“In my own life as a reader I experience real moments of alienation when a writer feels too perfect, or like even the flaws they are admitting are somehow noble, or dysfunctional in an overly edgy, aesthetically pleasing way.” WayFeelsRealMomentsMy OwnPerfectReaderNobleFlawsAlienationMy Own LifeAdmittingEdgy Author:Leslie Jamison
“I've been thinking so much about writing as a gift to readers - and how newness of subject (place or topic or person) is one of the biggest gifts at our disposal.” ThinkingWritingPersonsSubjectsReaderTopicsNewness Author:Leslie Jamison
“WWII is something contemporary readers already know a lot about. If our schools are doing their jobs, they know about the invasion of Normandy, the Hitler Youth, the Holocaust, and at least a few of the horrors of the Eastern Front.” IfsKnowsSchoolJobsFrontsYouthReaderHorrorContemporaryHolocaustEasternInvasionWwiiNormandyHitler Youth Author:Anthony Doerr
“I never want to play down to the reader. I think readers are willing to go along if they're intrigued.” IfsThinkingWantPlayWillingReaderIntrigued Author:Joseph Boyden
“All that matters to me as a reader are characters. I want characters to be real, authentic, and rounded. I will be digging into characters for at least a month. Who they are. What they are like. Outside of the story.” WantRealMatterCharacterStoriesMonthsReaderBeing RealDigging Author:Matt de la Pena
“I only know what it's like to be an author with social media. I can't compare. I do think we lose the mystery of the author. Today, I get tons of e-mails and Facebook messages from readers, and my goal with Twitter and Facebook is, if someone reaches out to me, I'm going to respond to them. I don't want to be an elitist author who is untouchable. I'm just a regular person, too. I will always respond to everybody.” IfsThinkingKnowsWantPersonsI CanTodaySocialGoalLosesMysteryMediaReaderMessagesSocial MediaCompareReach OutMailElitistUntouchablesTwitter And Facebook Author:Matt de la Pena
“Singularity theory is something that I do believe will come to pass, sooner or later, although whether or not in our lifetime I don't know, and I'm not sitting around waiting for my father to be resurrected. Readers probably have the impression from the book that I'm a lot more a of a techno kook than I actually am. It became a convenient fulcrum in the story, sort of a kaleidoscope through which to address religious and spiritual questions.” KnowsBelieveBookStoriesSpiritualFatherWaitingReligiousTheoryReaderSittingLifetimeImpressionAddressesSooner Or LaterConvenientSitting AroundSingularityBeing A FatherTechnoKaleidoscopeSitting Around WaitingFulcrum Author:Ron Currie Jr.
“I want each character to be as unique as possible. I want them to reflect something of who they are in the way that they move and in how their bodies work. That was foremost in my head when I was writing Salvage: I wanted every gesture, every little movement, to really carry meaning and communicate meaning to the reader. I was very conscious of that when I was writing.” WayWantWritingLittlesCharacterBodyWantedMovingMovementReaderUniqueConsciousCommunicateGesturesSalvageBody Work Author:Jesmyn Ward
“I allude to Back to the Future in the 1985 story to let folks know it was an inspiration and because it literally was the most time-travelly bit of pop culture we had in the mid 80's. I can talk about their tools for considering change. First, the book is metafictive in a traditional sense where I'm showing and telling the reader that the act of writing and reading is a reflexive way to push boundaries of real and literal time travel. Writers and readers are time travellers. The question is what we do with that time we traveled when we leave a book, leave a page.” KnowsWayWritingFirstsI CanBookRealStoriesInspirationCultureReadingBitsReaderPagesToolsFolksPopsBoundariesTraditionalTime TravelConsideringTraveledPop CultureLiteralTravellerWriting And Reading Author:Kiese Laymon
“A word, and all the infinite fluctuations it may possess. Like that moment when you know you have something to say, and you know you're speaking, even, but you still have no idea how you will say it. Or the moment when, as a reader, you're reading, and you are understanding what you are reading, but still have utterly no idea what will come next for you, what precisely the author wants to say. For me, that is the ultimate level of literary depth, of literary density.” KnowsWantMayStillsIdeasMomentsReadingNextUnderstandingLevelsReaderUltimateInfiniteDepthNo IdeaThat MomentDensityFluctuation Author:Sergio Chejfec
