Best stories & writing Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings Page 5

“When you're writing a script you have the option to embellish on life or switch the order of events or make it generally more cinematic. I would stick too closely to my own experience and not necessarily think about the fact that it needs to have an event happen. Realising that I could channel my own experience into a story that was slightly more cinematic was a very important moment for me - allowing myself to accept that the kind of screenwriting I'm doing is a work of fiction.”

Thinking Needs Writing Kind Important Moments Facts Stories Happens Order My Own Fiction Accepting Events Sticks Scripts Allowing Realising Screenwriting Cinematic Important Moments

Author:Lena Dunham

“There really is no difference in the actual writing or plotting. I choose to tell different stories for the younger reader and, of course, I would never put sex and extreme violence in a YA book. But writing for adults and children requires the same care and attention.”

Writing Children Book Different Stories Care Courses Sex Differences Attention Violence Reader Adults Extremes

Author:Michael Scott

“When I write a story, I just wanna tell you what's in my head. It can come from real life and then turn into fantasy, stuff just rhyming. And write about what you know. I just like to tell stories that have not been told or [told] from my perspective.”

Knows Writing Real Stories Turns Stuff Fantasy Perspective Real Life Rhyming

Author:Nas

“When I'm writing a script, I don't worry about plot as much as I do about people. I get to know the main characters - what they need, what they want, what they should do. That's what gets the story going. You can't just have action, you've got to find out what the characters want. And then they must grow, they must go somewhere.”

People Knows Want Needs Should Writing Character Stories Action Grows Worry Scripts Plot Main Characters

Author:Mel Brooks

“In crime fiction, I just don't write the parts that aren't a thriller and it's exactly the same in my TV reporting - I distill the essence of the story until it's only the jewels of the tale - and leave in only the most compelling and exciting parts.”

Writing Stories Fiction Crime Tvs Essence Exciting Tales Compelling Jewels Thrillers Crime Fiction

Author:Hank Phillippi Ryan

“From my vantage point in writing a story, I can't and don't and have no interest in thinking about the level of sophistication of the audience. I can only think about what interests me, and maybe what I would want to see if I were watching the movie. To me, that's the key to writing something that's not pandering.”

Ifs Thinking Want Writing I Can Stories Interest Levels Audience Keys Sophistication Vantage Point

Author:Charlie Kaufman

“Details make stories human, and the more human a story can be, the better.”

Writing Humans Stories Details Short Story Writers And Writing Writing By Writers Beautiful Writing Story Writing Writing Stories Story Writers Writing Short Stories Short Writing

Author:Ernest Hemingway

“I decided that I would write one story about each thing that I knew about.”

Writing Stories Decided

Book:The Hemingway Collection

Source: The Hemingway Collection

“I love writing family stories.”

Writing Stories

Author:Larry Wilmore

“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”

“Frankly, as much as I love to improvise, it hasn't been difficult to stick to the script on 'Mad Men.' The writing is so precise, and the story so carefully crafted, that I don't think there's room - or need - for ad libbing. I could never come up with dialogue as lovely as these writers do, anyway.”

Thinking Men Needs Writing Stories Difficult Rooms Mad Sticks Scripts Come Up Lovely Dialogue Ads Precise Mad Men

Author:Rich Sommer

“The most fun part for an actor is the writing and the story and the character. That's very fulfilling.”

Writing Character Stories Actors Fun Fulfilling

Author:Dominique McElligott

“I was quite shy. I used to write stories all the time, and I think that was a worry for my parents.”

Thinking Writing Stories Used Parent Worry Shy

Author:Anne-Marie Duff

“An editor named Kerrie Hughes wanted me to write a short story that brought my fire-spider Smudge from my goblin books into the present-day world. I came up with libriomancy as a way to make that happen.”

World Way Writing Book Stories Happens Wanted Fire Editors Short Story Spiders Present Day Goblin

Author:Jim C. Hines

“Ive tried to write deep and serious. I spent years working to write a story that would make my writing group cry.”

Writing Years Stories Groups Cry Serious

Author:Jim C. Hines

“I started out doing music videos and photography, and I always loved writing. Filmmaking seemed to be a good compilation of all these skills in a way that allowed me to tell a story “greater than the sum of its parts.””

Way Writing Stories Greater Skills Photography Video Filmmaking Compilation

Author:Brendan Fletcher

“Many people seem to think that art is a luxury to be imported and tacked on to life. Art springs out of the very stuff that life is made of. Most of our young authors start to write a story and make a few observations from nature to add local color. The results are invariably false and hollow. Art must spring out of the fullness and richness of life.”

Source: Willa Cather in person: interviews, speeches, and letters

“Stories have a richness that goes way beyond fact. My writing knows more than I know. What a writer must do is listen to her book. It might take you where you don't expect to go.”

