“I usually do at least a dozen drafts and progressively make more-conscious decisions. Because I've always believed stories are closer to poems than novels, I spend a lot of time on the story's larger rhythms, such as sentence and paragraph length, placement of flashbacks and dialogue.” StoriesDecisionNovelConsciousSentencesDialogueRhythmLengthDozenAlways BelieveParagraphPlacementFlashback Author:Ron Rash
“The idea that you could stitch together every detail episode to episode and preserve continuity for the length of a season and tell a story while using no time cuts, no flashbacks, nothing but pure real time just seemed too difficult.” IdeasRealStoriesTogetherDifficultCuttingPureSeasonsDetailsPreservesLengthEpisodesContinuityStitchesFlashback Author:Michael Loceff
“Like some kind of particularly tenacious vampire the short story refuses to die, and seems at this point in time to be a wonderful length for our generation.” KindStoriesSeemsDiesWonderfulGenerationsRefuseVampireLengthShort StoryOur GenerationTenacious Author:Neil Gaiman
“There will always be stories that require a feature-length format, and there will always be stories that will be told in short-form.” StoriesFormFeaturesLengthFormat Author:Andreas Deja
“I never even considered writing a career option. I just liked the play of words. I was certainly interested in story, but the stories I was telling then were in narrative verse and prose poems, short and succinct, except for one novel-length poem written in narrative couplets.” WritingPlayStoriesCareersNovelWrittenNarrativeProseLengthVersesCouplets Author:Charles de Lint
“I am a technophile, so there is no such thing as a first draft. The first draft plunges on, and about a quarter of the way through it I realise I'm doing things wrong, so I start rewriting it. What you call the first draft becomes rather like a caterpillar; it is progressing fairly slowly, but there is movement up and down its whole length, the whole story is being changed. I call this draft zero, telling myself how the story is supposed to go.” WayFirstsWholeStoriesProgressMovementChangedLengthZeroRealisingQuartersUp And DownPlungeRewritingCaterpillars Author:Terry Pratchett
“When the story is good enough, people can watch something three times the length of an opera.” PeopleEnoughStoriesThreeWatchesLengthGood EnoughOperaThree Times Author:Kevin Spacey
“If Edgar Allan Poe were alive today, his agent would be constantly slapping him upside the head with tightly rolled copies of his brilliant short stories and novelettes, yelling, 'Full-length novels, you moron! Pay attention! What's the matter with you -- are you shooting heroin or something? Write for the market! No more of this midlength 'Fall of the House of Usher' crap” IfsWritingMatterStoriesWould BeTodayFallHousePayAttentionNovelAliveBrilliantAgentsPay AttentionShootingLengthCopiesShort StoryCrapYellingHeroinLive For TodayMoronSlappingAllan Poe Author:Dean Koontz