“Like when you pick up a book and you don't realize what type of text it is - it could be an essay, a novel, a biography - and at one point you realize you don't know where, as a reader, you want to be. Where are you going with this text? What is the goal? How are you supposed to interpret what you're reading? And people's responses vary - some dislike it, and are put off by the confusion, the lack of comprehension.” PeopleKnowsWantBookReadingGoalRealizingNovelTypeReaderPicksResponseConfusionDislikeBiographiesEssaysVaryComprehension Author:Sergio Chejfec
“When I use a name or place, I want to leave the reader open to the waterfall of determinacy that it may provoke. And I don't know, but I must mention the name Borges. I try to mention it in every one of my works. It's a mark, a stamp, a sort of homage to Argentinidad. But it's an homage that works through pat phrases, those stock images that populate his work: the night, labyrinths, libraries. That is, I don't want simply to pay homage to Borges, but rather the contrary: to recall his commonplaces.” KnowsWantTryingMayUseNightNamesPayReaderMarkLibraryContraryPhrasesWorking ItRecallsProvokingStampsCommonplaceLabyrinthHomageWaterfallsBorges Author:Sergio Chejfec
“More often than not in poetry I find difficulty to be gratuitous and show-offy and camouflaging, experimental to a kind of insane degree - a difficulty which really ignores the possibility of having a sensible reader.” KindShowsPossibilityReaderDegreesDifficultyInsaneSensible Author:Billy Collins
“Another trouble with poetry - and I'm gonna stop the list at two - is the presence of presumptuousness in poetry, the sense you get in a poem that the poet takes for granted an interest on the reader's part in the poet's autobiographical life, in the poet's memories, problems, difficulties and even minor perceptions.” TwoProblemInterestMemoriesTroublePoetReaderPerceptionDifficultyListsGrantedMinors Author:Billy Collins
“By clarity I don't mean that we're always in kind of a simple area where everything is clear and comforting and understood. Clarity is certainly a way toward disorientation because if you don't start out - if the reader isn't grounded, if the reader is disoriented in the beginning of the poem, then the reader can't be led astray or disoriented later.” IfsWayKindMeanSimpleClearReaderUnderstoodAreasClarityGroundedComfortingDisorientation Author:Billy Collins
“I'm speaking to someone I'm trying to get to fall in love with me. I'm trying to speak intimately to one person. That should be clear. I'm not speaking to an audience. I'm not writing for the podium. I'm just writing, trying to write in a fairly quiet tone to one other reader who is by herself, or himself, and I'm trying to interrupt some silence in their life, which is utterance.” ShouldWritingTryingPersonsFallSpeakSilenceAudienceClearReaderQuietFalling In LoveToneUtterance Author:Billy Collins
“As soon as I start to write I'm very aware, I'm trying to be aware that a reader just might well pick up this poem, a stranger. So when I'm writing - and I think that this is important for all writers - I'm trying to be a writer and a reader back and forth. I write two lines or three lines. I will immediately stop and turn into a reader instead of a writer, and I'll read those lines as if I had never seen them before and as if I had never written them.” IfsThinkingWritingTryingWellsTwoImportantMightTurnsThreeLinesWrittenReaderPicksStrangerBack And Forth Author:Billy Collins
“I'm very conscious of the fact that every line should have a cadence to it. It should contribute to the progress of the poem. And that the ending of the line is a way of turning the reader's attention back into the interior of the poem.” WayShouldFactsLinesAttentionProgressReaderConsciousShould HaveInteriorsCadence Author:Billy Collins
“I wanted a feeling of accumulation. I really wanted the moments to add up because they do add up. I wanted to come up with a strategy that would allow these moments to accumulate in the reader's body in a way that they do accumulate in the body.” WayMomentsFeelingsBodyWantedReaderStrategyAddCome UpAccumulation Author:Claudia Rankine
“Whereas if you were writing an op-ed piece or an essay, somebody would be asking, "What's your point?" With poetry you can stay in a moment for as long as you want. Poetry is about metaphor, about a thing standing in for something else. It's the thing that opens out to something else. What that something else is changes for readers. So what's on the page - it falls away.” IfsWantWritingLongMomentsWould BeFallPiecesReaderPagesStandingAskingMetaphorPoetry IsEssays Author:Claudia Rankine