Knows Way Writing Book Facts Stories Might Richness

Author:Madeleine L'Engle

“I do not know if Alice in Wonderland was an original story-I was, at least, no conscious imitator in writing it-but I do know that, since it came out, something like a dozen story-books have appeared, on identically the same pattern. The path I timidly explored believing myself to be 'the first that ever burst into that silent sea'-is now a beaten high-road: all the way-side flowers have long ago been trampled into the dust: and it would be courting disaster for me to attempt that style again.”

Source: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Other Tales

“The difference between writing a story and simply relating past events is that a story, in order to be acceptable, must have shape and meaning. It is the old idea that art is the bringing of order out of chaos.”

Writing Art Ideas Stories Past Order Differences Events Shapes Art Is Chaos Acceptable Old Ideas Past Events

Author:Katherine Paterson

“a novel is not born of a single idea. The stories I've tried to write from one idea, no matter how terrific an idea, have sputtered out and died by chapter three. For me, novels have invariably come from a complex of ideas that in the beginning seemed to bear no relation to each other, but in the unconscious began mysteriously to merge and grow. Ideas for a novel are like the strong guy lines of a spider web. Without them the silken web cannot be spun.”

Writing Ideas Matter Stories Guy Three Strong Grows Born Lines Novel Bears Relation Died Complexes Unconscious Chapters Spiders Terrific Spun Spider Web

Author:Katherine Paterson

“I am called to listen to the sound of my own heart -- to write the story within myself that demands to be told at that particular point in my life. And if I do this faithfully, clothing that idea in the flesh of human experience and setting it in a true place, the sound from my heart will resound in the reader's heart.”

Ifs Writing Humans Heart Ideas Stories Sound My Own Particular Reader My Heart Demand Flesh Setting Settings Clothings Human Experience

Author:Katherine Paterson

“When I feel that I'm going to write a detective story, I buy a five pound box of chocolates and a ream of paper. When the candy is all gone and the paper all used up, I know that the book is long enough.”

Knows Feels Writing Long Book Enough Stories Used Gone Five Paper Boxes Pounds Chocolate Candy Detectives Detective Stories Box Of Chocolates

Author:Carolyn Wells

“Daydreaming had started me on the way; but story writing once I was truly in its grip, took me and shook me awake.”

Way Writing Stories Awake Daydreaming Story Writing

Author:Eudora Welty

“My own words, when I am at work on a story, I hear too as they go, in the same voice that I hear when I read in books. When I write and the sound of it comes back to my ears, then I act to make changes. I have always trusted this voice.”

Writing Book Stories Sound Voice My Own Ears Trusted Making Changes

Book:One Writer's Beginnings

Source: One Writer's Beginnings

“Each story tells me how to write it, but not the one afterwards.”

Writing Stories

Author:Eudora Welty

“Mostly it's lies, writing novels. You set out to tell an untrue story and you try to make it believable, even to yourself. Which calls for details; any good lie does.”

Writing Trying Doe Stories Lying Novel Details Untrue True Story Believable Good Lies

Author:Anne Tyler

“I always write a story in one sitting.”

Writing Stories Sitting

Book:Katherine Anne Porter: Conversations

Source: Katherine Anne Porter: Conversations

“I have no control over my writing. I have lots of good intentions, but no control. There's a story that wants to be told.”

Want Writing Stories Intention Good Intentions

Author:Ursula K. Le Guin

“When we deny our stories, They define us. When we own our stories, we get to write the ending.”

Writing Stories Deny

Author:Brené Brown

“It's difficult to write a really good short story because it must be a complete and finished reflection of life with only a few words to use as tools. There isn't time for bad writing in a short story.”

Writing Stories Use Difficult Reflection Tools Finished Short Story Few Words Bad Writing Reflections Of Life

Author:Edna Ferber

“The conventional wisdom is - people say this all the time - you should only write something when you're far enough away from it that you can have a perspective. But that's not true. That's a story that you're telling. The truth of it is here, right now. It's the only truth that we ever know. And I'm interested in that truth and the confusion being part of the experience and sorting it your way through and figuring it out.”

People Knows Way Should Writing Enough Stories Perspective Right Now Confusion Telling The Truth Conventional Conventional Wisdom Sorting Figuring It

Author:Charlie Kaufman

“I'm not sure I would call it agony but there is a kind of cyclic frustration. You get one story right and then here comes another one. When does that end? What I'm trying to do is get it to end right now, by recognizing that that cycle is writing. That is: trying to understand the frustrations and setbacks (and agony) as part of a bigger chess game you are playing with art itself.”

Writing Trying Kind Doe Art Ends Stories Games Right Now Bigger Chess Not Sure Frustration Cycles Agony Recognizing Setback Chess Game

Author:George Saunders

“I love stories, but writing fiction is another craft and I don't feel as if I have it.”

Ifs Feels Writing Stories Fiction Love Story Crafts Writing Fiction

Author:Joan Larkin

“How I work is that I write a story I'd like to read. Then you fly to Paris or Sydney and the interviewers talk about the greater significance of your work.”

