Fiction Writing Quotes - Page 2

• A professional writer is an amateur who didn't quit.

  Richard Bach

  Perseverance, Writing, Editing

  Richard Bach (2012). “A Gift of Wings”, p.9, Dell

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• Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.

  W. H. Murray

  Inspirational, Life, Motivational

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• Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader - not the fact that it is raining, but the feeling of being rained upon.

  E. L. Doctorow

  Nature, Rain, Writing

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• Thank your readers and the critics who praise you, and then ignore them. Write for the most intelligent, wittiest, wisest audience in the universe: Write to please yourself.

  Harlan Ellison

  Writing, Intelligent, Praise

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• Writing is turning one's worst moments into money.

  J. P. Donleavy

  Writing, Worst Moments, Writing Fiction

  Quoted in Playboy, May 1979

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• The greatest rules of dramatic writing are conflict, conflict, conflict.

  James Frey

  Writing, Conflict, Dramatic

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• If you start with a bang, you won't end with a whimper.

  T. S. Eliot

  Writing, Bangs, Ends

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• The writer's genetic inheritance and her or his experiences shape the writer into a unique individual, and it is this uniqueness that is the writer's only stuff for sale.

  James Gunn

  Writing, Unique, Inheritance

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• The reason that fiction is more interesting than any other form of literature, to those who really like to study people, is that in fiction the author can really tell the truth without humiliating himself.

  Jim Rohn

  Inspirational, Truth, Writing

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• Close the door. Write with no one looking over your shoulder. Don't try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. It's the one and only thing you have to offer.

  Barbara Kingsolver

  Life, Being Alone, Writing

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• People on the outside think there's something magical about writing, that you go up in the attic at midnight and cast the bones and come down in the morning with a story, but it isn't like that. You sit in back of the typewriter and you work, and that's all there is to it.

  Harlan Ellison

  Morning, Writing, Thinking

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• The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense.

  Tom Clancy

  Life, Witty, Truth

  "Biography/Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader.

  Ernest Hemingway

  Reading, Book, Writing

  "The Figure a Poem Makes". Book by Ernest Hemingway, 1939.

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• Have something to say, and say it as clearly as you can. That is the only secret.

  Matthew Arnold

  Writing, Secret, Famous Writers

  Quoted in G.W. E. Russell, Collections and Recollections (1898)

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• Fiction is about stuff that's screwed up.

  Nancy Kress

  Writing, Fiction, Stuff

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• Fantasy doesn't have to be fantastic. American writers in particular find this much harder to grasp. You need to have your feet on the ground as much as your head in the clouds. The cute dragon that sits on your shoulder also craps all down your back, but this makes it more interesting because it gives it an added dimension.

  Terry Pratchett

  Cute, Writing, Clouds

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• Editors never buy manuscripts that are left on the closet shelf at home.

  John W. Campbell

  Home, Editors, Writing And Reading

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• Find the key emotion; this may be all you need know to find your short story.

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  Writing, Keys, Story Writers

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• In a good play, everyone is in the right.

  Christian Friedrich Hebbel

  Writing, Play, Fiction Writers

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• The reason 99% of all stories written are not bought by editors is very simple. Editors never buy manuscripts that are left on the closet shelf at home.

  John Y. Campbell

  Home, Writing, Simple

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• If you write one story, it may be bad; if you write a hundred, you have the odds in your favor.

  Edgar Rice Burroughs

  Writing, Odds, Stories

  "King of the Jungle" by John J. Miller, reason.com. August/September 1999.

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• It is perfectly okay to write garbage – as long as you edit brilliantly.

  C. J. Cherryh

  Writing, Long, Garbage

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• Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.

  Anton Chekhov

  Inspirational, Writing, Moon

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• Get it down. Take chances. It may be bad, but that's the only way you can do anything really good.

  William Faulkner

  Inspiring, Writing, May

  "A Faulkner perspective: a companion-guide to the limited first edition of the Selected letters of William Faulkner".

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• I have been successful probably because I have always realized that I knew nothing about writing and have merely tried to tell an interesting story entertainingly.

  Edgar Rice Burroughs

  Writing, Successful, Interesting

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