Writing Quotes

I'm not much of a believer in the so-called character study; I think that in the end, the story should always be the boss.

~ Stephen King

Create a character with an obsession, then follow.

~ Ray Bradbury

Even your sweetest character has claws, no matter how well they may be retracted and hidden (hidden even from herself).

~ Eric Maisel Ph.d.

My characters will happily march off a cliff if it is in them to do so, but may the gods help me if I write that the character is an alcoholic when they are not. They will fight me at every turn and it is their domain. A writer cannot win against a stubborn character.

~ Thomm Quackenbush

Love it when a compelling new character kicks open your mental door, tracks mud across your brain, and props their feet up on your cerebrum.

~ Don Roff

Yeah, episodic doesn't work. Your coolest character needs something big and meaningful to do. Otherwise, well, it's just narrative shit.

~ Don Roff

No one ever developed their character by arranging their experiences in such a way that only ‘good’ things are allowed to happen to them. Character is not purchased with a dance in the street. It is not cheap, and it’s hard to come by, owing partly to the fact that it is the heir of disappointment, frustration, betrayal and deceit. However, it is not the inheritance that matters so much as what you do with it. In the face of seemingly insurmountable problems what do you do, and why do you do it? The same holds for dramatic characters whose strength, courage, insight and wisdom have to be earned.

~ Billy Marshall Stoneking

The telling of any character is what they do in a different situation.

~ Sara Sheridan

Perfection should generally be avoided in a character. Real people, such as your readers, aren’t flawless and chances are they are not going to be able to fully identify with a character who is.

~ Craig Hart

IT’S NOT THAT ANYONE CAN BE A HERO, BUT THAT A HERO CAN COME FROM ANYWHERE. BUT THE KEY IS THAT THEY HAVE TO HAVE SOMETHING INSIDE THEM. A SPARK. A SENSE OF MORALITY. A YEARNING.

~ Film Crit Hulk!

In real life people do occasionally act out of character or do things we wouldn’t normally expect them to do. In fiction, there should be a good reason for a character to do something outside of the ordinary.

~ Craig Hart

By mastering character and plot, you give your book a fighting chance and withoutcharacter and plot, no book can survive.

~ Craig Hart

Characters are the lifeblood of anygood book.

~ Craig Hart

He must shape simultaneously (in an expanding creative moment) his characters, plot, and setting, each inextricably connected to the others; he must make his whole world in a single, coherent gesture, as a potter makes a pot...

~ John Gardner

Realize that by hurting your own characters, you are not a sadist. You are not deliberately hurting your loved ones merely to watch them suffer. You’re giving a gift. You’re helping them grow and develop. Your characters take on deeper meaning to become more alive on your pages. They’ll become real.

~ James Chartrand

We should all live as though someone is writing a book about us.

~ J.r. Rim

The journey as a writer is not so much about our stories, but the stories of others we meet along the way on our wonderful path. #grateful

~ Lee Bice-Matheson

When life gives you lemons ~ write about 'em!

~ Kimmie Easley

If you only enjoy the journey of writing, that's reward enough.

~ Deray Ogden

There is no right or wrong way to write a novel. Each journey is different for every individual work and for every writer. The first error is never to begin, the second is never to finish.

~ Don Roff

In the end, I will have to make a choice about how to tell my story....There has to be a moment of going forward, when all the possibilities are left behind.

~ Helen Humphreys

An author’s operating charter is to unearth embedded symbols that reflect complementary and inconsistent relationships of our collective assemblage, combine harmonizing and contradictory conceptions that motivate us, and delve larger truths out of variable and erratic elements of human nature.

~ Kilroy J. Oldster

In any case, it seems to me that all over the world people nowadays prefer to judge rather than to understand, to answer rather than to ask, so that the voice of the novel can hardly be heard over the noisy foolishness of human certainties.

~ Milan Kundera

People were usually much better in their letters than in reality. They were much like poets in this way.

