“One way of understanding a graphic novel is that it's an ambitious comic and one way or another my comics have had ambitions. I have no problem with escapism. When I get my depressions all I want to do is escape reality.” WayWantProblemRealityUnderstandingNovelAmbitionOne WayComicAmbitiousNo ProblemGraphicEscapismGraphic NovelsEscape Reality Author:Art Spiegelman
“Some TV shows are like really good novels in that there are enough episodes that you start to have your own feelings about how the characters should act. When the scriptwriters go slightly wrong, when they make the character make a left turn that he or she wouldn't do, you know enough about the characters to say, "No, that's not what she would do there. That's wrong." You can actually argue with a TV show in a way that you can't do as much with movie - you inhabit a TV show in the way you inhabit a novel.” KnowsWayShouldEnoughCharacterShowsFeelingsTurnsLeftNovelTvsArguingDo You KnowEpisodesTv Shows Author:Nicholson Baker
“I think there's a real connection between acting and writing novels because the way I write characters has a little bit to do with the method acting that I was taught in high school and college.” ThinkingWayWritingLittlesRealCharacterSchoolBitsActingNovelTaughtCollegeLittle BitHigh SchoolConnectionsMethodMethod ActingReal Connection Author:Jeffrey Eugenides
“The excitement of theatre is palpable but the frustrations, and the complete absence of a definitive evening - the play as text means practically nothing in a way - , there's no particular performance that is definitive in the way a novel is a solid object you hold in your hands and here it is. You can't say that about a play. If the novel gives us a sense of throbbing consciousness, theater is pure soul, beautiful and elusive.” IfsWayGivingMeanSoulPlayHandsBeautifulConsciousnessNovelObjectsParticularPurePerformancesTheaterTheatreAbsenceEveningExcitementFrustrationElusivePure Soul Author:Don DeLillo
“I think it's especially important for an editor to say what he's enjoying. For a novelist to be told, midstream, what he's doing right can actually influence the unwritten parts of a novel in a positive way - praise helps a writer know what's good about what he's written, what's interesting and exciting, and what to work for in writing the conclusion.” ThinkingKnowsWayWritingImportantHelpingEnjoyInterestingNovelWrittenInfluenceExcitingPraiseConclusionNovelistsEditorsDoing RightUnwritten Author:Donna Tartt
“What works in a story is very different than what works in cinema. For example, dialogue in books: If you translate it too faithfully, it sounds a little stilted, because we often don't speak the way we speak in novels. Oral language is much punchier, shorter sentences.” IfsWayLittlesBookDifferentStoriesSpeakLanguageSoundNovelExampleSentencesDialogueCinemaTranslate Author:Yann Martel
“Just look at the cinema itself: It's comprised of lots of movies about graphic novels, and if you're not 20 years old and wearing a cape and a mask and white, you're out of business. Today's cinema is a proliferation of comedies, which are in some ways creating caricature images. They're one-dimensional.” IfsWayYearsLooksTodayWhiteNovelComedyCreatingCinemaMaskGraphicCaricaturesProliferationCapesGraphic Novels Author:Danny Glover
“When I went to the University of Iowa in order to be a writer, I thought, This is the worst way to learn how to write. To sit in a room with a bunch of would-be writers, who want to write the Great American Novel, every one of them, and you read their stories and they read yours, and you're not living a life. I don't like that. I like learning on the job. The character of my work has definitely evolved from the character of my life.” WayWantWritingCharacterStoriesWould BeJobsOrderRoomsNovelWorstUniversityBunchGreat AmericanIowa Author:Joe Frank
“Your interviews or blog posts or whatever are less supplements to your novel than part of it. I'm not private, but I believe in literary form - I'll use my life as material for art (I don't know how not to do this) and I'll use art as a way of exploring that passage of life into art and vice versa, but that's not the same thing as thinking that any of the details of my life are interesting or relevant on their own.” ThinkingKnowsWayBelieveArtUseFormI BelieveInterestingNovelKnow HowMaterialsVicesDetailsI Believe InPostsInterviewsPassagesRelevantExploringBlogsVice VersaSupplements Author:Ben Lerner
