Charles Forsman Quotes

The trick to being a novelist is to act like an iceberg. Make it seem as if you're displaying only one-tenth of what you know, and the other nine-tenths isn't visible and never mind if that part is pure styrofoam!

For me, the game would be to assume a very intelligent reader who can extrapolate a lot from a little. And that's become my definition of art; to get that pitch just right, where I can put a hint on page three, and the reader's ears go up a bit, as opposed to dropping it all on the first page.

I purposely adopted a style in my storytelling wherein I don't have to explain everything or why the story is moving in a particular way.

I feel, in drama, you don't need to be fed everything. Even though sometimes when you watch, you want to know what happened and you want to see it, I feel like sometimes it's so much stronger to see the effects that those actions have had.

Peter Morgan's writing is so much about what you don't say: you're saying one thing but there's 10 other things going on, and those are the best writers like Chekhov... they're masters at a sort of naturalism, and yet there is all the subtext.

So much of writing is about what characters don't say, and in the early drafts, sometimes things get overwritten.

As a writer, you paint strokes and leave suggestions so readers can create their own pictures. That allows you to know someone by a small action and it saves countless pages of explanation.

Filmmaking is not about what we see - it's a very misconceived notion; it's about what we don't see.

I always find with dramas that the more that's left to the imagination of the audience, the better.

The short story form allows evocation, suggestion, implication. Its potency often lies in what it does not say.

I don't want to lose too much of the mystery by hammering every detail to death.

And isn't it better really to leave things only hinted at?

Lead the reader toward the thought, then stop a little short.

I never say what I mean, but I always manage to say something similar.

When you write fiction, you have an ideal reader in your mind who's sort of you but smarter.

I would imagine that anyone picking up a book written by me would expect a fast-paced story that requires minimal effort to turn the pages. The reader would also be looking for some out-of-the-ordinary revelations along the way. At the end of the day, I'm a writer who simply loves revealing stuff that is out-of-the-ordinary.

I write books that will make 10 or 12 hours disappear, and hopefully they'll resonate with you for a few days, where you'll remember the characters and the story. That suits me fine; I am happy with that.

I think it's very easy to disgust the reader with violence on the page - that's incredibly easy - but it's far harder to make a reader care about a character.

I am as interested in seeing what happens to my characters as any reader; that is why I tell kids that writers write for the same reason readers read - to find out the end of the story.

The nature of good fiction is that it dwells in ambiguity.

When I give myself over to a good novel, I surrender to the truths fashioned from one writer's heart, mind and soul. I do not waste a nanosecond wondering whether what I'm reading 'really happened.'

A discerning eye needs only a hint, and understatement leaves the imagination free to build its own elaborations.

A novel should be a book of questions, not a book of answers.

That's the thing with 'Lost': you can put a spin on so many things.

I like the eclipses, the synaptic jumps of short stories. The reader has to participate very actively in the experience.