My Favorite Writing Quotes
Whether you’re an unpublished novelist or a sixteen-time New York Times bestselling author, you can always improve your craft. You can always become a better writer.
There is no Idea Dump, no Story Central, no Island of the Buried Bestsellers. Your job isn't to find these ideas, but to recognize them when they show up.
— Stephen King, On Writing
When you write, you're telling yourself the story. When you rewrite, your main job is taking out all the things that are not the story.
— Stephen King, On Writing
Remember that 'plumber in space' is not such a bad setup for a story.
— Stephen King, On Writing
Not every book has to be loaded with symbolism, irony, or musical language, but it seems to me that every book—at least every one worth reading—is about something.
— Stephen King, On Writing
Rewrite formula: 2nd Draft = 1st Draft - 10%.
— Stephen King, On Writing
The key ingredients I look for in a fully formed breakout premise are (1) plausibility, (2) inherent conflict, (3) originality and (4) gut emotional appeal.
— Donald Maass, Writing the Breakout Novel
If there is one single principle that is central to making any story more powerful, it is simply this: Raise the stakes.
— Donald Maass, Writing the Breakout Novel
A perfect character is not engaging. Character transformation can be one of the most powerful effects in any story.
— Donald Maass, Writing the Breakout Novel
As authors we like our protagonists. We are tempted to protect them from trouble. That temptation must be resisted.
— Donald Maass, Writing the Breakout Novel
I do not believe you have no opinions. It is simply not possible that you have never observed a fact of human nature or uncovered a social irony. You are an aware, observant and discerning person. You are a novelist.
— Donald Maass, Writing the Breakout Novel
There is, in any great opening line, a mini-conflict or tension that is strong enough to carry the reader to the next step in the narrative.
— Donald Maass, Writing the Breakout Novel
On opening sentences: “If in the first chapter a hurricane is going to blow down an oak tree which falls through the kitchen roof, there's no need to first describe the kitchen.”
— James Thayer, Author Magazine
A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.
It's said that all writers are thieves. It's also said that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Both sayings are true.
— Elizabeth Lyon, Manuscript Makeover
I'm not against writing for the sheer joy of it. Without a plan or prior thought, you'll sometimes end up with a rough draft worth revising.
— Elizabeth Lyon, Manuscript Makeover
When a stranger donates a kidney or risks her life to save another person, the public wants to know more about this individual. These spontaneous or inexplicable acts do happen in real life, but rarely in fiction. In your novel, you must show how and why the character is compelled to take such risks.
— Elizabeth Lyon, Manuscript Makeover
Who has the most to lose? Most of the time, your answer will guide you to select the character who should be your protagonist.
— Elizabeth Lyon, Manuscript Makeover
Most of your novel's action falls under two words: complications and conflict, or should.
— Elizabeth Lyon, Manuscript Makeover
Complications—obstacles, antagonists, and psychological conflicts—should intensify and reach points of high drama, high suspense. Crises.
— Elizabeth Lyon, Manuscript Makeover
Make sure you aren't so dazzled by the climax and the conclusion of [your] plot that you abandon the conclusion of your character's long internal struggle.
— Elizabeth Lyon, Manuscript Makeover
Your novel is like a brand-new, steam-powered train. If you don't keep tossing coal into the fire, your train will stop and the passengers will never reach their destination. One of your most basic jobs is to keep driving your story forward, through action and change, to its conclusion. Keep shoveling.
— Elizabeth Lyon, Manuscript Makeover
I have edited half a dozen thrillers where the primary action was characters sitting around talking. How thrilling is that!
— Elizabeth Lyon, Manuscript Makeover
Emotions are like anchors deep into a character. Changing them frequently, in tandem with changes in the plot, keeps a story vital and moving.
— Elizabeth Lyon, Manuscript Makeover
Readers develop expectations based upon where you lead them. A wonderful technique is to pop reversals of the expected, which operate to change action, change emotions, or change goals.
— Elizabeth Lyon, Manuscript Makeover
If you end a sentence or paragraph with an unanswered question, readers must go on to find the answer.
— Elizabeth Lyon, Manuscript Makeover
The greater the dramatic event, the more you should keep from immediately answering what it is.
— Elizabeth Lyon, Manuscript Makeover
In writing fiction, you not only get to play with time and space, you must gain skill in manipulating them.
— Elizabeth Lyon, Manuscript Makeover
When you decided to grant a viewpoint to a character, whether you knew it or not, you made a commitment to develop that character's thoughts, feelings, and physical responses.
— Elizabeth Lyon, Manuscript Makeover
I know a few people, very few, who can spout plot summaries of novels on request. What most people remember, I contend, are their favorite characters.
— Elizabeth Lyon, Manuscript Makeover
Make sure you have two stories and two sets of stakes in your novel: the outer stakes of the plot goal, and the inner stakes of the universal [emotional] need.
— Elizabeth Lyon, Manuscript Makeover
Beginnings are the most difficult to write well, and success in getting to first base with a literary agent or publisher hinges on them.
