Peter Hedges Quotes

When you're writing a novel - at least the way I write is I work from what I would call 'emotional atmosphere,' ambiance to ambiance.

One of the biggest mistakes people make is to think that what you need to write a novel is imagination, creativity and a facility with words. Yes, you need all those things, but a novel is a highly complex organism that needs to be dealt with in quite a logical manner.

I always pity people who have to write my plot synopses.

For me, when I start a novel, I only have a general sense of what I am going to do - usually three or four big scenes or something to which I can really respond emotionally.

I went to a seminar early in my career on the craft of storytelling by Robert McKee. It was really life altering. There are basic principles on how to craft an engaging story and he covers them well. He's got a book out, 'Story,' that I would highly recommend to anyone interested in improve their storytelling.

Once a novel gets going and I know it is viable, I don't then worry about plot or themes. These things will come in almost automatically because the characters are now pulling the story.

It was a challenge for me to do a plot because I'd been an essayist and a journalist. I had to be vigilant about moving things along and being entertaining.

There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.

The reason most novelists are not good screenwriters is that you don't have time for a lot of details. Novelists can really create a richer experience for the reader and have many subplots. You only have 90 pages because each page is a minute of screentime. You have to have certain things happen by certain pages, a certain story arc in the movie.

It's a cliche, and in a way it's a conservative idea about fiction, but I did learn the hard way that plot does need to dictate the story.

Storytelling is my true passion.

There are many oral historians in America, but my books are made using the rules of novel writing. I have a beginning, a plot, characters.

You spend so much time as a writer telling straight and linear stories.

A good TV writer needs all the same tricks a good novelist has.

What interests me in writing a novel is taking really remote voices, characters, and stories and beginning to create some kind of web.

I'm not a good crime writer. I'm not good with plots... so I have to do something else.

As a fiction writer, my favorite tools are my imagination and the peculiar opportunities offered by different points of view.

I'm big on story structure. I studied with John Truby, who mapped out story by means of moral wants and needs, and that's what I do. Hey, so does John Irving.

Writing a novel is not at all like riding a bike. Writing a novel is like having to redesign a bike, based on laws of physics that you don't understand, in a new universe. So having written one novel does nothing for you when you have to write the second one.

As a writer, my only responsibility is to tell a compelling story.

When writing, I'm not thinking about war, even if I'm writing about it. I'm thinking about sentences, rhythm and story. So the focus, when I'm working, even if it's on a story that takes place at war, is not on bombs or bullets. It's on the story.

I think it's a short story writer's duty, as well as writing well about emotions and characters, to write story.

I think the main thing to remember when writing a novel is to stay true to the characters.

Good scripts and interesting stories are hard enough to find.

Short-story writing requires an exquisite sense of balance. Novelists, frankly, can get away with more. A novel can have a dull spot or two, because the reader has made a different commitment.