Writing Stories Greater Paris Significance Sydney Interviewers

Author:Michael Connelly

“Nobody cooks using just one ingredient. Why would you write using just one flavor of story?”

Writing Stories Cooks Just One Ingredients Flavor

Author:Patrick Rothfuss

“I have a blog where I keep in touch with my fans. I write about things that are important to me. Sometimes on there I'll just tell a little story about the things that happen in my everyday life. People seem to enjoy them well enough.”

People Writing Wells Littles Important Sometimes Enough Stories Seems Happens Enjoy Fans Everyday Everyday Life Blogs

Author:Patrick Rothfuss

“I think the business of writing a great deal of it is the business of paying attention to your characters, to the world they live in, to the story you have to tell, but just a kind of deep attention and out of that if you pay attention properly the story will tell you what it needs.”

Ifs Thinking World Needs Writing Kind Character Stories Deals Pay Attention Pay Attention

Author:Salman Rushdie

“One thing that I believe is that every time I write something, I am taking the time to celebrate. Even if I am writing a sad story or an angry poem, I am still giving those stories my time and attention.”

Ifs Giving Writing Believe Stills Stories I Believe Attention One Thing Angry Celebrate My Time Sad Story

Author:Sarah Kay

“Authors have to write for their characters, for who they are, that's the strength of books. Don't worry about censors. Just write the story you need to tell and the rewards will come.”

Needs Writing Book Character Stories Worry Rewards

Author:Ellen Hopkins

“It has always seemed to me that if you could talk about your work in fully-formed phrases, you wouldn't write it. The writing is the statement, you see, and it seems to me that the poem or the story or the novel you write is the kind of metaphor you cast on life.”

Ifs Writing Kind Stories Seems Novel Casts Metaphor Statements Phrases

Author:Hortense Calisher

“My vocation is to write and I have known this for a long time. I hope I won't be misunderstood; I know nothing about the value of the things I am able to write. I know that writing is my vocation. When I sit down to write I feel extraordinarily at ease, and I move in an element which, it seems to me, I know extraordinarily well; I use tools that are familiar to me and they fit snugly in my hands. But when I write stories I am like someone who is in her own country, walking along streets that she has known since she was a child, between walls and trees that are hers.”

Knows Feels Writing Wells Children Long Country Stories Use Hands Seems Able Moving Values Known Tree Streets Wall Fit Walking Elements Long Time Tools Familiar Ease Vocation Misunderstood

Author:Natalia Ginzburg

“I love writing for myself. I read them [my stories], I cry over them sometimes.”

Writing Sometimes Stories Cry

Author:Grace Ogot

“For nearly a century the psychoanalysts have been writing op-ed pieces about the workings of a country they've never traveled to, a place that, like China, has been off-limits. Suddenly, the country has opened its borders and is crawling with foreign correspondents, neurobiologists are filing ten stories a week, filled with new data. These two groups of writers, however, don't seem to read each other's work. That's because the analysts are writing about a country they call Mind and the neuroscientists are reporting from a country they call Brain.”

Writing Mind Has Beens Two Country Stories Seems Brain Pieces Groups Week Century Ten Limits Filled China Data Borders Traveled Analysts Crawling Filing

Author:Susanna Kaysen

“Every time you finish something ... you figure you've finally learned to write, right? Then you start something else and it turns out you haven't. You have learned how to write that story, or that book, but you haven't learned how to write the next one.”

Writing Book Stories Turns Next Havens Figures The Next One

Author:Grace Paley

“If you write what you know about, you will always be on safe ground. I am very edgy and nervous about going into territories I know nothing about. That's why you don't find much high finance, group sex, or yachting parties in my stories.”

Ifs Knows Writing Stories Sex Party Groups Safe Finance Nervous Territory Edgy

Author:Maeve Binchy

“Individual science fiction stories may seem as trivial as ever to the blinder critics and philosophers of today - but the core of science fiction, its essence has become crucial to our salvation if we are to be saved at all.”

Ifs Writing May Stories Seems Today Individual Fiction Essence Salvation Science Fiction Critics Philosopher Saved Core Thrive Crucial Corny Fiction Stories

Author:Isaac Asimov

“But to write - that is grief and labor; and to read what one has written - how unlike the story as one saw it; how dull, how spirtless - that is enough to send one weeping to bed.”

Writing Enough Stories Grief Saws Written Bed Labor Dull Weeping

Author:Winifred Holtby

“I'm the least confident person in so many ways. But I believed that if somebody gave me the chance to tell a story, I would tell a story [well enough] that the person who gave me the chance would get their money back.”

Ifs Way Writing Wells Persons Enough Stories Chance

Author:Joss Whedon

“Writing the opening lines of a story is a bit like starting to ski at the steepest part of a hill. You must have all your skills under control from the first instant.”

Writing Firsts Stories Bits Lines Skills Starting Opening Hills Instant Skis

Book:Our Stories: A Fiction Workshop for Young Authors

Source: Our Stories: A Fiction Workshop for Young Authors

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