— Elizabeth Lyon, Manuscript Makeover
Every novel is an original, every story is imbued with an atmosphere, and every genre has a distinctive tone. The worst possible case occurs when a novel has none of these qualities.
— Elizabeth Lyon, Manuscript Makeover
There is no substitute for being a reader of the genre in which you are writing, and for reading in other genres for contrast and inspiration.
— Elizabeth Lyon, Manuscript Makeover
Every beginning must draw your reader into your story and, as quickly as possible, get them to suspend disbelief in your created world and accept it as “reality.”
— Elizabeth Lyon, Manuscript Makeover
Scenes are the workhorse of fiction. Characters hold the reins and call out the commands.
— Elizabeth Lyon, Manuscript Makeover
[T]he most effective section or chapter endings are those that force the reader to turn the page.
— Elizabeth Lyon, Manuscript Makeover
Guaranteed, you need to give your protagonist a more distinctive personality and voice than you have.
— Elizabeth Lyon, Manuscript Makeover
Heroes and heroines should be passionate about their lives, what they are seeking, and what finding it will do not only for themselves but for the people they care for.
— Elizabeth Lyon, Manuscript Makeover
When any form of narration reveals the unique personality and voice of the viewpoint character, it becomes characterization.
— Elizabeth Lyon, Manuscript Makeover
Substitute "damn" every time you're inclined to write "very;" your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.
Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.
The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.
A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.
Drama, instead of telling us the whole of a man's life, must place him in such a situation, tie such a knot, that when it is untied, the whole man is visible.
Many of us were taught that no sentence should begin with "but." If that's what you learned, unlearn it - there's no stronger word at the start. It announces a total contrast with what has gone before, and the reader is thereby primed for the change.
— William Zinsser, On Writing Well
Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self.
Writing gives you the illusion of control, and then you realize it's just an illusion, that people are going to bring their own stuff into it.
[On fantasy writing:] It's not enough to create magic. You have to create a price for magic, too. You have to create rules.
Writing well means never having to say, ‘I guess you had to be there.’
Thus, in a real sense, I am constantly writing autobiography, but I have to turn it into fiction in order to give it credibility.
Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule.
— Stephen King, Everything You Need to Know About Writing Successfully - in Ten Minutes
If you don't have the time to read, you don't have the time or the tools to write.
— Stephen King, On Writing
Good YA is not dumbed-down adult fare; it’s literature that doesn’t waste a breath. It doesn’t linger over grandiloquent descriptions of clouds or fields, and it doesn’t introduce irrelevant minor characters in the hope (too often gratified) that the book will be called Dickensian.
Every paragraph should accomplish two goals: advance the story, and develop your characters as complex human beings.
Everything I say about [writing] battles applies equally well in the boudoir.
Don't write what you know. Write what you love. That's what will keep you writing.
Fear is the root of all bad writing.
— Stephen King (source unknown)
I try to leave out the parts that people skip.
— Elmore Leonard
Write without pay until somebody offers to pay.
— Mark Twain
You have to know how to accept rejection and reject acceptance.
— Ray Bradbury
As a novelist, you want the reader to experience two conflicting yet simultaneous reactions [to your endings]. They should be saying “Wow, I never saw that coming” and “Of course, sure, yeah, it had to work that way, didn’t it?”
— Michael Snyder interview on Author Culture
The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense.
— Tom Clancy
“Foreboding” and “ominous” is what you're striving to achieve—not mention.
— Joseph Novakovich
Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.
— John Steinbeck
You must write for children in the same way you do for adults, only better.
There's a level of realism you can only achieve through the imaginary.
A well-written novel is co-authored by the reader's imagination.
— Stephen Parolini, via Twitter.
Don't get discouraged because there's a lot of mechanical work to writing. I rewrote the first part of Farewell to Arms at least fifty times.
— Ernest Hemingway
I'm not a great writer. I'm a great rewriter.
— Paddy Chayefsky
The business of the novelist is not to relate great events, but to make small ones interesting.
Adverbs are a sign that you've used the wrong verb.
There are three rules for writing the novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.
Suspense is achieved by information control: What you know. What the reader knows. What the characters know.
I often need physical gesture to balance dialogue. If I write in public, every time I need to know what a character is doing with his hand or foot, I can look up and study people and find compelling gestures that I can harvest. Writing in public gives you that access to a junkyard of details all around you.
There have been great societies that did not use the wheel, but there have been no societies that did not tell stories.
You have to write whichever book it is that wants to be written. And then, if it's going to be too difficult for grown-ups, you write it for children.
It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.
— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince
"All of the true things I am about to tell you are shameless lies."
— Kurt Vonnegut, Cat's Cradle
For me a work of fiction exists only insofar as it affords me what I shall bluntly call aesthetic bliss, that is a sense of being somehow, somewhere, connected with other states of being where art (curiosity, tenderness, kindness, ecstasy) is the norm
— Vladimir Nabokov, from his essay “On a book entitled Lolita”
If history were taught in the form of stories, it would never be forgotten.
— Rudyard Kipling