“For me writing is an organic process that starts with engaging the language and then thinking about the structure of the novel as you move along. Especially in revision you start to notice correlations. Things come up, not self-consciously, because you're busy feeling your way through sentences and trying to push the language into new places.” ThinkingWayWritingTryingSelfFeelingsMovingLanguageProcessNovelStructureBusyCome UpSentencesEngagingRevisionCorrelationNew Places Author:Dana Spiotta
“I think there's a false division people sometimes make in describing literary novels, where there are people who write systems novels, or novels of ideas, and there are people who write about emotional things in which the movement is character driven. But no good novels are divisible in that way.” PeopleThinkingWayWritingIdeasSometimesCharacterNovelMovementEmotionalDrivenDivisionDescribingEmotional Things Author:Dana Spiotta
“Katherine Heiny's work does something magical: elevates the mundane so that it has the stakes of a mystery novel, gives women's interior lives the gravity they so richly deserve -- and makes you laugh along the way.” WayGivingDoeNovelLaughingMysteryDeserveStakesGravityInteriorsMundaneMake You LaughMystery Novels Author:Lena Dunham
“Read non-fiction. History, biology, entomology, mineralogy, paleontology. Get a bodyguard and do fieldwork. Find your inner fish. Don't publish too soon. Not before you have read Thomas Mann in any case. Learn by copying, sentence by sentence some of the masters. Copy Coetzee's or Sebald's sentences and see what happens to your story. Consider creative non-fiction if you want to stay in South Africa. It might be the way to go. Never neglect back and hamstring exercises, otherwise you won't be able to write your novel. One needs one's buttocks to think.” IfsThinkingWayWantNeedsWritingStoriesMightHappensAbleFictionCasesNovelCreativeMastersExerciseSouthFishesSentencesBiologyNeglectCopiesSouth AfricaPublishNon FictionCopyingBodyguardPaleontologyButtocksFieldworkHamstringsCoetzee Author:Marlene van Niekerk
“My writing derived from the conviction I conceived during my college years: one should lead one's life as if one were the protagonist of an epic novel, with the outcome predetermined and chapter after chapter of edifying, traumatic, and exhilarating events to be suffered through. Since the end is known in advance, one must try to experience as much as possible in the brief time allotted. Writing is a way of ensuring that you pay enough attention along the way to understand what you see.” IfsWayShouldWritingTryingYearsEndsEnoughPayAttentionKnownNovelEventsCollegeConvictionOutcomesChaptersEpicExhilaratingProtagonistsPredeterminedYear OneCollege Years Author:Jeffrey Tayler
“You can't have a novel without real, believable people, and once you get into either too theoretical a novel or too philosophical a novel, you get into the dangers that the French novel has discovered in the past 50 or 60 years. And you get into a sort of aridity. No, you have to have real, identifiable people to whom the reader reacts in a way as if they were real people.” PeopleIfsWayYearsRealPastNovelDangerReaderPhilosophicalTheoreticalBelievable Author:Julian Barnes
“In some ways, a novel isn't as structurally rigorous as a screenplay or a TV show, which have finite real estate. In a novel, you can more deeply illuminate a character's interior and get away with digressions.” WayRealCharacterShowsNovelTvsGet AwayEstatesTv ShowsInteriorsFiniteScreenplays Author:Howard Gordon
“You, and in fact quite a lot of your generation, have in some way been exiled from that particular sanctuary. It's become almost impossible for someone to "go mad" in the classical sense. At one time people conveniently "went mad" and were never heard from again. Like a character in a romantic novel. But now you are too hip to yourself on a psychological level. You all are too intimate with too many of the symptoms of insanity to be caught completely off your guard.” PeopleWayCharacterFactsLevelsNovelImpossibleGenerationsHeardParticularMadCaughtPsychologicalHipsInsanityIntimateOne TimeSymptomsSanctuary Author:Ken Kesey
