“It has long been a tradition among novel writers that a book must end by everybody getting just what they wanted, or if the conventional happy ending was impossible, then it must be a tragedy in which one or both should die. In real life very few of us get what we want, our tragedies don't kill us, but we go on living them year after year, carrying them with us like a scar on an old wound.” IfsWantShouldWritingYearsLongBookRealEndsWantedDiesNovelImpossibleGoes OnTraditionTragedyWoundsReal LifeScarConventionalHappy EndingsOld Wounds Author:Willa Cather
“Cut like crazy. Less is more. I've often read manuscripts - including my own - where I've got to the beginning of, say, chapter two and have thought: “This is where the novel should actually start.” A huge amount of information about character and backstory can be conveyed through small detail. The emotional attachment you feel to a scene or a chapter will fade as you move on to other stories. Be business-like about it.” FeelsShouldTwoCharacterStoriesMovingMy OwnNovelCuttingCrazyInformationEmotionalHugeAmountSceneIncludingDetailsAttachmentFadesChaptersManuscriptsLess Is MoreSmall Details Author:Sarah Waters
“I have long admired the visceral storytelling and moral complexity of John Vaillant’s brilliant non-fiction about humankind’s tragically ambivalent relationship with the natural world. Now he brings his abundant literary gifts to a debut novel set in a very real borderland in which human beings are themselves treated like animals. The Jaguar’s Children is a beautifully rendered lament for an imperiled culture and the brave lives that would preserve it. You should read it.” WorldShouldHumansChildrenLongRealCultureNaturalHuman BeingsAnimalFictionMoralNovelBraveBrilliantTreatedStorytellingPreservesComplexityHumankindNatural WorldNon FictionLamentVisceralDebutAmbivalentJaguars Author:John Burnham Schwartz
“I should love to do a novel, about one abnormal character seeing present-day life, very ordinary life, yet arresting through it, abnormality, until at the end the reader sees, and with little reluctance, that he is not abnormal at all, and that the main character might as well be himself.” ShouldWellsLittlesEndsCharacterMightNovelSeeingReaderOrdinaryAbnormalPresent DayOrdinary LifeDay LifeReluctanceMain CharactersAbnormalityArresting Author:Patricia Highsmith
“Good God! This man should be writing dime novels.” MenShouldWritingNovelAviationDimesGood GodAir PowerAirpower Author:Josephus Daniels
“I'm extremely surprised to learn that a story, which has become familiar to children through the medium of comic strips and many succeeding novels and adventure stories, should have had such an immediate and profound effect upon radio listeners.” ShouldChildrenStoriesNovelEffectsAdventureSucceedShould HaveProfoundRadioFamiliarMediumsComicListenersComic Strips Author:Orson Welles
“I've found myself at one in the morning just sitting at my desk spending an hour returning emails from the day until like two in the morning. It's ridiculous, I should be sleeping, or dreaming, or reading a novel.” ShouldTwoDreamReadingFoundHoursSleepMorningNovelSittingSpendingRidiculousDesksEmail Author:Brit Marling