty much what's going to happen at the end. But that doesn't mean you know what's going to happen in the middle. For me, it's that sense of what happens in the middle that's important.”

Thinking Knows Way Mean Important Ends Happens Reading Novel Middle Built Anna Predictability

Author:Scarlett Thomas

“Writing the middle of a novel is a lot like driving through Texas. You think it's never going to end, and the scenery looks the same.”

Thinking Writing Looks Ends Novel Middle Driving Texas Scenery

Book:How to Write Killer Fiction: The Funhouse of Mystery & the Roller Coaster of Suspense

Source: How to Write Killer Fiction: The Funhouse of Mystery & the Roller Coaster of Suspense

“A novel with a bad middle is a bad book. A bad ending is something I've just gotten in the habit of forgiving.”

Book Novel Middle Habit Forgiving

Author:Lev Grossman

“F.R. Leavis's "eat up your broccoli" approach to fiction emphasises this junkfood/wholefood dichotomy. If reading a novel--for theeighteenth century reader, the most frivolous of diversions--did not, by the middle of the twentieth century, make you a better person in some way, then you might as well flush the offending volume down the toilet, which was by far the best place for the undigested excreta of dubious nourishment.”

Source: Expletives Deleted: Selected Writings

“All middle-class novels are about the trials of three, all upper-class novels about mass fornication, all revolutionary novels about a bad man turned good by a tractor.”

Men Three Class Novel Middle Mass Trials Revolutionary Middle Class Bad Man Upper Class Tractors

Book:The beauties and furies

Source: The beauties and furies

“I won't read a new graphic comic novel until the writer has completed the entire series. I got burned a few times when I got turned on to a book, plowed through it only to find out the author was in the middle of writing the next.”

Writing Book Next Novel Middle Series Comic Burned Graphic

Author:Nick Offerman

“In a novella, a whole lot of crap can happen, and you can build momentum and suspense and leave room for a surprise or three. Stories are cut down to the most essential elements, and novels (this might be an unfair generalization on my part) are big fat clumsy efforts where the reader can snooze for a couple chapters and miss nothing of consequence. Hence my love for the middle way.”

“I let myself go at the beginning and write with an easy mind, but by the time I get to the middle I begin to grow timid and to fear my story will be too long. . .That is why the beginning of my stories is always very promising and looks as though I were starting on a novel, and the middle is huddled and timid, and the end is...like fireworks.”

Writing Mind Looks Long Ends Stories Grows Easy Novel Middle Starting Fireworks

Author:Anton Chekhov