“I imagine as long as people will continue to read novels, people will continue to write them, or vice versa; unless of course the pictorial magazines and comic strips finally atrophy man's capacity to read, and literature really is on its way back to the picture writing in the Neanderthal cave.” PeopleMenWayWritingLongCoursesLiteratureNovelImagineCapacityVicesMagazinesComicCavesVice VersaComic StripsAtrophyPictorialNeanderthals Author:William Faulkner
“For me, with any character, there are different ways that you approach understanding him, and in this film in particular, because I had the novel to refer to. It's always really helpful to have all of that information and all of those hundreds more words which give you an idea into the background and your character and all.” WayGivingIdeasDifferentCharacterFilmUnderstandingNovelInformationParticularApproachBackgroundsDifferent WaysHelpfulUnderstanding Him Author:Asa Butterfield
“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
“I wanted my first novel to be a veritable infarct of narrative cloggers-the trick being to feel your way through each clog by blowing it up until its obstructiveness finally reveals not blank mass but unlooked-for seepage points of passage.” WayFeelsFirstsWantedNovelMassTricksNarrativePassagesBlankBlowing It Book:U and I: A True Story Source: U and I: A True Story
“It's very bad to write a novel by act of will. I can do a book of nonfiction work that way - just sign the contract and do the book because, provided the topic has some meaning for me, I know I can do it. But a novel is different. A novel is more like falling in love. You don't say, 'I'm going to fall in love next Tuesday, I'm going to begin my novel.' The novel has to come to you. It has to feel just like love.” KnowsWayFeelsWritingI CanBookDifferentFallNextCan DoNovelLove YouFalling In LoveContractsNonfictionTopicsTuesdayI Can Do ItLike LoveFeels Just Author:Norman Mailer
“One thing I've found that I can do that I really enjoy is rereading my own writing, earlier stories and novels especially. It induces mental time travel, the same way certain songs you hear on the radio do ... the whole thing returns, an eerie feeling that I'm sure you've experienced.” WayWritingI CanWholeStoriesFeelingsCertainSongFoundEnjoyCan DoMy OwnNovelOne ThingReturnRadioTime TravelEerieRereading Author:Philip K. Dick
“The ability to get inside your character's head in a graphic novel is really fun and useful because one, you can really define the character's voice and two, it's a way easier way to convey what the character's thinking by actually laying out what he's thinking.” ThinkingWayTwoCharacterFunVoiceAbilityNovelEasierGraphicGraphic Novels Author:Eric Kripke
“I look on my life as raw material for my novels: that's just the way I am, and it frees me from any inhibitions.” WayLooksNovelMaterialsRaw MaterialsInhibitions Author:Imre Kertész
“Even in traditional filmmaking, you're always trying to find novel ways of telling stories, and this is different.” WayTryingDifferentStoriesNovelTraditionalFilmmakingAlways TryingTelling Stories Author:Rick Heinrichs
“For me, the experience of making the show is very much like being in a novel. I enjoy getting the new script. I make a cup of tea and I read it the same way I would read a book, with the same amount of joy.” WayBookShowsJoyEnjoyNovelAmountScriptsCupsTeaCups Of Tea Author:Billy Campbell
“Photography intervenes in a very strange way. It makes the streets, gates, squares of the city into illustrations of a trashy novel, draws off the banal obviousness of this ancient architecture to inject it with the most pristine intensity.” WayCitiesNovelStreetsStrangePhotographyDrawsAncientArchitectureGatesIntensitySquaresIllustrationPristineObviousness Author:Louis Aragon
“I think not in two or three dimensional terms but in five dimensional terms when I consider a novel. There's height, width, and depth, there's the time factor, and then there's the factor which I call the cerebral factor of the reader, the way the reader adjusts to all the other dimensions, which is the fifth dimension.” ThinkingWayTwoThreeTermNovelFiveReaderDepthFactorsHeightDimensionsFifthCerebralWidth Author:Richard Grossman
