“I'm used to adapting my novels for feature film - it can be challenging to cut and compress three or four hundred pages into two hours of dramatic action.” TwoActionFilmUsedThreeHoursChallengesNovelFourCuttingPagesHundredFeaturesDramaticAdapting Author:Tom Perrotta
“Well, I think in my first two novels, both the characters are pretty neurotic, which I would say that I am.” ThinkingFirstsWellsTwoCharacterNovelNeurotic Author:Curtis Sittenfeld
“My novels tend to come about from a fusion of two big ideas, creating a critical mass that then fissions, throwing off hundreds of other particles, riffs, tropes and characters.” TwoIdeasCharacterBigsNovelCreatingMassCriticalThrowingParticlesFusionBig IdeasTropesCritical MassFission Author:Will Self
“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
“My first two novels were set in the past, and that freed me up in a lot of ways; it allowed me to find my way into my story and my characters through research.” WayFirstsTwoCharacterStoriesPastNovelResearchMy Way Author:Jennifer Gilmore
“I had two projects that fell apart during preproduction. The first one was this movie that Judd Apatow and I had written about two guys following the Rolling Stones. It was going to be half concert film, half pseudo-documentary. It was Mick Jagger's idea.The other one was Simple Plan, based on a novel by Scott Smith. It's a great book - really stark, not a comedy - about a guy who finds $4 million in a plane crash and decides to keep it.” FirstsTwoBookIdeasFilmGuySimpleHalfMillionsNovelComedyPlansWrittenProjectsStonesFollowingPlanesConcertsCrashRollingDocumentariesStarksRolling StonesGreat BookPseudoTwo GuysJaggerPlane CrashesSimple Plan Author:Ben Stiller
“I suspect there are two kinds of novelists. Those who have a point of view and have something to say and then write a novel in order to say that thing, and those of us who write the book in order to find out what we think about that thing.” ThinkingWritingKindTwoBookOrderViewsNovelPoint Of ViewNovelistsSuspects Author:Neil Gaiman
“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
“It's so easy to get into the same routine. A novel every two years; perhaps, improving technique. But I'm not interested in that. I'm interested in doing something fundamentally important--and therefore, it needs time. And what I've been doing, really, is avoiding this pressure to get into the habit of one novel a year. This is what is expected of novelists. And I have never been really too much concerned with doing what is expected of novelists, or writers, or artists. I want to do what I believe is important.” WantNeedsWritingYearsBelieveTwoImportantArtistI BelieveEasyNovelToo MuchHabitConcernedPressureExpectedTechniqueNovelistsTwo YearsRoutineNot InterestedImprovingAvoidingEasy To GetTime Of Need Author:Chinua Achebe
“I'm not particularly inventive. If you left me in а room and told me to write a novel, I wouldn't be able to do it. But if you gave me two years in a public library around the corner, I could. It all comes from sort of mixing the true and the invented. I'm not a fabulist. I'm more of a reporter.” IfsWritingYearsTwoAbleLeftRoomsNovelLibraryCornersTwo YearsReportersMixingAround The CornerPublic LibraryYou Left Me Author:Elizabeth Gilbert
“R.G. Belsky's thought-provoking thriller, The Kennedy Connection, introduces us to a smart, witty, and human hero whose quest to find answers about two crimes - one famous, one all but unnoticed - is loaded with tension and full of unexpected twists and turns. I loved The Kennedy Connection, and can't wait for the next Gil Malloy novel.” HumansTwoTurnsNextWaitingAnswersNovelCrimeHeroSmartConnectionsWittyTensionUnexpectedThought ProvokingQuestsIntroducingProvokingTwistsLoadedThrillersUnnoticedTwists And Turns Author:Jan Burke
“Freud believed that our dreams sometimes recapitulate a speech, a comment we've heard or something that we've read. I always had compositions in my dreams. They would be a joke, a piece of a novel, a witticism or a piece of dialogue from a play, and I would dream them. I would actually express them line by line in the dream. Sometimes after waking up I would remember a snatch or two and write them down. There's something in me that just wants to create dialogue.” WantWritingTwoSometimesPlayDreamWould BeRememberLinesNovelPiecesHeardSpeechJokesWake UpDialogueCommentWakingCompositionOur Dreams Author:David Mamet
“Well, people have been wondering what's going to happen to the novel for two hundred years; its death has been announced many times. You know, I think the novel keeps redefining the world we live in. What you should look for in a novel is a window nobody else is looking out of, that nobody else can look through. What you look for is a voice. You pick up a novel by someone such as Faulkner or Hemingway and you just read three pages and you know who wrote it. And that's what one should demand of a novelist.” PeopleThinkingKnowsWorldShouldYearsWellsLooksHas BeensTwoHappensThreeVoiceWonderNovelDemandPagesPicksHundredWindowNovelistsRedefining Author:Mordecai Richler
“A good book changes for you every few years because you are in a different place in your own life. That's a sign of a good novel. Not only will two different readers get something different but so will a single reader at different points in his life.” YearsTwoBookDifferentNovelReaderGood BookDifferent Place Author:Alan Lightman
“Fiction -- at least for me -- requires long, relatively uninterrupted time stretches in which to bring it to fruition. I've never been a two-hour-in-the-morning writer, who could put in another six hours on Sunday afternoon. For me, a novel requires weeks of living in a largely mental and wholly internal landscape. Everything else has to be relegated to the odd hour here, the bit of time there. Sadly, however, uninterrupted time blocks are not what life doles out today to any of us with regularity.” LongTwoTodayBitsHoursFictionMorningNovelWeekSixBlockLandscapeOddInternalsSundayAfternoonRegularityFruitionSunday Afternoons Book:Conversations with Samuel R. Delany Source: Conversations with Samuel R. Delany