Jim Lynch Quotes

Setting is my primary joy as a writer, building a world and watching people respond to it.

With most of my books, I'll actually go out and look at the setting. If you describe things carefully, it kind of makes the scene pop.

When I set out to write, I see it very visually. I almost feel like a reporter. I'm relating what I'm seeing and hearing, so it's kind of watching a play for me.

I like it when I can hear directly from the writer: what they're seeing, what they're envisioning, and what their intention is.

A sense of place is very important in writing.

Prose is all about embellishing and describing.

I think a setting is hugely important. I look at setting as a character with its own look, sound, history, quirks, goofy temperaments and moods.

When I write, it's like watching a movie in my head.

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.

The funny thing about writing is, although you are writing about an experience which only you have had, you are trying to welcome other people into it, and there are ways I think of doing this, and one of them is through the senses, through the sounds and the smells.

I'm a very conceptual writer.

In fiction, plenty do the job of conveying information, rousing suspense, painting characters, enabling them to speak. But only certain sentences breathe and shift about, like live matter in soil.

Place colors everything; It is the thing by which I find my way in my fiction.

Fiction's essential activity is to imagine how others feel, what a Saturday afternoon in an Italian town in the 2nd Century looked like. My ambition is solely to get some effect, as of light on stone in a forest on a September day.

Choosing location is integral to the film: in essence, another character.

I always try to make the setting fit the story I have in mind.

I think my books come out very visual, which is an obvious consequence.

I just love details; I love trying to make the reader smell what I was smelling at the time and see what I was seeing. Textures, too - all that kind of stuff is probably my strong suit as far as my writing goes, I would say.

Writing a screenplay is so spare, it kind of reminded me that I really should celebrate what I can do in a book, which is description: for example, places, people, locations.

I can't write anything if I don't know where it's set, where the events are happening - even if the details of setting are minimal.

The elements of a good story are most definitely details, little bitty details. That does it, especially when you're describing, when you're setting the scene and everything. It's like you're painting a picture, so details are very important. Also, the music gotta be right. The music can really set the tone for the story and let you know what the story is gonna be about, but definitely, it's the vibe in the place where you at and the detail.

Good writers are in the business of leaving signposts saying, Tour my world, see and feel it through my eyes; I am your guide.

I think almost always that what gets me going with a story is the atmosphere, the visual imagery, and then I people it with characters, not the other way around.

A lot of writing is a form of seeing - putting down what you see in terms of action and landscape.

I write short stories. I write every day.