“Updike worked this way, and I just kinda borrowed it from him. So the memoir will be relief from novel writing for a moment.” WayWritingMomentsNovelMemoirReliefBorrowedNovel Writing Author:Rick Moody
“I think there seems to be a need for escapism at the moment. Maybe that's the type of world we're living in. It's a sanctuary, in a way, where you can immerse yourself in something that doesn't exist, whether that's TV shows or comic books or novels. it's not solely down to magic and vampires - that's in at the moment. but escapism, being a part of other worlds, is very good for you.” ThinkingWorldWayNeedsBookMomentsShowsSeemsNovelMagicTvsTypeVery GoodVampireComicComic BookTv ShowsSanctuaryOther WorldsEscapism Author:Colin Morgan
“Horse racing is really much more intimidating than anything having to do with literature. When I had horses at the racetrack, I would wake up in terror in a way that I would never wake up while working on a novel.” WayLiteratureNovelHorseWake UpTerrorRacingIntimidatingHorse Racing Author:Jane Smiley
“I kind of build a novel the way marine polyps build a coral reef, it's millions and millions of little precarious bodies stacked on one another. And in my case, that's thousands of minutes I go through to get from one scene to the next and build it that way.” WayKindLittlesBodyNextMillionsCasesNovelMinutesSceneMarinePrecariousReefsCoral Reefs Author:Dean Koontz
“Conan Doyle is amazing in the way he has Watson describe Sherlock’s posture, mood swings, his hand gestures, and so forth in the novels.” WayHandsNovelMoodGesturesSwingsPostureWatsonConanMood Swing Author:Benedict Cumberbatch
“I set up this little office space with a piano in it and I thought that would be quite a novel way of writing the album, to make it like a job - a romanticised version of the 9 to 5. I think that was probably my favourite time. I made sure I walked there every day, which took me about an hour.” ThinkingWayWritingLittlesMadeWould BeJobsHoursSpaceNovelOfficeAlbumsVersionsPianoFavouriteOffice Space Author:Sarah Blasko
“In my mind what novels do best is that they immerse us deeply into our character's world - they truly transport us deep into these spaces - but the same way you know a Hollywood movie won't end after thirty minutes, you carry in yourself the implicit contract that the novel won't throw you out of itself 'til the very end. That bulk of pages is a form of consolation, of security.” KnowsWorldWayMindEndsCharacterFormSpaceNovelMinutesSecurityPagesHollywoodThirtyContractsConsolationTransportImplicitHollywood Movies Author:Junot Diaz
“Along the (writing) way accidents happen, detours get taken... But these are not "divine" accidents; I don't believe in those. I believe you have constructive accidents en route through a novel only because you have mapped a clear way. If you have confidence that you have a clear direction to take, you always have confidence to explore other ways; if they prove to be mere digressions, you'll recognize that and make the necessary revisions. The more you know about a book, the freer you can be to fool around. The less you know, the tighter you get.” IfsKnowsWayWritingBelieveBookHappensI BelieveNovelTakenClearDivineFoolProveMereDon't BelieveAccidentsRoutesConstructiveHave ConfidenceRevisionDetoursAccidents HappenClear Direction Author:John Irving
“No Way Back is my kind of novel - a tough, taut thriller - Mofina knows the world he writes about.” KnowsWorldWayWritingKindNovelToughThrillers Author:Michael Connelly
“When I have my students do erasures, I'm always amazed by the way their voice comes through, whether they're doing an erasure of a romance novel or an encyclopedia. Your sensibility will out.” WayRomanceVoiceNovelStudentsSensibilityAmazedRomance NovelEncyclopedia Author:Matthea Harvey
“I wish every American explored the importance of novel writing, identity, honesty, character and place in fresh-ass ways.” WayWritingCharacterWishNovelHonestyIdentityImportanceAssNovel Writing Author:Kiese Laymon