~ Charles Bukowski

402Emotional position is part of it, but as an individual you are not your emotions, neither are you your intellect. These are things that you have . They're not things that you are . Therefore you have to start to become aware of the different requirements that human beings have, the different areas that they like to be satisfied in. Which means becoming aware of yourself. I mean, as a writer you're gonna have to understand pretty much the whole universe. But the best place to start is by understanding the inner universe. The entire universe – for one thing – only exists in your perceptions. That's all you're gonna see of it. To all practical intents and purposes this is purely some kind of lightshow that's being put on in the kind of neurons in our brain. The whole of reality. So. To understand the universe there's worse advice than that which was carved above the shrine of the Delphi oracle. Where it just said: “Know thyself”. Understand yourself. Know thyself is a magical goal, but like I say to me there is very little difference between magic and creative art in any sense – the laws of one apply perfectly well to the other.

~ Alan Moore

Writing isn't about creating perfect characters. There's no such thing. It's about creating characters that are real; flawed-- yet beautiful, in that they know they need another person. Needing someone else doesn't make them weak; if they believed all they needed was them self, they would be. A strong heroine isn't afraid to admit that a best friend, or soul mate, is exactly what they need at one moment or another. A strong heroine never stands alone. They stand tall; they believe in who they are. They are perfect in every human flaw, because as humans we are flawed. And in every flaw, I see the perfection of their souls. Writers breath life into simple words and create beings--flaws and all.

~ Cassandra Giovanni

I am Envy...I cannot read and therefore wish all books burned.

~ Christopher Marlowe

While every chapter should have goals to further the plot and delve our readers deeper into our world, there must be one goal above all else: Emotional Impact.

~ A.j. Flowers

Although my work is to grapple with words, I have no words with which to describe and explain this feeling. Perhaps I write stories to show that in life there are moments, emotions, and events that cannot be explained with words.

~ Shahriar Mandanipour

I'm obsessed with trying to recount events as accurately and honestly as possible, but in practice the only thing I'm really any good at is telling you how I feel.

~ Jason Christopher Hartley

Words do not come back to me easily,so I pull out my heart and wrap itin a thin sheet of paper, let the bloodseep across in stanzas of honestyand hand it to anyone who will take itso that the still-beating heart can tell themall my secrets, all my weaknesses,because if they are not hiddenthey cannot be taken and used against me.

~ Miriam Joy

That's the trouble with good writers. Only the bad ones make you want to do the human thing and look away.

~ Nick Hornby

Even a best fountain-pen cannot make a writer be a fount of eloquence, but fountains teach to sob with ecstasy.

~ Lara Biyuts

I think poor poetry writing skills are excused when you’re simply trying to flush out emotions.

~ Katie Kiesler

I don't think I've ever dared to write down what I see in the ruins of me, or tell in any detail the scars and all their secrets.

~ Ashly Lorenzana

Anyone I love takes away part of my freedom, but in that case it is I who wished it; and there is so much pleasure in loving that one gladly sacrifices something for its sake. Any one who loves me takes away all my freedom. Anyone who admires me (as a writer) threatens to take it away from me. I even fear those who understand me, which is why I spend so much time covering my tracks - both in my private life and in the persona I express through my books. What would have delighted me, had I loved god, is the thought that god gives nothing in return.

~ Henry De Montherlant

People who reported having a terrible traumatic experience and who kept the experience a secret had far more health problems than people who openly talked about their traumas. Why would keeping a secret be so toxic? More importantly, if you asked people to disclose emotionally powerful secrets, would their health improve? The answer, my students and I soon discovered, was yes.We began running experiments where people were asked to write about traumatic experiences for fifteen to twenty minutes a day for three to four consecutive days. Compared to people who were told to write about nonemotional topics, those who wrote about trauma evidenced improved physical health. Later studies found that emotional writing boosted immune function, brought about drops in blood pressure, and reduced feelings of depression and elevated daily moods. Now, over twenty-five years after the first writing experiment, more than two hundred similar writing studies have been conducted all over the world. While the effects are often modest, the mere act of translating emotional upheavals into words is consistently associated with improvements in physical and mental health.

~ James W. Pennebaker

I've found that busting your ass on a daily basis to make your art good, clear, and meaningful creates the most luck.

~ Don Roff

If there's something I'm not good at, it's usually because I just organically despise it. I can't help that. I'm fabulous at too many other things to waste my time faking it.

~ Crystal Woods

AuthorZoom- You do the writing, let us do the rest.

~ Christopher Seufert