“But it seemed to me that as soon as you have computer storage you could put every point you wanted in - make the ones that are less relevant to your central topic, further away or allow the central topic to move as the reader proceeded.” WantedMovingReaderComputerRelevantTopicsStorage Author:Ted Nelson
“I plot as I go. Many novelists write an outline that has almost as many pages as their ultimate book. Others knock out a brief synopsis... Do what is comfortable. If you have to plot out every move your characters make, so be it. Just make sure there is a plausible purpose behind their machinations. A good reader can smell a phony plot a block away.” IfsWritingBookCharacterMovingPurposeBehindsReaderComfortablePagesUltimateSmellBlockNovelistsPlotOutlinesPhonyPlausibleSynopsis Author:Clive Cussler
“I think if a book has the power to move a reader, it also has the power to offend a reader. And you want your books to have power, so you just have to take what comes with that.” IfsThinkingWantBookMovingReader Author:Katherine Paterson
“Giving a reader a sex scene that is only half right is like giving her half a kitten. It is not half as cute as a whole kitten; it is a bloody, godawful mess. A half-good sex scene is not half as hot; it actually moves into the negative numbers, draining any heat from the surrounding material.” GivingWholeMovingSexNumbersHalfMaterialsReaderSceneNegativeHotMessCuteHeatBloodyKittenDrainingGood Sex Author:Sandra Newman
“It is the specialist's task to talk about means, about centimeters. An artist's task is to talk about the goal, about kilometers, thousands of kilometers. The organizing role of art consists of infecting the reader, of arousing him with pathos or irony -- the cathode and anode in literature. But irony that is measured in centimeters is pathetic, and centimeter-sized pathos is ridiculous. No one can be carried away by it. To stir the reader, the artist must speak not of means but of ends, of the great goal toward which mankind is moving.” InspirationalMeanArtEndsMovingArtistLiteratureSpeakGoalRolesMankindReaderTasksRidiculousIronyPatheticSpecialistsCarried AwayPathos Author:Yevgeny Zamyatin
“Two things, Christian reader, particularly excite the will of man to good. A principle of justice is one, the other the profit we may derive therefrom. All wise men, therefore, agree that justice and profit are the two most powerful inducements to move our wills to any undertaking. Now, though men seek profit more frequently than justice, yet justice is in itself more powerful.” MenMayTwoChristianMovingPoliticsJusticePowerfulPrinciplesEconomyWiseReaderAgreeProfitTwo ThingsLiberalismMost PowerfulUndertakings Book:The Sinner's Guide Source: The Sinner's Guide
“Are You Seeing Me? is written powerfully with both the heart and the head, and neither gives an inch. It's funny, moving and hugely insightful. Darren Groth puts the reader into the heads of Perry and Justine in a way that feels so true and so revealing that I think I've come away with a greater capacity for empathy. I didn't know a book could do that. We all need to spend some time inside this story.” ThinkingKnowsWayNeedsGivingFeelsHeartBookStoriesMovingGreaterWrittenSeeingReaderEmpathyCapacityInsightfulInchesRevealingDarrenJustine Author:Nick Earls
“As a reader I like both great characterization and fast moving plots. The challenge is to balance the both and not compromise one for the other.” MovingChallengesReaderBalanceCompromisePlotGreat CharacterCharacterization Author:Tobsha Learner
“Readers must be given room to bring their own emotions to a piece so crammed with emotional content; the writer must tenaciously resist explaining why the material is so moving.” MovingGivenRoomsEmotionPiecesEmotionalMaterialsReaderExplaining Author:William Zinsser
“When I wrote The Interestings, I wanted to let time unspool, to give the book the feeling of time passing. I had to allow myself the freedom to move back and forth in time freely, and to trust that readers would accept this.” GivingBookFeelingsWantedMovingAcceptingReaderPassingPassingsBack And ForthTime PassingTime Passes Author:Meg Wolitzer
“Poetry and code - and mathematics - make us read differently from other forms of writing. Written poetry makes the silent reader read three kinds of pattern at once; code moves the reader from a static to an active, interactive and looped domain; while algebraic topology allows us to read qualitative forms and their transformations.” WritingKindMovingFormPoetryThreeLiteratureWrittenReaderTransformationMathematicsSilentPatternsActiveCodeDomainStaticInteractiveQualitativeTopology Author:Stephanie Strickland
“Prophetic utterance, like poetic utterance, transforms experience and moves the receiver to new attitudes. The kinds of experience--the recognitions or revelations--out of which both prophecy and poetry emerge, are such as to stir the prophet or poet to speech that may exceed their own known capacities; they are "inspired," they breathe in revelation and breathe out new words; and by so doing they transfer over to the listener or reader a parallel experience, a parallel intensity, which impels that person into new attitudes and new actions.” KindMayPersonsActionMovingPoetryAttitudeKnownPoetReaderSpeechCapacityInspiredBreatheRecognitionProphetRevelationsPoeticIntensityListenersProphecyParallelsExceedTransfersUtterancePropheticReceiverNew WordsNew Attitude Author:Denise Levertov
“Theoretically, we know that the world turns, but in fact we do not notice it, the earth on which we walk does not seem to move andwe live on in peace. This is how it is concerning Time in our lives. And to render its passing perceptible, novelists must... have their readers cross ten, twenty, thirty years in two minutes.” KnowsWorldYearsDoeTwoFactsSeemsEarthMovingTimeTurnsReadingWalksOur LivesMinutesReaderTenCrossesTwentiesPassingPassingsNovelistsThirtyThirty Years Author:Marcel Proust