“Ironically, writing a novel is not a way to sort out your confusion.” WayWritingNovelConfusion Author:Curtis Sittenfeld
“I wasn't trying to write a corrective novel - that would just end up tasting like medicine, and I tried to stay away from polemics as best I could. I think that, if anything, Fobbit is my way of showing readers there's another side to war - the backstage of combat, if you will. If you play a word association game with Americans and say "war," what's the first thing that comes to mind? Soldiers running across a battlefield through a hail of bullets, right? Rambo, smoke, explosions. In Fobbit, I hope readers will see something a little different” IfsThinkingWayWritingTryingMindFirstsLittlesDifferentWarEndsPlayRunningGamesSidesNovelReaderMedicineSoldierSmokeMy WayCombatAssociationBulletsExplosionsBattlefieldsHailTastingPolemicsRambo Author:Dave Abrams
“It's disingenous for me to say that I wasn't trying to write a moral novel. By its very nature as a novel about the Iraq War, Fobbit steps into the political conversation. There's no way to avoid that. I can appreciate that readers are probably going to line up on one side of the novel or the other. I hope they go to those polar extremes, actually.” WayWritingTryingI CanWarPoliticalSidesLinesMoralStepsNovelReaderConversationAppreciateIraqExtremesIraq War Author:Dave Abrams
“I'm trying to break myself of that habit [of not writing out a first draft ] because I'm working on a couple novels and I know if I tried to write those books the way I wrote the stories it would take me years to finish.” IfsKnowsWayWritingTryingYearsFirstsBookStoriesBreakNovelCoupleHabitTake Me Author:Donald Ray Pollock
“The novelistic attribute of my work is very much like the Russian way of creating novels. Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky - their work has so many gaps. But for the reader, you cannot erase those gaps because they are important. They contextualize the whole struggle. My cinema is like that.” WayImportantWholeNovelStruggleReaderCreatingCinemaGapsAttributesEraseDostoyevsky Author:Lav Diaz
“I love to read and teach experimental fiction but yes, neither this work nor my first novel is really that experimental. It uses some experimental techniques but in the end, I would not say that it is experimental. I'm not sure why. I do a lot of writing on my own, and I have always just written this way.” WayWritingFirstsEndsUseMy OwnFictionTeachNovelWrittenTechniqueNot SureLove To Read Author:Porochista Khakpour
“People were always hungry, bullied, afraid, paranoid - so I just thought I'd show that in the novel in a kind of suffocating way.” PeopleWayKindShowsNovelHungryParanoidBulliedSuffocating Author:Fred D'Aguiar
“It's an unusual way to write a crime novel, to have these lingering, fairly large story points, but it's something I knew I had to do if I wanted to write a sequel...but, you know, people still have to read and enjoy this book, or it's a moot point.” PeopleIfsKnowsWayWritingStillsBookStoriesWantedEnjoyNovelCrimeUnusualSequelsLingeringCrime Novels Author:Tod Goldberg
“I don't think about the reader in any conscious way that impacts the writing, as far as, Hey, most readers would like this! But at the same time, if it were presented to me: "John, you're going to write a novel. It's going to take you a few years. When you're done with it, there's a law that no one's allowed to read it." I don't think I would write it. I want someone to read it!” IfsThinkingWayWantWritingYearsDoneLawNovelReaderConsciousImpactHey Author:John Brandon
“I've been asked if I'd consider doing Ropes as a straight novel - which is flattering, I suppose - but I can't imagine why I'd want to limit myself that way. There's a certain immediacy we gain from that specific image of Fred being struck by a revelation, of those union workers appearing from the shadows in an alley, of a lonely woman wondering for just a moment if she should make a pass at this young man in her hotel room” IfsMenWayWantShouldI CanMomentsYoungCertainRoomsWonderNovelImagineLimitsShadowGainsLonelyUnionsWorkersYoung ManRevelationsHotelRopeAppearingFlatteringAlleysHotel RoomsImmediacyLonely Women Author:James Vance