Writing-advice Quotes

Don't say it was delightful; make us say delightful when we've read the description. You see, all th...

Don't say it was "delightful"; make us say "delightful" when we've read the description.

Often when he was teaching me to write in Greek, the Fox would say, "Child, to say the very thing yo...

Beware of advice—even this.

Make them laugh, make them cry, make them wait.

The unwritten novel has a basilisk’s stare.

Avoid stock expressions (like the plague, as William Safire used to say) and repetitions. Don't say ...

To help you fill in the details of the world you are creating, imagine that your characters inhabit ...

Let us not neglect the forbidden. Let us not sophisticate ourselves out of the cheap thrill and chil...

For me, art that's alive and urgent is about what it is to be a human being.

Q: What do you think is magical about fiction?DFW: ... The first line of attack for that question is...

I hate dialect. It gets in the way. If there is a need for dialect, you can render it quite easily b...

A man's grammar, like Caesar's wife, should not only be pure, but above suspicion of impurity.

Fiction should be in its way subversive. I don't think books should be neat or gentle or genteel or ...

I'm not asking you to describe the rain falling the night the archangel arrived; I'm demanding that ...

Prose is architecture, not interior decoration.

Imagination? It is the one thing beside honesty that a good writer must have. The more he learns fro...

Up in that room I decided that I would write one story about each thing that I knew about. I was try...

You need the devotion to your work that a priest of God has for his.

What you don't write is often more important than what you do

All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.

As a writer, you should not judge, you should understand.

Trying to write something of permanent value is a full-time job.

Don't let yourself slip and get any perfect characters... keep them people, people, people, and don'...

One does not travel, any more than one falls in love, to collect material. It is simply part of one'...

If you have a machine with three or four parts, you can shake them up in a box and it's still pretty...

But let the wise be warned against too great readiness at explanation: it multiplies the sources of ...

Modern writing at its worst does not consist in picking out words for the sake of their meaning and ...

‏Don’t live with a lover or roommate who doesn’t respect your work.

A major character has to come somehow out of the unconscious.

I have no talent; it's just a question of working, of being willing to put in the time.

The beauty of Goodreads is that you know you’re sowing in a field where everyone, by definition and ...

Do you know what the difference is between PR and advertising? Advertising is when you say how great...

I have a hardcore attitude: a “self-published, ghost-written book” is wrong because the concept behi...

Atticus told me to delete the adjectives and I'd have the facts.

They say it's a dangerous experiment to include dreams (actual dreams or otherwise) in the fiction y...

If you can't give the is-ness of a thing give the not-ness of it! The main thing is to hook up, get ...

Shut up, Ray.

Saepa stilum vertas, iterum quae digna legi sint scripturas. (Turn the stylus [to erase] often if yo...

think young writers should get other degrees first, social sciences, arts degrees or even business d...

What lasts in the reader’s mind is not the phrase but the effect the phrase created: laughter, tears...

Write what should not be forgotten.

If you're going to have a complicated story, you must work to a map; otherwise you can never make a ...

I am doubtful myself about the undertaking. Part of the attraction of the L.R. is, I think, due to t...

I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means. W...

You can always edit a bad page. You can't edit a blank page.

The highest duty of the writer is to remain true to himself and let the chips fall where they may. I...

Theoretically there's no reason one should get [writer's block], if one understands that writing, af...

Novels were not arguments; a story worked, or it didn't, on its own merits. What did it matter if a ...

Write freely and as rapidly as possible and throw the whole thing on paper. Never correct or rewrite...

Sometimes it helps to pick out one person-a real person you know, or an imagined person-and write to...

Be daring, take on anything. Don’t labor over little cameo works in which every word is to be perfec...

Your story is not a picture of life; it lacks the elements of truth. And why? Simply because you run...

I practiced writing in every possible way that I could. I wrote a pastiche of other people. Just as ...

It's basically an act of faith, hoping that a small idea will unspool into a bigger whole. Sometimes...

about clichés. Avoid them like the plague.

In general, shorter is better. If you can encapsulate your idea into a single captivating sentence, ...

No good story is quite true.

Perhaps the hardest thing in all literature— at least I have found it so: by no voluntary effort can...

One should write only those books from whose absence one suffers. In short: the ones you want on you...

Use what you stand for and what you oppose as a foundation to write great content that resonates wit...

Write without pay until somebody offers to pay.

...and above all, you should not think of writing as a way of earning your living. If you do, your w...

I never presume to give advice on writing. I think the best way to learn to write is to read booksan...

People who want to write books do so because they feel it to be the easiest thing they can do. They ...

Remember: when people tell you something's wrong or doesn't work, they are almost always right. When...

You have to finish things — that’s what you learn from, you learn by finishing things.

I’m an author. We don’t want to lead. We don’t need to follow. We stay home and make stuff up and wr...

Start telling the stories that only you can tell, because there’ll always be better writers than you...

I'm writing. The pages are starting to stack up. My morale is improving the more I feel like a write...

Start telling the stories that only you can tell, because there’ll always be better writers than you...

Remember: when people tell you something’s wrong or doesn’t work for them, they are almost always ri...

On the whole, I think you should write biographies of those you admire and respect, and novels about...

All writing is difficult. The most you can hope for is a day when it goes reasonably easily. Plumber...

Biting my truant pen, beating myself for spite:"Fool!" said my muse to me, "look in thy heart, and w...

I think the first duty of all art, including fiction of any kind, is to entertain. That is to say, t...

In quickness is truth. The more swiftly you write, the more honest you are. In hesitation is thought...

I thought you could beat, pummel, and thrash an idea into existence. Under such treatment, of course...

When in doubt, have a man come through the door with a gun in his hand.

I would write:"The soft melting hunk of butter trickled in gold down the stringy grooves of the spli...

Heinlein's Rules for Writers Rule One: You Must WriteRule Two: Finish What Your StartRule Three: You...

The greater the artist, the greater the doubt.

I shall be as brief as I can, for it is not by piling up detail that I hope to achieve my picture, b...

On Hayao MiyazakiI told Miyazaki I love the "gratuitous motion" in his films; instead of every movem...

One, don’t wait for inspiration, just start the damned thing. Two, once you begin, keep on until the...

There are two moments worthwhile in writing, the one when you start and the other when you throw it ...

Make it so good and so clear that it doesn't need any further explanation.

You need to take out the stuff that’s just sitting there and doing nothing. No slackers allowed! All...

Try any goddam thing you like, no matter how boringly normal or outrageous. If it works, fine. If it...

Language does not always have to wear a tie and lace-up shoes. The object of fiction isn't grammatic...

Sometimes you have to go on when you don't feel like it, and sometimes you're doing good work when i...

It's hard for me to believe that people who read very little - or not at all in some cases - should ...

... when editors were flattered, they would sometimes give in on some of their mad ideas.

But if you needed to HAVE AN IDEA, boredom could be to a roadblocked novel what chemotherapy was to ...

Writing isn't about making money, getting famous, getting dates, getting laid, or making friends. In...

There is a muse, but he’s not going to come fluttering down into your writing room and scatter creat...

At its most basic we are only discussing a learned skill, but do we not agree that sometimes the mos...

Only God gets it right the first time and only a slob says, "Oh well, let it go, that's what copyedi...

Love words, agonize over sentences. And pay

I have an idea and a first line -- and that suggests the rest of it. I have little concept of what I...