“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 was always aware, reading Chesterton, that there was someone writing this who rejoiced in words, who deployed them on the page as an artist deploys his paints upon his palette. Behind every Chesterton sentence there was someone painting with words, and it seemed to me that at the end of any particularly good sentence or any perfectly-put paradox, you could hear the author, somewhere behind the scenes, giggling with delight.” WritingEndsJoyArtistReadingBehindsScenePagesPaintDelightSentencesParadoxBehind The ScenesPalette Book:The View from the Cheap Seats: Selected Nonfiction Source: The View from the Cheap Seats: Selected Nonfiction
“I think in a couple of weeks, the question of all these bad write-offs will be behind us because everybody is going to throw in the towel on bad accounting.” ThinkingWritingBehindsWeekCoupleAccountingTowels Author:Muriel Siebert
“Imagine you are writing an email. You are in front of the computer. You are operating the computer, clicking a mouse and typing on a keyboard, but the message will be sent to a human over the internet. So you are working before the computer, but with a human behind the computer.” WritingHumansBehindsImagineFrontsInternetComputerMessagesMiceEmailKeyboardsTyping Author:Yukihiro Matsumoto
“I try to write in a way where the lyrics have many meanings and you won't really know what's behind it.” KnowsWayWritingTryingBehinds Author:Taylor Momsen
“It's odd but even when I was a kid, I would write about 'old and other times' as though I had a lot of years behind me. Now I do, so there is a difference in the weight of memory.” WritingYearsKidsDifferencesMemoriesBehindsWeightOdd Author:David Bowie
“I always feel that there is a curtain, you know, that if I could just peek behind the curtain I'd see how the world really works. And since I haven't had it I have to write about it instead.” IfsKnowsWorldFeelsWritingBehindsHavensIf I CouldCurtains Author:Charles de Lint
“Close reading of tough-minded writing is still the best, cheapest, and quickest method known for learning to think for yourself... Reading, and rigorous discussion of that reading in a way that obliges you to formulate a position and support it against objections, is an operational definition of education... reading, analysis, and discussion is the way we develop reliable judgment, the principle way we come to penetrate covert movements behind the facade of public appearances.” ThinkingWayWritingStillsReadingBehindsKnownPrinciplesSupportMovementPositionJudgmentToughMethodDefinitionsAppearanceDiscussionAnalysisPenetrateObjectionsFacadeCovertThink For YourselfClose Reading Author:John Taylor Gatto
“Along with a lot of other things, becoming a Bob Dylan fan made me a writer. I was never interested in figuring out what the songs meant. I was interested in figuring out my response to them, and other people's responses. I wanted to get closer to the music than I could by listening to it - I wanted to get inside of it, behind it, and writing about it through it, inside of it, behind it, was my way of doing that.” PeopleWayWritingMadeWantedSongBehindsFansListeningBecomingResponseMy WayBobDylan Book:Bob Dylan: Writings 1968-2010 Source: Bob Dylan: Writings 1968-2010
“Natural writers will often try to force themselves into a form - novel, story, screenplay, or poem - that is not necessarily the appropriate form for the way they see the world... if, in fact, they are writing from the artist's impulse, which is a deep, inchoate vision of some sort of order behind the apparent chaos of life on planet earth, they'll be driven then to express that vision in the creation of the object - the art object.” IfsWorldWayWritingTryingArtFactsStoriesEarthFormArtistOrderForceNaturalBehindsVisionNovelCreationObjectsPlanetsChaosDrivenImpulseAppropriateScreenplaysPlanet Earth Author:Robert Olen Butler