“"Unputdownable" is, I suppose, something we all dream of, maybe without knowing it. I realized, some time ago, that a novel can hold a lot, and it made sense that this one was not of the sleek and economical variety, but instead the "full" type. Novel as piñata. And the reader does the whacking. I had a central idea, which is to look at what happens to talent over time.” LooksDoeMadeIdeasDreamHappensNovelKnowingTalentTypeReaderI RealizedVariety Author:Meg Wolitzer
“The practice of employing metaphor and image and composition and linguistic choices to move the reader through the content.” MovingChoicesPracticeReaderMetaphorCompositionEmploying Author:Lidia Yuknavitch
“To a certain extent that happens with all kinds of successful writers and artists and celebrities, but there is also something about the form of memoir that creates an eerie reader space of intimacy that is only "real" in the space of the text.” KindRealHappensFormArtistCertainSpaceSuccessfulReaderMemoirAll KindsIntimacyEerie Author:Lidia Yuknavitch
“I had to do things to myself on the page that had been done to me in real life. I had to try and drown myself in the bath. You have to do that. And the impulse is to rescue yourself and to spare the reader, but I can't rescue myself. And why should I spare the reader when nobody spared me? It's telling people what happened.” PeopleShouldTryingI CanRealDoneHappenedReaderPagesReal LifeImpulseRescueShould ISparesBaths Author:Damian Barr
“One of the things that bugs me about the Western Literary Tradition is that the conventions of narrative in particular seem to confine the stories you can tell about characters to tropes of bone-headed action and old models of psychological realism. And as readers, too, we have been conditioned to understand characters as - and forgive me for saying it out loud - what the market says they should be. Namely, safe, clean, proper.” ShouldHas BeensCharacterStoriesSeemsActionParticularReaderSafeModelsTraditionForgivingCleanWesternBonesPsychologicalNarrativeLoudConventionsRealismBugsForgive MeTropes Author:Lidia Yuknavitch
“The chief reason I shove the reader inside the body - or more specifically, the chief reason I try to get the reader to feel their own body while they are reading, is this: we live by and through the body, and the body, is a walking contradiction.” FeelsTryingReasonBodyReadingReaderWalkingChiefsContradictionLive By Author:Lidia Yuknavitch
“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
“If Fobbit leaves a reader feeling stranded in some bland in-between territory, then I haven't done my job. But having said all that, I didn't consciously write the book with a particular moral intent. I took what I experienced and processed it through the sausage factory of fiction. It's up to readers to interpret what's on the page - as is the case with any novel.” IfsWritingSaidBookDoneFeelingsJobsFictionMoralCasesNovelHavensParticularReaderPagesTerritoryFactoriesSausageBlandStranded Author:Dave Abrams
“While writing, writers are living inside a character or characters, and when the book ekes into the world, writers are living inside the reader. That's more than connecting.” WorldWritingBookCharacterReaderConnecting Author:Lauren Groff
“Fiction is always a utopian task, in that there's an ideal you hold in your head as you write which inevitably fails in the moment of creation, in the insufficiency of words to convey meaning, or in the way the work is completed in the reader's head.” WayWritingMomentsFictionFailingCreationReaderIdealsTasksUtopianInsufficiency Author:Lauren Groff
“To keep the readers interested, and coming back, and to keep coming up with new and exciting ways to present stories and to present the character in a reflection of the times, is an absolutely incredible accomplishment. Hats off to all these people who have done such incredible creative work and still do every week.” PeopleWayStillsDoneCharacterStoriesCreativeWeekReaderReflectionExcitingIncrediblesAccomplishmentHatsComing BackCreative WorkHats Off Author:Michael Uslan
“Then again, the name, the associations with a writer's name, can add to the reader's entertainment and pleasure.” NamesPleasureReaderAddEntertainmentAssociation Author:Jonathan Ames
“A lot of readers have actually helped me, been really sweet to me... So maybe my cry for help has sometimes been answered.” SometimesHelpingCrySweetReaderReally Sweet Author:Jonathan Ames
“I love the box that such a decision puts you in, and I love the interest the reader has in seeing how you negotiate that box: that seemingly hugely narrowed set of options. I also like the way in which it reminds us that we connect to the real world. That our relationship to the world matters.” WorldWayRealMatterInterestDecisionSeeingReaderBoxesReal WorldOur Relationship Author:Jim Shepard