“The reason I love comics is that they DON'T move, and there is NO sound. As a creator I have to evoke those elements in the drawings and writing, and the reader has to create those elements in their own minds.” WritingMindReasonMovingSoundReaderElementsCreatorDrawingEvoke Author:Dave McKean
“What a person loves at 20 may seem stupid at 35. That doesn't mean the book was stupid, it means that the time when it spoke to the reader is past. So . . . I'm cautious about rereading favorite books. I hate to spoil the good feelings they created. Keeping the good feelings is more important than rereading the book. Moving on is a good thing.” MayMeanPersonsImportantBookFeelingsSeemsPastMovingHateStupidReaderI HateGood ThingsSpokesSpoilCautiousGood FeelingFavorite BookRereadingPersons Love Author:Carl Deuker
“I got a rejection letter from an editor at HarperCollins, who included a report from his professional reader. This report shredded my first-born novel, laughed at my phrasing, twirled my lacy pretensions around and gobbed into the seething mosh pit of my stolen clichés. As I read the report, the world became very quiet and stopped rotating. What poisoned me was the fact that the report's criticisms were all absolutely true. The sound of my landlady digging in the garden got the world moving again. I slipped the letter into the trash... knowing I'd remember every word.” WorldWritingFirstsFactsRememberMovingSoundBornNovelKnowingReaderQuietGardenCriticismLettersRejectionReportsEditorsLaughedStolenTrashPitsDiggingPretensionSeethingRotatingRejection Letters Author:David Mitchell
“What is good for you creatively is usually bad commercially. You thrive financially by sticking to a series and not fiddling about too much. You do yourself harm by moving away from the series and the genre. By trying things not based in that particular mode of writing, you will just lose readers.” WritingTryingMovingLosesToo MuchParticularReaderSeriesHarmGenreThriveSelf HarmMoving Away Author:John Connolly
“I think that when a poem can move readers across generations and across its specific class or race then it becomes truly classic.” ThinkingMovingRaceClassGenerationsReaderClassic Author:Rita Dove
“If you want to write poetry, you must have poems that deeply move you. Poems you can't live without. I think of a poem as the blood in a blood transfusion, given from the heart of the poet to the heart of the reader. Seek after poems that live inside you, poems that move through your veins.” IfsThinkingWantWritingHeartMovingGivenBloodPoetReaderVeinsBlood Transfusion Author:Ralph Fletcher
“To grow, to become spiritually alive, and vibrant, you really have to struggle. Without struggle, you do not move at all...I would appreciate it if readers who come to my work would try very, very, very hard not to think narrowly as we are taught to think in America.” IfsThinkingTryingHardAmericaMovingGrowsStruggleAliveTaughtReaderAppreciate Author:Alice Walker
“But I am not sure it would contain any short stories. For the short story is a minor art, and it must content itself with moving, exciting and amusing the reader. ...I do not think that there is any (short story) that will give the reader that thrill, that rapture, that fruitful energy which great art can produce.” ThinkingGivingArtStoriesMovingEnergyProduceReaderExcitingNot SureShort StoryMinorsThrillGreat ArtAmusingRapture Author:W. Somerset Maugham
“I am sometimes referred to as Excuse Me in an annoyed tone of voice, because apparently I am in the way. I am so sorry. I am supposed to be some sort of mind reader, I guess. I am moving out of the way now as slowly as I possibly can. I am doing this and there's nothing you can do about it.” WayMindSometimesMovingVoiceCan DoReaderSorryExcuseSupposed To BeToneAnnoyedExcuse MeMoving OutI Am So Sorry Author:Demetri Martin
“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
“The practice of employing metaphor and image and composition and linguistic choices to move the reader through the content.” MovingChoicesPracticeReaderMetaphorCompositionEmploying Author:Lidia Yuknavitch
“Giving the reader the space to move around and be active, and encourage their active response is important to me. That will connect the reader more to the text.” GivingImportantMovingSpaceReaderResponseActive Author:Leni Zumas
“Joyce's writing in Dubliners contains some of the most unshowily beautiful sentences in the English language. I learned from him that if you write a good, clean line of English, you can get under a reader's skin. The reader won't even know why, but there you are. Didion, Berger, the many others I mentioned above, and many, many poets I haven't mentioned. Writers of this calibre are the moving targets the rest of us are always chasing.” IfsKnowsWritingBeautifulMovingLanguageLinesHavensPoetReaderSkinsCleanSentencesTargetChasingEnglish LanguageJoyce Author:Teju Cole
“At the very core of what a comic is, time and space are kind of the same thing. When your reader moves her eyes across the page, she should be moving through time in your story.” ShouldKindStoriesEyeMovingSpaceReaderPagesCoreComicHer EyesTime And SpaceRough Times Author:Gene Luen Yang
“Every reader of the Conversations with the God is invited to self-select, that is, to choose themselves, to be among those who commit to moving forward their own individual and personal evolution by embracing and demonstrating behaviors that serve to awaken the species to who and what human beings really are Individuations of Divinity, and how that may be made manifest in our experience.” HumansMayMadeSelfMovingIndividualHuman BeingsEvolutionReaderConversationBehaviorSpeciesCommitMoving ForwardDivinityManifestBeing RealInvitedSelectDemonstratingIndividuationPersonal Evolution Author:Neale Donald Walsch
“I write adult fiction, but a good 40 to 50 per cent of my readers are teenagers. I love that if they have to grow up and move past JK Rowling they can move to me. From Jo to Jodi!” IfsWritingPastMovingGrowsFictionGrowing UpReaderAdultsTeenagerCents Author:Jodi Picoult