“Ordinary Bibles often include cross-references and brief concordances; Study Bibles include much more, all bound up in one fat volume, so that readers can find a lot of useful explanation on each page without having to hunt through Bible dictionaries and commentaries and the like.” StudyReaderPagesOrdinaryCrossesBoundsFatsExplanationVolumeHuntsDictionaryCommentary Author:D. A. Carson
“Most good evangelical Study Bibles have more in common than people sometimes realize. All of them are committed to explaining the Bible to lay readers.” PeopleSometimesRealizingCommonStudyReaderLaysCommittedExplainingEvangelical Author:D. A. Carson
“It's better to emphasize biblical theology, partly because there are fine Study Bibles already available that lean into systematic theology, and partly because biblical theology is particularly strong at helping readers see how the Bible hangs together in its own categories: that is, God in his infinite wisdom chose to give us his Word in the 66 canonical books, with all of their variations in theme, emphasis, vocabulary, literary form, and distinctive contributions across time.” GivingBookHelpingTogetherFormStrongStudyFineReaderInfiniteAvailableTheologyThemeContributionCategoriesBiblicalVocabularyEmphasisVariationSystematicDistinctive Author:D. A. Carson
“Make sure your main characters are likeable. They can be flawed, but your readers need to be able to root for them.” NeedsCharacterAbleReaderRootsFlawedMain CharactersLikeable Author:Janet Evanovich
“It's completely different, for instance, to report on poor farmers in Africa than it is to report on, say, poor African-Americans. The familiarity of my readers with the terrain, and their preconceptions, are quite different in those two cases, and their perspective, as I imagine it, has to be taken into account at every turn.” TwoDifferentTurnsPoorCasesTakenImaginePerspectiveReaderAccountsInstanceAfrican AmericanReportsFarmersFamiliarityTerrainPreconceptions Author:William Finnegan
“I would hope that my readers feel a sense of awe at the quality of human endurance, at the endurance of love in the face of a variety of difficulties; that the quotidian life is not always easy, and is something worthy of respect.” FeelsHumansFacesLife IsEasyQualityReaderDifficultyWorthyVarietyAweEndurance Author:Elizabeth Strout
“I would also hope that readers receive a larger understanding, or a different understanding, of what it means to be human, than they might have had before. We suffer from being quick to judge, quick to make excuses for ourselves and others, and I would like the reader to feel that we are all, more or less, in a similar state as we love and disappoint one another, and that we try, most of us, as best we can, and that to fail and succeed is what we do.” FeelsTryingHumansMeanDifferentStatesMightSufferingUnderstandingFailingJudgingReaderSucceedExcuseDisappointWhat It Means To Be HumanQuick To Judge Author:Elizabeth Strout
“Most of us have loved. And the terror for a writer is that readers will forgive you so much, but they won't forgive you one false note about love, about which they too are expert.” ReaderForgivingNotesTerrorExperts Author:Richard Flanagan
“In the end you're not made or broken by prizes. Your relationship is with your readers, not a prize, and you just have to keep on honoring that.” MadeEndsBrokenReaderPrizeOur Relationship Author:Richard Flanagan
“For an author just starting out, you've got to deliver the goods every year or sooner or people will forget you or you will lose momentum. There is a contract that exists between author and reader.” PeopleYearsLosesForgetReaderStartingGoodsContractsMomentumForget YouStarting Out Author:Jasper Fforde
“It is hard to write about physically difficult things without causing the reader to disengage.” WritingHardDifficultReaderDifficult Things Author:Akhil Sharma
“It is hard to create a first-person narrator that can be a child and yet is able to take in enough information for the narrative to be legible to the reader.” FirstsChildrenPersonsHardEnoughAbleInformationReaderNarrativeFirst PersonNarrators Author:Akhil Sharma
“To me exposition always contains tenderness. While a dramatized scene is a way of proving and guaranteeing an emotional experience for the reader, exposition assumes that the reader is sophisticated and can see the universal.” WayEmotionalReaderSceneProveUniversalAssumingTendernessSophisticated Author:Akhil Sharma
“Exposition suggests a great trust in the reader, and this expression of trust makes a book feel tender.” FeelsBookExpressionReader Author:Akhil Sharma
“I try to end every chapter with an air of suspense. I try to leave the reader wanting to turn the page.” TryingEndsTurnsAirReaderPagesSuspenseChapters Author:Nelson DeMille